a weird combination

oh man, looking at this picture i am wishing i had more spinach so that i can make this again. there was this lovely recipe i found on food52 for a "yoghurt and spinach dip" that sounded absolutely delicious. and luckily enough, i happened to have some spinach on hand from my CSA! so, i blanched it (well, i sort of blanched it. in the sense that i kept it in the boiling water for only 30 seconds or so, but then i forgot the crucial blanching step of the ice water shock, and so the spinach was completely wilted. which is fine really because you just saute it after you chop it up anyway. and i threw in a bunch of greek yogurt, and some glorious extra virgin olive oil i recently bought. pretty simple, pretty delicious - just needs a bit of salt for the finishing touch.


i cooked some chicken quick, and put it on top of the spinach dip. can we say delicious again? probably. also bought some crusty bread that was quite tasty. all in all, a good dinner choice. and lunch the next day. and leftover dip as another lunch another day. perhaps the next party i have, i'll make some? or maybe just the next time i have spinach. or the next time i go to the grocery store. :)


and then tagging along with this entry is some delicious parsnip risotto that i made last week! its official: i love parsnips. they are pretty much the most awesome vegetable. along with celeriac. and kale. okay so i have a lot of favorite vegetables, shush. but anyway, parsnip has a nice, sweet but satisfying flavor, that makes it so good in creamy dishes, like soup or risotto. I think the only thing that would have made this better is if i had put rosemary in it. i thought i had some dried, but apparently did not, and didnt pick any up at whole foods when i was there (because i thought i had some dried) and so i decided to just make it sans adequate spices. still fairly good, but i think that it was lacking a bit without the spices. which i should really be cooking with more often. i think my new motto for the spring is going to be: embrace spices!!

what the hell do i do with all these vegetables?

i am TERRIBLE about updating this thing. I have taken pictures of like, 5 different meals in the last few weeks, but have i updated this thing with ANY of them? no! because i have been busy and lame, etc. i suppppose i have the excuse that 2 weekends ago i was in NYC visiting the brother, and last weekend was filled with birthday celebration, but still. shame on me.

so this catch-up entry is an ode to my CSA vegetables. and a sort of "what on earth do i do with all of these???" explanation of what i've been cooking in the last few weeks. we begin, apparently, with a potato gratin. not just any potato gratin, however, this one has sweet potatoes in it! and maybe celeriac, and maybe carrot and parsnip. i honestly dont remember what i put in it, all i know is it contains sweet potatoes, other root vegetables, onion, cheese, milk, probably chicken broth. it was...decent. i think the problem is that when i make these things, i make WAY too much of them (but once you cut up one each of the vegetables you have a ton!) and then i get sick of eating them. As i was telling emily and bryan last night, i need a boyfriend, because then i could just feed him my leftovers, and i would only have to eat potatoes au gratin 2-3 times instead of 5-6. the other alternative we thought of is swapping leftovers. that one probably has more potential...


and then we have the kale. i love kale. have i mentioned that enough in the other entries where i cook kale? because i think it honestly might be one of the tastiest greens there is. swiss chard, on the other hand? hate it. cannot eat the stuff, its just not tasty. but kale...kale is delicious and happy. kale ALWAYS tastes good. particularly when you roast garbanzo beans with garlic and oil and then add that to some sauted kale and did i mention DELICIOUS? yep, it makes me happy.


rounding out the boring food post, we have: glob of mashed root vegetables with glob of sauteed vegetables. okay, thats not a fair description. on the left, we have: sweet potato, regular potato, some beets, which were boiled, then mashed with butter and parsley and chive and some oil. (can we tell i am trying to use up my massive stash of potatoes?) and frankly...this was delicious. quite flavorful, and really so tasty. i forgot how much i love mashed foods. but again, it made so much that i was eating it for like, 5 days. that gets boring and sad. on the right...i have some zucchini, squash, onion, and some green (i think it was baby bok choy) that i needed to do SOMETHING with...so i steamed it and then sauteed with a bit of butter. and it was really delicious. thats sort of become my default for zucchini and squash now, because it tastes so good. i made it again 2 nights ago, actually, sans the bok choy, and forced myself to leave enough leftovers that i could put it in an omelet with tomato and feta cheese last night. delicious? DELICIOUS.

so...as we can tell with this entry, i think i am getting a bit fed up with some of the things i've been getting in my CSA share. i'm sort of cooking just to cook, for some of this stuff, instead of cooking something i WANT to cook. which isnt the end of the world, eating healthy and fresh and all, but i am so sick of having potatoes. and i am sick of seeing a drawer filled with apples and trying to think of what dessert i can make and which friends to pawn it off on because i'll never eat more than 1 serving of it. and getting greens on a thursday evening but not having time to cook until monday and by that time they have started to wilt...and wasting lettuce because i cannot eat an entire head of lettuce myself in a week along with whatever other salad greens they give me...i guess what i am saying is i am not sure if i am going to continue this CSA thing. i love supporting local farms and communities...but can i really go through all this food myself in a week? is it providing the variety i really want? will the summer share really be any better? i dont know. i really dont know.

