The broccoli rabe (or rapini, if you prefer) was the first to go! Here it is, going down for the wilt with the garlic scapes, sauteed in olive oil.
Patti gave me a great idea for lettuce: chicken salad wraps. Here’s my chicken salad (chicken from Stone Gardens Farm) wrapped in Patti’s Red Butterhead lettuce.
I’m still swimming in lettuce from last week’s CSA. I can’t seem to make a salad dressing that I like. So, I’m going to fess up here: I’ve been cooking some of the lettuces. (Go ahead and gasp if you must.) Fact is, some lettuces are okay to cook and Red Romaine is one of them!
I soaked some cannellini beans last night to make something like escarole and bean soup with the Red Romaine. Their nutritional profiles are remarkably similar. Funnily enough, today Patti announced that escarole is coming up this week in the CSA! So, consider this the practice run for the real deal.
Red Romaine and Bean Soup--it certainly looks like the real deal.
Tuscan Greens and Beans Soup
Soak 1 cup of cannellini beans overnight in 3 times as much water. With escarole and bean soup, the beans really do have to be cannellini; navy and other white beans just don’t have the right flavor.
Rinse the beans until the water is clear.
Cover in 2 times as much water and bring to a boil for at least 10 minutes. Skim off the foam while it’s boiling.
Simmer for about 1-1/4 hours, until the beans are tender. Add salt at the one hour mark.
Clean and chop 1 head of escarole. I used Red Romaine lettuce from Sport Hill Farm.
In a soup pot, sauté 3 chopped garlic cloves in 3 Tbsp olive oil until carmelized. I used the better part of a stalk of spring garlic from Holbrook Farm.
Add the escarole (or lettuce) to the pot with 1/2 tsp. crushed red pepper flakes and a pinch of salt and some freshly ground black pepper. (Cayenne pepper courtesy of Cherry Grove Farm in Newtown, dried here last year, crushed today.)
Toss until the greens are wilting.
Drain the cannellini, reserving the liquid.
Add the cannellini beans, 1 cup of the bean water, and 1/2 cup of plain water to the pot and stir.
Allow to simmer for about 10 minutes.
Spoon into bowls.
Top with shaved cheese, like Parmigiano-Reggiano. I used Beaver Brook‘s Pleasant Son.
I made a crock-pot rotisserie chicken for Patti Popp’s Eat Local CT Challenge along with a salad with a (sort of) Thousand Island dressing.
I happened upon a recipe for crock-pot rotisserie chicken at one of Kimberly Hartke’s blog carnivals. Obviously I spend too much time with Engineers because I thought there was a new kind of crock-pot on the market, like with an actual rotating rod. It turned out to be a recipe for cooking chicken in an ordinary crock-pot that tastes just like rotisserie chicken. Still, I like rotisserie chicken, I have a crock-pot, and I had a chicken.
It turns out that there are a quarter of a million (literally) other crock-pot rotisserie chicken recipes. (Google it.) Most of the recipes are quite similar, with variations on the spice mix (or shall we say flavor profile of the dry rub).
A popular technique is to raise the chicken off of the bottom of the pot. Most recommend making several balls out of aluminum foil on which to rest the chicken, but a few suggested using potatoes. I went with the potato idea since you can eat them. I mostlyfollowed the recipe from Real Food, Allergy Free, but borrowed here and there from some of the others.
I made a rub of
3 tsp salt
2 tsp paprika
1 tsp Cayenne pepper
1 tsp thyme
1 tsp pepper (multicolored)
4 minced scallions
1 Tbsp minced spring garlic
I rubbed some olive oil all over the chicken, then worked the “dry” rub into the skin.
I used some leeks cut lengthwise along with the potatoes for the elevation medium.
The chicken went breast down onto the potatoes and I put on the lid. (No water or other fluids—everyone was fairly adamant about that.) I let it go for 4 hours on high and another 2 on low.
It was excellent! I mean really good! The meat was literally falling off the bone (like nearly everyone said it would). Even the breast meat (not my favorite part) was moist and tender. Seriously. I could see making this every week.
Told you the meat was falling off the bone! I didn't think of that as I was removing it from the crock-pot.
Sources:
chicken: Center Brook Farm, (Jesse Miller) New Milford, CT (New Milford farmers market)
Cayenne pepper: Cherry Grove, Newtown, CT, dried here
thyme: mine
potatoes, salt, pepper, paprika, and olive oil from away (although the olive oil is from my own grove, but more about that in another post!)
With a refrigerator full of heirloom lettuce, you almost have to have a salad too.
I tried to do a local Thousand Island dressing. (Operative word is tried.) I substituted yogurt for the mayo and strained it to make it almost Greek style. While there’s ketchup in the fridge, it’s there for other people. Instead, I used some of the roasted plum tomatoes from the freezer. I put the defrosted tomatoes through the food mill, then strained the liquid. I mixed it into the yogurt and added two chopped hard-cooked eggs and two chopped dill pickle spears and some of the pickle juice. I added some red wine vinegar, honey, salt, and pepper. It needs something more, but I don’t know what. I suspect that the problem is simply that yogurt is not mayo. Still, it wasn’t horrible—just missing something.
Really thick dressing...perhaps I drained off too much liquid...
Sources:
Red Romaine and Grand Rapids heirloom lettuce: Sport Hill Farm
