Random Veggie Gratin

Here I am, about to go on vacation, and there's close to ten pounds of zucchini in the fridge. And Brussels sprouts. And some other stuff. I suppose I could have frozen the stuff, but why freeze it when I could cook it up and have a freezer meal ready for one of those weeknights when I am lazy as fuc... can't be bothere... too tired to functi... need a quick meal to stick in the microwave? I was missing just two ingredients, so after a quick trip to the store, mixed veggie gratin went into production!

This is totally one of those recipes where I tossed shit in and didn't measure. I cannot tell you with any accuracy what the temperature on the oven was. Nor can I guess how long they were in there since I went out and mowed the lawn and did some other stuff. So, be warned!  

• 4 large zucchini/summer squash (mine were between 8 and 10 inches long, and about 3 inches in diameter), plus a few of the small ones 
• A large onion 
• 2 pounds brussels sprouts (if you can find the shredded, go for it!)
• 8 random shishito peppers
• As much minced garlic as you'd like 
• 4 cups+ of shredded cheese 
• a pint of light cream 
• 3 eggs 
• Salt
• Pepper 
• Paprika 
• 1 teaspoon dried thyme 
• A large and deep baking dish (hey - this recipe is not about measuring too many things)

• Preheat your oven to about 375? 
• Slice your veggies to even size - about 1/4 - 1/2 inch thick on a mandolin; slice the peppers into thin lengths
•  I started with a layer of peppers and onions, a layer of cheese, a layer of sprouts, a layer of cheese, a layer of zucchini, a layer of cheese. All until the ingredients were used up; end with a layer of cheese on top
• Whisk together the garlic, salt, pepper, paprika, thyme, eggs, and cream; pour it over your veggies (obviously be careful not to fill your dish too much!). I ended up with this stuff filling up about a quarter of the dish.

Cover with foil (not too tightly or else you'll end up with melted cheese on your foil and not in your belly), and bake. I *think* it was in there for about 45 minutes - but it was definitely bubbling and the veggies were cooked through. Remove the foil and let the dish bake another 10 minutes or so to evaporate some of the liquid from the squash, and to give that cheese some color.

Remove from the oven and let it cool so the excess liquid from the squash is reabsorbed and the whole dish sets nicely.

Share with other people if you don't end up eating it all.

When this is cool, it actually slices like a lasagna. Yummeh.

Quick Stewed Shrimp

Oh hai! Thought I'd forgotten about this blog, eh?

Well, I did. :) But I'm back!

It's tomato season on the farm, but the weird weather this year hasn't been very good for the tasty fruit, so yield has been a lot lower. By comparison: last year at about this time I went to collect my share and was gifted with ten pounds! I made salsa for the small people. This past week, I only got about three pounds. But I have zucchini coming out of my ears, so if you have any recipes for those..

Okay, on to the point.

1 pound shrimp, peeled and deveined
1 pound of tomatoes
1 pound of zucchini
1 large bell pepper 
1/2 vidalia onion
as much minced garlic as you'd like
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon butter
Salt
Pepper
Lemon juice

• Place shrimp in a large bowl, and season with salt and pepper to taste, a few teaspoons of lemon juice, a few teaspoons of minced garlic, and whatever else you want to throw in there (for example, I used Trinidad green seasoning and powdered habanero, because I put that stuff on everything). Let the shrimp marinade for about a half an hour.
• Cut the zucchini into spears about the size of your pinky finger (2 inches long, 1/4 inch wide and thick); cut the bell pepper in half lengthwise, and slice (about a 1/4 inch thick)
• Thinly slice the onion
• Chop the tomatoes up into 1-inch chunks 
• Heat the olive oil in a large non-stick skillet; add the garlic and onion and saute until fragrant and very lightly browned 
• Add the zucchini and pepper, and saute for about two minutes, seasoning with just a little salt and pepper
• Remove the veggies from the skillet, and add the butter 
• Saute shrimp for about one minute until they just start to turn pink; add the tomatoes to the shrimp and cook for an additional two minutes 
• Add the veggies back to the pan, and cook until there's a nice amount of liquid your dish, and it's bubbling happily 
• Serve by itself as a stew, or over rice, or over pasta, or with some crusty bread, or however you feel like eating it. 

