Shrimp Boil - A One Pot Meal

This is one of my favorite summertime recipes. It's quick and simple, full of local flavors and good for you too! Top it off with an ice cold beer and it's pretty much the perfect meal on a steamy summer evening (or a cool one too)!

My sister is visiting from VA (by way of New London, CT) and brought some shrimp from Captain Scotts Lobster Dock. The corn is "local" from the grocer (which means it's probably from Hadley, MA) and the new potatoes are from the farm stand on Tamarack Road - just around the corner.

Ingredients:
1 lemon, quartered
5 T Cajun seasoning
2 1/2 tsps. cayenne
2 bay leaves
4 garlic cloves
8 small boiling potatoes (about 2")
4 ears of corn, shucked and halved
1 1/2 pounds large shrimp in the shell (but deveined)
1/3 cup ketchup
1/3 cup mayonnaise
1 1/2 T horseradish

Preparation:
Squeeze lemon juice into 4 qt. water in a 6-8 quart pot, then stir in lemon quarters, cajun seasoning, 2 tsp. cayenne, bay leaves, garlic, potatoes, and 2 T salt (omit salt if it is the first ingreident in seasoning).

Bring to a boil, then simmer, partially covered, until potatoes are almost tender, 10-12 minutes.

Increase heat to high, then add corn and simmer, partially covered, 4 minutes.

Stir shrimp and cook until just cooked through, 2-3 minutes.

Meanwhile, stir together ketchup, mayonnaise, horseradish and remaining 1/2 teaspoon cayenne. Drain shrimp, potatoes and corn and serve with sauce.

This recipe from epicurious came to me by way of Cate Robichaud McLean. As you can see, I served this up with a side of snap peas sauteed in a bit of olive oil with a pinch of Borsari seasoning.

Bon Appetit!

Sugar (Snap Peas) and Spice and Everything Nice

To me, the arrival of peas represents a sort of rite of passage from spring to summer. They're one of the first veggies to arrive on the scene as one begins to wonder, "just how many greens can/should one person eat?" Yeah, I know peas are green, but they're sweet, crispy goodness is a totally different experience from the spring greens, which are the first veggies to arrive on the scene at farmers' markets and in CSA shares.


I know we were thrilled to see sugar snap peas on the "pick your own" board at our CSA last week. Since then, we've enjoyed them prepared a variety of different ways. Raw off the plant in the garden (does it get any better than that?). Then in a risotto, a very close second (and the perfect comfort food on these rainy New England evenings). My standard risotto recipe can be found here. I use this as my "base" and tweak it according to what I have on hand (or to achieve the flavor I'm aiming for).



This time I omitted the saffron, but added 1/4 pound of prosciutto sliced into 1/2" pieces when I added the onions. This allows the flavor of the prosciutto to permeate the other ingredients (can you say, YUM)! The other change I made was to add about 1 cup of sugar snapped peas (cut into thirds) with the last ladle of stock. This really was one of my best meals ever IMHO. Restaurant quality. The poor lighting doesn't even begin to show how good and gorgeous this dish really is.
















The other new pea recipe I tried this past week was
Sauteed Sugar Snap Peas with Carrots and Ginger/Honey Glaze. This recipe was courtesy of Holiday Brook Farms' CSA Newsletter as taken from Farmer John’s Cookbook, The Real Dirt on Vegetables: Seasonal Recipes and Stories from a Community Farm.

Ingredients:
½-1lb sugar snap peas
2 medium carrots, peeled [I used half a package of baby carrots]
2 Tbsp butter
1 Tbsp honey
A couple pieces crystallized ginger, chopped fine (about 1-2 Tbsp, to taste) [I used grated fresh ginger]
Fresh ground pepper

Instructions:
Remove strings from both edges of the pea pods. Cut each carrot into thirds and slice lengthwise so that they are about the same size as the pea pods. Place carrots in a steamer basket and steam until just crisp-tender, 3-5 minutes. Melt the butter in a large skillet over medium heat and add the peas; cook, stirring frequently for 5 minutes. Add the carrots. Continue to cook until peas are bright green, about 3 minutes. Add the honey & ginger and cook for 1 more minute, stirring constantly, until the peas and carrots are glazed. Season with pepper to taste.







I'll be adding both these recipes to my recipe box. Hope you enjoy them too!


Bon Appetit!

Locavore for a Day

On Wednesday, What a Card wrote about Reduce Footprint's weekly challenge which just happened to jive with we do over here: eating locally! The challenge was to eat only local for one whole day. I'm a newbie on the locavore scene so I knew taking on this challenge would be tough as my cupboards and fridge have only just started their transition to local foods. I picked Sunday as our day so that my husband could join in the fun.

