eggs florentine... sort of

Annnnnd eggs. I love eggs. Katie loves eggs. We especially love poached eggs. This year for Xmas Katie bought me poach pods so I can make them whenever I want, which is always. Tonight we only had 4 eggs and were really hungry so instead of making a hollandaise I added fontina cheese to give an extra layer of richness. You could use any greens for this, and considering we both finished it in .095969 seconds and were screaming "MOAAAR!", this is probably going to become how we use some greens at least once a week. Enough babbling, on to the show:


Ingredients:
4 eggs
2 English muffins
1 bunch kale, roughly chopped
1 bunch spinach roughly chopped
salt, pepper to taste
1/4 cup shredded fontina cheese
1/2 an avocado

Get a sauce pan of water on the stove and get it boiling. Toast English muffins. Sprinkle with cheese and return to toaster oven, or oven to get all melty and delicious. Saute your kale and spinach in a pan over medium low heat with a little bit of cooking spray (don't forget to season these). Spray your poach pods, add your eggs, and get them into the boiling water. Cover and cook for about 7 minutes and WHOA, perfectly poached eggs. Layer them up as we did in the picture, or any way you want. Heck, make a sandwich! (Come to think of it, that's a damn good idea!) Eat, and begin craving for more.

eggs benny

I've been a little obsessed with arugula since Kenny & I ate breakfast at Mission Beach Cafe. It was opened about a year and a half ago by Ryan Scott who was a contestant (ahem, chef-testant!) on Top Chef season 4. But, I just looked at their website and it looks like they've got a new chef there now. Anyway, it's right on the corner of 14th & Guerrero, which is where we lived when I first moved out here.

It was the morning of Bay to Breakers, so we were looking to escape our neighborhood (the Lower Haight) before it became plagued by drunks in costume. We quickly ran through and rejected all our usual brunch spots and decided to just start wandering away from the crowds. I remembered Mission Beach Cafe, figured it wouldn't be crowded so we walked over and got a seat right away.

I couldn't decide between the huevos rancheros or the warm breakfast salad. Both featured poached eggs, which I was having a serious craving for. I still couldn't decide when the waiter came to take our order so I asked the waiter to make up my mind for me and he told me to order the huevos rancheros.

They were incredible! Perfectly cooked eggs, delicious beans and sauce, and... the best part: tiny little leaves of baby arugula. Since we've been eating seasonally, it had been a few months since I had a taste of delicious peppery arugula and it was like heaven in my mouth. One of those Goddamn moments. Goddamn, I just remembered I love arugula!

We're still waiting on arugula to start showing up in our box but thankfully my co-worker Paul hooked me up with a big bag of arugula from his father's garden. As I was crouched down cutting leaves off his huge arugula plant, I was already plotting this dish. Hells yeah, arugula and poached eggs!


Ingredients:
4 strips bacon (The best bacon in the world from the Fatted Calf)
1 bunch arugula
1/2 an onion, diced
4 eggs
4 slices Acme sour batard (sorry South Philly, this isn't your Ack-a-mee)
a dollop of creme fraiche, for garnish (we used Cowgirl Creamery, made with local, organic Strauss Creamery milk, it's amazing!)

Fill a deep pan with about 1 1/2" of water and get it boiling. Cook the bacon in a non-stick pan as you like it. I like my bacon a little bit chewy. Especially this Fatted Calf bacon, you gotta respect the bacon and not burn all the flavor out of it! Remove just when it starts to crisp and set aside on some paper towels to blot the grease. Add the onions to the hot pan of bacon grease and cook until they are tender. When the water is boiling, poach the eggs until the whites are cooked through, should only be a few minutes. Meanwhile, add the arugula to the pan with the onion and bacon grease, as toss until it wilts. Oh, throw the bread in a toaster oven too! The recipe is pretty fast and easy but it takes some skill to get the timing of everything right. When the eggs are ready, plate the toast, then the arugula, two strips of bacon and top with two eggs. Add a small dollop of creme fraiche for extra decadence!

three onion and arugula frittata

Nothing is better on a weekend morning than a fresh cooked frittata. Or for that matter, nothing is better to finish off after your husband has gone to work than a fresh cooked frittata, right Katie?