Roasted Butternut Squash with Corn

When Nando's Peri-Peri restaurant first came into the DC Metro area, I was pregnant with Mr. Tomato. I ate there so often that is fetal nickname was Peri. They offer this dish as a "fino" side. I always thought it was a little ... meh. But one Thanksgiving I decided to reproduce it. I found a basic recipe online someplace, which has since been tweaked so much that I don't even know what the source is anymore.

The bonus here is that this recipe is totally vegan. If you're into that sort of thing. Heh.

Roasted Butternut Squash with Corn

1 2 lb. butternut squash, peeled and cut into one-inch, bite-sized pieces
1 large red onion, chopped (about 1.5 cups)
3 Tbsp olive oil (plus an optional 1 – 2 tablespoons for coating squash)
"4" cloves finely minced garlic
2 tsp apple cider vinegar
A "little" hot sauce of your own choosing
1 Tbsp sea salt
2 - 3 ears corn, kernels cut off (approx. 1.5 cups kernels)
1/8 tsp cayenne
1/4 cup sweetened dried cranberries
1/2 bunch chopped cilantro, stems removed


• Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F
• Roast the corn on a cookie sheet for about 5 - 10 minutes, or until they have a little golden color
• Lightly toss the squash in the olive oil and arrange on a cookie sheet. 
• Bake the squash until soft, about 20 minutes
• Meanwhile, heat the olive oil in a pot and sauté the onion and garlic
• Add the corn, hot sauce, vinegar, salt, and cayenne to the onions and stir for a minute or so
• Add the dried cranberries and stir for a few more minutes; remove from the heat and add to a large bowl
• Add the cooked squash to your mixture
• Continue to stir the mixture for a few minutes for the flavors to blend
• Add the chopped cilantro to taste.

You can let this sit at room temperature about half an hour for the flavors to blend a bit more. Goes over well with roasted chicken and some wilted swiss chard. Yum!

Not Your Mama's Slaw Slaw

Confession: I think the dressing on traditional cole slaw is nasty. Gross. Ick. So I re-purposed a recipe I found somewhere online that originally had dill (ickkkkkk) and carrots.

The great thing about this recipe is that it's multi-purpose. I've even used a variation on it, with extra olive oil, for potato salad dressing. Yum.

2 packages of shredded cabbage, or that broccoli slaw stuff
1 package shredded carrots
1 bunch chives
1/2 bunch cilantro
"3" cloves garlic
1/3 cup lemon juice
1/3 cup olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste

• Finely mince the garlic, and whisk it together with the olive oil and lemon juice, salt and pepper; if you want a little kick, add some finely minced hot pepper of your choice
• Thinly slice the chives, and finely chop the cilantro; add it to the carrots and cabbage in a large bowl 
• Toss with the vinaigrette

Eat that shit up by itself because it's delicious--the longer it sits, the more the flavors will develop, and you will be the hit of any pot luck.

Butternut Squash Soup

Lemme tell you something about this soup: it's not my own recipe.

But good gravy it's good!! It's straight out of the Joy of Cooking. I don't like the way that they lay out their recipes, so this is my own rewrite.You're going to need a few hours for this, since the squash needs to be roasted.

