Abby’s 5 Essential Cookbooks

**This post is inspired by thekitchn.com‘s series of “5 Essential Cookbooks”.**

Living in small urban apartments with even tinier kitchens, my cookbook collection has to be kept pretty small. If a cookbook is going to enter the house, it has to be both inspiring and useful. I like books that have good advice on what to actually DO with food, rather than a collection of glossy pages with overstylized displays.

These are the ones I return to day after day, week after week for inspiration, instruction and delicious food.

Better Homes & Gardens Cookbook: The classic red and white plaid cover is a classic all its own. This was one of the first cookbooks I ever had. I think my parent’s gave me a copy when I got my first apartment. It has everything from how to hard boil an egg (the most used/dog-eared page) to fancier, classic dishes. It’s also a great reference for substitutions and conversion, which are always useful!

How to Cook Everything Vegetarian: Mark Bittman’s “How to Cook Everything” books are the best reference tools out there. There’s a good reason why there’s one of them on pretty much everyone’s shelf. It’s an amazing reference tool and full of interesting twists on every type of veggie and legume imaginable. When I see a new fruit or veggie at the farmer’s market, this is my go to book for figuring out what to do with it.

Clean Food: Love this way this is organized by season, with fresh recipes and lots of inspiration. This is a new book for me, so I’m still exploring it, but so far everything I’ve made from it has been absolutely delicious!

Veganomicon: Pretty sure this is the pinnacle of vegan cooking right here and even though I’m not vegan, I’ve cooked pretty much everything out of this book at least twice. Every recipe is stellar and the substitution guide for making other recipes vegan friendly is indispensable.

Delicious/Pinterest: Not traditional cookbooks, but I use these two platforms for bookmarking, tagging and saving lots of recipes. Delicious has better search functionality, but Pinterest is making a strong showing with it’s great graphics.

What are your 5 essentials?

A Wine-Drinking, Meat-Eating Yogi’s Guide to Detoxing

This post originated as an email in response to a Facebook question about detoxing (yay social media!)

An increasingly popular thing to do after the excesses of the holidays, detoxing or cleansing (as I see it) is a commitment to getting your eating habits back on track and making the conscious choices to eat good, clean, healthy foods for a set period of time.  It would be great if we could do this ALL the time, but as this coffee-loving, red meat eating, Miller High Life drinking yogi knows, it’s just not always possible.

The past few years I’ve taken time out just after the holidays and again in the spring (something about that seasonal change!) to detox my system.  It’s also a great time to restock the pantry with good stuff and weed out the crap that sneaks in there when schedules get too busy.

OK, so I’ve tried to pull together some of my thoughts, resources and recipes for detoxes.  Let me know if you have any questions!

CSA Weeks 11 & 12 and a question for readers

Week 11 went by way to quickly to capture anything on film, but Week 12 was pretty darn fantastic!

This week brought in yellow carrots, broccoli raab, 1 lb sweet banana peppers, 1 lb zucchini, 2 eggplants, 2 lbs potatoes, and 5 lbs tomatoes. Yes, you read that right, FIVE POUNDS.

week 12 haul

What’s the best possible thing to make when you have all these glorious ingredients?

what to do ... what to do ...

Make ratatouille!

adding in fresh tomatoes

Found a great (and well rated) recipe on Epicurious and only made a few modifications (added capers and a splash of balsamic vinegar).  One of the comments suggested serving with mashed potatoes mixed with herbs and Greek yogurt. YUM!

dinner!

A recent Splendid Table podcast asked the question: what’s the most important tool in your kitchen?

It got me thinking and the thing I use the MOST when I cook is this:

Chloe the netbook

Not only are 90% of all my recipes online (saved at delicious.com if you want to check them out), but Chloe also provides great cooking music.  I can bring up my recipes, fire up Pandora or Grooveshark and cook all day long!

What’s your most important tool in the kitchen?

P.S. I’m FINALLY taking a digital photography class in September, so hopefully I’ll finally learn something about food photograhpy

CSA Week 9 & 10

So Week Nine was kind of a lost week: lots of great fresh produce, but no documentation.  What can I say? Life got in the way of blogging.

