CSA Mixology 101

Photo via Green Thumb White Apron

I spend a lot of time working in the kitchen.  A lot.  Don't get me wrong, I love doing so, but eventually you reach the point of, "Enough!"  So, fellow fledgling chefs, let's kick back for some cocktails!

I've made two of the cucumber salads mentioned in our last post, but I've still got one more cucumber left.  Cukes just seem to say, "Refreshing."  There are a couple of cocktail recipes I've found that leverage that.  Adding in a little basil to reinforce the summer-iness and lime for even more refreshment, you can make an awesome gimlet.  Or, for something a bit more refined, how about a cognac cocktail?

Photo via Food.com

This week, we will have more blueberries and another awesome cantaloupe.  Obviously these two can pair up to make a colorful, delicious fruit salad, but how about another cocktail or two?  Fresh berries are an incredible bar ingredient.  Something refreshing with blueberries and mint, maybe?  Or, for the more serious mixologist, something with absinthe?

As for the cantaloupe, its gorgeous color can be brought to full bloom in a Fiery Torch.  Or how about a glowing orange cantaloupe martini?

In any case, hand off your keys, get the blender or the shaker, and let's have a few!

Photo via Rachel Ray Magazine

Time to Cool Off

Yes, it's too early to start complaining about the heat. But I'm going to anyway. I guess I'm just a wimp. While I am no fan of winter, I would rather be too cold than too hot. So what am I to do to keep cool as it gets warmer and warmer?

Thankfully, we have cucumbers. The saying, "cool as a cucumber," is definitely based in fact.  Eating them definitely makes you feel cooler. And what better way to eat them than in a cucumber salad.

Photo via Bon Apétit

Like coleslaw, the debate about cucumber salad revolves around using the cream-based dressing or a vinegar-based dressing. We've had this discussion before.  While I remain strongly in the vinegar camp for coleslaw, I'm pretty equally divided when it comes to cucumber salad. My favorite is the one my mother made when I was a child, and I guess a lot of us have dishes like that. Her cucumber salad was very simple: peel the cumbers, slice thinly, optionally add a green or yellow onion also sliced thinly, and a bunch of chopped fresh dill. The dill has to be fresh. Has to. Put in a small squirt of olive oil, salt and pepper, and cover the cucumbers with white vinegar. It's great after a couple of hours, and perfect the next day.

Here are some more cucumber salad recipes, and I've included ones from both sides of the argument.

• I still have half a bunch of radishes from a week ago that I need to use up. I'm planning on trying this recipe this week.
• I remember buying tahini for some recipe once. I had to buy a big jar, even though I only needed a tablespoon or two. I wondered what the heck to do with all the extra tahini. It makes some pretty good cookies, but the real find was using it in a cucumber salad dressing.
• You can shell some of the peas from this week's box for this creamy cucumber salad.
• When it gets really hot out there, this crab and cucumber salad will be super refreshing!
• And I guess, technically, tzatziki sauce is a kind of cucumber salad...

Photo via Simply Recipes

Crudités, Anyone?

Another item that can move grease off of the game day buffet is utterly simple:  crudités, or, simply, cut up veggies with dip.  Pick up some carrots and anything else that looks appetizing at the store this week, and either put out your favorite salad dressing with it, set out some hummus, or use this utterly simple dip.  My mom has been making it since the beginning of time, I believe.

Thanks, mom, for the recipe.

Photo via Saveur

Vegetable Dip With Dill

Ingredients:

• 3/4 cup mayonnaise (light mayo works just fine)
• 1/2 cup sour cream (again, fat free is just fine)
• 1 tablespoon dried onion or 
• 1 teaspoon onion powder
• 1 tablespoon dried dill weed (double for fresh)

Directions:

Stir it all together.  finis.  It's better, though, if it can sit in the fridge for a day or two prior to serving to allow flavors to integrate.

