Well, we are a week into the summer season of our CSA share, so what better time to do a wrap-up post of our winter recipes? If you’ve got any root veggies hanging about in your crisper, and you want to make room for what spring is bringing your way, here are some of our favorite recipes of February and March.
Red cabbage is a tough thing to get rid of, and when it comes, it comes in bulk. Thankfully, there’s an Emeril recipe that will take a good bit of that cabbage off your hands. This roast pork loin with braised red cabbage recipe has a big ingredient list, but it’s a cool weather dream dinner. (Cabbage, apples, and apple cider from our CSA. Also, I didn’t have juniper berries, so I substituted a tablespoon of Tanqueray.)
I paired this dish with the cheesy potato recipe I mentioned on our February Cheese of the Month post.
Serve this meal up alongside some Pinot Noir from the finest Pinot winery in Solvang, Loring Wine Company, and it makes any chilly evening a lot more pleasant.
Next, it was time to put my Vegetti to work on a new endeavor. I love the Vegetti for making ‘zoodles’ (that’s Zucchini Noodles, for any non-yuppies reading our blog), but I found a great recipe from Heart Beet Kitchen for salmon with rutabaga noodles. (Kale, rutabagas, shallots, and garlic from our CSA. Salmon is Scottish salmon from Wholey’s.)
It is a LOT harder to Vegetti-fy rutabaga than zucchini. The result was that my noodles look nothing like the gorgeous ones on the Heart Beet Kitchen blog, and more like fettuccine noodles. But the flavor was just as good!
I served the meal with an easy side of garlic butter button mushrooms (no CSA ingredients, but sale ingredients from the grocery store). This was awesome, and now that we’ve gone Scottish salmon, I doubt we’ll go back. (And a big thanks to the fish mongers at Wholey’s who listen to all of my questions and give me great advice!)
It’s hard to choose favorite recipes, but the next three have definitely fallen onto my list.
First was a terrific vegetarian dish that I made for lunch. If it was not more than 600 calories per serving, I would be making this goat cheese polenta with basil almond pesto and pan-fried chickpeas every dang day. (Polenta, goat cheese, and garlic from our CSA.)
The flavor in this was incredible. The pesto was so savory, and the polenta and the chickpeas meaty enough that this was a main course. As I mentioned, very high calorie (it is a pesto, after all), but the calories are all from good-for-you ingredients, so I think it’s a fair splurge to have! Also, the polenta is super easy to prepare in this way, unlike many polenta recipes, so you can throw this together quite easily.
Finally, I embarked upon a triple-recipe dinner when we received some potatoes and Jerusalem artichokes in the same shipment. Jerusalem artichokes look deceptively like ginger root when you receive them, but they are sweet and nutty in flavor.
I made a Bon Appetit recipe for crispy Jerusalem artichokes with aged balsamic and it was earthy and sweet and savory all together.
With the potatoes, I opted to go for a salty side and made another Bon Appetit recipe: crispy salt & vinegar potatoes. (Potatoes from our CSA, chives from my garden.)
Omgggggggg. They didn’t get quite as crispy as the recipe indicated, but they were terrific nonetheless. The leftovers were fantastic, as this made a big batch that we enjoyed for several days. Tasted just like salt and vinegar potato chips, but in French fry form.
Served together with the yummy spiced pork chops with apple chutney from Cooking Light, it was a wonderful dinner that covered every taste and texture you could want.
The winter veggies will be winding down soon (it’s RAMP SEASON!), so we’ll be bringing much greener plates to the blog very soon. But if you’re still debating what to do with the potatoes and rutabagas you’ve gotten recently, we hope some of these recipes find their way into your kitchen!
Yum!