Chips Ahoy!

There are people who lose their appetites when they are nervous... and then there are those who get the munchies when they're stressed. 

Me? Let’s just say that if you are in a 25-mile radius of my house today and hear a crunching sound, it’s probably coming from my kitchen. And my office… and my family room…  My daughter just left for her first summer of sleep-away camp this morning. And while I know she’s in good hands and will have an amazing summer, I’ll feel a little better when I get that first letter saying, “Camp is great!”

In the meantime, I am trying to keep my hands out of the cookie jar…  (and the chip bag, and the pretzel bag….)

Good time for kale chips, wouldn’t you say?

If you’ve never had them, kale chips are small pieces of kale leaves roasted in the oven with a little bit of olive oil till crispy and crunchy, and sprinkled with a little bit of salt and/or spices. I’ve had them a few times at parties and keep meaning to make them, and with a bunch of kale from last week’s CSA pick-up still sitting in my refrigerator, today seemed like the perfect day to try.

Here's what I did:

Preheat the oven to 375.

Cut the leaves off a bunch of kale (discarding tough stems), and cut or tear into pieces about 2x2” Drizzle with just a little olive oil. (If you use too much oil, the chips won’t crisp up.) Sprinkle with seasoning. You can use plain salt, or seasoned salt. I used some za’atar, an Israeli herb blend with sumac, hyssop and sesame seeds. (Given what it looks like, I’m amazed my Israeli friend was able to get the Ziploc baggie of it she brought me through customs, but I’m glad she did.) Roast for 15-20 minutes – or for about as long as it takes to log on to the camp website 374 times to see if there are any pictures of your kid up yet.

Let the chips cool, and munch away, pretty much guilt-free!

Blueberries for Sal[e]

One day, I will learn that “2-for-1 Sale” means “Buy as much as you need for half as much money!” and NOT “Buy twice as much as you need!”

Clearly, last Wednesday was not that day.

Which explains how I ended up with 4 pints of blueberries in my fridge, despite the fact that I don’t even LIKE blueberries all that much, except when they’re baked into things. And so, committed to using up not only our CSA veggies but also the fruit I buy in local stores, I hauled out my Kitchen Aid and whipped up a double batch of blueberry cake.

The recipe (below) is very similar to the delicious plum torte recipe from the New York Times that has been emailed around my circle of friends so many times that it has whiplash. But don’t let the word “torte” put you off if you’re an inexperienced baker. This is an easy, homey cake, the kind that makes you feel as if you’ve stepped into a favorite great-aunt's kitchen. 

In June, I make it with blueberries. But as the summer moves on and into fall, it works with just about every fruit I can think of (except maybe bananas), and it’s a perfect way to use up extra fruit – even pieces that are a tad-bit past their prime. Just be sure to grease the pan really, really well, as the fruit/sugar syrup that forms as the cake bakes has a tendency to stick.

Blueberry (or Plum, or Peach, or Apple or Strawberry-Rhubarb, or Pear…) Cake

Preheat the oven to 350.

1. Cream together 1 Cup of sugar and ½ Cup (one stick) butter or flavorless, non-hydrogenated shortening, such as Earth Balance.

2. Add 2 large eggs, lightly beaten and ½ a teaspoon of lemon extract. (If you want to ramp up the zing factor, you can also grate in some fresh lemon zest. When I use plums, I use about a half teaspoon of almond extract instead. Or, with any fruit, you can just use a teaspoon of vanilla.)

3. Add 1 Cup all-purpose flour, 1 teaspoon baking powder, and a pinch of salt. Beat just until it’s all mixed.

4. Grease an 8” or 9” spring-form or cake pan really, really well. (Or, better yet, if using a cake pan, grease the pan, line it with a circle of parchment paper, and grease THAT.)   Pour/spread cake batter in pan.

5. Spread about a pint of blueberries on top, (or 1.5-2 Cups of other sliced or cut up fruit) pressing fruit slightly into batter. Top with about 2 Tablespoons of sugar and a few sprinklings of cinnamon.

6. Bake for 50 mins-1 hour, until a tester stuck in the middle of the cake comes out with moist crumbs but no gooey batter. Cool the cake COMPLETELY before trying to get it out of the pan. 

Makes one 8-9" cake. Recipe doubles easily.

Chard Day's Night

Like many people who like to cook, I have dozens of cookbooks and several looseleaf binders full of interesting recipes I’ve clipped from magazines. And, like most people who have cookbooks and notebooks full of recipes, but also have days full of chores, obligations, work and errands, I tend to let the “interesting” recipes sit unused,  while I make the same 10 or 20 easy and adaptable dishes again and again.

