My First CSA Box!

Within the past few weeks, I've head several of my friends raving about the boxes they have received through Community Supported Agriculture programs - so I got my own to see what it's all about.

I ordered my from South Central Farmers, since they delivered the box to my work. It was like I was in an episode of Chopped.

I got a lot of greens in this box. A lot. We have here (left to right): Bloomsdale Spinach, Black Kale, Red Romaine Lettuce, Green Romaine Lettuce, Fava Beans, Collard Greens, Detroit Red Beets, and Turnips. I have to be honest, I've never had some of these greens - particularly Kale and Collard Greens. So, what did I make first?

Kale chips!

A little salt and a tiny bit of oil and in the oven until crisp. Not bad! Brian still favors potato chips, but I can see converting. Next, I made a Green Romaine Lettuce salad with some Detroit red beets, with a lemon garlic vinaigrette. It was so yummy. I immediately started my love affair with beets. I had no idea how tasty beets were!

So, I combined my new love of beets with my other new love of fresh, homemade pasta.

I roasted 2 beets, then pureed them as much as I could. Those dark red spots on my dough are larger bits of beet that could not get pureed down all the way, but it didn't seem to matter once the pasta was made.

After cooking the pasta, I added it to the sauce of salmon, onions, dill, vodka, and cream.

It was probably the tastiest of all the pastas I have made. Brian agrees.

Next, I made lemon, garlic Collard Greens.

Then, roasted Turnips with sour cream.

And finally, I added some Fava Beans in my stir fry.

Unfortunately, I couldn't keep up with the rest of the vegetables and they didn't get used. Now, while all the vegetables I did get to use were all delicious, I had one big problem. The bugs. I know, I know.... no pesticides, so lots more bugs. The problem is, I'm terrified of bugs. It was difficult. I had to wash my lettuce one leaf at a time, around 3-4 times each leaf to make sure all the bugs were gone. It was so time consuming - which is why I didn't get to use a large portion of my box. Despite the bugs, I think I'll do it again. Though, I need a bug break for a little while.

Lemon Theme Night!

Yes! Lemon was my surprise theme for my first official theme night! Now, at first, the theme lemon might not sound that exciting - but ohhh, it is. On the menu: Homemade lemon pasta with a rosemary vodka lemon cream sauce, a mixed green salad with lemon mustard vinaigrette, all served with a limoncello and orange cocktail. For dessert, we have a low fat/calorie homemade lemon ice cream! A little more exciting, right? On top of it all, I dressed up in my most yellow 50's party dress and had a big pouffy flower in my hair! Theme night was awesome!

So, the first thing I actually made was the lemon pasta, which you can read all about here. The next thing I made was my ice cream. I have been making banana ice cream a lot lately, so I decided to change it up. In the fridge, we had tons of lemons, so I went for it. Making lemon ice cream is tricky though, especially if you are using all non-fat ingredients. Lemon and cream can curdle real easy, especially when there isn't enough fat. Somehow, I got really lucky. I was very diligent about my whisking and it all creamed together, so wonderfully.

I used a lot of lemons, as pictured above, both their juice and their zest. I strained the zest out, before letting my mixture cool. The next day, I added a little more non-fat half and half, then into the ice cream maker it went.

Once it was thick enough, I packed up my ice cream and got started on the next lemon dish.

I started off chopping all of my ingredients, washing the salad, and basically making a big mess. Luckily, I made a lemon mustard salad dressing the night before, so the salad was ready to go.

I really wanted to surprise Brian, but I had less than an hour to get everything done! I started on my sauce, by sweating some sweet red onions and shallots, with a little bit of rosemary.

I added a few shots of vodka, a few squirts of lemon, and my cream. Since I used lots of fat free ingredients (low cal butter and fat free cream), I noticed a little bit of curdling. Gross, I know. To fix that, I just added a big piece of fatty, glorious, wonderful butter, which totally saved the day.

Did I mention I was making my pasta at the same time? Excuse the dark, somewhat blurry photos below. Making pasta, taking pictures, and being in a hurry all add up!

Making the pasta wasn't bad. Sure, I had to start over on a few pieces, but overall, it was a decent first time, for doing it by myself.

For some reason, the pasta machine didn't fully cut the fettuccine, so a few of them clumped together when I boiled them. I think I might need more flour, next time.

And finally, the last thing I did was make the cocktail.

Our friend, Michael, gave us a bottle of his homemade Limoncello - so delicious. I made a little cocktail that was 3 parts orange juice, 1 part Limoncello. It was so light and tasty! And finally, dinner was served.

Again, I apologize for the dark pictures!

We finished the night off with our homemade lemon ice cream.

It was dreamy.

