Herbed Olives

We sent Jack to the store by himself with a head cold, and he came home with several kinds of exotic cheese and a kilogram of very inexpensive olives in a plastic bag of vegetable oil.

We decided to upcycle them into glass jars and give them some flavor enhancements -- highly inspired by Dorie Greenspan's herbed olives (as seen in Around My French Table).

We put the olives into canning jars (two quart jars was about right for two pounds of olives -- we might have eaten a few on the way to the jar).

Then I warmed about a cup of olive oil just slightly in a pan with some mustard and fennel seeds, a few cloves of garlic, a couple bay leaves, and some sprigs torn from our scraggly indoor rosemary plant, and then poured the warm oil over the olives. To one jar we also added a couple dried chiles; to the other we added some strips of lemon peel and a big pinch of dried mint. Then we added more olive oil to cover the olives.

We didn't notice a very distinct change to the flavor of the olives, even after several days, but the improvement in aesthetics led to rapid olive consumption. The olive oil did solidify in the fridge, so I think I may try unrefrigerating the olives.

(6/3/12: Update to this post.)

Garlic Scapes and Pasta, Two Ways

I can't quite believe that it's July.

Could it be the fact that my tomato plants are still just six inches high? Is it that I'm wearing sweaters and gloves in my office? Or is it the garlic scapes in the CSA box?

Usually associated with the very beginning of the growing season and the early farmers' markets, garlic scapes are the long curly shoots of the garlic plant.

Jack improvised two delicious recipe-less pasta sauces with our bunch. (They may be impossible to replicate, in which case I'm just telling you about them to brag.)

For the first, he simmered half the garlic scapes, finely chopped, in olive oil. Then he added white beans, coarsely smushing them with a wooden spoon. Then he added milk, butter, and cream (probably at least one of those is redundant) and salt until delicious. YUM.

The second was supposed to be a pesto. It started with LOTS of toasted walnuts. Run through the food processor with half our bunch of garlic scapes and a handful of basil, they became ... very green, very garlicky walnut butter.

(To try to tip the vegetable:nut ratio, I blended in a handful of frozen peas and a few tablespoons of water while Jack was occupied with sauce #1. You could do this in a more surreptitious manner if you defrosted the peas first.)

We skipped most of the olive oil of a more usual pesto, since there was plenty of nut oil in the mixture, but we did blend in lots of Parmesan, salt, and pepper. The result was surprisingly pesto-like. (For traditionalists, here are a couple more standard garlic scape pestos.)

Pizza Salad

We still tend to be overwhelmed by CSA lettuce, so "make a salad" is a persistent to-do list item. If anything in the kitchen isn't moving very fast, I threaten to put it in the hypothetical salad.

"I have one carrot left over."
"We can grate it into the salad."

"I chopped way more parsley than we need for the pasta."
"Let's put it in the salad."

"Does anyone know what these little screws belong to?"
"Put them in the salad."

"Have you seen the cat?"
...

So when instead we made a pizza that used up the little bits of everything in our fridge, Jack christened it "more-pizza-less-lettuce salad."

This pizza is topped with red onion, garlic, spinach, and cooked sweet potato chunks, as well as a can of tomatoes and a mixture of goat cheese, cheddar, and Parmesan. (We make pizza not infrequently; this is the dough we use.)

We also had a lone green pepper, but it was relegated to the actual salad.

(P.S. We are also a little bit excited about the breakfast pizza on Smitten Kitchen this week.)

Fried Lettuce

We're still working on a backlog of vegetables from the holidays, and lettuce is, as always, the slowest going.

... so I think you will understand how amazing it is when I tell you that our house ate two heads of lettuce in one meal.

I'm willing to cook salad greens to reduce their volume, but I draw the line at lettuce. You can't cook lettuce!

Fortunately, some of my housemates are not so into boundaries. Jack says you can cook lettuce the way you cook dandelion greens. So, we did:

Cook some garlic in lots (lots! no, really, more than that) of olive oil. Add two heads of roughly chopped romaine lettuce and cook until wilted. Dress with soy sauce and ... whatever else you like.

That seemed too easy, so we garnished it with some sunflower seeds (toasted in a pan with chili powder) and sliced radishes (sauteed with butter and ground ginger).

Serve over brown rice.

If I hadn't known it was lettuce, I would have believed it was bok choy or one of the million varieties of Chinese greens.

Out with the Old ...

We ended 2009 by trying to eat down our accumulated vegetables, so I present Things You Would Never Think to Make If You Were Buying Ingredients at a Grocery Store, in two courses.

1. Squash-carrot-(avocado!?) soup

Just the latest in our long history of making large quantities of orange soup, this even-oranger-than-usual concoction included squash, sweet potatoes, carrots, tomatoes, giant garlic, and avocados. Non-CSA additions included a can of diced tomatoes, milk, curry powder, nutmeg, and a spoonful of Marmite.

Presumably there's a technique for making the soup, but I have to say this one was less rehearsed than usual.

Approximately: Cook the garlic in oil. Add squash and potato chunks and cook for a bit. Add grated carrots, tomatoes, canned tomatoes, water, and Marmite and cook until the vegetables are soft. Blend the soup a bit with an immersion blender, add avocados and milk to achieve desired consistency, and season to taste.

Makes an enormous amount of soup.

2. Stir-fried greens and ham

Our authentically vegetarian housemate is still out of town, so excuse the foray into carnivory.

Farm share items herein: Onion, green pepper, zucchini, basil, bunch of kale, bag of salad greens (I don't think normal people cook these, but I put them in at the very last minute to just wilt them a bit, and it reduces the volume a lot).

Non-CSA additions: Mushrooms and ham.

Brown the ham and mushrooms until the smoke detector goes off; set aside. Saute the onions, green pepper, and zucchini until just about cooked. Return the ham and mushrooms to the pan. Add the kale and a small amount of water, cover, and let steam until the kale is cooked. Add the basil and salad greens and steam for just a moment more. I seasoned with salt and pepper, red pepper flakes, and lemon juice.

Jack got a mandoline for his birthday (hi, Jack's mom!), so we did a beautiful mise en place with the onions, mushrooms, zucchini, and pepper very thinly sliced.