Potato, Green Bean and Tomato Salad

This potato salad is the best of summer. Red potatoes from the CSA, beans and basil from the farmer's market, and sun gold cherry tomatoes from the garden.

2 lbs small red potatoes, quartered
1/4 lb green beans, halved
1/2 pint cherry tomatoes, halved

Vinaigrette:
Blend 2 T. champagne vinegar, 4 T. olive oil, 1/4 cup (or more) chopped basil, 1 clove minced garlic, 1/2 t. salt

Steam potatoes until just tender, adding beans to blanch for the last minute or two of steaming. Put potatoes, beans and tomatoes in a bowl and toss with the vinaigrette.

Ginger overload

About a week ago, I got some free cabbages from a friend (thanks, Butter Nut!) and thought I would make them into kimchi. I bought a crap ton of carrots, ginger, garlic and scallions in preparation and then ... nothing. For some reason, I couldn't get over the 12-hour soaking period required by the recipe I wanted to use. Thankfully, soon came a better cabbage-fermentation idea (what's up, kraut party people?) and life went on. Except I still had a crap ton of carrots, ginger, garlic and scallions. Enter: Mark Bittman and his wonderfully searchable cookbooks. All of these recipes come from How to Cook Everything Vegetarian.

1.) Carrot ginger orange soup

What you need:
1/1/2 lb carrots, sliced
2 T butter
1 t sweetener (sugar, maple, honey, etc)
6 C vegetable stock or water
1 T minced ginger
1 T grated orange zest
3/4 C orange juice
Cream, sour cream, yogurt, etc. (if you're into that sort of thing with your soup)

What you do
Put the carrots, orange juice, zest ginger, and sugar into a skillet/saucepan and bring to a biol on high. Cover, turn heat to medium low, and cook 5 more minutes. Uncover and raise the heat to boil off the liquid. Lower the heat again and continue to cook until carrots are tender. Add the stock and bring to a boil again. Simmer until the carrots are tender enough to smoosh with your choice of immersion blender or regular blender.

2.) Spicy cilantro ginger pesto


What you need
2 C cilantro leaves
salt
2 cloves garlic
3 T oil
1 T lime juice
1 T chopped ginger
1 jalapeno or other hot pepper to taste

What you do
Throw it all in a food processor and blend until tasty.

3.) Pickled ginger (because when you're unsure what to do with something you happen to have a lot of , why NOT make a pickle?)


What you need
enough ginger to fill your jar (For this recipe, I used a fist-sized piece for 1/2 pint)
1/4 C vinegar (the original recipe calls for rice, but I used cider to no ill effect)
1-2 T sugar
1/4 C water
1 T salt

What you do
Thinly slice the ginger and toss with salt. Let sit in a bowl for 1 hour. Rinse *thoroughly* and pack into your jar. Heat equal parts vinegar and water with sugar to taste. Let cool a bit and pour over ginger into jar. This is a refrigerator pickle, so stick it in the fridge.

Raw Kale Salad

I know I am not the only one with lots of dark greens growing in abundance. I notice that mine tend to sit there for a long while - which is fine, they will last long into the fall - but I think it is because I keep thinking I need to eat them cooked. And as it turns out, this summer is not my summer for cooked greens. I try to eat them along with breakfast or dinner and I am not into it. I'm done after a few bites, and even those seem a bit forceful. But raw greens - that is a different story!


I looked up some basic raw kale recipes, and settled on Kale Salad with Pecorino and Lemon. The basic difference to eating raw kale versus cooked seems to be it needs to marinate for an hour or more to soften it up a bit. It actually felt like I was making a version of pesto when I made this salad, but without the food processor...similar smells. Which is maybe why I ended up adding in some roasted pistachios too. It was the only nut I had, though had I seen this before sticking them in the oven, I would have brined them first. Yum!


In the end, I also decided to use a different green than kale (my kale is way small, not enough sun)...I used Mustard Spinach Komatsuma - a new green I planted this year (which is delicious btw). It is not as tough as kale - more spinach-y. (That link has some recipe suggestions, including a kimchi that I am intrigued by.) Anyhow - the salad turned out amazing! The flavor is really nice - the lemon somehow compliments the slight bitter taste of the greens. I think the nuts add a really nice crunch to the salad too. These greens really sucked up the lemon and olive oil, and I wonder if kale would be a little less absorbent. I actually ended up using the juice of just one lemon and only 1/4 c. olive oil - and that was plenty for the komatsuna. Raw greens!

pickles!

While Megan has been making cucumber drinks, I've been fermenting those little suckers. And they're so delicious and easy. Get yourself a quart jar and a little tray of pickling cucumbers (you know, the tiny ones with thick skin). Can you use normal, larger cukes? Meh. I tried it, slicing them thinly, but they're just not so tasty. You've been warned. I've also been using whey to kick start the fermentation process. You could just add extra salt, but "making" whey is, uhh, whey easy.



