Over the past weekend, I was assigned the job of cooking for a pack of 10 hungry friends (to keep them nourished before a big holiday party) and was lucky enough to have a cooking partner who also shares my love of rocket/arugula. Making pesto is extremely simple and quick if you have a food processor. I usually just eyeball my ingredients to taste and consistency as I’ve made pesto far too many times at this point.

As a rough guide…

• 4 cups of packed arugula leaves
• 1/4 cup pine nuts, toasted
• 1/4 cup (packed) freshly grated parmesan or pecorino romano cheese
• 1/4 cup olive oil

Once your pesto has a smooth consistency, toss with your favorite cooked pasta. For added flavor and texture, we sauteed a pint of grape tomatoes and tossed them in as well. We served this with a side of focaccia and a small bonus portion of very tasty sage pumpkin pasta that was leftover from the night before.

It’s quite safe to say that our plates were a smashing success as most people were looking for seconds and maybe even thirds. I think we provided enough energy to keep everyone going until 4 am so we could all sing in holiday cheer.

The next day: x2

So we had some left over arugula and made another batch the following night substituting toasted walnuts instead of pine nuts.

X2 was served with a Tuscan bread salad made with a nice crusty loaf of organic rustic Italian courtesy of Amy’s in Chelsea Market. The main flavor component in this salad is the lemon garlic vinaigrette. We ran low on oil and the bread in the salad was slightly on the dry side but still tasty with tomatoes, onion and cucumber.

So much good food & good times.

It’s nice to see some of my peers finding success in this field…

Click here to continue to the New York Times article.

We have been making a small salad with arugula, cherry tomatoes, and shaved carrots (everything but the tomatoes came from our CSA) and topped with a quick lemon vinaigrette.

We also purchased three year barley miso from South River Miso here in Massachusetts. Just plop an over sized table spoon of miso into a coffee mug with a lid and add some furikake for extra flavor. This is a Japanese seasoning which consists of a mixture of sesame seeds, bonito flakes and seaweed. To finish, we add fresh tofu and chopped scallions. This has worked out to be a quick and easy lunch at work. When ready to eat, just go to the water cooler and add hot water. Talk about instant soup, take that ramen noodles!

We’re not one to eat at our desk or be chained indoors at lunch so we usually take it to the streets.

The Salted Cod gets excited when Steve opens his truck door and corn is pilled high, practically bursting from the seams. We can only imagine what it must be like growing up in the Corn Belt where these ears are everyone’s source of income. The scent was sweet with a hint of the farm, something Midwesterners must be all too familar with during those hot summer months. It also reminded us of our favorite regional scent when we traveled to Hatch New Mexico. In Hatch, chilies are drying and roasting everywhere you turn (including rooftops). The scent was so thick in the air you could smell it on your clothes and hair the next day; a delicious combination of smokey, sweet and spicy. We are trying to think of what a true New England scent would be to represent summer. Maybe low tide or rotting cod from the fisherman’s catch…

Anyway, back to week 12:

Week 12 is all about corn chowder! We made LOTS of corn chowder…

In our wonderful Le Creuset dutch oven we cooked 6 slices of bacon (we like our chowda smokey here). Once cooked, we removed the bacon and left about 2 tbs of the grease to sauté our onions, celery, and a few celery leaves. That right, we said celery leaves. Once softened and translucent we added 6 ears worth of corn kernels, 4 cups of whole milk and 2 cups of chicken stock. We also added halved cherry tomatoes and precooked and chopped potatoes. A little salt & pepper and you are good to go.

We had enough for dinner and to freeze for the colder months.

We’ve picked up a nice brandywine tomato for another caprese. No picture sorry.

We ended up picking up some San Marzano tomatoes, 2 Japanese eggplants, a zucchini, and 2 small summer squashes and 2 ears of corn and basil. We’ve made a fresh ratatouille of summer goodness. We even snuck in our last Parker onion into this batch. We baked this at 350 for just over an hour. We topped some fresh baked Italian bread which was grilled over the flame. The flavors screamed together and melted into the nice bread.

