Summer Squash Everywhere with Lasagna, Goat Koftas, Pumpkin Curry Noodles with Beef, Miso Grilled Chicken, Truffle Potato Salad & More!

So many of these meals have summer squash because it’s so abundant right now and I’m always using it up!

We also cranked up the grill for some feta stuffed goat koftas, grilled chicken and squash and there’s curry noodles, chicken and brats with turnips and caramelized onions and pork liver pate.

Beef, Lentil, Squash, Eggplant and Potato “Lasagna” with Cucumber Salad

This was sort of like Moussaka meets Lasagna and it came out so delicious.

I love a good moussaka, but since I have so much basil in my garden, I decided to go a more Italian route in the flavor profile but use roasted potatoes, eggplant and squash in place of any pasta sheets. We’re also so limited on our own beef right now (this ground beef was a gift from a friend and former farm staffer who brought it when he visited from the farm where he currently works), so I bulked the meat sauce up with red lentils, too!

I started by sautéing the beef and added diced yellow onions once the beef had started to brown. Seasonings were fennel seeds and Credo Farm’s kelp based seasoning mix that has basil, thyme and oregano in it. Then I added minced garlic and tomato paste, beef bone broth, frozen tomatoes and eventually the red lentils, cooking it until the lentils were soft.

Meanwhile, I sliced summer squash and zucchini and Japanese eggplant into thin sheets and roasted those in the oven on parchment lined baking sheets. This step really helps to intensify flavor and cook out a lot of the moisture so that the lasagna/moussaka/casserole isn’t soupy. We had already made a bunch of ruffle cut roasted potatoes earlier in the weekend, so I used those for the potato layer!

I also made a mix of cottage cheese, parmesan, eggs, basil and Italian seasoning and then started the layers: potatoes, beef-lentil-tomato sauce mix, cottage cheese mix, eggplant and squash, more cottage cheese mix, then the rest of the sauce, topped with mozzarella, provolone and parmesan cheeses. I baked it in the oven at 375 degrees for 30 minutes or so and we ate it with ciabatta garlic bread and a creamy cucumber salad with red onions and dill.

It was a delicious combination and like so many dishes like this, the leftovers were arguably better than the first night we ate it!

Feta Stuffed Goat Kofta with Grilled Veggies & Herby Summer Squash Pancakes

This was such a fun meal — it’s nice to do something quite different with both the ground goat meat and summer squash than I have all summer!

Koftas are a broad category of meatballs, mini meatloaves or rolled kebabs using ground meat, popular across the Balkans, the Middle East, North Africa and parts of Asia.

These feta stuffed goat koftas were Turkish inspired, seasoned with garlic, onions, lemon zest, cilantro microgreens, coriander, cumin, paprika and red chili flakes. I also used some panko breadcrumbs as a binder. After mixing the meat and seasonings together, I formed the meat into thin patties, then put feta in the center and rolled them together into little torpedos.

We grilled them and relied on the grill basket for the majority of them, but next time I would either coat them all in oil and place them perpendicular against the grates or roast them in the oven — the only snafu of the meal was that the koftas in the grill basket got stuck to it and got a little burned on the bottom!

After prepping the koftas, I moved on to herby squash pancakes. All the recipes out there are for zucchini pancakes, but of course yellow and zephyr squashes work just as well! I grated a bunch of squash, salted it and set it aside. Eventually I squeezed it out in the bowl, then transferred the squash to a clean towel to squeeze out even more moisture.

The pancake mix involved eggs, green onion (microgreens), dill and mint plus feta cheese, a little flour and baking powder. They were so delicious in and of themselves that if I didn’t already have so much sliced ciabatta and country loaves from Bellegarde in my freezer, I’d be making batches of these to eat with eggs for breakfast!

The pancakes were also great with the goat koftas. To round out the meal, we blistered some okra and lunch box peppers in our pizza oven, finished everything with fresh lemon juice and dipped in a batch of roasted red pepper almond and cashew sauce.

Miso Grilled Chicken with Truffle Potato Salad & Calabrian Chili Deviled Eggs (and Squash!)

More grilling for Labor Day! Our chicken growing friends are always piled up on leg quarters and drumsticks, so I intended to do my part in taking home some of each, but I accidentally grabbed two half chickens instead of leg quarters!