other exciting posts to come this weekend: parnsip risotto, and cranberry sour cream cake with barley flour (both of which are things that make me extremely happy about having the CSA, as i never would have explored those dishes without it!)

the flowers are prettier than the food

I really love flowers. Perhaps its the fact that i grew up with a mother obsessed with gardening, and we often had fresh flowers on the table (i'm not kidding about the obsessed part - every time i come home, i find that mother has dug up another section of the yard for more flower beds. its slightly absurd, but very pretty). And perhaps it is also that my aunt used to buy flowers for herself at the market all the time, so that she would have something pretty in a vase. and i always loved stopping by the chinese flower lady in kendall square, making picking up a few daises for friends, or a plant for myself (i kept a cyclamen alive for *months* once, it was amazing, the thing never died!)

but in any event, i love flowers. and i dont have any spots in my apartment that would allow for flower pots - the windows dont have large sills (and arent in spots i could put a table by) and so there is no sun access. at the old apartment, not only did we have large window sills in the kitchen, but we had a back deck that we could put plants on (not that i really did, except for some hanging plants; jamie was the gardener of the 3 of us) but i really have no options at the current apartment. so i am now getting into the habit of picking up some flowers every few weeks at the market, to decorate the kitchen table. a few weeks ago, it was gerber daisies (my favorites). this week? a collection of daffodils, tulips, and other pretty things. definitely a happy sight at the end of the day. at some point, i think i am going to investigate options for a hanging herb garden for my kitchen.

but back to the actual point of this blog: food. my CSA gave me celeriac this week. and yellow beets. and tons of other delicious things (it was a good week) but the important thing is that i got tasty items that are particularly delicious when julienned in a salad. and so...i pulled out my mandoline, and chopped up a TON of vegetables. carrot, beet, celeriac, cucumber, apple. makes quite the delicious salad! except...it makes a delicious salad that will last for DAYS and DAYS because when you chop all of that up you have an absurdly large quantity of chopped vegetables. which really gets tiring and boring after a while...i will be eating them...all week long, before my trip to NYC this weekend!

Happy pi day!

i know, i know, i'm 2 days late with this post, but the important thing is that i *made* the pie on pi day, right?

so as you all (aka my 2 readers) know, i recently joined twitter. and while i mostly only follow friends, i also follow a few foodie-type people, who post about things happening in boston as well as restaurants and food events, etc. and one of those people i follow is @eatboston. well, a week or two ago, he mentioned that he wanted to have a pi day party - a palooza, if you will, to which people would bring pies, and at which much pie would be consumed, in honor of that good ol' 3.14159(...) and i thought...that sounds like fun! i should make a pie!

so while sarah and i were at tupelo last week for dinner (highly recommended, btw) we brainstormed a bit on pies. there were many fun pie ideas, but none solved the problem i have been having lately. the problem of not being able to eat all of the fruit my CSA gives me. i know, they don't give me that much fruit...2 grapefruits and 3 apples a week, i should be able to eat all that, right? well at some point, i got a bit behind, and the fruit just started piling up! i dont know what to do with it all! it seems that even if i take a grapefruit in for breakfast several times a week, the pile never gets smaller! what could i do? make a grapefruit tart, is clearly the answer.

i was quite torn about what the filling should be. i found a recipe online calling for a marscapone filling, which i have never done before but have heard good things, and it sounded fun. but i also sort of wanted a lemon custard. i actually wanted it to be a bit thick, like a lemon meringue pie (without the meringue). tough choice. somewhere between a custard and the lemon meringue filling. similar to the texture of pastry cream that has NOT been lightened by whipped cream. anyway, trying to figure out what to do, and i decided to go with the simplest, and try to marscapone (which, btw, i was unaware of the texture of, having never used it before. i never would have gone with it had i realized just how soft it would be). i was also originally going to be lazy, and use a store-bought pie dough, but it went bad on me! so i had to frantically make a pate sucre that morning! which i didnt have time to chill again after rolling out, so the sides totally shrunk in! so disappointing...

so the pate sucre (which i think i overcooked juuuuust a little bit, because it was just a bit too crunchy), covered in a layer of mixed berry jam, then the marscapone filling (with some crystallized ginger and grapefruit juice and confectioner's sugar), topped with fresh sections of grapefruit. and yes, i sectioned all of those and yes, i had a papercut or something on my hand for the citrus juices to sting, but i made it out with enough nice slices to decorate the top of the pie, for one of the prettier tarts i've ever made. next time, i think i will experiment with the filling a bit more....

most unhealthy greens EVER

tonight, i made what is probably the BEST and the most UNHEALTHY vegetable dish EVER. now, i know i often refer to finding recipes on epicurious, and i never link to them, but this time, i am, because you all need to know how to make this delicious side dish. so here is the link. looking at the recipe now, i see that i was supposed to use 3 bunches of kale, instead of just one. ah well, still delicious (and makes sense considering i totally dont have 6 servings right now, only 2!)

