Salad Days: Root Veg with Chevre and Toasted Pecans

This week's salad is without question the best salad I have ever had. The recipe for the shredded root veg slaw came via email from a fellow CSA member after several people had asked for recommendations on how to deal with all the root veggies. The root veg mix is delicious and keeps well in the fridge for several days; I've enjoyed having it on hand so I can serve it as a side dish, add some color to a tossed salad, or, as in this case, make it the centerpiece of a hearty salad entree.

We enjoyed this salad on Friday the 13th as part of our early Valentine's celebration, since we had plans with friends on the day itself. For the past few years, our Valentine's routine has been to pop a bottle of champagne, order Thai or Chinese, and make creme brulee (Dan's favorite). However, this year, since we're trying to spend less, I nixed the takeout and budgeted $10 for good cheese instead, planning to serve it along with a salad. We also postponed the creme brulee since this month is packed with desserts already (some of which you've already seen).


Picking the cheese was hard because there were so many amazing selections at the Coop. I went in thinking I'd like something local and made from raw goat's milk. Since we live right on the border with Vermont, the local options are abundant. However, some of the imported cheeses looked so tempting that my resolve wavered. Ultimately, I decided to split the budget, selecting one imported, semisoft, raw, cow's milk cheese and one local, soft, pasteurized, goat's milk cheese. We snacked on the imported cheese, a Morbier from France, while I grated the veggies for the salad and Dan did the dishes. Morbier is a creamy, slightly bitter cheese with a pungent smell but a mild and faintly nutty taste. It is made of two layers, separated by ash; traditionally, farmers would pour leftover curds from Gruyere de Comte in to a mold in the evening, then cover it with a layer of ash to preserve it, and top it off with more curds from the next morning's batch. Now it is generally made from one batch but the ash layer is kept for tradition. We both enjoyed this cheese very much, but I'm not sure I'd buy it again soon; there are just too many cheeses out there that I haven't tried yet.


The local chevre went on top of the root veg slaw, along with some toasted pecans, all with a bed of mesclun. The combination was simple but fantastic. You know how when you taste something delicious, the first few bites taste the best, but then you sort of get used to it? That didn't happen with this salad. With every bite, I was surprised; every forkful was bursting with flavor and new taste. I think it's just the perfect balance of earthy, tangy, sweet, and nutty flavors, and the mix of textures - smooth, crunchy, crisp - offers so much variety that it stays interesting even if you eat a huge platter. We've already repeated this salad and I know it will become a regular menu item for us.

Judi's Winter Root Salad

8 cups grated root vegetables (beets, turnips, carrots, daikon, celeriac, etc., plus one garlic clove)
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
2 tablespoons olive oil
1.5 tablespoons vinegar

Mix it all together. Lasts in the refrigerator for several days. I omitted the garlic and used a German stone-ground mustard instead. I only used beets, carrots, and celeriac in mine. Grating all these veggies by hand would be a pain (literally, for my bad wrists); my yard-sale Salad Shooter does the trick in two minutes.
Best Winter Salad

4 cups mesclun (rinsed and spun)
3 cups Judi's Winter Root Salad
2 oz chevre (about half a small log)
1/3 cup chopped pecans

Set oven to 300. Spread pecans on an ungreased cookie sheet and toast in oven until they smell wonderful (about eight minutes). Divide mesclun between two plates. Scoop half of the root veg slaw on to each plate. Top each serving with dollops of chevre and toasted pecans. Serves 2.

Smorgasboard!

Here is a shot of that applesauce spice cake I blogged about earlier. Now that I know to build in at least eight hours for the flavor to develop, it's earned a place in my baking arsenal. This time I topped it with - what else? - cream cheese frosting.

This is the beginning of a pot of potato-leek soup I made a few weeks back. It was simple, delicious, and perfect for the gray, rainy days we've been doomed with lately. No picture of the finished soup because it didn't come out well (too late for natural light - the days are getting shorter). I served it with popovers.

Whole-wheat pancakes with walnuts, dried cranberries, and Vermont maple syrup - the perfect beginning for a Saturday. I apologize for the lousy picture quality; this was during the borrowed-camera phase and this particular camera was definitely my least favorite. I'm so glad to have my new Canon now!

Kale and azuki beans is a very simple but delicious and healthy dish. Azuki beans are small, red beans popular in Japan; they are usually sold in the bulk bins at the grocery store. This dish starts with sauteing greens (in this case, fresh kale, but I've used frozen spinach many times before) with a little garlic and oil, then adding the cooked beans. I usually spritz the combo with Bragg's Liquid Aminos, but you could use soy sauce instead. Serve over brown rice and you have a tasty, nutritious, and cheap meal.

