Stir Fry With Italian Flair

A few weeks ago, after we started collecting the CSA box, I was at Bed Bath and Beyond and decided on a whim to buy a pack of those green plastic bags that are supposed to keep produce fresh for weeks.  I didn't have any high expectations as I've been burned by infomercials before.  The weekend before last was the last time we collected the CSA box because we were in Mexico last weekend.  Anyhow, I put the produce in a few of the bags and went on vacation.  I checked on the stuff today and I was completely prepared to take it to the trash while holding my nose.  What do you know...it was as fresh as the day I put it in bags.  The bags really do work!

Of course, I didn't wanna push my luck so I cooked half of the produce for tonight's dinner.  I had planned to make a curry but I don't have any grated coconut.  I settled on a quick stir fry instead using some of the fennel and some of the chard.  I had never used fennel before and I was quite surprised by the strong anise/licorice smell as I was slicing it.  I was even more surprised when the cooked fennel, and stir fry, didn't taste one bit like anise or licorice.

Now, I know I said stir fry and then said fennel, it wasn't a mistake.  Fennel is a very Italian ingredient and stir fry and Italian aren't usually used in the same context as stir fries tend to be Asian but this works.  Don't think about it as stir fry, think about it as a quick chicken saute and then it will make more sense.

Chicken, Fennel and Chard Stir Fry


4 oz fennel bulb (about 1/2 a medium bulb), thinly sliced
oil for cooking
1 tbsp butter
2 chicken breasts (about 1 1/4 lbs) cut into thin strips
1 tbsp fennel leaves, chopped
3 chard leaves, cut into strips
1/4 cup chicken stock
juice of 1 lemon
grated Parmesan to serve


Blanch the fennel in boiling water for one minute.  Drain and rinse under cold running water to stop the cooking process.  Drain again.  

Heat a wok or large frying pan until very hot.  Add 1 tablespoon of oil and half of the butter.  Swirl to coat the sides.  When the butter begins to sizzle, add the sliced fennel.  Stir fry until golden brown and tender.  Remove from the wok and keep warm.

Reheat the wok, add 2 tablespoons of oil and half of the remaining butter.  Stir fry the chicken in two batches until cooked through and browned on the outside.  Add more oil and the remaining butter between the two batches.  Return the pork and the fennel to the wok and mix well.  Add the fennel leaves and chard.  Stir fry for one minute until the chard is just beginning to  wilt.  Add the stock and lemon juice, stir. Season with salt and pepper and serve immediately, sprinkle with grated Parmesan cheese.


Serves 4

I served this over plain white but I bet it would be really good over wild rice or even mashed potatoes.  Now I have to figure out what to do with the other half of the fennel bulb and pretty much ALL the top.

Cookied Out

On Friday night, I attended a get together with a few girls from a local board.  The theme was cookies.  We all had to bring cookies, store bought or homemade, to share and then take some home.  There were 14 of us there....that was a lot of cookies!  They were all delicious but I'm cookied out!

I brought some spritz cookies.  Why?  Well, because considering the amount of cookies I had to make, pressed cookies seemed like the easiest route and it was.  One single batch made about 100 cookies but it depends on the design.  The Christmas tree die is apparently not a dough hog.  This recipe is very loosely based on a Martha Stewart recipe.

Vanilla and Cinnamon Spritz Cookies


1 cup sugar
1 tbsp vanilla powder (or vanilla extract)

3 sticks (12 oz) unsalted butter
2 large egg yolks
3 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp ground cinnamon
sanding sugar as needed



Preheat the oven to 350°F.


Beat the sugar and the vanilla powder on medium speed until incorporated, about 3 minutes.  Add the butter and beat until pale and fluffy.  Add the egg yolks, 1 at a time making sure to beat well after each addition.  Reduce speed to low.  Add flour, salt and ground cinnamon and beat until smooth.


Working in batches, fill the cookie press and press cookies onto an ungreased cookie sheet about 1 inch apart.. Sprinkle the dough with the sanding sugar and bake until the edges are just golden, about 10 minutes.


