Tuesday, August 13, 2013

First bag of vegetables after the holidays

I picked up this lovely bag of Danish vegetables after getting home from my holiday to the States. It's a bit difficult for me to get through all of these vegetables by myself (Bobby comes home today, so he can start helping me!). In fact, the red cabbage hasn't been touched! Luckily for me, it will last forever in the refrigerator. The rest has been thoroughly enjoyed, though! As you can see, there is a bag of spinach, some chard, the aforementioned red cabbage, a bunch of scallions, a HUGE zucchini, a kilo of small little potatoes, an artichoke, some fresh dill, and some sugar snap peas.
I ate the sugar snap peas as a snack, sometimes with a dip I made of cremè fraîche, the pictured dill, fresh basil, lemon juice, and garlic. The artichoke was roasted, the leaves dipped in garlic butter and mayonnaise. I have no photos, but it was delicious!
For the chard, I decided to sauté it with some garlic and chili flakes. I first sautéed the garlic and chard stems, then added the leaves, plus a few splashed of water, and covered the pan to let the whole thing steam.
It was simple, quick, and delicious!
I used some of the sautéed chard to add to a Korean-ish burrito. This was my favorite dish of the week, and was inspired by an episode of The Mind of a Chef, which follows New York chef David Chang. I had used his recipe for bo ssam earlier in the week, and used some of the leftover meat, rice, and hot sauce for this burrito. I also added some of the sautéed chard and some of the fresh scallions I got in the bag. Any time I have left-over bo ssam, I will made this awesome burrito!
The spinach I got was not young spinach, and I'm actually not totally convinced it was spinach. I did use some of it for a salad; I made Yotem Ottolenghi's baby spinach salad with dates and almonds (featured in the New York Times last week, you can find the recipe here), but I substituted half of the salad with my odd spinach and the other half with neapolitan salad. I also used some of the spinach in a pasta bake, shown here. In addition to the spinach, I added some broccoli and cauliflower to the pasta, made a small amount of sauce using cremè fraîche, a bit of fresh mozzarella, and some grated salty cheese from Denmark's west coast. This was a nice, filling pasta with a lot of vegetable goodness.
I love roasting vegetables; they seem to compliment almost any meal. I roasted two big batches, the first of which included the huge zucchini and potatoes from the bag. I used the same cremè fraîche dip I mentioned above to accompany the vegetables.
And finally, soup. Also known as 'how to use the few remaining scraps of food hanging out in your fridge'. This particular soup featured the remaining spinach and potatoes from the bag, supplemented by a lone sausage I had left-over, some cabbage, carrots and onions, and a bit of spaghetti noodles that had found their way to the back of the pantry. Oh, and the one can of chickpeas that had also migrated to the back of the pantry. Hurray for economical, and healthy, meals!

1 comment:

  1. Hi there! I'm Heather and I was hoping you would be willing to answer a question I have about your blog! My email is Lifesabanquet1(at)gmail.com

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