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!

Corn and Lobster Chowder

With summer coming to a close and the abundant sweet corn with it, I wanted to make up for the corn ice cream debacle and share something with you all that I would actually make again. This time I thought I should stick with something a bit more mainstream as far as corn recipes go. Chowder came to mind right away because, like the corn, seafood chowders are something that I associate with summer. I know that hot, creamy soups are generally not high on the menus during the summer, but for me the association has more to do with summer beach trips. The taste of chowder brings memories of the sounds of the surf and smell of the salt in the air. The result of this recipe was truly excellent, and the only thing that would have made it better would be cooking it at a beach house while watching the waves. Ah well...there's always next summer.

Rice and Squid Stuffed Peppers

If you are into food blogs, I imagine that you have at some point spent time on Smitten Kitchen. It's one of more well known out there, and a recent post there for rice stuffed tomatoes caught my attention. However, with an abundance of bell peppers coming in over the last few weeks, as well as the pepper plants in my garden starting to produce (yes, despite the fact that I'm getting a half-bushel of vegetables every week from the farm that I can barely keep up with, it seemed like a good idea to ALSO plant a vegetable garden) I realized I needed to get working on this pepper backlog and now was the perfect time to go for a meal of stuffed peppers. 

I still wanted to use a tomato/rice mixture based on the Smitten Kitchen recipe as the stuffing, but since the plan was to have this as a stand alone meal, I was worried that it would not be filling enough as is. Adding some seafood to the rice seemed like a good answer and I picked squid because it pairs so well with tomato, and anyway, seafood risottos are a favorite at my house.

Given a choice I would have picked a sweeter (red, orange) bell pepper for this dish, but green was what I had to work with. In the end though, the slightly bitter taste of the green bell pepper paired pretty well with the sweetness from the tomato used to cook the rice and if I make this again in the future, I may purposely seek out green peppers. Its always fun when the necessity of using an ingredient on hand results in a something tasty that you never would have discovered otherwise!

Spicy Pork with Peach Sauce and Braised Cabbage

The farm has been quite generous with peaches over the last few weeks, with recent shares containing 8 peaches every time. This has presented a bit of a challenge in that the peaches are not yet ripe when I get them, and inevitably they will all ripen at the same time resulting in a bit of a scramble for us to get them all used before they start going bad. Not that I'm really complaining about having to eat lots of nice ripe peaches, but it got me thinking that it would be good to have a few ways to use unripe peaches as well.

Since the unripe peach are quite firm, they don't fall apart as easily during cooking and I wanted to take full advantage of this by using them in two of the three components in this dish. The main protein, pork is often paired with fruit, apples probably being the most common. I've never tried pork with peach, but there are plenty of pork/peach recipes on the web, so it appears I've been missing out.

After sifting through a few recipes, I decided to go for a sweet/spicy combination by using a spicy rub on the pork and then serving it with a sweet peach sauce. Since the unripe peaches are rather tart, I'll add some sugar to the sauce to give it a bit of sweetness, but not too much. The second way I used the peaches was to combine them with red cabbage (left from a couple shares ago) and onion and then braise the whole lot with vinegar until it reaches its happy place. Pork, peach sauce, braised cabbage...this is going to be good!

Spaghetti with Fresh Tomato Sauce

So I had touched on this, my favorite way of making tomato sauce about a month ago, but it was just one component of a larger recipe and now that fresh tomatoes are in hand, I thought it was time to give this simple yet delicious recipe its own spotlight. Once fresh summer tomatoes are in abundance, this sauce will make weekly appearances at our table. 

Plum tomatoes are ideal for this recipe with their strong flavor that is just a bit on the sweet side, but just about any fresh tomato will work. I've used everything from beefsteak to cherry with good results, and each type of tomato will bring its own unique flavor to the sauce. Otherwise I try to keep ingredients to a minimum. Onion, basil and garlic are always in there because after all, they are tomato sauce's best friends. Red pepper flakes will add a nice bit of spice to the mix, but in the end you want the tomato to shine through so I would not stray too far from the ingredient ratios I have here if you decide to experiment.

