Peachy Green

I can’t stay ahead of my milk, y’all.

Allow me to explain. I’ve always wished for local milk at the East Atlanta Farmer’s Market, and this season Country Garden Farms is making all my (dairy-related) dreams come true! They’re there every week with gallons and half-gallons of amazingly creamy, raw whole milk. (Sale of raw milk for human consumption is illegal in Georgia, so they are very clear about how their milk is for pets only; assume all tasting notes in this post come directly from these two.)

So the problem is, I only use about a quarter-cup of milk per day, on my breakfast granola. Even though I’ve been freezing it in pint jars and only thawing one at a time, I still can’t seem to get through a jar before it sours.

Tonight’s solution to the problem was Smitten Kitchen’s creamed chard, and oh my, was it ever tasty. Cooking the white sauce with spring onions flavors it throughout with delicious oniony sweetness, and though you’ll totally forget the chard is even there, it adds a little texture and color and, you know, vitamins. So good.*

I served ours with a sourdough baguette for sauce-sopping, skillet broccoli, and first-of-the-season broiled snap beans for an altogether lovely, and very green, meal.

*According to Thurston, that is.

A few months ago, my buddy Claire sent me this miso gravy recipe because, as she explained, it had changed her life.

When I texted her to ask a question about it tonight she didn’t know what I was talking about.

It was pretty tasty anyway, and the perfect thing to dress up a simple supper of roasted vegetables (I used yellow squash, green onions, and broccoli) and quinoa. Not that there’s anything nutritionally awry with that meal as-is, but the miso and nutritional yeast in the gravy really up the ante there, too.

The gravy recipe is a little weird in that it calls for you to cook the flour, yeast, and garlic in a dry pan rather than starting with a roux. It worked out just fine, but I think next time I’ll go the traditional roux route and see if I can’t deepen the flavors a little. Also, a squeeze of lemon at the end of the cooking time would be just perfect, I think.

My life seems to be basically the same so far, but I’ve got leftovers. Time will tell.

ROASTED VEGETABLES WITH QUINOA & MISO GRAVY

4 cups sliced yellow squash

1/2 cup sliced (1” lengths) green onion, white & light green bits only

2 cups broccoli florets & stems

Olive oil, as needed

2 tbsp flour

3 tbsp nutritional yeast

1 tbsp minced green garlic (original recipe called for 1 tsp garlic powder, which I didn’t have, but I sure as heck have plenty of green garlic)

1 2/3 cup water

2 tsp mustard

1 tbsp miso

Salt, pepper, and chili flakes to taste

Also, 4 servings of cooked quinoa (about 3/4 cup dry).

Heat oven to 425. Toss squash & onions with olive oil and salt, and spread in a single layer on a baking sheet. Give the broccoli the same treatment, but its own pan. Roast squash & onions for 15 minutes, then stir and return to the oven, along with the broccoli. Give it all another 15 minutes or so, until tender and browned in spots.

Meanwhile, combine flour, nutritional yeast, and garlic in a saucepan over medium heat. Add water & bring to a boil, whisking frequently. Simmer until thickened (keeping in mind it will thicken further as it cools), then remove from heat & whisk in miso and mustard. Add salt, pepper, and chili flakes to taste. Don’t forget that miso is super salty, lest you ruin your supper.

Serve vegetables & gravy over quinoa.

This pretty tart is an Orangette recipe, and like so many of hers, it’s perfect in its simplicity. I was so tempted to make little changes—add garlic, some scallions, cracked black pepper—but I’m so glad I resisted. The flavors of the beets and feta need space to mingle and shine, and it’s best if nothing else gets in the way.

For the crust, I tried a new recipe—this olive oil tart crust. Perfection! I had all but given up on whole wheat pie crusts, and olive oil? Forget it! But this one came together easily and rolled out effortlessly, an elastic, supple dough that baked up flaky and crisp, unlike the crumbly, tough mess I’d experienced before. This is my new go-to.

Speaking of go-tos, it’s hard to mess up green garlic and green veggies in a hot cast-iron skillet, so that’s been a favorite side dish around here lately. Tonight was dinosaur kale, and it rounded out our meal nicely.

Wild blackberries (referred to by all our friends as “streetberries,” as in, “Erin brought streetberry cobbler again, eat at your own risk,”) grow all over our neighborhood. The ones I usually pick all summer are only just flowering—we’re a month or more away from ripe fruit. A couple of weeks ago, though, I spotted a little patch of some other variety, with smaller leaves and, apparently, a much earlier season. Between that little find and the ones we’ve been getting from the Scharkos, my granola’s been dressed up fancy all week, plus I had enough left over to do something fun with on Saturday afternoon.

