Cabbage and Kale - Three Ideas

This is where the rubber meets the road.  Right about now you are finding out that a full share CSA is not for the cowardly, particularly if you have been traveling lately, as I have. Veggies are piling up.  There is no more room in the vegetable drawer.  You've even filled up the fruit drawer and still veggies are stacking upon veggies.  It's time for some serious work.

A good place to start is with the cabbage (hard to use up) and the greens (they wilt fast). So here are a few ideas for you to try. 

While visiting my dancing daughter in Atlanta I stayed at the Marriott in Dunwoody and tried their baked kale appetizer.  I am pretty sure all they did was cut up kale, toss with a little olive oil, salt and pepper and bake until crisp (but not burnt!).  They key to not burning the kale is to bake at a lower temperature than you would think.  I baked mine at 275 for 12 minutes and it came out great!

Baked Kale

Baked Kale

3-4 kale leaves, center rib removed and torn into 2 inch pieces
olive oil cooking spray (or 1/2 tbs olive oil)
salt, pepper to taste

Spray cut up kale leaves with olive oil to coat (or toss with the olive oil).  Sprinkle on salt and pepper to taste.  Bake on a cookie sheet for 12 minutes at 275.  Serves 2 as a snack/appetizer.

Also while in Atlanta we had lunch at a raw vegan place - Tassili's Raw Reality in the West End. All I can say is that if you ever get to Atlanta, this place is well worth a visit.  It is a very simple, casual establishment in an old house.  From the posters on the wall displaying the "ankh" symbol to the elaborate scarab, cartouche, and heavy necklace jewelry that was for sale on the porch, we could see that this place was owned and frequented by a group of people that are into some type of polytheistic religion that strongly looked like the religion of Ancient Egypt (Tasilli calls herself Tasilli Maat) and that this somehow ties into the raw vegan diet.  Nonetheless we liked their food!  They had a terrific kale salad that is making me crave chopped kale heavily coated with dressing.  My wonderful daughter, Hannah,  came up with a fantastic tahini dressing last summer that I love to use on kale. So here is a good option I found to use both the red cabbage and kale.

Kale and Cabbage Salad

Kale and Cabbage Salad

For the salad:
1/4 head of red cabbage, chopped (about 4 cups)
1/2 bunch of kale, center rib removed and chopped
1 heirloom tomato, cut up
1 cup sliced scallions
For the dressing:
1/4 cup tahini
juice of 2 lemons
1 tbs white wine vinegar
2 tsp maple syrup
2 good pinches cayenne pepper
salt and pepper to taste

Place cabbage and kale in a large bowl.  Whisk together dressing ingredients and pour over salad.  Toss all together to coat thoroughly.  Serve and enjoy!  Serves 4.
Note:  Since I am the queen of one dish meals, I served a little side of broiled tofu with this salad.  Just cube the tofu and toss with about 1 tbs each of sesame oil and soy sauce.  Broil on a cookie sheet for 7 minutes.

Finally, if you feel like doing a little more prep, I made this noodle dish to use up some of the cabbage and broccoli.  As I said, I like to make one dish meals, so I added some red kidney beans to bulk it up and add protein.  Tofu would be great in this too.  

Rice Noodles with Cabbage and Broccoli

Rice Noodles with Cabbage and Broccoli
8 ounces rice noodles (such as pad thai noodles), cooked, drained, and kept warm
1 tbs olive oil (or for more "asian" flavor use sesame oil)
3 cups cut up broccoli
2 cups chopped red cabbage
1/2 ounce dried shitake mushrooms, reconstituted in 1 cup boiling water for 5 minutes
1 cup red kidney beans, drained and rinsed
1 tbsp fresh ginger, minced
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 cup sliced scallions
For the sauce:
1 tbs siracha
3 tbs soy sauce
2 tbs mirin (rice wine)
1/4 cup vegetable broth

Heat oil in a large skillet.  Stir fry broccoli about 3 minutes.  Drain shitake mushrooms and add to pan with the cabbage.  Cook about 3 minutes to wilt cabbage but still have it maintain some crispness.  Add the garlic and ginger and toss for a minute.  Add the kidney beans and toss to combine.  Now add all the sauce ingredients and continue to stir fry to coat everything and heat through - about 3 minutes.  Add the noodles and scallions and toss to combine.  Serve at once.  Serves 3-4.

For more Kale ideas try these previous posts: Kale Salad with Creamy Avocado and Ginger-Almond Dressing and Kale! Kale! Kale!.