Our CSA has some amazing farm fresh eggs from chickens that roam freely and eat creepy crawlies and oh, you can just read about it here. We had a lot of members of the onion family this week and some awesome local baby arugula as well, and we thought... hmmmm... let's throw it together with eggs and cheese! Speaking of cheese, we also found this awesome company: NYMilk. All the cows are totally pasture fed, there is no animal rennet its all raw milk, and all of the workers are guaranteed a fair wage. Plus its made in state, and its priced competitively with those big national organic cheeses. Go local!

Anyway, back to business. This recipe is highly customizable, just substitute as you see fit.

Ingredients:
6-7 Large Eggs
3 small Leeks (white and pale green parts only), 1 Red Spring Onion and 1 White Spring Onion (both with some greens), all sliced thinly. This is a total of 1.5 cups of goodness.
1/2 pound of arugula, or your favorite green
2 Tbsp. + 1 Tbsp. Earth Balance (or butter)
1 Tbsp. Safflower Oil (or your favorite cooking oil)
1/2 cup shredded Pepper Jack Cheese
salt and pepper to taste

You can take care of the veggies a day or two before hand if you like, or if you just want to sleep in a little longer. Heat the oil and 2 Tbsp. of EB in a saute' pan on medium heat. Add the onion/leek mixture and cook, stirring occasionally until they are just starting to get caramelized, about 10-13 minutes. Once they are ready toss in the greens, adding them slowly but surely as they continue to cook down. This will take about 5-7 minutes until all of the greens are cooked. Season to taste. Ready to move on? Need a coffee break; OK, I can wait.

Good, now set this veggie mixture aside (off the stove would be best, see above), and preheat your oven to 375 degrees. Take the remaining EB and coat a pie dish (we used Pyrex, using metal may vary the cooking time, so check in a little more often). Beat the eggs in a bowl, and then incorporate the cheese. Season if ya like to. Add these to the veggie mixture and mix thoroughly. Place in your dish and throw that bad boy in the oven, gently of course.

Now its time for the waiting. This is probably going to take about 40-45 minutes. Set a timer for 30 minutes. When it goes off turn on your oven light or peek inside eversoquickly to not let heat out. What you will probably see is a delicious crust forming on the top, with the outer rim of the fritatta puffed up and the center still sunken in. It is now time to babysit. Check back every 2 to 3 minutes, once the center has risen it is time to remove it from the oven. Careful, its hot. Set it aside. Don't touch it. Let it set and firm up for about 10 minutes. Plus it'll burn your mouth, be patient. Use this time to make some toast or hash browns. Make another pot of coffee. Call your mom, she is probably eating cereal this morning and will be very proud of what you have just created. Has it been 10 minutes? OK, let's eat breakfast.

rice, squash, greens and leek bake. hello winter in CA.

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups white rice

1 bunch kale, stems removed

4 slices prosciutto

1/2 butternut squash, peeled and thinly sliced

1 leek, thinly sliced

1/2 cup panko bread crumbs

2/3 lb parrano cheese, shredded and divided equally

2 cups milk

3 eggs

1 1/4 cups vegetable stock

2 Tbsp butter

2 Tbsp flour

1 1/2 tsp dried thyme

dash of nutmeg

salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 350. Layer the bottom of a large casserole dish with uncooked white rice. Next spread the kale leaves over the rice to cover completely. Then top with slices of prosciutto. Next up is the butternut squash, then pour the beschemel over the whole thing. OMG! We forgot the sauce! Make a light roux by melting 2 Tbsp butter in a small sauce pan. Stir in 2 Tbsp flour and whisk to incorporate. Whisk in the milk and veggie broth. Temper in the eggs, by beating them in a small bowl and pouring a small amount of the hot milk into that small bowl. This will ensure that the eggs do not scramble. Add the tempered eggs to the sauce. Right before the sauce comes to a boil, whisk in 1/2 of the Parrano cheese. Dump the sauce over the casserole. Next toast the breadcrumbs and leeks together for a few minutes. Layer the leek and breadcrumb mixture on top of the casserole then cover with the remaining cheese. Cover with foil and bake for 35 minutes, then remove the foil and bake for another 10 minutes. Wait 5 minutes before you slice into it!

