Pan Seared Shishito Peppers

It literally doesn’t get any easier than this. You don’t even need a knife. Just a pint of shishitos, a lil dollop of your favorite oil (I’d suggest anything other than olive oil due to the high temperatures), a pan, and a source of heat. Shishitos are usually incredibly mild, though the common saying is that about 1 in 10 will pack as much heat as Sriracha. These peppers make an awesome appetizer, just enjoy every bit of it except for the little stem. 

Gorgeous shishito peppers, before the pan sear

Ever grown shishito peppers? If not, you probably should. They’re really productive plants that don’t seem to get pest problems or diseases easily. We start our seeds in April (right around the same time as tomatoes and eggplant) and pot them up into larger containers so the transplants are nice and big before they move out to the field. After the danger of frost passes, they migrate to the field, where we’ve been growing them in two rows per bed, about eighteen inches apart. They produce before any other pepper we’ve grown, are extremely flush with peppers for what feels like months, are popular at market, delicious and actually really easy to grow! Plus, if you let them change from green to red, you are pretty much guaranteed to have a spicy pepper so you can get the best of mild & spicy peppers off of one plant. I feel like I’ve talked about them too much now... so let’s move on to the recipe, shall we?

Get ready for this! It’s going to take you about ten minutes and requires almost nothing. You could also personalize this in any way you desire. Want to go garlic crazy... do it! Love ginger? I dare you to add that too. At any rate, I love shishitos for what they are, and therefore don’t add much to them. They don’t need it. But you do you. That’s the beauty of cooking at home.

Ingredients

• 1 pint of shishito peppers (or 2, if you’re extra hungry like us!)

• 2-3 tablespoons of oil (I used 2 tablespoons canola & 1 of sesame oil)

• 2 tablespoons of soy sauce (or more to taste)

• Pinch of salt

Instructions

• Add oil to a pan and turn heat to medium high. Once the oil starts to sizzle, add your shishitos and stir somewhat often to cook all of the peppers evenly. When you see that most of them have browned slightly, add the soy sauce and throw a lid on the pan for about thirty seconds. Remove lid and stir again, until they look to be seared at the level you like best. For me, this all took about five minutes.

• Let cool for a minute or so and enjoy!!! Maybe throw a pinch of salt on there, maybe don’t.

• Throw any additional shishito recipe ideas my way please. This is just by far the easiest and my favorite way to enjoy them.

Acorn Squash Tacos

Acorn Squash has quickly skyrocketed to our favorite crop list, and will be grown in abundance next season. You heard it here first. The texture is somewhere between butternut squash and yucca, and it’s perfectly suited to become either a tasty savory meal, or sweet. Not many crops can boast such a wide range of options. It’s also pretty straightforward to grow, so if you’re inclined to try that out... read on!

We start acorn squash in the greenhouse in trays in May, moving them outdoors just a week or two later since they grow so incredibly fast! We plant them in one row per bed, about two feet apart and try to keep them weeded until the leaves start to die back and acorn squash are ripe. Ideally, it would be nice to mulch these for weed control, so that’s the plan for next season.

Well, it’s time to get to the recipe. With baked acorn squash, onion, carmen pepper, tomato, rice, beans and cilantro & lime sour cream, it’s a feast for your tastebuds. Dive in, and enjoy!

Yield: about ten tacos worth, plus a little extra!

Ingredients

• 2 acorn squash (about 1lb each), medium size cut into half moons with seeds scraped out

• 1 onion, halved and then thinly sliced

• 1 carmen pepper (or two, if you want!) diced

• 1 cup of rice

• 1 can of beans

• 1 tomato, diced

• Corn tortillas (we used at least ten, so plan accordingly!)

• 1 cup almond milk plain yogurt (I used Silk’s)

• Salt

• 1/4 tsp cumin

• 1/2 teaspoon paprika

• 3 tbsp sunflower oil

• 2 tablespoons lime juice (or more to taste)

• 2 tablespoons cilantro (or again, more to taste)

Instructions

• Make rice. Add two cups of salted water to 1 cup of rice (rinse your rice a few times if you’re feeling fancy) and bring to a boil. Once boiling, reduce heat to low to allow rice to simmer and cover the pot with a tightly fitting lid. Let simmer for about twenty minutes. While the rice is cooking...

• Bake acorn squash. Preheat oven to 375 and cut your acorn squash in half with a really sharp knife. Cut off the stem, or any blemishes and scoop out the seeds. Line up on a baking pan and shake oil (I used about 2 tbsp of sunflower) lightly over the top & season with a little salt. Put in the oven and set your timer for about twenty minutes. Remove from the oven when squash starts to brown. While this is baking...

• Cook the onion and carmen pepper. Add a tablespoon of sunflower oil to a pan at medium high heat. Once the oil heats up, add your sliced onion and diced carmen pepper. Add paprika and salt, and saute for about ten minutes, stirring frequently.

• Heat your beans & dice your tomato. This is about as easy as it gets. Put beans in a small shallow pan on medium low heat and stir. Add salt and cumin to taste and stir from time to time, reducing heat to low if needed. Also, dice your tomato if you haven’t already.

• Make cilantro lime yogurt. My favorite yogurt to use for savory dishes is Silk’s almond milk plain yogurt, and used the full cup of it. Add two teaspoons of lime juice and two teaspoons of cilantro and stir. Remember to just add more if you want it!

• Guess what? Now you can finally assemble those tacos and enjoy! Mark ate six in one sitting... so let us know if you beat that record!

Pumpkin & Butternut Squash Soup

This savory Pumpkin & Butternut Squash Soup was even better than I expected... and I already love, love, love winter squash! Somehow, despite the house smelling sweetly of cinnamon & toasted pumpkin seeds, this dish is also savory and rich from the addition of cashew cream and white pepper. A big thank you to Mark for being chef of this dish!

The recipe is adapted from Byrant Terry’s Sweet Potato and Pumpkin Soup, from his Afro-Vegan cookbook. This book is incredible! Not only did it introduce me to tons of inspiring flavor combinations, it also helped remind me to pay special attention to the spices that accentuate that dish. Bryant often uses a mortar and pestle to extract the finest, freshest flavors from whole spices toasted and ground as needed. He also pairs each recipe with a song recommendation to check out while you cook! Plus he is truly focused on what is seasonal, local and fresh! Hero status. Seriously, check out his book!

How about that curly pumpkin stem though?!

Here’s the recipe, as Mark modified it:

Yield: 4 to 6 servings

Ingredients

• 1 small pumpkin

• 1 teaspoon extra virgin olive oil

• 5 cups of vegetable stock (homemade or store bought)

• 2 cinnamon sticks

• 1 1/2 lbs butternut squash

• 1 cup creamed cashews

• freshly ground white pepper

Instructions

• One hour before cooking (or overnight if you’re feeling up to it!) soak 1 cup of raw cashews in water.

• Preheat the oven to 275 degrees F.

• Cut the top off the pumpkin (and cut the butternut in half if you want to eat those seeds too!) and scoop out the seeds. Put the seeds in a small bowl and drizzle with olive oil, tossing until evenly coated. Spread the seeds in a single layer on a baking sheet and bake for about 15 minutes, until lightly browned, stirring every five minutes for even cooking. Set aside.

• Meanwhile, peel the pumpkin & butternut squash and cut into 1-inch pieces. Put the stock, cinnamon stick, and salt in a large saucepan over medium heat and bring to a simmer. Cook for five minutes, then add the pumpkin and butternut squash. Increase the heat to high and bring to a boil. Immediately decrease the heat to medium-low, cover and simmer, stirring occasionally, until the vegetables are fork-tender, about 35 minutes. While that’s going on, drain the cashews and put them in a blender with 1/2 cup of fresh water, processing until smooth and creamy. Stir the cashew cream into the pumpkin & butternut squash mix.

• Using a standard blender and working in batches, or using an immersion blender, blend the soup until smooth. pour the soup back into the saucepan and cook, over medium-low heat, stirring occasionally, until warmed through. If necessary, thin with water so the soup pours easily from a spoon. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Serve garnished with the toasted pumpkin seeds.

Stuffed Peppers

If you’ve never had a carmen pepper, a sweet italian variety- you should absolutely locate a farm near you and scoop some up. They have an outstanding flavor and are delicious both straight out of the field and cooked. This week, we took the culls from our harvest and decided to try stuffing them. I’d honestly never tried using them this way and was really pleased with the results. 

