Braised Leeks & Eggs

Here's another kind of fancy looking dish. I saw in this in a magazine and have been anxiously waiting for leeks to reappear in our boxes, which I knew was inevitable. I had never seen a dish made with this combination of ingredients before, but I was intrigued after seeing a picture and reading a description. There was no recipe because it was an article on a restaurant, this being one of their most popular dishes, so I basically had to make this up based on the little information I had. The combination of leeks, egg and mustard turned out absolutely delicious! It might look a little complicated, but I promise it's worth the effort and is on the table in less than an hour from when you start.

Braised Leeks & Eggs

2 medium-sized leeks

1 tbsp olive oil, plus more for drizzling on leeks

sea salt

ground black pepper

4 slices of bread

1 clove garlic

1 ½ tbsp prepared mustard*

2 tbsp butter, plus more for cooking the eggs

1 tbsp olive oil

Shredded mozerella cheese

2 eggs

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Trim the tops of the leeks and save for another recipe. Cut the leeks in half lengthwise and wash carefully to remove any dirt. Don't worry about how much water gets trapped in between the leaves as the water will help to cook them.

Put the leeks into an oven proof pan or casserole dish. You may have to do some additional trimming to make them fit, but you can save these bits for the croutons.

Arrange the leek halves into pairs and then drizzle them with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper.

Cover the pan with aluminum foil and put into the oven for 15 minutes.

While the leeks are cooking, mince the garlic and roughly chop any of the leek trimmings you may want to use for the croutons.

Cut the bread into medium sized cubes.

In a large skillet over high heat, add the butter, 1 tablespoon of olive oil and the garlic, stirring constantly. When the garlic just begins to brown, add the leek trimmings if you are using them. Stir constantly to prevent burning. Once the leeks have become translucent, add the mustard. Stir until combined, and then add the bread cubes. Stir until combined and then spread out the bread mixture on a baking sheet. Bake at 350 degrees for about 15 minutes, stirring every 5 minutes or so to prevent burning.

After the leeks have been in the oven for 15 minutes, remove the aluminum foil and top the leek pairs with mozzarella cheese. Use as much or as little cheese as you want.

Put the leeks back into the oven for an additional 15 minutes.

Once the croutons are finished cooking, remove them from the oven once and set them aside to cool.

Once the leeks are finished cooking, remove them from the oven and set them aside.

Fry two eggs. Place each pair of leeks on a plate and top each with a fried egg. Arrange the croutons around the egg.

Bon Apetit!

*You can use any kind of mustard you like for this. I happened to have some hot and spicy mustard on hand, so I used that.

BORSCHT!

I looked with dismay at large piles of beets and cabbage, and finally decided to muster up the courage to attempt to make borscht. A Russian classic, very red, not always popular. But I found a recipe in the Moosewood cookbook and got as brave as I could.

This is a LARGE recipe, so go ahead and half (or quarter) it.
2 cups sliced beets
2 cups sliced celery root (it was still in our fridge from, like, a month ago, and still good. The original recipe called for a cup of potato and a cup of celery, so i thought this would work out well enough).
COOK (10 min or so - until tender) in about 8 cups veg broth. Drain and set aside - but keep the broth!

3 cups chopped onion - saute in 4 TBSP butter until translucent. I used leeks instead.
Add 2 tsp caraway seeds, some salt, 1 cup chopped carrots, and a cabbage (thoroughly chopped - about 5 cups)
Add the reserved broth and any additional water necessary to cover the vegetables. Cook about 15 minutes (medium heat) until the cabbage is tender.

Add:
2 1/2 TBSP honey
2 1/2 TBSP apple cider vinegar
1 tsp dill
black pepper to taste
beets and potato/celery root previously cooked.

Simmer everything together on very low heat for 20 minutes or so.
Serve with sour cream (or yogurt), and a sprinkle more dill.




When you eat it, the dark red turns into bright pink. Awesome!

Butternut Leek Pasta Sauce

I used the butternut squash in the last box and the leeks in this week's box to make a pasta sauce. I wasn't sure how it would turn out, but I brought it to a potluck today and it got all eaten up, so I think it worked! This has a few more steps than a lot of the recipes I've been posting lately, but i think it's worth it.

Ingredients:

1 butternut squash

2 leeks*

1/2 cup butter

1 tsp each salt & nutmeg

1 can evaporated milk (12 oz)

Cut the stem off of the butternut squash if it has one and then cut it in half lengthwise. Scoop out the seeds and place the 2 halves cut-side down on a baking sheet. Cover with aluminum foil. Bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour.

