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Cooking Update: October 7, 2023
Welcome to week three of Lira's informal cooking blog! I'm actually getting this one started during downtime while we're cooking, which clearly works better than me writing entirely after the fact, haha. Unfortunately, I'm now posting it over a week late, because that's how much I got thrown off by not being able to upload recipe images on mobile, whoops.
Farmshare Veggies:
Cooked by Lira & Yrin:
Cooked by Alia:
Modification Notes:
-carrot pickles: this is a slightly different pickling liquid than the one we did two weeks ago. It's 1.5 tbsp miso paste, 1.5 tbsp mirin, 1 tsp soy sauce, 1/2 tsp each minced ginger and garlic. We usually use jarred ginger + garlic but since we're using ginger for a lot of things, I did fresh today. Excited to see how that makes a difference!
-soba salad: I follow the recipe mostly as written, aside from using actual nice soba from the Asian grocery store rather than spaghetti. I do 1/2 cup peanut butter, an extra tbsp each of the rice vinegar, sesame oil, and soy sauce, and a whole 1/2 cup water, because I like the sauce to be thinner; I find it coats the noodles better (and we use more noodles than written...). I skip the red cabbage 100% of the time because I will not buy one just to use a tiny bit in this recipe and the scallions 50% of the time, give or take whether we have any.
-miso-tahini soup: This recipe comes from my friend Laney!! This week we're using acorn squash rather than the kabocha or butternut that's recommended, because it's what we have, and I tend to use butter instead of coconut oil (because we are not vegan and I love butter almost as much as Julia Child does) and may skip the nori. But otherwise, made as written!
-cabbage fritatta: There's no recipe because this is a mad science experiment. Shredded cabbage (wilted in pan), carrot, potato, baked in a 13x9 dish with a 2 cup milk, 1 cup flour, 4 eggs mixture and seasoned with salt, pepper, and ginger. I'm smashing together elements of okonomiyaki, a veggie fritatta recipe I make a lot, and a potato + cabbage + egg breakfast fritatta recipe, for what will hopefully be a tasty pancake-esque thing.
Free Talk:
I kind of feel like I should use this space to do an informal life update, like how actual cooking bloggers tie every recipe to a story, but this is a quiet holiday weekend. Outside of cooking, we've been staying home and playing videogames. I picked up a PS5, the PS5 version of No Man's Sky, and the library's VR1 Playstation VR console, and soon we'll have the adapter for the damn PS4 camera and will be able to try out VR!
But on to cooking. The cabbage and the radicchio were what wanted using within the week, thus my cabbage mad science experiment. I actually really like cabbage in a small handful of recipes but I've made all of those other recipes recently enough that I will grow sick of them if I don't mix it up. So doing "okonomiyaki casserole" instead of making normal okonomiyaki was a fun way to add a little variety without having to come up with something totally new. And the radicchio... Well, there simply isn't anything better to do with radicchio than salad!
The soup is a reeeeeally good and savory winter option, now that we're getting more and more winter squash. And the peanut noodles are something I like bringing for lunch.
I suspect this free talk section will get shorter and shorter as the novelty of my recipes wears off but honestly, that seems like a blessing, haha.
Last Week Recap:
The recipes that we made last week were:
Everything turned out super delicious, actually! The Italian casserole isn't new and was as delicious and comforting as ever, as were Alia's mini chicken pot pies. She makes the dough herself and bakes six of them in a tray, two more in little ramekins, and they're great because each pie is a single serving and they're super easy to heat up and eat in very little time.
The kale soup was also super yummy, definitely a new favorite for disguising kale, haha. The other strong flavors -- ginger, chili oil, vinegar from the pickles I added -- really transform the kale (and the soup) into something entirely different and tastier than the sum of its parts.
And the beet pickles were also even better than I hoped! Yrin really doesn't love beets but the winter farmshare in particular loves to give them to us, so I've been struggling to disguise them in ways Yrin will want to eat. The big winner so far has been a chocolate cake made with two cups beet puree -- it's super chocolatey and you really can't tell it has beet in! -- but these are similarly great for not really tasting like beet. They have a really strong, licorice-y fennel flavor and that paired with the sweetness and the vinegar is super yummy. I kept the chilis in the brine for an hour or two but took them out before putting the pickles in the fridge, because I feared letting the pickles get spicier and spicier, but as a result we definitely lost the chili flavor. Next time, I think I'll either try keeping one chili in the jar, or all of them, if I'm feeling like spicy is a good option.
And that's it for this week!
