Stone Soup Farm CSA: Spring Treat Share #1

It's here it's here it's here it's here!!



No, not spring, obviously. Sigh. Behold the no-joke April Fool's Day snowstorm of 2011.

I mean the first Stone Soup Farm CSA share of the year!



Check it out! Lots of storage veg: carrots, potatoes, turnips, cabbage. Fresh spinach and arugula, eggs, and two pounds of local whole wheat bread flour from another farm out in Western Massachusetts. I made a couple of whole wheat baguettes yesterday, and the flavor is great. Wednesday night I stewed up our last quart of home canned tomatoes with a chopped onion and some garlic, added the spinach and cracked in a few eggs for dinner.



There are five more bi-weekly spring shares before the regular summer shares begin, and I'm so glad we signed up for the spring treat share. What about you, have your farm shares started yet? If not, what are you most looking forward to?

Eggs in Purgatory

Is there anything the egg can't do? It makes your cakes tall and fluffy, it makes your custards custardy, and it makes this tomato sauce into dinner. We didn't actually send eggs to the underworld for our meal, we just cooked them in spicy tomato sauce. This dish has roots in the cucina povera tradition of southern Italy, but to me, it's not poor peoples' food, it's just good. There are few things I like more than a runny yolked egg, and when you cut into this one the yolk runs out to enrich the bright, acidic tomato sauce with just enough unctuousness. You could serve it over potatoes, pasta, rice, or polenta if you like, but for a light dinner a piece of toast that you've rubbed with the cut side of a clove of garlic does the trick.

Eggs in Purgatory
Serves 2 (with leftover sauce)


Adam and I like spicy food. Add that to the fact that we're both getting over colds, and you begin to understand why I use a full 1/2 teaspoon of sinus-clearing red pepper flakes plus hot sauce. Only you know how hot is too hot for you, so use 1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes to start and bump it up from there. It's much easier than drinking a gallon of milk with dinner.


2 tablespoons olive oil
1 large onion, chopped (about a cup)
4-5 large cloves of garlic, pressed (cut this to 2 or three if you don't LOVE garlic. This is a lot.)
1/4 - 1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1 28 oz can whole peeled tomatoes
1 28 oz can diced tomatoes
1 tablespoon tomato paste (I buy the kind in a squeezable tube so I can use small measurements like this)
1 teaspoon dried marjoram or oregano
5 shakes hot sauce (I'm a devotee of Frank's Red Hot) - optional
salt and pepper
1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley
4 eggs
2 pieces Italian bread, toasted and rubbed with raw garlic (for serving)


Heat the olive oil in a large wide saucepan (one with a lid, you'll want that later) over medium heat and add the onion. Saute for about five minutes until onion is softening, then add the garlic. Lower the heat to medium low if necessary to keep the garlic from burning. Saute until onion is translucent, another minute or two and garlic is just starting to get fragrant. Add the tomato paste and red pepper flakes, stir, and saute another 30 seconds, then add the diced tomatoes. Break up the whole tomatoes with your hands and add those, then add the juice from the can. Stir in the dried marjoram or oregano, and let the whole thing simmer uncovered over medium low heat for 20-30 minutes until slightly reduced and thickened. Stir occasionally.


At this point, I set aside 2 cups of the sauce to use on pizza later in the week. If you leave it all in the pan, you will have a lot of sauce. Consider yourself warned.


Crack four eggs into the sauce, nestling each one in a bit if you can. Cover the pan and allow the eggs to poach, adjusting the heat if necessary. My eggs took about 9 minutes to set with a runny yolk over medium low heat (the edges of the sauce were bubbling). Adam left his in for about 12 minutes and his eggs were cooked through with very little ooze left in the yolk.


Serve eggs with sauce along side crusty garlic toast.

Green Tomato and Egg Pizza

Our CSA farm has been hit pretty hard by the absolute crap weather we've had this year. His cornfield drowned, his arugula is full of holes and hold the phone: we haven't even gotten any zucchini yet. Whoa.

But that's not even the worst of it. The worst of it is the paltry selection of tomatoes. Many farmers here are harvesting the much anticipated summer super star early and green just so they can keep them from rotting on the vine. Maybe you've heard of it: the dreaded late blight attacking most of the tomatoes here in the northeast and withering the stalks, leaves and fruits into dry brown skeletons of sludge. It's really, really depressing so I'm not going to dwell on it. I'll just say hey, if you need to harvest early or you find green tomatoes at the market, don't fret! Make pizza. (Or you could fry 'em up and eat them southern style.)

Green Tomato Pizza
Serves 2 as a light dinner or one hungry person

I used stored dough from my ABin5 bucket (the olive oil/pizza dough recipe with a little whole wheat flour replacing about a cup of the all purpose). I also didn't really stretch it thin enough, but I really like doughy crust. You can use your favorite pizza dough recipe; here's a good one, and store-bought is fine, too.

