Cajun Grill-less Corn Recipe

Our post this week comes from The Farm Table member, and guest blogger, Laura Miller, who blogs over at Beyond the Cuke. When we asked her to come up with a post for us featuring Farm Table produce, we were flattered to get this post in return. First, she had us at Game of Thrones, and while we don’t expect to be adding “milk of the poppy” to our add-on list anytime soon, we were delighted to hear she thinks so highly of us. Thanks for a great post, and recipe, Laura!

3 Reasons Why The Farm Table is the Best of All of the CSAs

Let me just put it this way–If this was Game of Thrones, House Baratheon, House Lannister, House Stark and House Greyjoy would see no reason to wage war because The Farm Table obviously rules the realm. Here’s why:

1. No vegetable ninjas here. I’ve tried my share of vegetable delivery services and I’ve never come across one with such friendly neighborhood coordinators! In fact, not only did these other services not have Angela, my friendly neighborhood coordinator who chats with me about running and blogging, but they might not have had NCs at all for all I know. After all, I’d just leave a box out and sometime by the end of the day–varying times, meaning that my veggies might sit out for a bit since I wasn’t sure when to expect them–it’d be replaced by another box of veggies.

Okay, okay. I’m sure there are neighborhood coordinators for all CSAs but I’m just going to assume they were vegetable ninjas until you provide evidence that proves otherwise.

2. The “S” in “CSA” could stand for “Social.” It doesn’t, but it could. With everything from farm volunteer days like this one in May to local food tastings like the one that I had the pleasure of attending last night at The Savory Grain, your weekly veggie boxes basically come with berries, potatoes and a new set of like-minded friends.

3. Piles and piles of produce. Here’s a visual:

So maybe we don’t get corn every week but we get the week’s version of corn. No more eating out of season food that has traveled all of the way from South America or the West Coast. In July, you’re going to eat peaches. In September, you’re going to have some apples. And you’re going to enjoy them because they’re delicious, in-season and local.

Since this week’s corn is, well, corn, here’s something to make with the Farm Table box bounty:

Cajun Grill-less Corn, otherwise known as “Targaryen Corn”

What You’ll Need:

4 medium ears of corn
2 tablespoons vegan butter substitute
1/4 teaspoon chili powder
1/4 teaspoon ground pepper
1/8 teaspoon garlic powder
1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon cornstarch
1/4 cup vegetable broth

What You’ll Do With It (before eating it, of course):

1. In a large pot, bring 3 quarts of water to a boil. While the water’s boiling, peel your corn.
2. Add the corn to the water. Return to a boil and cook for 3-5 minutes until tender. Keep an eye on it–you don’t want mushy corn but you don’t want hard corn either!
3. While boiling the corn, melt your vegan butter substitute in a small saucepan. Stir in the chili powder, pepper, garlic powder and cayenne and stir for 1 minute.
4. In a small bowl, combine cornstarch and broth. Once combined, whisk into the butter mixture. Bring to a boil and cook and stir until slightly thickened, which should take about 1-2 minutes.
5. Drain the corn and then get your Van Gogh on and paint the corn with the seasoned butter.
6. Sit back and enjoy compliments from your fam, after enjoying at least two ears yourself, of course.

Veganized recipe from Taste of Home

Laura Miller blogs about each week’s kitchen triumphs–and kitchen “learning experiences”–featuring The Farm Table produce at Beyond the Cuke. Follow @beyondthecuke on Twitter and Instagram.

Dinner Time Woes? 14 Free Printables For Your Kids

You’ve received your weekly Farm Table box.

You’ve written your weekly meal plan.

You’ve washed, sorted, and properly stored your produce . 

Now it’s time to actually prepare dinner and you find that adults and kids alike are running on empty. Everyone is a tad cranky, the kids are bouncing off of the walls, and you are gritting your teeth trying to get something that resembles a meal on the table for your family to enjoy and not lose your mind.

We think getting children involved in the meal and table preparation is a great way to teach them new skills, foster independence and confidence, and create lasting memories for everyone. We also know that sometimes that task is unrealistic, especially with more complicated meals, and those nights when you are short on patience and time.

Check out these 14 fun printables that you can print now, prep, and pull out when you need the extra help — that’s 2 weeks worth of extra help! They are fun, seasonal, and educational. You’re welcome!

We still think they should help set the table though!

• Fall Food (KBTeachers)
• From Plant To Food (Montessori for Everyone)
• Fall Leaves color by numbers (Live.Create.Learn)
• Learning about Nutrition (Nourish Interactive)
• Annie’s Corn Cakes coloring page recipe (Jan Brett)
• Halloween Toys & Crafts (Made By Joel)
• Life cycle of a pumpkin activity and printable (A to Z Teacher Stuff)
• Scarecrow Maze (Busy Bee Kids)
• Where Things Come From  (Montessori for Everyone)
• 10 Fall Halloween Songs (Katie Yeh)
• Plant Life Cycle (Exploring Nature)
• Acorn Connect-the-dots (Busy Bee Kids)
• Mr. Gallon Man (The Teacher Website)
• Fall Reading Challenge Chart (Homeschool Creations)

You can make an appetizer plate to stave off hunger with sliced fruit, veggies, and dip. Don’t worry about it spoiling dinner. Who cares as long as you are eating fruits and vegetables!

