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| Day 7, a week late. Oops. I’m a bad, bad blogger. Well, the meal was made on day seven, however the picture didn’t make it off the camera until today. Yeah. Anyway, in all of its glory, I present to you my own creation, a zucchini pasta salad. The idea took form after I realized I could make pasta noodles from zucchini using my mandoline. Since I heavily modify recipes anyway, I’m just going to give you the basics of what I did. Onions were browned in some olive oil, then the tomatoes were added along with the zucchini and a bit of homebrewed beer. While that was simmering, I grilled the chicken and portobello mushrooms. The mix on the stove went into the fridge after the liquid was drained and so did the finished chicken and mushrooms. After everything was well chilled, I brought it out, sliced the chicken and mushrooms, added some local blue cheese on top and finished it off with a blackberry vinegarette (Olive oil, crushed blackberries, red wine vinegar, fresh basil). All the flavors worked well together and it made for a light afternoon lunch. | Zucchini Pasta Salad – My Own Recipe |
| Ingredients Used: *Zucchini – my garden *Tomatoes – Charlestown Farm *Mushrooms – Oley Valley Mushrooms *Cheese – Birchrun Hills Farm *Chicken – Eberly Poultry *Onion – North Star Orchard *Blackberries – Willow Creek |
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Blog Archives
Zucchini Week: Day 7
Posted on 9 August 2009
Zucchini Week: Day 4
Posted on 30 July 2009
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| We move into day four of Zucchini Week with a heavily modified version of our recipe. My mandoline didn’t have a plate that would slice wide but thin slices of zucchini for proper pappardelle noodles (think wide fettuccine), so i went with the square-spaghetti-sized slicer instead. This gave me these awesome zucchini spaghetti noodles and I was just in total awe. Why hadn’t I thought of this before! Ingenius. Michael Chiarello uses a whole bunch of spices and ingredients that I just didn’t have and was not going to go out and buy just for this recipe, so I improvised. A LOT. Sweet smoked Spanish paprika? Grey Salt?! Yeah. I had regular old paprika and table salt, and those worked out just fine. Instead of arugula, I happened to have some red leaf lettuce in the fridge and went with that. The feta is a goat’s milk feta that I’ve been layering on sandwiches all week. I still had two heirloom tomatoes from last week’s farmer’s market run and used those in place of the cherry tomatoes, sliced thin. I didn’t have olives, so they didn’t make it into this dish. Overall though, I think this worked out well and the idea of the recipe is still there. The warm tomatoes and zucchini noodles over lettuce made for a really great, refreshing and light lunch. | Zucchini Pappardelle Salad – Recipe on FoodNetwork.com |
| Ingredients Used: *Zucchini – my garden *Lettuce – Kimberton Whole Foods locally grown *Tomatoes – North Star Orchard *Feta – Amazing Acres |
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Zucchini Week: Day 3
Posted on 29 July 2009
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| Day three! Are you sick of zucchini yet? I’m not! In fact, it’s pretty fun using up zucchini left and right in all these different recipes with the whole meal coming out pretty different every time. Today was a Zucchini Breakfast Casserole, another recipe from Elise’s vast collection. This is the last one from her for the week, I promise! I’ve come to love casseroles because they’re just so easy – put all the ingredients in one dish, bake, refrigerate leftovers to enjoy all week. And, I’m willing to bet that this is just as good the next day as it is fresh. I used a fresh goat’s milk ricotta cheese, basil from my back deck herb planter, and substituted fresh heriloom tomatoes from the farmer’s market. The bread was a “rustic wheat” that was really delicious in sandwiches, but I happened to have just one slice leftover for this recipe. I also added a lump of that spicy chipotle chevre again. There aren’t a lot of ingredients in this one, but the simplicity is what makes it so attractive and delicious. It’s easy and quick to make and goes a long way. | Zucchini Breakfast Casserole – Recipe on SimplyRecipes.com |
| Ingredients Used: *Zucchini – my garden *Basil – my herb garden *Egg – Mt. View Organics *Tomatoes – North Star Orchard *Cheese – Shellbark Hollow Farms *Bread – Oley Baker *Chevre – Amazing Acres |