it pretty much tastes like happiness in a dish. perhaps the butter (which i remembered to put in this time) or the carmelized onions, or the pancetta (fatty fatty fatty!) did it, or the amazing combination, but delicious. absolutely delicious. I made some chicken for dinner (really boring - i baked it and didnt even bread it or anything!) and shredded a few pieces to put on top of the kale with some bread. even boring chicken was incredibly delicious when combined with this side dish! i think that i will be making this EVERY time i get kale in my CSA share.

paired it with a Dr. L Reisling that i bought after having it at tupelo the other night with sarah. which was also awesome.

when i'm not being lazy

when i'm not being lazy...i actually cook meals! like, not just putting something together for dinner. i'll actually cook things like breakfast. or lunch. even if its something simple, like a salad, i'll chop up tons of deliciousness to go with it, and make it real. its always amazing how long things can take, too. breakfast this morning? took me like, 40 minutes. because i had to cut and toast the bread, and then spread the delicious goat cheese on it, and then i had to wash all the greens and cut the tomatoes and spin the greens and make a little vinaigrette and then fry the eggs and APPARENTLY i am a granny because these things take me so long. but it is very calming, being so deliberate with food, doing prep, etc. kitchen is my happy place. and i get things like a tasty breakfast out of it too. not pictures is the very tasty smoothie i also made to go with breakfast; a treat after my gym workout this morning.

after running a bunch of errands this afternoon, and enjoying a hot chocolate at bloc 11 in out of the rain, i headed home for more relaxing kitchen time. which included...infusing oil!


i had no clue what to do with the bunch of flatleaf parsley my CSA gave me this week. and then i stumbled upon a recipe, online, for parsley and chive mashed potatoes. which involves blending parsley, chives, and olive oil, and then pressing the mix through a sieve to get the delicious oil. and i did this, with some new EVOO that i purchased at the lovely whole foods for added flavor. didnt get a ton of infused oil out of it though. hard to press the herbs enough to get all the oil out. and the recipe calls for you to just toss the herbs after that! but why would a person do that with all those lovely herbs! instead, half went into the fridge for a salad i have planned for tomorrow or monday (beets, celeriac, apple, etc. it will be exciting), and half went into the freezer for later pesto-like use. and the oil went into my cute little jar for use later this week! i might even drizzle it on roasting potatoes! we'll see! i think i need to infuse oil more often...maybe try other tasty herbs.

chocolate, vanilla, strawberry...i always hated neapolitan ice cream...

okay, so months and months ago, i was at crate and barrel with emily, and i saw these beautiful white scalloped dessert dishes. and i said to emily "can i justify buying those?" and she said "yes! of course you can!" like a good little enabler. but it took me months to figure out what to make with them, because they are rather deep. i thought they might be best with some type of mousse, but what exactly to do...then, my bon appetit magazine had a recipe for a chocolate souffle in it. and though i have always heard that souffles are super complicated, and if you dont time things exactly perfectly, they will fall, and blahblahblahsohardetc. but this recipe claimed to be so easy even a caveman could do it! okay not really but i saw that commercial recently. so i figured, these dishes were the perfect thing to make the souffle in! and it mostly turned out simply - i totally miscalculated the additional cooking time needed, because i was using dishes that hold much more souffle than the recipe called for (who wants only 3/4 a cup of souffle?) but luckily they didnt fall despite coming out of the oven for a minute before they were fully done. so souffle! mmm a tasty dessert choice! but emily and bryan had also given me a bottle of their beer, entropy, so my parents could try it, and entropy goes best with vanilla...so i felt i needed something vanilla to go with it.


i considered a flan, after emily's delicious one a few weeks ago, but i had the fact that you have to turn them upsidedown on a plate for presentation. yes, i understand the whole presentation thing, and the caramel and how flan works, i know, i know, but as you can see, i like to present things in a pretty way. i also decided against creme brulee, because i dont have a torch, and yes, i know that you can make it under the broiler but it isnt the same and dont try to tell me it is. so i thought maybe a sauce to go on it! enter: the creme anglaise. a delicious, delicious sauce. made all the better because i bought a real vanilla bean!


real vanilla bean really makes all the difference, i think. i will have to use one each time i make a real vanilla dessert. the thing is though...they never tell you how you're supposed to use the vanilla bean, in recipes. you just sort of read in recipes "scrape the seeds from the pod" but you never know what it actually looks like. so when i first tried to open the vanilla bean...i had absolutely no idea how. how do you split a vanilla bean? how? how do you scrape tiny little seeds that keep getting all over your hands? well, i found instructions online, successfully scraped out tons of little seeds, and made a delicious creme anglaise (and had very delicious smelling hands after, too).

ended with some delicious, fresh strawberries, to add a little sweetness to round out the dessert. perfect! i had one extra souffle...and after chillin for a bit after baking, it fell! looks so sads...