Adventures in CSA: Week 5 Recipes

I'm late! I'm late! For a very important post!

It's too early in the season for me to be half a week behind, y'all. Here I am, at last, with a (hopefully) better-late-than-never report of how we ate our CSA vegetables during week 5, which ended this past Saturday. I hope you haven't been hungry, waiting. You have to eat to keep your strength up!

Week 5 Produce (vegetable share, and first week of fruit)
4 or 5 cucumbers
1 head green cabbage
1 bunch tatsoi - CHALLENGE VEGETABLE
4 or 5 garlic scapes
1 head Tuscan kale
1 head lettuce
1 bunch dill
1 bunch carrots
1 pint cherries
1/2 pint blackberries
1 jar blackberry jam -- CORRECTION: it was actually black currant jam

Okay, I just have to interrupt myself here to say that the classical music radio station I'm listening to while typing this is now suddenly playing Jingle Bells. Is that because it's been so hot we're wishing for winter? Or has someone fallen asleep at the switch?

Despite the brutal heat in NYC this week, I'm not wishing for winter. I'm too into these summer vegetables and fruits. So, without further ado, descriptions of what we et last week begin . . . NOW.



Cucumber Sesame Salad - We were invited to an impromptu backyard-baby-pool-and-salads potluck party, and this is what I pulled together to take as our dish. I found the recipe in an issue of Cooking Light magazine. It called for miso or low-sodium soy sauce, and I didn't have any miso in the house, so I used the latter, but I'd love to make it again with miso. It was very good, and I think miso might make it "next level," if you will grant that a cucumber salad could be "next level."

Instead of toasted sesame seeds, I actually used a toasted sesame seed and salt mixture called gomashio. You could make your own if you can't find it in stores (or are the sort of person inclined to make your own condiments). It added a depth to the dish that I appreciated.



Side note: Have I mentioned how glad I am to have a subscription to Cooking Light? If you're like me, you might be put off by the "Light" in the title. For years, I assumed it was a "diet" magazine, and I'm mightily suspicious of the diet industry. But, thanks to a post recommending this magazine to food-lovers on the Chowhound home cooking board (a great place to find ideas for CSA veggies, by the way), I know now that I can blithely ignore that "Light." It really just means "healthy," as far as I'm concerned. Over the past few years, I've found each issue to have really approachable ideas, attainable ingredients, multiple recipes I want to and am able to make -- in the time I've allotted myself in life for cooking, if you know what I mean -- and it has a focus on seasonal produce that keeps me subscribing. Above is a picture of my recipe file. Most of the pages from magazines have been ripped out of Cooking Light.

p.s. No, the Cooking Light people didn't put me up to this. I've never gotten one red cent from them, and they have no idea I exist. But I love them anyway.

Back to week five's CSA share, and the food it inspired!




Tatsoi and Kale Rice Bowl - Dan put this dish together. I couldn't really detect the difference between the tatsoi and kale, once it was all cooked together, but I suspect the tatsoi may have been responsible for some slightly more tender bites. There was also some chicken in here, and maybe some garlic scapes, as well as dried (soaked) mushrooms and soy sauce. The leftovers were good for two or three days, though the chicken got a teeny bit chewy with reheating.

I like having dried mushrooms in the house. They've been working well with off-the-cuff CSA dishes.



Apple Cider Blackberry Popsicle - Look, I tried to talk the kid into a more seasonal beverage, like lemonade, to pair with the CSA berries, but he's a fiend for both Halloween and apple cider. We made several of these with our Zoku (again, not a paid advertisement; I got two as a gift from my Aunt Debbie) and they were yummy! The best news is that the kid gets full before he eats a whole popsicle, so I "have" to help. The worst news is that I think these need to be eaten outside, or followed by a thorough floor-mopping, next time.



Chai-Spiced Carrot Cake, topped with blueberries - If you've read past years' posts (and you should, because I used to have a lot more time to blog thoughtfully and creatively!), you may know that I make a carrot cake every year around the beginning of July. That's because it's Dan's preferred birthday cake, he happens to have a birthday every year in early July, and I aim to please.