Luckily, this variety of pepper has proven to be easy for us to grow, although every year it always seems to take forever for them to change from green to red... but that’s likely due to impatience more than anything else. We start the seeds in the greenhouse in late March or early April (at the same time we start tomatoes and eggplants) and after about a month we move them to bigger trays so they can be the biggest, healthiest transplants possible. Once the danger of frost passes, we move them out to the field in two rows per bed, a foot apart between plants. While they’re still small, we put out tobacco stakes to trellis them so that when the peppers finally begin to form we can wrap string down the sides of the plants and keep them upright from the weight of the peppers. I know that some farmers have problems with disease in pepper crops, or with animals nibbling on the delicious peppers before they are ready... but somehow, someway we have been spared this so far. Once the crop turns from green to a gorgeous deep red, they are ready to harvest and enjoy!

The great thing about enjoying these as stuffed peppers is just how much you can personalize this dish. Add plant based sour cream, cheese, Beyond Meat crumbles, whatever the heck you want. So, read on for our recipe if you aren’t feeling like coming up with your own spin. Or build off of this and let me know what you did differently.

The inspiration for this dish came from here … though I basically didn’t follow any of it except for roasting the pepper.

Ingredients

• 4 Carmen peppers, cut in half (or 3/4 if you want more space to fill with stuffing) and de-seeded.

• 2 1/2 cups rice (I used brown but make white to spare yourself some time if you’d like)

• 2 tablespoons sunflower oil

• 1/4 cup cilantro, chopped

• 1 pint of cherry tomatoes

• 2 medium onions, chopped into thin slices

• 3 cloves of garlic

• 1 teaspoon of salt (or more to taste)

• OPTIONAL: one spicy pepper of your choosing, de-seeded and chopped

Instructions

• Cook the rice. Combine 2 1/2 cups of rice with 5 cups of water or stock. Bring to a boil and then reduce heat to low and cover. Brown rice will take about 45 minutes to be fully cooked, white about 15 to 20.

• Heat the oven to 450 degrees Farenheit. Arrange the peppers cut side up in a broiler safe pan. Bake until slightly softened, 6 to 10 minutes (I ended up going with 8, for the record). Remove from the oven.

• While the rice and peppers are cooking, add the oil to a pan over medium high heat for sauteeing the onions and garlic. Sautee the onions for about five minutes, stirring often. Add the garlic in the last thirty seconds and remove the pan from the heat as soon as the garlic becomes fragrant.

• While that is cooling, you can dice up your cherry tomatoes into quarters and put them in a bowl. Add the chopped cilantro (and spicy pepper if you opted for that) and salt, then stir. Add the sauteed onion and garlic mixture to this and stir again. Now is a good time to set your oven to broil on high.

• If you like to save yourself too many dishes, like me, add your cooked rice to the pan where you previously sauteed the onions and garlic and set it to low. Add a can of beans and add salt to taste, stirring somewhat often to heat up the beans. Stir in the mixture of cherry tomatoes, cilantro, onions & garlic.

• Take your cooled peppers and stuff them with this mixture by carefully spooning the mix in. Broil until warmed throughout and starting to brown, about ten minutes for our convection oven, but start to keep an eye on yours after about five.

• Plate and enjoy!

Imam Bayildi

Whole eggplant stuffed with caramelized onion, garlic, tomato, dill & basil, slowly simmered until it’s fork tender. I honestly feel like no further description is necessary. If that doesn’t sound good to you... then I guess I just don’t understand what would. Bonus with this dish: if you make too much of the filling, it also makes a delicious side dish or dip for chips!

Make too much filing? Enjoy it as a side dish or dip for chips!

‘How do I grow my own eggplant?’ you real over-achievers may be asking yourself. Well, I’ll describe our methods here with the disclaimer that we really haven’t dialed this in yet. Sure, this year the plants looked better than ever. In fact, they’re gorgeous! But they just aren’t producing many fruit. In fact, the four we cooked were the only ones we found in four beds worth of growing space! A little digging makes it pretty clear that our soil conditions are to blame. To be fair, we did not amend the soil before planting the eggplant, so that makes the most sense. At any rate, we start the seeds in late March or early April in the greenhouse and pot them up after about a month into bigger containers. Once the danger of outdoor frost has passed, we moved them to the field in beds of one single row with plants twelve inches apart. In our dream scenario, they’d be on landscape fabric or mulched, but this year we’ve weeded them both by hoe and hand. One thing to note is that flea beetles really enjoy this crop, so when they are first transplanted we leave them covered with frost cloth until they’re about a foot tall. At that point we uncover them since they’re finally big enough to withstand the damage a flea beetle can inflict. Aside from that, we use tobacco stakes and some string to keep the plants upright... though they haven’t really had enough fruit to worry about that. I hope all you home growers have much more success with your eggplants than we have this season so far!

Well, that leaves us back where we began, with the deliciousness that is Imam Bayildi. How’d we stumble upon this recipe? An awesome Netflix show called The Chef’s Line featured a Turkish recipe week with this dish as one of the challenges. If you haven’t seen it and you love cooking shows, this may be your new favorite! It’s an Australian show that has home cooks compete with professional chefs and their chefs line; apprentices, station chef, sous chef and head chef as the show progresses. It’s charming, inspiring and entertaining as hell. Plus, Mark Olive may be one of the best cooking show judges of all time, always checking in with the shows participants with the line “how do ya feel?” I could go on, but it’s best if I stop here and you just go check it out for yourself. 

All that’s left is the recipe. So let’s get to it! Original recipe inspiration source is here.

INGREDIENTS

• 2 medium or 4 small eggplants

• 1 large or 2 medium onions, sliced very thin

• 6 garlic cloves, finely chopped

• 1 ½ pounds (3 large or 6 medium) tomatoes chopped

• 2 tablespoons finely chopped dill

• 2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh basil

• Salt (I used about 1 teaspoon in the onion and tomato mixture and just a sprinkle over the eggplants)

• ¼ cup olive oil (I had to substitute coconut for all but two tablespoons and still adored the results)

• ¼ cup water

• 2 ½ teaspoons sugar

• 2 tablespoons lemon juice

PREPARATION

1. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Slit the eggplants down the middle, being careful not to cut through the skin. Place on the baking sheet and bake for 20 minutes, until the outer skin begins to shrivel. Remove from the oven and transfer, cut side down, to a colander set in the sink. Allow to drain for 30 minutes.

2. Meanwhile, heat 2 tablespoons of the olive oil over medium heat in a large, lidded skillet and add the onions. Cook, stirring often, until the onions are very tender, 5 to 8 minutes, and add the garlic. Cook, stirring, for 30 seconds to a minute, until fragrant. Remove from the heat and transfer to a bowl. Add the tomatoes, herbs, salt to taste and 1 teaspoon of the sugar and 1 tablespoon of the remaining oil.

3. Turn the eggplants over and place in the pan, cut side up. Season with salt. Fill with the onion and tomato mixture. Mix together the remaining olive oil, the remaining sugar, the water and the lemon juice. Drizzle over and around the eggplants. Cover the pan and place over low heat. Cook gently for 1 to 1 1/2 hours, checking the pan for liquid and basting from time to time with the liquid in the pan, and adding water to the pan if it becomes too dry. By the end of cooking the eggplants should be practically flat and the liquid in the pan slightly caramelized. Spoon this juice over the eggplant. Allow to cool in the pan, and serve at room temperature (if you have the patience, which we did not).

Tomato & Corn Pie with a Biscuit Crust

Clearly I have a fever, and the only prescription is more tomatoes. I’m sorry to anyone who’s reading these that my last three recipes have featured the same vegetable, truly. This experience is teaching me that between late July and early August my diet shifts to be primarily tomato based, a funny and absurd thing to come to terms with. 

At any rate, if you’ve never enjoyed a biscuit crust tomato and corn pie you need to rectify that situation now. It’s savory summertime perfection layered with vine ripened tomatoes, corn and basil... plus a little plant based cheese, salt and pepper. What more could you ask for? 

So if you haven’t read up on how we grow tomatoes and care to do that, you can find the recipe by checking out our post about Gnocchi in Tomato Broth. If you’re only hear for this fantastic recipe, look no further.

The original source is Smitten Kitchen, this time from her blog.

I’ve altered the recipe, as I’m sure you’d guessed, since it is originally not plant based. Read on dear pie lovers.

Ingredients

• 2 cups all-purpose flour

• 1 tablespoon baking powder

• 1 3/4 teaspoons salt, divided

• 3/4 stick (6 tablespoons or 3 ounces) cold unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch cubes, plus 2 teaspoons melted (I used Miyoko’s cultured vegan butter)

• 3/4 cup milk (I used Silk soy milk)

• 1/3 cup Vegenaise

• 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

• 1 3/4 pounds beefsteak tomatoes (I used Striped German and regretted it for the aesthetics, yellow tomatoes with corn just looks like a whole mess of corn)

• 1 1/2 cups corn (from about 3 ears), coarsely chopped by hand or lightly puréed in a food processor, divided (I used a can because I didn’t have fresh corn available)

• 2 tablespoons finely chopped basil, divided

• 1 tablespoon finely chopped chives, divided (I skipped this)

• 1/4 teaspoon black pepper, divided

• 7ounces coarsely grated cheese (1 3/4 cups), divided (I used Parmela Creamery Mozzarella style aged nut cheese)

Whisk together flour, baking powder, and 3/4 tsp salt in a bowl, then blend in cold vegan butter (3/4 stick) with your fingertips or a pastry blender until it resembles coarse meal. Add plant based milk, stirring until mixture just forms a dough, then gather into a ball.

