This week's Produce Box - and what I've done with it so far!

Homemade apple juice made
with 3 of the many apples
I've been collecting.
Delicious! My food
processor also has a juicer
attachment. Hot homemade
apple cider coming soon!

Contents of this week's Produce Box,
shiitake mushrooms in the brown bag.
Mixed hot peppers behind cabbage.

 This week's Produce Box contained several ingredients perfect for an Ethiopian feast! I chose Box C this week and got shiitake mushrooms, several bulbs of different garlic varieties (Chesnok, Music, Silver White), collard greens, a hot pepper mix, apples and green cabbage. Ethiopian happens to be one of my favorite cuisine and I finally happened to have essentially all the ingredients on hand (except for ginger root carrots and a couple of spices, which I got from the grocery across the street) to make two of my favorite dishes: Ethiopian collards and a cabbage-carrot-potato dish. I found a few recipes online and then used them to create my own dishes.

Here are the links to the collard recipes that I essentially combined:

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Gomen-Wat/Detail.aspx
http://girliegirlarmy.com/blog/20100607/ethiopian-collards-on-mini-injeras/

Basically I started out following the directions in the second link.
I cooked down the collards, drained off and saved the liquid, then chopped the collards. Then I cooked the finely chopped red onion in oil. In the food processor I chopped 4 cloves of garlic 1.5 inches of peeled ginger root, 1.5 long green chilis and 1 green bell pepper and then added them to the onion and oil in the pot. Next I added the chopped collards to the pot along with about 1 cup of the collard cooking water. Then I added the spices from both recipes: freshly ground sea salt, freshly ground pepper, turmeric, paprika, allspice along with the juice of one small lemon. I let everything continue to cook and added a bit more of the collard cooking water. It tasted amazing. I was worried that it might be too spicy because I forgot to de-seed the chilis, but it had just the right amount of spiciness. I think combining the recipes made it all the better.

Almost simultaneously I was preparing the second dish. Here I basically followed this recipe:

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Ethiopian-Cabbage-Dish/Detail.aspx

The changes I made here were to double the spices (except for the salt) and I used 1 sweet potato and 3 white potatoes instead of only 5 white potatoes. I figured since there are already carrots in the recipe sweet potato would be an added bonus. It was a great choice - absolutely delicious!

I also tried making the injera bread (used the recipe on the 2nd collard recipe link), but since I didn't have teff flour (GF) I substituted sorghum flour (GF) and GF all-purpose mix and the results were ok, but not the way it is supposed to be. If I try it again I will make sure to get teff and hope it turns out right.

Homemade Ethiopian: cabbage-carrot-potato-sweet potato dish
and spicy Ethiopian collards served on my homemade attempt
at injera

The best part is that I now have tons of leftovers!

I've got a whole slew of other recipes I want to make soon, so keep posted - I'm in a cooking mood!