Week One, Part Two...

With the rest of week one's selection, I went with mostly salads, given the massive amount of salad greens. I actually made a nice salad of mixed greens with a truffle vinagrette for serving with slices of pate (from The Italian Store - highly recommend), but for some reason, the pictures did not capture. In retrospect, the dressing came out a bit more acidic than I would have liked, but in a way, that, combined with the bitterness of the chicory endive, was actually pretty good up against the richness of the pate.

The other thing I did with the produce was to slowly cook - almost steep - the garlic scapes in olive oil over low heat until the roughly-sliced scapes were tender (almost the consistency of a well-cooked green bean). I cooled them and stored them in the oil, which I thought might be useful when flavored of garlic.

My sister and her partner were in for the weekend, so I ultimately wound up using them as part of the filling for more refrigerator pie - a great fallback recipe courtesy of Alton Brown. Super-fast, super-easy quiche is basically what we're talking. In this case, the filling is the scapes, a package of baby portabella mushrooms, shredded cheese (goat and ultra-aged Gouda), and some more of the chives. I roasted the mushrooms in the oil with the scapes, so the filling picked up a really nice flavor of garlic without being too overbearing.

The rest of the weekend, while not CSA-related, was fun in that I got to cook up some goodies for a Saturday night Wolf Trap concert out on the lawn. It wound up being a really good show (David Byrne of Talking Heads fame and DeVotchka) and a beautiful night.

I basically made two bean-based dips. One was fava beans (two cups when cooked from dried beans), olive oil, and ricotta salata, with a touch of garlic, lemon, and mint. The second was a dip made from black-eyed peas, whipped together much like hummus, with lime juice, hot chili and sesame oil, a touch of the garlic scape oil, salt, and white pepper.

I think they turned out pretty well, but the food highlight of the day was probably our stop at the Wine Kitchen in Leesburg. I'd been before, but this time I got to take Meghann and Chad, and I think all of us were pretty impressed by both the wine and the food (let's not forget the desert). They emphasize serving the wines in organized flights of three - each wine comes with a notecard containing a detailed description at a reasonable price for one or all three...

Needless to say, I got the special. Which was fabulous. And I got the macaroni and cheese - which was solid if not just a bit light on the salt. Other items included a portabella panini, polenta with mushrooms, frisee and a poached egg, and the desert - two small ultra rich and moist chocolate and mint cakes with mint cream and, to top it off, a mint-perfumed salt...

I also had the pleasure of talking with the manager Michael Mercer, who was incredibly kind and corteous. After learning we were headed to Wolf Trap for the evening, he recommended a bottle of 2007 Domaine Felines Jourdan Picpoul De Pinet that we might like.

Needless to say, we left with two bottles. One for the show, and one for DE consumption. A great thing about the wine selection at the Wine Kitchen is you get $10 off the list price if you get wine to go. The rest of the evening was great - a beautiful night (just about the only one that week), wonderful sound, great set-lists, and even easy traffic in and out of Wolf Trap and back onto 267 for the return ride back to Arlington.