Monday, October 18

Curried Chickpeas with Leftover Squash and Lamb


The mission use up leftover lamb roast and baked black futsu squash.

The solution cook two shallots in a little olive oil, add a hefty amount of curry powder (your choice - mine was leaning toward the Moroccan side of life) and cook until the curry powered smells good and toasted. Add a can of rinsed chickpeas and cook for a minute or so. Add about a 1/2 cup water - cover and cook until dry again - if the chickpeas need more softening repeat. Add 1/2 a baked futsu squash (about 1/2 to 3/4 cup) and cook until dry. Add another 1/2 cup water along with chopped leftover lamb roast. Cook covered until the roast is to your taste of falling-apartness - adding more water as necessary. Serve on a tortilla with sour cream.

This was the last portion of the 1/2 lamb we purchased a year ago from Bob. (We're trying to clean out our freezer.)

Also - you'll notice the theme of squash lately. I never seem to learn my lesson. Each fall as I find unique/old varieties of squash for sale, I find myself suffering an attack of squash hording.

Wednesday, October 13

Bacon Squash Pasta

Cooking for several purposes at once.
On Monday I made baked a potato for dinner. While I had the oven on baking my dinner - I threw in extra potatoes and a black futsu squash for use later in the week. This morning I made peasant potatoes from the baked potatoes and this evening I made dinner out of half the squash. On Sunday while canning Apple Butter - I placed an egg in an empty mason jar and boiled it along with the apple butter for the 10 minutes of processing - perfect for the dinner salad that evening.

Tonight's Dinner
I should have made slightly less or more. It was too much for me to eat all of it with not enough left over for lunch tomorrow.
Fry 2 strips of bacon - remove from pan and drain most of the drippings off. Cook a little chopped onion and 1 clove chopped garlic in the same pan. When almost cooked through add in chopped sage and a pinch of cumin seed. Deglaze with some slightly old white wine from the refrigerator (3 days in my case). Add about a 1/2 cup (may have been more like 3/4) mashed black futsu squash and enough cream to loosen up the entire mixture. Add milk, water or more cream to achieve desired consistency. Chop the bacon and add to the mixture with more chopped sage. Serve over cooked linguine.

Monday, October 4

More uses for Smoked Chicken

My main goal tonight was to use up the remaining smoked chicken and the sad looking 2 pints of beat up cherry tomatoes from the CSA.

So I took the vadalia onion from the CSA and cooked it fairly quickly in some olive oil, added two smashed garlic cloves and then the 2 pints of cherry tomatoes chopped in quarters. To this add a length of thyme, sage and oregano along with some salt. I cooked this down with a cover until it was almost dry. Then I added the remaining cream (I think 1/4 cup) and the remaining smoked chicken (maybe a cup/cup and a half). Check for salt and stuff into two hollowed out delicata squash. Cook at 375 for (Dang it - i forgot to keep track again - sorry). Open it up and mash the squash with the filling.

Also - I had left over filling so I cooked up some elbow macaroni and tossed it with the filling for lunch tomorrow.

Almost Free Soup


Kent & Chrysa let us have their CSA share while they are on vacation. It came with a red cabbage that I thought would be good with lamb soup.

So...while looking over Bob's meat options on Saturday I selected a yummy set of lamb ribs (not much meat attached - just ribs). I decided that would be best for the soup. Stephen complained a little that it was the most expensive cut. In my head I disagreed and chose to just pick up my ribs anyway. The first thing Bob says when we give him our selections is "Ribs are on me". Wee Hoo!

So cut up 1/2 a free red cabbage, 1/2 a $1 green cabbage, slice the ribs apart and place in a pot and cover with water about an inch below the food level. Top with salt, whole pepper corns, 1 T butter and 2 T flour. Bring to a boil - cover and simmer for an hour.

Pasties!

While shopping at the Farmers Market on Saturday I decided to make pasties. I've been eating too many frozen burritos for lunch. I had a full day all to my self so after Stephen left for work I ran to the library and The Wine Thief and got to work.

It's been eons since I made pasties.

My mixture contains:
1 large celery root (celeriac)
1 lb cooked ground hamburger
6 (i think) peeled, diced carrots
1/2 the amount of potatoes from Kent & Chrysa's CSA
loads of thyme, oregano and sage from my garden (at least 1/4 cup chopped)
Salt & Pepper

Pasty dough - tested and proven my Ma Armstrong
mix: 3c flour, 1.5 tsp salt, 1.5 tsp baking powder
cut in: 1 cup butter
add: 1 egg beaten with 1 T vinegar
add: 6 T water
Makes 10 standard size. My mixture above made 20 pasties.

350 - until they look and test done (with a fork through the vents) - I forgot to time it for this instruction.