Cabbage and Edamame-Sesame Salad

One thing is certain - if you subscribe to a CSA group in Western Pennsylvania you WILL eat lots of cabbage!  Honestly, cabbage is not my favorite vegetable.  What does one do with cabbage anyway?  Cole Slaw?  Too watery.  Cabbage Soup?  No flavor.  A Stir-Fry?  Yes, but done too many times.  So I usually use it up by throwing hunks of it into my juices and smoothies.  But the red cabbage we recently received from Clarion River Organics is so pretty and so...well, BIG, that I decided to get creative and come up with a salad I liked.  As a bonus this salad also uses the carrots and sweet wax peppers from the week #23 Clarion River delivery.

In this salad, I chopped the cabbage instead of shredding it which is the way you usually find it in slaws.  I'm not sure why it is always shredded unless it's because cabbage is very fibrous and can be a little, what shall I say...time-consuming to chew.  But when it gets shredded it just turns to mush so I like to chop it into nice chunks that are still small enough to be palatable.  This salad gets its flavor boost from the sesame seeds and sesame oil so don't leave them out.  They are the essential secret ingredients!

Cabbage and Edamame-Sesame Salad

4 cups chopped Clarion River Organics red cabbage

1-2 Clarion River Organics sweet wax peppers, seeded and chopped

2 Clarion River Organics carrots, shredded

1-2 Tbsp toasted sesame seeds (use 2 Tbs for more sesame flavor)*

1/2 package frozen shelled edamame

1/2 cup frozen corn

Salt to taste

Dressing:

3 Tbsp toasted sesame oil

2Tbsp rice wine vinegar (regular vinegar works too)

3 tsp tamari or soy sauce

Bring a pot of water to a boil.  Meanwhile, place cabbage, peppers, carrots, and sesame seeds in a large bowl and toss to combine. Whisk dressing ingredients together in a bowl.  

Add the edamame to the pot of boiling water.  Return to a boil and cook the edamame for 4 minutes.  Add the corn to the pot and continue to boil 2 more minutes.  Drain into a colander and run under cold water until cool enough to touch.  Add edamame and corn to the salad.  Pour the dressing over the salad and toss to combine.  This is even better after it has been allowed to "marinate" for half an hour.  Serves 6.

*To toast the sesame seeds, spread seeds out on a cookie sheet and place in a 400 degree oven for 2 minutes.  Watch carefully!  They burn easily!

Not Your Typical Minestrone Soup

I guess technically any soup that contains beans, vegetables, and noodles can be called Minestrone, right?  At least that is what a recent article in the Wall Street Journal said.  I have always thought of Minestrone as having a clear tomato broth with green beans, kidney beans, a few other common vegetables, macaroni noodles and some parmesan cheese sprinkled on top.  But the following soup can be called "Minestrone" because it has those three basic elements: beans, veggies, and starch.  I could just keep inventing new "Clarion River Organics Minestrone soups" every week depending upon what CRO sends us, but then that would get confusing!   I am fairly certain you can't mess this up.  Just use what you still have in your fridge from CRO, throw in some beans and a starch and call it "Clarion River Minestrone Soup"!

Clarion River Minestrone Soup with Rosemary Pesto
1 yellow onion, chopped
4 cloves of garlic, minced plus 2 whole cloves
3 stalks celery
1/2 of a large Clarion River Organics rutabaga, peeled and diced
6 cups vegetable broth
2 bay leaves
1 can (15-oz) white beans, rinsed and drained
1 1/2 cup lentils, rinsed and drained
3 cups Clarion River Organics chopped cabbage (about 1/3 of the head)
1 small apple, peeled and diced OR 1/2 cup apple cider
1/4 pound dry spaghetti, broken into thirds
Salt and Pepper to taste
For the Rosemary Pesto:
1 cup kale, chard or other leafy green (the Clarion River Organics bok choi greens would work well)
1/2 cup toasted pecans, chopped
1/4 cup rosemary sprigs
2 Tbsp olive oil

Spray a large cooking pot with cooking oil and place over medium heat.  Add onions and minced garlic and cook, stirring occasionally, until onions are soft and just beginning to brown, about 8 minutes.  Add a little water to the pot as necessary to keep onions from sticking and burning.  

Stir in celery, rutabaga and cook another 5 minutes.  Add 4 cups vegetable broth, bay leaves, white beans, lentils, cabbage, and apples or apple cider.  Stir to combine.  Bring to a simmer and then reduce heat to medium-low, cover, and cook until lentils are tender, about 30 minutes.  Add the additional 2 cups of broth as needed to keep enough liquid to make this a soup and not a porridge!  Season with salt and pepper to taste.  

Add the dry spaghetti and continue to simmer about 10 more minutes.  Make the rosemary pesto: in a food processor, puree greens, pecans, whole garlic cloves, a pinch of salt and oil until mixture is reduced to a paste.  

To serve, ladle soup into bowls.  Place 1 or 2 dollops of pesto on top of each bowl.  Serves 6.

