Tuesday: Minimalist mustard pasta

Whole wheat pasta with mustard greens and chevre.

This is one of those recipes where you try to just take the edge off of red mustard greens without losing their wonderful bite: half the slivered greens were tossed in to boil for a couple seconds with the pasta just before it was drained, and half were added raw along with the goat cheese when the dish was assembled.

Monday: Kabocha-hominy stew

Chillied kabocha-hominy stew (flavored with sweet peppers, toasted cumin and cilantro).

This might be one of our all-time favorite recipes; we always make it around this time of year. Kabocha is a small, dark green Japanese winter squash varietal. It's actually pretty common - you might find it halved for sale in a supermarket. It's good for stew, since its cubes soften nicely but retain their shape instead of becoming mush.

Hominy, for those who aren't familiar, is corn kernels treated with lye. When mashed, corn treated this way becomes "masa harina," the flour that tortillas are made of. Whole canned hominy, for that reason, sort of has that "tortilla" taste. Both white and yellow hominy is available in many supermarkets. We used both in this recipe, but we generally prefer the flavor of the yellow kind.

After red onion is sauteed with a little oil, the cubes of squash are thrown in and sauteed until they begin to soften. Flour, cayenne and cumin seeds are then added and stirred to coat the squash. Finally, hominy and broth are added, and the stew simmers for a while - the flour thickens it so that the minced pepper added at the end is suspended throughout. The final step is a cilantro garnish. It's pretty foolproof, but comes out looking (and tasting!) like restaurant food.

Sunday: Puttan-esque

Broccoli Romanesco salad, with hard-boiled egg, olives, capers and anchovy, served over couscous.

If you're confused by the title, we thought this meal was reminiscent of Spaghetti alla Puttanesca, an Italian pasta recipe which combines the very strong flavors of olives, capers and anchovy. Here, those flavors are a foil to the nutty crucifer broccoli Romanesco.

Farmer's Market Haul, 10/3/09

VEGGIES:
Adirondack blue potatoes
Kabocha (winter squash)
acorn squash
red mustard greens
red carrots
Romanesco broccoli
yellow sweet peppers
Rocambole garlic
heirloom tomatoes
few stalks lemongrass

FRUIT:
small watermelon
Delaware grapes (the varietal, not the state)
Bosc pears

Friday cat blogging...with caption contest

What's Oscar thinking? Leave your caption in the comments......

Thursday: North Indian cauliflower and potato

Cauliflower and potatoes cooked with fenugreek and fennel seeds.

This recipe from Madhur Jaffrey's World of the East is apparently a popular North Indian dish. It's commonly served with paratha, but due to time constraints we had to substitute sourdough bread from the freezer.

A note on terminology: some people might call a dish like this "curried" cauliflower and potatoes. The truth is, there isn't really such thing as "curry" - Indian dishes use a great variety of different spices in combinations that vary by season, region and recipe. Generic "curry powders" might include a few of the most common spices - turmeric, coriander, cumin and cayenne - but this doesn't begin to capture the subtlety that can be created by varying types and amounts of spices, and adding them at different stages of the cooking process.

Ironically, a common flavoring in many south Indian regional cuisines is the "curry leaf" - which bears no relationship to commercial curry powders, but does impart its own complex flavor to certain dishes.

Farmer's Market Supplement, 10/1/09

This week's supplement: fingerling potatoes, milk from Ronnybrook Farm, and local farro and whole wheat bread flour (!) from Cayuga Pure Organics.