Opa!

Before I go into the details of my Greek inspired meal from this week's harvest, a little note on my overall cooking style: I consider recipes to be suggestions. I don't really measure when I cook (baking is a different story) so when I tell how I do things, I will rarely give precise measurements. I hope you will consider this inspiration for your own cooking experiments and modify things to your taste. 

Our veggies for the week: 

Grape leaves

Pac choi

Tatsoi

Salad turnips

Today's recipe uses only the grape leaves. Our pac choi and tatsoi started to get wilty really fast. I'm not sure if I can revive it. I may have to make it into a stir fry or something later, which will have to be for a later post.

I wanted to make stuffed grape leaves as soon as I saw that they were an option at the pick up this week. Farmer Pete promised that with fresh grape leaves, we wouldn't have the sour taste that I've noticed before with grape leaves. 

First, I had to remove the stems from the grape leaves and blanch them, meaning briefly submerge them in boiling water (3 minutes-ish). This softens them and changes the color. Then, I made the rice mixture to stuff them with. I started by sauteing diced red onion, about 1 1/2 cups of long grain rice, fresh mint, and fresh parsley (dill or tarragon might also be good) in a saucepan. After the onions were starting to look ready, I added enough chicken broth to cook the rice in (about 1 cup; vegetable broth would work too) and squeezed out a lemon into the pan, letting it simmer together. Once the rice was cooked through, I wrapped a spoonful of the mixture into each grape leaf at the base where the stem had been connected. It works well to put the shinier side facing down and fold both sides in before rolling it up. I had about 12 grape leaves and I had plenty of rice mixture leftover. I put the rolled grape leaves into a saucepan and covered them with more chicken broth and the rest of the lemon juice that I could squeeze out. Then I let them simmer on low for about 30 minutes. At first, I had the heat too high and some of them burst, so make sure you keep the heat low enough. I was able to save most of them and they looked and tasted great - lots of flavor! As a bonus, they're only 1 weight watcher point for 2 stuffed grape leaves.

I was lucky enough to have a sous-chef (Nathan visiting all the way from Omaha!) who made a fabulous Greek salad to go along with our stuffed grape leaves.

So far, many of the ingredients are still coming from the grocery store, but we're hoping and praying for bigger harvests as the season progresses. Hopefully soon I can make some recipes that are heavier on the CSA ingredients. Until then, the challenge of an interesting new ingredient is still pretty fun in itself.