$1.98 for a huge bushel of basil! We actually had a random customer tell us we’d never use this much and it would go to waste. We made more pesto to freeze…

We also picked up a quart of fresh blackberries, 5 nectarines, shortcake and awesome homemade whip cream. We made a little blackberry sauce for the shortcake and topped this with a sprig of mint.

All in all we spent close to $40 for a 3 course meal for two. We are very happy we are part of a CSA program; they are a huge value and well worth it.

Tomatoes, tomatoes, finally week 11 brings tomatoes. We received a nice pint of plump cherry tomatoes. The Salted Cod was popping these babies like candy on the way home from the drop.

Week 11 also brings us a great harvest salad. Maybe we were a bit overexcited this week; it feels like most of the produce went into this salad. (We aren’t complaining)

We made mustard vinaigrette with a good grainy French Dijon. The vinaigrette dressed our arugula greens as seen in the middle. On top we have some quick pickled onions which were a nice zesty addition to this. Notice our new sea salt on the cherry tomatoes! Green peppers, purple basil and fresh mozzarella are also coming to this party.

This is a caprese omelette! Fresh mozzarella, tomato and purple basil fill this big guy.

Keep the carrots and potatoes coming! The carrots have been getting us through the work day, great snack. We used our potatoes again for an awesome Sunday breakfast. We can’t get enough of them.

Another batch of pesto is tucked away in my freezer for those chillier months. The Salted Cod is whipping through olive oil this summer. We need to start buying in bulk.

The baby bok choy was a great addition to a stir fry, it so fresh and tender.

It looks like it’s a two stir fry week, we sautéed down some green peppers, zucchini, and an onion from week 9. Put in a little but of soy, garlic, and hot sauce with a side of rice.

Let me state right now that week 9 makes us feel good inside. The Salted Cod had a half work day on week 9’s pickup date so we took our bike down to central square to make the pickup. Little did we know that it would be this large.

Corn, this was some great corn, very sweet with small kernels. We almost ate a weeks worth of corn in one sitting. Steamed for a 5 minutes lots of good butter, sea salt and black pepper.Made a quick lunch of sauteed squash, spring onions and rice for lunch.

We’ve also attempted to make kimchi with our napa cabbage. Unfortunately we had a bad recipe and it’s not looking too good.

A great Sunday breakfast with our potatoes and onions.

Finally we made a nice fresh sauce with our squash, onions, mizuna and corn. We even threw a corn cob in the sauce for extra flavor! Very nice!

Week 8 is summer vacation week for The Salted Cod. This week we took a road trip out to Lancaster to pick up our share at the farm. It was a fun morning, I got to see the where all my great produce is grown and had a bit of time to hang out with Steve as well.

The star of week 8 is our veggie roast! The Salted Cod loves roasted vegetables. We had a nice selection of the great sweet onions with tops, extra creamy potatoes, carrot and lots of fresh basil.

The veggies were mixed lightly with olive oil and seasoned aggressively with black pepper and lightly with sea salt. We let it roast at 450 until the potatoes were just crispy on the outside. This roast took right around an hour.
MMM…

This summer is flying by. We were so excited for more basil that we whipped up a batch of pesto to freeze for later use. The yellow carrots were an awesome snack for the work week as well as the sauteed beets for use in salads. The cilantro was excellent in some homemade guacamole.

We’ve roasted our cauliflower with lemon, fresh balcony grown dill, garlic and olive oil. The oven was set to 450 and let it go for about an hour. The cauliflower came out nice and crispy. It had a deep nutty roasted flavor but the lemon and dill kept it fresh which was a nice offset.

15 minute pickles!

We have adapted this recipe from The Salted Cod’s favorite cookbook How To Cook Everything by Mark Bittman.

We sliced one cuke into chips, which were then put in a strainer and heavily salted. Toss them around to make sure each chip gets salted.

After 10 minutes the chips should have released most of their water content. Go ahead and wash the chips under running water, you want to remove all of the extra salt. In a small bowl big enough to hold your chips pour 1/4 cup of white vinegar over the cuke chips. Mix in 1 tablespoon of sugar and a teaspoon of dried dill. Eat them quickly because they actually don’t last all that long. They have been a favorite treat of many of The Salted Cod’s companions this summer including confirmed pickle haters. It’s a nice salty/acidic balance. Good stuff.