One of my favorite fast fixes is Swiss chard with raisins and pine nuts. It’s easy to make and keeps for several days in the fridge. You can play pretty fast and loose with the measurements, and it is highly versatile. Sometimes, I serve it as a side-dish with fish or chicken; others, I pile it on toasted ciabatta for crostini. Last night, with two bunches of chard from LAST week’s CSA haul still sitting in my fridge, somewhat wilted, and another two perkier bunches from yesterday’s brand new box staring up at me like a dare, I made some of the chard/raisin/pine nut mixture and tossed it with pasta and crumbled feta cheese for a fast and easy dinner. 

Did my children eat it? Nope. But luckily, they’d both be happy to eat pasta with pesto every night of the week (which they may well have to, come July’s bumper-crop of basil) so I whipped some pesto up and we all ate together, happily.

Swiss Chard with Raisins and Pine Nuts:

2 Tablespoons olive oil

nutmeg

half a medium-sized red onion, minced

2 bunches Swiss chard, washed REALLY well, dried and cut into tiny pieces (stems included)

one or two plum tomatoes, or a cup or so of cherry tomatoes, chopped

raisins or currants

pine nuts or walnuts

honey and/or balsamic vinegar

Heat the olive oil in a large skillet and saute the red onion till it’s translucent. Grate a little nutmeg into the pan, or add a pinch of dried nutmeg from a jar. Add the chard and saute until it is all good and wilted. Add in the tomatoes and the raisins (about a generous handful*, but more if you want) and continue cooking until the chard is cooked through and soft and the tomatoes have collapsed. Add the nuts (also a handful or so). Season with salt and black pepper to taste. If you want to make the dish sweeter, add a squeeze of honey. If you want a little zing, add a drop of balsamic vinegar. Like things sweet-n-sour? Add a drop of each. Serve hot or at room temperature, as a side-dish, crostini topping or on a short pasta like farfalle, tossed with crumbled feta or goat cheese.

Okay: Two bunches of chard used; two more to go… (and some kale, and some zucchini and some peas and some lettuce… and it’s only the second week!)

*I have small hands; adjust accordingly.

And So We Begin...

“Just out of curiosity,” my husband asked me last week, surveying the two bunches each of dewy-fresh  Chinese cabbage and Swiss chard in our refrigerator, “how much did it cost to join the CSA, (Community-Supported Agriculture co-op) anyway?” 

As anyone who has been married for more than 5 minutes knows, “just out of curiosity” is married-people code for “at least one of us is probably going to regret my asking this.”

“Six hundred dollars,” I answered, cool as a local, organic cucumber.

“SIX HUNDRED BUCKS???” (Okay, sometimes we BOTH regret his asking…)

“Well, it’s for 26 weeks,” I answered, trying not to sound defensive.

“So, you’re telling me that four bunches of green stuff cost us 23 dollars?!”

“Well, it’s just the first week,” I said. “In August we’ll need a U-Haul to bring all the produce home, just wait!”

He scowled and said nothing.

“And it supports a family farm,” I said. “And,” I added, with all the conviction I could muster, “I’m really, really not going to let any of it go to waste.”

To which my everlovin’ husband just grumbled, “Yeah, this I gotta see.”

This is probably a good time to mention that my husband is neither a tightwad nor a controlling jerk. In fact, he is one of the most generous and easygoing people I have ever known. But he is also a realist. A realist who has probably emptied THOUSANDS of dollars-worth of forgotten-'til-it's-rotten produce from our refrigerator in the dozen years we’ve been married, and who also knows that I have thrown out thousands of dollars-worth more on top of that when it was my turn to clean out the fridge – which, I admit, does not make us the ideal candidates for a CSA (or Community-Supported Agriculture co-op) in which you pay a flat fee up front and get a percentage of a farmer’s crops every week throughout the growing season. Some weeks it’s a lot; some weeks it’s a little. Some weeks it’s stuff you like; others it’s the veggies that make even grown-ups wrinkle their noses and say “eeeeew.” Last time we signed up for a CSA, 6 or 7 years ago, we ended up giving half the stuff to our kids' babysitter.

But -- call it the triumph of hope over vegetable-chucking experience – I have committed myself, again, nevertheless. To the farmers. To a half-year of eating local/organic/sustainably-grown produce. And (me and my big mouth…) to using ALL of it.

And to shame myself into doing just that, I am going to be writing about it here. I hope you’ll check in to see how I am doing. Thanks for stopping by.