Sweet Corn and Butternut Squash Succotash

 

This is SUCH a nice side dish for this Maple Sugar Time of Year ! We had this with roasted baby potatoes and grilled lamb chops this evening.  It was a bit of springtime before the actual seasonal warm up. 

Cooking With Cider - Red Cabbage and Apples

It's almost tax time, so we were on a Skype call this past week with our German friends, Harald and his wife Inge. We help Harold negotiate the finance world of US banks and tax law sometimes. Anyway, in making small talk about late winter and what everyone has been doing and eating during COVID lockdowns, the topic of schnitzel and veggies came up. One thing lead to another and by the time I began planning for dinner, pork medallions and red cabbage became my targeted ingredients. Hiel and I really miss the German fare that we had when we would meet friends at the local restaurants in Baden -Württemberg. Between missing our friends and missing the German culture, I was back to the schnitzel and sides.

'Kind Of' Colcannon ...Just in Time for St Paddy's Day

Weekend fare that seems fitting for a bowl of comfort and a cold beer at the pub ...

Bribery Pasta by Michael Anthony

Dinner the other evening was green from start to finish, and to boot, gluten free. Now, you don't have to go that route if you love your traditional semolina pastas. I have been trying to limit my glutens a bit, as I have a skin condition that seems irritated by too many glutens (as well as other baddies) in my diet. SO! I tried out Barilla Pasta's chick pea pasta. I have to say that we loved its nutty flavour. I cooked it al dente so it never got mushy, which can happen real fast with other GF pasta products.

Anyway, the real star of this dish is all the fresh green veg in the slice and dice. Just look! Broccoli, Swiss chard, green onions and their slivered green tops, plus onions and garlic. There is far more veg in this dish than there is pasta.

Gazpacho - Cool Relief From the Heat

Another healthy way to use the garden's bounty! This is Ina Garten's recipe with a bit of a more traditional adapting. The gazpacho is very smooth, has the addition of a piece of artisan loaf that has had the crust removed and a wee bit of cumin as well as that Kosher salt and black pepper. The garnishes resemble a pico de gallo atop the bowl of soup ... cold crisp and the perfect start to a meal with a glass of cold Pinot Grigio on the side and tortilla crisps with guacamole.

Hokumpoke Creamy Corn Pasta with Peas and Basil

This past week I made my way over to Hancock, New Hampshire to a start-up CSA called Hokumpoke Farm. Isn't that an awesome name ? First of all, it's just plain fun to say and second it is not a name to be forgotten, so it's easy to toot it to my friends. Anyway, I was drawn there because Colleen had the brilliant idea to market the CSA to more folks by offering a weekly opt in/opt out share program. Now, SB and I have our own vegetable garden, but we also are pretty basic in what we grow. My herbs are sketchy this year, we never grow leeks or kohlrabi or fennel or heirloom tomatoes or cabbage ... and guess what? Hokumpoke Farm does! You can guess what weeks I'll be trotting over to pick up a bag of produce!

Stewed Summertime Veg - Pisto

Summertime vegetables are starting to come into the supermarkets and soon they'll be mounded up at the local farmer's markets too! That makes this tapas dish perfect for using the best of the best fresh veg! I love the color and flavour that a bit of smoked paprika gives this particular pan of Pisto. 

Perfect Creamed Spinach

Spinach is my all-time favorite dark leafy green. I particularly love it this way - softly wilted in a pan of sautéed onions and butter and then tossed with a rich white sauce made with chicken broth, a bit of heavy cream and spiced with a wee bit of nutmeg.  It's heavenly, as is, but if you have pine nuts for the toasting ? Oh my, they are a nice addition to the dish.

Quinoa and Spinach Salad with Almonds and Sun-Dried Tomatoes

This very easy salad came together in the heat of that oppressive day we had this week ... the first really hot day of springtime here in New England. The recipe comes from a summer line-up of terrific side dishes posted at a food blog called COOKIE + kate.  You can follow Kate's recipe to the letter or do what I did. I used double the spinach, added lemon zest, and slivers of basil in my version.

It was a delicious way of using the first picking of our spinach greens and the basil that I topped out of my plants so that they'd fill out a bit and not bolt to blossoms and seeds. This salad was perfect sitting on the plate beside a pan-seared salmon filet. Add a glass of super chilled Sauvignon blanc and it was a super summery supper. Say THAT three times fast !

