All Hail Kale!

Well, it's that time of year again, the time of the year when my weekly Newleaf produce box is full of kale. I love kale, but it does have a way of building up in the fridge. I have a few recipes I make a lot where the kale is cooked, like Gourmet's potato and kale gallette or the ever popular black-eyed pea, kale and chorizo soup. Sometimes, though, I like to use the kale raw.

Usually, I'm meticulous about keeping track of the source of my recipes, but this is a recipe I found at my sister-in-law's. I snapped this photo, certain that I would remember where it came from. But guess what? I don't. Anyway, I've made this recipe a couple of times and it's fantastic. A little browsing on the interwebs reveals this to be a traditional Italian salad. The real key to this salad it to shred the kale thinly. I love this salad. It's cheap, healthy and elegant.

Roasted Artichokes

This week my Newleaf Grocery organic produce box contained two perfect little artichokes. I love artichokes so much, but the last time I made them I think I steamed them for maybe...I don't know, six hours, and they were still underdone. So staring at my new friends on the counter, I decided to try something new. After a little browsing on the interwebs, I came across this great recipe for roasted artichokes on the excellent food blog Pinch My Salt.

The recipe is simple enough: Cut the tops off your artichokes, stuff in a few cloves of garlic, drizzle with olive oil and lemon, then of course, salt and pepper. Wrap your little ones in foil and bake at 425 for an hour and fifteen minutes. This is one of the best and easiest recipes I've ever tried for artichokes. They are delicious and require zero attention, which would make them great and elegant for a dinner party, something where you don't want to be tied to the kitchen. 

I'd never roasted artichokes before, and I have to say, they are amazing. The roasting intensifies the flavors. Most likely, any artichoke at my house will never again see a boiling pot of water.

Salad Nicoise

This week I had some stray green beans left from my produce box and I wasn't sure what to do with them. Coincidentally, we also had some leftover boiled small red potatoes. You what I was thinking? I was thinking Salad Nicoise! Composed salads are great fun and also an excellent way to use up extra veggies. Plus composed salads look awesome and you can serve them to guests without it appearing you are serving leftovers. (Heads up to future guests. If you see a composed salad, you are seeing last night's dinner.)

When I make a composed salad, I always just use my everyday vinaigrette, which I usually have on hand. But I wanted tonight's dinner to be special, so conjured all my inner Frenchness and made a nice vinaigrette with lemon, Dijon mustard, salt, pepper, shallot, and then I added the oil slowly while whisking to emulsify. It was great. It might even become my everyday dressing.

I took at peek at Mastering the Art of French Cooking for salad pointers and mine was pretty spot-on with Julia's but hers had anchovies, so I added them to mine and I have to say, they made all the difference. I wish every meal of leftovers could be so luxurious. Another of her pointers that I've taken to heart is always use tuna packed in oil. She's right about that one. Tuna packed in water tastes like dust.

Scalloped Sweet Potatoes and Corn

One of the things that I love about my weekly produce box from Newleaf Grocery (www.newleafnatural.net) is that it forces me to work with unfamiliar ingredients and since much of the produce is local, at certain times of the year I have an abundance of a particular vegetable. Now for example, it’s sweet potatoes. Last week I had some great sweet potato fries, processed and froze some uncooked fries for a future date, and I also fed some to my dog who loves them. But that still leaves me with about a half a dozen more. I turned to 250 Ways of Serving Potatoes (1941) for help.

There were MANY more recipes for sweet potatoes than I expected in this book. I don’t really think of sweet potatoes as a potato. I mean, if I’m in the mood for mashed potatoes or tater tots, then sweet potatoes don’t really do the trick. But I guess in this case they count. There was terrifying similarity in the recipes. Mostly it was all sweet potatoes, butter, and brown sugar in some combination. They’d change it out a little with honey instead of sugar, or marmalade instead of sugar. You get the idea. The single recipe I use as an example of my grandmother’s horrible cooking is in this book: “Sweet Potatoes with Cheese and Mushroom Sauce.” And by mushroom sauce they mean canned cream of mushroom soup. The recipe is right next to the one I made. I also wanted to mention that there is also a recipe for "Pickaninny Creole" on page 41. Though it shouldn't have, this surprised me. Immediately I ran to The Culinary Arts Institute Encyclopedic Cookbook. This is really just another repackage of the previous booklets. I just had to know if "Pickaninny Creole" made the cut to this 1964 edition. It did. Really, did no one ever look at these recipes again?

The "Scalloped Sweet Potatoes and Corn" recipe was pretty good. There were a couple of small problems--my fault, mostly lack of planning. The recipe says to boil the potatoes, but I always prefer my vegetables roasted and since the sweet potatoes I had were so small, it didn't really take long. The thing is, I was then left to peel them hot if I wanted dinner to be ready by the time Serena got home. It also calls for white sauce, which I made from the Encyclopedic Cookbook. Here's the dumbass part, I didn't check how much the recipe called for. So after I made the white sauce, I dumped it on my casserole only to find I didn't have enough. But since my potatoes were so small I just poured a little extra milk in and called it good. It was supposed to cook for 45 minutes, but when I pulled it out the whole thing still looked pale and dry. I added a bit more milk and some butter dollops on top. I mean, what doesn't taste better with butter? I served this with a green salad and kale sauteed in butter. I would definitely make this again.