Southern Saute

One of the nice things about living in the south is the long growing season. Our CSA is able to deliver produce year-round. These days, we're getting lots of leafy greens and root vegetables. Recently, we got a nice big bunch of collards. Despite growing up in the South, I've never particularly liked collards. I think that's because all the collards I grew up with were boiled to the point of becoming mush. I figured there had to be another way to eat collards. I started playing around, and this is what I came up with.

Psycling and I both really liked this. It made for a nice one-dish meal, and was fairly quick and easy to pull together.

While it's actually more of a braise, I like the alliteration of "Southern Saute." This was really good. Turns out I like collards after all :-)

Southern Saute
(makes about 3 servings)

5-6 strips of bacon
1 Onion, vertically sliced
1 Bunch collards, coarsely chopped
~3/4 c. chicken broth
1 c. soaked black eyed peas
2 c. hot cooked rice (I used brown rice)
Hotlanta Hot Sauce (or Tobasco)

1. Cook bacon inlarge skillet. Set aside to drain on paper towels. Crumble into bacon bits.

2. Pour off all but about 2-3 tsp. of bacon grease. Add onion, and saute until getting tender. Add collards, and sautee for a copule of minutes, until leaves are coated in bacon grease and just starting to wilt. Add chicken broth; cover and cook until broth is absorbed, about 4-5 minutes. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

3. Add black eyed peas, and cook, stirring, until beans are warmed through.

To serve, put about 2/3 c. of rice in a bowl. Top with about 1/3 of collard mixture. Sprinkle with bacon bits and drizzle with hot sauce to taste.

I'm Alive! With a Recipe!

Not that you'd know it from this poor neglected blog, but I am still alive, and I have been cooking. The cooking has been much less time and labor intensive since the arrival of LC, but I'm working on getting back in the groove.

I have been planning our meals around the wonderful produce in our CSA. Since we often get the same things several weeks in a row as they hit their peak harvest, it's forced me to cook outside the box, and find new and creative ways to prepare veggies. Tonight, we we had Margarita Fish Tacos with Chipotle-Lime Mayo to use our arugula, and I wanted to make a side dish with our green beans (It seems like we've been eating green beans for months...and they're still coming!). Regular old steamed green beans can be kinda boring, and I wanted to find some way to tie the green beans in with the rest of the meal. So I did what I do best and I started playing. The resulting Chipotle Green Beens were surprisingly good.


Chipotle Green Beans (all amounts approximate)

1/2 lb green beans, trimmed
olive oil
salt and pepper
1/2 tsp cumin
1/4 tsp chili powder
1/4 c. water
1/2 c. cherry tomatoes, halved
1/2 tsp. adobo sauce from canned chipotle chilis

1. Heat olive oil over medium heat. Add green beans, and season with salt and pepper, cumin and chili powder. Saute for about a minute. Add water, cover, and steam for about 3 minutes or until crisp tender. Uncover, and cook until water boils off. Add adobo sauce and tomatoes and cook until mixed and tomatoes begin to soften and brown.

As I was making this, I was skeptical. I was planning on giving Psycling my standard disclaimer that this was an experiment and I wouldn't be offended of he didn't like it. But they were actually really good. I like using the saute/steam method for green beans because the sauteing really brings out the flavor, and the steaming gets them to just the right texture. I also really like adding tomatoes to my green beans. The flavors work well together, and they provide a nice visual contrast as well. The cumin (one of my favorite spices), chili powder, and adobo sauce were surprisingly good on the beans, and this made for a perfect side dish to our fish tacos.

Now...I just need to figure out what to do with the billionth bag of green beans we got today. And the arugula. Apparently it's arugula season. Any ideas?

CSA Bounty

I believe I mentioned that this year Psycling and I decided to join a CSA. I have really enjoyed cooking with so many wonderful fresh, local, and organic ingredients, and we have made some really good stuff! Earlier this summer, I made a wonderful meal out of the fresh patty pan sqush, cucumbers, and tomatoes that came in one of our CSA bags.

