Elk Stroganoff

Tonight's recipe was a roaring success by my lights. We had some ground elk (yes, we're those people) and poked around for recipes that weren't chili - surprisingly hard to find. We ended up adapting this Beef Stroganoff recipe to great effect:

Beef Stroganoff III

Various alterations:

- Elk instead of beef, obviously - but also ground meat instead of steak.
- corn starch instead of wheat flour for my gluten issues
- Yellow onion instead of green, because... well, because we forgot we had green
- fresh mushrooms instead of canned, and cooked with the onions instead of added last
- added the wine with the broth to help pull everything together.

One of my favorites so far. Totally a winner.

Radishes

Neither of us were thrilled to get a bunch of radishes in our CSA box, but hey, the vegetable is mandatory, so we poked around for recipes, and ultimately settled on sauteeing them in about half a stick of butter. There was probably some brown sugar involved, too. They ended up entirely edible - barely bitter at all, more like potatoes than radishes. Not something either of us would seek out, but it worked just fine to get them out of the fridge.

Roasted Endive

Continuing with our roasted vegetables, we attacked the endives we got in our CSA box. Endives weren't something I'd ever had before, but preparation seemed easy enough.

Roast Belgian Endive

I tried some of the variations listed at the end: added garlic (burned to a crisp - complete waste, find a different way to add it than just letting it bake) added parmesan (excellent) and sprinkled some brown sugar on (also good.) I didn't love the flavor of the vegetable itself, although it was certainly edible, and the texture was remarkably nice.

Roasted Asparagus

Turns out we both like asparagus pretty well, and it's in season. This is the recipe that's worked well for us so far:

Roasted Asparagus

The only change I made (and it was a good one) was using the lemon pepper we had on hand instead of black pepper. Good stuff!

Lamb Curry

Because I mentioned it in my previous post, here's my lamb curry recipe. I've made this a number of times, and I don't have the original source any more, but here's a link:

Crockpot Lamb Curry

It's a little fiddly - the only times it's gone poorly have been when I get cocky and try to chop stuff while other stuff is cooking - but generally reliable. I have, at various points, skipped the serranos (fine) used pickled or powdered ginger instead of fresh (fine, but I don't love ginger) used potatoes instead of cauliflower (fine, but add them in up front) or skipped them completely (less recommended - it's a potent dish without something to soak up the spice) used fresh tomatoes instead of canned (fine, but the skins are annoying) and once, skipped the tomatoes because I forgot I didn't have any (not recommended.)

Generally, follow the steps and it's quite a passable curry.

Gluten-Free Fry Bread

I do the gluten-free thing, these days, and I'm always looking for things to take the place of bread. I prefer recipes that aren't full of substitutions, but are inherently gluten-free. When we had an Indian curry the other day, I decided to look for a naan substitute, and found this

Pan-fried Cassava Bread

I had tapioca (cassava) flour on hand for a different project, and this looked easy. It was (barring some fiddling with proportions and glaring at recipes in metric) and the result was a chewy flat pancake that went perfectly with our curry. I used lemon rather than lime juice because it's what I had, but it did no harm. I'll definitely do this again.

Chicken and Artichokes

Right out front, I'll mention that not all of these recipes will be vegetables.This one, for example:

Braised Chicken Legs with Artichokes and Pearl Onions

We did not do this one straight from Trader Joes like the recipe describes; we had two whole artichokes, not frozen hearts, and regular yellow onions, not pearl onions. We used balsamic vinegar and coconut oil rather than Banyuls and avocado, respectively.

I steamed the artichokes, disassembled them, and chucked the hearts in the pan as the recipe describes. I sauteed the onions quite aggressively (raw onion disagrees with me) and otherwise followed the recipe. When I took it out, the vegetables were very nearly blackened, and my heart sank...

...until I tasted them. Because man oh man, was that dark, crusty garlic-onion-artichoke mess swimming in chicken fat *delicious.* We used it as a dip for the artichoke leaves and it was fantastic.

The chicken itself was unremarkable - on the bland side. I'd season it more heavily next time, but that's likely my fault in the first place.

Warm Beet Salad

We've made this one three times already - it's *fantastic*. No alterations to the recipe tried (or needed - we really love this one.) It's particularly nice if you, like us, get your beets from a CSA or the farmers' market and were wondering what to do with the huge beet greens attached.

Warm Golden Beet Salad with Greens and Almonds