Pasta with zucchini and Ricotta Salata

Pasta is my go-to dish for a quick supper. This is a standard combination of my favorite flavors. I always start with onion and garlic sauteed with in olive oil. Here I've added sliced zucchini, fresh basil, chopped fresh tomatoes and small white beans and crumbled Ricotta Salata cheese - a dry salted ricotta cheese made from sheep's milk - which is sort the Italian version of Feta Cheese, a similar texture - drier, and less salty. You may have noticed that I never tire of eating pasta with vegetables and feta, I am becoming very fond of Ricotta Salata as well.

Pasta with Garlic Scape Pesto and Roasted Beet and Orange Salad

A couple of weeks ago, the CSA box had something in it I have never cooked (or even seen) before - Garlic Scapes. These are the shoots that grow up out of the garlic bulb as it tries to become a plant. We eat the garlic bulb, so the farmers cut off the scapes before they flower and leave the bulb to continue to grow. I have read that the scapes have a "delicate" garlic flavor. Our experience was that they pack a serious punch of garlicky power. They are lovely to look at as well.

There are dozens of recipes (maybe hundreds) on the web for garlic scape pesto. I used less oil than called for - a trick I learned from Weight Watchers - I substituted vegetable broth for some of the oil..

Ingredients

1 cup chopped garlic scapes (about 1/2 inch pieces)

1/4 cup pine nuts

2 tablespoons olive oil

1/4 cup vegetable broth

1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesean Cheese

Pulverize everything in the bowl of a food processor.

It come out a lovely light green color. We did not add basil - but someone told me it is a nice addition.

We had our pesto with spiral pasta (Barilla Plus - for protein)

Our side dish was made from another stand out in the early summer CSA share - beets. I usually roast them whole, but D.has a new cook book, called Fast Fresh & Green by Susie Middleton


She recommended "quick roasting" the beets by slicing them thinly crosswise, tossing them with olive oil, coarsely chopped fresh thyme and a little salt, and roasting them at 475 degrees for 16 to 18 minutes. We did them this way and they were fabulous. We served them on top of some leaf lettuce with chopped navel orange slices and just a little Feta cheese.This should have been topped with a little fresh mint as well - but we got hungry and skipped right to eating.

Veggie Burgers and Kholrabi Salad

I worked all day today and it was pretty hot and humid when I came home, so we wanted a simple supper that didn't take long to cook or generate much heat. I had frozen a few burgers from the Guy Fieri recipe I made a few days ago ( a note about that - I froze this batch before I cooked them and when I took them out of the freezer tonight and browned them in the pan, the stayed a little softer (mushier) than I like, The batch that I cooked first and then froze had a much nicer texture when re-heated).

I sauteed some button mushrooms and a small yellow onion in 1 tsp olive oil to top the burgers - they were still incredibly tasty even though they were a little mushy.

We made the Kholrabi Salad from a recipe on Epicurious.com (my favorite recipe site) - with some modifications.WE had one small Kholrabi bulb so we made a smaller salad.

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Kohlrabi-and-Apple-Salad-with-Creamy-Mustard-Dressing-10693

Ingredients

1/42 cup heavy cream

1 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

1/2 tablespoon coarse-grained mustard

3 tablespoons finely chopped fresh parsley leaves

1/4 teaspoon sugar

1 kohlrabi bulb peeled and cut into julienne strips

1 Granny Smith apple - seeded and diced (we did not peel it)

In a bowl whisk the cream until it holds soft peaks, it doesn't take very long. then whisk in the lemon juice, the mustard, the parsley, the sugar, and salt and pepper to taste. Stir in the kohlrabi strips and the apple, peeled, cored, and diced, and combine the salad well.

We also had our first Donaldson's Farm Market corn of the season at this meal - just picked and sweet as sugar. I hear people are buying corn at the supermarket, but I can't imagine why..

For dessert - Donaldson's peaches (also first of the season), south Jersey blueberries and vanilla ice cream - heaven.