P.S. CSA Delivery blog does not support the ehm... use of a sort-of-illegal-but-pretty-much-decriminalized-in-CA drug. But if we did, then we would eat this right out the dish with two forks and not call for shitty pizza or take out noodles. Well, we might get noodles AND eat this dish together. BLAM.

The rice in this dish gets all milky and cheesy. The layers stay intact. OMG, I wish I could eat this year round and still be sustainable. Actually, this would probably work with lots of different veggies. If you are looking to do it vegan: Sub- Earth Balance, Lightlife Tempeh Bacon, and unsweetened soy milk, egg replacer, or corn starch. The cheese? Well thats up to you and your proximity to "decent" vegan cheese.

Super Fast Crust-less Quiche with Greens

Weekend mornings are usually pretty busy around our household. Since we usually only have one day off together we always have a lot of errands to run, things we couldn't get to during the workweek, and the farmers market to get to, all before we can just relax and enjoy our time together. So getting breakfast out of the way quickly is almost always a good idea, but it still has to taste good, right? I whipped this up last weekend, and it really hit the spot. It was simple, had few steps, and allowed plenty of time to multitask while things were cooking. These are my favorite kind of things to cook.

Ingredients:
9 Large Eggs
1/2 onion, thinly sliced
1/2 pound, or 2 cups shredded cheese (I used cheddar. More specifically, Grafton Farms 2 year old cheddar.)
1 bunch of Kale, chopped pretty small, with a lot of the larger stems removed
1 stick of Butter or Earth Balance (don't worry, we aren't using it all)
Salt and pepper to taste

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Blanch the kale for about 10-15 seconds, and then strain and shock it with cold water. While the kale is draining, preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Use the stick of butter to grease a 9" pie pan (We used Pyrex). Crack all of the eggs into a large bowl and beat them up. Add in the cheese, kale, onion, and some salt and pepper and mix well until everything is incorporated.

So now for the downtime... Get ready to balance you checkbook, read the paper, clean you junk drawer, or whatever it is you have been meaning to do all week. Its going to be a few delicious smelling minutes before breakfast is ready.

Place it into your oven on the middle rack and bake for 30-35 minutes, or until the eggs are set in the center. Once its ready, let it sit for 10 minutes before cutting and serving.

Happy breakfast!

zucchini blossoms and beet salad

So this week in our share we got two giant beets with greens, two big spring onions, one bunch each of kale and parsley, eight zucchini blossoms, four Delecata squash, one head of broccoli, two leeks, and our bi-weekly dozen of eggs.  We are going to a wedding this weekend and so we only had 3 days to eat all of the veggies!  On Monday night we made a Latin inspired veggie stew with all of the greens, one of the onions, all of the squash, some tomatoes, and some beans.  We ate it with rice.  We didn't take any pictures, but I am sure you can imagine what it looked like.  Today we had some more time on our hands, and wanted to make sure we did the zucchini flowers justice by making something awesome.  We did something similar last year so I won't bother going step by step through the process. 

Katie made an awesome filling out of goat chevre, the greens of the spring onions, and parsley.  We then fried them up and devoured them.  There was some leftover filling so we added a little olive oil to it so that we could use it as a dressing for our beet salad.  Since we already had hot oil on the stove I drained a can of chick peas and tossed them in.  I let them get crispy for about 5 or 6 minutes, and then strained them and seasoned them with smoked paprika and sea salt.  We proceeded to snack on them while finishing the salad.

I peeled and chopped our beets and boiled them in salt water until fork tender.  While they were boiling I tossed in 2 eggs and let them cook with the beets for about 10 minutes (multitasking!) because I really love hard boiled eggs.  When the beets were finished we cooled them in the fridge, and then mixed them and a few handfuls of chopped parsley with the goat cheese dressing.  We served them with the crispy smokey chickpeas for a salad of amazing flavors and textures.

asparagus quiche

Isn't quiche just the greatest ever? It's looks pretty but it's deceptively easy to make, especially if you do what we did and just buy a pre-made pie crust. If you make it for a dinner party or pot luck, it's sure to impress. And the best part: it's considered a totally appropriate food to eat for breakfast, lunch or dinner! How many other foods can claim that? Not that there's anything wrong with eating pancakes for dinner. Anyway, look at that golden brown deliciousness and tell me you don't want a slice!


