If you’re looking for a hearty, warm, satisfying winter meal that you can eat for breakfast, lunch or dinner, look no further than Tex-Mex Cornbread Skillet made with ground beef from the Cedar Valley Sustainable Farm share. I used Beth’s recipe from this month’s newsletter as a jumping off point. It comes together fast and really is as good as it looks and sounds.
Tex-Mex Cornbread Skillet
All of the recipes from this year’s 24 box season in one convenient spot. If you would like to view the original post, enter the recipe name in the search box located at the top left corner in the gray bar. You can also access all of the recipes from the 2007 season here.
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Happy Thanksgiving and Happy Cooking! If you have room to squeeze one more dish on the table, make it this one. Celery Root (aka Celeriac) & Apple Purée tastes like a cross between creamy, buttery mashed potatoes and sweet baked apples with an underlying hint of celery. And if you don’t get around to making it today, the purée would pair wonderfully with Thanksgiving leftovers.
Celery Root & Apple Purée
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I always struggle with Brussels sprouts. I’ve tried all different ways of cooking them – roasting, pan searing, even braising them with bacon. None of them did it for me. They always had that “funky” taste and sometimes came out mushy. I’ve heard different theories on causes of the funky taste. Number one reason could be overcooking (admittedly, that blame lies with the cook). Another theory proposed that the tiny core of each sprout was to blame. One recommended solution was to pull off all the outer leaves, one by one, and discard the core. I actually tried it – and it did work – but boy was it a pain in the you-know-what. Then I tried a new approach: slicing the sprouts very thin. The resulting pieces cooked up very quickly, thus solving the overcooking, mushy problem (and it’s a lot faster than pulling off the leaves one at a time). And because you have to grip on to the stem of each sprout in order to slice it, you end up discarding the core. When all is said and done, you’re left with crisp, buttery Brussels sprouts without a lot of prep time in the kitchen.
Sliced Brussels Sprouts with Brown Butter
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Click on an ingredient and link to a past 24 Boxes post using that vegetable.
When I hear “salad”, it usually conjures images of lazy summer dinners or outdoor picnics – days when you yearn for something cool and crisp. But this salad is all about Fall. The roasted sweet potatoes and caramelized red onions are enveloped in a sweet, piquant dressing and served with the peppery bite of arugula. The big kick of flavor comes from the toasted guajillo chile dressing. Don’t be scared – it’s not spicy. Guajillos are rich, smoky and only register at 6,000 heat units on the Scoville scale (the spiciest of chiles and peppers can clock in at 855,000 units or more!). My favorite source for dried chiles is Penzey’s. They have a huge selection of quality herbs, spices and dried chiles.
Sweet Potato Salad with Caramelized Red Onions
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Click on an ingredient and link to a past 24 Boxes post using that vegetable.
Since returning from vacation, I’ve been focusing a lot of my kitchen time on stocking up for winter – roasting, pureeing and freezing squash and sugar pumpkins, harvesting the last of my patio-grown jalapeños and drying them in a dehydrator for a powdered spice, and I even “put up” some pickled beets and blackberry jam before I left for Hawaii. All in all, necessary, but not very exciting “post-worthy” stuff. I’ve got some ideas in the hopper and I promise I’ll be back to posting recipes soon.
Click on an ingredient and link to a past 24 Boxes post using that vegetable.
Click on an ingredient and link to a past 24 Boxes post using that vegetable.
This month’s issue of Fine Cooking has a fabulous article about Potato Gratin. It’s essentially a blueprint for building great gratins, one layer at a time. I chose to go with a Bacon, Leek & Potato version with Gruyere cheese and a bread crumb topping. The best thing about this recipe is it’s versatility – you can change it up to suit your tastes. Swap out broccoli for the flavor layer and use cheddar instead of Gruyere. Or layer in Bacon & Mushrooms and top with Fontina cheese. The possibilities are as deep as your imagination – or your well-stocked refrigerator. That said, I’m partial to this version. My husband and I ate nearly three-quarters of it the first time I made it! It’s that good...
Bacon, Leek & Potato Gratin
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Click on an ingredient and link to a past 24 Boxes post using that vegetable.
Fall weather has officially arrived here in Chicago – chilly nights, breezy and cool days. I love fall weather and I love fall food. This French Onion Soup has a deep, dark broth that is a result of the caramelization of the red onions in the first step. As an alternative to the layer of goopy, greasy cheese, serve with cheese croutons for dipping, sopping and scooping up the soft, flavorful broth and onions. Put away the flip flops, cozy up in slippers, and enjoy a bowl of this comforting fall weather soup.