Family Secrets

We've all got them, right?  Some treasured family secret recipe somewhere.  I gave you one of mine in my first post on kohlrabi.  I'll give you another one now:  my mom's German potato salad, with a couple of my own tweaks.  Potatoes are another almost-every-week kind of staple, and we're in the midst of cucumber season, too.  So, without further ado:

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 lbs. assorted potatoes, either peeled or unpeeled, sliced into bite-sized 1/4" disks
• 1/2 cucumber, peeled and sliced 1/8" thick
• 2 scallions, sliced 1/8" thick
• 3 slices thick-cut bacon, sliced crosswise into thin strips
• 1/4 cup flour
• 1/4 to 1/2 cup white vinegar, to taste
• 1 teaspoon sugar, to taste
• Salt & pepper
• Kettle of boiling water

Yes, you need to slice a number of ingredients thinly.  Yes, the mandoline will make that fast and easy.  No, you may not use it without the safety glove.

Directions

• Boil potatoes in salted water until tender but not soft.  Since you're cooking the potatoes after they're sliced, they will cook quickly.

• Crisp the bacon, reserving fat.  You should have about 1/4 cup.  Remove bacon to a paper towel and make gravy from the bacon drippings.  Add half the flour to the bacon fat with salt and pepper, whisk.  Gradually add remaining flour to create a roux, and allow to darken a little.  Add sugar and 1/4 cup vinegar to roux, then gradually add boiling water, stirring, to create a medium-thickness gravy.  Adjust vinegar, sugar, salt and pepper to taste.

• Toss together potatoes, scallions, cucumber, and crisped bacon.  Pour over half the gravy, toss.  Add more gravy and toss again until you get the desired consistency.

• Ta da!  Serve either cooled or warm.  And yes, it'll be better tomorrow.

Potato salad is the sort of dish where nearly every family has their own favorite.  I asked around Nall's and Vanessa had a really good one, too:

I used about 6-8 red potatoes, cut in small cubes, tossed in olive oil and red wine vinegar then lined then up in a deep cookie sheet and bake for 50-60 mins at 400. While potatoes are baking, take about 4 ears of corn and cut off cob. Chop up 2-3 spring onions and toss with corn. When you take out the potatoes, sprinkle with sea salt and toss with mayo to your liking while the potatoes are hot and add in the spring onions and corn. Refrigerate for about an hour before serving. You can also add bacon!

 I've got a couple of other potato salad recipes that I really like as well.  This one is sort of an Alsatian take on my German potato salad, using pancetta and brown butter.  It's my go-to pot luck dish.  This one is similar and on my list to try.  Here's a creamy, lemony one that's very good too.

Do you mind sharing your "secret" potato salad recipe?

Cucumber Salad just screams, "Summer!"

                                   

Another dish that brings back summer days is cucumber salad.  If you remember our post on coleslaw, the debate was vinegar vs. cream-based dressings.  Cucumber salad is much the same premise.  Slice the veggies really thin, then let them marinate in a dressing overnight.  If you found a dressing that works for your coleslaw, then by all means repurpose it for cucumber salad!  I will say that, in my experience, cucumber salads have more add-ins beyond cucumbers than coleslaws do beyond cabbage.

My go-to cucumber salad is one my mom used to make, and it uses some of the fantastic spring onions that were also in last weekend's box.  Slice both the cukes and onions very thin.  I use a mandoline, and it gets the job done in a real jiffy.  A word of caution:  The blade of a mandoline is incredibly sharp.  Never, ever, ever, *EVER* use it without either the included safety guard, or a kevlar glove.  Trust me on this, I have had several trips to the emergency room while learning to use my mandoline and I don't want you to have the same problem.  And isn't that what always gets them on Top Chef? After slicing your veggies, take some dill weed from your herb pots (how are they doing, by the way?) and chop that as well.  So you have:

                         

The dressing is simplicity itself:  

a little squirt of olive oil,

a few tablespoons of white vinegar (to taste), 

salt & pepper, 

and a little water. 

