CSA Week 7

In the box this week:

Cabbage

Cantaloupe

Bell pepper

Tomato

Eggplant

Broccoli 

Red chile

Poblano pepper

Cherry bomb pepper

Potatoes

Corn

Recipes:

Braised cabbage

Quinoa with broccoli, cheese and bacon

Jalapeño popper Mac and cheese

Pierogi casserole

Moussaka

Well, it's finally happened - I have veggies left over for next week - lots of peppers. There may be roasted peppers in my future. Also, for some reason this week seems to be very carb loaded...this is what happens when I have potatoes coming out of my ears. Apparently I'm not a huge potato eater. Who knew. 

Beer braised cabbage. I used Guinness, since I still have some left over from St Patty's. It's probably not all that great to drink, but I was great in this dish. Better than it's current use as my back door stop! I added some flour at the end to thicken the sauce. It was great for breakfast with a fried egg on top.

Quinoa side. Sometimes I should really read the recipe before I start cooking - maybe that would help! I started cooking the quinoa separately before I realized it was to be like a pilaf. Oops. It still turned out well and was tasty, so I guess I didn't perform a fatal mistake.

Jalapeno popper mac and cheese. Kinda hard to see the pasta at this angle. Once again, I should read my recipes before I start to make them. I was under the impression that this was baked in the oven, but it is actually a stovetop dish. This week could also be known as "teach Allison how to make a roux week". A roux is a very powerful tool in the kitchen. A roux is equal parts fat (usually butter) and flour that is cooked into a paste. This is then used as a thickening agent in a bechamel sauce - add milk to roux and you have bechamel (as an aside, if you add chicken stock instead of milk you get veloute, these would be 2 of the 5 classic sauces of French cooking. A veloute would be used for something like chicken pot pie). Then add cheese to bechamel and you have a cheese sauce and for our purposes, mac and cheese. This was very yummy and creamy with the addition of cream cheese.

To add insult to the carb injury, we have pierogi casserole. Basically the components of pierogis in casserole form - mashed potatoes, pasta and deliciousness. It was really easy to put together and in the end very good. I did have to do some advanced math to determine how many potatoes would make 4 cups of mashed potato - after some research, I decided that 2.5 lbs of potatoes would make about 4 cups mashed, if you were wondering. We used turkey bacon for both the quinoa and this dish, so that we don't feel totally bad about all of this very heavy food. I think I need to make a green salad....

And finally moussaka. I knew once we were getting eggplant, I wanted to make moussaka. This also goes along with "teach Allison to make roux week" - that's her bechamel handiwork there. The thing I love about moussaka is the meat - there's cinnamon in the meat and it's not enough for you to know it's cinnamon but you know it's different. It is sooo delicious. Perfect for today, which is nice and cool compared to yesterday.

The cantaloupe was devoured quickly with prosciutto. The corn was stripped from the cob and put in the freezer. All that is left is chiles...roasting sounds like a great idea...maybe then preserve in oil? Will have to think on that for next week.