In this week’s share:
More squash to experiment with!
More peppers, too… not sure what to do with them. (I will not be stuffing them, that’s for sure!)
In this week’s share:
My parents never made stuffed vegetables when I was growing up.
Now I know why.
Some people like their veggies filled with rice, ground meat, and onions – maybe even a little crunchy topping – but this does nothing for me, especially when the stuffed vegetable in question is a pepper. I think it comes down to two things: seasoning the pepper itself (it usually isn’t), and its texture after being roasted twice (or parboiled and roasted).
The filling may be tasty, but the pepper remains bland. I have yet to find a recipe that asks for it to be seasoned. (Any leads on this phantom recipe are welcome.) Additionally, cooking the pepper twice – once to make sure it finishes “tender,” and a second time with the filling inside – leaves it flaccid.
The only possible redeeming factor in this sad, sad dinner was a balanced, well-seasoned stuffing: and unfortunately, the one I used from saveur.com was lackluster. (You can find the recipe here, anyway.)
Thankfully, the squash turned out much better – probably because its firm, thick flesh naturally lent itself to roasting. Here’s our acorn squash, post-roast:
More adventures in stuffing to come in the future…
In this week’s share:
The first squash of the season has arrived, and it’s tiny – about the size of a baseball. I’m excited for more autumn crops to arrive.
In this week’s share:
We were out of town this week, and ended up giving our half-share – in addition to some vegetables from last week – to my mom. She got pretty creative and made a smorgasbord of dishes.
The radicchio became a coleslaw, which unfortunately neither she nor dad liked. (I can’t blame them; I’m not a big coleslaw person myself.) She cooked the savoy cabbage the same way she sometimes cooks napa cabbage – stir-fried with Chinese dried shrimp and cellophane noodles – and that was a disappointment as well, as we discovered the savoy didn’t soften the same way napa cabbage does. The kale, which she sautéed in olive oil with garlic, turned out a little better, but needed more time than expected to cook down. They didn’t get around to the beets, which are probably still going bad somewhere in the fridge right now.
On the brighter side of things, Mom loved how the Swiss chard turned out in (another) simple sauté, not just in taste but also in its appearance – a mosaic of ruby red, pale yellow, and dark green. (I think I must get my enjoyment of unusual vegetables from her.) Last but not least, she shredded the zucchini to fry up in pancakes à la Ina Garten, (from her cookbook Barefoot Contessa at Home). This, she reports, was the tastiest result from this series of veggie experiments, though she prefers a slightly thicker pancake.
It occurred to me after I returned home that I should’ve asked my mom to take pictures of all the cooking she did with the vegetables. Next time… and perhaps also a guest post, too!