I really think the Cooks Illustrated recipe I use (online here) results in the best carrot cake of any I've tried, and lately I've been using the 2005 print issue's "chai spiced" variation, which includes a good amount of black pepper and cardamom. Sebastian said "no nuts," when asked to weigh in on that option, and he's a boy after my own heart. I was happy to oblige. I like nuts, but not so much IN cake.

New this year was my idea to top the cream cheese icing with CSA blueberries. Yes to blueberries on carrot cake! By the way, in case you're wondering if you can accidentally use a whole stick of butter in your cream cheese icing (instead of 5 Tablespoons) and still have it taste good, that answer is also yes. Yes, yes, yes! Everything is yes (except for nuts, which is no), when it comes to this cake!

p.s. I no longer subscribe to Cooks Illustrated, but that's another story.



Black Currant Jam on Toast - The jam the farm sent us is excellent. My "secret" to toast-making is to use slightly more butter than necessary. Butter it IMMEDIATELY upon its emergence from the toaster. Then, let it melt with the pieces of toast sandwiched together (butter-sides-in) before separating your slices and putting on the jam. You probably already do this. It's not rocket science, after all. My secret to a lot of things is to use slightly more butter than necessary. I'm pretty sure this doesn't even technically qualify as a secret.



Blackberries and Whipped Cream - Most of our CSA cherries and blackberries were devoured raw, but a few made it into some whipped cream we happened to have in the house (leftover from introducing our son to the classic banana split). My shame: it's not homemade whipped cream. It almost always is, I swear! I wasn't the one who went to the store!





Scrambled Eggs with Spring Onions and Garlic Scapes - I'm not sure where the spring onions were from. Maybe left over from week 4? At any rate, they weren't too wilted, so I sliced them into rounds (greens and whites) and sauteed them in butter until they almost melted, then scrambled some eggs on top of them. When the eggs were almost cooked, I cut up and added the grilled garlic scapes (grilled on an indoor grill pan that may have still had some sausage grease on it). Sebastian thought the scapes were green beans; he's so unsophisticated!



Simple Salad - It looks dull. It wasn't. These fresh lettuces we keep getting are so delicious and tender they hardly need anything added to them. Dan dressed this week's head with lemon juice, walnut oil, and coarse salt. I couldn't stop eating it.


So, that's most of it! A few odds and ends:

The dill we got just barely made it to the beginning of week 6, and you'll see what we did with it, and one leftover cucumber, in the next recipe post. I also just realized we didn't use the cabbage in week 5. Better dig through the fridge and see what kind of shape it's in!

Did anything from your CSA share go missing in your kitchen this week? 

Adventures in CSA 2013: Week 4 Recipes

What an abundantly vegetal week we have had in our house, thanks to the goodies in our farm share! I've been looking forward to writing about the ups and downs (yes, even the downs) of dishes we made with week four's CSA items. Without further ado:


Week Four's Share Contained
1 bunch Tuscan kale
1 bunch beets
1 bunch scallions
small bunch basil
2 heads broccoli
2 daikon radishes -- CHALLENGE VEGETABLE
1 head lettuce
10 garlic scapes

With the above, we prepared:



Garlic scape and basil pesto - Dan's been whipping up pestos for the past few years, and he's gotten pretty good at them. Garlic scapes make for a slightly unusual pesto, but it's one we always enjoy.  The flavor is brighter and it tastes like summer. This week, a bunch of basil arrived in our share, so he was able to include that as well. It meant the pesto tasted a bit more "traditional," but the garlic scapes still shone. Our two-year-old chose the pasta shape, which I guess counts as "helping," and he seemed pretty pleased with the end product as his dinner.



Simple salad of lettuce, cheese, and homemade croutons - The dressing for this was made with vinegar, oil, and bottled artichoke hearts. Not very exciting, as salads go but still tasty as a side dish. I'm so into homemade croutons. They're easy to make, and I kind of just want to eat them like popcorn.