French Onion Soup with Cheese Croutons
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Great instructions for seeding a watermelon; it really does the trick!The majority of seeds in a watermelon are found in a concentric ring a few inches from the center of the melon. You can take advantage of this fact when removing seeds. First cut the melon into circular slices of the desired thickness. Using a biscuit or cookie cutter, remove the seedless melon center. With a paring knife, next cut out the ring that contains most of the seeds, and then cut along the inner boundary of the rind. Simply lift off the rind and slice the now-seedless fruit, including the melon center. – cooksillustrated.com email newsletter
Another tomato recipe already? Well folks, we’re at that time of year when you can use all the tomato recipes you can get your hands on. And this is a great one for using up a lot of tomatoes with minimal effort and fantastic results. Best of all, this is a perfect recipe to make in large batches and freeze – it’s an easy way to capture the flavor of summer tomatoes and enjoy them when it’s cold and dreary.
Roasted Tomato Sauce
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This is prime, peak season for tomatoes and they’re the perfect ripeness and flavor for an outstanding fresh tomato salsa. The key to a chunky texture, rather than a soggy salsa, is to let the tomatoes drain in a colander for 30 minutes to purge excess water. Then simply toss with the other ingredients, season with lime juice, salt, sugar and a pinch of pepper.
Fresh Tomato Salsa
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We’ve been lucky this year with carrots – this was the fifth week in a row that we’ve received a bunch in our box. Last year, I can only remember getting them once or twice due to the incessant 2007 August rain. But this year, the farm has been yielding bumper crops, and it’s likely we’ll receive more on Saturday. So, what do to with all those carrots? How about a cool, crunchy, spicy Moroccan Carrot Salad – a great alternative to boring, old carrot sticks.
Moroccan Carrot Salad
Admittedly, this recipe is about one week late. Last week’s box contents were a perfect mix for ratatouille – eggplant, zucchini, garlic, onion, and parsley. But many of you, like me I suspect, have vegetables that hang around the week after and this is a perfect recipe for clearing out your refrigerator. There are a lot of variations and styles of ratatouille and everyone has their favorite. I am a big fan of roasting and I like my vegetables to remain separate and distinct, so this version is perfect for my tastes. You can serve this bruschetta-style on toasted bread with goat cheese. Or, as a side dish to fish or poultry, warm or room temperature.
Roasted Ratatouille
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Oh what to do with the lemon balm? I ask myself that question every time I get this little known herb in my box. Well, this time I actually used it – some of it, at least. I tied together a bunch of lemon balm along with three black tea bags (you can use any tea you like – black, white, green, herbal...) and placed the bundle in a 2-quart container. Fill it up with filtered water, place in a sunny spot and the tea will be ready in 3 to 5 hours depending on how hot and sunny it is that day.
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Ever since I bought The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook last year, I’ve had my eye on their recipe for Hot Pepper Jelly. In part because I’m a huge fan of anything with cream cheese. But most appealing was that the recipe called for green peppers. We receive a LOT of green peppers in our boxes and, quite honestly, not a big fan. Love red peppers; but green peppers, not so much. I usually hand them over to my Dad so he can make stuffed green peppers or I donate them back to the swap box.
Hot Pepper Jelly
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There’s a hard core group of burger purists out there that are probably horrified at the title of this post. Well Done Burgers! Never. Burgers are to be medium (at most) if they are to be enjoyed and appreciated at all, they say. Here’s the deal: I like a medium/medium-well burger as much as the next person – if I’m at a restaurant where someone who’s experienced is doing the grilling. Too often, I’ve started off grilling with the best of intentions, only to find that the burger is either (a) undercooked and I have to throw it back on the grill or (b) overcooked and dried out. So, when I tried this recipe, I hit the jackpot.
Well Done Burgers Done Well
The adjustable mandoline slicer is one of my most favorite and heavily used tools in the summer kitchen. In this recipe, it makes short work of turning garden vegetables into thin ribbons and slices. I piled on these “cold cuts” along with a garlic and herb cheese spread. In no time at all, I had a spectacular Veggie Cold Cut Deli Style Sandwich stacked with zucchini, squash, red bell pepper, carrots and radish.
Veggie Cold Cut Deli Style Sandwiches
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