Tag: <span>zucchini</span>

One Local Summer – Week 8

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Only the finest in outdoor cooking!  This was last week during some of that AMAZING and beautiful weather we had.   We busted out the new electric fondue pot and went to town with some beef broth fondue.   There’s no real plate photo today because cooking meat and veggies in the broth gives you little bites here and there, a lot of conversation, and a relaxing and long dinner – perfect for a gathering of friends.   Dear friend Debbie and her 4 month old son joined us for this meal and it was a really enjoyable evening.  The ingredients list looks much shorter than usual, but it really was a filling meal and we certainly were not left hungry when the meat and veggies were gone.

Fondue:
Turkey – Mountain View Organics
Top Round Beef – Bethany Farm
Zucchini – Smith’s Produce
Potatoes – Smith’s Produce
Onions – Smith’s Produce
Baguette – Saint Peter’s Bakery
Non-Local – Beef Broth

One Local Summer – Week 7

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Another week is on the books. Or Blog.  I’ve always been a big fan of Greek food and gyros in particular. So, this week, with dill running amok in the planter on the deck, I decided to prune it back a little, make some tzatziki and work up some chicken gyros.  This was also the first meal we had on our brand new patio, and what a way to start many summers of relaxing dinners!  MANY thanks to Ryan Steckel of Steckel Building for his amazing work on the patio.  We’re positively thrilled with the results.  Onto the ingredients!

Chicken Gyro:
Pretty basic, when you get down to it. Pitas were homemade using this recipe and really were more time consuming to make than difficult – I did substitute one cup of flour for whole wheat pastry flour and used plain old bread flour for the other two.  I decided to throw them on the super-hot pizza stone on the grill since it was just so incredibly hot this past week and I wasn’t going to heat up the house with any baking.  Turns out,  it worked out perfectly, once I got the hang of it.  The thinner the dough is and the hotter the stone is, the better the pitas puff up and shrink back down.  The chicken was marinated, skewered, and grilled while the pitas cooled a little, and the vegetables were in the grill wok on the next burner.
Bread Flour – Anselma Mill
Whole Wheat Pastry Flour – Anselma Mill
Chicken – Mountain View Organics
Oregano – Back deck planters (used in marinade for chicken with Olive Oil, Vinegar, and Lemon Juice)
Tomatoes – Brogue Hydroponics
Onions – Smith’s Produce
Sharp II Chevre – Shellbark Hollow Farm
Goat’s Milk Yogurt – Shellbark Hollow Farm.  Used this as the base for the Tzatziki
Cucumbers – Smith’s Produce
Dill – Back deck planters
Non-Local: Salt, Sugar, Olive Oil, Yeast, Pepper, Lemon Juice

Vegetables:
These cooked up and were so tasty.  The first zucchini of the year are always my favorite.
Zucchini – Smith’s Produce
Yellow Squash – Smith’s Produce
Carrots –  Jack’s Farm
Non-Local – Salad Dressing as a marinade

OLS: Week 13

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One Local Summer’s last meal is on the table and consumed already.   I can’t believe we made it to the end of the challenge and participated in every single week!   This week, we threw a whole chicken in the smoker with some barbeque sauce leftover from the pulled pork sandwiches and let her cook up while some zucchini, garlic, basil, onions,  and peppers were simmered together with last year’s tomato sauce from the garden.   I decided to pop open a jar of the zucchini pickles, and WOW are they delicious.   Definitely worth doing again next year.   Non-Local ingredients include some vinegar, mustard seed, turmeric (pickles), olive oil, and  McCormick’s Chicken Rub.   Here’s the rundown of local ingredients.

Zucchini: My Garden
Basil: Back Deck Garden
Peppers: My Garden
Garlic: Willow Creek
Onions: North Star Orchard
Chicken: Mt. View Organics
Barbeque sauce: Leftover from Week 11
Wine: New Hope Winery’s Raspberry Wine

Final thoughts – I’m SO glad I participated in this year’s challenge and I can’t wait to do it again.   This challenge has gotten me into local foods and has actually gotten me cooking (something that shocked and amazed my family and friends).   I hope to continue doing one local meal a week since our Phoenixville Farmer’s Market is open year-round and I can get most items (except for seasonal vegetables) regularly.   Thanks to the folks at FarmToPhilly.com for hosting the challenge!

Zucchini Week: Day 7

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Day 7, a week late. Oops. I’m a bad, bad blogger. Well, the meal was made on day seven, however the picture didn’t make it off the camera until today. Yeah. Anyway, in all of its glory, I present to you my own creation, a zucchini pasta salad. The idea took form after I realized I could make pasta noodles from zucchini using my mandoline. Since I heavily modify recipes anyway, I’m just going to give you the basics of what I did. Onions were browned in some olive oil, then the tomatoes were added along with the zucchini and a bit of homebrewed beer. While that was simmering, I grilled the chicken and portobello mushrooms. The mix on the stove went into the fridge after the liquid was drained and so did the finished chicken and mushrooms. After everything was well chilled, I brought it out, sliced the chicken and mushrooms, added some local blue cheese on top and finished it off with a blackberry vinegarette (Olive oil, crushed blackberries, red wine vinegar, fresh basil). All the flavors worked well together and it made for a light afternoon lunch. Zucchini Pasta Salad – My Own Recipe
Ingredients Used:
*Zucchini – my garden
*Tomatoes – Charlestown Farm
*Mushrooms – Oley Valley Mushrooms
*Cheese – Birchrun Hills Farm
*Chicken – Eberly Poultry
*Onion – North Star Orchard
*Blackberries – Willow Creek