Broccoli and pesto pasta salad - Dan took the leftover pasta with pesto from dinner the night before, then added olives, tomatoes, cheese, one head of the broccoli (quickly boiled, then shocked in ice water), and Italian salad dressing. This held up really well as a supplement to lunches over much of the week.



Butter-braised daikon radish - I wanted to like this. I really did. Sigh.

I'm getting ahead of myself here. But this was the flop of the week. I had considered making one of many recipes that call for daikon raw (often shredded), but I just wasn't feeling motivated to eat them that way. I remember making butter-braised radishes a year or two ago, and really enjoyed them. They had come out both smooth and juicy.

Then, before I had quite decided what I was doing, I  impulsively boiled the daikon radishes along with our CSA beets, thinking I was killing two birds with one stone ... and found I was stuck. Boiled, the daikon had an unappetizing smell and texture.

I still wondered if braising might sort of work, at least to impart a little more flavor. I sliced the boiled radishes into coins, then simmered/braised them in chicken stock and spices until they almost tasted great. But they never lost their bitter edge. I tried splashing on some lemon juice, as suggested by Mark Bittman. Still bitter. Incredibly bitter. Throw-them-into-the-trash-after-hopefully-eating-half-of-them bitter. Sigh.



Beets with goat cheese/Kale salad with beets - Two-ingredient dishes that taste good are rare, so the fact that I can put beets and cheese in a bowl and enjoy it makes me happy. We alternate between boiling and roasting the beets to cook them. These were boiled, as you know from my sad, sad daikon story, but not to oblivion. Ultimately, they ended up working in three different dishes. On their own, the beets and cheese were creamy and mild. Later that day, added to kale and lemon juice, they enhanced the texture of the greens...



Blue tacos, featuring chicken, kale salad and beets - ... and the next day, leftover kale and beet salad topped chicken-sofrito tacos in blue corn shells. Dan added more cheese (queso blanco, this time), which melted under everything in a tantalizing way. I think I ate more than my share of these, and I would happily have eaten more. Winner!





Cheese, onion, and broccoli quiche - A quiche seemed like a good way to use up CSA leftovers at the end of week four. This one had spring onions, a head of broccoli and the remaining 3 or 4 garlic scapes, as well as 4 oz. of shredded cheddar cheese and a tiny bit of red pepper. I also used the last of our batch of farm-fresh eggs. I think, if I made it again, I'd cut the broccoli a bit smaller and steam it first (I just sauteed it in a pan for a few minutes). The scapes and onions were so good on their own, I think I might leave the broccoli out entirely. I'd also cook the whole thing an extra 5 minutes. I followed Mark Bittman's instructions to take it out of the oven when the center was still a bit wobbly, but the eggs inside still were (not raw, but) slightly runnier than I prefer.

The pie crust here is Bittman's "whole wheat savory" crust, meaning that I left out the sugar and used 1/2 cup of wheat flour along with the white. I really like his pie crust recipe. It's easy to make and to work with, and this was sturdy enough to go underneath a wet-custardy base without problem.

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Addendum: I decided to admit to you that I threw out a bit of this week's lettuce salad (gone mushy in the fridge) and most of Week Three's slaw (way past its prime) today. I'm just not a big fan of coleslaw, and we couldn't get through a whole head of cabbage + a whole head of radicchio that way.  We won't be making that much coleslaw again. The ends of the spring onions wilted badly before I got to them, too. But, all in all, I do feel good about the amount of vegetation we made it through, and I'm always working to have less waste. Dan made some chicken stock last week, and it was definitely improved by the vegetable trimmings I've saved in the freezer thus far.

How did you do with your CSA veggies this week? What's been a standout on your table? Did anything go bad before you could get to it?

