I don't know when this turned from a largely-about-crafting blog to a food and cooking blog. It's sad, but I've been so busy I just haven't had time to knit. A girl has to eat, however, and all the fresh vegetables I've been getting from the CSA have challenged me to cook and eat to keep up with them!The wonderful thing about food is, even though I just had carbohydrates and protein (and fibre, thank you) for dinner tonight, it was far from bland. I made scalloped potatoes with mushrooms, and green beans with shallots.
I used a quick recipe from Cook's Illustrated for the scalloped potatoes. This is made with the slightly non-traditional method of half-cooking the thinly sliced potatoes in the cream and broth mixture on the stove (I used my dutch oven), first. Then, it gets finished in the oven. Again, the recipe suggests slicing the potatoes with a food processor, because it's faster. As if I didn't know!
The recipe calls for fresh cremini and shiitake mushrooms, bay leaves and thyme (from my garden). The potatoes and onion came from the CSA, and the baking dish is a Chantal that I just bought today. I wanted one in a bright, apple green, but they didn't have any more at the discount store I went to. It's a good thing that I bought this dish, though! The recipe says to bake the potatoes in an 8 x 8-inch dish, or a 1.5 quart au gratin dish, but I don't think they could have possibly fit into something that size. I know I used the correct amount of potatoes, since I weighed them with my digital kitchen scale.
It turned out perfectly! The potatoes were exactly what I was craving tonight.
I also used up the big bag of green beans from the CSA, adding fresh garlic and shallots.
And here's one with no cooking involved: the salad I had for lunch today. Red and green (they're called Green Zebras, and I love them!) tomatoes, fresh corn cut from the cob, and heirloom beets. There aren't that many weeks of the CSA left, so I am really enjoying the colourful and flavourful fall harvest. I wonder if I'll still be having as much fun cooking once winter comes around?
2 comments:
i was about to comment that i hadn't seen you use that beautiful dish before! aha! you forgot to say how big it was though?
The bottom of the dish says that it's 8"x8"x2", and holds 3.5 quarts. I measured the dish, and it measures more like 9"x9"x2". Somebody at Chantal's can't measure! So, I'm not sure if the volume measure is accurate. Maybe I'll pour some water into it and measure that some time....
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