Week 6 Recipes - Meatless Monday Lo Mein (Cabbage, Fennel Bulb)

Is the cabbage from the week 6 delivery still in your refrigerator?  If you find you are having trouble using it all, then here is an option - Meatless Monday Lo mein.  Lo mein is offered on the menu of many Asian restaurants, but is probably more American than Chinese.  Typically it is a combination of vegetables and meat in sauce mixed with cooked noodles.  In this version, tofu is substituted for the meat and may even fool some into thinking the dish contains chicken (well, not really, but at least it gives the appearance of chicken!). 

This dish is very simple to make once you have all the vegetables washed and chopped because everything is stir fried at once.  You can actually use any vegetables you have on hand, but the fennel gives this dish a unique flavor and the cabbage stays nice and crunchy for a beautiful texture.  You can really use as much fennel as you like, so if you still have the entire bulb, just use it all.

Because I like my family to eat some greens every day, I  serve this dish with a side salad of Clarion River Organics lettuce and cucumbers.


Meatless Monday Lo Mein Noodles

1 lb noodles of choice (I used brown rice spaghetti style pasta)
2-3 cups chopped Clarion River Organics green cabbage
1/2 Clarion River Organics Fennel bulb including parts of green stalks, sliced thin
2 medium carrots, grated
1 or 2 inch piece ginger, peeled and grated
1/2 cup onion, sliced or chopped
4 garlic cloves, peeled and minced
5-6 shitaake mushrooms, optional
1 lb extra firm tofu, cubed
1/3 cup soy sauce
1 Tbsp olive oil (or any vegetable oil)
2 tsp sesame oil
cilantro for garnish, optional

The veggies you will need - about a 3-inch
wedge of cabbage should do it!

All veggies can go into the pan at once so
just pile them up on a plate as you prepare each.

Cook noodles according to package directions.  When noodles are done, drain and return to pot.  Cover to keep warm while vegetables cook.

Heat a large frying pan over medium heat with the olive oil.  When hot add all vegetables (cabbage through mushrooms) at once and stir fry two minutes.  Add tofu and continue to stir fry 2-3 minutes.  Add the soy sauce, cover pan tightly, turn heat down slightly and cook 5 minutes.  Add veggie/soy sauce mixture and sesame oil to the warm noodles.  Toss to combine and serve at once garnished with cilantro (if desired).  Serves 4-5.

Week 6 Recipes - Kolhrabi, Fennel, Green Cabbage, Garlic Scapes, Mesclun, Cucumber

Now that I have finished with my Sunday School class, I will have a bit more time to blog about my CRO cooking.  I hope to post at least twice each week about how I used things.

By now you may be feeling veggie overload.  How will you ever use it all?  Well, I have a meal planned for you that uses six - count them six - of your items received this week, including kohlrabi and fennel. 

The kohlrabi may be a bit of a mystery to many.  It is considered to be a part of the cabbage family, but really is used more like a potato.   The leaves and their stalks should be removed, the stalks discarded and the leaves saved for another use (cook with other greens or chop raw into salads).  The kohlrabi bulb should always be peeled and peeled again as the outer layers are tough and fibrous and do not soften in liquid or cooking.  Once peeled, you can cook and mash kohlrabi as you would a potato with non-dairy milk and butter, slice it into wedges to make "french fries" or just cut it into chunks and add to any dish.

The fennel bulb tastes strongly of anise particularly when it is raw.  It can be used this way in salads, but I prefer the milder taste of cooked fennel and typically slice mine into a stir fry.  The fronds (wispy green tops) can be chopped as you would any herb and used to flavor your dishes.  However, because there is an abundant amount on each bulb, I will dry mine and place in jars for use in the winter (more on that in a future post).

This entree is a wonderful take on a French dish called "cassoulet".  Cassoulet traditionally would consist of sausage and white beans, but in this healthy version we use all beans instead of sausage for the protein and add several flavorful herbs and vegetables.  The red wine is a key ingredient to flavor this stew so do not attempt to leave it out.  In a word, this dish is SAVORY!  So here is how we eat 'comme le Francais' Clarion River Organics Style!

Bean Cassoulet

2 large shallots, chopped

1 3/4 cup vegetable broth

After removing the leaves, the kohlrabi looks like an alien!

1 bulb Clarion River Organics Kolhrabi, leaves and stems removed, peeled and cut into bite sized pieces

1 tsp salt

1 tsp dried marjoram

1 tsp dried thyme, crushed between your fingers

1 tsp dried sage, crushed between your fingers

1 tsp fresh fennel fronds, chopped

1 cup dry red wine

1 carrot, sliced

1/2 Clarion River Organics Fennel bulb, sliced thin

3 Clarion River Organics garlic scapes, chopped

1 can cannellini beans, drained and rinsed

1 can aduki beans, drained and rinsed

2 cups chopped Clarion River Organics green cabbage (about 1/3 of your cabbage)

1 cup bread crumbs

black pepper

Heat a large soup pot over medium heat with 1/4 cup of the vegetable broth.  Add shallots to pot and turn heat down to medium low.  Simmer uncovered for 10 minutes.  

