CSA in the Kitchen

Let's start the week off right with a salad.  We got two lovely heads of lettuce this week and promptly turned them into a Caesar salad.  The salad part is quite simple - tears the leaves off of the stem and rinse thoroughly, then dry thoroughly (it's important to dry lettuce well so that the dressing actually stays on it).

We make our Caesar dressing from scratch, so it's a bit more labor-intensive but so very delicious.  Beat one egg yolk (yes, this involves eating raw egg) with the juice of half of a lemon.  Add one or two cloves of freshly pressed garlic, 1/3 cup of finely grated Parmesan cheese, 1 TBS of Worcestershire sauce and 1 minced fillet of anchovy.  While mixing, drizzle in about 1/4 cup of olive oil.  Add salt and pepper to taste.  Dress your salad greens and enjoy.

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These last few weeks we have found ourselves with quite a few bell peppers.  This is a wonderful thing but, you see, Grady and I enjoy certain foods so much that we will often eat them once per week - we have had fajitas or something along those lines involving fresh salsa at least that often and sometimes more.  You, however may not love fajitas so much and so we bring you: meatloaf.

Yes, we did chop a green pepper and add it to our meatloaf mix.  The carrots we added were from our share last week.  We like to top our meatloaf with BBQ sauce so while you can taste the distinct green pepper a bit, mostly it tastes like delicious sauce with some meat and veggies.  For the mix I would use 1 medium carrot, 1/2 an onion and 1/2 a bell pepper per 1 pound of ground meat.

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This share is also looking perfect for making a refreshing batch of Gazpacho (use tomato, cucumber, bell pepper, jalapeno, and possibly even the herb you picked up).  According to Cook's Illustrated magazine, the way to make a perfectly creamy soup is to slowly drizzle in the olive oil as the blender is running.  Take a look at the recipe on this website to guide you to your simple dinner-from-a-blender!

Photo taken from oui, chef blog

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Our love affair with the grill continues this week as we plan to attempt grilling beets and fennel - maybe at the same time, maybe not.  I would say this could be a recipe for burned roots and bulbs but Grady is determined and so we will seek to enhance these foods with grill-supplied smoky flavor.  We'll let you know how that works for us ... if any of you have tried grilling either of these items before, please do let us know.

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Got hot peppers?  I know we do!  We took a handful to attempt infusing in vodka for future use in such drinks as very spicy Bloody Mary's.  Not wanting to drink your peppers?  Well Preserved food blog had a great recipe for hot peppers fermented with whey.  Check it out here!

Have a great week, everyone!

~ Courtney and Grady