Adventures in CSA 2013: Week 4 Share

I've just posted my week three recipes wrap-up, but week four began on Saturday, so let me go ahead and share with you what we received (and are already happily eating). In case you can't see the photo above, here's the scoop:

Week 4 produce
1 bunch Tuscan kale
1 bunch beets
1 bunch scallions
small bunch basil
2 heads broccoli
2 daikon radishes -- CHALLENGE VEGETABLE
1 head lettuce
10 garlic scapes

I had a feeling we'd be making garlic scape pesto this week, and (spoiler alert) we already have. We're probably in for a kale salad, too.

More importantly, what do you think we should do with the daikon? And do you think I can invent some sort of scallion pie? It's definitely a challenge to use up the scallions each week.

Adventures in CSA (2012): Week 4 Wrap-Up

Week Four Produce (veggies and fruit)
2.5 lbs summer squash
2 pickling cucumbers -- CHALLENGE VEGETABLE
1 "regular" cucumber (but I'd swear this is just a big pickling cucumber. It looks the same as the smaller ones)
1 bunch parsley
1 bunch arugula
.75 lb mesclun mix lettuce
1 bunch carrots
1 bunch kale
3 pints blueberries

Plus the following items leftover from previous weeks:
5 radishes
a baggie of snap peas
1 bunch mustard greens
1 pattypan squash
1 bunch kale

With these ingredients, we made:



1. Double-your-pleasure kale salad (CSA kale). Kale, lemon, coarse salt, avocado, olive oil. This is the stuff.



2. Zu-canoes (CSA squash, including pattypan, and parsley). Dan stuffed these with squash, parsley, two types of cheese, green rice, and mushrooms. The pattypan squash's skin was a bit tough, but the zuchinni and oblong yellow squash were terrific.



3. Arugula salad (CSA arugula and mesclun mix). Arugula and greens, tuna, lemon, sunflower seeds. dried cranberries. Dan felt this was a little bland, but I quite liked it. I want to have dried cranberries in all of my tuna salads.



4. Blueberry Cobbler with Cream Cornmeal Biscuit (CSA blueberries). I found this recipe in the Rustic Fruit Desserts cookbook I was given as a Christmas gift. You can also find the recipe online. Unlike rhubarb, I think blueberry is best mixed with other fruits. I find its baked flavor a bit heavy, sweet, and overwhelming alone. Thank goodness for the superb biscuits on this cobbler. They cut the blueberry sweetness in just the right way.

5. Raw snap peas, eaten as a traveling snack (not pictured).



6. Several snacks of quick pickles (pictured) and raw cucumber (not pictured). I mentioned in a previous post that I am intimidated by the canning process. I've yet to "put up" any batches of...well, anything. But I did turn our pickling cucumbers into "quick pickles" by slicing them into thin rounds and spears before giving them a bath in commercially prepared (dill) pickle juice that just happened to be in the refrigerator.  24 hours later, they were good. 48 hours later, they were great!  We had them on sandwiches and raw. Baby-approved!



6. Epic Frito Salad (CSA mesclun mix). What a doozy, in the greatest possible way! Cotija cheese and a shredded Mexican mix of cheese, corn off the cob, Frito chips, tomato, black olives, red onion, and that mesclun mix came together under an elote-inspired dressing of lime, mayonnaise, and Tapatio hot sauce. This is Dan at his best, folks.

We traveled over the 4th of July holiday, meaning we didn't get through as much produce as we might have otherwise. And so, still in the fridge, fated to join Week 5's produce, lie:
5 small radishes (booo!)
1 bunch ruby chard
1 bunch mustard greens
1 bunch carrots
a little bit of parsley

Oh yeah, and thrown out this week:
2-3 handfuls of snap peas that sat in a hot car overnight while we were camping. Goodbye, cruel world!

Adventures in CSA (2012): Week 5 Pick-Up

Okay. I'm a little behind, seeing as I pick up Week 6 produce tomorrow and still haven't written Week 4 or 5's wrap-ups.  Whoops. Let's start with the easy stuff.

