Colcannon with Bacon

Serve with Bacon, Ham, Canadian Bacon or Sausage

Recipe by Robin

Colcannon! I’ve never made it and wasn’t planning on it. But our weekly food shares have delivered cabbage and potatoes for weeks. I’m not keeping up cooking-wise. Plus, St. Paddy’s day is right around the corner. I’m usually way to busy to coordinate an Irish treat on this holiday, but colcannon can be as simple as the two main ingredients plus butter and a few scallions. Proportions are forgiving, depending on quantities on hand. And yes! It’s perfect comfort food for chilly winter into spring weather!

Sharmoula

Served as Dip = Sharmoula

Recipe by A. and Robin

I messed up. When trying to recreate my cousin A.’s delicious sharmoula, a traditional Libyan salad, memory didn’t quite serve. I got the ingredients right. I cut them right. I adjusted the proportions to maximize deliciousness. I made an acceptable substitution of green onions for red. I made it with love like A. said to. BUT, “Wait, you put the bread IN the salad?” asked A. when I sent a photo. I’d forgotten that the bread goes on the side, to serve like a dip. Still, my salad saved my days-old bread quite tastily.

Asian Slaw

Colorful and Healthful

Recipe by Robin

A craving for a slaw that would be a perfect foil for parchment baked salmon engulfed me. Especially since I had 1½  lbs. of salmon in the freezer, caught and flash-frozen by my work colleague’s kids in Alaska last season. One does not want such a generous and delicious gift to go to waste. I got a little carried away (inspiration knows no seasons), and included cilantro, which is decidedly not in season, though readily available in the market. A better choice would have been parsley, currently growing in my garden, or simply skipping the little green addition. The cabbage, carrots, green onions, sesame seeds, and exotic dressing will carry the dish with little reduction, unless you happen to be crazy about cilantro as I am.

Cashew Chicken Salad with Mandarin Oranges

A Salad for All Seasons

Recipe Inspired by Cooking Light

In the middle of winter, comfort foods abound. Yet, after months of hefty fare, along comes an unseasonably warm and sunny day, and we suddenly crave fresh raw veggies. This winter veggie salad is a nutritional powerhouse, good for boosting immunity during the winter months. Cabbage is high in Vitamins A, K, and B6, plus 20 flavonoids and 15 phenols. Carrots are loaded with beta carotene and antioxidants. Bean sprouts contain lots of iron, copper, and other minerals. Ginger aids digestion and warms the body from within, a good addition to a wintertime salad.

Turkey and Veggie Meatloaf

Turkey Loaf Requires a Variety of Fall Veggies

Recipe adapted from The Cooking Decade

It’s that turkey time of year here in the US, and the colder weather makes me crave more comfort foods. Yet, it would be smartest not to gain weight before December’s usual slide into decadence. This spinoff from classic beef-and-onion meatloaf is chock full of healthful veggies and lower-fat ground turkey. My sister clipped this recipe from an unknown source many years ago. She presented it to me in a binder of family favorite recipes a few years back. She claimed to be starting her second “non-cooking decade,” and since I was just starting to cook family recipes, she dubbed this binder “The Cooking Decade.” Her kids loved eating this turkey loaf while they were growing up, and so will yours. Turkey Veggie Loaf is perfect for this time of year because it's hearty enough to stand up to cold weather and also takes advantage of the last of this  year's red pepper harvest. 

Salsa Fresca: Fresh Tomato Salsa

Serve with Other Classic Mexican Garnishes

Recipe by Robin

I have a confession to make. I’ve never actually made salsa fresca before. It seems like a no-brainer recipe for a gardener in these days of abundant tomatoes, peppers, and cilantro, but I thought that there must be some tricks to salsa besides fresh veggies. And indeed there are: a couple of aromatics, a bit of acidic flavoring, and some salt. That’s it. The other reason I’ve not made salsa is the mystery of what to eat with it. I don’t want to encourage myself to eat lots of tortilla chips. And being spoiled by the variety of authentic Mexican food available in the neighborhood, I’ve not been motivated to develop my Mexican cooking skills. But tonight I’m making Parmesan-breadcrumb encrusted broiled sole, a recipe from a cooking class way back in May. Fresh salsa will perk up the visual appeal of this fish as well as complimenting its flavor.

Simply Braised Greens

Braised Greens with Rice and Turkey

Recipe by Robin

As readers who follow my Recipe Links by Month posts know, I’ve been trying to come up with a recipe for simple braised greens all summer. Flavoring the greens without overpowering them, while keeping the recipe simple, has been my goal. The secret, I knew, was a zippy braising liquid with a balanced combination of sweet, sour, bitter, pungent, and salty flavors. I’d been off on unsatisfying broth-and-lemon and ginger-and-raspberry-vinegar tangents for some time. Then sweet red peppers began ripening at the same time that our CSA provided a bunch of green onions—plus loads of assorted greens. The sweetness of the peppers contrasting with the bitter pungency of green onions is key to this dish—along with a significant amount of garlic.

Scalloped Potatoes

Just Like Mom's, but with Green Onions & Gold Potatoes

Recipe inspired by Mom

My mom’s delicious cooking is one of my earliest and most persistent memories. When I was very young, she made the most tantalizing delights on her old electric stove, teaching me the various methods of preparation by osmosis: baking, broiling, boiling, and frying. This was before anyone in New England had heard of stir-frying or steaming (except for suet puddings), and before anyone I knew had an electric frying pan, if they were even invented yet. One of Mom’s old time recipes, often served with ham or beef, was scalloped potatoes. Although they weren’t my favorite back then, recent work stress brought on a craving for this classic comfort food. So I put together a recipe like hers…kind of.

Pasta with Onion, Green Garlic, Sundried Tomato, and Basil

Top with Parmesan Cheese, or Not

Recipe by Robin

Most great cooks love improvising from written recipes with inspired and/or wacky ideas. Not only does improvising tickle the cook’s creative bones, it’s also a practical way to deal with an overly enthusiastic garden and odd bits of leftovers in the kitchen. As case in point, I’ve just reinvented my classic “cheap fare” recipe, Pasta a l’Olio.  I incorporated a backlog of onions and green garlic from our CSA, a bounty of CSA basil from this week, and dried tomatoes from our last year’s garden harvest. Soon this year’s tomatoes will be ripe for drying, so I used a rather large amount from last year along with some tomato paste. You could reduce the quantity of dried tomatoes, and/or add some fresh tomatoes or tomato sauce. We’re improvising here, eh?

Cold Summer Borscht: Chlodnik

When Stirred, It Gets Pinker

Recipe by The Art of Polish Cooking

Third in a trio of seasonal beet soups, this borscht features the summertime bounty of old world Poland, the country of my ancestors. Simple borscht, a wintery dish served hot, is made from shredded beets and seasoned beef broth. Spring borscht is served at room temperature. It contains young sliced beets with their greens, along with young dill and green onions, lemon, sour cream, and eggs. Summer borscht is served chilled. In addition to the ingredients in spring borscht it contains meat, shrimp, and cucumbers of the plentiful summer season.

Spring Borscht: Bocwinka

Borscht with Springtime Goodies

Recipe Adapted from The Art of Polish Cooking

Until last August, I was afraid of beet soups, and had never eaten them. Early childhood memories of watching my grandmother from Poland make dark, foreboding soups (that I never tasted) made me cautious. Because my cooking goals for both 2011 and 2012 included exploring my Polish family cooking roots, learning to make beet soup was inevitable. Especially since we get loads of beets in our CSA share.