Join Debbie as she raves about whole foods, rants about chemicals and generally celebrates cooking and eating with fresh, local, nutritious foods. And sometimes she might get a little feisty….
If there’s one thing we’re getting from our sorry, sorry CSA farm this year (the weather, they say), it’s chives. And to some extent, that pacifies me, because I really love chives and they are just so gosh darn versatile. That’s farmer talk for you can use them in almost anything.
Just a mere sprinkling of chives on anything makes it seem fresher and homemade. In fact, I’ve been having fun dreaming up ways to use my abundance of chives. Come, dream a little dream with me….
1. Make pasta with lobster, butter beans and chives. OK, fine, you hate lobster or don’t happen to have any lying around the house. I can live with that. Use some canned crabmeat instead, or try chicken, or leave out the animal protein and go for the vegetarian version.
2. If you dig mayonnaise-free potato salad, try my recipe for potato salad with chives and feta. This one’s really about the chives, folks, and it makes it great.
3. There’s nothing wrong with falling back on an old standby or two. Chop those chives and sprinkle them on your baked potato (or mix them right into your favorite mashed potato recipe).
4. Here’s the other standby: stir chives into your scrambled eggs.
5. Or, make a frittata brimming with chives and whatever other fresh veggies you happen to have. If I made one right now, it would also have garlic, onions, chard, sun-dried tomatoes and four-cheese blend. What would you put in your frittata?
6. Add to pasta sauce, or make a pesto using chives instead of garlic.
7. Add some chives to the yummy white bean dip with herbs when you try it.
8. Sprinkle chopped chives on a salad.
9. Make a yogurt green herb dressing and use as you would tzatziki sauce.
10. How about a mushroom chive risotto? That’s worth eating….
11. Man, I’m not in the least bit hungry, but now I’m starting to drool (just a little) thinking about these bleu cheese burgers with chives. Hot pepper sauce, Worcestershire, mustard, all mixed in to the burger.
12. Do you completely adore pad thai like I do? Add lots and lots of fresh chives, like this recipe calls for.
13. I would never, ever in a million years make this recipe for bacon, cheddar and chive muffins (one of the ingredients is cream of mushroom soup… that’s just wrong), but it did get me to thinking how delicious my savory spinach and feta muffins were, and how scrumptious the addition of chives would be.
14. Even though it’s the middle of summer, I’ve been craving homemade soup, and this recipe for apple squash soup with chive sour cream sounds divine. In my experience, you can leave out the cream in any pureed soup like this and not even miss it, especially if you’re topping it with a dollop of sour cream.
Tell me, what do you do with your chives?
Clacked by Debbie McDuffee
on Aug 07, 2009 @ 10:00 EST5EDT