Ingredients:
enough cukes to fill your quart jar
1 T mustard seeds
2 T fresh dill
1 T sea salt (non-iodized, unrefined)
4 T whey (or an additional 1 t salt)
1 C filtered water

I've also added some whole peppercorns, cloves, cinnamon stick, garlic, celery seed, etc. to batches. Stick with whole spices, though, as the ground kind tend to turn into a slimy film at the bottom of the jar.

To get the whey:
Plop a bunch of whole milk yogurt into a clean dish towel and let it sit over a bowl for a day or so. The yellowish liquid that ends up in your bowl is your whey. You also have a bunch of really thick yogurt, which is delicious in these.

To make the pickles:
Pack your cukes into the jar along with spices, dill, etc. Add the salt, whey and filtered water. The top of the liquid should fully cover your cukes and be at least one inch below the top of the jar. Put a lid on the jar and let it sit on your counter for 2-3 days. I always cover mine with a dish towel, as I've heard that sunlight can hinder the fermentation process. If your cukes are fermenting particularly rapidly, you might want to let off some pressure by quickly unscrewing the lid and then screwing it back on. If you like a sour-er pickle, let it sit on the counter longer. When the pickles are pickled to your liking, transfer them to the fridge. They'll continue to ferment in there, but much, much slower.

Cucumber-Lime Drink

This humidity is helping me to become very familiar with all kinds of chilled beverage options: iced tea, kombucha, coconut water, la croix... But sometimes I want something more festive. I was thinking about this while staring into the fridge on one of the recent 90 degree days when my eyes landed on the cucumbers.

These cukes are just starting to take off at the northside homestead - soon they'll be competing with the zucchini for garden space. They are already jack-and-the-beanstalk-like on the back trellis; that trellis is as tall as me, but the plants are reaching to get to the fence, the green beans, anything really. And the leaves are so thick it's hard to find the fruit - note the particularly large one that was hiding! ha.

Anyway, some internet searching lead me to this recipe from Bon Appetit. It uses fresh green grapes and mint along with the cucumber and lime. I used coconut water instead of grapes, and I added in a little sweetener. It was slushy-like and totally refreshing! After freezing what was left in a jar, I took it out the next day to de-freeze. Being too thirsty and hot to wait, I added sparkling water to facilitate the melting process. I actually liked that even better. Really, this is like a better version of lemonade...or at least the local version (um, if we had lime). I made it one more time, this time with 1 part cucumber blend to 1 part seltzer water. So refreshing!!

Barley risotto

My favorite aisle in the Lund's across the street from me is the frozen food one, due solely to the fact that the frozen food aisle is where they stash their cart of "sale" items. What a bounty I've found in this ever-changing cart: organic apple juice-sweetened dried cherries (I bought 15 packs for $1 each!), sunflower butter, fancy pasta sauce, and on and on. It seems like many of their more obscure items (often organic/"natural") end up in this cart, making it the first place I go when I'm at the store. Anyway, about 9 months ago, I bought cartons of this broth, never having used mushroom broth before and not really knowing what I'd do with it...but it seemed like such a good deal (I think they were $1 each) that I put them in my basket and figured I'd come up with something later.

Well, the other day I decided to clean out the cupboard and realized that they were set to expire on July 27, so I made two batches of this vegan risotto (from Robin Robertson's Vegan Planet cookbook)--it's simple and delicious.

1/4 c. dried porcini mushrooms, soaked in 1 cup very hot water for 20 minutes
4 c. mushroom stock
1/2 c. white wine
2 T. olive oil
1/4 c. minced shallots
1 large garlic clove, minced
1 c. pearl barley
2 c. chopped cremini mushrooms
2 t. minced fresh marjoram leaves (first time using these--such an amazing scent!)
2 t. minced fresh parsley leaves
2 t. minced fresh chive
Salt and black pepper

1) Drain the porcinis, reserving the soaking liquid. Chop the mushrooms and set aside.

2) Combine the stock, reserved mushroom liquid, and wine in a medium-size saucepan over medium heat and bring to a simmer.

3) In a large skillet or saucepan, heat the olive oil over medium heat. Add the shallot and garlic and cook, stirring, until fragrant and slightly softened. Add the barley and both kinds of mushrooms, and stir until covered with oil.

4) Add 1/2 c. of the hot liquid and simmer, uncovered and stirring frequently, until the liquid is almost absorbed. Continue adding the stock mixture 1/2 c. at a time, until the barley is tender, about 30 minutes.

5) About 5 minutes before the risotto is finished, stir in the herbs and salt and pepper.

Serve hot!

Chocolate peanut butter tart

Ahhhh, this is a delicious, delicious, delicious vegan and gluten-free dessert. I want to make it again right now!

A few alterations to the original post: I used agave instead of date sugar, and I put it in a Pyrex baking dish. (According to the blogger, it's really sticky, but it worked just fine in glass.)