Divide dough in half and roll out one piece on a well-floured counter into a 12-inch round (1/8 inch thick). Fold the round gently in quarters, lift it into a 9-inch pie plate and gently unfold and center it. Pat the dough in with your fingers trim any overhang.

Preheat oven to 400°F with rack in middle. If your kitchen is excessively warm, as ours is, go ahead and put the second half of the dough in the fridge until you’re ready to use it. Whisk together vegenaise and lemon juice.

Cut an X in bottom of each tomato and blanch in a large pot of boiling water 10 seconds. Immediately transfer with a slotted spoon to an ice bath to cool. Peel tomatoes, then slice crosswise 1/4 inch thick and, if desired, gently remove seeds and extra juices. Arrange half of tomatoes in crust, overlapping, and sprinkle with half of corn, one tablespoon basil, 1/2 tablespoon chives, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1/8 teaspoon pepper and one cup of grated cheese. Repeat layering with remaining tomatoes, corn, basil, chives, salt, and pepper. Pour lemon vegenaise over filling and sprinkle with remaining cheese.

Roll out remaining piece of dough into a 12-inch round in same manner, then fit over filling, folding overhang under edge of bottom crust and pinching edge to seal. Cut 4 steam vents in top crust and brush crust with melted vegan butter (2 teaspoons). Bake pie until crust is golden and filling is bubbling, 30 to 35 minutes, then cool on a rack. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Gazpacho

You may have observed that this weeks recipe features the same crop as last week, the lovely market garden crop that I currently (clearly) can’t get enough of. The thought of chilled soup boasting the best flavors of summer was too appealing to pick another crop just for the sake of it being different. So, here it is. A glorious medley of tomatoes, cucumber, fresh sweet red pepper, garlic & onion blended and served chilled. Because, frankly, it’s been pretty frickin hot out when we eat lunch.

Just how we specifically grow tomatoes was described last week so check out the Gnocchi in Tomato Broth post if you want to hear about our practices for raising tomatoes. Otherwise, carry on reading to discover a recipe that is not only flat out delicious, but also takes about 15 minutes to make (not including chilling time here)! 

For the original recipe inspiration, click here. Only a few modifications were made, and you bet they’re included in the recipe below.

Ingredients:

• 2 cups (500 mL) vegetable stock (or tomato juice if you want the dish to pop with color for your photos)

• 1 1/2 pounds (0.6 kg) tomatoes, cored and roughly chopped

• 1 medium/large (425 g) red pepper, seeded and roughly chopped

• 1 medium/large cucumber, peeled and roughly chopped

• 1/4 cup (30 g) chopped sweet onion

• 1 medium/large garlic clove

• 1 tablespoon (15 mL) fresh lime juice, or to taste

• Fine sea salt, to taste

• 1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes, or to taste

• 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, or to taste

• Chopped peppers, avocado, green onion, olive oil, croutons, etc., for serving

Directions:

1. Combine the vegetable broth (or tomato juice), tomatoes, red pepper, cucumber, onion, garlic, lime juice in a blender and blend until smooth.

2. Add in the rest of the seasonings (salt, red pepper flakes, pepper) to taste, and blend again.

3. Pour into a 2-litre/8 cup glass jar and secure lid. Chill for 3 to 4 hours, or overnight. Or just chill in the blender if you are lazy, like me.

4. Before serving, shake the jar to combine (or stir in your blender). Pour into bowls, and garnish with your desired toppings (such as chopped peppers, avocado, green onion, croutons, olive oil, etc.).

Gnocchi in Tomato Broth

When searching for a tomato recipe, I wanted to try out something that felt grand. Outlandish even. After such a long wait for this crop to finally ripen up to harvest, a bit of theatrics felt necessary. To accent our abundance of potatoes this season, there feels like no better way to enjoy the summer bounty than by pairing gnocchi with fresh, homemade tomato broth and ribbons of basil.

How do we grow our tomatoes? Well, every season so far (and please keep in mind that as of typing this we are in the midst of season three) there have been modifications to how we grow tomatoes. Fortunately, this season is shaping up to be the best yet! We seed in very early April, using heat mats and frost cloth to keep everything warm for germination. After about a month, we “pot up” the crop, meaning that we move the small seedlings into bigger cells so that they have even more space to grow. Pairing this timing with a fresh batch of soil full of  extra amendments and perhaps even a boost of compost tea is really beneficial. Once all threat of frost is over, we move them outside in single rows per bed, eighteen inches apart. Keeping up with pruning and trellising is extremely helpful for us, so we are sure to train the varieties we grow to two stems (at least for the slicing varieties) and prune heavily around the base of the plant to help allow better airflow and to prevent disease. While all of these things have helped this seasons tomato patch look better than ever... they still seem to take quite a while to ripen. This may be due to the location we selected to grow, but if you have any ideas on how to help boost our tomatoes, please let me know!

Enough about growing tomatoes though! It’s time to talk about preparing them for this dish. 

Gnocchi in tomato broth is one of the most impressive summer dishes I’ve ever made. While it may seem impossibly complex, I promise you that if you actually follow the instructions... you can’t go wrong! If you’d asked me yesterday if I thought this recipe would work out, I would have told you no. I was fully prepared to post my first true recipe fail, but it looks like we’re just going to have to wait and see what that ends up being! 

This homemade tomato broth captures the flavors of summer, combined with fluffy potato clouds (aka gnocchi) making for a delicate and impressive meal. 

The original recipe inspiration came from The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook by Deb Perelman on page 117. I hardly modified it, but what was changed is included in the recipe below.

Yield: 2 1/2 to 3 cups of broth and 85 to 100 gnocchi, serving four

Ingredients:

Tomato Broth

• 2 medium carrots, chopped

• 1 small yellow onion, chopped

• 2 garlic cloves, peeled and smashed

• 1/2 cup white wine

• 1/2 cup water

• Two medium sized tomatoes, cut into chunks

• Small handful of fresh basil leaves, plus more for garnish

• 2 cups vegetable stock

• Salt & Pepper to taste

Gnocchi

• 2 pounds Satina potatoes (or a comparable potato variety)

• 1 large “egg” substitute ( I made a double batch of Ener-G egg replacer)

• 1 teaspoon table salt

• 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour, plus more for dusting surface

Directions

Bake potatoes. Preheat over to 400 degrees. Bake potatoes for 45 minutes to 1 hour, depending on size, until a thin knife can easily pierce through them. Meanwhile, prepare the tomato broth. 

Make tomato broth. Heat the oil in a heavy pot over medium-high heat. Once it’s hot, add the carrots and onion and cook together for 5 minutes, reducing the heat to medium if they begin to brown. Add the garlic, and cook for 1 minute more. Pour in the wine, and use it to scrape up any browned bits stuck to the bottom of the pan, then cook the wine until it is reduced by half, for several minutes. Stir in the tomatoes, plus a half cup of water, add the basil and stock and simmer until the tomato broth thickens slightly, for about 45 minutes. Strain out the vegetables in a fine-mesh colander, and season with salt and pepper to taste. Set aside until needed.

Make gnocchi. Let the potatoes cool for 10 minutes after baking, then peel them with a knife or peeler. Run the potatoes through a potato ricer or grate them on the large holes of a box grater (or shred them in a food processor like my lazy self did). Cool them to lukewarm, about another 10 minutes. Add the egg replacer and salt, mixing to combine. Add 1/2 cup flour, and mix to combine. Add next 1/2 cup of flour, a tablespoon at a time, until the dough is a good consistency. You want it to be soft and a little sticky, but able to hold its shape enough to be rolled into a rope. Knead the dough together briefly on a counter, just for a minute. 

Divide the dough into quarters. Roll each piece into a long rope, about 3/4 inch thick. Cut each rope into 3/4 inch lengths. At this point, you can use a floured fork or a gnocchi board to give it the traditional l ridges, but I definitely didn’t bother with this step. Place the gnocchi in a single layer on a floured surface. Freezing notes: if you want to freeze any gnocchi, be sure to freeze them while they are on the tray and then scoop them into a bag to kept them separate and not one big mass. 

Cook the gnocchi. Place the gnocchi, a quarter batch at a time, into a pot of boiling, well salted water. Cook the gnocchi until they float, about two minutes, then drain. (Frozen gnocchi will take about a minute longer).