Ingredients:
1 whole wheat pie shell
about 8 stalks of asparagus, cut into 1/2" pieces
2 cups cream
4 eggs
3 oz. Big Ed's raw milk cheddar, shredded
3 oz. Comte, shredded
few pinches of salt and pepper

Preheat your oven to 425 degrees. We bought a 365 brand whole wheat pie crust which comes w/it's own (recyclable!) aluminum pie tin. So trim and chop the asparagus then dump 'em in to the pie crust. Cover with half of the cheeses. Combine cream and eggs in a mixing bowl and whisk together until fully incorporated. Sprinkle in some salt and pepper. If you have white pepper, feel free to use that for color consistency. Pour mixture on top of the asparagus and cheese, then cover it all up with the rest of the cheese. Bake for 15 minutes at 425 then reduce the heat to 350 and bake an additional 37-40 minutes, until the quiche is golden brown and set up. If you check on it and it's still wiggly, it's not done yet! Allow to cool for about 10 minutes before you slice and devour!

mushroom and brown rice casserole

Kenny is working late tonight so, I'm cooking with mushrooms again! Hooray for me, I never get sick of 'em. I didn't have anything planned so I typed "mushroom" into the wonderful Super Natural Recipes Search Engine and the very first result was mushroom casserole from 101 Cookbooks. The author of 101 Cookbooks, Heidi Swanson, is also the creator of the search engine, by the way. Some other recipes that struck me while looking through the results were for mushroom quiche and mushroom soup. But for tonight I thought the casserole would work best and I had most of the ingredients already. I've tweaked the recipe just a bit.

Ingredients:
1 pound white button mushrooms, quartered
1 red onion, diced
4 cloves garlic, minced
2 cups cooked brown rice, room temperature
2 large eggs
1 cup sour cream
1/2 cup ricotta cheese
1 Tbsp lemon juice
salt, pepper, thyme to taste
1/4 cup panko breadcrumbs
1/4 cup Parmesan cheese

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. In a pan over medium-high heat, saute the mushrooms in 2 Tbsp of olive oil and a pinch of salt. Stirring occasionally, cook until the mushrooms have browned a bit and begun to released their liquids, about 6 to 8 minutes. Add the onions and cook for another 4 minutes or so, then add in the garlic. Saute together for another 3 minutes, then take the pan off the heat. Add the rice to the pan and stir until combined.

In a large bowl, mix together the eggs, sour cream, ricotta and lemon juice. Season with salt, pepper and thyme to taste. Add the rice mixture to this bowl and stir until well combined. Spray a casserole dish with your Misto, then pour the mixture into the casserole.


Mix the breadcrumbs and Parmesan together in a small bowl, then sprinkle over the casserole. Cover with foil and place in oven for 30 minutes. Remove foil and bake for another 20 or 30 minutes, until cooked throughout and golden along the edges.

chorizo and potatoes for brunch

This was a quick breakfast idea when we woke up kind of on the wrong side of the bed (read: hungover) one morning. It requires little action, but reaps great rewards.

Ingredients:
1 pound fingerling potatoes, sliced into approx. 1/2" rounds
1 yellow onion, coarsely chopped
2 peppers, whatever color you have, coarsely chopped
1 package Light Life Chorizo Style "Sausage", cut into 1/2" slices
1/4 cup crumbled Cotija Cheese, or Queso Fresco
2 Tbsp. Canola Oil
1/2 Tbsp. Cumin
Salt, pepper, and cayenne to taste
Fried Egg (optional)

Wake up. Grab glass of water and Emergen-C. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Chop stuff. Mix everything except cheese and eggs in a bowl. Put into baking dish and put that into the oven. Put on pot of coffee. Set timer for 25 minutes. Crawl back into bed.

When the timer goes off, get out of bed and check the potatoes. Are they fork tender? OK, good. Remove the dish from the oven and top with cheese. Cook some eggs if you like and throw them on there too. Grab your coffee, sit down and watch some cartoons.

fried rice

Ingredients:
2 cups of white rice
4 1/2 cups of water
1/2 block extra firm tofu
3 heads of baby bok choy
4 eggs
1/4 cup soy sauce
2 Tbsp sesame oil
1 1/2 Tbsp rice wine vinegar
2 Tbsp canola oil
2 tsp red pepper flakes
1 tsp garlic powder
1 1/2 tsp minced ginger

Cook the rice in a rice cooker- it takes 4 1/2 cups of water to cook 2 cups of rice in a rice cooker. Sear the tofu in a wok with soy sauce and sesame oil. When the rice is ready, add the rice and eggs to the wok and stir vigorously to disperse the ingredients around. Add the seasonings. When the egg is fully cooked, add the bok choy and sautee for another 5 minutes.

