Salad of random green stuff

The kids and I picked up the CSA today from Gorman Farm.  It's a fun reading, counting, and measuring lesson, though we try to go earlier, so we don't irritate commuters with ChaseKBH's spelling and lack of understanding about what half a pound feels like.  Today we ended up going later than is ideal, but we had a blast picking out our items.  Of great interest was three pounds of cucumbers, which are to become pickles.  ChaseKBH is adamant that we only make cute pickles, not grossie or ugly pickles.  I have no idea why he cares so much about the appearance of the pickles.

There was a bonus table at the CSA today, but we ended up not taking anything, as we are behind having done so much traveling.  We did trade our squash for a second head of lettuce, as squash is just not well enough liked in this house for the quantities of a mid-Atlantic harvest.  We also got a beautiful bounty of garlic that I'm looking forward to using extensively.  

It was way, way too hot to cook for real.  I cheated and microwaved some corn on the cob (the almost-four year old doesn't really care), and pan-sauteed some frozen chicken breasts, and made a big salad with random green stuff.  It seemed to be a hit, though the husband believed the dressing was too acidic.  We're out of olive oil, but the oils used seemed to work well.  The salad might have been a bit overdressed, but eh, proportions are easy to fudge a bit.  As for the verdict, well, the almost-four-year-old ate a bit of chicken, a bite of leaves with nothing on them, some cucumbers, and a lot of corn.  The one year old ate corn, leftover pasta, and some cucumber.  The grownups finished a large bowl of salad.

Random Leaves Salad

I suspect that the same thing could be done with pretty much anything that's green and can be eaten raw.

Ingredients:

1 large head red or green leaf lettuce (we used red), washed and torn into bite sized pieces

2 giant handfuls of basil, stemmed, washed and large leaves torn into bite sized pieces

3 giant handfuls of parsley, stemmed and washed

2 teaspoons salt, divided

1/2 cup oil (I used grapeseed, canola, and about a 1/8 of a cup of truffle oil)

2 cloves of garlic

Juice of one large juicy lemon

1 teaspoon pepper

1 cup roughly torn basil

Method:

- Rinse leaves, dry well (spin in a salad spinner), and sprinkle with 1 teaspoon salt.  Set aside.

- Add 1/8 cup oil, garlic, lemon, salt, pepper, and basil to a blender.  Pulverize.

- Slowly drizzle in remaining oil until desired consistency is achieved.

- Taste.

- Drizzle in oil and/or lemon as needed to balance.

- Toss leaves with the dressing, set rest aside for another day.

- Top with grilled or pan sauteed protein if desired.

Garlic Scape Pesto Gnocchi

I am a big fan of the garlic scape in the spring and early summer.  A garlic scape is the flower stalk of the hardneck garlic plant - it is removed to concentrate energy in the bulb.  It is also delicious spring eating.  It has a much milder flavor than garlic, but can be used where one uses garlic.  To me, garlic scapes and strawberries are the beginning of the season of local produce in Howard County and the rest of the mid-Atlantic.  

Steamed garlic scapes are almost sweet.  Sauteed garlic scapes remind me of garlic-sauteed green beans.  They can be blanched and tossed into salads. But one of the great joys of garlic scapes is the infinite number of sauce preparations that the simple garlic scape can make sublime.  Tonight, for dinner we had garlic scape "pesto" gnocchi, as well as some steak with garlic scape "pesto" as a lovely condiment.  The color is electric green.  As always, this type of preparation is a make to taste preparation - a guideline, not a recipe.  I use a blender because I can drizzle in oil slowly when the top is off, but a food processor would work just as well.

Gnocchi with Garlic Scape "Pesto"

Ingredients:

1 lb garlic scapes, grassy and woody parts trimmed, cut into 1 inch pieces and then rinsed in cool water

1/4 lb good Parmesan cheese, cut into chunks (please don't use the pre-shredded or pre-ground if you can avoid it)

Juice of 2 small lemons

2 teaspoons salt (or to taste)

2 teaspoons pepper

1/4 cup to 3/4 cup olive oil

Prepared gnocchi, prepare fresh gnocchi according to package instructions

Method:

- Place scape pieces, cheese, lemon juice, salt, and peper into a blender, with the hole in the top lid removed.  - Begin blending together on low.