1 four-pound butternut squash
2 large leeks
2 teaspoons finely minced ginger
6 cups vegetable stock
A few tablespoons olive oil or butter
Salt and pepper to taste

• Preheat your oven to 350 degrees 
• Cut the squash in half; scoop out the seeds 
• Fill a baking dish with about a half inch of water; place the squash face down and cover with foil. Cook for about 45 minutes to an hour, or until it's easily pierced with a fork and very soft 
•  While the squash is cooking, finely mince your ginger and slice the leeks--you will only need the white parts
•  Remove the squash from the oven and set it aside so it cools enough for you to handle 
• Saute the leeks and the ginger in the olive oil in a heavy-bottomed pot until they are soft and fragrant and just a little browned 
• Scrape the cooled squash into the mixture and add four cups of stock and cook on medium heat for about 15 minutes; as it cooks, mash the squash against the side of the pot to break it up a bit
• Remove your pot from the heat; either ladle the mixture into a food processor or blender and process until smooth. If you have an immersion blender, just use that in the pot to process until smooth (NOTE: be VERY careful with the immersion blender; this shit is lava-hot and will bubble up) 
• Return the soup to the stove, add remaining two cups of stock, salt, and pepper to taste and cook for about five to ten more minutes until it's at your desired consistency. 
• Serve garnished with garlic croutons, or finely chopped parsley, or finely chopped cilantro

Pickled Radishes *nom nom*

As an FYI: pickled radishes smell like pickled farts. But they are delicious. Also, any canning that happens here is purely by accident. I don't can things, since they get eaten too quickly to bother. But if you want to can these, knock yourself out!

To enjoy these... well, I just open up a jar and go at it with a fork. 

3/4 cup apple cider vinegar or white wine vinegar
3/4 cup water
3 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon pickling spices

A bunch of radishes
Half a red onion
Optional: a few cloves of garlic, a really hot pepper, a few sprigs of thyme

Set the vinegar, water, salt, and sugar in a pan and bring to a boil. Remove from heat and allow to cool.

Slice the radishes so they are very thin and even in width; slice the onion to the same size as well. I used a mandolin for this purpose.

Add the radishes, the onions, the pepper, the garlic, pickling spice to a jar. Add the liquid. Seal and let it sit in the fridge for a week. This will keep for up to a month, uncanned.

Be careful with that damned pepper or your mouth will water uncontrollably.

Random Roasted Veggies

I have a membership at a CSA in Upper Marlboro. CSA, for the uninitiated, is short for Community Shared Agriculture: you purchase a share of all of the vegetables that the farm produces for the growing season and ... eat away. Claggett Farm is my CSA spot, and I've been going there since my son was about as big as a beefsteak tomato. Clagett's growing season has made me become creative with my weekly menus: sometimes I think I am drowning in tomatoes and zucchini, but the variety and taste is oh-so-good.

 

Last week I found that my fridge was overflowing: time to cook this stuff up. While my kids are very good veggie-eaters, they're only around half-time, and cooking day-to-day meant some of this stuff was going to spoil. So, I chopped up a bunch of stuff and seasoned and tossed in the oven. The only store-purchased items were broccoli and an onion. This works for lots of random veggies that can stand up to roasting.

Heaven. 

• Large zucchini 
• Large onion 
• a bazillion sweet peppers 
• Large eggplant, peeled 
• Two heads of garlic 
• A head of broccoli 
• Any other veggies you have on hand that you feel like cooking. 
• Two tablespoons olive oil 
• Salt and black pepper to taste 
• Pinch of five-spice powder  
• Paprika 
• Red pepper flakes or hot pepper flakes (that's another recipe for another day) 

• Pre-heat your oven on broil to 400 degrees. 
• Finely mince the garlic 
• In a bowl, mix the garlic, salt, peppers, five-spice powder, and paprika together 
• Roughly chop your veggies into bite-sized pieces; toss with the olive oil mixture 
• Spread in an even layer on a large cookie sheet, stick it in the oven for about 15 minutes
• Clean up the mess you just made in your kitchen 
• Share your veggies with your work wife 

A side story: there's a reason why this guy is called Mr. Tomato. Besides steak and strawberries, he will roll over you for a tomato.

  

The year before this photo was taken, he was about 18 months old when tomato season started at the farm. He walked up to the table that came up to his nose, reached into a basket and grabbed a big, red tomato. He took a bite. He was in heaven. Ever since the staff and volunteers at the farm look out for him in tomato season. Hence the name, Mr. Tomato.