Adventures in CSA: Week 8, Part 1

Last Sunday, I put in a couple of hours volunteering at the CSA pickup site. Things might not look so busy in the photo above, but there was a definite rush at the beginning of my shift, and I had plenty to do. Later, during a lull in the distribution, I sorted out my own share of:

1.5 lb. green tomatoes
1/2 lb. green beans
1 lb. cucumbers
1 lb. squash
2 medium garlic
1 Napa cabbage
1 lb assorted greens (I chose: 1/2 lb collard greens, 1/4 lb. ruby chard, and 1/4 lb. kale)

Once again, there was a little extra fruit to be had! It seems that the (pouring) rain kept away a few of the fruit shareholders (as well as many of the veggies-only participants, incidentally), so I was invited to take home a few peaches and plums.

So, what's been cooking?



1. Cold Green Bean Salad with Soy-Glazed Almonds. We were invited over to Ingrid, Ari, and Desmond's house for an impromptu potluck supper with friends. I was interested in making a cold green bean salad after reading two or three recipes online, so I chose one of them. I made just a few adjustments.

I prepared the salad a few hours ahead of time, then socked it away into the fridge to marinate. At Ingrid's house, I threw in the sticky, soy-glazed nuts.

I was thrilled with this mixture. I could have eaten twice as much salad as I did, and the nuts were the perfect topping. I would make the nuts on their own, too, to top other salads and dishes.

For my version, you'd need:

1/2 lb green beans, trimmed and cut into bite-sized pieces (1 lb would have been even better)
1 c. whole almonds
1 tsp. peanut oil (the recipe calls for any kind of oil except olive oil)
1/4 c. soy sauce
1-1/2 T. sugar
2-inch piece of ginger root, peeled and minced
2-3 large garlic cloves, peeled and minced
2 T. corn or canola oil
2 T. white wine vinegar + 2 tablespoons rice wine (or use rice wine vinegar, which was what I was trying to create a substitute for)
2 tsp. soy sauce
one small bunch scallions, finely sliced
(I omitted 1/2 cup chopped cilantro, but would happily use it if I had some around)

First, boil the beans for about 2 minutes (longer if tough or very big). Drain them and shock them in cold water. Drain again.

Toast almonds in dry pan on stove for 5 minutes. Don't let them burn. Remove almonds and put peanut oil, 1/4 c. soy sauce, and sugar in the same pan. Let everything boil and bubble while you stir and the mixture reduces. When it is syrupy, put the almonds back in and stir until they are coated with the sticky mixture. Put the almonds to cool on a cutting board.

Make the dressing for the salad with the rest of the ingredients. Whisk it all together in a bowl and pour it over the green beans. Add cilantro, if you choose. Stir everything together. Chill salad for several hours (if possible).

Separately, chop your glazed almonds roughly, but keep them separate until you're ready to serve, then throw them on top. If you add the almonds too early, the glaze will soak off as the salad marinates.





2. Green Tomato Mincemeat Pie. I gathered a number of green tomato recipes this week, but ultimately decided a pie was calling my name. Then, in my home library, I found the Moosewood Restaurant Book of Desserts, which contains a recipe for green tomato pie made with chopped apples, nuts, and lots of spices.

Unfortunately, I erred when making the recipe and sliced my apples, so the texture never really approached a true mincemeat chop. I also did not have pecans in the house. I think they would have tasted more appropriate to the experience than my last-minute mixture of walnuts and almonds.

My favorite part of the recipe was actually the pie crust, which was simple but tender. I will certainly be using it again, along with the method of bringing the edges of the crust up over the pie filling to create a rough-hewn, artisinal-looking almost-pocket of dough around the pie (rather than a classic top and bottom crust).

However, it was never a bad pie. We ate it with vanilla ice cream as part of our first Giant Movie Night event. The flavors melded together more and improved greatly overnight, so we had more the next evening with friends...and the next day as breakfast...and after lunch at work...




(photo and smoothie by Dan)

3. Cherry-Peach Smoothies. The peaches were surprisingly bland this week, and I'm not sure why, but blended with cherries and ice cream and milk they were excellent smoothie ingredients.





4. Raw Cucumbers and Squash with Hummus. I've been cooking most of the vegetables we've received, but there's nothing like a raw, farm-fresh cucumber or summer squash. One lazy evening, we simply sliced up the beauties and ate them with salt, pepper, and hummus. Simple! Mighty fine.


