CSA Week 3

Here's what's in the box this week:
yukon gold potatoes
2 jalapenos
red onion
yellow onion
2 tomatoes
6 ears corn
zucchini
yellow squash
1 pint raspberries
1 head cabbage

Extras leftover from last week:
2 green mangos
large tub pickled carrot and daikon
1 head cabbage

Extras from the gardens of friends:
large patty pan squash
large zucchini
3 yellow squash
2 zucchini

Recipes:
Peanut, carrot and cabbage slaw
Green mango salad
BBQ cabbage and sausage stuffed sandwich
Cabbage roll casserole
Summer squash gratin
Zucchini butter
Roasted corn tabouli
Stuffed patty pan

Well guess this is a lesson on making sure that I prep the veggies if I plan to use them later. Never got around to that head of cabbage, so I had 2 heads to deal with this week - made sure I used them up!

Step one on dispatching the cabbage is slaw. This is an asian style slaw with peanut dressing. I also used the leftover picked carrot and daikon in place of the carrot and radish called for in the recipe. Pretty tasty. Unfortunately, the vinegar from my pickles somewhat overpowered the peanut dressing, so I didn't get much of that. Sometimes the shortcuts and hacks work out, sometimes they don't.

Another thing in my fridge that I keep forgetting about are 2 green mangoes I bought at the Asian market in Philly. They had been sitting in my fruit drawer and oops, forgot about them. One of them almost turned into a ripe mango! The recipe suggested using a mandolin slicer for the fruit, but I had some trouble with it, so I just cut mine with a knife. The dressing was killer - that spicy dressing you get at Thai/Vietnamese restaurants on a green papaya salad? This is it! I used sambal oelek in place of the Thai chile. Soooo good.

Cabbage step 2. These sounded so good, I just couldn't resist. When I was talking about them with my coworkers, my cabbage hating friend said she might even be interested in these! Mainly because she thinks you won't taste the cabbage with the BBQ sauce, sausage and cheese, she's right. You do get some nice crunch, since I tried not to over cook the cabbage. I got the sausage from a stand at the farmer's market when I was picking up my box this week - I never really looked around the market before! This was a great find! So was this recipe.

Word to the wise though - it says 1 lb of dough to make 8 rolls, well I ended up using a whole recipe from my Artisan Bread in 5 min a day book to make 16 rolls (wheat of course), that's 4 lbs of dough! The recipe uses 1/4c of filling in each bun, so I used 1/4lb sections of dough for each bun and some were harder to close than others! The filling is really good and each bun got wrapped and placed in the freezer for future lunches.

The final cabbage recipe is the Stuffed Cabbage Casserole. This takes the ingredients of stuffed cabbage (a staple out here) and puts them all together in a casserole - much easier than stuffing all those rolls. This is not a dish I have had much of, so I took a few liberties. I used brown rice - since the intent was to cook the rice in the oven while in the casserole, I par cooked the rice before adding. I also used less beef - who really makes a recipe that uses 1.5lbs of beef, when every package comes in 1lb? Really this was my fault for not really reading the recipe, but seriously, what would I do with that other 1/2 lb? I also felt that the recipe did not have enough seasoning, so I added much more salt, pepper and some sugar to make the tomato sauce stand out.

This also makes enough for a crowd - in the freezer you go!

This is the zucchini/squash gratin - I originally was going to use a recipe from the Food Network, but it became very clear that I had way too much squash to make a bechamel and coat and bake and such - might try it in the future though, don't think I'm going to run out of zucchini! So I precooked the squash in a giant bowl in the microwave for about 12 min (in 4 min bursts) then shingled the squash into the dish like I would if I was making a potato gratin. I varied the layers - all squash then all zucchini. Added some salt, pepper and herbs then some cheese. I used a preshredded package of sharp cheddar and so used 2 cups cheese for the whole dish. I topped it off with more cheese and panko, then sprayed the top with olive oil spray to make the topping crunchy. For moisture, I added in some corn-chicken stock I made out of the corn cobs from the tabouli recipe, below.

Zucchini butter. I have had this recipe for a while and keep coming back to it since it sounds so weird and interesting. Mine is not as nicely green as the one on the site, but that may be because I used the very large zucchini for this dish and the inside to outside ratio is different than with a batch of smaller zucchinis. I also used a red onion from the box instead of shallots so that might also contribute to the muddy color. It does taste good. Kinda like a caramelized onion, which is how I think I will use this. Would be great in a quiche or omelette. I was also thinking it would be good in a lasagna as one of the layers. So into the freezer you go to await use in the future.

Roasted corn tabouli. Pretty simple salad - roast corn in oven, cook bulghur then toss with lemon and parsley. Since I was cutting off the kernels from the cob, I made a corn stock with some chicken broth to cook the bulghur in (why cook grains with just water??) then also added it in my gratin.

The only thing left is a large patty pan squash, perfect for stuffing. While looking for a recipe, I found many for smaller patty pans but this is a large one - I did find something that I will use as a guide - thinking you need to par cook it a bit - so boil for 10 min then let cool. Then scrape out the insides and add your stuffing ingredients. Since I have corn and jalapeno, was thinking I would go for the Mexican vibe. Add some pinto beans, brown rice and feta cheese and you have a pretty good sounding dinner. Pop back into the oven to fully cook the squash and you are golden...brown that is.

Phew! My cooking buddy is out of town this week, so I guess that is why I'm feeling so pooped! Definitely have a start on stocking the freezer...maybe if I play my cards right, I will have a full freezer to get me through the winter once the CSA is over? One can only hope.

Update: here's the stuffed patty pan