I received an interesting Savvy Mom article this week about party ideas around an Olympic theme and so I'm a little hooked on it this week. It started with Torch Cupcakes (cupcakes baked in to mini ice cream cones with icing flames), and that led into the Fruity Olympic Rings (pictured above) which led into me wondering if there is enough of the food in this week's box to make the Olympic rings - blue (hmm - not quite), black (the plums), red (cherry tomatoes), yellow (beans), and green (zucchini or broccoli). I don't think you'll see a creative Olympic ring photo from me tomorrow when I get my box, but I have chosen to fill this week's post with British recipes or recipes from British food sites to make use of this week's selection and to pay homage to and celebrate the opening of the Summer Olympics in London on Friday, July 27, 2012.
I started with beets - my great aunt, whose background was British, had beets, pickled or otherwise, at many Sunday dinners alongside whichever roast was cooking. We generally enjoy our beets roasted with just a bit of butter and salt and pepper served alongside any dish (try this recipe for Roasted Beets). However, I may get ambitious this week and actually try to preserve my beets by pickling them. My kids are all about pickles right now so some homemade pickled beets should be a hit. I found a Pickled Beets recipe on the TLC website or this English Style Pickled Beets recipe which can do as little as one jar of beets. Don't forget to cut the greens off the beets (if they are there), and use them as you would the chard, or add them to any of the chard recipes that you decide to make.
Chard is another vegetable that appears to also feature somewhat regularily in Bristish cooking - or I seemed to find a variety of chard recipes on British food sites. This Chard and Chickpea Ribolitta soup, from the British publication The Guardian, is enticing because I love soup and I think that with the fresh vegetables in it, is light enough for our hot summer weather. Use the onion and garlic from this week's box as well. Or search through this collection of chard recipes from British organic veggie box distributor Abel and Cole. I especially like the looks of the Tomato and Chard Pie as a lunch meal this weekend at the cottage, of course I will be cheating and buying either a puff pastry package or premade pie crust for ease of use!
I lived with my dad's cousin in university, it was her mother who was the great aunt with the British background. My dad's cousin grew zucchini (and still does) every year, and every year, there were so many zucchinis. She would shred zucchini after zucchini and freeze it all. And mostly, she would make zucchini loaf, muffins, zucchini chocolate chip muffins or some variation therein. I think it's a great way to use up overabundant zucchini and went searching and found this recipe from a UK food network for Zucchini Cake. I doubt that zucchini cake is at all specific to the UK but is more likely a creation by necessity to make use of the vast amounts of zucchini throughout the winter! I do joke a bit, because I no longer live in the same time zone or end of the country as my cousin, so I am not offered any extra bounty from the zucchini crop and I don't get so overwhelmed by zucchini in the summer. We get less zucchini throughout the summer than I was used to growing up so I think that I really enjoy it more. This time of year, consider slicing the zucchini into rounds, brushing with some olive and seasoning and grilling on the barbecue, or add some large chunks of onion and broccoli to a grill proof skillet or tray and roast all of them together.
Lastly, to stick with the British theme, I was thinking about making some small batch marmalade with the oranges (and shame - I have a lemon still in my fruit crisper - where is my post about using the lemon first?). I am a big fan of preserving - more so B.C. (before children) when the kitchen could be hijacked for 12 hours straight, and I have a beautiful book, The Complete Book Of Small Batch Preserving, that has recipes that are perfect for making just a few jars of something really good. I was just going to type up a good marmalade recipe out of there, but low and behold, I've lent it to someone - this has spawned a plea email to friends to find out where my cookbook is. In the meantime, I opened up my Bernardin Guide (basic resource for all things preserving) and found their recipes for the Easiest Ever Marmalade and Orange Marmalade. There is also this apparently no fail Orange Marmalade recipe from the Iowa Housewife website, and somehow I ended up at my new favorite foodie site - Food 52 (have I mentioned it before???) where they have a Valencia Orange Marmalade that is made over 3 days which is typical of marmalade. I would half their recipe. Looking at all this marmalade recipes made me think that marmalade or jam of any sort really, would go well on some scones - truly Bristish. Maybe sometime throughout the next couple of weeks while you are doing some Olympic sport viewing, sit yourself down for a nice cup of tea, a traditional English scone, with some clotted cream or butter, and some homemade marmalade. Cheers.
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