Pizza dough (or a generous pound of stored dough)
1 medium green tomato per 10-inch pizza, sliced
1 egg per 10-inch pizza
1/4 cup crumbled feta cheese*
olive oil
2-3 cloves garlic, more if you like garlic an awful lot (I do!)
salt
pepper
Parmesan cheese
cornmeal for sprinkling, or parchment paper

Preheat your oven to its highest setting (mine is 500 but it runs at about 550 if you give it a long enough pre-heat) with a pizza stone or upside down cookie sheet on the middle rack. You'll want to give it at least 20 minutes to heat up. If using stored dough, take it out of the fridge and give it some time to rest at room temperature; you can do the rest of your prep work while it rests.

Chop the garlic roughly, then using a little bit of salt for friction, smash and mash it against the cutting board with the flat of your knife to make a rough paste. You could also use a mortar and pestle here. Put the garlic in a small bowl and add couple tablespoons of olive oil. Set aside.

Spread a thin layer of cornmeal on a pizza peel or the back of a cookie sheet (or use a sheet of parchment paper, crust will not get as crispy, but that's ok with me). Flour your hands, then pat your dough flat and stretch it into a thin round, tossing it gently on your knuckles at first then stretching more vigorously until it reaches the diameter you want. Place the round of dough on the peel, and working quickly, spread the garlicky oil over the pizza, leaving a thin border. Sprinkle the feta over the garlic oil. Add the tomato slices, forming a ring in the center. At this point, if you want a fully-set egg yolk, crack an egg into the center of the tomato ring. (If not, wait until the pizza is 3/4-cooked, then crack the egg onto the hot pie and let it finish in the oven. ) Grate some Parmesan cheese over the whole shebang, and sprinkle with some black pepper.

Slide the pizza off the peel/cookie sheet onto the stone in the oven and cook for 10-15 minutes depending on the heat of your oven. The egg will be fully set (unless you waited), the tomatoes starting to shrivel and the crust puffed and brown around the edges.

*This is not a super cheesey pizza, so feel free to increase the feta to 1/2 a cup or add a meltier cheese (monterey jack, or mozzarella perhaps) under or on top of the tomatoes.

Eggs in Toast

I wish I could claim credit for this idea. Alas, I cannot, because it's Zoe's (one of the authors of Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day, you may recall my obsession), but I can show you how it turned out for me!

Essentially, you roll out some dough, tuck it into a muffin tin, and slide an egg all cozy into the little toasty basket. I skipped the bacon but I did put some cheese in the bottom, and after I took this photo I added several hearty shakes of Frank's Red Hot sauce. I make myself an egg and some toast every morning so I have it down to a seven minute science... these take a little longer, but I think they would make a great addition to a brunch menu. Yum!

Chipotle and Cheese Souffle Muffins

Have you made those cottage cheese muffins yet? I may mentioned them to you a few months ago and told you to give them a try but did you? Did you? Hmph. Maybe you did. I'm sorry, I don't know what's come over me. Maybe it's that I made this awesome chipotle and green onion version last week and they're gone now... tragically gone! And I'm back to store bought English muffins for breakfast! My life is SO HARD! *sob*


Okay! Enough melodrama. Here is the story: I had an open can of chipotles in adobo in my fridge, and for the life of me I cannot remember what I originally opened them for. I know they went into scrambled eggs and chili and these muffins once they were open but the first use escapes me.


Wait, I remember! I opened them for the same reason I bought the queso fresco that aaaalso went into these muffins. I made a giant white bean and kale chipotle baked thingy. It was great. Next time I make it I'll add more kale. So apparently this is a 101 cookbooks-centric post. Thanks for all the recipes, Heidi!


That said, I've tweaked the recipe a little bit: since I didn't have any almonds around I just used whole wheat flour for the whole thing. Now please forgive the wacky tone of this post, as it is only Wednesday and I was ready for it to be Friday when it was still only Monday. Look at that sentence! See what I mean? I blame the snow, not these muffins.

Chipotle & Cheese Muffins
adapted from 101 cookbooks

1 cup plain cottage cheese (low-fat is fine)
3/4 cup queso fresco, crumbled
1 1/4 whole wheat cup flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
2-3 chipotle peppers in adobo, chopped
3-4 green onions, chopped
1/4 cup water
4 eggs, lightly beaten
1/2 teaspoon salt

Preheat oven to 400F degrees. Line muffin tin with paper cups or grease lightly OR use a silicone muffin pan, like me (I love it).

Put the cottage cheese into a bowl with the queso fresco, the flour, baking powder, chipotles, green onions, water, and eggs, and season with salt, then mix all together.

Spoon the mixture into the muffin cups 3/4 full and bake for 30-35 minutes, or until set, risen, and golden brown. Serve as hot or at room temperature.

My muffin tin has 12 cups so this makes 12 smallish muffins.