- Drizzle in olive oil slowly.  

- Increase speed slowly to highest setting, keep drizzling in olive oil.

- Blend until garlic scape pieces and cheese are completely blended in, and sauce has reached desired consistency.

- Place gnocchi, warm, and half a cup of the water it was cooked in in a pan on medium.

- Add enough sauce to cover - roughly one cup.

- Heat until sauce just begins to bubble.

- Remove for heat and seve immediately.

This makes way more than you need.  It was great on steak, it's great on bread, or pretty much anywhere else something garlicky would taste good.  

Gorman Farm CSA 2013

We signed up for a Gorman Farm Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) share again this year.  On Wednesdays, ChaseKBH will eat any vegetable on earth.  On every other day, well, that's another story.

So far it's been a lot of salads, a lot of sauteeing with garlic and olive oil.

My son's first cake

Cross post at The Adventures of Benji Bear.

ChaseKBH had a little bit of adult help on this project, but not much.  The above is a picture of ChaseKBH's chocolate Thomas Rocket Ship cake.  It's ridiculously adorable - though the cake itself wasn't wonderful, it wasn't terrible either.  

We started with Hershey's Perfectly Chocolate Chocolate Cake.  We adapted to a half recipe, or at least as close to a half recipe as a three year old can measure.  Instead of following the directions, we simply put everything into a bowl, and mixed it with a whisk.  The cake was baked in a Wilton Rocket Ship Pan, well sprayed with baking spray.  It took about 35 minutes to bake at 350F, but I think my oven is a bit off right now.  I would start checking at 20 minutes and continue from there.

We frosted the cake with a simple frosting consisting of 6 tablespoons of softened European-style butter, 1/2 a pound of powdered sugar, and about 1/3 of a cup of heavy cream.  Everything went into the stand mixer and was whipped until a frosting appeared.  We colored the frosting with Wilton Icing Color - in blue.  After we "painted" the cake with frosting, we sprinkled on an insane amount of blue sprinkles.

The kid sort of looks like a smurf now.

Tatsoi

I was unfamiliar with tatsoi until I got some in my CSA share.  Tatsoi is a green similar to a very soft kale or a creamier spinach, if that description makes any sense.  Anyway, it was quite good simply cooked in garlic infused olive oil, and even better the next day cooked in sesame oil with ginger.  

Roasted eggplant and tomato soup

Cold, wet weather requires soups with a bit of heat.  Of course, we're still full on the summery vegetables (or rather botanical fruits culinary vegetables) here in central Maryland - and we had a lot of eggplant and peppers to use up, but ratatouille or pasta just didn't seem right on a day that required fleece jackets and rain boots.  I was also in the mood for something flavorful, but still kid-friendly, without requiring twenty pots on the stove in addition to the soup pot.  So I preheated the oven, got to work with a vegetable peeler, and listened to the rain pounding on the roof.  If I lacked the kids, I would have added a seeded chile pepper of some type.  If my husband lacked me, he would have added two, with seeds intact.  Take from that what you will.

Ingredients:

2 medium sized traditional eggplant, peeled and cubed

5 Roma or paste tomatoes, peeled with a vegetable peeler (I swear this works)

1 tablespoon olive oil

Salt

2 tablespoons olive oil

3 cloves garlic, chopped

1 medium onion, chopped

2 teaspoons cumin

1 teaspoon coriander

1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper

1/4 teaspoon cloves

 2 bay leaves

4 cups vegetable stock

Method:

Preheat oven to 400F.

Toss eggplant, tomatoes, 1 tablespoon olive oil, and salt into a roasting pan, combine well.

Roast botanical fruit culinary vegetables until very soft and lightly browned, about 20 minutes.

Sweat garlic and onion in remaining olive oil in large stock pot over medium-low heat until translucent.

Add cumin, coriander,  cayenne pepper, cloves, and bay leaves.  Increase heat to medium high, fry spices 1-2 minutes, until fragrant.

Add roasted eggplant and tomatoes.  

Stir and let cook down 1 minute.

Add stock and bring to a boil.

Let soup simmer 15 minutes.

Remove bay leaves.

Blend with an immersion stick blender, food mill, or blender working in batches.

Serve hot.

