My Recipe: Fried potatoes with onions and mustard greens

Last week’s CSA share had a small bunch of mustard greens.  Inspired in the vaguest way by German potato salad, I cooked the greens up with fried potatoes and onions.

1. Heat cast-iron frying pan
2. Pour in enough canola oil to cover bottom of pan
3. Cut 4 small red potatoes in half, then slice 1/8″ thick
4. Cut 1 medium onion in half, then slice 1/8″ thick
5. Slice stems of mustard greens 1/8″ thick
6. Add potatoes, onions, and mustard stems to frying pan
7. Salt and pepper everything in the pan
8. Coarsely chop leaves of mustard greens
9. When potatoes are slightly browned, add mustard leaves to pan
10. When potatoes are nicely browned, take out of pan and eat

2011 CSA: Week 2

This week brings fennel, kohlrabi, endive, beets, pak choi, and garlic scapes.  I still have mustard, pak choi, and fennel leftover from last week.  This actually isn’t a problem since there wasn’t as much pak choi or fennel as I wanted for my recipes.

Food Nemesis: Arugula

I’m not a fan of arugula in salads, so I looked for a recipe that uses it in a different way, and I found arugula and fava bean crostini.

As usual, I didn’t quite follow the recipe as written. But this time, there were only three big differences.

1. I used edamame instead of fava beans, which is a recipe-sanctioned substitution.
2. I didn’t bother with the separately chopped arugula bit and put it all in the food processor.
3. Instead of spreading on nicely toasted baguettes, I scooped it up with plain Bagel Crisps.

I made this goop up last night, and it sat in all it’s bright-green glory overnight in the fridge to be carried to work and nommed on as breakfast before I thought to get a picture of it.

New food: Garlic Scapes

This week’s share included 5 garlic scapes. I’d seen scapes at the famer’s market, but I always thought they were a bit too expensive for something that looked like a cross between a scallion and a chive bud. So when they showed up in my share this week, I had no idea what to do with them.

Genehack directed me to a Washington Post article about garlic scapes, complete with a recipe for garlic scape pesto.

After a quick shopping trip for walnuts, I got out my trusty stick blender and its food processing attachment and set to making pesto.

2011 CSA: Week 1

I apologize now for the lack of photos, I didn’t know I was going to start blogging until after I did all this stuff I’m writing about 🙂 Next time, I’ll take the photos. Maybe.

Because I really like vegetables, but don’t much like getting up early on Saturday mornings to get to the farmer’s market before the good stuff is gone, I joined a CSA this year. My current pick-up is Tuesday evenings a few blocks from my office, though I might see about shifting to Thursday evening so my veggies are fresher on the weekend when I tend to have more time to cook.

This week was the first pick-up and here’s what was in my share: pak choi, mustard greens, swiss chard, arugula, mizuna, garlic scapes, fennel, and a zinnia in a 4″ pot. I didn’t pick up any mizuna because all of it was very limp and rather bug-eaten, but I got some of everything else. Even the arugula and I don’t much like arugula.

Then I took it all home in the handy-dandy tote bag and stuff everything in the fridge to deal with later.