The peeled kohlrabi looking much like an apple

Stir in the kohlrabi and continue to cook, covered, about 5 minutes.  Add the salt and continue cooking covered about 10 more minutes.  

Stir in the herbs, wine, carrot, fennel, and garlic scopes   Cover and cook for about 15 minutes over low heat.  Add the remaining 1 1/2 cups vegetable broth, the beans, and the cabbage (it will look like too much cabbage, but it cooks down).  Bring to a boil.  Lower heat to a simmer, cover, and cook about 30-40 minutes until kohlrabi is crisp-tender.  Taste to see if more salt is needed and grind in a generous amount of black pepper.  

Ladle the stew into individual bowls and top with a generous helping of bread crumbs.  Serves 4-5.

Slice the fennel lengthwise into thin sticks

All of the chopped veggies ready for the soup pot

All the vegetables and herbs cooking in the savory sauce

Finish this dish with a generous helping of bread crumbs

And a simple side salad...

The depth of the flavors in this stew call for a simple side salad of Clarion River Organics mesclun and cucumbers (and a few grape tomatoes if you have them) drizzled with a lemon-dijon vinegrette (juice of one lemon whisked together with 1 tsp dijon mustard and 1 tsp olive oil).  Have you noticed how tender and mild the mesclun from CRO is?  Delicious!

Bon Appetit!

Week 4 Recipes - Broccoli, Zucchini Blossoms, Mesclun Mix, Red Lettuce, Red Cabbage

Remember when broccoli was all the rage in the 1980s?  It was the kale of yesteryear.  I still love it - raw or cooked - but if I cook it, I never cook it to the point of real softness.  I like it just crisp tender and bright green.  That is how it is prepared in today's recipe.  

I never waste any part of the broccoli.  If there are some small leaves on the stalks, I tear them off and save them to mix into my salads.  If my recipe only uses the florets (as this one does), I peel the stalks and use them in salads or as "broccoli sticks" to dip into hummus.

This is one of my favorite dishes which I adapted from one that is in the Engine 2 Diet book.  I start with their sauce and the shitakes as my base and then add what I think would taste good.  I like it with chinese style brown rice noodles instead of whole wheat pasta, but you could use either.  If you still have some garlic scapes from last week, you can use 1 or 2 in this instead of the garlic cloves.  Likewise with the scallions.  I often make this same recipe with carrots and snow peas instead,  but I particularly like broccoli in this which is why it is the perfect week 4 recipe!

Shitake and Broccoli Stir Fry 
16 oz. brown rice noodles
1 lb. extra firm tofu, cubed
Braggs liquid amino spray or 1 Tbs tamari
8-12 oz. shitake mushrooms, rinsed, patted dry, and sliced
1 head Clarion River Organics broccoli, cut into florets
1 garlic clove, minced
1-2 Tbs minced fresh ginger (about a 2 inch piece)
Cooking Spray
1/2 bunch cilantro, roughly chopped
2 scallions, sliced



For the sauce:
6 Tbs tamari
juice of 1 - 1 1/2 lemons
3 Tbs molasses
3 Tbs flour or arrowroot powder


First, make the sauce by combining all the ingredients with a whisker or fork and set aside.  Spray the tofu with the Braggs Liquid Aminos (or toss with 1 Tbs. tamari if no Braggs) until it is covered.  Place tofu cubes on a cookie sheet covered with parchment paper put under broiler for 5 minutes (check it after 2-3 minutes to be sure it is not so close that it burns).  When tofu is light brown and very firm remove from oven and set aside.


Cook noodles according to package directions.  Meanwhile, spray a large skillet with the cooking spray to coat it and heat over medium heat.  Add the remaining ingrediants except cilantro and scallions in the order listed stirring for one minute after each.  Remove from heat and add the sauce and tofu.  Drain noodles and serve broccoli-shitake mixture over the noodles and garnish with scallions and cilantro.  Serves 5-6.

Zucchini Blossoms
And not sure what to do with that nice carton of zucchini blossoms?  Why not make a beautiful tossed salad to go with your noodles using the CRO mesclun mix and red dazzler lettuce, and even a little of that red cabbage, chopped.  Then  top the salad with the blossoms for some beautiful color and interesting conversation pieces.  I simply rinsed mine first and patted them dry and used them as a garnish.  You could also chop them up and mix in with your lettuce if you prefer to "hide" them.