What dinner time tricks do you have up your sleeve?

A Northwest Chowder

Let me first say that I’m sorry.

I don’t have any appetizing photos of farm fresh produce, or photos of a just prepared meal to share with you in this post. Nothing visual to make your mouth water, or inspire you to get in the kitchen.

You see, we’ve been taking care of a brand new human being around here. 

Now, I do have a picture of him:

Do you forgive me now?

What I have to share in the way of food is a hearty chowder recipe that my husband and I learned to make from The Northwest Best Places Cook Book when we lived in our home state of Oregon. The addition of Tillamook Cheese is what makes this a truly Northwestern Chowder, but you can pick out a local cheese of your liking to make this chowder as “local” as possible.  Just make sure it is a sharp cheddar cheese. It goes really well with The Flour Garden Bakery Rustic Bread.

A cozy meal for a cozy night at home — especially while holding a cozy newborn baby.

Enjoy!

Northwest Chowder

Ingredients:

• 4 cups peeled potatoes, diced
• 4 cups water
•  1-2 tsp cumin seed
• 1/2 cup butter
• 2 large onions, chopped 
• 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 2 1/2 cups milk
• 2 cups corn kernels
• 8 to 10 ounces of sharp cheddar cheese, grated

Directions:

• Combine potatoes, water, and cumin in a large pot. Bring the water to boil. 
• Lower the heat to a decent simmer until the potatoes are just tender (about 15 minutes).
• While the potatoes are cooking, heat butter in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the onions and cook until transparent. Sprinkle the flour over the onions and continue cooking for a few minutes until well mixed.
• Add the onions to the potatoes and water, then add the milk, corn, salt and pepper to taste. 
• Simmer the chowder for about 20 minutes, until it thickens, stirring occasionally.
• Sprinkle some cheese in the bottom of individual soup bowls, then ladle the chowder over the top. Serve with remaining cheese over the top of each bowl, allowing each person to stir their own cheese into the chowder.
• Serve with a nice loaf of bread.

What is your favorite soup to make? Share it with us in the comment section of this post, or on Facebook.

Maque Choux

This recipe comes from Farm Table member, Christen Miller, a nostalgic recipe from her days in Texas, learning to cook from her Louisiana-born neighbor who infused Cajun-inspired dishes into Christen’s life. Christen’s food talents include: vegan and vegetarian, wild foods, Cajun and tex-mex, historic (Native American, civil war era, colonial era), healthy recipes, and campfire cooking, including dutch oven, cast iron skillet, grill, and foil. We look forward to Christen contributing more recipes to our blog for your enjoyment. 

Christen swears by Tony Chachere’s Cajun seasoning, and you can almost taste the dish below as she describes how to make it. With corn on the menu last week and in the Chef box this week, why not try this recipe out?

Some of my earliest memories are from the garden of my youth. Hot Texas sun, red clay dirt, the drone of cicadas and the smell of warm pine needles will always invoke memories of sweet tomatoes, a cucumber tee-pee, and that particular shade of purple you can only find in an eggplant. We planted our garden in March, and we were still pulling tomatoes in December. What we didn’t get from our own piece of land often came from close by. We lived in an agricultural society. Sweet corn and rice were cash crops in Waller County. Most of the kids in my school were in Future Farmers of America or 4-H, and raised cows, sheep, goats and chickens to show in fairs. It was just how we lived.

But agriculture wasn’t the only food source in our house — my father is an avid fisherman, and the main source of animal protein on our table was fresh caught bass or perch, speckled trout or red snapper. We had eggs from our chickens, and blackberries and muscadine grapes picked from the road sides. And of course…we had barbecue!

I don’t live in Texas any more, I don’t have a garden, and there is rarely time to fish. But the values I learned in childhood of the importance of eating local and close to the earth have stayed with me. I was thrilled when I found out about The Farm Table from a flyer at my child’s school. An opportunity to participate in a community run organization that delivers local produce to your door? Sounded to good to be true! Thank goodness it isn’t– I feel like it’s Christmas every Thursday when I get home and find “The Box” on my doorstep, and the smell of fresh produce takes me back to childhood, and stirs both my creativity in the kitchen and my memories of all my kitchen mentors who’ve been in my life.

The first day my husband and I moved into our house in Galveston, TX, we met our next door neighbors Gussie and Emery Thibodaux. They hailed from Louisiana and were some of the kindest, generous, and most genuine folks I’ve ever known. And Gussie could cook like no one I’d ever met. I hope to share many of her recipes, but one of my favorites is her corn Maque Choux  (pronounced mock shoe) – I’ve read that the origin of the name is not French as it seems, but a variation of an American Indian name. Gussie never measured anything, and so I learned to cook like her with a dash of this and some of that, going by smell and taste to determine if it was right. Maque Choux is one of those regional dishes that has as many variations as there are families that make it. It showcases corn in a unique and wonderful way. I don’t know how true that is, but I like the story. Every time I cook it up I can picture her stirring and stirring the pot and telling me, “You gots to stirl and stirl and stirl it!”