When we got such beautiful fresh tomatoes and cucumbers in the same bag, they were crying out to be turned into a tomato and cucumber salad.

Unfortunately, I don't have an actual recipe to pass on, but this was so simple to throw together that you don't really need one. I chopped up some tomatoes and cucumbers, drizzled them with olive oil and balsamic vinegar and tossed it all together. Then I topped it with some chopped basil fresh from the garden. It was delicious!

The same week we got all those gorgeous tomatoes and cukes, we got some patty pan squash, so I made Sauted Baby Squash with Basil and Feta.


Psycling isn't a huge fan of feta cheese to I used goat cheese instead...and, really, how can you go wrong with goat cheese? To go with these two wonderful vegetable dishes, I just did a simple lemon and olive oil marinade for some grilled chicken breasts. It was a perfect meal!

P.S. I apologize for the bad photos. During my pregnancy, just getting the meal made was a big accomplishment. Getting nice pictures after just wasn't happening. Hopefully, as I get back into the swing of things, I'll be able to work on my food photography, as well as my cooking!!

Creamy Goat Cheese Pasta with Squash

I scan many different food blogs...mostly for new ideas for things to cook and bake. But, even though there's LOTS out there that looks yummy, I'm actually pretty selective about which recipes I "star" in my google reader. If my only criteria is "that looks yummy" I'd star more in a day than I could make in a month. So I really try to limit to the recipes I think I will actually make (and I *try* to be realistic in this assessment...).

All this lead-up is to say that the other day, I found a recipe on Cupcake Muffin for Creamy Goat Cheese Pasta with Zucchini and Sausage. Given that I love love love goat cheese, and it looked like a simple weeknight meal, I starred it. Later that day, I went to pick up our CSA bag and discovered some gorgeous yellow summer squash!! I knew immediately that it was destined for this recipe!

I made a couple of slight modifications, based on what I had on hand...though to be honest, many fewer modifications than I might normally make to a recipe. I have to say, it was really good (and with all that goat cheese, how could it not be?). In my opinion, the freshness of our straight-from-the-farm squash made a huge difference in this dish. I can honestly say, it is the best squash I have ever had! Psycling and I both really enjoyed it, thought we also had different assessments of it. For instance, I thought the hot sausage almost overwhelmed the delicate taste of the squash, and thought it might have been better with mild sausage (or at least a mix of the two). Psycling, on the other hand, thought that the spiciness of the hot sausage added a punch to the dish that was critical, and that maybe it would be too bland with out it. Either way, we both quite enjoyed the meal!

I'll put my "tweaks" in italics. The tweaks I made were based almost solely on making the dish with what I had on hand, to avoid a shopping trip and make a quick and easy weeknight meal.

Creamy Goat Cheese Pasta with Zucchini and Sausage (adapted from Fine Cooking)
Serves 3

Kosher salt
1/2 lb. dried rigatoni (I used penne since it was what I had on hand)
1/2 lb. hot Italian sausage (I used turkey sausage)
2 medium shallots, finely chopped (I used leeks, since we also got those in our CSA bag)
1 1/2 cups yellow and green summer squash, cut into 3/4 inch dice (I just used the yellow summer squash from our CSA bag)
3 oz. fresh goat cheese, crumbled
1 tsp finely chopped parsley (I added a little bit of chopped fresh oregano too...I had some, and thought it would taste good...it did!)
Freshly ground black pepper
Parmigiano-Reggiano to serve (I actually left this out...I may have used a little extra goat cheese, and the pasta seemed cheesy enough without the parm. It may have been good with the extra cheese, but I didn't miss it at all.)

So there you have it. For a quick and delicious weeknight meal, this recipe definitely deserves a star. I would highly recommend giving it a try, and tweak it based on what you have on hand. I bet it will still be yummy!