Granola bars

 Let's get one thing straight - these aren't healthy for any reasonable definition of healthy.  These granola bars have tons of sugar and butter - and while dried fruit, nuts, and whole grains, it doesn't make up for the fact that these are essentially cookies.  Just like commercial granola bars.  However, the flavors can be more interesting than commercial granola bars, and you can avoid certain ingredients if you like.  I made a big batch of these for Jamie's breakfasts during his hour car commute.  I'm working on a couple variations for the next batch.  Switching the sweetener (brown rice syrup, maple syrup, honey, etc.) and the add-ins (dried fruit, nuts, chocolate chips) creates totally different recipes.  Remember the chemistry though - if you want chewy bars your ingredients need to be as hydrophilic as possible.  As always, better ingredients yield better results.  These are easy enough to make, but a pain to store and transport - I wrapped them in parchment paper then placed them in a big ziptop bag in the refrigerator, pulling one or two out every morning in my terrible impression of a doting housewife.

Almond cranberry granola bars

Ingredients:

1/4 cup butter, softened

1/4 cup flax seed oil

1/2 cup light brown sugar

1/4 cup agave syrup

1 teaspoon vanilla

2 cups rolled oats

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

1 cup dried cranberries

1 cup almonds

Method:
Preheat oven to 350F.
In a stand mixer with a paddle attachment, cream together butter and sugar.
Add the rest of the wet ingredients and beat well.
Take 1/2 cup of the oats, place them in a blender or food processor and grind into a fine flour.
Sift the oat flour, baking powder, and salt together into a separate bowl.
Whisk or mix in the remaining oats.
In thirds, add the oat mixture to the wet mixture.  Beat until well combined.
Remove paddle attachment and replace with bread hook or remove and do the rest of the mixing by hand.
Add cranberries and almonds.
Mix until everything is well combined.
Spray an 8 x 8 pan with baking spray or oil (I use silicone - I strongly recommend it in this case).
Lay a piece of parchment paper over the sprayed pan, with significant overhang on each side.
Spray parchment paper with baking spray or oil.
Scoop mixture into pan.
Press down to even out mixture.
Bake until edges are just browned, about 25-30 minutes.
Remove pan from oven.
Let cool slightly.
Using the parchment paper as a sling, remove granola bar mass and place on a flat surface.
Cool completely, then place in refrigerator for 2-3 hours or freezer for 20 minutes.
Cut granola bars into squares while very cold.
Wrap in parchment paper to store.

Apple walnut fig cake

This cake is delightfully boozy.  So boozy that I would strongly recommend not serving it to those under 21, even if you would, perhaps, love to get a small person to sleep or stop screaming from teething.  Plus you're not supposed to give little kids nuts.  I made this cake as a large bundt, but I have a lot of syrup left over so I'm planning to make some mini-bundts or mini-loafs tomorrow, with a shorter baking time, to spread around the neighborhood as fall gifts.  This is a basic buttery egg leavened cake with additions.

Ingredients:
3 cups sugar (not this is a pretty sweet cake - you can reduce to 2 1/2 cups if you like but any further is going to throw off the chemistry)
1/2 cup high-fat European style butter, softened
6 eggs, brought up to room temperature
1 cup heavy cream
1 teaspoon vanilla
3 cups cake flour, sifted
1 teaspoon salt (there is about taste, not chemistry, so this can be skipped)
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon cloves
1 teaspoon ginger
1/2 teaspoon cardamom
2-3 apples, peeled, cored, diced finely
6 large fresh figs, stemmed and diced finely
1 cup chopped or crushed walnuts
1 cup apple brandy (Calvados)
1/4 to 1/2 cup powdered sugar (can be omitted)

Method:
Preheat oven to 325F.
Cream together sugar and butter in a stand mixer.  You could try this some other way but it's going to be a pain.  I seriously recommend doing this with a stand mixer if at all possible.
Cream sugar and butter until light and fluffy.  I would suggest 5 minutes at least with the paddle attachment.
In a separate bowl, whisk together eggs 2-3 minutes, until they develop a bit of fluff.  Add to stand mixer and beat 2 minutes.
Add cream and vanilla, beat another 2 minutes.
Sift together flour, salt, and spices.
In thirds, slowly incorporate the flour mixture.  Beat until well combined.
Gently fold in apples, figs, and walnuts.
Spray bundt pan with baking spray or grease / flour very, very well.
Bake 75 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.
Cool cake slightly, transfer to a wire rack or plate.
Mix apple brandy and powdered sugar.  Bring to just a boil, then remove from heat.  Whisk well to ensure a good mix.
Brush or drizzle on glaze while cake is still warm.
Let cake cool completely, reapply additional glaze as desired.
You can also simply drizzle on some alcohol, but the cake won't get a glaze.  The fruit is fresh, so this isn't exactly a preserved fruit cake, but alcohol without a glaze will nudge the flavor that way.