Let the cookies cool in the sheet.  Cookies can be stored at room temperature in an airtight container for up to 4 days.  Raw dough can be refrigerated in an airtight container for up to 3 days.

I get my vanilla powder at Williams Sonoma and it's Nielsen-Masseys.  It measure tablespoon for tablespoon with vanilla extract and I haven't noticed a difference in the consistency of the final baked good. I got it for the novelty of it but I think I won't get it again once this pot runs out.

I baked a similar version of this cookie some time last year but they were wreaths then.  I also dyed the cookies green this time since I wanted to make Christmas trees.  These is an easy peasy cookie to make and the press just makes it even easier.

Happy baking!

CSA Week 3 Start Up

I look forward to every Saturday morning now because it's CSA box day.  I enjoy the drive to Bee Heaven Farm almost as much as I enjoy getting the box.  I always drool over all those houses with enormous plots that I will never own. But I digress.

Yesterday was the first time we didn't leave anything from our box behind in exchange for something else, although we did take a goody from the extras box.  This time the box had one eggplant, thai basil, green chard, one green bell pepper, one pint of cherry tomatoes, 3/4 pounds green beans, one cucumber and a bag of 5 piper betel leaves.  We took fennel from the extras box.

The only thing in this box that I am 100% unfamiliar with is the piper betel.  I have no idea what it is nor what do use it for.  The newsletter has some suggestions but we'll see what comes of that.  The fennel has the top attached so it huge, though the bulb itself isn't.  I don't know what I'm going to do with it but I hope I can use it all.  There's not much I have planned for this stuff since I am going on vacation for a week on Tuesday and Matt will be home alone.  I really doubt he'll be doing any cooking so I gotta figure out a way to make this stuff last until I get back.  I still have some things from the previous box plus there will be the box next weekend.  I guess we'll be eating a lot the week I get back!

I did give the green beans to my mom because we still have some from the first box (assuming they are still good).  I also gave her one of the avocados from the previous box. I think I'm gonna make a curry from the eggplant tomorrow but our AC broke today and hot curry is the last thing I want to eat in the heat.

For more picutres and info on the box, check out Matt's blog.

Vegetable Garden On Its Way!!!

Well, the vegetable garden has been started!

I am doing a Square Foot Garden as well as some containers.  Neither one of us is particularly handy so we just ordered the box for the Square Foot Garden.  It is not here yet though.  I went ahead and started a few seeds in the garage three days ago.  I sowed Genovese and Dark Opal basil, thyme, chives and Sweetie tomatoes.  MUCH to my surprise, everything but the chives had sprouted this morning.  SO fast.  I guess the garage is pretty warm :P

 

A couple of days ago I sowed chantenay carrots directly into the container.  Instead of following the packet instructions and spreading seeds everywhere and then thinning the seedlings, I used the SFG method and just poked small planting wholes the same distance away as the plants need to be and sowed 2 seeds in each hole.  Hopefully at least one of the seeds in each hole will germinate and become carrots.  That's 32 carrots in potentia. I had great success the other time I grew carrots so I am hoping for success here too.

 

Today I sowed red shallots into a container and potted two transplants I bought, cayenne pepper and butternut squash.  Both went into a container and I will stake the butternut squash at some point though maybe a small trellis of some sort will be better.

 

I cannot wait until the actual Square Foot Garden is started!  I am going on vacation on Tuesday so I'm gonna have to wait until I get back but I do hope the box is here by then.  I'm so excited about this whole thing that it is ridiculous.  I hope to have be able to start harvesting some things by mid February or so.  Hopefully the vegetable garden (if you can call it a garden) plus the CSA veggie box will be enough so we don't have to buy produce again until the season ends.

Chinese Minus The Take Out

We got a new camera this week and my image processing software did not support the files.  Easy fix, right?  Not so.  There are no upgrades to my software for this file because Adobe is greedy and they just want you to keep buying their products.  Then there's the fact that this new card the camera uses crashes My Computer 95% of the time I hook it up to it so getting the pictures off the card has been...interesting.  I have had pictures for the post on the damned camera for days but only yesterday was I able to actually get them on the computer and process them.

