2012 Christmas Meal Memories

As the activities of January have taken over, I am fondly remembering the time during our winter vacation to plan and savor family meals together.  Before the holiday is too distant of a memory, I want to post about all the yummy food and new recipes using as many ingredients as possible from our Open Oak CSA we tried for our family Christmas meals.

Christmas Eve Dinner--We were joined by my husband's family for Vegetable Chowder from the Moosewood Cookbook, Butternut Squash Risotto from The Cook's Illustrated Cookbook, and bread from Noisette.  I don't know if I can gush enough about what a delicious meal this was!

The chowder was a perfect soup for a dark winter evening especially topped with a little parmesan cheese.  My husband found the risotto recipe and took on the challenge to make it.  It was good to eat the first day and for leftovers for several more days.

Vegetable Chowder (adapted from Moosewood Cookbook)

1 T olive oil

1 onion chopped (Open Oak CSA)

6 cloves garlic minced (Open Oak CSA)

1 t salt

1/2 t thyme

2 t basil

1 medium potato diced  (Open Oak CSA)

2 medium carrots, diced  

2 c chopped broccoli  

2 c chopped cauliflower  (Open Oak CSA)

2 c corn

2 c chicken broth

1 c milk (I think I even added heavy cream to the recipe!)

pepper

Saute onion and garlic in olive oil with salt, thyme, and basil until soft.  Add vegetables and saute for a few more minutes.  Add broth and cook until all vegetables are tender.  Add milk and puree part of the soup with an immersion blender.

The delicious food did not stop on Christmas Day either when we had my mom's Poppyseed Roll (it over rose, but still tasted great), a Paula Dean Pumpkin Cheesecake (made with delicata squash--I could live in this), Cornish Game Hens with wild rice dressing (my husband also took on this challenge and created an amazing main course dish for our holiday dinner, and Roasted Vegetables with Green Parsley Dressing (yumm! from my new favorite cookbook--thanks, Jessi!).  

Roasted Vegetables with Green Parsley Dressing (from Eating Close to Home)

The green parsley dressing is from my new favorite cookbook about eating locally grown foods seasonally in the Willamette Valley.  The color was fantastic on a bed of roasted beets, parsnips, garlic, and fennel from Open Oak CSA.

2 clove garlic Open Oak CSA

1/2 t salt

1/4 t pepper

1/2 t whole fennel seeds

1/2 t dried taragon

1 c parsley Open Oak CSA

2T lemon juice

1 c olive oil

Blend everything together and serve over salad or roasted vegetables.

Delicata Squash Cheesecake from the Food Network
Graham Cracker Crust
1 3/4 c graham cracker crumbs (I was even able to find a brand without high fructose corn syrup!)
3 T brown sugar
1 t cinnamon
1/2 c melted butter

Mix all ingredients together and press into the bottom a springform pan (in this case a brand new pan I purchased on Christmas Eve, just so I could make this dessert).

Filling
 3 8-oz package of cream cheese
2 c cooked and squashed delicata squashed (from Open Oak CSA)
3 eggs
1 egg yolk
1/4 c sour cream
1 1/2 c white sugar
1 t cinnamon
1/4 t nutmeg
1/8 t cloves
2 T flour
1 t vanilla

Beat cream cheese until smooth.  Then add additional ingredients until well combined.  Carefully pour into crust.  Bake 350F for 1 hour.  Remove from and set sit at room temperature before covering with plastic wrap and refrigerating for 4 hours.

Rich Swedish cream dough with Poppyseeds From Amy Vandegrift collection- a holiday favorite!  Nothing from our CSA here, ties with the Christmas Blueberry Roll for my favorite Christmas treats.

You can make this dough in advance and keep it for up to 4 days in the refrigerator. It works best when thoroughly chilled

1 envelope active dry yeast
¼ cup warm water
1 cup heavy cream (have been known to use regular milk)
¼ c evaporated milk
3 eggs yolks, slightly beaten
3 1/3 cups flour
¼ cup sugar
1 teaspoon salt
½ cup butter or margarine at room temperature (although mine always comes right out of the refrig)

In a small bowl, stir yeast into warm water to dissolve. Allow to grow about 10-15 minutes.
Add and mix well the dissolved yeast cream, milk and egg yolks, and set aside
In a large bowl, stir together flour, sugar and salt.
Into the flour mixture, cut in ½ cup butter with a pastry blender until mixture resembles coarse crumbs.
Stir yeast mixture into flour just to moisten. (a light hand so as not to break down the butter too much)
Spread dough with a light film of butter to prevent drying, place into a buttered bowl. Cover bowl with plastic and refrigerate overnight or up to 4 days.

Poppy seed braid roll
One 12.5 oz can of Solo poppy seed cake and pastry filling
In a bowl, stir one egg white into the poppy seed mixture

Roll out dough into a rectangle
Cut on dough the long way in three even parts. I find a pizza cutter works best
Working with one strip at a time
Put 1/3 of the filling down the center
Draw the edges of the dough together over the filling and pinch to seal seam. Sometimes some seeds
escape
Repeat for the other two strips

On a greased cookie sheet carefully place each strip side by side so that you can braid them. I do find
that the dough is long enough to do this on a diagonal of the cookie sheet. Fold under at the top, braid
the strips and fold and pinch the bottom.

Beat the remaining egg white slightly and gently rub a thin layer of egg white over the top of the
roll, (discard the rest). Let the braid rise in a warm place free from drafts until double in bulk ( 50–60
minutes)

Bake in a preheated 350 oven for about 25 minutes.

