Tac Choy: A Mexithai Fiesta!

For dinner on last night we wanted to make tacos. We're huge fans of tacos and could pretty much eat them everyday. In oder to continue with our movement to not waste vegetables that we get from the farm share and to try out new recipes that involve eating more greens, we decided to cook the bok choy last night as a side dish!

Ingredients:
3 Baby Bok Choy (or more, we used what we had from the farm which was 3)
1/4 Cup Water
2T Soy Sauce
1t Olive Oil
1t Sugar
2-3 Cloves Garlic, to taste, minced
Salt, to taste
Pepper, to taste


For those of you who aren't sure what bok choy is... this is what it looks like:

Many people refer to it as Chinese cabbage.



Directions:
Step 1. Rinse bok choy thoroughly and cut off about an inch and a half of the stems (where they all come together at the bottom of the plant).

Step 2. Cut the leaves off each stem of the bok choy and place in a separate pile. Dice up the stems and the leaves, again keeping them in separate piles.


Step 3. Place a skillet over medium low heat. Add the oil and minced garlic. Cook for a minute or two, until garlic is slightly browned but not black.

Step 4. Add the stems of the bok choy to the skillet and cook for 2 minutes. Now add the leaves of the bok choy as well (the stems take longer to cook).

Step 5. Add all other ingredients except for water. Mix contents thoroughly.

Step 6. Add the water and cover the pan. Allow bok choy to simmer for another minute or two, until wilted and appearing bright green color.



The taste was phenomenal and I am really excited to use more bok choy in a stir-fry dish. If we are allotted more in our Saturday pick-up, it will be on the list for next week!!

For the tacos- Andrew fried up some corn tortillas in safflower oil and baked up some flour tortillas in the oven plain. We heated up some refried beans and cooked ground beef we had in the freezer from Wholefoods. We of course added in some grated cheese and finished it off with homemade salsa. I didn't take pictures of the salsa this time- I made it early in the week pretty late at night. It turned out really well- excellent heat factor. I will be sure to take pictures on the next batch and post the recipe!




ENJOY!

The Main Dish: Chicken Stuffed with Tomato, Spinach and Cheese

The main dish for our first farm veggie meal was stuffed chicken. We only used one ingredient from our share in the recipe, but it was still delicious. The other ingredients were pulled out of the fridge and based on what we had around the apartment already!

Ingredients:
3 Chicken Breasts, cut almost all the way through (create a taco shell shape)
1.5 Cups Tomato (could use cherry, gourmet, diced up heirloom, on the vine, etc)
1-2 Cups Spinach, rinsed
Parmesan Cheese, to taste
Ricotta Salata, to taste


Directions:
Step 1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Step 2. Place the spinach in the a skillet over medium heat with a couple spritzes of water and cover. Simmer until spinach is wilted.



Step 3. Stuff each chicken breast with equal parts of ricotta salata, spinach and tomato. Top each with some parmesan cheese.



Step 4. Place chicken breasts on a baking sheet and into oven. bake for about 20mins until chicken is cooked all the way through.

Dinner is served:



Chicken is served with Kale Salad with Ricotta Salata and Roasted Turnip "Fries". The recipes for these two sides are separate posts.

ENJOY!

Roasted Turnip "Fries"

Another vegetable that we received in our first share of farm veggies was the turnip. Again, neither of us had extensively tried turnip recipes, so we were excited to do some research on them. We had both heard that you could fairly easily mash them and create a "mashed potato" type dish, but we wanted to try something different first. So, we found a Turnip fry recipe and altered it to our liking.

Ingredients:
Turnips (We used 4, definitely the more the merrier here)
1T Olive oil
Salt, to taste
Pepper, to taste
Paprika, to taste
Garlic powder, to taste
Rosemary (or another herb of choice), to taste



Directions:
Step 1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Clean turnips and cut off and discard greens (technically you could do something with the turnip greens, but we chose not to this time).
Step 2. Coarsely peel turnips (the original recipe called for peeled turnips, but we did a few swipes with the knife and kept the rest- after all, that's where the nutrients are right).
Step 3.Dice up turnips or slice into french fry shapes depending on size of turnips. Toss with olive oil in a bowl. Set aside.




Step 4. In separate bowl combine the rest of the ingredients (spices and herbs, any combination, to taste).



Step 5. Toss the turnips with the spice mixture and then spread out on a baking sheet that has been covered with foil (the foil will help prevent sticking and an impossible clean-up).



Step 6. Roast in the oven for about 20minutes or until soft on the inside.

The final picture of the turnips is combined with the kale salad and stuffed chicken under the stuffed chicken recipe.

ENJOY!!

Kale Salad with Ricotta Salata

We picked up our first CSA farm share on Tuesday, May 18. I must say I was really excited about the whole process and ready to start trying some new recipes. We picked up a lot of fresh produce, including a large portion of Kale and Collard Greens. We did some searches on possible dishes with Kale/Greens and decided on this fresh Kale Salad.

Ingredients:
4 cups of Kale/Greens, rinsed well
3T olive oil
1-2 cloves of garlic, minced
salt to taste
pepper to taste
1/2 cup Ricotta Salata Cheese, grated




Directions:
Step 1. Cut the center stem out of each leaf of Kale and discard. Slice up the kale leaves into thin strips. Place in bowl.



Step 2. In another bowl, mix lemon juice, garlic, salt and pepper. Slowly pour in olive oil while continuously whisking to keep the dressing well-mixed. The dressing will have a yellow look.




Step 3. Toss the bowl of Kale with the grated ricotta salata (you could use another cheese too, but this has a good taste that goes well with lemon juice). Toss kale-cheese mixture with dressing.



Other Comments: The original recipe called for 4.5T of olive oil, but that seemed like too much. 3 should be the perfect amount. You could also take this recipe a step further and add in a toasted walnut, pecan or almond.

Enjoy!