CSA Day AND Chicken Marsala

That's right...you're getting a two for one deal tonight!  So let's get things started.

Here's what we hauled in today...

We're really excited about this whole chicken.  The peanuts and potatoes will be a little trickier since they are both off limits with the Paleo diet, but since we allow ourselves one cheat day, we'll find a way to incorporate them into meals then.

Now...for tonight's dinner, we whipped up some chicken marsala and roasted turnips.

We started by making a "marinade" for the chicken.  I use that term loosely since it wasn't your typical saucy marinade, but that's how the recipe phrased it, so that's what I'm sticking with.  We started by slicing and dicing some green onion (since we didn't have shallots), white onion, garlic, thyme, rosemary (our little twist), and sage, and adding in a bit of grapeseed oil.  Then we layered in our chicken, making sure each piece was nicely covered in the aromatics.

The recipe says to cut your chicken into chunks, but we went more with cutlets.  So I stacked them up, making sure to get the onions and herbs in between each piece, and let them sit for about 10 minutes while we prepped the turnips.  We kept them simple and just roasted them up, similar to how we did the cauliflower here.  Once the chicken had a chance to marinate, we browned them in a pan, and then popped 'em into the oven just to stay warm (so turn your oven no higher than 200).

Using the same pan, we added the remaining onions and herbs to the pan to soften, and then added in the mushrooms.  We used both the oyster and shitake mushrooms that we picked up in our share.

Once the mushrooms have cooked down, add in your marsala wine to deglaze the pan.  Be sure to scrape up all the delicious brown bits that may be stuck on the bottom of your pan.  If you use a non-stick pan like we did, you won't have to worry about those stuck-on bits.

Once the alcohol has cooked off, add in your chicken stock.  Give everything a good stir, and be sure to season your sauce with salt and pepper.  Then you just let it simmer and reduce for about 10 minutes.  Up until this point, it was Paleo-friendly.  But we had to add a tiny bit of cornstarch to thicken the sauce.  The recipe called for arrowroot as the thickening agent, but we didn't have any on hand.  Considering there was only about 1/2 tsp of cornstarch, I'm going to say this was still Paleo-friendly.

Once your sauce has thickened to your desired viscosity, you can toss your chickens in so they can absorb some of the sauce.  Then you're ready to serve!

CSA Recap

Happy April!  It's time once again for our CSA recap.  Here's what we picked up...

And here's how we put the deliciousness to use...

• Lamb Sausage & Broiled Tomato Salad
• lamb & pork sausage
• romaine
• tomatoes
• Chicken & Kale Curry
• kale
• tomatoes
• green onion
• Chili (very similar to this one)
• ground beef
• Lettuce Wraps
• green onions
• shitake mushrooms
• bibb lettuce
• Pork Chops, Roasted Turnips & Salad
• turnips
• creasy greens

We ended up just eating the apples as snacks/part of our lunches, and the bacon is in the freezer since we still have some from the last share that we need to eat.  Stay tuned tomorrow to see what we pick up next!

It's a Wrap!

On a cold, rainy night like tonight we were looking for a quick, easy, healthy, tasty, and comforting meal.  We were hungry for some delicious pot stickers like we had at Chinese New Year, but we wanted to keep it Paleo, and use some of our share ingredients, so decided to make some Asian lettuce wraps.

Essentially, we used the recipe for the pot sticker filling.  We started by mincing up some ginger, garlic, and scallions.  

That was all mixed with some ground pork, salt, white pepper, sesame oil, a little soy sauce, and a dash of Chinese cooking wine.  Next we chopped up our shitakes from the share, and tossed it all together.

We cooked the mixture in a pan with a bit of coconut oil, and it was ready in no time.  While that cooked, we julienned some carrots to wrap up in the lettuce, and chopped up a little more green onion, and some cilantro to garnish.

We tore the leaves from the head of bibb lettuce to use as our wraps, and set up a little station to build our wraps.  Just spoon in some pork and mushrooms, add a few carrot sticks, top with some green onion and cilantro, and you're good to go!

CSA Day!

It's that time again!  Woohoo!  Here's what we hauled home today:

Lots of good stuff to come as we jump back on the Paleo train.  Stay tuned!

CSA Recap

It's that time again...time for our bi-weekly recap of how we used our CSA goods.  As a refresher, here's what we picked up

And here's how we used our goods:

• Oyster Bahn Mi
• oysters
• cilantro
• Steak with Chimichurri & Rutabaga
• rutabaga
• cilantro
• romaine (we made a salad on the side)
• Gnocchi
• potatoes
• oyster mushrooms
• romaine (we made a salad on the side)
• Chicken Piccata & Polenta with Kale
• kale
• Trout & Spinach
• trout
• spinach
• shitake mushrooms
• cilantro
• Stuffed Cabbage Rolls
• cabbage
• onion

Tomorrow's share is looking to be a good one, so stay tuned to see what we bag!

Let's Dish on our Fish...

Wednesdays can be a tough day to get motivated to cook dinner.  You're bogged down at work, already looking toward the weekend.  Although fish is more of a Friday thing this time of year, trout and spinach were all that remained of our share, so tonight that's what we did.  We got a late start, but luckily tonight's dinner came together in a matter of minutes.  No joke!

Justin was in charge of the sauteed spinach.  He started by chopping up some garlic, onion, and the shitake mushrooms from the share.  Into the pan they went with a little butter, where they cooked down for a few minutes, until the onions and garlic were soft.  He also added a dash of red pepper flakes for some heat.

Once that all cooked down, he added the spinach, and a little white cooking wine to deglaze the pan.  It took just a few more minutes for the spinach to wilt down.




While Justin took care of the spinach, I got to work on our whole trout.  Since we had some lemon, onion, and cilantro to use up, we decided to stuff our little guy with all of those tasty ingredients, along with some garlic and ginger.

 

Before stuffing him silly, he got a sprinkling of salt and pepper on both sides of his skin, and inside.  Then I filled his belly with the garlic, ginger, some of the sliced onions, some of the lemon slices, and about half of the cilantro.  I also made a little bed of lemon and onion for him to rest on, and to serve as a little blanket for him.

Into the oven he went for about 7 minutes on each side.  The flavors melted into the fish, and the skin got a bit crispy.  We topped him off with the remaining fresh cilantro.  So in about 20 minutes, we had a delicious meal.  We also had the leftover polenta with kale that we made the other night.  I think it was even tastier as a leftover!  But if you're looking for a quick meal to throw together mid-week, or any day of the week, try this out.  The flavors of the lemon, ginger and cilantro were subtle, but they were there.

CSA Day!

Hooray for CSA day!  Today's share is a little smaller than what we've been getting, but we have plenty of leftovers from our Chinese feast yesterday to help fill in some of the gaps.

So here's what we picked up...

The infamous cabbage is back!  I'm not sure what we'll do with it quite yet, but hopefully we can come with something other than sauerkraut or kimchi.  The oysters came pre-shucked, so my paring knife will be spared any further damage.  To Justin's credit, he did replace my paring knife with a much higher quality one :)

We'll be turning to our trusty cookbooks, the interwebs, and our own creative minds to come up with delicious uses for all these tasty ingredients.  Stay tuned!