Couscous Salad with Lemon Balm Vinaigrette

Another way I wanted to use my CSA lemon balm was in a vinaigrette. I discovered my local grocery store carried the larger Middle Eastern (I think sometimes called Israeli) couscous, so I thought I'd try making a cold couscous salad. It came out decently well, but lacked a little flavor. I cooked the couscous in 1 cup wine + 1/2 cup blush wine, but I don't think it added much flavor. It also ended up being too much liquid - I followed the cooking directions, but I think next time will do 1 1/4 cups water with 1 cup dry couscous. The vinaigrette could've had more flavor, so increased the vinegar, brown sugar, salt, and garlic in the recipe below. I also only had the bottom of my green onions, the tops would've added some flavor, too.You can probably use the typical small couscous for this recipe, too. Photos!

Pretty CSA carrots - I used five for the couscous

Carrots peeled - ready to cut!

Carrot circles, about 1/8-1/4 inch thick

Lemon balm leaves

Chopped lemon balm

Chives!

Lemon balm vinaigrette!

Cooked carrots and onion

Couscous cooking up, I made my couscous in the same pot as the carrots and onion; you can see some orangy oil on top from this.

Steamy, ha

Couscous, ready for incorporation

Final dish!

 Couscous Salad with Lemon Balm Vinaigrette - makes ~3 meals, ~4-5 side dishes

• 1 cup dry couscous
• 1 cup carrot circles
• 2 green onions - divide bottoms from tops
• 1 tbsp butter
• 1/4 cup golden raisins

for vinaigrette:

• 1/8 cup olive oil
• 3 tbsp white wine vinegar
• 1 tsp brown sugar
• 2 cloves garlic, minced or pressed
• 2 tbsp lemon balm, chopped
• 1 tbsp chives, chopped
• 1 tsp seasoning (I used an all-purpose seasoning called Special Shit - no joke)
• 1/4 tsp salt

1. Prepare vinaigrette first, to allow flavors to mingle, could be made day before. Add olive oil, vinegar, and brown sugar to bowl or bottle and whisk (with whisk or fork) or shake. Add garlic, lemon balm, and chives to liquid. Add seasoning and salt and whisk or shake final mixture. Refrigerate if making ahead of time, or for other uses.
2. Cook carrots on low heat in butter while cutting onions. Add onion bases (the more onion-like part) and cook on low-med heat for 7-10 minutes, until translucent.
3. Meanwhile, prepare couscous as directed. Add carrot and onion to couscous, along with golden raisins and green onion tops, mix.
4. Add vinaigrette, stir, and refrigerate to chill.

Roasted Radishes

Once upon a time, I got some radishes in my CSA. I admit - I do not like radishes. When I was little, sometimes I'd take one out of the garden and draw on our white fences with it. It leaves a pretty pink mark. I do give radishes that; they are quite pretty. In any case, I looked for a way to eat these without being sad, and I found something! Roasting them is quick and simple, and they taste great. Success! I roughly followed this recipe from Bon Appetit, found with my Epicurious app. Here's what I did:

• Preheat oven to 400F (This ended up being a bit hot - I will do 375F next time)
• Use small radish quarters - mine were about the size of a quarter or golden dollar.
• I also used some summer squash - cut these into small circle or semi-circles.
• Spray baking sheet with olive oil lightly, arrange radishes, spray these as well.
• Don't add squash yet.
• If you don't have a mister, you can toss the radishes in a bowl with a little olive oil.
• Bake radishes for 7 minutes, stir them a bit to get different sides to brown, add squash, bake 7 more minutes.
• Add a little salt or seasoning! I used some green onions cooked in my lemon balm compound butter for a dressing - it was wonderful! I ate a few radishes before coating them, and they were great - many possibilities.

Here's the photos!

Little radishes - I probably had about a cup's worth

This one was the tiniest - so cute!

A few green onions to cook in the compound butter.

Radishes ready for roasting.

Squash!

I melted the compound butter on low.

Radishes halfway done, turned, squash added.

Sliced green onion cooking on low in the compound butter - amazing!

Roasted vegetables getting ready to be mixed with onions and butter.

Pretty!