Last Saturday, we still had the following items in our fridge from previous weeks:
5 small radishes
1 bunch ruby chard
1 bunch mustard greens
1 bunch carrots
a little bit of parsley

And then we received the following veggies:



CSA Bounty - Week Five (veggies only)
note: nothing on this week's pickup was labeled, as there was some sort of key that had been lost (I was told).

4 small yellow squash
1 head unlabeled lettuce
1 bag loose lettuce (mesclun mix?)
2 heads broccoli
5 pickling cucumbers (2 yellow, 3 green)
1 kohlrabi
1 onion
1/2 lb. fava beans

And that's what we had to work with, folks...

Adventures in CSA (2012): Week 3 Wrap-Up

Another week's gone by. We didn't quite get through everything from our pickup last Saturday, but we got respectably close, I think.  And nothing has gone to waste from this batch, so far.

Week 3 CSA veggies:
1 head lettuce (I suspect this was "butter lettuce," aka Boston Bibb)
1 head bok choi
1 head escarole - CHALLENGE VEGETABLE
3 summer squash
1 pint snap peas
1 bunch cilantro
1 bunch kale
1 large cucumber
1 bunch ruby chard
1 bunch mustard greens

What we made this week:



1. Start-the-week salad. I said you might get sick of me making and photographing a series of salads, but I'm not sick of eating them yet. They're a great way to eat a lot of CSA vegetables in one meal, and it's easy to get creative with the ingredients and the dressing (not that we always get that creative). Hey, why am I defending salad? 

For this one, we used the CSA cucumber, some of the CSA lettuce, and added red onion, bacon, and avocado.



2. Swiss chard with cotija cheese (CSA chard). One of my favorite ways to prepare Swiss chard is to chop and sautee the stems with an onion in a little olive oil, then add and wilt the leaves. Dan had the idea to top it with cotija cheese. It was delicious. It would have made a great taco filling (or lettuce cups), but we ate it on its own.



3. Did someone say tacos? Another night, we ate tacos filled with CSA squash and cilantro, as well as store-bought tomato, onion, refried black beans, and leftover cotija cheese. Tacos, salad, stir fry, pizza, pasta, rice, soup -- no matter what ingredients I have on hand, I come back to these dishes over and over again.



4. Bok choi slaw (CSA bok choi). This was Dan's idea, and I wasn't sure how I felt about it, but bok choi makes a very nice slaw. He added carrots and scallions. The dressing included mustard, sesame oil, mayonnaise, and lemon



5. Salad again (CSA lettuce, cucumber and escarole). This one also includes additional lettuce from the store, pancetta, corn, tomatoes, scallion, cheddar, and blue cheese dressing.

This butter lettuce was absolutely tender and delicious. What a sweet little variety of lettuce. More, please!

Leftovers being added to Week 4's share:
4-5 radishes found lurking in the back of the fridge
a baggie of snap peas
1 bunch mustard greens
1 bunch kale
1 pattypan squash

I tried just a bit of the mustard greens raw. Yeowch! That's a potent green. I'm off to research recipes for that ingredient, as well as the squash.

P.S. Guess who hasn't figured out how to eat salad yet (but loves poking at and "stirring" the leaves)?

Adventures in CSA (2012): Week 4 Pick-Up

 

As Week 4 begins, I have the following vegetables (leftover from previous weeks) hanging out in our kitchen:

4-5 radishes (Man! I could have sworn we had finally finished the radishes!)
a baggie of snap peas
1 bunch mustard greens
1 pattypan squash
1 bunch kale

At our CSA pickup site this morning, I was awarded:



 CSA Bounty - Week Four (veggies and fruit)
2.5 lbs summer squash
2 pickling cucumbers -- CHALLENGE VEGETABLE
1 "regular" cucumber (but I'd swear this is just a big pickling cucumber. It looks the same as the smaller ones)
1 bunch parsley
1 bunch arugula
.75 lb mesclun mix lettuce
1 bunch carrots
1 bunch kale
3 pints blueberries

So, we're off to the races with this lot. I am wary of pickling/canning/preserving food, by the way. I haven't had good luck with it in the past.

