summer casserole

I was not excited when my boyfriend came home with the idea of making a casserole for dinner - casseroles to me sound so heavy and wintery. Of course I was wrong to doubt The Man, and the casserole was incredibly flavorful, satisfying but light and bright. I also loved that the squash and zucchini were mashed in with the potatoes, again circumventing the cooked texture of summer squash that I don't always like.

Layer 1: mashed potato, yellow squash and zucchini
Layer 2: Korean short ribs (meat only, of course)
Layer 3: shelled snap peas, sweet corn and carrots
Layer 4: A blend of Italian cheeses and panko breadcrumbs

finally, a preparation of summer squash I can get behind

We have been getting tons of yellow summer squash over the past few weeks, and I'll say it, I haven't been thrilled. While I like the flavor, I am not the biggest fan of the texture yellow squash and zucchini often develop when cooked. That's what I loved about how my boyfriend prepared these ingredients tonight: the julienne cut totally eliminated what I can dislike about the texture. Combined with soy sauce, the end result was something with an Asian-style noodle feel, which was great.

Also included with the squash was the first purple bell pepper I have ever eaten. I didn't even know bell peppers came in this colour - it could seriously be confused for an eggplant. I didn't get a chance to try it raw (my boyfriend was too swift in the kitchen!), and I wouldn't have known it was in there if my boyfriend hadn't told me. So I can only assume that purple peppers are very mild in flavor?

Cucumber salad: "peeled" cucumber*  garlic, red onion and red wine vinegar


*this is clearly my boyfriend's new favorite technique, where you take a vegetable peeler and literally peel the entire vegetable, see also our crispy potato peels

White fish poached in vegetable broth with red onion

Rice

Julienned yellow squash and zucchini sauteed with purple bell pepper, diced onion, vegetable broth, soy sauce, and sriracha

hello sweet summer corn!!!!

This was the first week we got corn in our CSA box (sorry, no picture of the box contents this week), and oh my god, I was blown away. This was seriously the best corn I have ever had in my LIFE. No fancy preparation needed.

Seared pork chop

Roasted summer squash, red potatoes, red onions and carrots

Corn (boiled, cut off the cob, mixed with a touch of butter and salt)

cowboy breakfast for dinner

Corn grit pancake topped with sauteed pork blade steak, corn, green pepper, kohlrabi, carrot, tomato and onion

Served with an over easy egg

Finished with a drizzle of salsa verde

chilled soup plus

This is definitely up there among my favorite meals. Again the heat made us lazy and not hungry, to the point where it was starting to look like we weren't going to eat dinner at all. I was seriously considering just eating a bowl of cereal and calling it a day. But suddenly my boyfriend declared that he had a fantastic idea for something "small and amazing"...and he was right. I have decided that I prefer soups like this that have a nice creamy base with "toppings" compared to soups that are chunky and incorporate all the ingredients in the soup itself.

Chilled cauliflower and potato soup

Slices of seared pork blade steak

Snap peas, corn, beets and carrots sauteed with chili powder

chilled cauliflower and potato soup

There is one thing that I will never understand about the south. Let me set the scene: it is 1950 and air conditioners haven't made their way into the average home, which is unfortunate because it is 100 degrees outside before taking humidity and "real feel" into account. You get home from work, sweating from every part of your body, and what's for dinner? Fried chicken!

Now don't get me wrong, there is a special place in my heart for fried chicken and other classic southern fare, but come summer I just don't understand it. It is seriously just shy of 100 degrees and so humid that if I close my eyes I could convince myself that I am in a tropical rainforest. Given that these are average summer conditions, how on earth did fried chicken become the standard southern dinner?!?!?! I cannot think of anything I would like to eat less in the weather we've been having, and I am taking refuge in my lovely air conditioned apartment!!

I had the idea for tonight's dinner because I got home and was so hot I didn't know what to do with myself and the idea of eating anything remotely hot...well, it wasn't an idea I wanted to entertain for very long.

Panko-crusted pan-fried meatballs

Chilled cauliflower and potato soup: cauliflower, red potato,vegetable broth, garlic, onion, a splash of cream and tons of dill

a slider family

Beef sliders with pita buns

Toppings from left to right:
1) tomato and Chinese-style barbecue sauce
2) cheddar cheese, cucumber, kohlrabi, mustard and mayo
3) cheddar cheese, tomato, kohlrabi, mustard and mayo
4) cucumber and a chunky beet and wasabi mayo spread

Personally, #4 was my favorite, probably because I was sitting around for a good hour before my boyfriend got home fantasizing about how we could use beets in our dinner tonight. I am obsessed with the beet + wasabi mayonnaise combination, and coming up with this topping was my only contribution to the meal.

My boyfriend preferred #3. This slider just tasted so classic. Perfectly classic.

crispy potato peels

Last night we planned to grill with our neighbors. I thought that we had established our plan food-wise (veal chops, summer squash), when out of nowhere and my boyfriend decided to whip up this extremely satisfying crispy potato snack for us to munch on while we waited for the grill to heat up. I have no clue where this idea came from or how it popped into my boyfriend's head, but this was definitely a success. Is it still considered "snacking" when the entire bowl is emptied within minutes of being set down?

