What’s in the Bag Archives

EVENT: Cooking From Kate’s Bag
IN KATE’S BAG: Ground Turkey, Beets, Fresh Corn, Red Onion
MY ADDITIONS: Fresh Dill, Lemon Juice, Chives
MENU: Dill Turkey Burgers with Pickled Red Onion and Beet Relish; Sweet Corn with Chive Butter

In our second day of cooking from your bags, I opened Kate’s. Hers also contained a lot of summer stuff, but at the center was a new vehicle for serving it: ground turkey. I was glad, since I’ve always been more enthusiastic about making chicken or turkey burgers over the standard beef. Five or so years back, during summer no less, I remembered using fresh dill to add extra flavor to my turkey burger for a casual weekend night dinner, and my friend Jessy still raves about it to this day. Since beets go well with dill, I decided to use them as a condiment rather than a centerpiece, pairing them with quick pickled onions in a punchy relish.

Though the french fry is the obligatory compliment in a restaurant, when grilling burgers at home during summer, there always seems to be a corn cob to round out the meal. My mother and I usually drench ours in basil butter, but since I had some chives on hand, I used those.

From my kitchen, with a bag full of seasoned suggestions, to yours,

Phoebe, THE QUARTER-LIFE COOK

Dill Turkey Burgers with Pickled Red Onion and Beet Relish
Makes 2 (very large) burgers

Ingredients

For the burgers:

2 tbsp minced red onion
1 garlic clove, minced
1 tbsp finely chopped fresh dill
1 tbsp mayonnaise
1 tbsp Dijon mustard
1 tbsp lemon juice
1/2 tsp salt
1lb light meat turkey

For the relish:

1 tbsp dill
1 tbsp pickled red onion (recipe to follow)
2 tbsp finely diced beets (see Red Flannel Hash Recipe for roasted beets)

In a skillet, sauté the onion and garlic in a little oil until fragrant and translucent, about two to three minutes. Remove all bits from the pan and transfer to a medium mixing bowl.

Toss together the onion mixture, dill, mayo, mustard, lemon juice, and salt. Add the turkey meat and with clean hands, mix it together with the other ingredients. Make sure not to over work the turkey. When the meat mixture is well incorporated, form it into two or three patties, depending on your desired burger size. If you have the time, chill in the refrigerator for twenty minutes or so. This can be done up to a day ahead.

Meanwhile, combine the ingredients for the relish in a small bowl.

Heat a few tables of olive oil in the skillet—enough to coat the bottom—and get it nice and hot. Add the burgers (in batches if necessary) and cook on both sides until brown and cooked through, about 5 minutes per side.

Serve immediately open faced, on a toasted bun, or with a mixed green salad and top with the relish and a pickled onion round or two. Dill mayonnaise or crème fraiche would be a nice compliment as well.

Pickled Red Onions
Makes 1 cup

Ingredients
1 small red onion, peeled and sliced into thin rounds
¼ cup cider vinegar
2 tbsp sugar
½ tsp salt

Combine the vinegar, sugar, and salt in a small saucepan over medium heat. Bring to a boil and simmer for two minutes, until the sugars have dissolved.

In a small bowl, pour the pickling liquid over the onion rounds. Allow to sit for 10 to 15 minutes. Remove onions from liquid and pat dry. Transfer to a jar or Tupperware container, toss with a touch of olive oil and a sprinkle of salt and store until time of serving. Hold onto the liquid for another use.

Sweet Corn with Chive Butter
Makes 2 servings (can easily add another ear or two of corn)

Ingredients
2 ears of corn
2 tbsp butter
2 tbsp snipped chives
salt

Bring a large pot of salted water to boil. Blanche the corn for a few minutes, until the kernels turn a beautiful bright yellow (be careful not to overcook). Remove immediately to an ice bath or run the cobs under cold water to stop the cooking. Set aside on a platter.

EVENT: Cooking from Sara’s Shopping Bag
VENUE: Cara’s Apartment, Park Slope
PARTY SIZE: 3
TYPE: Weekday Fare
MENU: Edamame Succotash, Sweet Tomato Grilled Cheese

Last week, in honor of our new banner, we asked you to list four items from your current shopping bag, real or hypothetical. Not surprisingly, in this late-summer abundance, many readers listed some combination of seasonal fruits and vegetables: zucchini, corn, tomatoes, eggplant, figs, peaches, and beets. Though we’re honoring one particular reader’s bag, as per the rules, we hope that all of you with fresh summer produce can find something to cook in the recipes that follow, below, tomorrow, and the day after that.

As for the process: we selected three shopping bags. I cooked from one, Phoebe from another, and then we both did our renditions of a third. We added some basic ingredients, most from our list of everyday items (oil, vinegar, onions, garlic, sugar, salt, and pepper), but we kept your suggestions as the featured elements in every dish. Today we’ve featured Sara’s bag, and in the next few days we’ll post about the rest.