Assemble dish. Meanwhile, reheat brother to simmer. Add drained gnocchi and reheat through. Serve gnocchi and broth together, garnished with extra slivers of basil.

Fresh Green Beans with spicy coconut milk, ginger & lime sauce

Fresh Beans with a spicy coconut milk, ginger & lime sauce

This dish was so easy to make, and really well received from today’s “sous chef” Mark. The only negatives I’ll give it is that I wish I’d cut the tofu into cubes, instead of trying out those wide, thin strips. However, the flavor was awesome, so pick your favorite tofu shape and take it from there! Since we have such an abundance of beans at the moment, I wanted to make something other than the traditional garlic laden side dish this veggie has become synonymous with. Coconut milk with spicy pepper, ginger and lime were perfection paired with fresh beans, crispy tofu, rice noodles and toasted cashews. Okay, random aside: I know this recipe is officially good because I got hungry all over again just typing this up!

Beans are one of the vegetables that were the most surprising to learn about as I started my farm apprenticeship journey. Before working on a farm, I only saw them as black beans, pinto or green... and that was pretty much it! These are the sad facts about my bean ignorance. There are more varieties than I could have ever imagined, and the best part is that not all of them have to be grown on trellises (aka pole beans)... bush beans are a major plus. The bush bean varieties we grow are Provider, Royal Burgundy & Roc D’Or, primarily for the colors in addition to the awesome taste between them. We sow two rows per bed about 18” apart, about one or two inches between seeds. Growing beans is one of my personal favorites because it is such a fast crop to grow, meaning it outcompetes even most weeds. After three or four harvests, that succession (we usually do two per season but definitely want to up that count next year) is done, particularly since we don’t take any preventative measures for bean beetles. If anyone has any ideas that don’t involve using manufactured chemicals to control these pests, please let me know because I’d love to extend the harvest on this productive crop!

Back to the recipe! Looking for a new way to enjoy a summer staple? Try out this sweet and spicy green bean recipe with coconut milk, garlic, ginger & lime. It’ll be a switch up from the standard side of green beans you see literally everywhere. You know the one, with butter and garlic in an uninspired pile to the side of your main course. Plus, it’s summer, the very best time to enjoy coconut and lime complements to any meal, at least in my opinion.

Here’s the source for the original recipe. The edited version is below!

INGREDIENTS

• 1 (14- to 16-oz) package firm tofu

• 2 tablespoons soy sauce

• 3 tablespoons coconut oil

• 1 tablespoon finely chopped garlic

• 1 tablespoon finely chopped peeled fresh ginger (or the dried spice if that’s all you have)

• 1/2 teaspoon dried hot red pepper flakes (or your favorite spicy pepper instead!)

• 1 lb green beans, trimmed and cut into 2-inch-long pieces

• 1 teaspoon salt

• 1 (14- to 15-oz) can unsweetened coconut milk

• 1 tablespoon fresh lime juice

• 1/3 cup chopped salted roasted cashews

• Accompaniment: rice noodles or rice

DIRECTIONS

1. Cube the tofu into small one inch size pieces. Put 1 tablespoon soy sauce in a wide shallow dish, then add tofu, turning to coat, and let stand 10 minutes.

2. Heat oil in a 12-inch heavy skillet over high heat until hot but not smoking, then add tofu in 1 layer and cook, turning over once, until tofu is browned, about 6 minutes total. Transfer with a slotted spoon to a large plate, reserving oil in skillet.

3. Add garlic, ginger (if fresh, if dried add it with the coconut milk), and red pepper flakes to skillet and sauté, stirring, until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Add beans, bell pepper, and salt and sauté, stirring, 1 minute.

4. Stir in coconut milk (add dried ginger here if that’s what you’re using) and remaining tablespoon soy sauce and bring to a boil. Boil uncovered, until beans are tender, about 6 minutes. Transfer vegetables using a slotted spoon to plate with tofu.

5. Simmer sauce until thickened slightly and reduced to about 3/4 cup, about 2 minutes. Stir in lime juice and pour sauce over vegetables and tofu. Sprinkle with cashews.

Okra Cornmeal Cakes with Cilantro Lime Yogurt Dip

It’s safe to say that the predominant okra recipes online are for either a) fried okra, or b) gumbo. This recipe stood out from the crowd because it’s such a creative twist on the traditional okra dishes. Three cups of okra are in this dish, paired with a whole green pepper and two cloves of garlic- so despite appearances it’s really more vegetable than cake. The cilantro & lime yogurt dip rounded out the meal, which I’d only say could be improved by substituting a red pepper for green... and that choice is purely aesthetic, so go for green if it’s what you have available. 

For a little aside, we grew the okra, green pepper and cilantro for this dish- a first trifecta for the market garden & I’m gonna take a second to enjoy that here! Out of those three, growing okra is by far the simplest for us. We start the seeds in May or June in trays to transplant out into the field once they show their “true” leaves. They go out into the field in two rows per bed about a foot apart, and we grow both red and green varieties. So far, we haven’t had any pest problems with this crop, and find that it grows pretty easily in the climate here in western North Carolina. Great news for us this time of year with some other (rather finicky/particular) crops to worry about elsewhere in the field. 

I feel like I don’t need to elaborate too much on these. They are amazing! If you’re someone who doesn’t like okra because of the texture... these solve that problem. If you’re on the fence about okra, now’s the time to try out a new recipe. This one :)

Full disclosure: as I went to make this recipe, I realized I was out of cornmeal. Yep. I’m serious. So... I made do with a combination of semolina flour and panko bread crumbs. Though I do hope to make this again soon with actual cornmeal. Please don’t hate me for being too lazy to go to the store and correct this! The original recipe inspiration is from: https://www.runningtothekitchen.com/okra-cornmeal-cakes/ 

Now here’s the slightly modified version I made:

Ingredients

• 3 cups sliced okra rounds

• 1 cup diced pepper (green or red)

• 2 cloves garlic, minced

• 2 cup yellow cornmeal (or 1 cup semolina flour & 1 of panko bread crumbs)

• 2 teaspoon baking powder

• 1 teaspoon salt

• 2 eggs (I used Ener-G egg substitute)

• 1 cup water

• salt & pepper

• 1/2 cup oil for frying (coconut, canola, etc.)

• 1/2 cup plain yogurt (almond, coconut or any other substitute you enjoy)

• juice of 1 lime

• 2 tablespoons chopped cilantro

Instructions

1. Combine the cornmeal, baking powder and salt in a large bowl.

2. Whisk together the egg substitute and water.

3. Add the egg substitute and water mixture to the cornmeal mixture and stir together with a spatula.

4. Mix in the okra, pepper, red pepper flakes and garlic.

5. Season generously with salt and pepper.

6. Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat.

7. Once hot, form the batter into patties and pan fry on each side for about 3 minutes until golden brown.

8. Transfer to a paper towel lined plate to drain.

9. Mix the almond yogurt, lime and cilantro together in a small bowl and serve with the hot cakes.

Zucchini Bread

It’s the magical time of year when summer has only just begun and you’re already trying to get creative with the abundance of summer squash... ok the word “creative” is a stretch for zucchini bread, but let’s not focus on that. Instead, let’s focus on the one thing I’ve learned from writing these posts. Fact is, I truly enjoy baking, and want to find ways to incorporate it into the meals I make way more often. Weirdly, throughout my all of the baking I’ve done, I haven’t made many that many quick breads. So, zucchini bread, pumpkin bread, etc. always feel like a fun and uniquely seasonal indulgence. 

In an earlier post, I described our growing processes for zucchini, so I won’t dive into that now. If you’re curious about what it’s like to grow this crop, you can find that info here with the Zucchini, Apricot & Peach Socca Tart.

Why bother with this zucchini bread? Because it’s an easy & sweet treat with more zucchini than sugar, banana instead of egg (yum!) and the option to substitute according to your favorites. Want to make it gluten free, use your flour of choice. Oil free? Try it with applesauce instead. This zucchini bread feels indulgent and literally makes your house smell like an artisan bakery. I feel like that last sentence was enough of a reason to make this bread. At any rate, if you find yourself in a situation where you too are trying to bake, make your home smell amazing and eat a veggie laden dessert, look no further. 

The original recipe inspiration is from a new favorite, Connoisseurus Veg at https://www.connoisseurusveg.com/vegan-zucchini-banana-bread/

I made a few modifications which are included in the detailed recipe below.

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour

• 1/4 cups coconut flour (or make your life easier by using 1 3/4 cups all purpose flour instead, if you don’t have coconut)

• 1 teaspoon cinnamon

• 3/4 teaspoon salt

• 3/4 teaspoon baking soda

• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder

• 1 ripe banana

• 1/2 cup organic granulated sugar

• 1/3 cup coconut oil, melted (or your favorite baking oil)

• 1/4 cup soy milk (or your preferred milk substitute)

• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

• 1 cup coarsely grated zucchini

• 1/2 cup chopped (and toasted!) pecans

Instructions

• Preheat the oven to 350°.