The recipe makes a large amount of quinoa mixture - enough for two hungry people to have the salad as a side dish and enough for bowls of the quinoa/tomato/almond mix the next day for easy lunch. An easy way to serve is to plate the amount of spinach you would like and add a serving of quinoa mix over top each serving. Save the rest of the fresh greens for leftover lunch or second servings.

Crisped Cauliflower Salad with Citrus and Aromatics

Happy New Year, folks ! More veggies and less meat is what I say for 2018! Here's my first platter of salad. A warm salad of crisped cauliflower slices, shallots, rosemary, garlic, red pepper flakes, orange zest, flat leaf parsley, toasted hazelnuts, and a drizzle of olive oil and orange juice over top to finish it.

Springtime Soup

The devilishly hot days that taxed our bodies earlier this week have passed ... for the time being. We're back to cooler temperatures and possible rain showers. So I made soup with some of the vegetables and herbs that are coming from the garden and that have popped up at the farmer's markets.

Mom Flynn's Squash Casserole

Soft egg and mayonnaise custard surrounds chunks of zucchini, yellow summer squash, and Vidalia onions. Sprinkle in a bit of dried basil and you have a wonderful side dish for a roasted chicken or a pork tenderloin roast. This recipe comes to me via my sister, Donna. She made this for us with squash from her garden back in the early fall when I visited her.  She told me that she inherited the recipe from her mother-in-law,  Mom Flynn. It's simple and so sublime.

Roasted Brussels Sprouts

The end of the gardening season is upon us, but we still have a few treats to marvel over. Brussels sprouts are some of the last of the vegetables out there in the grey cottage's patch of Earth.

Asian Pickle

The cucumbers have arrived! SB brings three or four in every day and plunks them down on the counter ... a challenge is implied there. Can I stay ahead of them? Well, this year, yes! I donate some to the local food pantry as part of this little church challenge to spread the seasonal wealth to those who need good local food for free. The rest I use to make salads and these easy pickles.

DH's Slaw and Stories

Here's a cabbage and apple slaw without all that mayo. Diana Henry presents it as a great healthy side dish in her cook book called A Change of Appetite - Where Healthy Meets Delicious. This crisp and crunchy side nestled up to potato salad and a slow-cooked beef brisket dressed with Bourbon-Peach BBQ Sauce last evening. More on that beef brisket in another post.

Michael Anthony's Pepper Stew

If you were to serve this pepper stew with a bowl of rice, it could be a main  course. We opted to have it along side baked chicken breasts that were stuffed with cheese and ham. So it served as a vegetable side dish. Either way, it was delicious!

The Weirdest Salad I Ever Loved ...

Up til just a few years ago, you couldn't pay me to put a Brussels sprout in my mouth. No offense to my Mom, but she'd ruined the little cabbage for me. Her one and only method of preparation was to boil the heck out of the poor things until they resembled khaki bits of Army fatigues and serve them plain as can be with a pat of margarine and some salt and pepper. She also always bought the biggest (and thus more bitter) sprouts she could get. Why, I'll never know. Consequently, this little vegetable made it real fast to my shortlist of BLECCH!

It was SB who turned my attitude around. Oh, and Yotam Ottolenghi. SB showed me how to roast Brussels sprouts. YO showed me how to dress them up all pretty and sweet.

Bastelles a la Courge - Squash Handpies

The squash is getting ripe in the gardens. I guess this means Fall is at the corner! I spent the morning slicing and dicing butternut squash, onions, and garlic and rolling out a spelt flour handpie crust. It's always fun to start making those first few recipes that hale a change of season, isn't it?

Virtual Supper Club's Homage to Wine Country

When you think about wine country, images of France, California, Australia, Germany, or Italy may come to mind. For me, it's always Italy that comes to mind first. I love Italian cuisine and this meal is one of my all time Fall favorites. I play with the concept of saltimbocca and a side of delicious seasonal polenta for this month's Virtual Supper Club theme. Jerry has asked the club members to dish up a tribute to wine country and we have all done our best! While I am having this polenta with pork saltimbocca, Jerry has made a gorgeous Roasted Breast of Chicken with Pinot Noir Sauce. I think my pumpkin sage polenta will complement ! Let's see what else is on the menu!

IHCC - Here's to the Taters, Nigel!

... 500 grams of tiny Yukon Golds ... a Nigel Slater recipe ... a tasty side dish for baked cod ...

This week's challenge from the I Heart Cooking Club was to find a  root vegetable recipe from Nigel Slater's vast collection of work. I have been enthralled by his potato recipes for the past few weeks, so I thought I'd extend the tater love and go for one more goodie!