Art, Cello and Vegetables

Benedicta's painting - Gladness.

Benedicta had to enter a painting in the Hudson Guild Art show to entice me to check out the weekly vegetable pick up. The gallery is a lovely room off the main lobby and the show included a multitude of talent. A special perk for the evening was the cellist in the lobby. Everyone weighed their tomatoes and picked their onions to the sound of folky-toe-tapping renditions by the visiting cellist.

That's four pounds of tomatoes.

Pick up your vegetables to the sound of the cello.

When you get four pounds of tomatoes for the week and have a small freezer, you have to make spaghetti sauce. So a-chopping I went. Threw everything - including mystery herbs from the plastic bags of dried herbs we've been collecting over the last several weeks from the share that I've neglected to label - in the pot and let it simmer down before whizzing it to a semi-smooth texture in the blendtec. The taste turned out much better than the color. Deliciouso!!

Started the marinara sauce off with sauteed onion, garlic scapes, and miscellaneous herbs I dried and didn't label.

Chop, chop, chop your tomatoes.

Add the tomatoes and simmer down.

The sauce was orange - not like bright red store bought.

Eggplant!

Salsa, Salsa

Everything conspired for salsa this week - two pounds of tomatoes and Walla Walla onions. After my previous salsa disaster I vowed to chop all those tomatoes by hand on my next attempt! Wrong. How could I chop with the Blendtec poised and ready on the counter. I added a few extras - garlic scapes, chile powder, salt - then pulse, pulse, pulse it is done! Tangy tomato taste jumping off the tortilla, mingled with a hint of garlic fresh.


Salsa Verde had not been on my radar. In fact, I don't remember ever trying it. Sounds positively sinful when I say it. But now I know! We received a pound of tomatilloes so I googled to figure out what to do with them. To say I modified a recipe would be a huge overstatement. I basically created my own based on what I had in the kitchen. Broiled the tomatilloes. Tossed them in the blender. Threw in four garlic scape heads (only), Ile de Re salt, chile powder and three scallions. I did not expect SWEET! I wanted to just eat it with a spoon but since I'm an adult I drizzled it over refried beans and ate it with a fork, each serving having ample salsa verde and a wee bit of beans.


One more reason to love the surprise treats in the CSA box. Wonder what I'll discover next week?! Oh, but let's not forget the fruit. How about some Pear Ginger Crisp?

Cucumber Heaven

Doesn't that pear make you want to stare into her rosy cheeks and admire her voluptuous shape and savor the prospect of taking a bite out of her. That's just what I did. Over and over again. So juicy fresh. And look at those fascinating cucumbers. They're the intellectual counterpart to the sexy pear. When I was growing up, all summer long my grandmother had a batch of sliced cucumbers swimming in white vinegar spiced with salt and pepper brewing in the fridge. Biting into them was an exciting encounter with tangy crunch. I rarely make them though they are one of my favorite summer snacks. Benedicta hasn't caught on to this one so every slice waits patiently to be devoured by me alone. They've been reappearing in different shapes and colors over the past couple weeks and they all taste swell soaked in vinegar. I keep refilling the bowl, and adding a dash more salt and pepper and vinegar. So simple, so so scrumptious.

Vegan Pesto

10 years ago I had a plot in a community garden. I grew cucumbers, tomatoes, basil and zinnia.  That was the summer I fell in love with pesto. The rich flavor of blended herbs is a poor man's version of green gold. When I quit eating cheese, pesto was probably the biggest sacrifice. So I searched my vegan cookbooks and weeded out the pesto recipes that were trying to be something other than traditional. Since we still have garlic scapes I diced them as a replacement for garlic. They maintained a woody texture that made me a little nervous but I proceeded with abandon.

 

Next came salt from the Ile de Re, followed by toasted walnuts and basil. Pulse the blender and pour in olive oil. It's looking a lot like pesto. Next add some Nutritional Yeast while the angel hair dances in boiling water. Time for the taste test and hallelujah - pesto is back on the menu!! It is indistinguishable from the romano and parmesan version. One batch made supper for three nights and it's on the docket again for next week! Happy days of summer are here to stay!

