Archive for Zucchini
Ratatouille
This week, because we literally had our hands full with eggplant, the challenge to creatively utilize this purple bounty continues. We walked away from the farm with not only a sizable Rosa Bianca, but also a few Long Purples (depicted above) and a Casper, which is a small, white eggplant with a very sweet flavor. None of the recipes in the weekly CSA newsletter called for such a massive amount of eggplant in one dish. And since eggplant loses its texture and firmness with each passing day, we needed to use them all up quickly.
Our saving grace was a French dish called ratatouille, originally a poor farmer’s solution to excess summer produce. Ironically, the original recipe didn’t include eggplant, but today, ratatouille is almost unrecognizable without it . Zucchini, tomatoes, green and red bell peppers, onions, and garlic were used to make the first manifestations of this dish, and luckily for us, we had all these ingredients in stock as well.
There are a variety of ways to make ratatouille but all agree on one thing: the ingredients are cooked in stages, then combined and left to stew. Slow cooking allows the flavors to interact, and the final product makes a unique contribution to any dinner table (as well as fantastic leftovers!).
“Las Cruces Dal” with Split Peas and Squash
We love international cuisine, but we also love fresh, local food. Fortunately for us, we certainly don’t see why we can’t have the best of both worlds!
As we were browsing through Cooking Light Annual Recipes 2004, we came across a Split Pea-Spinach Dal with Cauliflower recipe and started wondering how we could adapt it to what we brought home from the farm and what we had in our pantry. This week, our options included a couple of zucchini, a crookneck squash, a bag of split peas, and a few miscellaneous farm goodies.
A dal is a spicy Indian dish traditionally made with legumes and seasoned with a variety of spices and other flavorings (e.g. mango, tamarind, cumin, ginger, etc.) , depending on regional preferences. So we decided to make a “Las Cruces Dal,” named after the city we live in.
