CSA 2011 - Week 8

Bit of a late post again, but at least I have a valid excuse this time in the form of an almost week-long visit to the Corporate Mothership. It was a good visit, but it did leave Mary to pick up and photograph the CSA on her own, and got us a bit behind on the consumption curve.

I am told that there were raspberries in this share, but they were long gone by the time I returned home. Mary reports that they were juicy and delicious. More tasty, tasty corn. We already had two of these off the cob, and plan to make a smoked mozzarella and corn pie with the other. Yum. These turnip looking fellows are actually watermelon radishes. We are going to enter the scary world of the cooked radish for the first time, so we'll see how that goes. Two incredibly dark red shallots. Assorted sweet peppers will get roasted and turned into a lovely and colorful salad.

These quinte apples are getting baked into a rustic tart. We actually have a bunch of non-dessert apple recipes, but for some reason we have been using them all in desserts lately. I guess I can convince myself that Apple Pie is a summer thing, whereas Roast Pork with Apple and Onions just screams autumn. Red bull onions will get mixed with some storebought ones and made into a rustic onion tart with feta and thyme. We are apparently in a rustic mood this week. This is a new recipe for us, but I have been told that it's great by others so I am excited to try it. Oh garlic scapes, I thought we were done. These will go into naan and our garlic lover's rub, which is entertainingly green when done with scapes. Did you know that there is such a thing as fresh garbanzo beans? I mean, logic dictates that there must be, but it never occurred to me that they came from anything but a can or bag. I guess I thought the stork brought them? We're at a bit of loss with these, and we may just roast them or make them into hummus and get our snack on.

These red potatoes will likely get mashed and eaten with the radish and chicken recipe. Carrots are carrots. We'll either fool ourselves into thinking that we will cut them and bring them to work as snacks then fall back to roasting them, or we'll just roast them. I suspect the first is more likely. This freakish fellow is an Armenian cucumber. It's not only striped like a circus tent, but also slightly fuzzy. We haven't cut into it yet, so we'll see what other wonders await.

Cucumber Mojito Sorbet

When one is in a CSA, one sometimes finds him or herself buried under a mountain of something with no idea how to use it all. For many it is zucchini, for us last year it was cucumbers.

I set out to find an interesting application that was delicious and consumed as many cukes as possible. I settled on sorbet, since it's something I enjoy making anyway. It helped that it was off kilter enough to seem odd, but plausibly delicious.

I fairly quickly got the flavor to a place I liked, and found that the cucumber itself brought a nice melon-like flavor once sweetened. Sadly, I had a lot of issues getting the texture to be anything but rock solid once it was frozen. I fiddled with adding more rum and higher proportions of simple syrup to overcome this, but to no avail.

Reading over a melon sorbet recipe more recently, I saw a comment that all the water in the melon meant that the texture would be extra icy. I wondered if I could psych out the simple syrup by making it with cuke juice rather than water. That was the key. This batch is still a little crumbly, but still scoopable when frozen and great tasting. Take that, cucumbers!

Cucumber Mojito Sorbet
1.5 Pounds cucumber
.5 Cup sugar
2 Tablespoons corn syrup (also helps reduce iciness)
.75 oz mint (that's one supermarket packet)
1 Shot of rum
Juice of 2 limes

1. Peel, chop, and puree the cucumber. If you are working with small-seeded varieties (as I was) go ahead and leave them in. For other types, you'll probably want to remove them.
   
2. Pour the cucumber puree into a strainer over a measuring cup and collect 2/3 cup juice. Keep the remaining solids and liquid (which in my case was about 1.5 cups total.)
   
3. Combine the cucumber liquid, sugar, corn syrup, and mint in a saucepan. Boil to dissolve sugar. Allow syrup to cool to room temperature and mint to steep. Remove mint.
   
4. Mix the room temperature syrup, cucumber solids, lime juice, and rum. Chill the mixture, then freeze in an ice cream machine.
   

CSA 2011 - Week 7

Not too much to report from last week. Things went pretty smoothly and other than my science pickles (which I plan on trying a second, larger batch of today) we didn't do anything too wacky.

Let's start with the most important bit: It's sweet corn season. For both of us, corn and tomatoes are the apotheosis of summer, and we look forward to them every year. While we love to grill it, we are going to make our creamed corn with leek and bacon with this batch. These fingerling potatoes are going to get steamed and made into potato salad. The first proper garlic of the summer. We'll use it here and there. Three colors of french beans. We always talk big about all the things we are going to do with beans, then we get home from a long day of work, take one look at the recipe, and say, "I ain't blanching." We will likely just steam these in the microwave with a little butter. Sweet vidalia onions A head of savoy cabbage. Savoy cabbage tends to appear in recipes for stuffed cabbage and cabbage wraps, so maybe we'll give one of those a go. And then have three quarters of a head of cabbage left.

These four Japanese eggplants are going into a baked pasta dish. It can also take zucchini, so it's keeper. One of these heads of broccoli is actually a head of romesco cauliflower. This tastes like cauliflower but looks all fractal-y and pointy. Neat! These two Japanese cucumbers are grist for my experiments. As I type this, I have a batch of sorbet underway where I am trying a new approach to solve my texture issues. I'll either follow up in another post (success!) or the header to the next CSA post (failure!) on how that goes. Last time we had black and red currants I managed to totally waste them by failing to make jam. This time around we are going to make a crisp with them and these apples, so hopefully we have better luck. Arugula will go into salads with the last of last week's lettuce and also onto egg and herbed ricotta sandwiches.

Pickles! Science!

Having received a bag of small cucumbers this week that were clearly intended to be pickled, I searched around for recipes. Most require full sterile bottling, though I did find some quick pickling recipes.

