Pasta with shaved fresh fennel, garlic scape pesto, and zucchini

Every Wednesday we get a new CSA box, and that first night it's always a challenge to come up with something to make without going to the grocery store to augment our pantry supplies. This week, we still had most of a bunch of garlic scapes (previously featured in tuna au poivre), and gained a lovely bulb of fennel and some zucchini. I was already starving by the time Janet arrived with the vegetables, so I needed something quick and simple. These sorts of vegetables just scream 'pasta' to me, so this is what we came up with.

It really came together very nicely — the slight heat and grassy greenness of the garlic are nicely balanced by the sweetness of the fennel, and the zucchini adds just enough tooth to make the texture interesting. Be sure to get a tasty and interesting extruded pasta (we used trottole) and this will make a lovely early-summer dinner.

Caramelized onion, kale, and cannellini stew

My fiancée and I have an arrangement—she does all the dishes, but I have to do all the meal-picking. I have to pick even when I don't want to pick. I have to pick even when I've got no idea what to make. I even have to pick when there's nothing in the house to eat except kale, onions, and miscellaneous cans. Of course, the last isn't so bad—when you've only got three things, put them together in a pot and make stew!

Tuna steaks au poivre with french onion sauce and garlic scapes

After a weekend at a bed and breakfast in New Hampshire where we learned how to make a true French onion soup, my fiancée and I stopped at a seafood shack nearby, where deliciously fresh tuna steaks were on offer. Tuna steak and French onion soup seem like unlikely mates, but I was in the mood for a classic sauce a poivre, and the rich savoriness of the soup seemed like it might just work as a replacement for the more conventional veal demi-glace base. A quick glance through our selections from this week's CSA box turned up some lovely garlic scapes — and here are the results!