Farmshare Veggies:
- Carrots
- Sweet Onions
- Cabbage
- Winter Squash
- Raddichio
- Daikon Radish
- Sweet Potatoes
Cooked by Lira & Yrin:
- prep radicchio
- short grain brown rice
- miso-ginger carrot quick pickles
- roasted sweet potato
- peanut soba noodle salad (recipe)
- miso-tahini soup with acorn squash and spinach (recipe: [1] [2])
- okonomiyaki-inspired cabbage sheet pan frittata
Cooked by Alia:
- roasted pears
- cole slaw
- dressing for radicchio salad
Modification Notes:
-carrot pickles: this is a slightly different pickling liquid than the one we did two weeks ago. It's 1.5 tbsp miso paste, 1.5 tbsp mirin, 1 tsp soy sauce, 1/2 tsp each minced ginger and garlic. We usually use jarred ginger + garlic but since we're using ginger for a lot of things, I did fresh today. Excited to see how that makes a difference!
-soba salad: I follow the recipe mostly as written, aside from using actual nice soba from the Asian grocery store rather than spaghetti. I do 1/2 cup peanut butter, an extra tbsp each of the rice vinegar, sesame oil, and soy sauce, and a whole 1/2 cup water, because I like the sauce to be thinner; I find it coats the noodles better (and we use more noodles than written...). I skip the red cabbage 100% of the time because I will not buy one just to use a tiny bit in this recipe and the scallions 50% of the time, give or take whether we have any.
-miso-tahini soup: This recipe comes from my friend Laney!! This week we're using acorn squash rather than the kabocha or butternut that's recommended, because it's what we have, and I tend to use butter instead of coconut oil (because we are not vegan and I love butter almost as much as Julia Child does) and may skip the nori. But otherwise, made as written!
-cabbage fritatta: There's no recipe because this is a mad science experiment. Shredded cabbage (wilted in pan), carrot, potato, baked in a 13x9 dish with a 2 cup milk, 1 cup flour, 4 eggs mixture and seasoned with salt, pepper, and ginger. I'm smashing together elements of okonomiyaki, a veggie fritatta recipe I make a lot, and a potato + cabbage + egg breakfast fritatta recipe, for what will hopefully be a tasty pancake-esque thing.
Free Talk:
I kind of feel like I should use this space to do an informal life update, like how actual cooking bloggers tie every recipe to a story, but this is a quiet holiday weekend. Outside of cooking, we've been staying home and playing videogames. I picked up a PS5, the PS5 version of No Man's Sky, and the library's VR1 Playstation VR console, and soon we'll have the adapter for the damn PS4 camera and will be able to try out VR!
But on to cooking. The cabbage and the radicchio were what wanted using within the week, thus my cabbage mad science experiment. I actually really like cabbage in a small handful of recipes but I've made all of those other recipes recently enough that I will grow sick of them if I don't mix it up. So doing "okonomiyaki casserole" instead of making normal okonomiyaki was a fun way to add a little variety without having to come up with something totally new. And the radicchio... Well, there simply isn't anything better to do with radicchio than salad!
The soup is a reeeeeally good and savory winter option, now that we're getting more and more winter squash. And the peanut noodles are something I like bringing for lunch.
I suspect this free talk section will get shorter and shorter as the novelty of my recipes wears off but honestly, that seems like a blessing, haha.
Last Week Recap:
The recipes that we made last week were:
- cucumber quick pickles
- scarlet turnip quick pickles
- beet pickles in fennel, chili, balsamic pickling brine (recipe)
- creamy coconut ginger kale soup (recipe)
- Italian potato, zucchini, pepper, and "beef" casserole (recipe)
- mini chicken pot pies
Everything turned out super delicious, actually! The Italian casserole isn't new and was as delicious and comforting as ever, as were Alia's mini chicken pot pies. She makes the dough herself and bakes six of them in a tray, two more in little ramekins, and they're great because each pie is a single serving and they're super easy to heat up and eat in very little time.
The kale soup was also super yummy, definitely a new favorite for disguising kale, haha. The other strong flavors -- ginger, chili oil, vinegar from the pickles I added -- really transform the kale (and the soup) into something entirely different and tastier than the sum of its parts.
And the beet pickles were also even better than I hoped! Yrin really doesn't love beets but the winter farmshare in particular loves to give them to us, so I've been struggling to disguise them in ways Yrin will want to eat. The big winner so far has been a chocolate cake made with two cups beet puree -- it's super chocolatey and you really can't tell it has beet in! -- but these are similarly great for not really tasting like beet. They have a really strong, licorice-y fennel flavor and that paired with the sweetness and the vinegar is super yummy. I kept the chilis in the brine for an hour or two but took them out before putting the pickles in the fridge, because I feared letting the pickles get spicier and spicier, but as a result we definitely lost the chili flavor. Next time, I think I'll either try keeping one chili in the jar, or all of them, if I'm feeling like spicy is a good option.
And that's it for this week!