Chopped Challenge: The Lamb that Almost Was, but Wasn't

This week The Box arrived with a wide variety of familiar goodies and a couple of strange ones. Nothing exactly made me want to jump up and down and cook like a mad woman, but for the most part the ingredients were useful. Here's what I got:

• Sorrel
• Orange Sun Gold Cherry Tomatoes
• Texas Onions
• Elephant Garlic Rounds (basically one big clove of garlic)
• Cucumbers
• Mammoth Basil (Looks like Basil, Smells like Basil, is 2X the size of Basil, I called it Mega Basil)
• Italian Sweet Basil
• Elephant Garlic Flowers (big fluffy purple flower thing)
• Something that looked like a Zucchini and a Eggplant mated
• And Purslane (because MIL thought it would be funny.....THANKS)

Again, we had some odd ducks, like the Purslane, which is essentially a weed, and sorrel, which is poisonous in large quantities. But nothing screamed "COOK ME" so I was looking forward to what was in the big brown basket sitting on the counter. It could have been anything. And I was hoping to get a nice fat, blood pressure rising challenge. So when I opened it up and looked at the ingredients I was perplexed.

Week 17, Box 17

This week's box was brought to be by The Husband for the first time ever after 9:30PM. It finally happened, we both had a conflict and since my hearing could have taken me to midnight to complete it fell to him to stop by the MIL and bring The Box home. From the contents of the box you can see we are well into the fall harvest.

The Whole Enchelada

This week The Box provided me with 4 tomatillos. Tomatillos are related to the husk cherry, and are not, despite the similarity in their name,are not tomatoes. Prior to creating my most recent creation, described below, I had never worked with them before. Tomatillos are frequently found in native Mexican cuisine, and being Italian and Jewish and The Husband being Irish, we don't usually eat a lot of Mexican food, and we certainly rarely choose to dive into that cuisine for cooking. It requires ingredients not typically found in our kitchen, and a taste palette that we are unaccustomed to balancing. However, the whole purpose of this little exercise is to expand our culinary horizons by dealing with the ingredients that appear on our doorstep. So, I made enchiladas.

Week 11 Box 11

Let it be known that the Rabbi has returned. This of course means that I no longer get the benefit of a full and fruitful box. Ah well, I'm back to my half share and it's probably better for the environment (less veg going to rot) and for this blog (splitting the share with the MIL results in me getting the weird stuff). However, we are coming into the Fall (even though it is still August) which means the "harvest time" is coming. I'm excited for the bounty of new veg that are coming into the season. And this week The Box is starting to reflect it. Here's what we got:

Week 10 Box 10

Many of you have been asking about the status of my finger. Well I'm sorry to say it had to be amputated.... Naw just joshing. It's fine. The Husband and  I went  down the shore as planned which was a lot of fun except for the fact that I had to wear a rubber glove on the beach and couldn't go in the water. Lots of little kids stared trying to figure out what exactly that crazy lady was doing and I am sure lots of parents worried that I had some horrible skin disease. I just tried to relax and keep my hand out of the sun (apparently rubber gloves trap heat).

The Glue they used peeled off a day early and unfortunately the wound hadn't healed all the way. It wasn't gushing or anything just still a little exposed. So of course it has become infected and I'm on antibiotics. Nothing is ever easy, is it? However, I expect to heal acceptably from now on and it cannot come fast enough. I'm sick of the pain every time I forget and hit "l" with the finger while I am typing. Apparently I can compensate on all the other letter but "l" is ingrained as "hit with right ring finger" unless I am paying close attention.

Anyway this week I picked up The Box again. It just happened to coincide nicely with the end of my doctor's appointment.

Here's what we got:

The Number of Hot Peppers in The Box is TOO DARN HIGH

As I said in a previous post Hot Peppers are an interesting but dangerous ingredient. Usually I will add them in small quantities to various recipes of the Spanish/Mexican variety. But when The Box gave me 7 Hot Peppers I was honestly stumped. What exactly do could I make with that much spice that won't kill The Husband by taste-bud overload.

Even I was a little frightened and for lack of a better plan I was going to simply slice and pickle them, saving them to top off sandwiches when the mood arises, maybe add them to a Martini for an interesting flavor twist.  But, although I've been wanting to pickle something for the blog for a long time, I just couldn't bring myself in this case. It felt a little bit like a cop-out. Too easy. So after some time on The Google Machine, and the purchase of a brand new canning kit, I decided to turn this:

Into a sweet and spicy relish. Yum!

Week 5 Box 5

This week I had a nice little change of pace when it came to picking up The Box.  It was not sinister-ly delivered to me by The Husband.  The Husband was working late so... I went. I took the 45 minute trip north through the traffic (and I HATE traffic) to get to my MIL's house where the abundance of veg was waiting for me. Once there my MIL and I lazily divided the contents in almost-half, chit-chatting and catching up, then we went out for a delicious pizza dinner where we discussed the various uses of the various veg we received.  It was delightful and made the following a little less of a conundrum.

When Life Gives You Collard Greens...