All in all, everything was good. The lemon pasta was very subtle and it was cooked really perfectly. The sauce was yummy - though, I might cheat next time and use some real, whole fat cream. The cocktail? Amazing. The salad? Totally good. The ice cream was delicious, though, I might use 1-2 less lemons next time -the flavor was good, but it was strong. I wouldn't say too strong - but it was more strong than I'd like it to be.

Lemon day was awesome. Now, what shall I do for my next theme night? Hmm...

Homemade Pastas

Any normal person would probably want to come home from a long day of making pasta and relax. I'm clearly odd. The moment I came home, from pasta making class, I made pasta.

Sure, it's not much in it's little packages there, but tonight I will put it to the test. First, let me show you what I made! As you can see above, I made 3 different bundles: Lemon, Rosemary, and a plain pasta. It all started with a simple dough of flour and eggs.

I did a lot of kneading and separated my dough into 3 equal parts.

I basically just took a look in the fridge to see what we had around to flavor the dough. We had a ton of lemons! Lemon pasta with salmon... that could be good, right? Let's hope so, anyway! So, I went ahead and zested some lemon and kneaded it into one of my doughs. If you look close enough, you can see the pretty little specs of yellow!

Next, we had so much fresh rosemary - we love rosemary.

I chopped it real small and added it to my second round of dough.

Once all the rosemary was evenly incorporated to the dough and all of the rounds were kneaded, I wrapped them in layers of saran wrap, labeled them, and put them straight into the freezer. Did I mention I don't have a pasta maker? Well, I didn't anyways... I have one now! And tonight one of my bundles of dough are coming out. I've already warned Brian that it's a theme night tonight. Oh yes, blogger friends, I'm having a theme night. I can't wait to surprise Brian with what I have planned... It will all be revealed soon!

Pasta In Casa! Hip Cooks, West LA

Well, happy valentine's day everyone! I was a little bummed out that Feb. 14 landed on a Monday, but it's given us the excuse to celebrate all weekend long. Saturday was massages and home cooking/baking and Sunday was "Pasta in Casa!" class at Hip Cooks in West LA. We got a gift card from Brian's sister last April, for our wedding and have finally put it to some good use! On the menu we had a Roasted butternut squash ravioli with sage butter (both Brian and my favorite, not pictured), then a Dill fettucine, salmon cream & vodka sauce. Making the dill fettucini sounded a lot more complicated, but it was basically the same pasta dough, with a little dill added to it The pasta itself was so pretty, here it is being put into the pasta machine.

It was so much fun!

We all had turns putting the pasta through the machine, here's Brian having a go at it.

And it came out so delicious. Definitely our second favorite pasta of the day.

The next pasta we made was called, Caramelle with mint, ricotta & lemon.

And finally we made a Portobello mushroom & spinach rotollo, red pepper tomato sauce.

Ugh, it was all very delicious. It was all so, so, so good.

The people joining us in class were all so nice and made the whole class a lot more fun and lively. Brian and I are already planning our next date over some Hip Cooks classes. Yay!

Conchiglie al Forno with Mushrooms and Radicchio (or Fancy Baked Pasta)

The other night, Brian was ohhhhing and ahhhhing at something Ina Garten was cooking up, on tv. I was intrigued. So, I made the dish. Not really a diet friendly dish, but it was tasty alright. The dish is called Conchiglie al Forno with Mushrooms and Radicchio and the recipe can be found here. It starts off with lots of cheeses. I'm not a gorgonzola fan, so I only added a few crumbles, and I just eyeballed the Parmesan and Fontina.

I cut the radicchio, then added my ricotta. The ricotta was great, because it really glued everything together.

On the side, I had some delicious Shitake Mushroom caps, sliced.

Did I mention the butter? Butter and light heat make the mushrooms real good.

I added the rest of my ingredients to the radicchio bowl, including sage, salt, and heavy cream (though, I didn't use as much cream as the recipe called for), then added my Shitake Mushrooms, and the lovely butter sauce that they produced (not sure if that was part of the recipe or not, but that butter was amazing).

Once my final ingredient of partially cooked pasta shells was ready, I added those to the mix too.

Then stirred and stirred.

The pasta should be baked at 500 degrees, in a shallow baking dish. I accidentally made enough for two dishes!

I thought it was a lot, but Brian didn't seem to mind.

After about 15 minutes in the oven, until the top noodles are nice and golden, take the dish out and let it rest for a few minutes. I added a few dabs of butter on top of my noodles, to give them that extra golden brown color.

It was delicious. The sage and radicchio gave it a unique bitterness that was a nice contrast to the pasta we usually eat.

The recipe calls this an appetizer dish, although I served it as our main course. I now see why it's an appetizer - it's ridiculously rich and creamy. Too heavy for a main course, but that didn't stop us from eating it. Or, from me eating it again for lunch today.