Kale Chips

The little bags of kale chips at the store are delicious, but oh so spendy!  Making it ourselves is so much nicer especially since my daughter and I can eat nearly an entire bunch of kale in one afternoon.  She calls it seaweed, and in texture it can be similar to the seaweed snacks we sometimes buy.  I've found several recipes online, but many of them over cook  the kale causing it to be brown and bitter.  This recipe seems to work for us and our oven. The baking time also seems to depend on the moisture in the kale related to how fresh it is from the farm--grocery store kale cooks faster than that from the farm stand or CSA.

We've also found that we need to store the cooked chips  in the fridge so they don't go bad, and we can pop them back in to the oven for just a few minutes to regain the crispy texture.

Kale chips
1 bunch kale (from Thistledown Farm)
Olive oil or grape seed oil
Salt

Tear kale into 2-4inch pieces.  Sprinkle with oil and salt.  Bake 250 F for 12-15 minutes.  Check and turn around minute 10 to check for crispness.


Ready for the oven.

Crispy and ready to eat!

Pesto Twist with Gnocchi

We've been talking about how handy it would be if there was a website where you could type in the ingredients in your house and it would produce menu ideas for the whole week.  In absence of that, I typed in a search for "basil and beets and kale" which produced several interesting recipe ideas.  I was particularly intrigued by this recipe on Moderate Oven website for Kale & Beet Green Pesto.

It seemed like the perfect way to use some of the kale, beet greens, and garlic scapes from our Open Oak Farm CSA.  I liked the idea of blanching the greens before blending them.  I made a couple of modifications to the recipe (not toasting the walnuts and adding a handful of parsley).  It is simple but delicious. The adventurous eaters in our house ate the pesto over store-bought whole wheat gnocchi (and the non-adventurous eater had the gnocchi with Parmesan Cheese but he liked helping with the food processor).  The greens had just a fabulous color!

A few days after preparing this, I also made a small batch of basil and garlic scrapes pesto and added it in with the leftovers.  The two types of pesto went really well together.  And I was inspired to make my own gnocchi.  This is a recipe that I have tried many times over the last 15 years.  The first time I made it, they were delicious.  However, the next several times that I tried the recipe the gnocchi were just terrible.  Fortunately, this time I had success!

Potato Gnocchi from The Compassionate Cook
4 c potatoes peeled, cubed, and boiled
2 c white flour
1/2 t salt
2 T olive oil.

Boil potatoes and then drain off the water.  Dry mash the potatoes, then add in flour, salt and olive oil.   Boil a large pot of water.  Kneed dough until well mixed using extra flour if necessary.  Divide dough into 4 portions.  Kneed each a bit more and then roll into a 1-inch diameter "snake."  Cut into approximately 1-inch pieces.  Drop gnocchi into boiling water.  Once they float to the suface, boil them for 2 minutes.  Remove from the water and drain.  

Serve with fresh pesto.  It tastes like summer!

Day Two with Chicken

After we ate our roasted chicken dinner, I removed the meat from the bones and saved the carcass to make a soup stock.

Vegetable and Chicken Soup Stock

Beet peels (from CSA)

Carrot peels

Potato peels

Celeriac (from CSA)

Onion skins

Kale stems (from CSA)

Garlic cloves (from CSA)

Chicken bones (from roasted chicken)

Put everything in a soup pot and cover with water. Bring to a boil and let simmer for a few hours. Remove from heat, drain our liquid and put in the refrigerator until fat is solid. Skim fat off and use stock.

I froze most of the soup stock in 2 c containers, but saved some to make chicken tetrazini and potato leek soup.

First CSA Bag of the Season

Over the last decade, my husband and I have tried to eat more locally. We have frequented farmers' markets in Portland, Beaverton, Corvallis, and Eugene. We've grown vegetables in two different community gardens and at each of our homes. We've also joined four different Community Support Agriculture (CSA) farms.

We were fortunate to find and join the Open Oak Farm's winter 2010 CSA. It had the perfect mixture of staple vegetables and grains and new foods for us to try (and the best carrots I've ever eaten). We loved it so much that we joined again for Summer 2011 and are delighted that the Winter 2011 farm share has begun. This season we are splitting the vegetable share with our friends, who write a blog about the Fairmount Neighborhood Farmers Market. We are also splitting a winter grain and bean CSA from Lonesome Whistle Farm.

I've been having a great time exploring new recipes each week to use the items from my vegetable share, and am looking forward to writing about them here.

Our first CSA bag of the season arrived last week. I spent several days looking through recipes in my newest cookbook Slow Cooker Revolution from America's Test Kitchen to find the perfect inaugural recipe for both a new slow cooker and for the winter CSA season. It was a winner! This recipe is designed to serve 6-8 people. We had enough for two adults for several meals and froze the rest for another day.

Super-Veggie Beef Stew

3 T oil

3 onions chopped (from CSA)

1/4 c tomato paste

6 garlic cloves minced (from CSA)

1 T thyme

1/3 c flour

1 1/2-2 c chicken broth

1 1/2 c beef broth

8 oz mushrooms (recommends portobello caps, I used regular buttons) chopped

1/3 c soy sauce

2 bay leaves

4 lb cubed beef (We only had 1lb and it was perfectly fine)

2-3 medium potatoes cut into 1-inch chunks

4 carrots cut into 1-inch pieces

3 parsnips cut into 1-inch pieces (from CSA)

8 oz kale cut (from CSA)

Heat 2 T of oil in skillet over medium heat. Add onions, tomato paste, thyme and garlic and cook until onions are softened. Stir in flour and cook for 1 minute. Whisk in chicken broth, scraping up any browned bits and smoothing out lumps. Transfer to slow cooker.

Stir in beef broth, mushrooms, soy sauce, and bay leaves. Season beef with salt and pepper and nestle into slow cooker. Toss potatoes, carrots, and parsnips with oil, salt, and pepper and place into foil packet. Lay foil packet on top of stew (keeps vegetables from getting too mushy).

Cover and cook 9-11 hours on low or 5-7 hours on high.

Remove foil packet. Let stew settle for 5 minutes and remove fat. Discard bay leaves. Place kale into slow cooker and cook 20-30 minutes. (However, we just cooked it a bit with olive oil on the stove top and then added it to our individual bowls before eating.)

Carefully open foil packet (watch for steam) and pour vegetables and juices into the stew. Let it heat through and mix about 5 minutes before serving.