This week, my CSA share included sugar snap peas, strawberries, salad mix, tomatoes and asparagus so I wanted to revolve our meals around those foods - not really hard! Here is what we came up with:

Breakfast: Tomato, basil and chevre omelet (tomato from the CSA; basil and chevre from Winchester Farmer's market; local brown eggs from Whole Foods)

Snack: Stonyfield Yogurt with strawberries

Lunch: Sugar snap peas sauteed in butter and salt, pan-seared asparagus and marinated steak tips (Peas and asparagus from CSA both cooked with local dairy butter; steak from Stillman's, Cilantro Lime Vinaigrette dressing for marinade by Appalachian Naturals)

Dinner: Toasted tomato, basil, mozzarella sandwiches with salad mix (tomato and salad mix from CSA; basil from Winchester Farmer's Market; hand-made mozzarella from Fiore di Nonna Cheese; salad dressing same as for steak marinade; bread from Mamadou Bakery in Winchester, MA)

Dessert: Crescent Ridge Dairy vanilla ice cream

We did cheat a bit by using salt and pepper on the peas, asparagus and steak. Not that you can't get local sea salt (you can!) but I just didn't plan that far ahead. Overall, I would say it was a great learning experience to see how easy and tasty it can be to plan your meals around local, in-season produce. I also realized that when you are eating the freshest produce available, you don't need a lot of other stuff to dress it up. Everything we ate was simply prepared and so good.

Try it out for a day (or more!!) and see how delicious it can be - New England in summer gives us so many wonderful choices! You can't go wrong.

Lots of recipes

We started out this CSA week with a big winner: Garlic Scape Pesto. I followed the recipe given there. Well, mostly. Oh, heck, you know I made a few changes:

Ingredients:

7 garlic scapes, chopped into approx. 2" pieces
Fresh parsley (I'd guess about 2 tablespoons chopped, but I didn't chop it since it was just going into the food processor, so I'm really not sure)
3/4 cup olive oil
scant 1 cup Parmesan cheese

Directions:

Put the garlic scapes, parsley, and olive oil into a food processor and process until smooth(ish...it doesn't turn out perfectly smooth).

Stir in Parmesan cheese and serve over pasta. I choose gnocchi since it's a favorite with my twins. The pesto turns out very thick, so it was a good match to a heavy pasta.


A quick note about this picture: the sauce turns out to be a delicate green, and I just couldn't get it to show up on the camera. Either the overhead lights or flash blew-out the color too much, or without extra light, it was too shadowy. I took this picture standing near the window, holding the plate at about a 45 degree angle to catch the right natural lighting. All so you could appreciate the green color! Of course, then I was so worried about my food falling off the plate I ended up not getting a great picture anyway. But the color is pretty, isn't it?

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Served with the pesto, we had Garlic Scape Bread. Basically it was garlic bread where I used minced garlic scapes in place of garlic powder.


Looks pretty, doesn't it? Well, it wasn't garlicy enough for me. I'd add some extra garlic powder in additon to the scapes if I made this again. The delicate garlic scape flavor was wasted on garlic bread. Oh well. I mean, it was slightly garlicy buttery bread, so it was still yummy, but this won't replace my normal garlic bread recipe!

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Here it is, my first big CSA failure. Garlic scape soup. The recipe is all the way at the bottom of the page listed, if anyone wants to waste their garlic scapes on this substandard meal. It was gritty and unfinished tasting. TK and I thought it was a good soup base...it might have been good with some chicken and rice or veggies added. But as it was: uninspired. It doesn't even look good:

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But no worries, things quickly turned back in a positive direction. We went strawberry picking with Snickollet (and her kids and friend), plus both moms and baby of Two Moms and Baby. Taking my inspiration from those delightful strawberries and the latest CSA haul, I threw together this salad:


The salad contained spinach, lettuce, radish, purple scallions, hard boiled eggs, and sliced strawberries. What made it really outstanding was the homemade Strawberry Vinaigrette dressing. I followed the linked recipe, except I subbed about 1/2 teaspoon fresh lemon thyme for the tarragon, and I forgot about the sugar (oops! That was an unintentional oversight, but I didn't miss it...)

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And one last recipe, Roasted Spring Turnips, Snap Peas, and Garlic Scapes.

I found a recipe at a neat blog about eating locally (on the West Coast, but hey, we've got the same stuff here on the East Coast!) and followed the recipe pretty closely. I loved the lemon zest, and I used a lemon pepper herb mix. The garlic scapes were my favorite part as they got a little crispy in some parts and slightly caramelized. Lovely!