Use Your Booty: Orzo with Arugula and Chive Blossoms

This is another non-recipe recipe, but that's the way market meals tend to go, isn't it?

We ate this dish hot, like a pasta main course, but it would be pretty great at room temperature as a pasta salad too. Don't skimp on the chive blossoms: they're pretty and they taste great!

Orzo with Arugula and Chive Blossoms

Serves four as an entrée and six as a side dish

• 1 pound orzo pasta (substitute another small pasta shape if you can't find orzo)
• 2 bunches arugula, rabe, chard, mizuna, spinach (after the leaves are stripped off the stems you should have 6-8 cups of loosely packed leaves - I used some finely chopped Swiss chard stems too - those are the reddish bits you see)
• a dozen chive blossoms (or 1/4 cup of mined chives)
• 1/4 ounce parmesan cheese, finely grated
• high quality extra virgin olive oil

Strip the greens leaves from their stems and then chop the leaves. In a large skillet over medium-high heat, sauté the greens in a little olive oil until they are wilted and softened - about 5 minutes or so. Turn off the heat.

Meanwhile, boil the pasta in plenty of salted water until it's cooked to your preferred doneness. before draining the pasta, reserve about a cup of cooking water.

In the skillet, combine the drained pasta, the parmesan cheese and enough pasta water to sauce things up. Stir in the chive blossoms and taste for salt and pepper. Drizzle some olive oil over the top of the pasta and serve.

This Summer, I am chronicling my first CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) experience. My CSA share is from Arrowhead Farm, a farm based in Newburyport, MA. Each week, I am posting about what was in my share and what I'm doing with it. By way of full disclosure, I won my share through a raffle and am not paying for it. However, Arrowhead did not know I was entered in the raffle, and I received no special consideration because of this blog.

CSA Booty - Week 2

Week two's CSA pickup included some repeats from last week (not surprising) and a few new items.

This week's share was:

• 2 heads arugula
• 2 heads broccoli rabe
• 2 heads bok choy
• 1 head Chinese cabbage
• 2 heads lettuce
• bunched baby shallots
• cutting herbs: basil, Thai basil, parsley, thyme, chives (I took mostly the blossoms)
• Eagle-eyed readers will notice that I'm missing an item in my list. I got distracted taking pictures and didn't realize I'd shorted myself until I got home. Ah well.

So here's what I think I'm doing with these items this week:

• Arugula is going to get sautéed with some of the shallots and served on a pizza tonight along with some homemade sausage.
• The broccoli rabe will be sautéed down with a ton of garlic and served on a roast pork sandwich.
• The bok choy will be a side dish for some kind of brown rice-bedded stir fry, most likely with carrots, celery and more of those shallots.
• I'm going to make kimchi out of the cabbage - I love kimchi and it's super easy to make.
• ... and the lettuce goes into salads.

So how'd I do with last week's haul? Here's we ate (and what CSA items were used) last week:

• Greens soup (broccoli rabe, arugula)
• Bok choy stir fry (bok choy)
• Swiss chard tabouli (Swiss chard) - this was going to be chard leaves stuffed with tabouli, but the dinnertime showed up much sooner than expected.
• Beet quiche (beets, Swiss chard)
• Rhubarb caramels, rhubarb syrup
• The herbs and chive blossoms were sprinkled over salads and dishes as garnishes.
• The lettuces went into green salads.

This Summer, I am chronicling my first CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) experience. My CSA share is from Arrowhead Farm, a farm based in Newburyport, MA. Each week, I am posting about what was in my share and what I'm doing with it. By way of full disclosure, I won my share through a raffle and am not paying for it. However, Arrowhead did not know I was entered in the raffle, and I received no special consideration because of this blog.

Use Your Booty: Bok Choy Stir Fry

Two gorgeous heads of bok choy were in my CSA box. There wasn't enough to feed the two of us, plus enough for lunch leftovers, so I stretched it into a rice noodle stir fry. To the bok choy I added 4 carrots, cut into rough julienne; a 1/4 head of cabbage, shredded; scallions and cilantro. Then I topped the whole deal with a fried egg.

This Summer, I am chronicling my first CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) experience. My CSA share is from Arrowhead Farm, a farm based in Newburyport, MA. Each week, I am posting about what was in my share and what I'm doing with it. By way of full disclosure, I won my share through a raffle and am not paying for it. However, Arrowhead did not know I was entered int he raffle, and I received no special consideration because of this blog.

Use Your Booty: Beet Quiche

I grabbed a wee little bunch o' beets with my last CSA pickup. There were too few to use as a main dish, or even a side. Somewhere in the mists of memory, I remembered reading a recipe for a beet quiche. So that's what I made.

I cooked the beets until tender, sliced up and sautéed the greens and then combined them and a healthy handful of grated parmesan all into a standard quiche recipe. I made two smaller "quichelets" instead of a large one.

Dinner was a quiche served [cold, because it was crazy-hot here] alongside a ginormous salad (made with CSA lettuce). I included herb leaves and chive blossoms too.

This Summer, I am chronicling my first CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) experience. My CSA share is from Arrowhead Farm, a farm based in Newburyport, MA. Each week, I am posting about what was in my share and what I'm doing with it. By way of full disclosure, I won my share through a raffle and am not paying for it. However, Arrowhead did not know I was entered int he raffle, and I received no special consideration because of this blog.

Use Your Booty: Swiss Chard Tabouli Salad

Did you know that Swiss chard is actually two vegetables in one? You use the leaves like spinach and cook them down, or simply slice them and serve them raw. The steams are edible too and since they'll make up a large part of the bunch, it's best to use them. Cut the stems into small pieces and sauté. You can add them to soups, salads or bake them into a quiche.

This salad is a play on tabouli, the Middle Eastern parsley and bulgur wheat salad. I used sautéed Swiss chard leaves and stems as a substitute for the parsley and topped each serving with a few slices of ricotta salata.

Swiss Chard Tabouli Salad

Serves 4 as a main dish or 6 or more as a side dish.

This is great made a day or two ahead.

• 2 cups bulgur wheat, medium or fine texture
• 2 bunches Swiss chard
• 2 tomatoes, diced
• 1-2 lemons
• olive oil
• 6 ounces ricotta salata, farmer cheese, or feta

Cover the bulgur with boiling water and let it steep. Depending on the texture, it will take between 20-40 minutes to soften. Add a little more water if the wheat soaks it all up. When the wheat is tender, drain off any remaining water, squeezing the wheat to make sure it's not soggy.

Trim the chard stems from the leaves. Cut the stems crosswise into 1/2" pieces. Cut the leaves into thin strips. Sauté the stems in a little oil over medium-high heat until just starting to soften. Add the chard leaves and continue to sauté until the leaves are wilted.

Stir the chard and tomato into the wheat. Squeeze lemon juice over the salad and add a good glug or two of olive oil as well as some salt and pepper. Stir and taste. Add more lemon, oil or salt as needed (remembering that you're adding a salty cheese at the end).

If you're serving this a main dish, it's nice to lay slices of cheese across the dish. If it's to be a side dish, crumble the cheese into the salad so it's evenly distributed.

Garnish with a drizzle of olive oil and some edible blossoms if you have them (I used chive and broccoli rabe flowers).

This Summer, I am chronicling my first CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) experience. My CSA share is from Arrowhead Farm, a farm based in Newburyport, MA. Each week, I am posting about what was in my share and what I'm doing with it. By way of full disclosure, I won my share through a raffle and am not paying for it. However, Arrowhead did not know I was entered int he raffle, and I received no special consideration because of this blog.