Leek and Shitake Mushroom Quiche

My Enchanted Broccoli Forest cookbook list the formula to create quiche = vegetable + custard + cheese. I made this one with leeks, shallots, and shitake mushrooms from our Open Oak CSA, which turned out to be quite similar to the mushroom quiche recipe in the Moosewood Cookbook (one of my favorites). It was really tasty!

Leek and Shitake Mushroom Quiche

Crust

6T butter

1 1/2 c flour

1/4 c milk

Blend ingredients in the food processor and press into pie pan. The pour in filling.

Filling

3 leeks (from Open Oak CSA)

10 shitake mushrooms (from Open Oak CSA)

2 shallots (from Open Oak CSA)

1/2 t thyme

4 eggs

1 1/2 c milk

2 T flour

1 c shredded swiss cheese

Put cheese on the pie crust. Saute vegetables, and pour over cheese. Mix eggs, flour, and milk and pour custard over vegetables and cheese. Bake 350F for 40 minutes. Eat warm or cold at any time of day.

Warm Christmas Salad

I needed a side dish for our Christmas dinner that would allow me to use many of the leafy green vegetables from our CSA this week. In my Moosewood Cookbook, I found and adapted this recipe for Warm Salad. I chopped all of the vegetables the night before and stored them in the refrigerator so all I had to do was cook everything together. This recipe made a huge amount of salad. It was enough for the eight adults at our dinner with plenty of left overs!

Warm Salad

1 bunch Swiss Chard chopped (from CSA)
1 bunch Sugarloaf (aka Castel Franc0 Chicory) chopped (from CSA)
8 cabbage leaves chopped--in this case one whole small cabbage (from CSA)
Olive oil
Salt and Pepper
3 leeks chopped (from CSA)
1 red onion chopped
3 cloves garlic minced (from CSA)
10 mushrooms sliced
1 stalk of celery chopped
3 T balsamic vinegar
1/2 c Parmesan Cheese

Heat oil in a large pan. Add in greens a little at a time and salt before adding more greens. Cook until the greens are wilted but still retain some of the color. Remove from the heat and place in serving dish. Add more oil to the pan and saute leeks, onion, garlic, mushrooms, and celery together until onions are soft. Add to the greens dish. Toss with balsamic vinegar and cheese. We served it warm, but the recipe instructions indicate that it can be served at any temperature.

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.