Farmers Market Month, Day 1: berries, coconut, salmon, acini de pepe

[rachelmanija]

At today's farmers market, I bought so much stuff that I had to call it quits early as I could literally carry no more. I now have berries (rapidly diminishing, they are PERFECT), kale, Chinese broccoli with edible yellow flowers (broccoli rabe), mandarin oranges, goat cheese, apricot kefir, pickled daikon, tempeh (for snacking - it's Korean style and very tasty), six eggs (white, brown, and blue-green), golden beets, sweet potatoes, onions and garlic, green garlic (garlic sprouts), and salad greens (which got so squashed that I decided not to make a salad tonight).

At the market, I bought and drank a green coconut, ate half the meat, and took the rest home. Not at the market, I ate a mango pastry I'd brought back from Tucson and warmed in the microwave. It was delicious. So were the things I made for myself:

Blueberries and raspberries in a coconut half:



Broiled soy-garlic salmon (an old stand-by) on a bed of acini de pepe, with capers, pickled garlic, and kimchi. Elderflower cordial.



Salmon from freezer. Acini de pepe from pantry. Let me explain the acini de pepe. I had a box of it which I bought a while back on a whim. It's rice-sized pasta (pastina). I decided to use it up in lieu of rice, since it's been sitting in the cupboard for ages. I have never cooked the stuff before and thought it would make about two cups. It made something like eight cups. Or more. I now have a giant bowl of acini de pepe that I need to make use of.

I'm thinking "in lieu of rice" and... um... maybe a grain-based salad? Heat with butter and maple syrup for breakfast? I believe it's normally used in soup, but I don't feel like making soup. Will take non-soup ideas if you have any. Especially if they involve any of the ingredients I already have. I also have Chinese sweet sausage I want to use up - maybe I could make a sort of fried rice with it, and eat with stir-fried garlic greens and/or Chinese broccoli. It's perfectly nice, neutral pasta, just... there's a lot of it.

Comments

[athenejen]

Maybe it's just the latent Midwesterner in me, but my immediate thought was casserole. I bet it would make a delicious broccoli-cheese casserole variation in place of the rice, for example, or tuna noodle casserole in place of the noodles. The nice thing about casserole is that you can add pretty much whatever you have on hand to it and flavor it however you like as long ss all the ingredients go together.