Veggie Slop, Two Ways

What with all the upheaval of moving a five-bedroom house in January, the farm share cooking around here hasn't been very exciting lately.

(What is very exciting around here? Our brand-new granite countertops, that's what.)

This is two examples of the very first thing I learned to cook reliably, which my very first roommates termed "veggies in a pan" (as in, "Did you make veggies in a pan again?"). Former housemate Liz brought us the less sophisticated -- but unarguably descriptive and inimitably co-opy -- name "veggie slop."

On the left, we have a vegetable curry, consisting largely of roasted farm share potatoes, beets, and carrots. There's also an eggplant, a zucchini, onions and garlic, a can of coconut milk, and Indian spices in there, all served over rice.

(Footnote: We seem to have lost our vegetable peeler in the move, so we ate the beets with the skins on. Is there anything wrong with that? If not, I sure feel silly about all the time I've spent peeling tiny CSA beets.)

On the right, a cabbage stir-fry, incorporating a whole head of cabbage, two smallish daikon radishes, yellow onion, and cilantro, with rice and Asian seasonings.

Herb Mayonnaise and Pesto

Inspired by Mark Bittman's recent paean to the food processor, we made a couple tasty condiments with farm share herbs this week.

Jack fried some eggplant slices for eggplant-tomato-mozzarella sandwiches for lunch one day and talked me into making basil mayonnaise to go with them. (It's amazing how many of our conversations start with me saying, "I think I'm just going to warm up some leftovers" and end with me emulsifying egg yolks.) We did the mayonnaise recipe from How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, which is pretty much the same as the method described in the article, and just threw in a big handful of basil at the end.

Then, to use up the herbs on Tuesday, we made a lemon-basil-parsley pesto, based on our usual pesto recipe, but with a few twists:

In the food processor, combine a small handful of walnuts, a shallot (I was too lazy to peel garlic), and a few big strips of lemon zest. Process to combine. Add as much basil and parsley as you have, as well as a few ice chunks*, and process until smoothish. With the food processor running, slowly drizzle in half a cup or so of olive oil. Add a handful of Parmesan and process; add additional Parmesan and salt and pepper to taste.

(Mark Bittman, as usual, one-ups us for minimalism and makes pesto mayonnaise.)

* The ice chunks purportedly keep the herbs bright green. I don't know about that, and I've always skipped this step before, but it turned out that the additional agitation made the herbs process in our tiny Cuisinart much more easily.

Winter CSA Research

We got the most beautiful CSA box from Enterprise this week: tomatoes, red peppers, apples, carrots, a big bag of potatoes, carrots, and four (!) eggplants.

The late-summer weight of the box, however -- as well as the winter squashes and pumpkins taking over the farmers market -- was a reminder that the growing season is drawing to a close and that it's time to start discussing what to do for our winter produce needs.

I compiled a Google Doc to lay out the Boston-area winter CSA options for my housemates (hence the slightly Somerville-centric angle). It's pretty similar to the Winter CSA list Boston Localvores put together last year, though I also added some non-CSA produce options (e.g., Boston Organics) and non-produce CSA options (e.g., the Pioneer Valley Grain CSA).

Last year, our house got the Enterprise East Coast Farm Share, which runs from December through May and is probably the simplest and most straightforward way to continue your CSA experience: every week, you get a box of somewhat local, mostly organic, and varied (not just root vegetables!) items. However, I also hear great things about the Shared Harvest CSA and Red Fire Farm's Locavore Deep Winter CSA, and I'm game to try something new.

Where will you get your winter vegetables?

White Eggplant Lasagna

So, the Enterprise CSA sent us this beautiful white eggplant. It was literally unlike any eggplant we had ever seen before. (I've never seen one like it in a store. That's why I love getting a CSA.)

This eggplant demanded special attention. We had to respect its gravitas. It simply would not do to give it our usual treatment, dicing it into small pieces and stir-frying it into that co-op favorite, veggie slop. This eggplant wanted to be made into quails. (Well, maybe, but that's not what we wanted for dinner.)

This eggplant deserved the full-court press, four chefs in the kitchen, every burner in service treatment. This eggplant wanted to dirty every pan we owned in its preparation. (This eggplant, as you will notice from our narrative, did not, however, quite merit a special trip to the grocery store for ingredients.)

