10.11.17 Wisconsin Grown | Part 23
Is it just me, or is fall running a little behind this year? The weather finally seems right (at last ), but aren’t the trees supposed to be changing color by now too? I have to admit, it feels a bit strange to somehow find myself needing to rake the yard, even though the trees are still sporting bright green leaves. I think, as of now, there is officially one tree in our whole neighborhood that has changed color. Maybe I’m just impatient; it’s just that I love fall.
The trees may still be green, but at least I feel like we’re hitting our fall stride in the vegetable department. Here are the days of pumpkins and peppers and all of the best root vegetables. But also tomatoes, because, always tomatoes. Just thinking about it all has me itching to fire up the oven and get roasting; throw a pot on the stove and get braising, and eat lots of cozy fall food. And if the leaves never change, and just continue to fall, as green as ever, so be it. We’ll be eating like it’s fall, and that’s all that matters. Here’s what we’re cooking this week:
They may call it a Pie Pumpkin, but ours is destined for so much more than pie this week. I’m thinking a big old pot of this Pumpkin and Pork Chili with Roasted Pepitas, and probably a whole bunch of this Pumpkin Mac and Cheese for good measure.
I feel like we must be nearing the end of Tomato season, and as such, each week we get more tomatoes in our CSA box feels like something we need to take full advantage of. I’ve said it before, but Food52’s Scalloped Tomatoes will always rank high on my favorite things to do with tomatoes, so you can bet we’ll be making more this week. I’m also thinking some of Dishing Up the Dirt’s Cherry Tomato Confit is in order as well - we’ll eat it on toast, throw it on pizza, or just eat them straight up.
This week’s Red Onion and Sweet Potatoes are slated for this Chile Roasted Chicken with Sweet Potatoes and Cilantro Rice. And since we all know I’m a sucker for breakfast tacos, any leftover sweet potatoes will be finding their way into these Sweet Potato and Chorizo Breakfast Tacos.
I love all of the peppers this time of year - this week’s Bell Peppers are getting roasted up with any leftover Tomatoes to make some of this Roasted Red Pepper and Tomato Soup. We’ll probably throw our Cayenne Pepper in there too while we’re at it, since we all know I’m all about making my food as spicy as possible.
I realize that cooking Broccoli forever does not sound like the most appealing thing to do with broccoli, but please trust me when I say, this recipe from Food52 is amazing. Toss it into pasta with copious amounts of parm and maybe some of the aforementioned tomato confit, and I’m a happy camper.
Do we need an excuse to make Smitten Kitchen’s Parsley Pecorino Biscuits? Probably not, but I’ll take the big bunch of Parsley in this week’s CSA box as a sign that these biscuits definitely need to happen. Come to think of it, adding some caramelized Shallots to these biscuits would probably be in our best interest as well. Just sayin.
Sure they’re big and ugly and gnarly looking, but I can’t help that I’m a fan of Rutabagas. Especially when they’re cooked up in this Chicken and Root Vegetable Stew with Parmesan Biscuits.
Last year, I discovered that my all time favorite thing to do with Celeriac is to make it into Lucky Peach’s Kung Pao Celeries. It’s spicy, it’s flavorful, it’s exactly what we’re going to do with this week’s celeriac.