So delicious and easy- I went back for seconds.

creamy chard and walnut pesto

Ingredients:
1 bunch chard, stems removed and leaves roughly ripped
about 1/4 cup loosely packed fresh basil leaves
1 cup walnuts
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/4 cup grated peccorino romano
2 Tbsp lemon juice
2 cloves garlic, peeled
salt and pepper to taste
1/2 cup heavy cream
1/2 lb whole wheat spaghetti
two eggs

Add all of the ingredients except the pasta and eggs to a food processor and blend until pesto-y. Cook your favorite pasta, and immediately toss with the pesto after cooking. You can top it with some whole walnuts and more peccorino, but we wanted to put a fried egg on it! Then again, what don't we want an egg on top of?

We had leftover pesto so the next night, I tossed it with spinach penne, sauteed zucchini and onion. Yum!

orange thyme fruit salad

Ingredients:
2 apples, 1/2" dice
1 cup grapes (The grapes we had were small. If you have large ones, cut them in half.)
juice of 1 orange
3 sprigs thyme, leaves taken off, no woody stems. roughly chopped.
1 lemon
2 tsp olive oil
pinch of salt

I was stoked to make breakfast on Saturday morning, I even set my alarm because I couldn't wait for fruit salad and poached eggs. Then the thunder happened! It was awesome. I kind of thought that there was going to be a giant earthquake, but with one look out the window I saw the pouring rain and heard some more claps of thunder and knew that my roof had no chance of falling on my head anytime soon. I was pumped. I love thunderstorms, and I love breakfast, what better way to spend the morning. Then another BANG from the sky, and the power went out. It only lasted an hour, which in my experience with other public utility fixings in SF, was super fast. So we got down to business. I won't go into detail about the eggs, because we do them so often, but let's get into this salad.

Juice half of your lemon into a bowl. Add 2 cups of cold water, and start cutting your apples. Toss the apples into the lemon water, and they won't get all brown and mushy, even if you have to walk away for 10 or 15 minutes or more. Once they are done and your grapes are free of pesky little vine tips, it's time to make the dressing. Juice the orange and the other half of lemon into a small container or bowl, be careful not to get any seeds in there! Add a pinch of salt, the thyme and olive oil, and stir or shake until the oil is incorporated into the dressing. Drain the apples, add the grapes, toss with the dressing and nom it up! It's sweet, it's savory, and good for breakfast, lunch, dinner, brunch, dunch, linner, or a light late night snack.

pisto manchego

I came across this recipe on New York Times website and I've been anxious to try it. It's supposed to be a summer dish but I figured we could make it work with butternut squash instead. Man, prepping 1/4" cubes of butternut squash is now my least favorite thing ever. What a pita. Still, at the end it was kind of worth it. Especially when Kenny told me he thought that it's one of the best things we've made together.


Ingredients:
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped
5 garlic cloves, minced
1 large butternut squash, 1/4" diced
1 can, diced tomatoes, strained and liquid reserved
1 1/2 tsp salt
black pepper, to taste
4 eggs

Heat the oil in a large soup pot over medium heat, then add the onion. Cook until tender, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic and cook, stirring, for another minute or two. Stir in the squash and 1/2 teaspoon salt, and toss together until the squash is coated with oil and cook until the squash begins to soften, about 20 minutes. Add the tomatoes and more salt to taste (we used about 1 teaspoon) and turn the heat to medium-high. Stir often until the tomatoes have slightly cooked down. Add the juice from the tomatoes plus 1/4 cup water, stir together, and turn the heat back down to medium-low. Cook uncovered for 30 to 35 minutes, until the vegetables are soft and easy to mash.The mixture will cook down and begins to stick to the pot. From time to time, press on the squash with the back of your spoon so that it breaks down. Taste, adjust the salt, and add lots of pepper.