• Lightly oil an 8 or 9 inch loaf pan.

• Stir the flour, cinnamon, salt, baking soda, and baking powder together in a medium mixing bowl.

• Place the banana into a separate medium bowl and mash it with a fork or potato masher.

• Add the sugar, oil, milk and vanilla extract to the banana and stir until well mixed.

• Add banana mixture to dry ingredients and stir just until blended.

• Fold in the zucchini & pecans.

• Scoop the mixture into loaf pan and smooth out the top with a spatula.

• Bake for 45 minutes (in a convection oven, 50 in a regular oven), or until a toothpick inserted into the center of a loaf comes out clean.

• Transfer the pan to a cooling rack and allow to cool completely before removing the loaf from the pan and slicing.

Beet Burgers (with balsamic)

My goodness these are delicious. I can verify that after having consumed near a dozen of them since we first started enjoying this recipe about a month ago. We have Mark to thank for this burger recipe & cooking experience, as it has practically become a weekly specialty since it’s “discovery.” Earthy beets combined with beans, oats, onion, garlic, dill... plus a balsamic reduction = the perfect veggie burger! Honestly, if you’re a veggie burger fiend, like us, you will likely love this homemade version.

Originally sourced from Connisseurus Veg on convegblog.com this version is nearly identical to the one shared below, with the exception of using half of the amount of balsamic. You can find the original link here: https://www.connoisseurusveg.com/beet-burgers/

 Prep Time: 10 minutes

 Cook Time: 25 minutes

 Total Time: 35 minutes

 Servings: 6

Pick your favorite toppings and perhaps use a real bun at home!

 Ingredients

• 1/2 cup balsamic vinegar

• 1/4 cup organic brown sugar

• 1 1/4 cups rolled oats

• 1 (14 ounce) can black beans, drained and rinsed

• 1 1/2 cups shredded beets (about 1 large beet, or lots of small ones in this case)

• 1 small onion, diced

• 3 garlic cloves, minced

• 1/4 cup chopped fresh dill

• 1/2 teaspoon salt, or to taste

• Black pepper to taste

• 1-2 tablespoons canola oil, or another high-heat oil

For Serving

• 6 burger buns

• Lettuce

• Tomato

• Onion slices

Instructions

• Begin by making the balsamic reduction. Stir the balsamic vinegar and brown sugar together in a small saucepan and place over medium-low heat.

• Bring the mixture to a simmer, lower heat and allow to cook, stirring occasionally, until the mixture is about as thick as chocolate syrup, about 15 minutes.

• Remove the balsamic reduction from the heat and allow it to cool for a few minutes while you prep the remaining ingredients.

• Place the oats into a food processor bowl and blend to a coarse powder.

• Add the beans, beets, onion, garlic, dill, salt, pepper, and 2 tablespoons of the balsamic reduction to the food processor.

• Pulse until the ingredients are finely chopped and well combined.

• Taste test the mixture and adjust any seasonings to your liking.

• Lightly oil a medium skillet and place it over medium heat.

• Shape the beet mixture into 6 patties and arrange as many as you can in the skillet without overcrowding.

• Cook the patties for about 4 minutes on each side, until lightly browned.

• Drizzle 1-2 teaspoons of the balsamic reduction over each patty. Flip and drizzle the opposite sides. Flip again and cook for a few seconds before removing the patties from the skillet.

• Cook any remaining patties in the same manner, adding oil to the skillet as needed between batches.

• Stuff the patties into buns and top with toppings of choice. Drizzle with some of the excess balsamic reduction if you like.

• Serve.

Beet burgers before cooking

Potato & Zucchini Latkes

Potato & Zucchini Latkes

Savory pancakes?! Yes please. These latkes are a definite upgrade to traditional hash browns, and are my current favorite way to enjoy potatoes. Adding summer squash was just a twist on this traditional recipe, so if there’s something you want to try out instead, I highly recommend it! It’s incredibly delicious, super quick to whip up, and really filling too. Essentially, it’s all the things!

Since I took a moment to describe growing zucchini/summer squash in last week’s Socca Tart recipe, this week is all about potatoes. This crop is a staple in our market garden! It is absolutely one of my personal favorites all around, I love planting, harvesting and eating them... which I definitely can’t boast of all of the crops we grow. Since we don’t own a traditional tractor (only a walk behind BCS tractor) we have modified the way we grow potatoes. Most growers plant in a single row and use a tractor to hill up around the potatoes as they grow to control weeds and keep the potatoes well covered from sunlight. Not us! To make the most of our field, we plant in two rows about twelve inches apart both between the rows and the plants (after cutting the seed potatoes into smaller chunks to make the most of those too!). Then, I do one round of “hilling” which essentially means walking around with a hoe and making sure the soil is piled high around the seed potatoes. Soon after the first shoots of the potatoes appear (about a couple of week later) we cover the entire area with mulch, trying to leave a little space for the potatoes to push through in the process. Mulching our potatoes is beneficial for two reasons. First, it allows us to not have to hill the dang things over and over as weeds inevitably appear. Second, it seems to have the magical effect of keeping *most* potato beetles at bay. Sure, we walk through and physically remove them from time to time if we need to... but the mulch really does seem to help the situation remarkably. We plant several varieties of potatoes, some that are specifically grown to be pulled early as “new potatoes,” some mid season and some late season varieties. If you want to know specifics, just ask! At any rate, to harvest we either simply pull them out of the ground, or use our small digging fork to loosen the soil first if needed. Just be sure to dig well away from the plant or you will end up stabbing a potato, which is always sad.

The potato patch at Mighty Gnome Market Garden 2019, partway through mulching.

Now that you know all about our method of growing potatoes, it’s time to read up on how you can enjoy them in a latke, right? Well, the original recipe inspiration for this is from The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook by Deb Perelman, which can be found on page 31 of the book. I have definitely modified this one a fair bit from hers, but always want to be very up front about the source of recipes listed in The Vegetablog.

This recipe yields about 8 five inch latkes, so perhaps cut it in half if that sounds like too much for you!

The recipe below will yield you double the amount of latkes pictured!

Ingredients

• 2 large potatoes (or the equivalent in small potatoes, whatever works!)

• 1 zucchini/summer squash

• 1 small onion

• 2 cloves of garlic

• 1 cup all purpose flour

• 1 tablespoon plus one teaspoon baking powder

• 2 teaspoons salt

• 1 teaspoon black pepper

• Vegetable or olive oil for frying

• 4 “eggs” or egg substitute. I used Ener-G egg replacer and loved the results!

Directions

• In a food processor or with a box grater, coarsely shred the potato, zucchini, onion and peeled garlic. Transfer the shredded mixture to a square of cheesecloth (or into a colander if you don’t have any cheesecloth lying about) and squeeze out as much of the water as possible. Let it stand for two minutes and then squeeze it out again.

• In a large bowl, mix together the flour, baking powder, salt, pepper and egg replacer. Stir in the potato, zucchini and onion mixture until all the pieces are evenly coated.

• In a small heavy skillet (she recommends cast iron, if you have one) heat two tablespoons of vegetable oil until it shimmers. Drop one quarter of the potato mixture into the skillet and flatten with the back of a spoon into a five inch round. Cook the latke over moderate heat until the edges are golden, about four to five minutes, flip and cook until golden on the bottom, about three to four minutes more.

• Serve topped with plant based sour cream, chives, applesauce, avocado, or whatever suits your fancy!

The ingredients before processing

Zucchini, Apricot & Peach Socca Tart

Zucchini, Apricot & Peach Socca Tart (plus Zucchini & Almond Ricotta Socca Tart)

This recipe is the epitome of summer! It is refreshing, a unique combination of flavors and surprisingly filling. While we preferred the Zucchini & Almond Ricotta Socca Tart - because yes, I made two of these- I was particularly fond of the Apricot & Peach Compote. I just would have preferred it with a traditional galette dough more than Socca. But hey, that’s just me. Perhaps this will be your new favorite flavor combination of all time! 

Without further ado, let’s talk zucchini. Growing zucchini, or any summer squash for that matter, is a joy. They grow quickly, with plants seemingly doubling in size week after week until they are ready for harvest. Unlike a lot of the crops mentioned in The Vegetablog so far, we start these in April (usually) though that may change once we land in a long term land situation. Why do we start them this late? Well, they grow so fast that within a few weeks they have to go outside! If confined to their trays too long, they’ll simply go to flower right where they are and you’ll have the worlds tiniest summer squash on your hand soon after. Since there are some pest issues with squash, it is helpful to cover them once they are transplanted in order to keep the bugs away until the plants size up. Once they start to flower, we uncover them and let the bees do their work. Zucchini or your preferred summer squash are right around the corner once flowering starts!