5. Plums (not pictured). The plums were amazing raw, too -- small, sweet-tart, and juicy. It took only a couple of days to eat both the superior red plums and the still-delicious, though slightly less awesome yellow variety. I'm sure they would have been yummy in a fruit salad or plum pie, but they were simply eaten and enjoyed as given by nature.

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Oops! Due to a couple of special events, weather, and general laziness, I fell behind this week. I cooked little, and ate just a bit more. In fact, I still haven't used the cabbage, garlic (but that will keep), or any of the greens! I plan to sort through the vegetable bin today, add what's salvageable to week nine's assortment (and some beautiful tomatoes from Tom at work), and report back to you soon.

The most selfish girl at the FEAST.

This month's FEAST picnic event was a little low on food. What was provided was very nice and clearly labored over with love [Molly and David were busy serving up bruschetta with a swell spread (white bean?)], but the potluck dessert table was somewhat bare -- both as compared to past events and in considering the number of people in attendance.

Carolyn's blueberry bars were delicious (I wish I could provide something that beautiful and professional looking); Liana's lemon yogurt cake graced the event, but was almost gone (I blinked and didn't get any); and someone had brought a watermelon to be cut up and enjoyed. I added my still-warm banana-bread-with-a-twist dessert offering to the goodies and wandered outside (this was an indoor-outdoor event, with people moving between the church and the park across the street) with my own slice of melon, dripping juice.

More about dessert in a minute. For the FEAST meal itself one had to go around the corner and pay an additional $10 for a generous picnic lunch of sandwich, fruit, curried potato salad, and chips from Brooklyn Standard. Everything looked great, especially the potato salad, but we got cheap-but-tasty tacos from Papacito's for dinner instead.

It was pleasant to sit in the park last night, eating and relaxing, surrounded by friends and strangers and grant winners and artists with proposals.



I visited the proposal tables, strung along the main interior sidewalk of the park. They were swamped with passersby and FEAST attendees. The activity and crowd lent a kind of carnival/street fair atmosphere to the evening. I was also happy to get a chance to see a "Work for Pay" performance while sitting on the grass with friends.

All night, I felt secure, if slightly guilty, with a secret -- I had selfishly saved for myself nearly 1/4 of a loaf of the two (namely, banana and plantain bread with chocolate and crystallized ginger) I had made for the potluck dessert table. I panicked and put the chunk aside (wrapped in foil, deep in my bag) when people began eating slices before I could get it all cut and put out on the table. The rest had been devoured to picked-at-crumbs in 30 minutes or less, I was told.



I guess they liked it!

The recipe for this bread is from Molly Wizenberg of Orangette, but I found the version I adapted in her book, A Homemade Life. It is slightly different from the one given on her blog.

A note on the book: A coworker who knows I like food and enjoy blogging suggested I read it, and even handed me a copy that was floating around the office. I was inspired by the ideas and flavors in the recipes included at the end of each chapter, and plan to try many of them, but didn't find much in the essays (which make up the bulk of the text) to hold my interest or to recommend a purchase of the book in hard copy.

Wizenberg writes well, and her family and life experiences have clearly touched her in a meaningful way (and each person's own life should hold meaning for one's self), but the book's stories are episodic and, to my taste, probably more charming on a blog or in a magazine article (I have only peeked at her blog, myself). I didn't find much to connect to in the book beyond the recipes.

That said, this bread was excellent, well-received, and I'm going to be making it again. My adaptations and suggestions?

• Double it to make two loaves at once. You won't be sorry (and you can certainly freeze one or both). I baked both loaves in the oven together, which added about 1/2 hour to the baking time. I tented the tops with aluminum foil for some of the time, as they got very brown, but I had to remove the foil in order to get the bread baked sufficiently. The loaves became quite brown, but did not taste burnt.
  
• Don't be afraid to substitute some very ripe plantain for part of your banana. I used 2 plantains (medium-sized) and 5 bananas because that was what I had hanging out in the freezer. I was a little worried about how the plantains would behave, but they did no harm. I did add another 1/2 c. granulated sugar to the amount of sugar already in the (doubled) recipe in order to sweeten the plantain mixture a little more.
• If you love ginger, add more ginger! The crystallized ginger pieces are what makes this bread special. I think that they should be in almost equal measure to the chocolate chips. I'd use at least 1/2 cup ginger (instead of the 1/3 c. called for) for each loaf of bread. Also, don't cut the pieces of ginger too small.
• If you're taking this to a party or another event, don't be ashamed if you want to reserve a little for yourself at home. You deserve it!
  

