Baba Ganoush

I'm a bit late in sharing this recipe with you all.  I had made this several weeks ago when eggplants were still coming in my CSA share, but finishing up the post somehow fell through the cracks. Better late than never I suppose!

Hummus has always been my go to homemade dip, but now that it is pretty much as ubiquitous as salsa, I do tire of it after a while. While baba ganoush is a bit more complex to make (as complex as roasting an eggplant can be...) it makes for a nice change. The ingredients are pretty much the same as hummus, but the eggplant gives this dip a lighter texture and flavor than you get with chickpeas. 

Apple and Pear Pie with Cinnamon Crumble Topping

Have I mentioned that I like pie? No, that's not quite accurate...I LOVE pie!! By far my favorite desert, and of all the great pies out there, apple is top of the list for me. What can I say, I'm all about the classics! So you can imagine that when the local apples started to arrive that I was immediately asking my wife to bake me one. Then the other day I get home from work and the house smelled like heaven! Butter, cinnamon and apple scents floated through the air to my nose the moment walked in the door. What a fantastic (and absolutely delicious) surprise to come home to! 

In addition to the apples, we had some Asian pears laying around from a family trip to a pick your own orchard a little while back, so she combined them with the apples to add another nice flavor to the mix. Additionally, the pears remained crisper after baking, giving a nice bit of crunch to the final pie that complimented the soft apples well.

Week 22 Share

Apples
Sugar Pumpkin

Watermelon
Bok Choy
Green Beans
Leeks
Radishes
Kale
Potatoes
Fresh Apple Cider

As the season changes into fall, my thoughts on what to cook are drifting to warmer and heartier meals. This week's share certainly will help that along. Leeks and potatoes? Sounds like soup to me! Fresh apples means its pie time, and the sugar pumpkin, well I suppose that could be made in to a pie as well, but I feel like there could be something more interesting to do with that one...

Black Bean, Corn and Spinach Enchiladas

This is one of those recipes, that now having made it for the first time, I can't believe that I've never done is before. Enchiladas were always something for the local Mexican restaurant to handle and it never really occurred to me that it would be such a simple thing to make them as home. Of course, any recipe can be made complicated, and I've sure there are ways of making enchiladas that would require a dozen more ingredients and half a day of work, but having tasted these I see no reason to do much more than what I've got here. 

The only thing I will probably try net time is to add some shredded chicken or beef to see what these are like as a non-vegetarian version. I suppose the one thing I did do here to make things a bit more complex was making the sauce from scratch (could have just bought a can of it at the store) but in truth it was not that much more work and I always prefer to serve a homemade sauce over store bought.

As for the filling, I had spinach to use so I googled "spinach enchiladas" and ended up on the recipe linked below. The beans give a nice meatiness to the dish and combine very well with the spinach. The addition of corn (I used some of the kernels I had frozen from fresh ears several weeks back) adds a bit of sweetness and crunch. 

I do think the ingredient that really brought it all together was the cheese. Choose that well and you will be well rewarded. I went for a blend of cheddar, pepper jack and mozzarella. Top these off with a spoonful of salsa, or better yet do what we did and use the salsa verde I made a few days ago. Cook a big batch, these make great leftovers!

Salsa Verde

I had promised myself that I'd try to do something interesting with the tomatillos, but after another busy week that included a three day business trip to Minnesota, I needed to get these used before they went bad, so I phoned it in with possibly the most common tomatillo recipe out there; salsa verde.

Salsa verde is made using a different technique than other salsas. Instead of dicing up the vegetables and mixing them together raw, all the ingredients are boiled together and then blended to make what is basically a chunky sauce. One of the reasons why its done this way is that tomatillos have a lot of pectin in them which is released by the boiling. Then when the mixture cools the pectin acts as a thickener, giving you salsa instead of tomatillo soup.