Want to try out some delicious Zucchini, Apricot & Peach Socca Tart? Perhaps you want to make a modified version with a homemade almond ricotta (like I did!) instead of the apricot & peach compote. If you want the recipe for the almond ricotta, just comment below and I’ll be sure to share that with you. Read on, try it out and let us know what you think! 

The recipe inspiration came from The French Market Cookbook by Clotilde Dusoulier of chocolateandzucchini.com. You can find the Zucchini, Apricot & Peach Socca Tart recipe on page 76, and the Socca Tart (Chickpea Galette) on the preceding pages 74 & 75. I have changed almost nothing from the original recipe!

Zucchini, Apricot & Peach Socca Tart on the left, Zucchini & Almond Ricotta Socca Tart on the right.

Ingredients

• 250 g of apricots or yellow peaches, pitted & diced (I used half dried apricots & half canned yellow peaches - so one full can of yellow peaches, drained) and loved the results!)

• 2 small zucchinis

• Socca Tart base

• Sea Salt

• Black Pepper

• 1 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves

Directions

• Cook the diced apricots & peaches in a small saucepan over medium low heat, uncovered, until very soft, about ten minutes. Increase the heat, bring to a simmer, and cook for another five minutes to thicken slightly. Set aside to cool completely. This will make roughly 1/2 cup or so of compote. Perfect to cover the galette/tart base.

• Using a mandolin slicer or very sharp knife, cut the zucchini into paper thin slices.

• Place the socca browned side up on a serving dish and spread with the apricot/peach compote. Scatter the zucchini slices on top and sprinkle with salt, pepper and the thyme.

• Cut with a serrated knife and serve.

Ingredients & Directions for the Socca Tart Base/Chickpea Galette

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups of chickpea flour

• 1 teaspoon fine sea salt

• 1 teaspoon ground cumin

• Olive oil

• Black pepper

Directions

• In a medium, combine the chickpea flour, salt, cumin, and three tablespoons of oil. Pour in 3/4 cup of cold water in a slow stream, whisking constantly to avoid lumps. Pour the entire amount of batter into the pan at once and bake until set, 25 to 30 minutes,* before switching to the broiler setting for another ten minutes. Turn the socca out onto a plate, then flip it back onto a serving dish and garnish with cooked or raw vegetables.

*In my personal experience, the socca tart was finished cooking after 25 minutes at 400. When I set the oven to broil, it very quickly started to burn and I removed it as quickly as possible. Just a note for something to pay attention to!

Carrot Cupcakes

Carrots

The idea here was to make carrot cupcakes... but as you can see the plan was revised to be carrot muffins instead! Although after some reading on the exact difference between cupcakes & muffins I am genuinely left with questions about which one I made. Oh well, that’s what happens when you forget to pick up cream cheese at the store beforehand (and the store is not conveniently close, so I am not driving back to fix the mistake!). As it turns out, carrot cupcakes- errr muffins- are wonderful even without cream cheese icing, so you can skip that step and the extra sugar that comes along with it. They are the perfect cinnamon sweetness and quick to make, taking about thirty minutes. If you have a sweet tooth- like me!- check this recipe out and please let me know what you think.

Dessert plus veggies = perfection

Growing carrots is not easy. It took us several seasons to dial in reliable carrot beds, and will probably take several more to really perfect our methods. The most challenging part of growing a great bed of carrots is keeping the weeds at bay. Since carrots are slow to germinate, there’s plenty of time for other plants to grow up and make your carrots very hard to find. One of the most common ways to combat this is with a flame weeder, an awesome tool that we don’t have... so I won’t go into too much detail on that. The other is to just seeds your rows as straight as possible so that you can hoe the lil weeds that pop up and try to avoid hand weeding the bed. Trust me, hand weeding is not fun. We also tried seeding a row of radishes right next to each row of carrots in early spring which worked quite well and helped us see the lines of crops to weed quickly, since radishes germinate so fast. Currently we seed three rows per bed and usually grow two to three beds per succession. Successions are ideally timed to be seeded every three weeks beginning in early spring. All of this was a very long winded way of saying that I am not an expert carrot grower, though I aspire to be one someday!

Shall we dive into this recipe? I think so! Original inspiration was from Spruce Eats, linked here: https://www.thespruceeats.com/super-moist-vegan-carrot-cake-recipe-3378191

Ingredients

• 1/4 cup applesauce

• 1 tsp. vanilla

• 1/2 cup vegan butter (softened)

• 1 tsp. salt

• 1 1/2 tsp. baking powder

• 2 tsp. cinnamon

• 1 cup sugar

• 1 1/4 cups flour

• 1/4 cup soy milk (but I bet any alternative milk would do!)

• 1 cup carrots (grated)

• 1/2 cup pecans (chopped)

Directions

• In a large bowl or using a mixer, combine the applesauce, vanilla, vegan butter, salt, baking powder, cinnamon, sugar, flour, and soy milk until well mixed.

• Add the carrots and pecans and gently folding them in to combine well.

• Bake in a lined muffin tin in an oven preheated to 325 for about 18 minutes, turning once about half way through to ensure even baking. Since mine was baked in a convection oven, be sure to keep an eye on these in the last few minutes of the bake if using a regular oven. My go to method is always to gently stick a fork in (or toothpick!) and see if it pulls out of the bake cleanly. If so, it’s done!

• See, I told you this was an easy recipe!

The only modifications made from the original were using pecans instead of walnuts, because that’s my preference. Oh, and making these into cupcakes/muffins instead of a cake! It really reduces baking time and allows me to make a couple of batches of fresh sweets. I also made a frosting for these... however, since I made it with coconut oil and then promptly forgot about it in the fridge while waiting for the muffins to cool, it was too hard to spread! Was it still delicious spooned on top of the muffins? You bet! But it was definitely too ridiculous looking to photograph.

Anyway, thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy this recipe!

Beet Balls

Beets

Okay, this recipe is particularly exciting to me! As someone who sticks to a plant based diet, I can tell you that I really look forward to homemade, high quality and easy to make meat substitutes. Beyond Burgers are great and all, but once beat season rolls around, it’s time to celebrate with this Beet Ball recipe! Mark made this recipe once before and we enjoyed the Beet Balls over pasta, though we’ve also talked about how delicious they would be on a sub with marinara and some cheese (plant based too, of course!). What other creative dishes would you make at home?

Here’s some good news; growing beets is actually quite easy to do! Fortunately, they have relatively few pests and can therefore remain uncovered in the field, which makes life significantly easier for the grower. While we used to direct seed them, we now transplant them to get a jump on the weed pressure, to prevent the need to thin after they start growing and to get a more consistently sized beet. Our favorite varieties currently include Merlin, Chioggia and Touchstone Gold, which we transplant into beds with three rows about five inches apart.  Since this is our first season trying this method, we can say that it’s been a big step forward from direct seeding for us, but that we will probably tighten up spacing between plants in the future. The only downside to growing beets is that you need to be patient! While their greens may make it appear as if the plant is big and ready to harvest, it can take longer than you’d think to get the beet size you want to harvest. The seed packet claims 55 days to maturity, but it definitely feels like longer... unless you like baby beets, of course!

At any rate, we hope you enjoy this Beet Ball recipe! We were certainly thrilled with it on the first go around! Enough so to make it again to confirm its quality for this blog post. They’re so unbelievably delicious, hearty and filling that we will absolutely be making this a staple. These Beet Balls are rich in flavor from herbs, onions, toasted walnuts and of course, the earthy beets of your choice- and you could go many directions with this with all of the flavor and color options out there!

Here’s the original recipe link: https://veggiedesserts.co.uk/recipe-courgetti-beet-balls/

The only modifications we made were substituting noodles for the spiralized zucchini (since all of ours is going to The Food Club this week!) and using Chioggia beets, which affected the color of the finished Beet Ball.

Beet balls over pasta

Ingredients

• 2 raw beets washed (approx 300g)

• 1/2 cup walnuts

• 1 can red kidney beans (15oz) drained and rinsed

• 1/3 cup breadcrumbs

• 1/2 red onion finely diced

• 1 teaspoon dried oregano

• 1 teaspoon dried thyme

• Salt and pepper to taste

Fresh out of the oven

To serve:

• Pasta, your favorite homemade version or storebought

• Zucchini, to make noodles if you have a spiralizer

• Marinara sauce to complement your pasta of choice!

Instructions

• Heat oven to 200C/400F and grease a baking tray with oil.

• Peel the beetroots and slice into chunks. Whiz in a food processor or mini chopper until fine. Transfer to a large bowl and set aside.

• In a dry frying pan, toast the walnuts for a few minutes until lightly golden. Add the walnuts and kidney beans to the food processor (no need to clean after the beets) and pulse once or twice until crumbly.