Oh, also -- what's your favorite recipe that uses mustard greens?

Adventures in CSA (2012): Week 3 Pick-Up

 CSA Bounty - Week Three (veggies only)

1 head lettuce
1 head bok choi
1 head escarole - CHALLENGE VEGETABLE
3 summer squash
1 pint snap peas
1 bunch cilantro
1 bunch kale
1 large cucumber
1 bunch ruby chard
1 bunch mustard greens

Plus:
1 partial pint of snap peas from week 1 (haven't gone bad yet!). I'm going to take them to work for office snacking.

Let's go!

Adventures in CSA (2012): Week 2 Wrap-Up

We started Week Two of our 2012 CSA season with the following unused produce leftover from Week One:
1 bunch radishes
1 bunch arugula
1 pint snap peas

And added to that our:

CSA Bounty - Week Two (veggies and fruit)
1 bunch radishes
2 big squash (1 zucchini, one yellow)
1 overflowing pint of snow peas - CHALLENGE VEGETABLE
3 garlic scapes
1 bunch mustard greens
1 head lettuce
1 bunch kale
1/2 lb loose lettuce
1 giant bunch bok choi
1 quart strawberries
1 pint blueberries



From this, we made:



Snow pea and bok choi stir fry (CSA snow peas, garlic scapes, bok choi). I insisted on adding soy sauce and peanuts to the finished dish. We ate it over rice. I'm still sweet on stir fry.

 

Summer squash and ricotta galette (CSA green and yellow squash). I found the recipe for this in the July 2012 issue of Cooking Light. The crust is made with olive oil, which gives it a distinctive flavor, and it's made on a baking sheet (rather than in a pie plate). I like that it's meant to look "rustic" -- i.e. messy. The ricotta base is flavored with lemon and thyme, which I was surprised to find I really enjoyed.

I tried to follow the recipe exactly (except that I cut my zucchini slices less attractively and used dried thyme), but found I had to veer off on my own at two points. For one thing, the two squash I cut up gave me far more slices than I could fit inside the amount of dough I made. I could have created two or three of these out of the two squash we received for our CSA share. So we saved the leftover squash and garlic mixture to use another night. Secondly, the recipe calls for the dough to be rolled out into a 14" circle. I could not, for the life of me, stretch that sucker past 12".  Those are pretty small quibbles, though. It's a delicious dish.

p.s. The leftovers are excellent warm or cold.



Summer squash with mustard greens over pasta (CSA green and yellow squash, mustard greens). This is how we used the squash leftover from my galette preparation -- sauteed with mustard greens and served (with pine nuts and cheese) over pasta. Simple. Good. NOT an attractive picture, though. It got kind of late (i.e. bad lighting is my excuse).

 




BLAT sandwiches (CSA lettuce). So much non-CSA produce went into this, as well as bacon, that it almost felt like cheating. How I wish I lived in Florida and could join an avocado CSA. They have those, right?



Gigantor Salad (CSA radishes, snap peas, arugula, lettuce). Dan added pepitas and parmesan cheese to this, too. Looks like there may be some dried cranberries in there, too, along with lemon and more avocado.  I tell you, after a while, the salads sort of run together.



Oh! It's Ina Garten's fruit salad with limoncello recipe again (CSA strawberries and blueberries)! I mentioned this in a previous post. The strawberries (a bit mushier than in week 1) and blueberries were tossed with currants, marinated in limoncello and sugar, then topped with bananas and lingonberry-jam-laced Greek yogurt. Divine!

Unused at the start of Week Three -- carrying over to join the next week's share:
Most of a pint of snap peas.

Trashed at the start of Week Three -- goodbye, cruel world:
1 bunch of radishes - argh! It got too hot to roast them, which is what I had my heart set on. So they went bad in the fridge and I threw them out. I'm sorry, Universe.


As I post this, I'm already midway through Week Three, so I'll be back ASAP to post that share and then again in a few days with news on what we've eaten this week. What was in your CSA share this week?

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