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Tomato
Onion

Ingredients
2 tbs olive oil
2 lb fresh tomatoes
1/4 cup onion, chopped fine
1 clove garlic, minced
1/4 tsp crushed red pepper flakes (or to taste)

1 tbs fresh basil, finely chopped
Salt and pepper
1/2 lb spaghetti

Preparation
Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Take the tomatoes and cut a shallow cross through the skin on the bottom, then place in the boiling water for 1 minute. Remove from the water and immediately place in a bowl of ice water to cool for 2-3 minutes. Remove the tomato from the cold water, peel off and discard the skin by grabbing the edges of the cross you cut on the bottom. Coarsely chop the peeled tomatoes, discarding the bit of core where the stem used to be. Return the pot of water to a boil then add the spaghetti and cook per package directions until its al dente.

Meanwhile, heat the olive oil in a large saute pan over medium heat then add the onion and cook until it starts to get soft, about 3 minutes. Add the garlic and red pepper flakes and cook for another minute. Add the chopped tomato to the pan  and cook, stirring occasionally until the tomato has started to break down and form a sauce, about 10 minutes. Stir in the basil then season to taste with salt and pepper.
Add the cooked spaghetti to the pan with the sauce and toss to coat. Serve immediately with lots of grated Parmesan cheese.

Sausage with Peppers and Onions in Marsala Sauce

Bell peppers from the CSA seem to have joined the squash in an attempt to overtake my refrigerator these past few weeks, and I don't know about you, but tossing a few slices on my salads is definitely not keeping them in check. To make some headway, I'm enlisting the classic combination of sausage with peppers and onions. Most of my experience with this meal has been at street fairs and the like, usually served out of the side of a truck or trailer that has been brightly painted with the colors of the Italian flag, and 9 times out of 10 the sandwich they sell you is pretty terrible. Overcooked, fatty sausage in a tasteless white bread bun with unseasoned, limp, greasy peppers and onions on top. To add insult to injury, the darn thing costs you eight bucks! 

My version of this dish is a far cry from carnival food. I like to use Italian turkey sausage because it is generally less greasy, though this recipe works just as well with regular pork sausages if that is your preference. To give the whole thing more flavor, the peppers and onions are cooked in a Marsala wine sauce along with tomatoes, garlic and a bunch of fresh herbs. I also throw in a jalapeno pepper to give a little heat (crushed red pepper works as well) and then let the whole thing simmer away with the sausages until it reaches its happy place. To serve this, you can go for the classic and put it on a roll (note that you can choose to leave the sausages whole to make portioning easier here) or for a less messy option, you can do what we did and serve on a plate with the bread on the side. This is also really good over rice or even pasta.

This recipe is loosely based on the one here from the Food Network.

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Bell Peppers

Hot pepper

Ingredients
2 tbs olive oil
1 pound sweet Italian turkey sausage
3 bell peppers, sliced
1 yellow onion, sliced

Salt and Pepper
1 tsp chopped fresh oregano
1/3 cup chopped fresh basil leaves
3 garlic cloves, minced

1 jalapeno pepper, minced (remove the seeds if you don't want too much heat)
2 tbs tomato paste
1 cup dry Marsala wine
1 (15-ounce) can diced tomatoes (or use an equivalent amount of fresh chopped tomato if you have them)

Preparation

Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium heat then add the sausages and cook until nicely browned, it is not necessary to cook them all the way through. Remove the sausages from the pan and drain off any remaining oil, leaving just a thin coating. Add the peppers and onions, season with salt and pepper and cook until they have started to brown. Add the oregano, basil, jalapeno and garlic and cook another minute or two. Next, add the tomato paste, Marsala wine and tomatoes then stir to combine. 

Bring the pan to a simmer over low heat. Cut the sausages into bite sized pieces and add back to the pan, stirring to incorporate. Cook uncovered over low heat until the sauce has thickened, around 10 minutes. Season to taste before serving. 