• Add the walnut bean mixture, bread crumbs, chopped onion, oregano, thyme, salt and pepper to the bowl of beetroot and combine well, you’ll need to use your hands. Squish the mixture well so that it sticks together. Roll into balls and place onto the baking tray.

• Bake the beet balls for 25-30 minutes, turning halfway through.

For the pasta or zucchini noodles:

• Zucchini noodles can be eaten raw or cooked. Spiralize the zucchini in a hand-held or freestanding spiralizer. If cooking, blanch the noodles for a minute or so in a pan of boiling water until hot, then drain. Gently toss them in the marinara then divide onto plates and top with the beet balls. Serve immediately.

Chioggia beets are gorgeous, and add their own “marbling” to any meat substitute dish. Kinda weird to say, I know.

Spinach and Caper Sauce (over pasta!)

Spinach

You know it’s good for you! So how can you enjoy it more often? Try the following recipe out! This spinach and caper sauce is magic over pasta! Brilliant green and hearty from the spinach, plus a hint of cilantro, capers and garlic. Yes please. Have any other ideas of what to combine this sauce with? Please let me know! Mark already took the leftovers from the blender and combined them with a can of beans for a sort of hummus dip. That’s right, we couldn’t even bear to wash the leftovers out of the blender. It’s that good.

This recipe was inspired by a new cook book I recently picked up. By new, I mean new to my life. I believe it was published a couple of years ago, so perhaps you already have a copy of The Homemade Vegan Pantry by Miyoko Schinner. That’s right, the Miyoko from Miyoko’s cheese! It was recommended to me by Ellis, and I am so grateful that I finally listened and added this title to my small collection of cookbooks!

Before we dive in, I just want to take a moment to share about our experiences growing spinach in the market garden. When we started growing this crop several years ago, we would seed it directly into the ground with moderate success. However, when we moved and also transitioned from double digging beds to using the BCS walk behind tractor to cut down on the hours needed for bed preparation... we decided to switch up our method of growing spinach. That’s because it grows just slow enough to experience substantial weed pressure. To help with that, we tried out transplanting spinach and found that process to be much more enjoyable. Like many of the other spring greens I’ve written about, we seed them in late February to early March in trays and let them size up in the greenhouse for a couple of weeks. Once they show their first true leaves, we move them out to the field- where they can handle the cold and don’t need to be covered (hooray!). Transplanting them gives us a jump on the weeds, so we can come through with a hoe when needed and clearly see where the spinach is instead of having to carefully search for those tiny sprouts while hoeing. Some growers cut the whole plant at harvest, but we prefer pulling off the large outer leaves so that we can return several weeks in a row and prolong the spinach harvest. The window for eating spinach fresh out of the garden is brief, compared to other crops, as it doesn’t like heat and will bolt (by that I mean go to flower) as the temperatures rise. Don’t let that discourage you though, it’s worth growing just to make this spinach and caper sauce once!

We didn’t change a thing from the original recipe. The only thing we would note is that we made it with five cloves of garlic and decided we wanted to tone it down on the next batch. Though when we had more of the sauce the day after making it, the garlic flavor had mellowed out significantly. 

You can find the following on page 149 of The Homemade Vegan Pantry. If you’d like to make the pasta too - which we did for the first time!- you can find that recipe on page 140.

Kick this dish up a notch by making your own pasta! We made pasta for the first time just to complement this incredible sauce.

In the process of making my first homemade pasta batch ever.

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup cashews

• 1 1/2 cups water

• 1/2 cup raw walnuts

• 4 or 5 cloves of garlic

• 1/4 cup capers

• 1 cup loosely packed cilantro

• 1 cup loosely packed fresh basil leaves

• 1 bunch spinach, washed and roughly chopped

• Sea salt

Spinach, you will be missed during the hot months of summer.

Directions

Place the cashes and water in a blender and process until very creamy and smooth. Remove about 1/2 cup of this cashew cream and set aside. You may or may not need all of it. Add the walnuts. 4 cloves of garlic, capers, cilantro, and basil to the blender and pulse briefly to chop. Add the spinach a handful at a time until it is incorporated. If the sauce is very thick, you can add the remaining cashew cream, or you can make it lower fat by adding water from cooking your pasta. It should have a thick but pourable consistency. Season to taste with salt, and adjust the other seasonings as well, adding another tablespoon of capers, a clove of garlic, or more basil as desired. Toss with hot pasta and serve. Spinach and Caper Sauce is best eaten when freshly made. You can keep leftovers in a covered container for a day or two. 

Makes about 4 cups, enough for 4 to 6 servings.

Kale Curry & Pan Fried Tofu with Rice

Kale: of the Red Russian variety to be specific

Kale. It’s trendy, it’s wildly popular, everyone knows what it is and what they want to cook with it. You probably know where I’m going with this already, but there’s more to the story of this crop! Red Russian kale, the variety we like to grow best out here at Stonecrop Garden, is a lot less well known than it’s curly and dino (lacinato) relatives. In fact, at market people sometimes ask us what Red Russian Kale is (if I forget to bring my tabletop signs) because it looks so different from what people expect to see when they hear the word “kale.”

Why do we bother to grow this lesser known variety? Well, it’s because it grows quite a bit faster than the other types, and it is often more tender and delicious (in our opinion, of course). If you’ve never tried Red Russian kale, I highly recommend you head out to your local Farmers’ Market and get some. Be sure to also buy any other kale varieties you see and try them all to see which one you prefer! I’d love to hear your which one you like best!

Okay, we’ve established that we grow kale in the market garden. What’s it like to grow? Well, it’s a lot like collard greens & other members of the brassica family. We start it in early March (or late February) in the greenhouse and tend to it for about a month until the ground is ready to be worked outside. Once the kale has reached a good transplanting size, we move it out to the field in beds with two rows, keeping the plants at least a foot apart. We’ve seen other farms grow them with three rows per bed, and want to try this out but have been hesitant to mess with a good thing. As you may know, brassicas are beloved by flea beetles, so we use frost cloth to cover the kale and protect it from any damage. The good news is that this extra hassle also helps speed up growth in the cooler spring months, so after a weeding or two and about a months time after transplant, you’re ready to enjoy the most tender, flavorful spring green in abundance. Like collards too, you can pull the largest leaves from the outside of the plant and let it keep producing new greens for you for a long while. Yum!

Alright, so by now you’ve added kale to your garden plans for next year. All that’s left is deciding what to do with it besides a simple sautee or raw addition to salad (which are the most amazing staples, might I add). If you’re like me, perhaps you’ve just sauteed kale too many times and now you want to branch out! Well, I have good news for you! This kale curry recipe with pan fried tofu and rice will catapult you out of the realm of standard kale dishes. It is so loaded with spices that as I added them to the dish I hesitated, wondering if I should half the amounts. Fortunately, I chose to trust the recipe instead and was so grateful I did. While we didn’t have every ingredient from the original and definitely made some substitutions, I was really happy with this dish! It was unusual (for me) since I don’t often use turmeric, allspice or coconut milk with kale. I made the rice with a little coconut & rice milk to add a lil somethin to it, and pan fried the tofu in olive oil and a hint of earth balance (because we didn’t have any coconut oil).

Food photographer I am not. Kale curry & pan fried tofu with rice enthusiant, I am!

Here’s the original recipe inspiration: https://www.happyveggiekitchen.com/kale-paneer-curry/

Below is the recipe as we prepared it, with all of the modifications written in:

INGREDIENTS

• 1/2 an onion, sliced

• 4 garlic cloves, diced

• 2 tsp ginger

• 1 tsp cumin

• 1 tsp ground coriander

• 1 tsp turmeric

• 1 1/2 tsp allspice

• 4 Tbsp tomato paste

• 2 Tbsp of earth balance

• 1 bunch of chopped kale

• 1 can of full fat coconut milk (I ended up only using about 3/4 can)

• 1 container super firm tofu sliced into cubes or strips

INSTRUCTIONS

1. In a skillet or wide saucepan, heat a little vegetable oil and lightly saute the onion until softened (about seven minutes). Add the garlic and ginger and saute for another few minutes until everything is cooked and fragrant.

2. Add half of the butter to the pan, followed by all of the spices, and cook until the butter is melted.

3. Add the tomato paste.

4. Now add about a third of the kale. Saute until the kale is wilted, and continue adding kale in batches. The pan may get dry as you do this, so scoop in some of the coconut milk as you go to add moisture and help the kale to wilt.

5. Once the kale is all cooked, add the rest of the coconut milk and mix thoroughly.

6. Now add the entire mixture to a blender or food processor and pulse until the kale is almost pureed but still has some texture. Alternatively, if your dish is deep enough you can use an immersion blender to achieve this, which is much easier.

