Salad bar: tomatoes, bruschetta, scarlet queen turnips, and radicchio

Some of these photos are from a couple of weeks ago. (You can tell because they have tomatoes.)

Here's a simple salad of chopped tomatoes, ground pepper and a bit of good olive oil.

Greek salad: tomatoes, cucumbers, yellow pepper, and feta, dressed with salt, pepper, and olive oil.

Bruschetta with a dried tomato spread and feta.

Now for some more recent salads. The first has mesclun, sliced raw scarlet queen turnips, chopped tomatillos, pepitas, feta, and a dressing made with dijon mustard, olive oil, and white wine vinegar.

Finally, a salad with roasted radicchio.

Washed and quartered, then brushed with olive oil and sprinkled with salt and pepper.

After roasting in a 400 degree oven, for 6 minutes on each side.

I chopped the radicchio and added sliced strawberries, pistachios, and balsamic vinegar.

Husband usually doesn't like radicchio, but did not mind this preparation. It wasn't his favorite salad, as he found it a bit too acidic from all of the balsamic vinegar, but he didn't find the radicchio bitter as he usually does. Overall, a win.

Roasted veggies: cauliflower, potatoes, and carrots with fennel and apples

The other night, we roasted lots of vegetables: a head of orange cauliflower, some potatoes (made using the Hasselback potato recipe I posted last week), and a melange of carrots, fennel and apples.

I prepared the cauliflower by taking off the leaves, washing it, and trimming the stem. Then I brushed it with olive oil and seasoned it with salt and some hot pepper flakes.

I also chopped up two apples, some carrots, and two fennel bulbs.

Then mixed them with olive oil, salt, pepper, and chopped rosemary.

Since the Hasselback potatoes cook at 425, I cooked everything at that temperature.

The potatoes need attention at 30 minutes and 60 minutes, then are done at 70 minutes. I checked the other veggies at those intervals as well. I stirred the apples, carrots, and fennel at 30 minutes as well, then pulled it from the oven around an hour. If I were making it again, I'd cook it at a lower temperature, or I'd add the apples later in the cooking time. The sugar from the apples burned on the bottom of the pan in areas where there were fewer veggies, but they still turned out fine.

Here's the roasted cauliflower.

I served the potatoes and cauliflower with non-fat greek yogurt to which I had added chopped chives, salt and pepper.

The roasted cauliflower was good cold as leftovers. I had never roasted a whole head of cauliflower before. I would definitely do it again.

Sunday lunch: quiche with leeks and dried tomatoes, corn muffins, and gazpacho

For lunch today, I made a quiche with leeks and dried tomatoes. I sautéed the leeks first. The dried tomatoes were from the freezer. (See this post for the basic quiche recipe that I use.) The cheese was mimosa, a young cheese, that I bought in a local Brazilian store.

I also made corn muffins, using the recipe from the Joy of Cooking. I'm not going to type it in here, because I was unhappy with how they turned out. While they tasted good, they didn't rise at all, just spreading out on the muffin tin.

We also had gazpacho with lunch, probably the last one of the season, given that we're not getting tomatoes anymore.

The best part of making too much food for lunch is that there are leftovers, which I can use to pack lunches this week.

Links: nut milks and butters, caramelized leeks, and tomato-orange soup

I've been buying almond milk lately, to make refrigerator oatmeal. The original recipe for refrigerator oatmeal is linked in this post. I usually put equal parts of oats and almond milk in a jar to sit in the fridge overnight, usually about 3/4 cup of each, then add fruit in the morning before eating. I've been having it cold during the summer. In the winter, I might warm it up.

Even with the organic versions of almond milk, there's a long list of ingredients. I just saw this post about how to make nut milks (and butters) without all of the additional random chemical ingredients. I definitely want to try making it on my own.

Husband tried this recipe for caramelized leeks and recommends it. A photo of his dinner that included the leeks:

Elephants Deli recipe for tomato-orange soup. Elephants Deli was the inspiration for the "Oregon salad" that I make. I didn't have their soup while traveling through the Portland airport, but I'd like to try making a fresh tomato soup. (I still have many plum tomatoes from my mom's garden, and the weather is turning cool enough to think about eating hot soup.)

This recipe for butternut squash bread pudding looks good. Perhaps a bit dense. Sister-in-law recommends Smitten Kitchen's butternut squash and caramelized onion galette.

What's in the box, 10/2/14 edition

Today's box continues the move into the fall season.

In this week's box: leeks, sage, kale, mesclun, oak leaf lettuce, orange cauliflower, butternut squash, breakfast radishes, hakurei turnips, and scarlet queen turnips.

Thinking about combining the sage with the butternut squash in some form, with some brown butter, maybe some bread and cheese in some type of casserole/bread pudding. 

Some of the leeks might end up in a quiche. The kale will be made into pesto. 

Recently, we made fancy ramen with the last batch of hakurei turnips and their greens (no greens this week):

With the colder weather, more ramen might be ahead for us and the hakurei turnips.

Quince jelly

The husband came home with three small quince recently. Together, the quince weighed just a quarter of a pound. I decided to make quince jelly, adapting this recipe for the small amount that I had.

I cut the quince in small pieces, using everything but the seeds.

Then covered them with some water.

Brought it to a boil, then back to a simmer, cooking for about 15-20 minutes.

Then strained off the liquid. I let it sit for over an hour to fully drain.

I had 2/3 cup of liquid, to which I added just over 1/2 cup of sugar. I brought it to a boil, then cooked it for about 7 minutes. If there were more of the mixture, it probably would have taken longer.

Then I put it in a jar. Here's a photo before I capped it. 

I didn't bother processing the jar in boiling water. There wasn't enough to do it, plus it was such a small amount that it will be eaten soon.

Tomatillo and peach salsa

My garden was a complete failure this year. A mix of weeds, lack of time, and a woodchuck contributed. However, my compost bins were quite productive. We had a huge vine grow in one of our compost bins, resulting in all of the decorative gourds you see below.

On the right of the photo are several tomatillos. While the garden didn't produce any tomatoes, the tomatillos that seed themselves every year did grow well in the weed patch. I never planted tomatillos; they came from compost after I got some in my Land's Sake CSA many years ago.

Finally, there's a lone plum tomato in the photo. A tomato plant grew out the side of our other compost bin, the only tomato plant that produced this year.

I used this batch of tomatillos in a salsa, mixing together a chopped peach, the chopped tomatillos, some chopped cilantro, the juice of half of a lime, salt, and a small bit of olive oil.

We used it with some fried plantains...

...and some scallops.

Husband had his on fish, but I don't have a photo of that.

I made the salsa just 15 minutes before we were going to eat, as I didn't want it to get mushy.