 Put it in a sealable container, shake it up, and let it seep in the fridge overnight.  This is something you'll find in my refrigerator pretty much continuously from now through September or so.

One raging debate about cucumber salad is whether or not to remove the seeds.  I find that when they're sliced thin, you don't have to.  If your recipe calls for more chunky pieces of cucumber, then you probably want to slice it the long way and scoop out the seed compartment with a spoon.  Cukes can definitely be enjoyed skin-on, but in salads I usually peel them.  Pickling cukes, though, traditionally have a thinner skin and are just fine left unpeeled. You don't just have to turn them into pickles! When we just cut them up and serve them at the table with a sprinkle of salt, my 5-year-old loves "stripy" ones (peel half the skin off, leaving a striped pattern along the cuke.)

Have you found any good dressings for cabbages and cucumbers?  I've made this one with tahini (you can find it at most upper-end grocers) which is really interesting.  Here's a creamy one on my list to try with our most recent cache of cukes.  Of course, the ultimate cucumber salad dressing is tzatziki sauce.  This tuna salad has cucumbers in it too, making it really refreshing for lunch on really hot days.

Please share any of your favorites in the comments section!

Juice It Up!

So this Monday I had the pleasure of partnering with Pat Backe of Senior Fall Prevention and Kingstowne Pilates to host a Juicing With Greens workshop at the Kingstowne Center for Active Adults.  It was a fantastic class with lots of hilarity (a juiced apple spurting across the room) and extreme randomness (ginger root pilfering), but the juices that Pat whipped up for all of us were fantastic.  So since much of the ingredients focused on seasonal items that we're all getting right now, I thought I'd share the two recipes from Monday with you.  If you don't have a juicer, you can still use a blender to make these items, though I'd recommend peeling the items first, and just know that they won't be as smooth and pulp free as if you were using a juicer.  But no matter what equipment you have, just be sure to wash all of your fruits and vegetables well beforehand.

ABC (Apple-Beet-Carrot) Juice

Serves 1

Ingredients:
1 apple (we used Suncrisp)
2 beets
3 large carrots
1" knob of ginger, peeled
Handful of kale, spinach or even toss in the beet greens

Kale-Aid Juice

Serves 1-2

Ingredients:
5 large kale leaves
1-2 cucumbers
1 lemon, peeled
1 apple (we used Suncrisp)
1" knob of ginger, peeled (for more kick add 2 or 3 pieces of ginger)
1-2 large celery ribs

For both recipes, wash your ingredients well, then cup them up as needed to fit through the chute of your juicer or to make blending easier.  Juice the ingredients in the order they're listed and serve immediately with or without ice.

Cucumber Mint Gin & Tonic

While I highly considered making some mint & cucumber water for a lovely detox with last week's Crop Share, I had that sad bottle of gin sitting on my counter, just looking at me longingly.  So I used up the last of the bottle to experiment with a mint & cucumber infused gin.  On a date night out with the Mister recently, I'd had this great mint & cucumber cocktail, so I was on a quest to recreate it.  I dare say I succeeded.  Super easy to make and this is the ultimate in refreshing summer cocktails.

Cucumber Mint Gin & Tonic

Ingredients for infused gin:
Gin
15-20 fresh, mint leaves
8 slices cucumber

Fill a mason jar with gin and add mint leaves and cucumber slices.  Seal lid and allow to infuse in fridge for at least 1 day up to 3 days.  Discard mint and cucumbers when finished.

Ingredients for cocktail (makes 1 cocktail):
1 shot cucumber & mint infused gin
8 oz club soda
slice of cucumber, for garnish
slice of lime, for garnish

In a double old fashioned glass, add 1 shot of infused gin and top with club soda to fill glass.  Garnish glass with a slice of cucumber and lime.  Cheers!

