Book ’n Cook | Fresh Food Fast

This is one of my favorite recipes that I come back to time and again. It’s a relatively easy recipe to make. It uses two of the season’s most bountiful ingredients – leeks and potatoes. And, it’s one of those versatile dishes that you could serve for breakfast, brunch, lunch or dinner.

This recipe is adapted from one of the Winter menus featured in Peter Berley’s Fresh Food Fast: Delicious, Seasonal Vegetarian Meals in Under an Hour. This is a well organized, beautifully designed, vegetarian cookbook that provides 48 meals – twelve for each season – including recipes, shopping lists and a game plan to walk you step-by-step through each menu. The meals boast a preparation time of under an hour and utilize techniques and tools that the average cook will have in her repertoire. I highly recommend it. It’s one of my top “go-to” cookbooks when cooking with fresh, seasonal ingredients.

Click here to download and print a pdf of this recipe:

Leek and Potato Frittata
Adapted from
Fresh Food Fast by Peter Berley

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.
  

Click here to download and print a pdf of this recipe:

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

Book ’n Cook | Fresh Every Day

This week I tested a Summer Sweet Corn Soup recipe from Sara Foster’s Fresh Every Day: More Great Recipes from Foster’s Market. First off, let’s start with the book. Fresh Every Day has eight chapters:

Breakfast for Anytime; Simple Soups; Seasonal Salads and Salad Meals; Seasonal Sides; Quick and Tasty Meat Main Dishes; Fast and Fresh Fish, Pasta, and Risotto Meals; Meals That Cook Themselves; A Little Something Sweet

The recipes are easy to follow and use upscale but accessible ingredients. Throughout the book, there are call-out boxes explaining basic techniques such as roasting garlic or peeling butternut squash. There are also a number of sidebars called “Tricks of My Trade” with helpful hints for making your recipes turn out better and easier.

The Summer Sweet Corn Soup is sweet, light and has a bright, fresh flavor from the addition of the basil. All in all, I recommend this book for it’s tempting recipes, beautiful photography and easy, clean design. And if you have some corn left, this recipe is definitely worth trying.

Click here to download and print a pdf of this recipe:

Summer Sweet Corn Soup
Adapted from
Fresh Every Day by Sara Foster

Book ’n Cook | Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook

As promised, I tested the Lee Bros.’ recipe for pickled scallions. Even though I’m not very familiar with pickling or canning (although I hope to change that over the course of this summer), the process went smoothly by simply following the recipe’s thorough directions. The pickled scallions turned out well – slightly tart and the pickling takes the edge off the scallion’s allium flavor. You could chop them and add the pickled scallions to egg salad. You could slice them and top a roast beef sandwich. Or simply add them to an antipasti platter along with other pickled vegetables, olives, salami and cheese.

As for the book, I think the Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook, by Matt and Ted Lee, is worth the read just for the Pickles, Relishes and Preserves sections. A few recipes that might appeal to fellow shareholders: Jerusalem Artichoke Relish, Hot Pepper Jelly and Pickled Corn. But the rest of the book is also valuable and a great read. The pages are peppered with anecdotes, back stories and, of course, classic Southern recipes.

Click here to download and print a pdf of this recipe:

Pickled Scallions
Adapted from
Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook by Matt and Ted Lee

Book ’n Cook | Chickpea & Basil Purée

This week’s Book ’n Cook post is from Patricia Well’s Vegetable Harvest: Vegetables at the Center of the Plate. Patricia is the author of a number of cookbooks including The Paris Cookbook and Simply French. She has lived in France for more than twenty years and her cookbooks and recipes reflect that. Her newest book, Vegetable Harvest, includes recipes for everything from appetizers, soups, salads to meats, poultry, and pasta that all incorporate vegetables, herbs and fresh fruits.


I still had some basil from last week’s vegetable box, so I chose the Chickpea & Bail Purée as the featured recipe from Vegetable Harvest. It’s light, fresh, delicious – and pretty healthy, too!

Click here to download and print a pdf of this recipe:

Chickpea & Basil Purée
Adapted from
Vegetable Harvest: Vegetables at the Center of the Plate