Gussie’s Maque Choux

Ingredients:

• Fresh corn, at least 1 ear per person
• Tony Chachere’s Cajun seasoning
• Oil, 1/2 cup corn oil or more OR about 2 Tbs of coconut oil
• Water, as directed

Directions:

• Start with the freshest corn, but you can use frozen if you must. At least one ear per person will do, but more is recommended.
• Using a very sharp knife, cut the corn off the cob in two thin layers, then flip the knife over and use the back to scrape every bit off the cob. Squeeze the cob to get every bit of milk out. Season with Tony Chachere’s Cajun seasoning to taste. Don’t skimp on this.
• Put enough oil in a heavy pot to coat the bottom. (This is the one area in which I don’t do just what Gussie said. She put at least half a cup of corn oil or more. I use about 2 tablespoons of coconut oil.) Get the oil nice and hot – medium heat is best.
• Add the corn all at once. Cook and stir until it starts to stick to the bottom of the pan, but don’t let it burn. When you have some nice browned bits add enough water to cover the corn, then scrape up the browned bits from the bottom. Let the water cook down until the pan is almost dry. Do that again – water to cover, scrape up browned bits, simmer down until almost dry. Your corn should put off a roasted aroma, and smell so good your mouth is watering. This process caramelizes the corn and brings out all the natural sweetness.
• Add water a third time, but this time not as much and don’t let it cook all away – you want some moisture in there. Taste for seasoning, and you are done.
• This dish goes with just about anything, and leftovers (if there are any) are fantastic as a condiment on burritos or tacos, stirred into pasta salads or casseroles.

Do you have a food mentor who left their mark on your cooking repertoire? A neighbor, a family member, or a friend? We’d love to hear more. Tell us about them in the comment section below!

Kernel Knowledge

Peaches, blueberries, parades, grilled chicken, sun-kissed cheeks, lemonade, fireworks, and corn — the perfect recipe for the 4th of July.

We hope our Farm Table readers survived the nasty storm that blew through Virginia earlier this week, and that you survive the sweltering heat we expect this weekend. We have two fabulous recipes for you to try with the corn that arrived in your box, just in time for Independence Day, or to distract you from the weather. Corn is one of the most versatile foods we consume, and so much has been done throughout history to use up the cob, silk, stalks, leaves, husks, and the corn kernels. We hope you enjoy the recipes below, and look forward to sharing a recipe in a future post for a corn, cheese, and potato chowder that you can save for a rainy day.

While celebrating the purpose of our upcoming holiday, please also remember our farmers, most of whom will likely be working on the 4th, while the rest of us enjoy a festive summer day eating the food they have labored over.

Thank you, indeed.

What are your food plans for the 4th of July? Do tell!

Curt’s Grilled Corn with Zested Lime

This lip-smacking recipe comes from my brother-in-law in Oregon, and is enough for 3-4 ears of corn. This recipe is so good I could eat all 4 ears in one sitting. The only change I would make is buying more corn and doubling the recipe!

Ingredients:

• 4 ears of corn, husked
• 1 lime, juiced and zested
• 1 tsp chili powder
• 1 tsp salt, Curt insists on a good quality salt (not your everyday Morton’s)
• Pepper, freshly ground

Directions:

• After the ears are husked, soak them in water while you prep the remaining ingredients
• Zest your lime, and juice it
• Add fresh ground pepper to the lime juice
• Add the lemon zest, chili powder, and salt to the juice
• Stir well
• Brush on the corn as you grill it

Excellent with an ice-cold microbrew, or for our teetotalers out there, freshly squeezed lemonade. 

Simple. Healthy. Delicious.

Black Bean & Corn Salad

Ingredients:

• 2 cups fresh or grilled corn, cut off of the cob (approximately 4 ears of corn)
• 1 (15 oz) can black beans, rinsed
• 1 small red pepper
• 1/2 red onion, diced
• 1 lime juiced (you can substitute 1 1/2 Tbs balsamic vinegar, if you prefer it over lime juice)
• 2-3 Tbs olive oil
• 1 1/2 tsp ground cumin
• 1 garlic clove minced (or 1/2 tsp garlic powder)
• salt and pepper to taste
• optional, but suggested: 1/2 tsp chili powder, 1-2 tsp of Tabasco sauce (or to taste)

Directions:

• Combine corn, black beans, bell pepper, and onion in a serving bowl
• In a separate bowl, combine lime juice, olive oil, cumin, minced garlic, salt and pepper
• Drizzle lime juice mixture over the black bean and corn mixture and toss well
• Chill and serve

You can amp this recipe up a few notches by adding  3 large tomatoes (diced), the tops of 3 scallions (chopped), Cotija or Feta cheese (approx 3 oz), and lay the black bean and corn mixture over a bed of greens. 

We sure hope to see you at our next Farm Table Event. You can RSVP HERE if you have not already.