Apple cupcakes with cream cheese frosting

We're in a cupcake phase with the three year old.  He doesn't actually eat much of the cupcakes, but he loves the idea of cupcakes.  Particularly using the pastry bag and adding sprinkles to things.  We're also in the height of apple season here in central Maryland, to the extent central Maryland has an apple season.  We do have lovely farms and orchards where the kids and I can go pick apples (and raspberries and broccoli and herbs and flowers and pumpkins) and enjoy bucolic west county for a morning.  Unfortunately, we decided to go apple picking before a play date lunch with ChaseKBH's current crush (I'm not actually sure if the crush is on the 2.5 year old or the 2.5 year old's mother, but while ChaseKBH primarily plays with the just-5 year old, he spends the next couple days talking about the females in that household).  Alas, alack, ChaseKBH tripped over his two feet running in a field trying to cut flowers, resulting in a bloody nose.  He had to be contented giving his fair lady a small decorative pumpkin and a chocolate lollipop.  

Of course, ChaseKBH isn't contented with simply pursing the preschool set.  He's also in love with our next door neighbor - a wonderful lady who is about three decades too old for him.  But he's determined to win her over with baked goods.  She's still at work, but I have dutifully texted her and we're going over tomorrow morning with cupcakes.  In the interim, we're snacking on the excess.

This recipe is a bit difficult on volume - it could be 12 cupcakes, it could be 18, it depends entirely on how much volume the apple takes up.  Do yourself a favor and be sure to only full 2/3 of the way up the cupcake liners.  If you fail, as I did, tear or cut off the excess and consider it your cook's bonus.

Ingredients:

Cupcakes

1 1/2 cup all purpose flour 

1 teaspoon baking soda 

1 teaspoon baking powder 

1/2 teaspoon salt 

Pumpkin pie spice OR cinnamon, ginger, cardamom, nutmeg to taste 

1 1/2 cup sugar 

1/3 cup vegetable oil 

2 eggs 

1/2 cup milk 

1 teaspoon vanilla 

2 apples, peeled, cored, and chopped finely

Cream cheese icing

1/2 cup cream cheese, softened

1 pound powdered sugar 

1 teaspoon vanilla

2-4 tablespoons milk

Method:

Preheat oven to 350F.

Sift together flour, soda, powder, salt, and spices.  I think this is great with a huge amount of ginger, but really you need to know your audience.  It's pretty hard to ruin with too much spice, and its fine with no spice (if boring), so use your judgment.

Beat sugar, oil, eggs, milk, and vanilla on medium speed with a hand mixer or stand mixer.

Add sifted flour mixture into wet mixture.  Beat until well combined.

Fold in apples.

Bake for 30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

Beat together cream cheese, sugar, and vanilla until fluffy, about 4 minutes.

Add 2 tablespoons milk.  Beat 2 minutes.  Add milk until desired consistency is reached.

I frost these with a pastry bag because I suck at frosting things.  

Cupcakes!

The three year old likes chocolate cupcakes.  And sprinkles.  Especially rainbow sprinkles.  I'm not really one for boxed mixes - mostly because I'm too cheap with money and storage space.  However, I'm also pretty lazy and love easy recipes.  Hands down best easy chocolate cake recipe ever is from the back of the Hershey's tin.     I prefer other cocoas, but I'll use that recipe (and the cocoa if I'm in a pinch) and have cupcakes in less than half an hour.  For the frosting, however, I made ganache - simply a cup of heavy cream, scalded, and a bag of 60% cacoa Ghiradelli chocolate chips melted and whisked into the hot cream then slightly cooled.  ChaseKBH was able to dunk the cupcakes into the ganache to easily frost them, then add the rainbow sprinkles.  Now, my floor has little multicolored balls ground into it, but what's a little floor damage in the grand scheme of creating a young baker?