Stuffed pork chops always seem so complicated, but they’re really not. Do you have a couple of beautiful Riverview pork chops around? If not, I bet there’ll be some at the one of weekend farmers markets or on the Farm Mobile.
Ok, what are you doing with all those daikon radishes? These days I’m slicing them onto sandwiches and stirring them into soup. I’m planning to experiment tomorrow with dicing the daikon and combining it with diced avocado, then making a dressing featuring sesame oil and trying that as a bruschetta-type topping. How about you?
Here’s another idea for your radishes – using them in potato salad. This recipe is from Scott Serpas of Serpas Fine Food. He made it for a demo at the Peachtree Road Farmers Market. Great now, great next spring.
Seeing all the radishes in the box reminded me of a wonderful recipe I’ve made for years. It’s a radish salad adapted from Jane Brody’s Good Food Cookbook. Here’s my version which is about as loose a recipe as it’s possible to have. Use the green onion tops from your pretty onions in this week’s box, and add a few garlic scapes if you’re so inclined.
If you want to blanch the collard greens or bok choy, you could use them in this recipe, or try it with the arugula specified.
Now about that cabbage. I have two wonderful cole slaw dressings you have to try.
One of the things I do to make a quick stir-fry even quicker is to keep a jar of stir-fry sauce in the refrigerator. You could buy a jar, but why? When you’re ready for dinner, heat up some vegetable oil, sauté your vegetables (this week you could use bok choy, beet greens, thinly sliced beets, onions, garlic and/or squash) and when it’s just about done, add just enough of this sauce to coat everything lightly. The cornstarch will thicken quickly and your stir-fry is done. I love that I don’t have to haul out the ginger and the garlic and the soy sauce and whatever every time I want to make a quick meal. This sauce will keep in the refrigerator for 2 weeks. Vary the proportions to suit the taste of your household.
As best I can tell, we didn’t do a recipe for pickled beets last year, so here’s one from Linton Hopkins of Restaurant Eugene. He demonstrated this at the Peachtree Road Farmers Market Memorial Day weekend. If you’ve hoarded your beets for the past few weeks you should have plenty to make this recipe.
If you’re thinking you’d like to do something with that head of romaine beyond fixing yet another salad, remember that the leaves make fabulous wraps for grilled anything. Or for spring rolls. I came home from the beach a few weeks ago with a bag of wild Atlantic shrimp. I poached the shrimp and then made spring rolls, using shredded romaine in place of the traditional rice noodles. When it came to eating the rolls, I laid each one in another romaine lettuce leaf, and added a few leaves of mint and basil, dipped the whole thing into a spicy Vietnamese dipping sauce and enjoyed.
I also love the idea of slightly wilted romaine lettuce. See what you think about this recipe.