This eggplant was going to be made into lasagna.

Jack sliced, breaded, and fried the eggplant. (When we later admired its firmness of texture, reminiscent almost of fried fish, he acknowledged, "that could be because I used fish seasoning.")

Meanwhile, I sliced the tomatoes, boiled the lasagna noodles (it turned out we had only four, so they were more of a gesture toward tradition than an ingredient), and sliced and sauteed a box of button mushrooms we'd inherited (thanks, Ariel!).

Liz prepared the cheese, which was a challenge only because we didn't have anything like the cheese you would want to have if you had, say, planned in advance to make lasagna. Jack instructed her to make "something like ricotta," and bless her, she made a medley of yogurt and sour cream and the bits and ends of several items from our cheese drawer that was something like ricotta. (Note for posterity: a little bit of smoked cheddar is lovely in an eggplant lasagna.)

Jack seared the tomato slices, because, honestly, that man will put anything in a frying pan if you don't watch him. (I caught him frying dried mint leaves today, but that's a different story for a different blog post.) While defending his gorgeous stack of fried eggplant from our attempts to nibble, nay devour it. (It was that good. Oh, it was so good. A little fried eggplant would hit the spot right about now, actually.)

Erica washed our never-ending stream of pots and spoons and dishes like the kitchen hero she is.

Liz layered it up: pasta sauce, lasagna noodles, cheese mixture, fried eggplant, sauteed mushrooms, seared tomatoes, basil, rinse, repeat, and grated Parmesan on top. Everything was cooked, but we put the lasagna in the oven for 20 minutes to warm it through and melt the cheese and just because we like dying of slow torture by hunger every now and again.

Turns out, it was lasagna worth waiting for.

And the eggplant? Delicious. To die for. Every complaint anyone has ever had about eggplant was resolved here. It was not bitter. It was not mushy. It was firm-but-tender, delectable, mild-tasting, non-slimy eggplant. It was eggplant even a nonvegetarian could love.

(P.S. Dear Enterprise Farm, please send us some more of those white eggplants!)

Sonnet 130: My Eggplant's Taste

My eggplant's taste is nothing like an egg;
Piano keys are whiter than her skin;
Our table's never seen such an odd veg:
Something quite like a fairy-tale pumpkin.

I have had eggplants ebony and green,
Rosa bianca hasn't such a hue;
But while too much of other kinds I've seen,
This is the type I'm dying to accrue.

I love her firm flesh and her gentle taste;
Readers, I say to you -- this eggplant rocks!
Another two or five would be no waste,
If Enterprise would send them in our box.

If you'll forgive this poetic charade,
Come back again; I'll show you what we made.


(It's still Massachusetts Farmers Market Week, and there's excellent blogging being collected at Loving Local. Donations to Mass Farmers Markets support "veggie prescriptions," among other awesomeness.)

Stuffed Eggplant

Folks, we were a little daunted by last week's giant eggplant. It just seemed demeaning to cut such an enormous aubergine into little pieces, so we skipped over it a few times while making curry or stir-fry or pasta.

Jack suggested that making stuffed eggplant would preserve the vegetable's gravitas. We had never seen one before, but Google image search and Tastespotting assured us it was real.

Our criterion for the recipe was that it be fast, because potluck guests were imminent, so we based our cooking on this stuffed eggplant Parmesan, which bakes in 30 minutes, and we scraped the shells extra-thin to be sure.

(How do you hollow out an eggplant? A spoon; a grapefruit spoon, per the recipe suggestions; or, best of all, we found, an avocado slicer.)

Ours was tasty, but it looks like the next level in eggplant stuffing is to go in an ethnic direction: Lebanese stuffed eggplants, fried stuffed Chinese eggplant, Greek-style stuffed eggplant, and adorable miso beef stuffed eggplants.

Farm Share Sushi

Just for the record, my housemates were rolling strange things into sushi long before Mark Bittman told us we could:

"What goes with sushi rice?" The answer, not surprisingly, is "almost anything." (It’s rice, after all.) Although I was concerned that the sweetness of the rice would impose limits, I had trouble finding any toppings that crossed the line. This is in part because the rice is also quite salty (it’s really very well balanced), and soy sauce pretty much makes sweetness disappear.