Using the back of your spoon, make four wells in the vegetable mixture and break an egg into each well. Cover the pot, and cook until the eggs have set, about six to eight minutes. The whites should be set, but the yolks should still be runny). Sprinkle with pepper and serve, using a spatula to dish out portions of pisto topped with an egg.

stuffed zucchini blossoms

Hell yeah zucchini blossoms! These were super simple, ridiculously delicious, and left us wanting more. We used garbanzo bean flour to make the batter for these. It adds a really nice nutty flavor, and makes a great crunchy crust. Mixed with the extra crunchiness of corn starch, its kind of like Tempura meets Falafel, or Tempurafel coating. Yeah, something like that...

Ingredients:
Zucchini Blossoms, as many as you can get!

Filling:
4 oz. Goat Chevre
1/4 cup Divina Roasted Tomatoes, in liquid (Can't find these? Just substitute Sundried Tomatoes in Oil.)

Batter:
1 cup Garbanzo Bean Flour (Don't have it? Use a mix of AP Flour and Breadcrumbs.)
1/2 cup Corn Starch
2 Eggs
2 Tbsp. Water
Salt and Pepper

Toss the goat cheese and tomatoes into your blendy machine and buzz them until they are smooth. Add a little water if you need to, just not too much, you don't want this to be runny. If you are fancy, transfer the mixture into a piping bag. If (like me) you will probably never have a piping bag, just put it into a ziplock bag, push it into one corner, and then cut a little bit of the corner off. Now fill your blossoms! (See above.)

Put about 1/4 inch of oil into a frying pan (got cast iron? use it!) and turn it on to medium high heat. Mix the cornstarch and flour in a dish and season it with salt and pepper. Beat the eggs in another bowl with the water, this will help the batter to be lighter and not so eggy, these are delicate little flowers and should be pampered, at least until we throw them in hot oil, and then fight over them. Shake off any excess flour and drop them into the now hot oil. Cook them about 2-2.5 minutes on each side and then take them out and let them sit for just a minute before noshing, or you can burn the hell out of your mouth with molten lava filling like I did...
Enjoy!

wilted greens with pancetta and hard boiled egg

This salad is very simple to make, but it doesn't taste simple. Decadent doesn't have to be difficult. The pancetta is from The Fatted Calf, they sell local, organic, humanely raised meat at a stand at the Ferry Building Farmer's Market on Saturdays.

Ingredients:
1 bunch pea shoots
1 bunch arugula
1 coil pancetta, chopped
4 cloves garlic confit, chopped
1 Tbsp garlic oil from confit
2 eggs, hard boiled
2 tsp balsamic vinegar
salt & pepper to taste

The eggs can be boiled in advance and allowed to cool. Pick through the greens and rip the leaves off the stem, roughly in bite sized pieces. Rinse thoroughly and set aside. Meanwhile, heat up a non-stick skillet and fry the pancetta until crisp, then use tongs to remove the pancetta and set aside. Add garlic oil and garlic confit. Working in batches, wilt the greens in the pancetta fat. It only takes a few seconds, you don't want to cook it it the whole way, just wilt and warm the greens. Toss and assemble the salad and drizzle just a bit of balsamic vinegar on top to cut the fat, season with salt and pepper, and serve.

100th post!

This is our 100th post! I'm proud of us. I thought we should do something to celebrate, so I made a new masthead. I also wanted to do a sort of "Best Of" and highlight out favorite recipes thus far.

Katie's top 5 favorites:
green chard fauxsotto - It's just a no-fail crowd pleaser, great for vegetarians and meat eaters alike.
six layer udon noodle salad - The flavors are clean, there's layers of texture, and the vinagrette is just awesome.
fried rice with bok choy - Best fried rice ever! The type of dish you get cravings for.
potato and onion gratin - Mmm, if only gratins were healthy, I could eat this everyday.
stuffed peppers - One of our early recipes, the combination of soyrizo, black beans, queso fresco and jalapeno was spot on. Next time, I'll take better photos.