Let’ start fresh with Week Ten!  On Wednesday I picked up beets, tomatillos (!!!), plum tomatoes, red cabbage, Swiss chard, potatoes, spring onions and 12 (COUNT EM!) ears of corn. [Can I just state for the record that I am so glad I have a small share? Large shares get TWO of everything.  I don't think I'd know what to do with all that food.!]

the full haul

tounge twister of tomatillos and tomatoes

This is my second year with Parker Farm and second year blogging about it, so you can guess how excited I was to find out that another food blogger interviewed Farmer Steve! Here’s his interview in all his awesome curmudgeonly glory.

The potatoes, onions and tomatoes went into a spicy tomato gratin, courtesy of 101 Cookbooks.  I love the recipes on this site and this one is fast becoming a new favorite.  It’s a delicious gratin that only uses 1/2 cup of cream.  Even dairy-intolerant me can make that work!

curried carmelized onions

just before going into the oven

101 Cookbooks has better finished pictures of the dish.  Mine came out GORGEOUS, but I’ll admit, I dug into it too quickly and portioned it out for lunches and dinner before I remembered to get a picture! ::wink::

And of course, I made a fresh tomatillo salsa.  I’ll be bringing that to work tomorrow along with some whole wheat wraps, avocado and brown rice and beans. NOM!

giant bag of corn

As for the corn… I gave three ears to each of my roommates, which leaves me with six. Maybe I’ll roast half and combine it with the salsa? Or serve it as a side to the gratin?

Not sure about the cabbage yet, but that keeps.  The Swiss chard is going into green smoothies.  My commute’s been fluctuating a lot lately (bouncing between apartments and travelling) and I’ve been making very bad breakfast choices.  Too much refined flours and sugars, cream cheese, and coffee.  So I’m going back to green smoothies when I’m in my home and have stashed some organic oatmeal and almond milk at work.  Three cheers for getting back on track!

What do you do to get yourself back on the Healthy Wagon?

CSA Week 8 – Carrots, Carrots & More Carrots

With two weeks of carrots still in the crisper, I was a little dismayed to hear we were getting ANOTHER big bunch.  I also picked up beets, basil, red Russian kale, 2 lbs of potatoes, spring onions, 1.5 lbs summer squash, celery, cucumbers and 5 ears of corn.

At the suggestion of my friend Carmen, I’m letting the bail “root”.  We’ll see what happens there.  Right now it’s making the kitchen smell divine!

The beets and carrots from this week and past weeks have been roasted and I’m making the chipotle dip from 101 Cookbooks for the  “carrot fries” tonight.

Corn, celery, cucumbers and such will go into a delicious corn salad that I can’t wait to munch on!

The kale and spring onions I’m plan to saute and serve with beans and some grain.  Delicious, simple and easy!

The potatoes and summer squash are going to hang around for a bit until I decide what to do with them. Any good summer recipe suggestions for those two ingredients?

CSA Week 7

The drought was finally broken by torrential rains and thunderstorms this past weekend.  Unfortunately it also flooded our basement both at home and at work.  Much of the weekend was spent either moving stuff out of the basement or being away from the apartment since we couldn’t use toilet or shower.  Not much cooking happened and so I was a little worried with this week’s farm share and how I’d finish last week’s food AND deal with this week.

This weeks delivery was beets, carrots, spring onions (yay!), curly kale, romaine lettuce, 2 lbs of potatoes, 2 lbs summer and cousa squash, 1 bunch basil and 1 lb green or wax beans.

Once the delivery was announced (thank you Parker Farm for posting the drop offs!) I went on a search for a quick and easy recipe that would use up a majority of the ingredients from this week and the ones from last week that were still kicking around.  I found this awesome minestrone recipe and will be cobbling it together tonight after teaching.  Perfect and summery, I love the addition of” pistou” or pesto for added flavor!

I plan to use half the curly kale and the rest of the Biera kale from last week in the soup, along with some of the potatoes, carrots, squash, green beans, onions and, of course, the basil.

The other half the kale will become my ALL TIME FAVORITE KALE RECIPE: Kale Chips!  Sooooo good!

If you have a farm share or frequent a farmer’s market, how’s it going?  Has it been a good growing season?  Less than stellar?  What are you looking forward to most this season?  (Me: tomatoes!)

CSA Week 6 – Too Hot To Cook

We’re in the middle of a heat wave here in northern New England and temperatures have topped 9o+ for the past four days and in some places, tipped over into 100+.  TOO HOT TO COOK.