And delicious :)

"Ginger" Cashew Chicken

So it seems I almost forgot to post about this one! Based off of a recipe I found using Epicurious from Bon Appetit - Ginger-Cashew Chicken. I put ginger in quotes in the title of this post because I didn't use any ginger. I made a smaller version of the recipe, using what I did have on hand (no chicken broth, no dry mustard, added mushrooms), and it made two servings. It came out pretty well - the biggest surprise was that the slight cooking of my embarrassingly old cashews made them taste quite a bit fresher! If you are sensitive to saltiness I would suggest adding less soy sauce. Here is my ingredient list:

• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 5 green onions (dense bottom part, used tops for second part)
• 2 cloves garlic
• 1 chicken breast
• 3 celery stalks
• 1 cup oyster mushrooms
   
• 1 tsp olive oil
• 1/8 cup water
• 1/8 cup wine (I used a semi-sweet rose blush, same as in this post)
• 1 tsp Dijon mustard
• 1 tbsp soy sauce
• 1 tbsp oyster sauce
• 1/4 cup cashews
• tops of green onions
• 1/2 cup uncooked rice (cook while making the rest)

Here are most of my veggie ingredients - note that I separated out the base of the green onions from the tops

Sliced oyster mushrooms ready to go

Starting with the green onion bases

I added the mushrooms about halfway through the cooking time of the onions

Everything cooked up! Ready when chicken was just done to keep it juicy.

Here's the sauce...I thought this looked kind of cool :)

Everything - ready to eat!

On rice.



Very savory and tasty!

"Marsala" Chicken and Asparagus

So, I had mushrooms and asparagus from my CSA that I thought I'd use with chicken. Marsala chicken, I thought. Well, plans changed as I realized my mushrooms had gotten a bit too fungal and probably weren't good to use any more. No matter, I forged ahead. I found this recipe using my Epicurious app, and it appears also on the website. It is apparently from Gourmet, June 1995. Here are my changes:

• There's just one of me, so I did a third of the recipe, with one chicken breast and it made two light meals.
• I used green onion instead of onion, and added a clove of garlic.
• Didn't have chicken broth, so I made up that volume using half water, half wine.
• No Marsala wine, so I used some wine I didn't really enjoy drinking, a semi-sweet rose.
• Didn't have parsley, instead used the green onion greens.

Asparagus is pretty quick to cook; I just used some fresh garlic, olive oil, and salt for that. While the last steps of the chicken were being completed, I cooked the asparagus.

Here's the ingredient list I used for the chicken:

• 1/2 tbsp olive oil
• 1-2 garlic cloves
• 1 tbsp butter plus 1/2 tbsp
• 3 green onions - tops for garnish
• 3 tbsp wine
• 1/3 cup water + wine
• salt to taste

When prepping green onions, I cut off the rooty bit and any sad-looking ends of the greens.

Here you can see where I separate the denser more onion-like part from the green leafy part.

Veggies prepped! Again, kept the greens and whites of the onions separate, one garlic clove for the asparagus.

Since I live alone, I usually divide up my meat and freeze part. Rolling down the baggies helps keep them open, and helps keep meat juice from the outside of the bag (bit of a germaphobe here). Putting a single serving in a bag makes things quick and easy when I want to defrost one in the fridge.

To the right: On low heat I melted the butter with the garlic in it.
To the left: Garlic in olive oil for asparagus. I put this on very low heat to let the garlic infuse into the oil.

I cut the breast in half, as directed, and tried to make all pieces about the same thickness. I used lemon pepper and salt to season.

Chicken just lightly browned - wanted to keep it juicy!

Here's the wine I used; sadly did not enjoy drinking, but excellent for food!

I believe I left all the fat in the skillet after the chicken, and cooked the onions until they were transparent.

Added chicken back, and cooked some more.

The lovely sauce - it was so good!

Here's the asparagus, just rinsed.

Added into the slowly heated garlic in olive oil during the second chicken cooking.

Just takes 5 or so minutes to cook on medium heat. Right at the end I added half of my green onion greens.

 

Used the second half of green onion greens to garnish chicken - how pretty is this? And so tasty!