Recipe: Kale, Kohlrabi and Apple Slaw

Wow, I opened my poor lonely blogger dashboard to find seven drafts and no finish in sight for any of them. There will be no conclusion for them tonight either as I'm ignoring those half finished posts in favour of getting this recipe into the books.

Seahawks for the Double! SuperBowl Chili...

Over the course of our summer CSA box, we once again received spaghetti squash. I've tried in the past to like spaghetti squash, but it has just never really spoken to me.... Until now.

Turns out I needed something a little more substantial than marinara to take spaghetti squash from meh to mmm.

Of course this post is not timely at all, in terms of our farmshare or seasonally available produce. But it is super timely if you're planning on having chili for Superbowl Sunday today. The chili seen with the spaghetti squash in the above picture was just a quick weeknight chili. But below you'll find the recipe for what we munched on before the game (seen in the first pic of the dutch oven).

Weeknight Dinner: One-Pot Chicken with Mushrooms and Squash

We've been busy here. Three of the four kids have started skiing and we've been going once a week to take advantage of the fleetingly snow covered hills in our neck of the woods. Due to the ski shop-esque amounts of ski equipment and paraphernalia we now own, I've had to take some time to clean out clothing and closets and storage areas. Finally organising our mudroom closet was extremely satisfying though and I'm now pleasantly surprised at how neat at least one (albeit small) part of my house looks.

In the meantime, I've been ignoring my little bloggie here and I've been to miss the harsh white glow of the laptop screen burning into my retinas late at night. So today I made an effort to get a blog post in and intentionally kept the camera handy in the hopes that my dinner recipe tonight would be a keeper.

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Mini Pumpkin Cupcakes with Bourbon Buttercream

Nothing says Christmas like pumpkins and booze, right?

I originally set out to make pumpkin eggnog cupcakes but when I discovered that I'd used all my nutmeg making James Beard's Amazing Persimmon Bread as shared by David Lebovitz, I had to make a last minute substitution. Out went the Cuban rum and along came the Kentucky bourbon. (Also in case you're wondering, the persimmon bread recipe is absolutely delicious... and boozy as well).

Radicchio and Corn Salad

This dinner was the epitome of eating as local as possible. The maple mustard chicken is locally raised and bought from our neighbourhood butcher. The carrots, potatoes and turnip that roasted under the chicken legs came from our Round the Bend Farm CSA box. And the beautiful chopped salad (save the dressing and cranberries) uses ingredients that are also from our CSA box.

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Pasta Nicoise

It's been the summer of the salad. The cool weather has provided our farm and CSA box with much more lettuce than anyone probably ever imagined possible. There was a point in time when hubby and I were eating mammoth salads for lunch and dinner plus green smoothies for breakfast and snacks.
(Jump to the recipe...)

Vietnamese Sausage (Nem Nuong) Lettuce Wraps

Summer always calls for meals that are full of fresh and raw greens served with grill-marked meats. And although the heat never fully arrived this year that didn't stop anyone from firing up the charcoal and enjoying some outdoor cooking, right?


This summer, we've received such beautiful lettuce and radicchio from our farmshare that it was inevitable that we would consume a lot of it in cup/wrap form. And what's our favourite filling for our lettuce wraps? Nem nuong. Delicious grilled pork.

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Homemade American Cheese? Verdict? Worth it!

When I was pregnant with my first son, I had strange taste and smell aversions. (Subsequently, I discovered it was morning sickness, just without the tell-tale being sick part.) One of my weird taste and smell aversions was cheese. I thinking that I was exposing the cheese to too much moisture and it was going off really quickly... I don't know how much cheese I threw into the trash thinking it had gone bad before finally asking hubby to double-check for me.

Unfortunately, I loooove cheese and I craved for it. So I took to having processed cheese and soon bagels with a Kraft single nuked over top became a common breakfast for me. Funny to reminisce about it now - there I was, first time mom, trying so hard to do everything right for my unborn babe. All the while, feeding myself artificial cheese that was nuked (not even toasted!) over dollar-a-loaf-grocery-store bagels. I guess it could have been worse, I could have wanted spray cheese and a ramen cup ;) 

Kohlrabi and Corn Fritters

Jump to the recipe...

Every year, inevitably, we'll receive the other-worldly kohlrabi in our CSA box. The first year we got it I was stumped. What to do with this strange root? I've tried it in coleslaw (nothing spectacular and not really to my liking). I've also tried stir-frying it (too soggy), roasting it (delicious but too hot to turn on the oven that often) and boiling and pureeing it into soup (yummy but felt like just a riff on cauliflower soup). I had yet to find a way to prepare kohlrabi that was simple and tasty and uniquely "kohlrabi".

Garlic Scape and Pea Pesto

Am I late to the party? I only just discovered that you can make pesto with fresh peas and I love the result. Fresh... and sweet... and the colour! The colour is even better than regular basil pesto because it stays beautifully pale green through refrigeration or heating.