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.

Slow Cooker Bean and Pasta Soup

I am finding it very challenging to find recipes where I can use all of the ingredients from the vegetable CSA and serve something that my non-adventurous-food-eating-four-year-old will eat without a fuss. I thought this minestrone-like soup that I adapted from my Slow Cooker Revolution cookbook to leave out tomatoes and onions would work; I was wrong. We did eventually convince him to eat the beans and pasta by removing them from the offending broth. Sigh. He continues to try new foods, but expanding his palate is surprisingly difficult.

The soup was ok, but it would have been better as a real minestrone with onions and tomatoes.

Slow Cooker Bean and Pasta Soup

1 t onion powder

2 cloves garlic minced (from Open Oak CSA)

2t oregano

2 T grape seed oil

3 c chicken broth

1 beet chopped (from Open Oak CSA)

3 small carrots chopped (from Open Oak CSA)

1 c rio zape beans (from Lonesome Whistle CSA)

1/4 c pasta

1 bunch escarole chopped (from Open Oak CSA)

salt and pepper

grated cheese

Microwave onion powder, garlic, grape seed oil, and oregano for 30 second in the microwave. Transfer to slow cooker. Add in dry beans, beet, carrots, and chicken broth. Cook on high for 4 hours.

Add in pasta and escarole and cook for 30 minutes.

Purple dinner

Beets, beets, and more beets. With our vegetable CSA, we have had many beets this winter. I think I've had more beets this winter that the last 5 combined!

I had one batch of beets in the refrigerator that was starting to go soft, so I boiled them to try to extend the cooking life. One night decided that I needed to use them all up. The same night I also decided to stop being intimidated by my purple barley from our grain CSA. The result: a very purple dinner.

First I made purple barley into the same salad that I made with wheat berries earlier this month. It was good. I like the taste of the barley! My 4-year old said this was his favorite part of the dinner. I've also found that I really like the purple barley with Geek Yogurt for breakfast.

I also made a beet soup adapted from Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, and a beet and potato salad adapted from Moosewood Restaurant Low-Fat Favorites.

The beet soup tasted ok. It did have a gorgeous red/purple color. I made a lot of modifications to the original recipe, but overall it just lacked some substance. I had one kohlrabi from the CSA--not part of the recipe, but I had roasted it and found that none of us wanted to eat it plain--so it went into the soup pot. This made a huge batch of soup; more than the 4-6 serving that the recipes suggests so we ate it for several days and froze a batch too.

Beet Soup

6 cups quick stock

4 beets boiled, peeled, and cut up (from Open Oak CSA)

1 onion chopped

2 cloves garlic (from Open Oak CSA)

olive oil

1 kohlrabi cubed and baked (from Open Oak CSA)

salt and pepper

Make stock with 6 cups of water, potato peelings (from potato salad recipe), parsley, onion peelings, dill, beet peelings, carrot peelings and cook for 20 minutes. Drain and set aside.

Cook onions in oil until soft. Then add in beets and kohlrabi and saute a few more minutes. Add vegetables to the stock. Puree with hand mixer (this is not in the original recipe, but my vegetables were so unevenly chopped that they looked funny in the soup pot together). Add salt and pepper to taste.

The salad was really purple--well more like the color of pink Pepto-Bismal. Th picture doesn't do it justice, because the beets just continued to leak color the longer it was in the refrigerator. The salad was overly acidic with Nancy's yogurt and apple cider vinegar, so we started to add mayonnaise to each serving and that helped soften the flavor. I think it would be better with fresh dill and a red onion (both in the original recipe, but I didn't have either at home). The color sure would make for an interesting potluck conversation piece.

Beet Potato Salad

5 beets, boiled, and cut into bite sized pieces (from Open Oak CSA)

3 potatoes, peeled, cut into bite sized pieces, and boiled

1/2 c minced onions

1 c Nancy's plain yogurt

2T dried dill

2 t cider vinegar

2 pickles, chopped

salt and pepper to taste

Mayonnaise to taste

Boil the cut potatoes in water for 20 minutes until soft. Drain. Place beets and potatoes in a bowl. Add the remaining ingredients and mix together. Chill for at least 30 minutes.

Easy Winter Roasted Vegetables

Only recently have I discovered how wonderful winter roasted vegetables are to eat!

Winter Roasted Vegetables
Parsnips (from CSA)
Beets (from CSA)
Potatoes
Onion
Garlic (from CSA)
Sweet Potatos

Cut vegetables, coat with olive oil and a little salt. Bake 350 F for 45-60 minutes. Enjoy.

Karen's Roasted Beet Vishyssoise

On dreary fall days, I enjoy enjoy eating potato-leek soup. I often make mine with a milk base, but thought I'd try the dairy free version my friend Karen wrote about on her blog. It's a modified potato-leek (from our CSA) soup with roasted beets (from our CSA) and a very flavorful vegetable scrape broth.

She has wonderful pictures, recipe list, and step-by-step instructions on her blog.

I did make a couple of modifications to the recipe. First, I roasted both the beets and the potatoes in the oven. The beets were gorgeous when I cut into them; some were red and white stripped and others were yellow and white stripped.

I also did not make the pesto, but instead added ginger and garlic (from our CSA) directly to the soup in the last stages of cooking.

The beets were super sweet and so the soup has a very sweet taste. And because of the coloring of the beets the color is more pink-light brown than the vibrant red in the original on Karen's blog. The soup was also delicious with a little cheese sprinkled over the top.