Farm share items in these rolls: fried eggplant strips, sweet potato french fries, carrot, and arugula.

More eclectic additions: whole-grain mustard, homegrown clover sprouts, cream cheese, fried banana, and strawberry jam.

Eggplant Off-the-Rails

Last night we were cooking Lebanese lentils and rice and decided we might as well cook our eggplant as a side dish.

I hope no one reading this blog is coming away with the impression that we cook in a deliberate, organized fashion. This is kind of what it's like in our kitchen:

"How about a fried, breaded sort of thing? When I did breaded tofu last week, I dipped the sticks in soy sauce before breading them."
"I don't think soy sauce is Lebanese."
"How about vinegar?"

1. Slice the eggplant into rounds and sprinkle with balsamic vinegar.

"Hey, do you think I should marinate them?" [no answer]
Go fold dish towels for a little bit. "Wow, the eggplant soaked up a whole lot of vinegar."

2. Bread the eggplant in a mixture of breadcrumbs (a lot), chili powder (some), and salt (a little).

"Can I fry these now? Oh, you're using all the burners."
"Put it in the oven?"

3. Bake in the oven at, oh, 375 degrees.

"Did you put any oil on those?"
"Oh, shoot."

4. Remove eggplant from oven and drizzle with olive oil and flip. Check after about 15 minutes.

"They're not getting crispy."

5. Flip and return to the oven for a few minutes, hoping for a different outcome.

"Hey, how about I put them under the broiler?"

6. Broil for a couple minutes. Remove and taste.

"I can't really taste the chili powder. Add cheese?"

7. Flip and grate some parmesan on top. Broil for a couple minutes more, until the cheese is melted and slightly browned.


P.S. Lots of relevant stuff on the Bitten blog recently: Mark Bittman is making a winter citrus salad of oranges and grapefruit that looks delicious. Another writer on the blog seems to be coming with us on the dubiously-authentic winter vegetable curries.

Rustic Eggplant

One of my housemates had her friend Becky (a Real Chef! at a restaurant you've heard of!) over tonight, and she made for us what she described as a rustic, peasant dish. I think it was something like a ratatouille, though more in an Italian direction.

(Important note: Any errors in transcribing the recipe are totally mine. I find it extraordinarily difficult to focus on taking notes when sexy culinary terms like "sweat" and "concasse" are flying around and my mouth is full.)

Becky started with slivers of onion and roughly chopped eggplant, letting the eggplant cook slowly in the onion's juices. Then she added the tomato (here's where the concasse comes in) and let everything cook for a while.

Then she added lots of parsley and seasoned the dish with cinnamon, cumin, red pepper flakes, and salt and pepper.

We ate it with roasted squash cubes and collard greens (our recipes for both to come, once I can pin down the chefs) and corn on the cob.

For a heartier dish on its own, Becky suggests adding ground turkey or brown rice or making it the filling for a wrap. Or you could take it in a Greek direction, she says, with yogurt or dill or saffron for seasonings.

Pie Day

Pi Day is March 14 (3.14), but pie day is when we looked at all the potatoes and apples in last week's share and thought: pot pie and apple pie! Last Friday's suddenly chilly weather helped, too.

(Let me admit up front that I can't take any credit for this one. The level of cuisine has improved markedly in our kitchen since other people have been doing the cooking.)

The pot pie recipe was Vegetable Potpie with Cheddar Biscuit Topping from Gourmet Today. (Full disclosure: I did the production editing for the book -- which pubbed just last Tuesday! -- so when I tell you it's amazing, that's with the slight bias of having hand-capitalized every main entry in the index. On deadline day.)

(This recipe, minus the turkey, is pretty much the same, and gets you the cheddar biscuits, which were sort of life-changing.)

My housemates, who are only slightly better than I am at following directions, improvised the filling based on the vegetables we had on hand -- potatoes, onions, carrots, celery, beets, eggplant, mushrooms, and frozen shelled edamame -- and used rosemary and sage instead of thyme. It was quite possibly the best pot pie I've ever had (though, to be fair, I was raised eating frozen Swanson pies).

I don't think my housemates used a recipe for the apple pie, so you'll just have to take on faith that it was a delicious and evocative taste of fall.