The basic frozen yogurt recipe I went with is from David Lebovitz, via 101 Cookbooks. I added in my blackberries, pureed with fresh ginger, and cut the sugar back even farther to just half a cup—I used Atlanta Fresh yogurt, which is seriously the most remarkably flavorful yogurt I’ve ever tasted, and didn’t want to cover up all that tart yogurty goodness.

BLACKBERRY-GINGER FROZEN YOGURT

1 cup blackberries

1.5x1.5” chunk ginger root

3 cups plain Greek yogurt, divided (I used full-fat)

1/2 cup sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

Puree blackberries & ginger with 1 cup yogurt, using an immersion blender. (I attempted to strain the mixture afterwards to remove the seeds, but found it was too thick and I was losing all the tasty blackberry pulp, so I decided to live with seeds. Fiber!)

Stir together blackberry mixture, remaining yogurt, sugar, and vanilla. Refrigerate mixture 1 hour, then churn in an ice cream maker & store in an airtight container in the freezer. I found that ours froze very solid in the freezer overnight, so plan to let it defrost a bit before serving!

This week’s CSA share brought Spring’s first cheery-looking bunch of little carrots. Scharko carrots taste and smell so flavorful they’re like a caricature of a carrot, an artist’s rendering of a carrot’s distinctive traits brought to an imaginary extreme, but that’s true for so many fruits & veggies when you get away from the built-to-last supermarket versions. At any rate, I felt like I’d been waiting my whole life (or anyway, since last Spring) to score the season’s first carrots and stuff them directly into the food processor to make Smitten Kitchen’s divine carrot-ginger dressing.

So that is what I did. The avocados are definitely non-negotiable, but I bulked out our salad with sliced radishes and browned tofu cubes. I replaced the shallot in the dressing with a small bulb of green garlic and one of green onion, which worked out nicely, but otherwise followed the recipe to a T, as there’s no sense messing with a perfect thing.

Late by a day, Austin and I realized this morning that yesterday was our six-month wedding anniversary. Maybe that unnoticed magic was what made this meal so good, but even if it was only coincidence, I can’t think of a better anniversary meal. Each of these three simple dishes hit the mark exactly.

Austin requested the deviled eggs, a favorite of both of ours lately. And then, as it happens, I am NOT yet over grated beet salads. I’m loving the sugary sweetness of the raw beets, and (clearly) I’m a little infatuated with the breadth of flavor possibilities. The seared skillet broccoli added a little green to our plates and a perfect garlicky, salty contrast to the creamy goat cheese beet salad that just might be my favorite version yet.

ROSEMARY DEVILED EGGS

4 eggs

1 tbsp mayonnaise

2 tsp grainy mustard

1 tsp finely minced fresh rosemary

Salt & pepper to taste

Hard-boil the eggs. (My perfect-every-time method: Spin the eggs on the counter to center the yolks [this actually works, yes]. Cover eggs with cold water in a saucepan, then bring to a rapid boil. Remove from heat & cover with lid. Let sit 15 minutes.) Stick the eggs in an ice water bath and do something else for a little while.

When chilled, peel & halve the eggs. Scoop the yolks into a bowl and crumble with a fork. Add mayonnaise, mustard, rosemary, salt, and pepper. Combine thoroughly, and plop the mixture back into the egg halves to serve.

SKILLET BROCCOLI & GREEN GARLIC

1 tbsp olive oil

1 small head broccoli, greens, stems, and all, cut into bite-sized pieces

1-2 bulbs green garlic, sliced thinly

Salt & pepper to taste

Heat olive oil in a cast-iron skillet until very hot, but not smoking. Add broccoli stems & florets along with garlic, reserving greens for a second. Allow to sear before turning, then stir around a bit. Add greens while stems and florets are still bright green and crunchy, but browned in spots. Stir for 60 seconds or so to wilt greens, add salt & pepper, and serve.

GRATED BEET SALAD WITH GOAT CHEESE

2 oz. goat cheese

1 tbsp olive oil

1 tbsp balsamic vinegar

Salt & pepper to taste

4 medium-sized beets, coarsely grated

Combine goat cheese, olive oil, vinegar, salt, and pepper in a bowl and mix well. Add grated beets & stir until well-coated.

Our leftover beet salad was really tasty tonight, too, atop a pasta very similar to this one.

As promised, I’m back this week with another take on grated beet salad, and this one is even tastier. The earthy miso pairs beautifully with sweet raw beets, and soy sauce and rice vinegar round out the flavors to hit every part of the palate. Sesame oil & toasted sesame seeds are the perfect finish. I served ours with fresh spring rolls & peanut sauce (kohlrabi made it into the filling this time, and was just right).

