Hello again, friends! Happy New Year! Over the last few weeks we’ve been bouncing all over Berkeley, San Francisco, the Los Angeles area, Boston, Cape Cod, and southern Vermont. Today was Megan’s first day back at school. Sometimes it’s nice to get back to a routine, isn’t it?
This week’s CSA: broccoli, cabbage, a spring onion, mandarins, sweet potatoes, and walnuts.
Hope you’re having a great week! Stay warm and dry!
These little cookies are super easy to make, and are deceptively delicious. The title still mystifies us, as there is no toffee involved, but we haven’t been able to come up with anything better. This is another one that comes from Megan’s mom.
They are lovely to make the night before a… you guessed it… party, because the chocolate needs time to cool, and because they’re much less time consuming than individual cookies. The most labor-intensive part is probably the chopping (you can avoid this by using chocolate chips if you prefer, though we find we can get better quality chocolate by the bar).
Megan whipped these up last week for her overworked, stressed students, which seemed to cheer them up, at least for a class period. We hope they’ll bring you a smile too! They taste great with a cool glass of milk or a nice latte.
Toffee Party Squares (print this recipe here)
Ingredients
Directions
Cream the butter and sugar with an electric mixer for a few minutes. Add the egg and vanilla, then continue beating for another minute. Add flour, and stir until combined. Spread the dough onto a 13×15 or 14×17 sheet pan (you’ll probably want to use your hands to push and flatten the dough). Bake at 350˚ for 15 minutes, until just starting to turn golden brown. Turn the oven off, sprinkle the chocolate evenly on the top, and pop back into the warm oven for a few minutes. When the chocolate begins to melt, spread it evenly to cover the dough. Sprinkle the nuts and allow to cool completely before cutting into squares.
Leftovers
These should stay fresh in a covered container for about two to three days. They do not need to be refrigerated.
Watermelon, acorn squash, green beans, eggplant, walnuts, carrots, and tomatoes.
It was a rainy weekend here in the Bay Area. Which meant perfect weather for cleaning, organizing, catching up on laundry, wandering art museums, reading, binge-watching Friends, and… of course, stocking the fridge and freezer! We made vegetable stock, blueberry muffins, a fancy potato-and-sweet-potato dish, applesauce pancakes, egg salad, and lentil-walnut burgers. We also defrosted some leftover chili and turkey soup. Phew!
Last week Joe unveiled his Chicken Cordon BBQ that he ate while we were camping. Megan’s turn this week! Joe says he really enjoyed eating these veggie burgers for dinner too. The slight crunch of the walnuts makes them a winner—don’t skip ’em!
This recipe is an adaptation from Mollie Katzen’s classic Moosewood Cookbook. Her original version has mushrooms, which Megan hates (yes, yes, she knows, she’s a terrible vegetarian). You can also, of course, cook the lentils from scratch as Katzen indicates, but the pre-cooked ones are a nice shortcut too.
There’s not too much work beyond the mashing, mincing, and chopping. (Would this work in a food processor? If anyone tries it, please do let us know. )When you cook the burgers, you’ll probably need to use your spatula to coax them into a nice round patty; they tend to fall apart. And make sure to get them crispy!
We love our lentil-walnut burgers with melted cheddar, tomatoes, avocado, and lettuce, and… usually on a toasted bun. This weekend we went “protein style” (because we had to), and it was still pretty tasty. Check out that beautiful Yukon Gold and Sweet Potatoes Anna on the side! Buttery, crispy, sweet, salty… a recipe to share another day.
By the way, does anyone have Katzen’s newest cookbook, The Heart of the Plate? How is it? We’ve been eyeing it…
Leftovers
These burgers are delicious out of the freezer! We make a batch every few months to keep ourselves stocked. Simply wrap uncooked patties in saran and store in a ziplock bag in the freezer, up to a few months. Dinner doesn’t get much easier than pulling out these bad boys! And they are so tasty you’ll never go back to store-bought. Try them as a burger, in a wrap, in a breakfast burrito, on top of rice, in scrambled eggs. Endless options.
The Recipe (printer-friendly version here)
Ingredients
Directions
Place lentils and vinegar in a bowl and mash (the bottom of a cup works well). Heat oil in a medium-sized skilled. Add onions and sauté over medium heat for about 5 minutes. Add garlic, spinach, walnuts, and spices (but not breadcrumbs) and sauté 8 to 10 more minutes, until all the vegetables are tender. Add the sauté and the breadcrumbs to the mashed lentils and mix well. Chill for at least an hour. Then form 4-inch-diameter burgers: about ½ cup each or slightly smaller will make 7 or 8 burgers. You can also make smaller burgers if you choose.
To prepare, fry burgers in a small amount of hot oil for a few minutes on each side, so that they are heated through and crispy on the outside. Patties may need coaxing to maintain their shape. Serve on fresh buns with your favorite burger toppings.
Notes
These burgers will freeze very well. Wrap in plastic wrap and freeze on a cookie sheet (to maintain shape), then transfer to a freezer bag. When ready to use, defrost a few hours in the refrigerator if you have time, or cook from frozen. Fry over a lower heat, covered, to help the burger defrost. Turn up the heat at the end to crisp them up.
If cooking on a grill, be careful that these don’t fall between the grates! Try cooking over a veggie grill basket or something similar.
The original Moosewood recipe offers instructions for cooking dry lentils: Place ¾ cup of lentils and 1½ cups water in a small saucepan and bring to a boil. Lower heat and simmer, partially covered, for about 30 minutes, or until the lentils are soft and the liquid is gone. The original recipe also includes mushrooms.
Score! Here’s what came today: walnuts, carrots, potatoes, navel oranges, broccoli, dino kale, savoy cabbage, and leeks.
We still have a sweet potato left from last week, so we’re planning to try this fritter recipe from our wedding caterer’s awesome cookbook. How fun do those look?
And, a confession: we are not huge cabbage fans! We don’t particularly like sauerkraut or coleslaw. Can you help us learn to love it? Our CSA‘s e-newsletter has a recipe for a lentil-cabbage salad with walnuts that looked pretty good, so maybe we’ll give that a try. Any other recipe suggestions?
The Leftovers Project 