Crispy Potato "Peels"
- using a potato peeler, literally "peel" an entire potato
- marinate"peels" in olive oil and garlic
- spread peels over a cooling rack on a baking pan
- bake in the oven until crispy (approx. 30 minutes)
- place peels in a bowl, season with salt to taste, and enjoy!

everything slaw

My boyfriend and I are still feeling the repercussions of eating out for a week, and it is difficult to think of food without feeling nauseous. Yes, I am at a point where the thought of melted cheese does not make me feel good - I don't even know who I am anymore. Combined with the crazy hot weather, cole slaw is a perfect solution, because it is fresh and crisp but won't wilt. As my boyfriend said, suddenly he understands why cole slaw, potato salad and pasta salad are summer picnic favorites. And really, making a cole slaw doesn't get easier: just take all the veggies you have that are good to eat raw (and fruit too, I think green apple is a fabulous cole slaw addition), chop them up small (having good knife skills is a bonus here) and mix with a touch of something creamy (mayo) and a splash of some kind of vinegar.

Slaw: cabbage, cucumber, green apple, green onion, garlic scape, yellow carrot, apple cider vinegar, mayo and dijon mustard

In this week's box...

1 bag of sugar snap peas
2 kohlrabi
1 cauliflower
1 sprig of mint
9 red potatoes
5 yellow squash
2 cucumbers
1 zucchini
1 green pepper
6 beets
6 yellow carrots

Also: 2 pork blade steaks, 2 pounds of ground beef and 6 eggs

the return of the home-cooked meal

We were in Halifax for the last week, and as much as we both loved all the delicious seafood (especially the mussels, which of course taste even better when eaten with beer on the harbour), we have definitely reached our eating-out limit, to the point of craving green food. What is it about eating at restaurants that discourages eating any veggies???

Seared pork blade steak

Kale chips

"Green" Cole Slaw: green cabbage, green apple, green onion, kohlrabi, mayo and vinegar

misidentified ingredient: correction

For the past couple of weeks we have been getting something from our CSA that we have been calling "chives". Neither of us were 100% sure that this is what it was, but given the onion-y flavor and the appearance, this seemed like a reasonable guess. But, now we have the answer: this is garlic scape, which is the stalk of a garlic plant. In addition to a great garlic/chives/green onion kind of flavor, what has also been impressive is that unlike our green onions that start to wilt almost right away, the garlic scape stays firm and has been lasting for weeks. This is quite a bonus for us when we start to get overwhelmed with our CSA box and trying to eat everything in time. Now that we know what it is, I am hoping we can start to use it in more interesting ways (so far it has only made an appearance in our failed green curry)

creamy with crispy

This meal was all my vision, and it came together exactly as I was hoping it would - the crispy kale chips were a perfect contrast with the creamy grits. Unfortunately the meat got a bit dried out during re-heating (we actually made this last night for an undocumented meal), but this was unnoticeable if you combined meat with grits in a single bite.

Slices of beef rump roast with sauteed shallots served over creamy cheddar cheese and green onion grits

Kale chips

cabbage rolls

My boyfriend has been talking about making cabbage rolls for a long time (ever since we got our first CSA cabbage in the fall, actually) but somehow we never got around to trying them until tonight. They were wonderful - reminiscent of a meat loaf in flavor, but lighter, fresher, and overall more suited to summer.

Cabbage rolls filled with ground pork sausage, rice, and red & green onion with a chunky tomato sauce.

tastes like guacamole and corn chips...only better...

Seared pork blade steak served on an avocado, kohlrabi, garlic, onion, chili powder and corn chip hash, topped with salsa verde

Side of snap peas

In this week's box...

1 bag of kale
2 kohlrabi
1 head of green cabbage
1 head of red romaine lettuce
1 bunch of green onions
2 sprigs of chives
1 broccoli
2 yellow squash
1 cucumber

Also: 4 pork blade steaks, 1 beef rump roast and 6 eggs

inspired by snap peas

After thoroughly enjoying the snap peas in our sub-par curry, I found this post with a snap pea side dish recipe - perfect! I love recipe ideas that only require a couple of ingredients, especially when we have all of those ingredients in the house.

Pork chop

Sauteed beet greens

Snap peas with pine nuts and parmesean cheese

a story that starts with a beet will end with the devil...

Over-easy eggs served on a beet and horseradish pancake with toast

yes, inspiration comes from the back of a bag of frozen fish

We have been slowly working our way through a bag of frozen trout fillets. Today, as I was defrosting the last two, I saw the words "avocado butter" as part of a suggested trout recipe on the back of the packaging. All I had to do was casually mention this to my boyfriend as I left the kitchen and...ta da! Dinner involving trout and avocado deliciousness! Bonus points for the use of lettuce in the presentation.

 Pan-fried trout topped with avocado, butter and green onion deliciousness, served over a slice of tomato and green leaf lettuce

Sauteed kohlrabi and red spring onions

saved by snap peas

After much deliberation, I am going to have to put tonight's dinner in the "fail" category...a salvaged fail, but a fail nonetheless. The plan was to make a green curry sauce. Unfortunately, neither my boyfriend or I had the foresight to realize that the curry paste we normally use contains more ingredients than simply curry powder. So we had all our ingredients in a pan with coconut milk, and we were just going to have a little taste before leaving it to simmer...and oh my god, our "curry" tastes burnt!. It was at this point that we realized the paste/powder distinction - "burnt" is what curry powder tastes like on its own. My boyfriend - being the brilliant boy that he is - instantly knew to start adding sweet ingredients (e.g., brown sugar) to counteract what I called "burnt" but what he better identified as "bitter". The end result was edible, but just okay as far as curries go. Luckily we had amazing snap peas from our CSA in there - they were so wonderfully crisp and crunchy that they totally stole the show. Despite the mediocre curry, I still went back for seconds to get more of those snap peas.

"Green curry" with coconut milk, chicken, snap peas, and chives served over rice