7. While the kale curry is in the blender, add the other Tbsp of earth balance to the pan with a Tbsp of oil and heat to med high to pan fry the tofu. 

8. Serve with rice and/or naan bread.

Please let me know what you thought of this recipe! I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Red Russian kale, quite a different look from lacinato or curly.

Collard Wraps with Arugula Pesto Hummus

Collards

In my experience at market, collards often get a bad rap. They are looked down upon as the overcooked ingredient of a side dish that pulls most of its flavor from ham hock in the (in)famous southern style collard greens. It is my opinion, that this is why I’ve seen market go-ers by pass these tender, sweet greens for kale time and time again. How do you think of collards? Was southern style collard greens the first thing that came to mind when you thought of this veggie too? If so, let’s work together to change that perspective this season, shall we?

Growing collards is a rewarding experience. They continue to produce for weeks, so you can enjoy those scrumptious greens from your garden for quite some time. In our garden, we start them from seed in February or March. We have always grown the Champion variety because it is so consistently awesome there has been no reason to try any other kind. After the seedlings reach a decent transplanting size (about four weeks or so depending on the conditions) we move them out to the field in two rows about a foot apart. Like any other member of the brassica family, we cover them to keep them protected from flea beetle damage and help speed up growth a bit. Fast forward another month or so and a few weedings... and you will be rewarded with some of the tastiest greens you’ve ever had! So good that they will definitely be featured in more than a few recipes here in the coming weeks/months.

Onward to the recipe, both chosen and made this week by Mark! Meaning I’ll be relaying this to you secondhand... but I feel confident I can make sense of it. Just comment below if I didn’t and I’ll be sure to make Mark write about the dishes he creates instead! 

Okay, so this week we (Mark) created Collard Wraps with Arugula Pesto Hummus. Not only were they gorgeous, they were also packed with flavor from the simply prepared and delicious veggies inside. Each wrap had an arugula and chickpea hummus, sauteed asparagus and zucchini, sliced carrots, radishes and purple cabbage, sprouts and avocado! Maybe that sounds like too much going on in one wrap to you... but let me assure you it made perfect sense when it all came together. It’s been a sunny and warm day here in Marshall, and coming in to enjoy these wraps was ideal. They were filling, felt like quite possibly the healthiest thing I could be eating and going in for seconds (or thirds) didn’t make me feel like taking a nap in the hammock by the creek! What more could you ask for?

Mark’s Collard Wraps!

Mainly, we kept to the original recipe with a few exceptions. The first exception being that Mark made his own hummus using arugula instead of basil. 

Here’s his ballpark arugula chickpea hummus recipe (because he seldom measures anything).

• 1 can of chickpeas

• 1/8 lb arugula

• 2 tbsp olive oil

• 1/4 cup cashews, soaked for about 20 minutes 

• 2 cloves garlic 

• Pinch of salt

• Lemon juice- Mark squeezed one slice, if that helps!

We are lucky enough to have a Vitamix, so Mark put all of these ingredients together in there and blended on medium speed for less than a minute to achieve this.

From there, the only other modifications he made was to leave out the cucumber, and to saute the asparagus and zucchini in about 1 tbsp of olive oil on medium heat for about ten minutes stirring occasionally before adding them to the wraps.

Oh, and he doubled the recipes. Because he knows how hungry we are during our lunches!

Feast your eyes on the original recipe here: https://www.eatingbirdfood.com/hummus-collard-wraps/

Or, without further ado, here is the Hummus Collard Wrap recipe as we prepared it:

Ingredients

• 4 collard leaves

• 1 cup arugula pesto hummus (Mark’s recipe yielded more like two cups of hummus, definitely more than you need in the wraps! So you’ll have extra, yay!)

• 10 asparagus spears, sauteed (as mentioned above)

• 1–2 carrots, peeled and sliced into short thin strips

• 1/2 cup zucchini, sauteed (again, see above description)

• 1/2 cup radish, sliced into short thin strips

• 1/2 cup red cabbage, sliced thin

• 1/2 avocado

• alfalfa sprouts

Instructions

Place collard leaves on a flat surface, spread 1/4 cup of hummus near the top/middle of each leaf, fill each leaf with the remaining veggies, splitting each amount between the four wraps. Wrap the leaves as you would a burrito, toothpicks may come in handy here! Cut each wrap in half and enjoy!

Our advice, flip the leaves over before you fill them. Do the opposite of what’s pictured here :)

Rainbow Chard, Raisin & Toasted Almond Pie

This insanely delicious pie had just the right amount of sweetness, a delicious crunch from the toasted almonds, and the cream with a hint of orange zest all served as the perfect pairing with blanched chard. Seriously, I cannot believe how much I enjoyed this pie. While we ate a few slices each for a late lunch, we couldn’t help but talk about how good it would be for brunch with a nice hot coffee.... or even for dessert! I know, I can’t believe I even suggested that a pie with chard should be a dessert, but it really would work!

This recipe was originally supposed to be made with pine nuts, but our nearest grocery store doesn’t have them so we subbed them for toasted almonds. We also veered quite a bit from the original (since it wasn’t plant based) and made a different crust because I forgot to get yeast at the store! Everything we did is listed below, with original inspiration coming from: https://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/swiss-chard-raisin-and-pine-nut-tart-236407

and the official crust recipe I used was sourced from: https://www.thespruceeats.com/flaky-vegan-pie-crust-recipe-3377320

I’ve seen other iterations of this with prunes instead of raisins, or cranberries and lemon zest, or kale and spinach instead of chard. The possibilities are endless! Now I want to make a massive batch of pie dough so I can whip one of these up whenever I want.

Making this pie? Please leave a comment below and share what changes you made, or just share what you thought about it!

Will I be making this pie again? Absolutely!

Before I put it’s hat on.

ACTIVE TIME 40 min

TOTAL TIME 4 1/4 hr

INGREDIENTS

• 1/2 cup raisins (golden suggested, but we used regular)

• 1 cup water

• 2 pounds green Swiss chard, we trimmed the stems but the original suggest removing them completely)

• 1 large egg substitute- I used Ener-G Egg Replacer at 1 1/2 teaspoons of the powder mixed into 2 tablespoons of warm water and left to sit for 5 minutes

• 1/2 cup almond milk creamer

• 1 1/2 tablespoons granulated sugar

• 1/2 teaspoon finely grated fresh orange zest

• 1/3 cup almonds (1 1/2 ounces), toasted

• Pastry dough (recipe below)

• 2 teaspoons confectioners sugar

PREPARATION

1. Bring raisins and water to a boil in a 1-quart heavy saucepan, then remove from heat and let stand, covered, 1 hour. Drain in a colander, then pat dry with paper towels. Put oven rack in middle position and preheat oven to 400°F.

2. Blanch chard in a large pot of boiling salted water, uncovered, stirring occasionally, until tender but still bright green, about 5 minutes. Transfer chard with a slotted spoon to a large bowl of ice and cold water to stop cooking. Drain chard in a colander, then squeeze out excess water by handfuls. Coarsely chop chard.

3. Whisk together egg substitute, almond cream, granulated sugar, zest, and a pinch of salt in a large bowl. Stir in almonds, raisins, and chard until combined.

4. Roll out larger piece of dough on a lightly floured surface with a lightly floured rolling pin into a 15- by 11-inch rectangle and fit into tart pan (do not trim edges). Chill shell while rolling out top.

5. Roll out smaller piece of dough on a lightly floured surface with lightly floured rolling pin into a 12- by 9-inch rectangle. Spread chard filling evenly into shell, then top with second rectangle of dough. Using a rolling pin, roll over edges of pan to seal tart and trim edges, discarding scraps. Cut 3 steam vents in top crust with a paring knife, then put tart in pan on a baking sheet. Bake until top is golden, about 1 hour. Transfer to a rack and cool 10 minutes, then remove side of pan. Cool to room temperature, about 1 hour (this ended up taking me about 45 minutes, but I used a convection oven). Dust with confectioners sugar.

The Pastry Dough

Ingredients

• 2 cups flour

• 1 1/2 tablespoons sugar

• 1/2 teaspoon salt

• 1/2 cup, plus 2 tablespoons vegan butter

• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil

• 3 tablespoons water (cold) (I ended up using closer to five to get the consistency I needed)

The steps:

1. Combine flour, sugar and salt in a large bowl

2. Cut in the vegan butter (I did this in the food processor)

3. In a separate bowl mix together the oil and cold water

4. Add the flour and sugar mix, taking care to mix just until everything is incorporated.

5. Wrap it in saran wrap, or cover the bowl with foil and chill in the refrigerator for at least thirty minutes. Don’t skip this step! 

6. After the dough has chilled, divide it into two with one of the portions being a little larger than the other. Then head back up to the instructions above for rolling it out! While the top recipe used a spring baking pan, I used a glass pie dish (without greasing or flouring it) with great results.