As I mentioned in the previous CSA post, I had never had bok choy and I was looking for some recipes to use it.  First, let me say that I do not like cooked cabbage.  I think it smells like fart.  Nasty, I know but that's what it smells like to me.   However, I do like a nice RAW cabbage salad.  The thought of putting cabbage in soup was 100% repulsive to me so I kept looking for other ways to use it up.  I ended up finding several recipes for stir fried bok choy and in the spirit of trying new things, I decided to brave it.

As I was slicing the bok choy, I tried a little bit of it.  Man, it was good!  Like...where-has-this-cabbage-been-all-my-life good.  It was sweet and crunchy and the white stalks were juicy...just loved it.  I was also very surprised by how good it was stir fried.  I do like it better raw but the stir fry was very good.  Now I'm thinking about growing the baby bok choy variety in my new Square Foot Garden but more on that later.

Stir Fried Bok Choy


400g (14oz) bok choy
1 tbsp oil
2 garlic cloves, mashed
3 thin slices of fresh ginger
3 tbsp chicken stock/broth
1 tsp sugar
salt or light soy sauce


Separate the white stakes and the green leaves of the bok choy.  Roughly slice both.  Heat a wok over high heat, add the oil and heat until very hot.  Stir fry the garlic and ginger for 30 seconds.  Add the white stalks and stir fry for about 2 minutes.  Add the greens and stir fry until they begin to wilt, then add the stock and sugar and season with salt or light soy sauce.  Simmer, covered, until the white stalks are tender but the leaves are still green, approximately 2 minutes.  Serve hot.


Serves 4

I made half that amount and it used up almost all of the bok choy.  We still have some green left and a lot of stalks so I may try something else with it.

For the main dish I just made a simple Lemon Chicken and I believe the recipe hails from Canton.  I used the garlic chives from the CSA box here.

Lemon Chicken


1 egg, slightly beaten
2 garlic cloves, sliced
2 small pieces of unwaxed lemon rind
1 pound skinless boneless chicken breasts, cut into 1/4 inch slices
2 tbsp cornstarch
1 tbsp canola or olive oil
juice of 1 lemon
2 small garlic chives, roughly chopped


Combine the egg, garlic and lemon rind in a bowl, add the chicken and marinate for 15 minutes.  Remove the lemon rind and add the cornstarch to the marinated chicken, making sure to stir and evenly distribute.  Heat the oil in a large frying pan over high heat until very hot.  Add the chicken, turn down the heat,  and cook, stirring occasionally, until the chicken is cooked.  Turn the heat up to high, add the lemon juice and stir. Remove from the heat, add the garlic chives and serve.


Serves 4

Why order Chinese when it's this easy to make??  I served this with white rice.


While making this chicken, I inadvertently tested a theory.  I have always heard that food sticks to pans (I dont normally use nonstick) not because the pan is hot but because it isn't hot enough.  I always let my pans get hot yet everything still stuck.  Well, this time I added the oil and then went to do something else (check my email, shame on me) and totally forgot about the frying pan.  When I remembered, I ran over the the stove and the oil had begun to smoke.  I went ahead and added the chicken anyway.  What do you know....know a single thing stuck!  I guess I was just not letting the pans get hot enough.

Vegetable Growing

I was born in the biggest city in my home country and aside from the odd few years I lived in a provincial town when I was a small child, I have always lived in big cities.  Havana, Miami, the Washington DC area, Naples, Italy, London, etc.  You get the idea.  I'm a city girl through and through and I have never made any excuses for that.  I love high rises and crowds and I would give my first born (OK, not really) to live in Manhattan.  However, there are a few country-life things I have come to yearn for in recent years.