WHAT’S IN SARA’S BAG: Zucchini, Corn, Tomatoes, Peaches
WHAT I ADDED: Edamame, Baguette, Cheese

From my kitchen, where you bring the ingredients, to yours,

Cara, THE QUARTER-LIFE COOK

**Recipes**

Edamame Succotash
Serves 4

Ingredients
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 shallot, minced
1 clove garlic, minced
1 zucchini, cut into a fine dice
3 ears of corn, kernels removed
3/4 cup frozen shelled edamame
fresh basil

Saute the shallot and garlic in olive oil over low heat. You want the onion to be translucent and not quite browned. Raise the heat to medium and add the diced zucchini. Stir fry for about 2 minutes, then add the corn kernels. Cook for five minutes, until they are soft and sweet, and then add edamame. Cook until hot through, adding 1/4 cup of water if the mixture starts sticking to the pan. Sprinkle in fresh basil, taste for salt, and serve hot or room temperature, or cold, as a salad.
Sweet Tomato Grilled Cheeses
Serves 4

I don’t know about you, but I quite enjoy my grilled cheese sandwiches dipped in ketchup. In this gourmet sandwich, a ketchup-like condiment—Sweet Tomato Jam, made out of peaches and tomatoes—is actually built into the sandwich, giving you the same taste sensation with so much added convenience.

Ingredients
1 baguette
4 ounces smoked cheese, like mozzarella or gouda, or whatever you like

For the sweet tomato jam:
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 large yellow tomato, diced
1 peach, peeled, pitted, and diced
1/2 onion, minced
1 garlic clove, minced
1/4 cup fresh basil1 tablespoon brown sugar
2 tablespoons white sugar
2 tablespoons white vinegar
salt to taste
Heat the olive oil in a small pan. Add the onions and garlic and cook until translucent. Add the peaches, tomatoes, and torn basil, and raise the heat to medium high. Stir in the two kinds of sugar and the vinegar and bring to a boil. Once you see a few bubbles, give the mixture a stir, then let it simmer until thickened and jammy, about an hour. Remove from the heat and let cool. (These ingredients make about a scant cup of jam-enough for the four sandwiches. You can double or even triple the ingredients if you want to keep some in the fridge for garnishing other dishes.)
Cut the baguette in half, lengthwise, then cut it into four pieces. Slice the cheese and layer it on each piece. Spread one side of each baguette with tomato jam. Using a lightly oiled panini maker or frying pan, cook the sandwiches on both sides until the cheese is melted and the crust is crispy. Serve immediately.

Cara’s Shopping Bag: Summer Squash, Parmesan, Onion, Kohlrabi
Phoebe’s Shopping Bag: Tomato, Avocado, Cilantro, Cucumber

It’s been a long time coming, but finally, we have a banner. Quite frankly, we’ve been a little Goldilocks about the whole thing. Over the last six months we’ve tossed around many ideas and design iterations, some good, some bad, but in the end, not one until now, felt just right. For this beautiful, final version, we have to thank Tom (his website is TypeShapeColor) for being patient with our indecision, and offering the endless options and creativity that fueled it.

We would usually round out this post with some sort of tasty token of appreciation courtesy of Cara’s oven. But since it’s too hot to bake, we thought we’d try something a little different.

In the spirit of our new imagery, we got to thinking about the contents of our shopping bags—plastic, paper, or tote. In a lot of ways, our culinary livelihood as quarter-life cooks is defined and confined by the contents of those bags. Our recipes begin with what we buy, and then they evolve through an endless debate on how to use up fresh produce and supplement enough stock pantry items so that our weekly ingredients fit both within our bag and our budgets.

Resourceful strategies aside, what we choose for our bag is mainly a product of our individual tastes. Its contents say a lot about who we are as cooks, revealing many idiosyncrasies. Cara might come home with blueberries, veggie sausage, and kohlrabi, Phoebe with basil, Merguez, and cherry tomatoes. While you’ll never find meat in one, you just as rarely find fruit in the other. Our pantries and our fridges do sometimes contain similar ingredients, but it’s what we use to spice up those essentials that leads to two different, if equally delicious, approaches.

Yet sometimes, it’s a breath of fresh air to step into someone else’s kitchen and, in doing so, step away from the staples of our shopping bags and our pantries. Which is why we’ll be asking, oh so kindly, for a little assistance from all of you out there. Please open your shopping bags to us and share three or four fresh ingredients you will be working with this week. We will then, in turn, adopt some of your shopping bags (two each) to our kitchens, cooking your ingredients in our style. We’ll post the resulting recipes at the end of next week. Of course, we need to work through ours first, so please see our lists above and stay tuned for what’s been happening to them in our kitchens during these next few days.

There is no vegetable too obscure (hello, kohlrabi?) or animal part too gnarly, though if it’s meat at all, Cara is likely to take a pass. But, that said, we’d prefer not to be appalled or nauseated by what you’ve bought, so please, unless you would actually like to try tomatoes stuffed with gummy bears, be honest about your recent market finds—or any hypothetical combination you would like to pick up if only there existed the right recipe out there to guide you.