MISO-SESAME GRATED BEET SALAD

1 tbsp miso paste (I used mild white)

1 tsp soy sauce

1 tsp rice vinegar

1 tsp sesame oil

1 tsp canola oil

1/4 tsp crushed red pepper

4 medium-sized beets, scrubbed and finely grated

1/4 cup scallions, green bits only, sliced thinly

1 tsp toasted sesame seeds, plus more for garnish

In a medium bowl, combine miso, soy sauce, vinegar, sesame oil, canola oil, and crushed red pepper. Stir until smooth. Add grated beets, scallions, and sesame seeds, and mix until well-coated with dressing. Garnish with sesame seeds to serve.

Last week, Jonathan, Austin, and I went to the Georgia Organics “This Is Market” fundraiser at SweetWater Brewing Co. It was such fun, we ate great food, we drank great beers, we talked to great friends, and so on, and I did not take any pictures, alas.

One of my favorite dishes offered was a grated beet salad by Julia LeRoy, formerly of Bookhouse Pub and LeRoy’s Fried Chicken and soon to be of several other things I can’t remember whether I’m supposed to talk about yet or not. She used finely grated raw beets and dressed them in homemade goat yogurt, herb-infused olive oil, and fig vinegar (I asked a lot of questions, yes). She microplaned a little pecan dust over each serving and it was DIVINE. Seriously so good. Inspired, I tried out a more traditional beet salad take last night, and I’m already scheming a miso-sesame version for this week’s beets.

I served our beet salad with black-eyed pea salad sandwiches—just coarsely mashed black-eyed peas mixed with mayonnaise, mustard, and rosemary, exactly like my egg salad. The kale was even simpler—sauteed over fairly high heat (I like it when the edges get a little browned & crispy while the rest is still bright green and just tender) in olive oil with salt & pepper.

According to Austin and his brother, anytime the dinner responsibility fell to their dad he’d put a skillet on the stove and start more or less randomly emptying cans and packages into it and stir it all around until it was good and cooked.

For my dad’s part, when he cooked dinner, it was nearly always breakfast. Scrambled eggs, half a bagel, and cantaloupe (bacon for my brother). If it ain’t eggs, Mom made dinner.

This dinner is an accidental homage to dad meals everywhere, apparently. I don’t know if Donnie B. ever called his skillet suppers “hash”, but he could have, because that’s what you call it when you really just dumped a bunch of things in a skillet and stirred them around but you want to seem like you knew what you were doing. It’s hash! Hash is a thing, I made hash.

And of course, I poached an egg on it. We’ve met, right?

BEETS & GREENS HASH WITH POACHED EGGS

Serves two

1 tbsp olive oil

3 smallish beets, scrubbed & sliced very thinly

2 cloves garlic, minced

6 cups roughly chopped greens (I used beet greens & swiss chard)

Salt & pepper to taste

1 tbsp butter

1 tbsp nutritional yeast

1/2 tbsp chia seeds

4 eggs (I only poached one for each of us and wished I’d done two)

Heat olive oil in a deep cast iron skillet. When it’s nice and hot, add beets. Cook, stirring only occasionally, until tender and beginning to brown in spots. Add garlic & greens, in batches, stirring until wilted. Season to taste with salt & pepper. Add butter, nutritional yeast, and chia seeds. Set aside.

While all that’s going on, boil a pot of water and poach your eggs. Serve hash warm, topped with eggs.

We spent the weekend basking in Spring, and are squeezing as much continued basking into the after-work hours as possible this week. Naturally, all that revelry isn’t really conducive to time-intensive meals, and it has us craving light, springlike fare anyway. This salad fit the bill perfectly, with tender lettuces, savory tempeh, and radishes for crunch. The miso-tahini dressing is a fancied-up version of this one from Post Punk Kitchen and makes the perfect creamy, tangy accompaniment to round the whole thing out. It’s wildly healthy, too—miso, like most fermented foods, is loaded with probiotics and tahini has lots of protein, minerals and healthy fats.

SPRING LETTUCE SALAD WITH TEMPEH & MISO-TAHINI DRESSING

Serves two (with extra dressing—I’m confident you’ll cope somehow)

1 tbsp olive oil

1/2 package tempeh, sliced into 12 thin slices

1 tsp soy sauce

1/4 cup miso

1/4 cup tahini

1 clove garlic

1 tsp rice wine vinegar

1/2 tsp sesame oil

1/4 tsp red pepper flakes

4 cups lettuce

1/2 cup sliced radishes

1/4 cup sliced scallions (green bits)

Heat olive oil in a skillet. Toss tempeh with soy sauce and add to skillet. Cook, turning to brown both sides.

Meanwhile, use an immersion blender to puree miso, tahini, garlic, vinegar, sesame oil, and red pepper flakes until very smooth & creamy.

Distribute lettuce into 2 bowls. Top with tempeh slices & dressing, then sprinkle on radish & scallion slices to serve.