Have beans, will travel.

Outdoor space is precious, especially in NYC. If you live in an apartment or building that includes access to a yard, deck, balcony, or rooftop, you will be envied by those of us with none of that.

I, personally, envy you. I have little in the way of outdoor space. Just a skylight with which to view the sky, a fire escape too rickety and small for purposes other than escaping fires, and a cement "front yard" that is made unpleasant and unusable by its proximity to an angry Italian woman wielding a kitchen knife.

It's wise to share your outdoor space liberally if you've got it. This will help keep your friends feeling friendly towards you. I'm lucky to have some very friendly friends. Several have marvelous rooftops.

I shared a lovely picnic dinner with friends on one of these rooftops in Brooklyn last week. We supped on fried green tomato BLTs, grilled vegetables with feta and vinegar, green bean salad with soy-encrusted almonds (which I toted over, as pictured above), and two kinds of ice cream with shortbread.









The evening left me grateful for rooftops, sunsets, summer vegetables, great views, and generous friends. I haven't been that relaxed, happy, and satisfied in a number of weeks.

I promise I'll return the favor and invite people over to hang out and BBQ in my front-stoop's cement "yard" again (which used to be a yearly event) just as soon as someone disarms my alarming elderly Italian neighbor. Until then, don't tell me you have a yard/roof if you don't want me in/atop it.

A very good idea

This week, I held my inaugural Giant Movie Night, in which I watch movies projected on the wall while eating food. If someone wants to stop by, that's cool. Y'know. Whatever.

GMN Week one
Film: Woody Allen's Love and Death
Snack: Green Tomato Mincemeat Pie (with green tomatoes from my CSA share)
Guests: Dan
Outcome: Awesome!

Poetry Tuesday: Trepidation, Mexico (a series).

[Today's Poetry Tuesday post is in honor of a new blog, Haiku Lunchbox, which I read about today on my Serious Eats feed and immediately added to my RSS reader. Welcome to the food-poetry blogging world, HL!]



Memories in dust,
A piñata's leavings wait.
Snack jail - tempting fate.




I'd be a sucker.
When was I in Mexico?
Horror show on sticks.



Such friendly dressing,
So eyes cry to mouth in vain.
A will dances, ill.

Parting is such sweet and savory sorrow.

I got out the sad wig, y'all. And for good reason. I suffered two major losses last week.





In my work life, I lost Greta, a coworker I like and respect for many reasons -- and also consider a friend. It is true that I gained cookies when she left, as they were presented on her last day and meant to be part of a sweet send-off, but I'd rather have the passionate, creative, and funny Greta. Cookies are fleeting. Greta is forever (as are the plastic containers in which the cookies came).





At least I'm losing her for a good cause. She's off to study urban planning in graduate school, which is an exciting and wholly appropriate reason to leave our job behind. If anything, I'm happy that she's found her thrill. But Greta, I beg you, when you are planning urban environments, do not forget the snack procurement locations. Need a consultant? Let's keep in touch.




My second loss was a bit more traumatic, meaning no offense to Greta, as our friends Matthew and Becky packed up a U-Haul and moved to Los Angeles for two years or more (I'd like to believe they'll come back, but who knows what the future holds?).

Dan and I have known Matt since 1995 or 1996, and he is one of those people I kind of took for granted as a permanent fixture in my life. He's lived just a few blocks away for the past 3 or 4 years. Even as he traveled all over the world working on photographic, film, and video projects, I assumed he would always be back for video games and brownies and just plain hanging out (he's one of the few people my cat actually likes). Becky and I met around the same time, or few years later, as we both studied theatre at the same university. I do believe I've known both of them longer than they've known each other (though not as well, obvs.).

Matt and Becky have a darn good reason to move to LA, which I appreciate. Matt was accepted into the cinematography program at AFI out there. I really am proud of him and happy to think he'll be fostering the talented eye he wields. Hopefully, it will be the land of opportunity for Becky, too.




Anyway, I may have done some self-medicating through the oral application of food as part of dealing with this loss. To keep our spirits up in the face of Matthew and Becky's pending flight, we gave them each a delicious send-off (separately, as their schedules clashed) at the fairly new neighborhood restaurant The Brooklyn Star.