Kenny's favorites:
pisto manchego - I really like eggs. No, I really LOVE eggs. Anytime, anywhere, on top of anything, even roasted squash.
seitan stew- Seriously delicious. So good we almost forgot to take a picture before we ate it all.
honey chili tofu with sauteed arugula and caper couscous - Fresh, flavorful, sweet, and spicy.
My other two favorites are already linked above. The potato and onion gratin, and the six layer udon salad. There is a lot more to come, so by the time we hit 200 posts, I am sure this list will evolve. Thanks so much to everyone who reads this thing! Keep reading, and keep cooking!

mini quiches

I was going to make myself a whole tray of mushroom & onion mini quiches because I'm a glutton like that. But we had still had some peppers in the fridge, so I figured I'd be nice and make some quiches that Kenny would like as well. Last time we made quiche was awesome, but this time I wanted to make the dough from scratch and use our muffin tin to make these cutesy little mini quiches. They make great hors d'oeuvres and the possibilities for the filling are endless!

Ingredients:
Crust:
2 cups all purpose flour
8 Tbsp cold butter, sliced into small pieces
3-5 Tbsp water
1 tsp salt

Add the flour, salt and butter to a food processor and pulse for a minute. Transfer to a large bowl and add 3 Tbsp water and begin to knead the dough and form into a ball. If the dough is not sticking enough, add more water one Tbsp at a time until it becomes easier. Form into a ball then put in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 425 degrees. When your dough is set up, flour a cutting board and rolling pin, and roll out the dough. Use a cookie cutter or a glass to cut circles in the dough. Press a dough circle into each well of a 12 well non-stick muffin tin, pushing the dough down to conform to the tin. Use a fork to poke holes in each mini crust.

We are going to blind bake the crusts so that they hold their shape. Rip off some squares of tin foil and press a piece into each muffin well then fill with dry rice or beans which will act as weights. Bake in the oven for 10 minutes at 425. Remove the tin foil and weights and return to the oven for another 10 minutes at 350. The crust should be dry and cooked through.

Mushroom filling:
1 Tbsp olive oil
4 oz white button mushrooms, quartered
1/2 onion, diced
pinches of oregano thyme, salt & pepper

Pepper filling:
1 Tbsp olive oil
2 gypsy peppers, small matchstick slice
1/2 onion, diced
pinches of red pepper flakes, salt & pepper

You can take care of this while you are waiting for your dough to set up & blind bake. Heat the olive oil in a pan over medium high heat and simply cook the ingredients together until just before the onions start to caramelize. Remember they will cook again in the quiche, so don't over do it at this point. Set aside in two separate bowls.

Quiche filling:
2 cups heavy cream
4 eggs
1 cup parmesan cheese
salt & pepper

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Whisk the eggs in a large bowl then, add the remaining ingredients and whisk until uniformly combined. Separate into equal portions using a measuring cup and add the mushroom filling to one portion and the pepper filling to the other. Pour the mushroom and quiche filling mixture into the first 6 mini pie crusts. Pour the pepper and quiche filling mixture in to the last 6 crusts. Bake for 40 minutes, turning the tin around halfway through if your oven doesn't bake evenly. At the end of 40 minutes, the mini quiches should be puffed up and beautifully golden on top. Allow to cool 10 minutes before removing the mini quiches from the muffin tin. Use a small spoon to run along the edge and pop them out.

weekly pickup 6/28

2 leeks
1 bunch carrots
2 red onions
1 bunch radishes
1 dozen eggs
6 zucchini blossoms
1 bulb garlic
1 head red leaf lettuce
1 bunch ezapote

NEW CSA IS HERE!!! WE'RE BACK BITCHES!!! weekly pickup 06/14

2 red onions
1 dozen eggs
3 leeks
2 beets
2 white onions
1 bunch of purslane
1 bunch spinach
1/4 pound garlic scapes
1 bunch cilantro

we have lots of ideas flowing already.... stay tuned for triple onion quiche, black bean soup and french lentil salad!

weekly pickup 07/25

1 dozen eggs
2 leeks
1 bunch something kenny doesn't remember the name of
1 head red leaf lettuce
4 ears corn
1 cabbage
2 lbs plums
1 bunch mint
4 nectarines
2 green squash
1 bunch spinach
1.5 lb potatoes
1 bunch scallion
3 plums

ps - i know we have not posted any recipes lately - we have been stupid busy but are still cooking like crazy. stay tuned for NINE new recipes!