I did a quick marinade of white miso, onion salt, chili lime seasoning, smoked paprika and fresh cracked coriander and mustard seeds, along with a little bit of honey. I also made a miso ranch dressing with Greek yogurt and goat yogurt, mayonnaise, onion salt, dill and nutritional yeast.

Next was a truffle dill pickle potato salad with russet and red potatoes, chopped lacto-fermented dill pickles, truffle oil and truffle mayo, yogurt, yellow mustard and lots of black pepper.

I also made a batch of Calabrian chili deviled eggs. Since I had used mayonnaise for the ranch and the potato salad, instead I used my roasted red pepper almond and cashew dip for the eggs, along with the Calabrian chili, black pepper, garlic powder, paprika and mustard. I topped those with green onion microgreens, crispy scallions and smoked paprika.

Then Grant grilled the marinated chicken and summer squash and we feasted!

Pumpkin Curry Noodles with Beef, Peppers and Squash

I recently did an inventory of my home freezers and since there was still roasted pureed pumpkin from last fall in there, I dreamed up this dish!

We’re down very little of our own grassfed beef while we wait to process more, but I do find tenderized round steak really versatile and great value for meal prep.

I dried off three packs of steaks and sliced them into cubes, then coated with cornstarch and curry paste and baked in the oven on a parchment lined baking sheet at 400 degrees until crispy. I also roasted a tray of summer squash and added some lunch box peppers once they were close to being done.

For the sauce, I sautéed onions in a little beef and pork fat (skimmed from the top of a batch of bone broth and then frozen) and then added ginger, garlic and more yellow curry paste. I deglazed that with beef broth, then added the defrosted pureed pumpkin and a can of coconut milk. I let that simmer together for awhile and added fish sauce and coconut aminos and rice vinegar to taste.

I added some of of the sauce to cooked linguine and then added the beef, squash and peppers to the rest of it, so that we could serve/portion out the noodles and curry separately. We ate the curry noodles with a quick salad of cucumbers with lemon basil, sesame oil, fish sauce, honey and sesame seeds.

Chicken Leg Quarters & Brats with Caramelized Onions, Roasted Turnips & Salad

For all the pizza parties we’ve hosted since getting our outdoor Ooni pizza oven this spring, I’ve gotten better and better at planning meals before and after to have proteins and other ingredients on hand for pizza toppings!

In this case, I knew I wanted two pizzas with shredded chicken and a brat pizza with caramelized onions and a creamy mustard sauce.

So two nights before, we had a double protein meal to make sure we had these ingredients ready for pizzas!

I started with the caramelized onions — cooking down in bacon fat and eventually deglazing the pan a few times with water and a little balsamic vinegar. I took out most of the caramelized onions for future pizza toppings and then seared some chicken leg quarters in a large cast iron. After they were browned on both sides, I added back some of the caramelized onions and some water and a splash of vinegar for them to finish cooking in the oven.

I was already roasting hakurei turnips on a sheet pan in the oven and then used another cast iron pan to sear the brats. They got nice and brown but since they were fairly thick, I also had those finish cooking through in the oven.

We had the turnips, chicken, brats and caramelized onions with a quick salad with Homegrown in Folsom’s spring mix, leftover miso ranch, cucumbers and homemade beet and cabbage sauerkraut.

Pork Liver Pate with Black Garlic & Rosemary

I don’t always crave or love eating organ meats, but when I do get a craving, I figure I probably need B vitamins or vitamin A or iron and copper or all of the above and I listen to it!

I used to think that chicken livers were mildest and they may very well be, but I have noticed that since we have our butcher cut pork liver into strips, there’s less connective tissue to trim off than in cooking so many individual chicken livers!

Sometimes I soak liver in milk to neutralize the flavor a little, but this time I didn’t and it still came out delicious.

I started by cooking onions in a little bacon fat and butter and then adding fresh minced garlic, rosemary, bay leaves, Smoked Shiitake & Black garlic seasoning and cloves of black garlic. Then I browned the livers on both sides and added heavy cream.

I let that mix cool, pulled out the rosemary and bay leaves and then pureed it all in the food processor, adding extra heavy cream to get the right consistency. It made five eight ounce containers and I froze all put one of them, so that the next time the craving hits, all I have to do is defrost!