Spinach & Sun Dried Tomato Fritatta

There are so many delicious things you can do with fresh spinach. This was a quick supper with eggs, kind of a fritatta. I used one bunch of spinach from the CSA box.

Wash the spinach well, especially if it just came from the farm market or the CSA box and still has dirt and sand clinging to it.. I usually put it in a big bowl of water, push it around gently, lift it out of the water into a collander, dump the water (and the sand and dirt) - or use it to water the plants, then repeat that process two more times or until there is no more dirt in the bottom of the bowl when I remove the spinach.

Chop the spinach bu piling up the leaves, slicing them into strips one way and then slicing the other way to cup those strips into pieces.

I made this a few weeks ago and used sun dried tomatoes - but if I make it now, I would use fresh tomatoes -mmm - makes my mouth water just thinking about fresh Jersey tomatoes...
For this fritatta, I chopped about 1/3 cup of sun dried tomatoes.

Grated about 1/2 cup Parmesean cheese

Sauteed one chopped yellow onion in 1 tsp olive oil

I beat 6 eggs with a little soy milk, then poured them into the ovenproof saute pan

I cooked the fritatta on top of the stove until it was almost set, then sprinkled the mozerella and Parmesean cheese on top and popped it into a 400 degree oven just until the top browned

Pan Fried Tofu topped with Spinach & cheese

Another dinner made from ingredients in a CSA box from earlier this season.

Aren't vegetables beautiful?

 I used 1 block of organic, extra-firm tofu. I cut the block in half length wise, then cut each half into four pieces width wise. I dredged the tofu in ww flour, then dipped it in soy milk, then breadcrumbs, then pan fried it in about 1 tablespoon of olive oil until it was nice and golden brown on both sides. Placed the browned pieces in a rectangular baking pan.

 I sauteed a chopped yellow onion, then added one bunch of chopped spinach, cooked till wilted, added about 1/3 cup chopped sun-dried tomato and cooked till everything was heated through.

 I had a bit of mozerella cheese - grated that and some parmesean. Topped the tofu with the shredded mozzarella cheese, then spread the spinach mixture over that and topped with grated Parmesan. I put the pan in a 350 degree oven just long enough to melt the cheeses.

 
 I cooked some asparagus on the grill. Toss them with a little olive oil salt & pepper, lay them on a grill rack and watch them closely - if they stay on the grill too long they get dried out or stringy.

I transferred the topped tofu to a platter.

 Pasta with leftover sauce for a side dish

Lovely.

Pasta with Greens, Herbs & Feta

The CSA box has been full of lettuce the past couple of weeks. Lettuce is wonderful, but D. was away for the week and three heads of lettuce is a lot of salad for two people to eat , so I cooked up the Romaine into this modified version of Molly Katzen's Pasta with Greens & Feta.

 I washed and chopped the Romaine ( I triple wash all my greens the same way I do the spinach (see Tofu topped with Spinach and sun dried tomatoes). I think Romaine lettuce has a wonderful flavor when sauteed lightly. Mollie Katzen uses it with Spinach in her recipe, but I decided to let the Romaine solo here.

 Went out on the deck and picked some oregano

 and purple basil

 I sauteed some onions in about 2 tsp olive oil, then added the lettuce and cooked it till it was wilted but still had a little crunch at the center.

 Then I threw in some Feta cheese

 Tossed the veggies with the pasta and some pasta cooking water

 and topped with freshly grated Parmesan

Very simple, quick and easy supper with wonderful flavors.

Spinach & Ricotta Pizza

Another use for the spinach in one of our first few CSA boxes of the year. Bought the whole dough to make the crust at Trader Joe's.

Washed and chopped the spinach...

Diced a few sun dried tomatoes...

Grated some Parmesean...

Sauteed an onion in a little olive oil, then added the spinach and cooked it just till it wilted and was still bright green

Threw some dollops of Ricotta cheese on the crust, sprinkled on the tomatoes and a few chopped Calamat olives, then the spinach and onion mix, then the Parmesean. Baked it at 450 for 5-6 minutes.