Plays Nice With Others

It's Pisto Manchego Pie! Oh, ho, ho, I amuse myself sometimes. For example, here's what I did with this one, I combined the most unholy of combinations, a fancy NYT recipe aaaaand, crescent roll dough! Bwah-ha-ha-haaaaaa!

No really, you know, we had all this yellow squash that needed to be used up, and somewhere I had seen some kind of savory pie using these squash, but then I wasn't up to making the dough from scratch (read; ran out of time) and there was this crescent roll dough in the fridge, and well, you know what happened next. No, wait, you don't. Then I was surfing around and saw this Mark Bittman video about Tomato Jam and found the recipe for the Pisto Manchego, which looked suprisingly easy and fit the bill for something to use the yellow squash (and tomatoes, which we also had a lot of!) that I could make pie-like. Voila! Really, my intentions were good, I knew there was some non-sweet pie dough somewhere in my files, I really was going to get it and make it... yah, well, you know how it goes.

And while I was making this, I kept wanting to add !oregano! or !spices! and stuff, but I'm really glad I didn't. It was very good.

I also tried out this thing where you put your mesh strainer over a bowl and then slice open your tomatoes and shove out the seeds into the strainer and then when you've done that you mash the juice through the strainer and throw out the seeds. I felt so fancy. Then you use the juice in the recipe and you have no seeds. I guess this is nice, kinda makes the tomatoes work more saucy. The most best thing would be to blanch the tomatoes, peel them and then do this. But that seems super intensive.

Somehow, the squash and tomatoes sweetness and the rich crescent roll dough married perfectly. I'm serious.

Pisto Manchego Pie

1 T olive oil
1/2 medium onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
6 yellow squash, sliced thin in the food processor
6 paste tomatoes, deseeded or 1 14 oz can diced tomatoes
1/4 t salt
pinch sugar
pepper

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
Saute onion and garlic in oil.
Stir in squash and 1/4 t salt and mix until well coated.
Cover and when squash has started to soften, add tomatoes and sugar and turn up heat.
Stir while simmering 5 - 10m until tomatoes are cooking down.
Add tomato juice and 2 T water and simmer uncovered 30 - 35m, mashing with a potato masher. When it begins to stick, it's done.
Meanwhile, in a small pie plate (I used a Baker's Square one, they are quite small), lay out your triangles of crescent roll dough, wide side out along the edge, overlapping slightly and pressing together seams with your fingertips.
Bake the crust 10m.
Remove crust from oven and fill with filling, sprinkle with pepper and bake 5m.
1/4th of the pie = 6 points

CSA veg!

Aubergines! Purple fruit is incredibly cool. In my next post you will see what I did with them... well, at least the big'un.
Red potatoes! I never know what to do with potatoes. Boil 'em, mash 'em, stick 'em in a stew!


Look at these!!!!!!!!!!! I am so excited, after becoming enraptured of paprikash and so forth, I am really excited about these this year (I think we just ate them out of hand last year). What to do, what to do? They are paprika peppers! I sure hope we can get some of these red and then maybe I will try and dry them or something...Here is some lovely chard. Gotta use this before it gets all floppy.

Here is some parsley! I can make parsley pesto again! Or maybe I should try something else?
Here is our pickle pack, which is a good idea, but I have to go pick up some jars, that should be easy enough, right? I've never canned before, but I DO have a wire cooling rack and a giant pot. Some weekend in September? I think next week we'll get another one so maybe sometime that week I should be a-picklin'.
Here are some dragon beans. They are dragon lingerie (woo!) dragon tongue beans. No idea what to do with these, already I was stumped with the yellow and green ones... froze those. Maybe I should pickle these, huh? What do you think, on my pickling extravaganza weekend (or weekday) in September?
Fennel. I am the only one who will eat this. Too bad, suckas!
And of course we had so much more!! More tomatoes! Walla walla onions! Lettuce mix with tomatoes! Zucchini and summer squash! I love our CSA.