Eggplant Parmesean

Eggplant Parmesan is another one of those meals that I felt I owed to my Italian heritage to know how to make it right. The word “right” of course is a very subjective word, especially when it comes to food, but I've received enough positive responses to this recipe that I’m confident even if you don’t agree that it’s right, you will at least think it darn good. 

Most versions of this dish that I've come across cut the eggplant very thin before breading and frying it, and the result does not really have much eggplant taste, mostly because in order to get a substantial meal out of the thin slices, you have to layer dozens of them to the point that you are eating more breading than eggplant. It also ends up being a lot of work to slice, bread, fry and assemble all that eggplant. Solving this was ultimately very simple; I just cut the eggplant thicker, about 3/4 of an inch. 

The first time I worked with the thick slices, I had cut them the long way and this proved to make assembly a bit tricky. When you have dozens of the thin slices, it’s easy to fold, twist and pack them together in the baking dish, but the big pieces proved a challenge to fit them in place without resorting to butchering them into little chunks, thus defeating the whole purpose, which was to have large WHOLE slices that would allow you to taste the eggplant. From this bump in the road came the idea to instead slice the eggplant crosswise into rounds that would stack easily to form individual servings. Not only did that solve the assembly problem, but it makes serving a whole lot easier as well. 

On this particular day, I had the idea to make use of some crocks I've had sitting in storage (after making French onion soup in them once a million years ago…) to create a fun presentation, but it’s definitely not necessary to dirty so many more dishes. Just use a 9x13 baking dish and stack up each serving next to each other. You should be able to get 6-8 servings into one baking dish depending on the size of your eggplant. Note that in the picture above I have trimmed the eggplant rounds to a size that will fit in the crocks. This isn't necessary when using a baking dish, just assemble them with the larger rounds on the bottom layer. 

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Eggplant

Ingredients
2 large eggplants
2-3 cups marinara sauce
Oil for frying
2-3 eggs
1.5 cups breadcrumbs
1 cup flour
1/2 cup grated parmesean
1 lb fresh mozzarella
Salt and pepper
1 tbs chopped fresh basil

Preparation

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. Slice the eggplants into rounds approximately 3/4 in thick then lay each slice flat and cut off the skin. Prepare a breading line on your counter using three shallow bowls (pie plates work really well for this if you have them). Place the flour in the first bowl and the eggs (beaten) in the second. In the third bowl, mix together the breadcrumbs, 1/4 cup of the grated parmesan and a 1/4 tsp each of salt and pepper. Heat about 1/4 inch of oil in a large skillet over medium heat until it reaches 300 degrees. Working along your breading line, take a slice of eggplant and dredge it in the flour to coat completely, shaking off any excess. Next, dip it in the egg to coat and then place in the breadcrumb mixture, turning to coat all surfaces. Place the breaded eggplant in the hot oil and fry for 3-4 minutes on each side until golden brown and then remove to a sheet pan. Adjust the heat on your oil as needed to keep it neat 300 degrees. Repeat with all the eggplant. Once all the eggplant is fried and has cooled enough to handle, you can begin assembly. Slice the fresh mozzarella into disks around 1/8 inch thick. You want to have two slices of cheese for each serving of eggplant. My 1 lb ball of mozzarella was just enough for 6 servings with a bit left over for my daughter to nibble on. 

To assemble, place 2 tbs of sauce in the bottom of each crock (if using a baking dish, spread a thin layer of sauce to coat the bottom of the dish) then place one slice of eggplant on top of the sauce. Top with another 2 tbs of sauce, then a slice of mozzarella and then sprinkle with the parmesean. Repeat one more time (eggplant, sauce, mozzarella, parmesean) and lastly top with a bit of chopped basil and a grind of black pepper. Place in the oven for 20 minutes, or until everything is heated through and the top layer of cheese has melted and browned in spots. Let stand for a few minutes before serving.