Still, I'm sad.



No number of truly amazing fried green tomatoes could dampen my sorrow.




And the best creamed corn I've ever had in my life is comforting, yes, but its melting, wild richness couldn't keep them here (how fitting that creamed corn stands in for "garmonbozia," or "pain and sorrow" in David Lynch's Fire Walk With Me).




I gave cookies to everyone as going away "presents," but they were really more of a "remember me by." I want Greta to think enough of hers to consider attending this year's cookie party. If I can reel her in socially with baked goods, the sky's the limit. Then, too, I hope the batch of peanut butter sandwich cookies I baked for Matt and Becky, dropped off on their last morning in town, lasts at least a few of the states they'll be driving through so that the memory of those cookies and the promise of more might linger. If it turns out to be a subtle, perhaps unconscious, factor in their deciding after a few years whether they want to return to New York, so be it.

At the very least, I would wish that all three of them could consider my feelings as tender as the tenderest crumb; my thoughts of them as sweet as the sweetest, freshest corn; and my hopes for their future as broad and grand as my plans for my next homemade dessert.

Bon voyage, kids! Happy travels, eating, and lives to all of us, wherever we go -- until we meet (and eat) again.

Adventures in CSA: Week 7

Looks like this past week's CSA vegetable share came with a purple, green, and white color theme. Last Sunday I picked up:

2 fennel
1 lb eggplant
1 lb fava beans (CHALLENGE VEGETABLE - or fruit!)
3 purple bell peppers (I've never seen this color before, but it's not so challenging)
2 kohlrabi (CHALLENGE VEGETABLE!)
1 bunch onions

We still had one of the farm's half chickens in the freezer, too, as well as a small amount of CSA sour cherries and white currants. As you'll see below, I used up the fruit this week but not yet the chicken.

Notice anything that might thrill me about this bunch of produce? If you guessed, "No leafy greens," you'd be right. I mean, I like chard and lettuce and spinach, but I'm happy to have some things I can worry less about wilting in my fridge as soon as I get them home. This is the first week we haven't had an overwhelming pile of leaves on a shelf in there waiting to be eaten.

Yee-ha! Instead, I ate and drank:




1. Sour Cherry Coconut Milkshakes. With the last of week six's sour cherries and 1/2 pint of vanilla ice cream, Dan whipped up a dessert beverage extraordinaire. Our new blender, courtesy of Nick and Julie (who are moving to England, of all places) is pretty dreamy. I'm sad they're leaving / have left with their charming daughter and my favorite office dog, but I can't be mad at their blender -- the blender they left behind. In my kitchen (on purpose).


2. Fennel and Currant Salad Redux (not pictured). I had to have this dish (#3) again. This time, Dan made it and used the white currants left over from week six. At work, I didn't have any parmesan to top it with, but it was still crunchy and delicious.




(photo by Dan)

3. Spicy Eggplant, Onion, and Kohlrabi Curry. I have an eggplant curry recipe adapted from an Emeril recipe I discovered at some point. I've made it several times, each time with slightly different ingredients. The original calls for spinach, but I rarely have that leafy green on hand.

This time, I adapted it to use three of our fine CSA vegetables. The finished product had an excellent flavor, but since I did not have any tomatoes that night it was just a tad dry. I added sesame oil to the rice when dishing it all out, which helped moisten the final product.

Eggplant Curry
1/2 c. vegetable oil
2 tsp. mustard seeds
2 tsp. ground cumin
2 tsp. ground coriander (I was out of this, so skipped it)
1 tsp. turmeric
1 1/2 T. curry powder (I used 1 tsp. spicy and 1/2 tsp. mild)
1/4 tsp. cayenne
1 c. chopped onions (I used both the small CSA onions, sliced, plus half a white onion, chopped)
1 T. minced fresh ginger (I skipped it this time)
3-4 cloves garlic, minced
3-4 small or 1-2 medum (or 1 lb) eggplants, chopped into similar-sized pieces
1 tsp. salt
2 large tomatoes, chopped (skipped this time)
handful torn fresh cilantro

This time, I also used:
half of a kohlrabi, peeled and sliced into 1/4" matchsticks
dash of sesame oil

Serving suggestions:
fresh yogurt or sour cream
cooked rice

Heat your oil in a wok or large pan over medium-high heat. Add the mustard seeds and stir until they begin to pop. Add all of the other spices except for the salt and ginger. Stir constantly while it cooks for 30 seconds, until fragrant. Add your onions and cook, stirring, for 1 minute.