Zucchini Week: Day 6

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All this zucchini and today is day six. One more to go! Today I tried a big experiment – Zucchini Pickles. I’ve never made pickles and have never canned or preserved anything in jars before, so this was all new territory for me. I actually used a recipe and advice from the Ball Canning Book, but the PickYourOwn.org website had pretty much the same recipe with onions added in, so that’s what I’m sharing with you. The recipe used up three mega-zucchini and filled seven wide-mouth pint jars. The process was much easier than I thought it would be, but does require some odd canning-specific equipment that the average cook won’t have around the house. The pickling solution smelled really good, but I haven’t tried them yet. I think I’ll wait a week to let them soak up more of the pickling juices in the jars first! Zucchini Pickles – Recipe on PickYourOwn.org
Ingredients Used:
*Zucchini – my garden

Zucchini Week: Day 5

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Day five of zucchini week already. I had other plans for today, but the crazy storms that rolled through right around dinner time spoiled the outdoor cooking idea, so I switched days up a little. Today was this neat polenta zucchini tart. I became a big fan of polenta the first time my study abroad Italian host mother made polenta lasagna. MMmmm Cornmeal. So, I’ve been searching for neat recipes that use polenta and came across this one.   Sadly, the recipe didn’t include instructions on how to make  polenta  from scratch, so I borrowed Alton Brown’s savory polenta recipe with a few changes.  The ingredients are ALL local this time (well okay, the olive oil isn’t, but who’s really counting that anyway). The feta cheese added something I think the parmesan wouldn’t quite do in the same way, plus, I didn’t have parmesan cheese on hand. This is absolutely delicious and will probably be made again as tomato season rolls around, using tomatoes in place of zucchini. Zucchini Polenta Tart – Recipe on ChocolateandZucchini.com
Ingredients Used:
*Zucchini – my garden
*Cornmeal – Mill at Anselma
*Feta – Amazing Acres
*Onion – North Star Orchard
*Garlic – Willow Creek

Zucchini Week: Day 4

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We move into day four of Zucchini Week with a heavily modified version of our recipe. My mandoline didn’t have a plate that would slice wide but thin slices of zucchini for proper pappardelle noodles (think wide fettuccine), so i went with the square-spaghetti-sized slicer instead. This gave me these awesome zucchini spaghetti noodles and I was just in total awe. Why hadn’t I thought of this before! Ingenius. Michael Chiarello uses a whole bunch of spices and ingredients that I just didn’t have and was not going to go out and buy just for this recipe, so I improvised. A LOT. Sweet smoked Spanish paprika? Grey Salt?! Yeah. I had regular old paprika and  table salt, and those worked out just fine. Instead of arugula, I happened to have some red leaf lettuce in the fridge and went with that. The feta is a goat’s milk feta that I’ve been layering on sandwiches all week. I still had two heirloom tomatoes from last week’s farmer’s market run and used those in place of the cherry tomatoes, sliced thin. I didn’t have olives, so they didn’t make it into this dish. Overall though, I think this worked out well and the idea of the recipe is still there. The warm tomatoes and zucchini noodles over lettuce made for a really great, refreshing and light lunch. Zucchini Pappardelle Salad – Recipe on FoodNetwork.com
Ingredients Used:
*Zucchini – my garden
*Lettuce – Kimberton Whole Foods locally grown
*Tomatoes – North Star Orchard
*Feta – Amazing Acres

Zucchini Week: Day 3

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Day three! Are you sick of zucchini yet? I’m not! In fact, it’s pretty fun using up zucchini left and right in all these different recipes with the whole meal coming out pretty different every time. Today was a Zucchini Breakfast Casserole, another recipe from Elise’s vast collection. This is the last one from her for the week, I promise! I’ve come to love casseroles because they’re just so easy – put all the ingredients in one dish, bake, refrigerate leftovers to enjoy all week. And, I’m willing to bet that this is just as good the next day as it is fresh. I used a fresh goat’s milk ricotta cheese, basil from my back deck herb planter, and substituted fresh heriloom tomatoes from the farmer’s market. The bread was a “rustic wheat” that was really delicious in sandwiches, but I happened to have just one slice leftover for this recipe. I also added a lump of that spicy chipotle chevre again. There aren’t a lot of ingredients in this one, but the simplicity is what makes it so attractive and delicious. It’s easy and quick to make and goes a long way. Zucchini Breakfast Casserole – Recipe on SimplyRecipes.com
Ingredients Used:
*Zucchini – my garden
*Basil – my herb garden
*Egg – Mt. View Organics
*Tomatoes – North Star Orchard
*Cheese – Shellbark Hollow Farms
*Bread – Oley Baker
*Chevre – Amazing Acres