Asparagus pizza

The cooked asparagus just hasn’t been doing it for me lately, so when I got more local asparagus in my Plan B box this week, I was wondering what to do with it. Then my sister suggested this asparagus pizza from Smitten Kitchen.

The verdict: delicious! And there are no pictures. But shaved raw asparagus is my new favourite thing. I have half a bunch left and I think I’m going to make a salad like Deb mentions near the beginning of her post, with olive oil, salt, pepper and fresh parmesan.

Raw food strikes again. 🙂

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Asparagus soup

I came home to a new Plan B box today, my first since the fall. A lot of greens, a cucumber, tomatoes, apples, mushrooms, and asparagus – which reminded me that I still had a bunch of asparagus in the fridge to cook up.

So I made this Jamie Oliver asparagus soup recipe that I found recently. It’s very simple, served with toast and a poached egg. I made a half recipe, which worked about right for a single bunch of asparagus (which, before I trimmed the bottoms, came to 450 g). I didn’t have any leeks so used 1 1/2 onions, but it would be better with leeks.

The truth is, I haven’t been excited about asparagus lately, but this soup was far more interesting than just steamed asparagus. I might serve the leftovers with grated cheese or even kefir mixed in.

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One-pot local pasta

I’ve gotten back into pasta again after discovering the yummy local stuff sold at the Green Barn Market – I buy the rotini, divide it into three zip-locs and throw it in the freezer for when I want a quick meal. But instead of doing anything fancy, I’ve been throwing together one-pot what’s-in-the-fridge meals. It’s quick and easy and all you really want in the summer.

Boiling isn’t my favourite way to cook vegetables because you lose nutrients in the water, but it’s worth the sacrifice for how easy this is.

Basically, decide on your ingredients and figure out how long each will take to cook, boil a pot of water and add ingredients from longest cooking time to shortest. Tonight, my dish consisted of (in cooking order):

• asparagus stems (Plan B)
• asparagus tips (they cook faster)
• pasta (Green Barn)
• frozen edamame (not local)
• beet greens (stems first, then leaves)*
• green onions (Plan B)

Once everything’s cooked, drain it and then mix in some sauce-like ingredients: pesto if you have it, or tomato sauce, or tonight I did a combo of cream, chevre (local, from Nancy’s Cheese), lemon juice and pepper. I topped the dish with pine nuts (also not local) and dinner was done in 10 minutes! Take that, Kraft Dinner.

* I have a ton of beets growing in the community garden – I went a little crazy planting them. I ate a couple of harvests of baby beet greens when I first thinned them, and while I was watering tonight I pulled out another beet to see how big they were getting. It was about the size of a ping-pong ball and I washed it and sliced it and ate it raw, then used the stems and leaves for dinner.

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Asparagus soup and pesto potatoes

No pictures today but two good, simple recipes.

I took this asparagus soup recipe from epicurious.com and made it this weekend almost verbatim – just used onion instead of shallots. It was fine the first day, but really good the second and third. I made a fresh vegetable stock mostly out of green garlic tops from my Plan B box and it added a lot of flavour. Be careful not to oversalt this soup as it has a very delicate flavour.

And tonight, I boiled up some red potatoes and tossed them in pesto. I had arugula and made it with pistachios and cheddar (partially inspired by this recipe) but you can use any greens and nuts you have around. Be careful with the garlic quantities. It’s a nice, simple way to prepare potatoes in the summer.

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Roasted asparagus and stewed rhubarb

Just a simple meal tonight. Would have had roasted potatoes too but I forgot to put them in soon enough (and we filled up late this afternoon on cheese and crackers from Nancy’s Cheese.)

I picked up local asparagus, fiddleheads and rhubarb from Karma this afternoon. I tend to want to prepare fresh seasonal produce simply, especially ingredients like these that I really do only eat in season. The asparagus I tossed in olive oil with a bit of salt and pepper and roasted – you can add garlic but I wasn’t in the mood this evening. I’m thinking poached eggs on the side, maybe with some toast.

I prefer rhubarb roasted as well, but I had a request for stewed so I did it that way, with some maple syrup and a bit of water to get it going. We’ll serve it with plain yogurt.

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