Farmers’ Market Finds

Even though our Community Supported Agriculture farm has been supplying us with a wealth of great produce this season, I still like to visit farmers’ markets to supplement our table.  You see, the CSA box provides just the right amount for what a normal family would want to eat.  But what if you want zucchini coming out of your ears, like a real gardener?  (There’s an old joke in my hometown that you shouldn’t leave your car unlocked in the summer, not to prevent theft, but to prevent zealous gardeners from giving you their surplus zucchini.)  I have neither the time, space, skill, nor inclination to actually garden, so I market instead.  I wanted more than what we could eat for dinner, so I could bake with some, freeze some, and just revel in the surplus of it.

Besides, the farmers’ market was on our summer list.

I brought home enough zucchini to eat some for lunch, freeze four cups of it, and bake this zucchini bread and these zucchini brownies.  (Trust me.  Zucchini brownies = good.)

While we were there, I couldn’t resist some ears of corn and these herbs.

Even though I have three healthy basil plants on the porch, I couldn’t resist that beautiful bunch of basil for $1.  This is what we had for dinner that night.  I had enough pesto to freeze, and enough leftover basil for salad dressing.

The recipe is for Spaghettoni Al Pesto (Barefoot Contessa Parties!), and you’ll probably notice that the picture doesn’t show spaghettoni.  That’s rigatoni, which rhymes with spaghettoni, and that’s good enough for me.

I had less of an idea of what I would do with the dill, but seeing those big, flowery bunches reminded me of my grandmother.  She grew acres of vegetables and herbs every summer, and I remember the dill on the edge of the garden.  The smell of dill always brings me back to her, and that garden.  Unlike a lot of people, I don’t have a lot of good food memories of my grandmother – she was pretty much insane, and not in a charming way – but the garden and the dill made me smile.
I brought it home and made a small batch of creamy cucumber salad, from Barefoot Contessa Back to Basics.

Provençal Vegetable Soup

This recipe (Barefoot in Paris) was a great way to get a great serving of vegetables in the middle of winter, and it also served me by helping me to clean out the freezer.  There are a few things that separate this from ordinary vegetable soup:  it includes pistou (like pesto), and it contains both potatoes and pasta, so it’s a bit on the starchy side.  I used frozen CSA green beans in place of haricots verts, so this was probably a little more sloppy than it should have been, but I didn’t mind.  I used yellow potatoes, which may have added to the starchiness, but either the potatoes or the noodles could have been eliminated if you didn’t want that much starch.  Instead of making the pesto fresh, I dug out some beautiful arugula pesto that I made from our CSA arugula last summer.  I mixed it with some tomato paste (also from the freezer!) to make the pistou.  Just a little bit of the pistou gave the soup a great flavor, and I’ll definitely use that trick again.

I found some great rosemary ciabatta rolls in the freezer section of the grocery store, which rounded this out nicely, along with the Chive Risotto Cakes.

Spinach Salad with Pesto and Peas

This salad made me so glad that I froze plenty of pesto this summer when the herbs and garlic were fresh, because it was like a taste of sunshine on a cold winter’s night.  This salad was so easy:  no chopping, no dressing, and triple-washed baby spinach meant it was on the table with very little effort.

Barefoot Contessa at Home, p. 77