Just add bacon! or at least that's what The Google Machine told me, and the almighty Mark Bittman, and that wonderful convicted felon Martha Stewart, and the old faithful Joy of Cooking. Apparently, Collard Greens are so horrific and awful that the only way to consume them is sauteed with enough bacon to drown out the flavor. 

Now I disagree. I like Collard Greens. Whole Foods makes an excellent ready-to-eat Collard Green "side" that I used to eat a big pint of for lunch when I found myself with one of those "never ending" days of school where I never left campus for longer than 15 minutes from 8 a.m. - 8 p.m. Granted, it had bacon in it, but bacon was the supporting actor in the dish and those wonderful bitter greens defiantly took the lead.

However, the one time I brought home that delicious mix of Collards, vinegar, crushed hot pepper and bacon to The Husband (while he was still The Boyfriend) his reaction was lacking the pleasure I found in the dish. I think he probably thought I was trying to poison him.

So when the Collard Greens showed up in The Box this week, I was excited to try and find a non-traditional recipe that did them justice while The Husband, on the other hand wanted to drown it with bacon fat and call it a day. 

Fortunately (after about 7 pages of search results in) I found THIS recipe which met the happy compromise of being different from the Collard Green consensus, but still had bacon. Pleased with my discovery, I set about prepping and modifying the recipe to fit my needs. 

Week 3 Box 3

This week's box contained no major surprises. It was actually a nice sigh of relief after the funeral followed by a wedding weekend The Husband and I had just gone through. The Box Yielded the following:

Kohlrabi!

This is the post you have all been waiting for... Kohlrabi!

When The Husband first brought this monstrosity home with his manic laughter at my general fear, I went straight to The Google Machine and got myself an education. The Google Machine brought me to the ultimate provider of knowledge on the internet, Wikipedia, which informed me of the following:

Kohlrabi (German turnip) (Brassica oleracea Gongylodes group) (Ulkobi in Assamese and Bengali) is a perennial vegetable, and is a low, stout cultivar of cabbage. Kohlrabi can be eaten raw as well as cooked. 

Informative, but not extraordinarily helpful. I didn't really need to know that it came about from genetic selection on the part of farmers who liked the way the fat ugly thing looked. I needed to know what the heck to do with it. Fortunately two items down on The Google list was a New York Times article usefully titled Discovering Kohlrabi (It's a Vegetable). 

In this perfectly helpful  and mildly entertaining article were 5 recipes of varying difficulty: Kohlrabi Home Fries, Kohlrabi Spring Rolls, Kohlrabi Risotto, Kohlrabi Puree and this: A Greek Style Kohlrabi Pie. 

• Me: It's too hot to make and eat risotto
• The Husband: What about home fries?
• Me: It looks way too easy, how about the pie? Kinda looks like Spanakopita, I can handle that. (famous last words, I know) 

So we set to work.

Introduction

The Husband and I, being happy go lucky newlyweds who love to cook, decided that we were going to invest in a CSA Farm Box. OK, maybe it was more like I decided I wanted a Farm Box.  I had had the privilege of consuming some of the amazing foods my BFF Becky created from her box the year before, and it looked like fun and simple enough. So when I heard that my MIL's temple had a Farm Share with Catalapa Ridge Farm I made a deal to split a weekly box with my MIL and convinced The Husband that this was a great idea.  In fairness to Former-Me, it seemed like a really good idea at the time.

Anyway, we received our first box last night and as The Husband laid out the contents before me:

• 1 Cucumber recognizable in shape and form, thank heaven
• 1 heirloom tomato, big and fat and glorious
• 1 bunch of red lettuce
• Onions with the greens still attached
• Rosemary
• Rhubarb
• Green Garlic
• Elephant Garlic Scapes

 I had a minor freak out. 

Now, in fairness to this first box, it wasn't much and the first five items I recognized easily enough but the last three items were totally new to me. What the HECK was I going to do???  The Husband MAY have laughed at me as I frantically began searching the net to figure out proper storage of the above items, and chomping into a random items to try and determine what manner of green they were. After exhausting The Google Machine and experiencing the worst garlic breath I've ever had,  I resorted to picking up the phone and calling the one person whose fault this really was: Becky's. 

That conversation went like this:

• Becky: Hello lovely
• Me: This is all your fault
• Becky: What?
• Me: I did something because I was inspired by you and now I have no idea what to do.
• Becky: What?
• Me: I bought a Farm Box and now I have Rhubarb sitting on my kitchen table and some other veg I don't recognize and YOU ... YOU MADE IT LOOK SO EASY.
• Becky: ::Laughter::

It took a bit to calm me down but with promises to provide me with recipes and resources Becky got my panic under control and, to her relief, got me off the phone.

I created this blog to document my adventures with the Farm Box. I'm sure this will be filled with lots of recipes that will most certainly go wrong and some that will go right. Inevitably some items will be deemed inedible by The Husband and others spoil in the fridge forgotten. But hopefully by the end of this year I will no longer panic when the box walks in the door. That is my goal and I'm sticking to it.

Now please excuse me, I have to go do more research on Rhubarb and Garlic Scapes.