Leek and Potato Puree

These vegetables are too beautiful for words. Luscious leaves, curvy forms, magnificent colors, sinewy roots. Such bountifully crunchy promise of meaty meals. All without the meat! Leeks in our bin meant stopping at Whole Foods for some red potatoes for an attempt at Vichyssoise. I didn't find a vegan recipe so I modified a standard from The Joy of Cooking. The last ingredient was a pint of cream. Um, that was not going to work. So I went for potato soup with leeks. Vegetable broth instead of chicken, scallions from last weeks harvest, potatoes, leeks sauteed in vegan butter and salt and pepper. As a potato soup it was tasty but having ruined the gazpacho I wanted to give the Blendtec another go.

 

There it is waiting for a twirl. I put half in and pressed soup. Miracle! It came out so creamy you'd think I added a quart of cream. I have no idea how that happened. The potatoes were creamy not starchy. The leaks took on a sticky texture. That combination? Must be. It was so good I wanted to eat it for breakfast. Benedicta slurped it at every opportunity and in a day it vanished. I have more potatoes. But will there be more leeks? If not, I'll buy some and see if the store-bought can hold up to farm-fresh.

 

Fennel and Zucchini Bread

 

The fennel arrived large and bulbous with lacy fronds symmetrically spaced around the top like a princesses tiara. I'd never seen anything like it and there were no cooking instructions attached. So I googled and lucked out on simple and tasty directions. Cut everything away except the little bulbs inside. Place on a cookie sheet. Drizzle with olive oil, then balsamic vinegar. Sprinkle with salt and bake. It's a good thing the recipe was easy because they sizzled down to tiny crunchy morsels that barely filled an appetizer plate. The licorice zest bounced around with the toasty vinegar to form a sensation that requires expletives of "Amazing" between every bite!

Next up zucchini bread. I've been making a vegan version weekly. I add all the ingredients, then grate the zucchini and stir. The first time I made it the batter seemed way too dry so I added extra water. When the zucchini went in I realized that all the moisture from the zucchini was plenty to silken up the batter. The thing I love about this recipe is it is FILLED with zucchini. Talk about yummying up your vegetables! I find with gooey stuff the best approach is to throw your hands in and pretend it's a mudpie. Voila!

Salsa? Gazpacho? Smoothie?

Love all the purples!

The most impressive colors arrived this week - lavender peppers, purple scallions, red and yellow tomatoes and look at those plums! All that fruit begs to be made into pie or jam. But they're too juicy and flavorful to ruin by adding sugar or crust. I threw two or three in my backpack every morning and by the time I got home they were gone - eaten at the park, the office, a cafe table on Broadway, the theater, the subway and just about anyplace else I happened to be. By the end of the week our basket was empty and we were ready for a refill.

The beautiful yellow (summer) squash got sauteed with mushrooms and an onion (Brenda's recipe- I just modified by leaving out the cheese, which I have to admit makes it a tastier concoction) for easy to pack box lunches. The zucchini turned into bread and everything else ... well, that's the title of this post.

Okay, I had my first vegetable disaster this week. For months I've had visions of making my own salsa and presented with all the ingredients I took a turn with the new Blendtec. Add onions, pepper, tomatoes (which I brought from Arkansas), crushed red pepper (my first mistake), cucumber (my second mistake), herbs, salt and spin (my biggest mistake!). 

Everything looked supple and lovely thrown in together. I selected "whole food", then "pulse" on the blender (perhaps I should have consulted the instructions but this seemed logical to me) and pressed "start". Before I could press STOP it was smashed beyond salsa and frothed an ugly brownish-pink. "Gazpacho!", I thought, not wanting to admit immediate defeat. So I added cherry tomatoes and cucumber and pressed "soup". Wrong again! It stared gyrating in a 4-minute cycle and I quickly aborted, gave up on further blending and poured. It had some resemblance to gazpacho but not a very good one. I tried to pawn some off on Benedicta but she couldn't take the crushed red pepper. So for three days running I drank salsa smoothie for lunch. It wasn't terrible, and with every swig I reminded myself how healthy it surely was, but I've never been so happy to empty a bowl. 

I'm not cured of my desire to make homemade salsa. But next time I'm going to use an old-fashioned chopping knife!

Started off right with onions, peppers, tomatoes and herbs.

Instantly it turned frothy.

So I added to the problem with more cucumber.

Way past gazpacho texture.

Not even recognizable as a salsa.