Beaverton Farmer's Market - Week 2

I've decided to try and do a weekly journal of the Beaverton farmer's market, of what I've bought and how I cooked and ate it. As for what my wife and I got last week included tomatoes, Yukon gold potatoes, rhubarb (mistakingly called rutabaga by me in my last post, sorry), asparagus, kale and a sourdough rye bread.

The first thing we cooked was the kale in a soup with linguica and a few of the Yukon gold potatoes. It turned out great. It can be made as a vegetarian dish if desired, just leave out the sausage.

Kale Potato Sausage soup
Head of kale
2 Yukon gold potatoes
1 onion
2 to 3 cloves of garlic (or more to taste)
14 oz can of chopped tomatoes
14 oz can of white kidney beans
4 cups of broth
6 to 8 oz of linguica (or sausage of choice)
1 Tbs olive oil

1. Cut sausage thinly and fry on each side until browned, drain and reserve a bit of the fat, add olive oil.
2. Cube potatoes, onions and chop garlic and saute until lightly browned.
3. Add broth, bring to a boil and reduce heat to a simmer and let cook for about 20 minutes or until potatoes are tender.
4. Add can of chopped tomatoes with the liquid inside.
5. Add the beans after draining.
6. Add the kale chopped and stir into soup until it begins to wilt. Let simmer for a few minutes to allow everything to heat up, season with salt and pepper to taste.

We had this for dinner and leftovers for lunch the next day, it went great with the bread.

Later in the week we had pasta and used the tomatoes to make sauce. After frying some onion and garlic in olive oil and anchovy paste, the tomatoes were chopped up and added to the pot and cooked on low heat for about an hour. We kept in the skin and seeds, it was great with the left over bread which I toasted in the oven with some granulated garlic.

The asparagus was used in three meals, first simply steamed and eaten fresh on Sunday night. Later in the week I added it to a stir fry, and the last fried up with onions and peppers when we had fajitas.

For the rhubarb my wife chopped it up and baked it with vanilla sugar (sugar you put in a jar with a vanilla bean, try it!) for about 30 minutes, maybe about 10 minutes too long. It did taste good with some strawberries, I think next time we'll try baking it with some apples.

So yesterday we went early to avoid the heat, but didn't get much since we will be at the Libertarian convention later in the week. We did get some asparagus to cook on the grill, turned out great. They had some blue potatoes, we got some of the very tiny ones and will saute them up whole. Picked up some fresh snapper, about a pound for five dollars, to cook up before we leave town. And had to get some fresh bagels, some more tomatoes and some hot sausages from the German deli that cooks them up by the bandstand.

I'll be missing going next Saturday when I'm in Denver, but there should be more variety when I go again at the end of the month.