Roasted Veggie Pasta

Yesterday, I made the best meal yet from all our produce. Since Alycia beat me to a post about fried eggplant, I will wax poetic about the Roasted Veggie Pasta I made last night.

I found a recipe for roasting Swiss chard, and since I’ve decided I’m not a huge fan of sauteed Swiss chard, I decided to try the new recipe. The idea is that the chard is really two vegetables; the leaves and the stalks. Here is a basic translation of what I did.

1 large bunch Swiss chard, well rinsed and dried, ends trimmed
1 TBSP olive oil
1 or 2 TBSP heavy whipping cream
Crushed garlic to taste
Salt and pepper to taste
Parmesan cheese, if desired

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.

1. Separate the leaves from the stalks by ripping or cutting the stalk out of the leaves. I folded the leaves over to one side of the stalk and cut them off the stalk.
2. Cut the stalks into half inch pieces and place in a 9x13x2″ baking dish. Drizzle 1 TBSP olive oil and toss to coat. Sprinkle with salt and pepper.
3. Roast stalks in the oven until browned and softened, about 20 mins.
4. Meanwhile, tear or chop chard leaves into smallish pieces. This is personal preference because you might like bigger leaves as a side dish. I knew I was putting it into pasta, so I made smaller bites.
5. When stalks are done, reduce oven to 350 degrees. Place leaves on top of stalks and cover. Bake 5-7 minutes.
6. Stir leaves and stalks. Add the heavy cream and garlic and stir (this is when I added the garlic. You should probably add it earlier, but this is when I thought, “Hey, garlic might be good”.) Cover and roast 5-7 minutes or until cream is bubbly and leaves are wilted.
7. Add Parmesan cheese and stir. Bake 5 minutes or until cheese is melty.

That was the end of the recipe I tried. They meant to use it as a side dish, but I wanted it in pasta!

While all that was happening, I cut up two golden zucchini, one green zucchini, one eggplant, and one white eggplant into small pieces. I tossed them with olive oil, salt and pepper. I baked them at 400 degrees for about 25 minutes, stirring every so often.

Meanwhile, I cooked a bag of Ohio City Pasta that I had gotten at the West Side Market. I then tossed it with all the roasted veggies, olive oil, and more Parmesan cheese. We also had some white cheddar and chive chicken sausage, which was an excellent compliment to all that olive oil and cheese!

That giant white spot on the sausage? Melted, gooey white cheddar. Oh, so good!

A Philosophical Moment

As Kim and I were enjoying our second meal courtesy of our CSA from Birdsong Farm, we had a little discussion about the benefits we have already noticed from getting fine produce this way……

1 It forces you to eat better because you don’t want to waste this delicious produce.

2 It challenges you to come up with new thoughts for meals that include the wonderful produce.

3 It has you trying things you have never had before…. ex. garlic shoots.

4 It has you recalling meals from your youth……ex. wanting to make tiny radish tea sandwiches because the radishes haven’t been that tasty since around 1962.

5 It has us talking with family and friends about what we are making, and that is always good.

Any other thoughts about why a CSA is a great thing?

6 Oh, and we are eating less meat already.

Carolyn

Our First!

When we came home from Chautauqua there was a big surprise in our fridge! Our first haul from Birdsong Farm CSA included a beautiful bunch of red leaf lettuce, a bunch of green leaf lettuce, a bag of lovely delicate mesclan mix, wonderful peppery tiny radishes, super fresh sugar snap peas, young bok choy, and something we have never eaten before, garlic shoots! Here is what we made for dinner- salad greens with radishes and a light vinaigrette,

and then a stir fry of pasta, shrimp, bok choy, sugar snaps and garlic shoots. Yummy! Here is basically the sauce that Kim added to the stir fry:

1/2 cup chicken broth

1/4 cup soy sauce

2 tbsp. oyster sauce

1 tsp. Thai garlic chili sauce

1 tbsp. corn starch

He briefly soaked the raw peeled shrimp in soy sauce before he stir fried them. He added the sauce at the end of the stir fry, and placed everything over a bed of fettucine!