Plum Bread Pudding

Plum Bread Pudding

It’s September! WTF, right? Summer is almost over and everyone’s heading back to school, picking up more work, just plain buckling down. I’m pretty much out of cooking time myself, but those CSA shares keep on coming. This is a quick breakfast or dessert to use some of our perfectly ripe plums, golden eggs, and a dried-out Fairway baguette.  Though the recipe is sized for a loaf pan and about 4 generous servings, but you can also make it bigger or divide the ingredients into individual cups. For a 9×13″ pudding, double the recipe and bake 1 hour.  For 6 small cups, use the same amounts but reduce the cooking time to 15 or 20 minutes. You can make this ahead of time and serve it cold or at room temperature, or dig into it straight out of the oven. It’s easy, cheap, between-seasons seasonal cooking. Make this in honor of your frugal grandma.

-Moriah Continue reading

Cucumbers in Scallion Sauce

Whenever I go to Grand Sichuan, I order their Cucumbers in Scallion Sauce dish. The cool cucumber chunks bathed in this sesame-scented emerald sauce are even better than their fabled soup dumplings. Really.

So I had to re-create this dish when I got my hands on our lovely yellow cucumbers. The sauce is basically a pesto made with my trusty immersion blender, but you could also use a food processor or mortar and pestle. This version tastes pretty close to the original, but my scallions were pale and a little bitter, which serves me right for not getting them at the farm. Lesson learned, universe! I’ll be stocking up on Saturday and making this again. Continue reading

Corn and Basil Chowder

Guys, we get corn this week! Are you as excited as I am? Maybe you will be if you have a nice, easy corn recipe to try. This is not really chowder, but it sounds so much nicer than calling it a soup.

This is my old faithful variation on a corn, basil, and tomato salad that I will post when we have tomatoes. Instead, I flesh this out with pimentòn de la vera. The barest hint of smoke and spice adds a bacon-esque richness to what is otherwise a very lean soup; a squeeze of lime brightens the flavors. Making a stock from the cobs and basil stems gives the soup a little more depth.

I made sure to keep boiling time to a minimum, since the entire point of summer cooking is to stay away from the stove whenever possible.  Continue reading

Purslane, Cucumber, and Marigold Salad

One of my favorite things about our CSA is the unusual vegetables in each share. I like to think it forces us out of our cooking comfort zone a little, and we get to try foods we might otherwise pass by. This past week’s share had a few of those little gems.

Purslane has a tart, citrusy flavor and has higher Omega-3 levels than any other leafy green. You can add raw stems and leaves to greens, pasta or grain salads, or you can lightly saute them.

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Raw Kale Salad (wait, hear me out)

Was your second week of CSA season as crazy as mine? I feel like I’ve been home about 20 minutes total in the past few days, and I haven’t gotten to do as much cooking as I’d hoped. I must admit, I have a bundle of chard and a cup of gooseberries still waiting for some attention, and I haven’t even a shadow of a plan for the 4th.

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