Monday, June 23, 2008

All kinds of food pics

I'm sticking all these recipes in one post, so those of you who are disinterested can just skim it. Or just peek at the pictures, some of which are surprisingly bad. Hey, we were in a hurry to start eating!!

We started out this CSA week with a big winner: Garlic Scape Pesto. I followed the recipe given there. Well, mostly. Oh, heck, you know I made a few changes:

Ingredients:

7 garlic scapes, chopped into approx. 2" pieces
Fresh parsley (I'd guess about 2 tablespoons chopped, but I didn't chop it since it was just going into the food processor, so I'm really not sure)
3/4 cup olive oil
scant 1 cup Parmesan cheese

Directions:

Put the garlic scapes, parsley, and olive oil into a food processor and process until smooth(ish...it doesn't turn out perfectly smooth).

Stir in Parmesan cheese and serve over pasta. I choose gnocchi since it's a favorite with my twins. The pesto turns out very thick, so it was a good match to a heavy pasta.


A quick note about this picture: the sauce turns out to be a delicate green, and I just couldn't get it to show up on the camera. Either the overhead lights or flash blew-out the color too much, or without extra light, it was too shadowy. I took this picture standing near the window, holding the plate at about a 45 degree angle to catch the right natural lighting. All so you could appreciate the green color! Of course, then I was so worried about my food falling off the plate I ended up not getting a great picture anyway. But the color is pretty, isn't it?

_________________________________

Served with the pesto, we had Garlic Scape Bread. Basically it was garlic bread where I used minced garlic scapes in place of garlic powder.


Looks pretty, doesn't it? Well, it wasn't garlicy enough for me. I'd add some extra garlic powder in additon to the scapes if I made this again. The delicate garlic scape flavor was wasted on garlic bread. Oh well. I mean, it was slightly garlicy buttery bread, so it was still yummy, but this won't replace my normal garlic bread recipe!

___________________________

Here it is, my first big CSA failure. Garlic scape soup. The recipe is all the way at the bottom of the page listed, if anyone wants to waste their garlic scapes on this substandard meal. It was gritty and unfinished tasting. TK and I thought it was a good soup base...it might have been good with some chicken and rice or veggies added. But as it was: uninspired. It doesn't even look good:

_____________________________

But no worries, things quickly turned back in a positive direction. We went strawberry picking with Snickollet (and her kids and friend), plus both moms and baby of Two Moms and Baby. Taking my inspiration from those delightful strawberries and the latest CSA haul, I threw together this salad:


The salad contained spinach, lettuce, radish, purple scallions, hard boiled eggs, and sliced strawberries. What made it really outstanding was the homemade Strawberry Vinaigrette dressing. I followed the linked recipe, except I subbed about 1/2 teaspoon fresh lemon thyme for the tarragon, and I forgot about the sugar (oops! That was an unintentional oversight, but I didn't miss it...)

___________________________

And one last recipe, Roasted Spring Turnips, Snap Peas, and Garlic Scapes.

I found a recipe at a neat blog about eating locally (on the West Coast, but hey, we've got the same stuff here on the East Coast!) and followed the recipe pretty closely. I loved the lemon zest, and I used a lemon pepper herb mix. The garlic scapes were my favorite part as they got a little crispy in some parts and slightly carmelized. Lovely!

____________________

So that's it. For now. Well, I've got to get started on dinner...more CSA inspired creations!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

GARLIC POWDER?
Card, do yourself a favor and start making your garlic bread w/ real garlic! You will never look back!
:)

Mary Ellen said...

I just got a load of "garlic chives" -- I wonder if I can use them in your pesto? Hmm. I'm going to try it!! Will let you know... (Thanks for the recipe!)

Mommy, Esq. said...

A friend of mine who does CSA also did a recent post on garlic scape. She did pesto too!

http://dandelionsinmygarden.blogspot.com/2008/06/great-scape.html

Anonymous said...

Your facebook status updates about food have been interesting so I checked out your blog to see more about the CSA... Glad I did because we made the garlic scape pesto yesterday and LOVED it. Had never found a scape recipe that was worth it before. Yum. Thanks. :-)
Dana