While the squash is baking, clean the leeks well.** Thinly slice the leeks crosswise. Over high heat in a large sauté pan, melt the butter. Stir constantly to prevent burning. Just as the butter begins to brown, add the leeks, salt and nutmeg. Stir constantly to prevent burning. When the leeks have begun to brown, turn the heat off and add the evaporated milk. Stir to combine.

When the squash is cooked, scoop out the flesh into a large bowl.*** Add the leek mixture and mix well. Toss with cooked pasta.

This makes enough sauce for 2 pounds of pasta.

* I threw in 1 stalk of green garlic that I had left from the last box. I imagine this recipe would work quite nicely using just green garlic, about 4 stalks total would do I think. Also, 2 regular onions can be substituted for the leeks.

** See the "Roasted Root Vegetable Salad" entry for instructions and pictures on cleaning leeks.

*** I had roasted some root vegetables while I was baking the squash. Instead of throwing the squash skins away, I tore them up into bit-sized pieces and tossed them with the roasted vegetables. Butternut squash skins are very tender and quite tasty, and this way there's no waste!

Roasted Root Vegetable Salad

Okay, now we're getting down to business! I had to make a dish to bring to a pot luck, so I knew I had an opportunity to use up lots and lots of veggies!

Here we have (starting at the top and going clockwise) lettuce, leeks, strawberry daikon radish, sweet potato, garlic, onion, carrots and lemons. In the center, the large lumpy thing is a celery root, and next to it are some potatoes. The onions and carrots were not from the veggie box, but we have gotten them in the veggie boxes before. The garlic is from the store and the lemons are from my parents' backyard, admittedly not local as they live over 350 miles away, but I was coming from there anyway ;-)

This of course can be scaled smaller to feed less people, and you certainly don't need this kind of variety. But I must say, the end result with all of these veggies was absolutely delicious!

Here's what you'll need to feed about 10 people:

Salad

5 lbs root vegetables

2 tsps salt

1 tbsp black pepper

1/4 cup olive oil

2 medium sized heads of lettuce (not iceberg!)

Dressing

1/4 cup lemon juice

3/4 cup olive oil

1/4 tsp black pepper

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp prepared mustard

1/2 bulb roasted garlic

Leeks are notoriously dirty vegetables. To clean them, you need to cut them in half lengthwise, leaving the root on to keep the leaves together. Depending on what your leeks look like, you may have to cut up to half of the top off, most of the dark green part. Carefully rinse them under running water.

Make sure to clean between all of the leaves. There usually won't be much dirt closer to the root or the inner layers, but it's better to be safe than sorry. There's nothing like grit to ruin your eating experience. Put the cleaned leeks on a large cookie sheet or broiling pan.

Cut up the remaining root vegetables. I halved the carrots and quartered most of the others. The celery root was pretty big, so I cut it into eighths. I left the skin on most of the vegetables, less waste that way, but sweet potato skins can be weird sometimes, so I peeled it. Not having a lot of experience with celery root, I peeled it pretty aggressively 'cuz it looked like it might be a bit woody. Leave the root end on the onion to keep it together.

Clockwise from the top left: celery root, sweet potato, strawberry daikon radish, carrots, potato and onion.

Cut the top off of the half-bulb of garlic.

Pool a bit of olive oil on the bottom of the pan and put the garlic bulb cut-side down on it.

Toss the vegetables with the olive oil, salt and pepper. It's a bit messy, but it's best to do this with your hands. Make sure to rub down the leeks with oil as well.

Cover the pan with aluminum foil and place in the oven at 350 degrees for 30 minutes.

Remove the aluminum foil and the garlic and continue roasting at 350 degrees for an additional 30 minutes.

While the vegetables are roasting, tear the lettuce into bite size pieces and put them in the bottom of a large serving dish.

Using a butter knife or a small steak knife, pop out the roasted garlic cloves.

Smash the garlic cloves well with a fork or with a mortar and pestle. Whisk together all of the ingredients for the dressing. The prepared mustard helps to keep the lemon juice and olive oil from separating.

Once the vegetables are cool enough to touch, cut them into bite size pieces.

Cut the carrots on the bias to make long slices.

Slice the radishes and the celery root. (celery root not pictured)

Cut the potatoes and the sweet potato into chunks.

Holding the root end of the onion pieces, cut up the onion. Be very careful as the onions will be extremely slippery! If you want, you can simply cut off the root end, and leave the onion layers whole.

Cut up the leeks in a similar manner.

Arrange the roasted vegetables on top of the lettuce.

You can mix them all together like I did in the picture, or you can keep them separated to form larger sections of color. Arranging the vegetables that way can be quite pretty, as well as help people chose which vegetables they want if you anticipate picky eaters. I had to arrange the salad in this container because I was transporting it to the pot luck. If it was going to serve this at home, I would have chosen something more presentable, but it still came out looking pretty good!

Bon Apetit!