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Zucchini Week: Day 2
Posted on 28 July 2009
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| Day two of zucchini week brings us to Stuffed Zucchini. As usual, I used the recipe as a guideline and substituted a few things using ingredients found locally. For the ground turkey, I used hot italian turkey sausage. Instead of Parmesan Cheese, I threw in Sharp II Chevre. Tomatoes were both from a local source and even last year’s garden in the form of sun-dried roma tomatoes. Mushrooms are also local mushrooms of the Crimini variety, bought from my favorite farmer’s market. The zucchini used here is a monster zucchini, probably a little past its prime, and a result of a neglectful gardener who didn’t want to go out picking through her garden during the heat, humidity, and thunderstorms we’ve been having lately. However, those three things have given me quite the harvest, so I suppose I shouldn’t complain too much. Now if only I could find a way to combine both zucchini and cucumbers into one dish! | Stuffed Zucchini – Recipe on SimplyRecipes.com |
| Ingredients Used: *Zucchini – my garden *Basil – my herb garden *Egg – Mt. View Organics *Sausage – Mt. View Organics *Onion – North Star Orchard *Tomatoes – North Star Orchard *Cheese – Shellbark Hollow Farms *Mushrooms – Oley Valley Mushrooms |
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OLS: Week 8
Posted on 25 July 2009
Pizza for Week Eight! I saw the post on FarmToPhilly.com about making pizza and I just *had* to! This has become a popular item in the house since the crust is actually done on the grill. I usually do a big batch of them at once and then stick them in the freezer or fridge and throw toppings on later and stick them in the microwave or toaster oven to melt the cheese really quick. It saves time, the crust comes out nice and crispy without using a pizza stone. I’m giving credit to Bobby Flay for this one since we saw it on Food Network a while ago and I thought it was absolute genius. Cooking in the house during the summer is just TOO hot sometimes, so taking everything outside to the grill is a great option. The show featured this recipe, and I really just only use the flatbread part and make my own toppings. On to the ingredients!
Crust: Whole Wheat pastry flour from the Mill at Anselma. Non-local Olive Oil, Salt, Yeast
Toppings: Heirloom Tomatoes and onions (hiding underneath) from the North Star Orchard, Colby Cheese from Agape Acres, and a little basil from the back deck. Couldn’t find a local Mozzarella, and really, all cheese is delicious in my humble opinion, so Colby it was. I didn’t even bother with sauce since the tomatoes were nice and juicy.
The pizza made for a quick and easy meal. I actually botched a batch of the pasta dough from last week by using a bad recipe that had me adding way too much water. I decided to throw in some more flour and gave up after a certain point, added yeast, and let it sit to see if it would work for pizza dough. Happily, it worked out just fine. After the flatbread was grilled up, I turned the heat down low and set the flatbread with toppings off the direct heat, closed the lid, and came back in about 15 minutes. The cheese had melted nicely and it looked perfect.
I have so many ideas for using local ingredients in meals, I feel like there won’t be enough weeks for all of them!
OLS: Week 6
Posted on 10 July 2009
Week six of One Local Summer and it’s almost the mid-point of the thirteen week challenge. The husband decided to take the lead on this week’s meal with no objection from me. In the back is a pile of mashed turnips and carrots with maple sugar added for flavor. Clockwise, next is a Bison Meatloaf using ground bison, tomatoes, garlic scapes, swiss cheese, an egg, and last year’s frozen tomato sauce. Finally, sugar snap peas finish the plate. In the wine glass is a Strawberry wine. It was a great meal, and even better, I didn’t have to cook it!
Rundown of ingredients:
Turnips: Willow Creek Orchards
Carrots: Willow Creek Orchards
Maple Sugar: Miller’s Maple
Bison: Backyard Bison
Garlic Scapes: Willow Creek Orchards
Tomatoes: Lancaster County (via Willow Creek)
Tomato Sauce: My garden, last year
Egg: Pleasant View Farms (via Willow Creek)
Swiss Cheese: Hendricks (via Willow Creek)
Snap Peas: Willow Creek Orchards
Wine: Mount Hope Vineyards