Next, add the ginger, garlic, and jalapeno. Cook about 30 seconds, stirring. Put in the eggplant and sprinkle with salt. At this point, I also added half a (peeled) kohlrabi, sliced into thin matchsticks. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the eggplant is cooked through (about 5-10 minutes). If you're using tomato, add it at this point and cook over medium-low heat 10-15 minutes until it's thickened to your liking. Add cilantro and stir well. Season to taste and serve hot over cooked rice with yogurt or sour cream on top.

In the variation pictured above, the eggplant turned out spongy and soft, with a good spice, while the kohlrabi was crispy and sharp. The kohlrabi seemed especially well-matched with the flavor of the fresh cilantro.





4. Raw Kohlrabi with Salt. More kohlrabi serving suggestions can be found here, but I found the simplest treatments to be the most desirable when testing mine out. They really are good just peeled, raw, and salted. There's a sort of radish flavor in there. I topped a few slices with a little mustard, which was queer but intriguing.

This challenge vegetable needs to cross over. Who'd like to help me bring kohlrabi to the masses? For starters, here are some exciting, marketable nicknames for kohlrabi that some friends and I came up with:
K-Rab™
Coooool-rabi
Kool Rah-B! (Yes, with an exclamation point.)
KEWL ROBBI





5. Kohlrabi and Fennel Salad with Sweet Cherries. This week's cherries were sweet, as opposed to sour, and purchased on sale ($1.99/lb) at Whole Foods, rather than CSA bounty.

To use them, and to use up the last of the week's kohlrabi and fennel, we created a variation on the fennel and currant salad I have been enjoying so much (mentioned above).

Anise-flavored fennel (1 bulb) and one radish-bitter kohlrabi (peeled and cut into thin matchsticks) were combined in a bowl with the juice of half a lemon and a little olive oil. We then added pepper and salt. I stirred everything together, then threw in pitted and quartered sweet cherries (about 1/2 cup), stirred again lightly, and we were off!

We took this salad in a plastic container to the palatial brownstone belonging to August's ex-boss and the ex-boss's wife (where August and Willow were house-sitting). There, we ate it in luxury, topped with freshly grated parmesan cheese. I think I liked this salad more than anyone else did, but I stand firm behind the concept. It was excellent.

Dan had seconds, so I guess I married the right guy. Too bad we left the remainder in the refrigerator there. August and Willow are off to Vietnam today, so I guess I won't be licking the container clean.





6. Fava Beans in Leftovers. I looked through 15 or 20 cookbooks to find but a handful of fava bean recipes. The one offering me the most choices for the beans was the Spanish tome, 1080 Recipes. I chose to modify a recipe for Fava Beans in Sauce.

I removed the beans from their pods, boiled them in a pot of salted water (with a pinch of baking soda) until they were tender, and then drained off the water. I added the drained beans to a pan containing leftover cardoon and turkey bacon gratin (dish #9) and heated everything to a decent temperature.

Cooked soft, the beans were velvety-smooth and thick-tasting. My original Spanish recipe had called for ham, but I found the turkey bacon to add sufficient depth of flavor. I chose not to create the sauce called for, as (you may remember) the cardoons were cooked in cream and came out plenty saucy.







7. North African Stuffed Purple Bell Peppers in Feta Sauce. This recipe I found in my copy of the Sundays at Moosewood cookbook. The stuffing for the peppers (whose purple color leached out during cooking) contained tomato, brown rice, pine nuts, onion, garlic, mint, dill, and parsley.

The sauce was meant to contain milk, but as I was out of that ingredient (which happens on rare evenings in this house), I substituted tomato juice and water in the same amount. This was thickened with butter and flour, and combined with feta, mint, and dill, then seasoned with salt to bring out the cheese's tang.

May I type a sound effect to suggest approval and satisfaction? MWAH!

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It is late now. I am full and I am tired. I intend to end this post in a moment, so as to take myself off to bed, where I will dream of eating the vegetables that have come to stay in week eight of this CSA experience. I shall also, I hope, dream of reporting on the week to all of you.

I am hoping I will dream thus because I plan to turn these dreams into reality in seven days or fewer. You'll see; dreams do come true.