I never had any interest in gardening of any sort until I moved to the UK in 2006.  We rented an apartment in North London and there was a pick your own farm within a 15 minute or so drive.  We were in the outskirts of London proper so there was some aspect of country/rural life to if you just drove a bit.  Vegetable gardening is big in the UK, there are several magazines about it and they even have local government support community garden type schemes.

These gardens are called allotments.  These allotments (of land) are in a large plot of land and subdivided into small plots, the allotments themselves.  The individuals rent (if you will) these small pieces in the large plot and plant it, tend to it, etc.  Each individual is responsible only for their own plot.  This is a great way for normal people to grow their own vegetables.  Most  houses in the UK have very small yards, if at all, so growing in your backyard is not necessarily an option.  I think allotments started in WWII but I am not sure.

Being exposed to all that made me really want to give growing vegetables a shot.   We were lucky enough that our apartment had a small garden (though we had to leave the building and go through two gates to get to it) so I said "why not?" and got to it.  Because we rented, we couldn't really dig and plant and raised beds would damage the grass so I decided to just do container gardening.  I planted herbs, lettuce, carrots and strawberries.  Turns out, I didn't have a black thumb at all.  The carrots were delicious and the little salad we got was good too.  The herbs served me well (until I let them die) and the birds enjoyed the strawberries cause I didn't get to them fast enough.  I loved it.

Then we moved to the US and trying to keep it up, I planted tomatoes in three containers.  They were prolific but it just so happened that they were prolific at the point in my pregnancy where I could not stomach anything and the thought of food alone made me want to run to the toilet.  My husband does not like tomatoes so they went to waste.  What a shame.  That put me off but I really want to get back into it.  We bought this house in March and even though it is a house, we do not have a yard.  We do have a big porch so I am currently considering Square Foot Gardening in raised patio boxes.  We'll see what comes of that.

As for the allotments, I REALLY wish the US had this sort of thing, even if not government supported.  I have looked high and low for any sort of garden that rents out lots in our area but they do not exist (or they are very well hidden and kept secret).  We have even considered buying land either for us or to start an allotment type business but alas, we cannot at this point.  If I was friends with anyone that had a big enough piece of land I'd beg them to let me use a small piece of it to grow things.  We live right next to Redlands, Florida, an huge agricultural area, you'd think it would be esay to find a small plot of growing land, no?

So, I hope we can at least make something with what we've got and gived SFG in raised patio boxes a shot. 

PS.  As a side note, we often talk about how next time we buy a house (in 5 years or so) we are definitely going to buy one with some land, nothing huge, just enough to grow a few things and maybe even keep a few animals.  Remember how I said I was a city girl through and through?  Yeah?  Well, I wonder where this suppressed country girl is coming from but my family would be horrified!

Here are a few pictures from my UK garden, if you can call it that.

CSA Week 2 Start Up

The second week of the CSA organic vegetable box is here!  Yes, I know I only posted one recipe from the previous box but rest assured we ate nearly all of it, I was just too lazy to post about it.

We picked up our box this morning and were surprised to see a few others there, including Margie (the farmer).  It had been raining and the grass was wet but we thought we'd let Liev run around anyway since he rarely gets the chance to be that free.  Leave it up to the spawn of a city girl to take a tumble right into a muddy puddle.  I was (almost) horrified but he just got up and kept walking.  Of course, the front of his clothes was soaked in muddy water. That was hilarious.

The box this week has a lot of things that I haven't tried and would not have normally bought.  Again, this is the beauty of vegetable boxes, you get to play Iron Chef a bit.  Improvise and see what happens.  I won't go into details about the contents and what the more exotic ones are (I'll leave that up to Matt) but the box had avocado, green bell pepper, garlic chives, zucchini, yellow squash, bok choy, dandelion, black zapote and romain lettuce.  We swapped the zucchini for another avocado although we wanted eggplants but there werent any in the extras box.  I don't have any set plans for any of it yet but I do think I want to make dandelion pasta.  The recipe on the newsletter caught my eye and I've been wanting to make pasta for a while so why not.  I'm researching other recipes.