And lastly, no food story here, but I snapped this shot at a rest stop on the way back last weekend. This is why I live in New Hampshire.

Out of the Box, Week 10

Just popping in to post a picture of this week's spectacular haul.
It's almost too much to fit in the frame!
Okay, let's pull out and see it all:

The quantity of vegetables this week is mind-boggling. We have:
--two small heads of lettuce
--two small bunches of bitter field greens
--two heads of bok choy
--assorted potatoes
--half a dozen onions
--SEVENTEEN tomatoes!
--a pint of assorted baby tomatoes
--three cucumbers
--two small yellow squash
--one delicata squash
--green beans
--six ears of corn

We already had an eggplant, four ears of corn, hot peppers, and garlic left over from last week, as well as a big bag of cucumbers from Dan's boss. I should have no problem sticking to just vegetables this weekend. In fact, I think I'll have to in order to get through all of this.

(By the way, these photos were taken with a borrowed camera - mine's almost certainly beyond repair.)

Out of the Box, Week 4

We were in such a rush last Thursday to catch the last bus down to Boston that I didn't photograph the produce before we split it up. We took some zucchini, garlic scapes, parsley, and lettuce to Boston for Zach and Maria, and left some zucchini, a summer squash, garlic scapes, turnip greens, and kohlrabi here. I know Maria made zucchini bread with her zucchini. We used our zucchini, along with some sugar snap peas left over from week 3, to make a green risotto.

Last night, we had a friend over for dinner, but we also faced the challenge of trying to use up everything in our fridge, since we're leaving today on a ten-day trip. I sauteed the turnip greens with the garlic scapes in a little olive oil and steamed the remaining zucchini and summer squash. For the main course, I made lentils and brown rice, using Rebecca Blood's recipe, but I added a generous amount of garam masala spice mix. I also served the lentils with thinly sliced onions fried in a little butter and a scoop of plain nonfat yogurt. It might sound strange but the addition of those two condiments takes the meal from something simple, solid, and hearty to a complex and irresistible treat. The sweetness of the onions and the tang of the yogurt against the earthiness of the lentils makes for a surprising luxurious flavor.

For weeks five and six, we'll be out of town, so we've offered our box of veggies to the house that we belonged to in college. I've asked them to let me know what they used them for and to take pictures if possible, so hopefully I'll have an update when I get back. In the meantime, I'm spending the next ten days in New York, North Carolina, and Cape Cod, for a family reunion bookended by two weddings!

I won't be doing much cooking, although at the family reunion, I will be cooking one night. Hopefully that will be preceded by a visit to a coastal North Carolina farmer's market. I'm hoping for peaches. I will also be eating out a lot, so I'll post pictures and reviews in the last week of July, once I'm back here.

Here's the first of many salads that we will eat this week. I used some of the colossal lettuce as well as some mixed greens (baby spinach, mustard, arugula, and several more that I can't identify). This night, I was craving all things crunchy, so I loaded up on celery, carrots, radishes, cucumbers, and sunflower seeds. I used my basic mustard vinaigrette (salt, dried mustard, champagne vinegar, and olive oil) that I put on almost all salads.

It was a tasty salad, but not quite filling enough. Thankfully, we had the rhubarb for a delicious dessert. I used Phat Duck's compote recipe, made with orange liqueur, and it was fantastic! The liqueur and the touch of butter really enhanced the natural flavor of the rhubarb. It was a little sweet for my liking, though, so next time I would cut the sugar down to a scant half a cup.



When I have rhubarb, I pretty much do a compote (with or without strawberries) or sometimes a crisp. My grandmother makes wonderful strawberry-rhubarb pies. But I'd like to do something different with it - do you have any suggestions for unusual rhubarb recipes? If so, please post in the comments! I'd love some new ideas.

By the way, that nice cold glass you see in the corner of the compote photo is spiced rum and ginger beer, a favorite drink of mine for summer (so refreshing!).

Out of the Box, Week 1

I've wanted to sign up for a CSA for a few years, but we've been thwarted by life events (one year hoping we would move out of state, then the next year knowing we would). Finally secure in the knowledge that we'd be in one place for a whole growing season, we signed up for a weekly small share from Luna Bleu Farm.

Not surprisingly, this early in the season, we get A LOT of greens. Take, for instance, this mega head of lettuce.

I think the fact that I have giant man-hands is throwing off the perspective of this picture. This lettuce was seriously HUGE - it must have been 18 inches across. It took a few hours to clean and spin the whole thing.

In addition to the colossal lettuce, we received a good-sized bag of spinach, a bag of mixed greens, and a handful of rhubarb spears. Clearly, the first week of eating out of the box would entail many salads. Pictures and details of just what we did with all those leaves to come in future posts.