Luckily there’s not much in this week’s farm share that needs cooking.  This week I picked up beets, 1 pound fava beans, cilantro,1 pound new potatoes, squash, cabbage, cauliflower, mizuna, carrots, 2 cucumbers and biera kale, which looks a lot like collard greens to me…

I’ve been trying to preserve more than last year to reduce waste so this week will be a lot of pickling!

• The cabbage is going to get sliced and paired with the cucumbers, cauliflower and a store-bought red bell pepper for a pickled slaw.
• The beets will keep until it’s cool enough to roast them and then they too will get pickled.

The squash I’m going to saute (god help me) and pair with a green salad with mizuna and store bought (but grown in Maine!) baby spinach.  I think I might just go whole hog and steam the fava beans too to add to the salad.

I’ve got some carrots left over from last week’s share too so what doesn’t get chopped up for salad use I’m going to make into this yummy raw carrot and sunflower spread from The Front Burner blog.

Not sure yet about the cilantro, potatoes and kale.  Hopefully they’ll keep until the heat breaks!

What are you eating to keep cool when the temperature spikes?

CSA Week 5 – The Bounty Continues

Light years better than last growing season, (though the current 90+ heat wave isn’t being so kind) we got another HUGE delivery last Wednesday.  Excuse the late posting as I was on “vacation” and taking some much needed time away from the computer.  But that doesn’t mean there wasn’t a lot of cooking going on.

Here’s what we got:  1 bunch chioggia beets, yellow carrots, BASIL (!!!), broccoli raab, kale, purple kohlrabi, cauliflower, fennel and a pound of summer squash.

With the basil and kale I was inspired to make a big veggie lasagna with a kale-tomato sauce.  Parboiled and then sauteed the raab for a yummy, crunchy, garlicy side.  The lasagna made two BIG pans and we’ve been happily munching on that for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

The rest of the basil I blended with some garlic, olive oil and roasted walnuts into a pesto that got portioned and put in the freezer for those cold winter months when you long for some good pesto.

Half the summer squash went into a Sunday breakfast of spicy spring veggie frittata and homemade jam pulled from the freezer.

The kohlrabi, beets and fennel were roasted and then tossed with wheat berries, some thyme and a dash of balsamic vinegar for a nice warm weather salad.  The salad was inspired by the Roasted Fennel & Farro Salad in the July 2010 issue of Eating Well.

The yellow carrots and cauliflower (roasted but still in the fridge in a bowl) are still hanging out.  Not sure what tomorrow’s delivery will bring, but I’ve got my fingers crossed for some good salad greens especially if this hot weather continues through the week!

What are you cooking?  Or not cooking, if it’s too hot to turn the stove on?

CSA- Week 4

Oh CSA, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways:

1 bunch collard greens
1 pint sugar snap peas
1 bunch baby carrots
1 bunch radishes
1 pound golden beets
1 head Bibb lettuce
2 heads of broccoli
1 bunch arugula
1 bunch parsley
and 1 pint of strawberries

Yes, it is true love.

CSA Week 3

Another HUGE delivery on Wednesday.  This week brought in red leaf lettuce, romaine lettuce, escarole, scallions, beets, baby carrots, kale, red chard, radishes and cabbage.

csa week 3

Wednesday dinner (which also made a lot of leftovers) was a simple sautee of the beet greens and escarole with garlic, pan fried tofu and millet cooked with veggie stock and Penzeys “mural of flavor”spice blend.  Millet is a new grain for me and I was inspired to try it by the great food and fitness blog The Front Burner.  She’s got a lot of great recipes.

Lunch was beet salad with local goat cheese.  The red leaf lettuce and romaine got washed and chopped, same for the radishes and carrots, and the red beets and chioggia beets from last week were roasted with salt, pepper and olive oil.   I’ve never cooked with chioggia beets before and peeling them was a fun surprise!

chioggia beets

These little beets are so sweet!  If you’re not a big beet fan, give these a try.  They’re sweeter and less earthy than their deep red counterparts.

I’ve been using the Swiss chard in my green smoothies in the morning and it makes a nice and smooth alternative to my usual spinach.

Still have the head of cabbage and the scallions, so I’ll be doing some recipe hunting for something that uses both ingredients.  Any suggestions?