Carrot & Apple Salad with Yogurt, Mint and Honey Dressing

My box season is starting so much earlier this year thanks to my new 2009 Spring subscription from the Genesis Growers CSA. I anxiously picked up my first box, not really knowing what to expect. It is, after all, April in Chicago, and there’s not much growing. But the box was heavy and packed with onions, beets, potatoes and giant carrots – some of the biggest carrots I have ever seen (the beets were giant-sized, too!). After a winter of heavy, warm foods I was craving this crisp, tart but slightly sweet Carrot & Apple Salad with a yogurt, mint and honey dressing. Exactly what I needed to brighten a dreary, rainy Spring day.

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Carrot & Apple Salad with Yogurt, Mint and Honey Dressing

Moroccan Carrot Salad

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.

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Moroccan Carrot Salad

Veggie Cold Cut Deli Style Sandwiches

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.


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Veggie Cold Cut Deli Style Sandwiches

Zucchini-Carrot Muffins with Lemon Cream Cheese Icing

These muffins give you a double dose of your veggies – carrots and zucchini – combined with hearty healthy whole wheat flour, wheat germ and pecans. In place of butter or oil, we’re using low-fat yogurt. To give them lightness and lift, the egg white are beaten to stiff peaks and added ever-so-gently at the very end. These muffins have a lot going for them, especially after you add the lemon cream cheese icing.

Now as for the shape, I used a bar cookie pan rather than the standard muffin tin. I love this pan and I use it for everything from perfectly portioned brownies to cute individual size cornbreads.

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Zucchini-Carrot Muffins with Lemon Cream Cheese Icing

Book ’n Cook | Farmer John’s Cookbook

For all of you Angelic Organic shareholders, you don’t need me to recommend this one! Last season, all shareholders received a copy of Farmer John’s Cookbook: The Real Dirt on Vegetables. It’s a great resource for information on storing and cooking the vegetables that grow on the Angelic Organic farm as well as a wealth of seasonal recipes organized by vegetable and growing season. But more importantly, it’s a book with stories and anecdotes that give you insight into the people and the process that gets your box of veggies from the ground to your home every week.

I’m not usually a fan of veggie burgers, but this week’s newsletter mentioned a “beet burger” recipe in Farmer John’s cookbook and I was intrigued. This recipe is my kind of veggie burger – it’s actually made out of vegetables! And there’s some sunflowers and sesame seeds thrown in for texture and protein. I strayed a bit from the original recipe in the book, but overall it’s a great vegetarian recipe with a lot of flavor and a lot of room for experimentation with toppings and add-ins (shown here with mayonnaise and avocado). Next time I make them, I’m going to try using smoked cheddar cheese to add another flavor dimension and give the burgers more of a barbequed, “meaty” flavor.

J.NOELLE NOTES

• I shaped my burgers into smaller patties (2.5” in diameter) and ended up with 18 burgers. But the smaller patties require smaller buns, so I used a 2.5” circle cutter to cut out whole wheat bread rounds and toasted them. If you stick with the original recipe, you can use standard regular or whole wheat buns. The smaller patties cooked for the same amount of time – 20 minutes.
  
• I added 1 teaspoon of kosher salt to the recipe (1/2 teaspoon if you’re using table salt) and sprinkled the patties with additional salt and a crack of fresh pepper before they went into the oven.
• I whisked together the eggs, oil, flour, soy sauce, garlic, cayenne pepper and salt to make a sauce, which I then worked into the other ingredients. It made mixing easier and ensured that all of the flavors of the sauce were evenly distributed.
  
• And one last tip: I wore disposable kitchen gloves while mixing and forming the patties. They’re indispensable when working with beets but are also helpful to have in the kitchen for other messy jobs or if you’re working with raw meat and chicken. You can find them at any kitchen and restaurant supply store.
  

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Baked Beet-and-Carrot Burgers
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Farmer John’s Cookbook: The Real Dirt on Vegetables

White Bean, Kale and Chorizo Soup

We usually think of soup as a fall and winter comfort food. But it’s also a great summer food. All of the cooking is done on the stovetop – no oven to heat up the kitchen. And most soup recipes always make enough for leftovers – perfect for when you would rather be outside in the garden rather than in the kitchen.

The other upside to making soup in the summer is the great variety of seasonal vegetables you have to choose from. This White Bean, Kale and Chorizo Soup makes use of the kale, onions and carrots that are fresh and plentiful at this time of year. It’s hearty, rich and bursting with beautiful color.

The recipe calls for a parmesan rind. It’s an optional ingredient, but it really adds a nice creamy and rich flavor to the soup. If you don’t happen to have a leftover parmesan rind sitting in your fridge (which many of us don’t), you can find them in the gourmet cheese section of Whole Foods. And if you don’t have a Whole Foods available to you, try checking with your local specialty cheese shop or grocery store.

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White Bean, Kale and Chorizo Soup