One thing that all of these recipes did in common was time. Since I am not filling my larder for the long winter months with Ma Ingalls, I don't really need these fellows pickled but just want to infuse in some extra flavor. I was reminded of an article I had just read on using a wine vacuum saver to quickly infuse flavors and figured I'd give it a try.

For the test I made a brine with:

• 1/2 cup white vinegar
  
• 1 1/2 tsp salt
  
• 1/4 cup sugar
  
• 1/4 tsp mustard seed
  
• 1/4 tsp celerey seed
  

I popped the brine ingredients into the microwave for two minutes on high to boil in the sugar and salt, and then let the mixture sit for an hour to so to come back to room temperature.

Next I cut a cucumber into spears and put it into a wine bottle. I had to cut them thinner than I may normally have (eights rather than quarters) to get them through the neck. Over the cukes I poured the cooled brine.

Now, the science! I used the wine savor to suck out all of the air in the bottle, then released the pressure as described in the article. Just to be sure, I repeated this step a second time. I upturned the bottle (over the same measuring cup I had had the brine in) and dislodged the logjam of (hopefully transformed) cucumbers with a bamboo skewer.

How did they turn out? Interesting. Because it was a very quick pickling, there was a much more overt cucumber texture and flavor, but the brine had clearly infiltrated. There was too much sugar for my taste and the seasonings were barely present, so I think next time I will reduce the sugar by half (which will put it at 1/4 what the original recipe had) and up the brine additions. I may also try boiling the brine for a longer period to help the added herbs infuse it.

The amount of brine I made was way more than was required, but that dumb bump at the bottom of wine bottles fooled me into thinking I would need more than I did. Next time I'll push my luck and see how many cukes I can fit into this amount of brine.

CSA 2011 - Week 6

Oh, I had big plans. I was going to open this blog post with a picture of gorgeous, jewel-toned currant jelly. But then I overcooked the berries, causing the juice to coagulate too early and one kitchen sink crime scene later, the currants were done for and I was jelly-less. If we get them again some time, I will have to try the recipe again, but without the boiling and the sorrow. I also ended up way behind this week due to a few late nights at work. Hopefully all that madness is behind us.

This place is quite a Broccoli farm. We've gotten it several weeks in a row. This will probably get roasted. When in doubt, roast. This week's onions are Supersweet vidalia onions. These won't be 1:1 substitutable for yellow onions, but we have a bunch of recipes that call for the sweet ones, so we should be ok. Not sure what we'll do with these eureka and concessa snap beans. We have a great salad that uses beans, sweet onion, and feta so we'll likely take that route. Once the zucchini begins, it doesn't stop. This week: Lebanese zucchini.

For a thrilling twist, we plan on not making our scramble with this Ruby swiss chard. We've made a saute before with shard, leek, and lots of butter, and that's where this is headed. We've never had Gooseberries before, but according to the internet, they are often very sour and are often used with rhubarb. Once we actually got our hands on them though, they really weren't that bad. We ended up just eating them as-is. They taste vaguely like plums. These Blueberries likely won't survive the night. Mm......blueberries. Cilantro is something we always seem to need until we actually get it from the CSA, then our minds blank on recipes that use it. Mary has been bemoaning the lack of salad lately (yes, really) so she was most excited by this Mixed baby lettuce this week. Freak.

The first cukes of the season are these Japanese cucumbers. Last year we had so many that I ended up experimenting with them in the form of Cucumber Mojito Sorbet. We're not to that point this year, but I am hoping we do get there because I think I have a way to make the sorbet not get quite as solid, and I am dying to try it this year. These are vaguely spiney, which is odd. As with broccoli, so with Cauliflower Greens are back in the form of darkibor kale. We have a small amount of cabbage leftover, so we may make soup and freeze it. We liked the pea pasta that we made earlier in the year so much, both Mary and Immediately though of it when we got these Green arrow english peas. Repeats aren't always bad. When we saw that we were getting Wisconsin SMR pickles we were unsure if we were getting pickles, or just pickling cucumbers. We are still not sure since we've been consumed with consuming other stuff.

CSA 2011 - Week 5

It will be a bit of a quick post today, I am afraid. With the holiday we didn't get the warning email from the farm this week, so some of our pre-share prep wasn't able to be done until post-share pickup. Not a huge thing, but it put us a little behind, CSA-wise. The only real comment from last week is that the Favas were fine. We did end up doing a pasta with them. It was good, but not so good as to warrant running out and searching for Favas. Maybe next time we are in Italy (ahh......Italy) we will try them at a restaurant.

The greens from these white beets are the only ones we are getting this week. It's a nice reprieve, since we've been having them in dishes and as sides for a few weeks now. We can't resist putting this radicchio into our favorite risotto. Cauliflower The internet seems to imply that the only use for red and black currants is to turn them into jelly. Who am I to disagree? Fresh, delicious, sweet raspberries. Oh cabbage, my old nemesis, we meet again. This guy will probably get slawed, though he's pretty big. I am sure that this summer we will continue our crusade to find good, non-slaw uses for this prolific vegetable. Currently, our only liked non-slaw recipe is a fall soup which we almost always freeze for later consumption.

More carrots More onions These two small heads of broccoli will probably go into a stir-fry with shrimp. The first zucchini of the season. One chubby green one and one pattypan, both will likely go into a side dish we've had before and liked. This farm always has tons of potatoes at their farmer's market table, so I think we need to gird our loins for an onslaught of the things. These are very thin skinned and need to be kept in the fridge. They do look really good though, in a leprous kind of way. We turned the previous kohlrabi into a pretty tasty slaw with carrots. This one will likely get cooked with lemon and honey, which is a recipe almost worth seeking out kohlrabi for.