(served topped with feta over rice) – Aug 25
Not pictured: countless Caprese sandwiches, creamy cucumber salad (with sour cream dressing), Swiss chard frittata.
Some Summer Dinners from the Garden – 2020
(served topped with feta over rice) – Aug 25
Category: Cooking
(served topped with feta over rice) – Aug 25
Roasted Tomatoes
I roasted two sheets of tomatoes today. 250F convection oven (on bake) for 30 minutes. They were grape to cocktail size, and that was the right amount of time. I used them to top a tomato tart I made for dinner. So yummy!
Yesterday’s Harvest
The Ping Tung eggplants will be roasted and turned into a salad with goat cheese and pine nuts, and the chard will be turned into sesame chard (a riff on sesame spinach) to accompany Korean steak, served with kimchi, quick-pickled carrots and rice tomorrow. The tomatoes (together with other previously harvested ones) will be used to make a simple sliced tomato salad with basil and parsley to complement Spanish tortilla with chorizo tonight.
Mid-July Harvest
Yesterday’s harvest: five cucumbers, Swiss chard and basil. I had harvested two cucumbers a couple of days earlier, so I used some of them up in last night’s dinner: I made a big Greek salad and served it alongside Mediterranean steak tips (marinated with fresh herbs from the back porch) with yogurt sauce, roasted garlicky eggplant, tahini sauce and rice. That still leaves four cucumbers 🙂
Breakfast
First harvest of 2020: baby greens (arugula, lettuce and kale) plus cilantro from my back porch container garden. I used it to top a fried egg-sandwich made with chili-garlic mayo on homemade sourdough bread. Yum!
(Almost) blank canvas
(Plot March 10)
I switched web hosts and because of a glitch I lost my posts from January and February. But there was not much there, except a post from January 11, where I cooked my last home-grown butternut squash. Roasted with thyme and rosemary, and then turned into soup. Delicious!
Squash
Yesterday, I harvested four more squash. They now cure in our back hallway. The night before – a very rainy and windy Sunday that my poor 17-year-old daughter spent outdoors at the last rowing regatta of the season on the Merrimack river – I had roasted three of the five previously harvested squash and turned half of the roasted pulp into a very tasty butternut squash soup with fried sage and cheese, adapted from this recipe. The soup was the perfect ending to a wet and raw day. I froze the other half of the pulp for future use.
All in all, I have harvested nine butternut squash so far. They weighed in at a total of 21 pounds and 15 ounces. I gave two of them to my neighbor and five are still on the vine – a total of 14.
Roasted Tomatoes
I still have a lot of tomatoes coming in from my community plot. For tonight’s dinner, I slow-roasted some with minced home-grown garlic and fresh thyme (90 minutes at 300F). I then chopped the tomatoes and added them to sauteed (home-grown) shallots and (store-bought) crimini mushrooms. I served everything over penne pasta, topped with grated cheese and fresh basil. No photo of the final dish – it was gone to quickly.
Today’s Harvest
The tomatoes will be used for sandwiches and in a succotash for dinner tonight. The Swiss chard will go into this orzo with caramelized fall vegetables tomorrow night. The peppers will be part of a chili planned for early next week.