I originally set out to make a garlic scape pesto but wasn't sure if I could ever get the kids to eat it since scape pesto tends to be so spicy. Then I remembered seeing pictures of pea pesto and figured that if anything could tone down the super concentrated garlicky flavour that results from grinding up a bagful of scapes, it would be fresh peas from the pod.

Zucchini Crumb Cake Muffins

(Jump to the recipe...)

If you've ever tried to leave zucchini on a neighbour's front porch under the cover of darkness, devised methods of handing out zucchini instead of candy at Hallowe'en or considered including zucchini as part of your taxable income calculations, then you've obviously experienced firsthand the awesome productive powers of the zucchini plant. However, despite its bad rap as an unwelcome vegetable gift, I feel indebted to the over-achieving zucchini plant because if it did not bear fruit so copiously, no one may have ever felt compelled to create the wonderfully moist delight that is zucchini bread.

Sweet Soup Dumplings (湯圓)

Mmmm... sweet soup dumplings. Chewy and warm and not too sweet. In our family we usually enjoy these around the winter solstice, but I know that a lot of families enjoy them during the new year and specifically to celebrate first full moon of Chinese New Year.

Usually, I make these every year with my father and sometimes my brothers if they are available. I have such fond memories of sitting around the dinner table with my family and making dumplings, pot stickers, spring rolls, etc. This year was extra special because it was the first time I made them with my family. 

Orange Peel and Anise Braised Short Ribs

We went out for dim sum this past weekend and it reminded me of how delicious the pairing of orange peel and beef are. Luckily, I had recently defrosted some short ribs with no clear plan of how I was going to prepare them. What resulted was buttery, melt in your mouth short ribs covered in a slightly citrus, fragrant, Asian inspired sauce.

Let's try a picture recipe this time:

Homemade Snack Mix

If your kids are anything like mine then they crave the food that comes wrapped in anything crinkly, plastic, foil and/or disposable. Never mind that they will sometimes get homemade mushroom risotto or sushi for lunch - they just want the Lunchables that their classmate is having. Once in a while though, I'll get one of my versions of a popular snack food just right and they'll gobble it up... even in its unattractive, reusable, non-plastic container packaging :)

Such is the case with our homemade Bits and Bites.

Chicken and Eggplant Parmigiana Sandwich

We've had some lovely late summer vegetables in our CSA boxes lately - sweet peppers (finally!), eggplants and squash (more on this later). We've also harvested the last of our tomatoes and what hasn't been frozen has been made into some delicious tomato sauce-based pasta dinners. So last night I decided to use some of our leftover pasta sauce and some deep fried goodness to make parmigiana sandwiches.

Our sandwiches consisted of eggplant parmigiana, chicken parmigiana, mozzarella, roasted peppers and homemade marinara.... plus some La Bomba sauce for a hot and delicious kick.

From Scratch: Green Curry Chicken

So I have a lot of thai basil in the garden right now and it's just perfect for making green curry paste. But what to do with the paste? Here's the obvious solution: green curry chicken.

From Scratch: Green Curry Paste

One thing I always grow in my gardens is basil. It's easy to grow, so much better when it's fresh and a real cost-saver considering that you pay $3 or more for a small bunch at the store. This year I was lucky enough to find organic sweet basil and thai basil seeds, so I have a lot of both growing in the garden... Just ask anyone I know if I've been in the business of dealing zip-top baggies of herbs at every recent girls' night-out.

Strawberry Blackberry Yogurt Pops

Oh man, I thought I would be able to finish some posts up before we went on vacation and schedule them to publish automatically while we were gone. Boy was I wrong! As usual, 10pm the night before we planned to leave at four in the morning, I was still awake and packing up food and clothing... sigh. 

Anyway, we're back now and after a brief absence, the posts begin again with this mouth-watering pic...

Okay, stop thinking about how cool it would be to have Wolverine claws and start thinking about how cool and refreshing these yogurt pops were after taking a long, hot walk last Saturday.

Grape Tomato and Oregano Sourdough Focaccia

I've been learning the way of sourdough (more on that in a later post!) and having some beautiful grape tomatoes and leftover dried up oregano from past CSA boxes inspired me to make some focaccia. Of course, this focaccia does not have to be made with homemade sourdough ;) You could easily substitute store-bought pizza dough and have the same fresh-baked result.

The method is simple enough...

Israeli Couscous with Roasted Garlic, Mushrooms, Zucchini and Eggplant

So what do you serve at a small craft brewery's inaugural tasting party? Lots of great homemade food, of course! We had smoked brisket, bbq and jerk ribs, sprouted arugula salad, fennel and orange salad, quiche, homemade sourdough focaccia and this pearl couscous pilaf.

I absolutely love Israeli/pearl couscous - it is the perfect combination of silky smooth and al dente chew.  It can take on a variety of flavours and goes from refrigerator to table with no problems whatsoever.

This particular dish has the added oomph of umami-laden roasted vegetables and comes together in a snap. I think everyone at the table loved this satisfying, vegetarian friendly dish.