Cucumber Cool & Minty Fresh

With the combo of mint and cucumber in this week's Crop Share, it'll be a passport to cool and refreshing.  If you need a bit of a detox, slice up some cucumber, lemon and toss it in a pitcher of ice water with a bundle of mint leaves.  Allow it to set up for a bit in the fridge and then enjoy your 8 glasses of water a day with an added detox boost.

But if you're looking for something a tad more substantial, try these two delicious looking recipes from Eating In Instead and A House In The Hills.  Both call for honey, so grab some local honey in store to help battle allergies while you nosh away!

Cool Cucumber Mint Salad via Eating In Instead

 Cucumber & Mint Slushie via A House In The Hills

Potato Salad With Cucumber, Rocket Greens & Smoked Salmon

With the hot and humid temperatures this week, I've been craving light and fresh salads.  But when it comes to the Mister a typical dinner salad isn't exactly his cup of tea.  However, over the winter we stumbled upon this gem of a salad that he swears he could eat every night.  Throw some potatoes in a salad and everyone is happy!  It's a quick and easy weeknight dinner, and he even whipped it up for me when I was leveled with pneumonia early in the year (photographic proof below!).  So this will be a great way for you to use up the cucumber and potatoes in this week's share.  We adapted it from Martha Stewart's Potato Salad with Celery, Cress and Bacon, so absolutely check out her version as it is equally as delicious, and well, it has bacon in it.  'Nuff said.

Potato Salad with Cucumber, Rocket Greens & Smoked Salmon

Ingredients:
1.5 lbs medium potatoes, cubed
Coarse salt & fresh ground black pepper
7 Tbsp olive oil, divided
2 Tbsp white wine vinegar
1 packet smoked salmon, shredded into bite-sized pieces
1 cucumber, thinly sliced
3 cups rocket greens/arugula (or a spring mix)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.  Toss cubed potatoes in 2 Tbsp olive oil and season with salt & pepper.  Spread onto a baking sheet and bake in oven for 30-45 minutes or until potatoes are golden brown and fork-tender.  Remove from oven and allow to cool for 3-5 minutes.

In a small bowl, whisk together vinegar and remaining 5 Tbsp olive oil, and season with salt & pepper to taste.

In a large bowl, toss together salmon, cucumber and rocket greens.  Fold in potatoes and pour dressing over   top, tossing to evenly coat.  Add additional salt & pepper to taste, if desired.

Can also use celery or thinly sliced fennel in place of cucumber to let this salad carry you through the seasons.

Adapted from Martha Stewart: (http://www.marthastewart.com/904197/potato-salad-celery-cress-and-bacon)

Cucumber Avocado Tea Sandwiches With Dill & Mint

If you all are like me, you've been glued to the TV the past couple of weeks watching every event for the Olympics. I am watching sports that I would never sit down and watch, but all of a sudden they seem so fascinating. If you are going to be having friends over this weekend to watch the closing ceremonies, these mini cucumber sandwiches will be ever so appropriate and fit for a queen.

Ingredients for the spread:
2 ripe avocados, kept cold in the fridge
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup chopped cucumber
2 tablespoons fresh chopped mint
2 tablespoon fresh chopped dill

To view the rest of this recipe, please visit: http://www.theppk.com/2011/07/cucumber-avocado-tea-sandwiches-with-fresh-herbs/

Melon Cucumber Lime Infused Water

Cucumber is one of the most refreshing vegetables out there. They're great to snack on alone or with a little pepper. One of our favorite things to do with it is add slices of it to water or cocktails (replace lime  in your gin & tonic with a slice of cucumber, it'll change your world!) This infused water recipe is great to keep in your fridge for hot days!

Ingredients:
Honeydew Melon, 1/4 of a melon sliced into thin slices
1 lime, sliced into thin slices
1/2 cucumber, sliced into thin slices
Mint leaves
Water

Click through to view the rest of the recipe at:  http://www.dashofeast.com/2012/05/melon-cucumber-lime-infused-water-in-time-for-cinco-de-mayo/