Mexican Pork and Purslane

Figuring out how to make use of the purslane was a bit of a challenge because in addition to it being a vegetable I've never used (or seen up until now) it turned out that the cuisines that make the most use of it were not ones that I typically cook. Really, the purslane is now the item from the CSA that did the best at taking me furthest from my usual cooking routine. New vegetable and a cuisine that I rarely work with.

Purslane is a plant commonly found in Mexican cooking, so it made sense to focus on that cuisine for a recipe. After a bit of research, I learned that its often paired with pork in a stew or soup preparation. The recipe here is based on a few different ideas that I found and the result is somewhat in between and soup and a stew with the pureed vegetables adding body and a nice depth of flavor to the broth. Cooking the purslane this way makes it quite soft and will dull its flavors, so if you want to experience the full flavor of this vegetable, then I suggest a raw preparation. Here's a link to one that looked pretty good to me.

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Purslane
Bell pepper
White onion (last one remaining from week 11)
Jalapeno pepper (also last one from week 11)

Ingredients
1.5 lb pork spare ribs
1 lb tomatillo, husked and quartered
1 large fresh jalapeño chile, seeded
2 cloves garlic, peeled and sliced
1/2 white onion, chopped
1 lb. purslane leaves, washed and coarsely chopped
1 bell pepper, 1/2 inch dice
Salt and pepper to taste

Preparation
Place the pork, 1 clove of garlic, half of the chopped onion, and 5 cups water into a pot and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to a simmer, cover and cook until the pork is tender, about 1.5 hours. Strain the broth, reserving the pork and 4 cups of broth. Discard the garlic and onions. Separately, bring a pot of salted water to a boil then add the jalapeno and tomatillos and cook until soft, about 10 minutes. Transfer tomatillos and jalapenos to a blender with the remaining onions and garlic and a 1⁄4 cup of the cooking water. Purée until smooth and set aside. In a wide bottomed pot, heat a bit of oil over medium high heat and brown the pork on all sides. Reduce the heat to medium, add the tomatillo purée and cook until thickened slightly, about 8 minutes. Add the reserved 4 cups of broth, purslane, salt and pepper to taste. Bring back to a boil and reduce to low and simmer until the pork is falling off the bone, 20-30 minutes longer. With 5 minutes left, add the bell pepper. Taste again for seasoning then serve with rice.

Pattypan Squash and Chicken Saute

Okay, I promise that this will be the last squash recipe for a while, but I felt I had to share this one because it was the brainchild of my mother, who has been visiting for the last week. Much of the foundation of my cooking came from watching and helping her in the kitchen when I was younger, and to this day its always a treat when I can enjoy a meal she makes, (she lives in North Carolina, so unfortunately these opportunities don't come up often), I mean, what could be better then some of mom's home cooking! Maybe mom doing the dishes as well...HA! Seriously though, handling the cleanup was the least I could do after this deliciously light, yet filling meal. The feta really completes this dish with its sharp, salty flavor giving a great contrast to the more mellow tones of the squash and chicken. Thanks mom!

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Pattypan squash
Fresh basil

Ingredients
1 tbs olive oil
2 chicken breasts, skin removed, cut in to 1 inch pieces
4 cups pattypan squash (or other summer squash), cut in to 1 inch pieces
2 cups leeks, white and light green part, sliced thin
1 tbs chopped basil
3 tbs white wine
Salt and pepper
Crumbled feta cheese

Preparation
Heat the olive oil in a large skillet over medium high heat. When hot, season the chicken with salt and pepper and add to the pan. Saute until the chicken is just cooked though and nicely browned, about 5-6 minutes, then remove to a plate and set aside. Return the skillet to the heat and add the leeks plus a little more oil if the pan seems dry. Saute for around 5 minutes until the leeks start to soften then add the cut up squash, season with salt and pepper and toss to coat. Cook, stirring occasionally until the squash is slightly browned in spots and cooked through, around another 5 minutes. With about a minute left, return the chicken to the pan then add the basil and wine and continue to cook until the wine is mostly evaporated and everything is nicely combined. Serve immediately with the crumbled feta on the side for people to sprinkle on top.