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.

CSA 2011 - Week 4

Last week's share went pretty well, though we do still have a large bag of beet and turnip greens taking up valuable fridge real estate, even after making a few different dishes. We have a good recipe for gingered greens that calls for three pounds of mixed greens, so we'll likely attempt to clear things out with that, this week. The new item last week had been the rapini, which we prepared as we would kale (which seemed to be its closest relative.) It was good, but I can't say that it tasted significantly different than kale to us. Nothing to fear, but nothing to seek out. Despite my big talk, I once again did not do anything exotic with my scapes. They ended up in three or four different dishes, with some left over. Maybe next year.

I am not sure what we'll do with these purple haze carrots. We like to roast carrots, but since these look so odd they may just be eaten raw as snacks. Last week's tokyo turnips got consumed with the beets in a gratin. This week we will probably try something that's a bit more turnip focused. A lot of the recipes we find are much more autumnal than we are looking for in June (even a rainy, cold June) so we may ask the magical internet for a good option. Spring onions As far as I can tell, fava beans are lima beans with more work. Also, I've heard they go well with liver. They are a large bean that needs to be shelled twice (once from the pod, then once from a tough skin around the actual bean) that is popular in Italian cooking. Neither of us have had them before, so we'll report back next week how it went. Florence Fennel sounds like a character from a children's book about misunderstood vegetables.

More beets! This time it's chioggia and kestral red beets. We had to bail on our favorite beet recipe last week due to having guests who were beet-averse, so we will almost certainly do that this week. Mmmm....roasted beet and caramelized onion salad... Tuscan kale will get added to the big bag o' greens along with two types of beet greens and turnip greens. Yikes. Emerald Broccoli These jewel strawberries are sadly the last of these berries for the year. But all hope is not lost: Blueberries, raspberries, and currants are coming into season, so we should start seeing those. We till have a little strawberry frozen yogurt left-over due to my tendency to make ice creams when there is already another dessert available, but maybe we'll have that done in time for me to justify blueberry sorbet. If not, blueberry pie!

CSA 2011 - Week 3

Another good week of CSA-ness down. I did end up making the strawberry ice cream (frozen yogurt, actually) and it's delicious and bursting with fresh berry flavor. We also made a seemingly simple but very good pasta with the peas, winning Mary over. She has even forgiven it for needing thirty minutes of pea shelling prep, it was so good. Wow! Surprisingly, we got no lettuce this week. In previous years we have gotten a landslide of it all spring and early summer, so it's a nice change to have a week off.

Our email from the farm indicated that these are "real baby carrots". Most baby carrots from the store are actually regular sized carrots whittled down to a smaller size to feed America's all-consuming obsession with baby eating. We'll see how these differ and report. Not sure what we'll do with them, which means we'll probably roast them. We weren't expecting it, but we got a bunch of kholrabi this week. It tastes like a mix of cabbage and broccoli, has a texture like a firmer radish, and looks like a alien softball. We are going to try a slaw with it, this time around. We plan on doing a quick stir fry of these sugar ann sugar snap peas as a side. We've done it before and it elevated the starchier store-bought ones, so I am curious to see how it works with the much sweeter fresh ones. We may be ruining this recipe by doing it right. It seems too early for turnips, yet here are some Tokyo market turnips. We have a few good recipes, but to me root veggies are more of an autumn/winter thing, so we may have to figure out a use that's more summery. More red spring onions.

Hiding on the left, looking for all the world like a beet green, this sprigariello rapini is apparently of the broccoli family. The internet tells me that it's basically broccoli where you eat the leaves instead of the flowers. Not yet sure what we'll do with it. Another one that seems eary (but I am not looking a gift horse in the mouth) is yellow rangel beets. We may actually branch out from our several well loved beet recipes and try a new one (roasted and tossed with citrus sections.) To the untrained eye it doesn't look like we got many cooking greens, but since we tend to eat the greens from beets and turnips, we actually have a giant bag of them in the fridge, awaiting their turn to become culinary delights. The closest thing we got to lettuce this week was baby spinach, and I think the beet salad calls for it. Score! If that's not the case, we may buy a small head of lettuce at the store to consume this as part of salads. Ah, spring; time of berries; how we love you. We have family coming to visit for the weekend, so these Jewel and Cavendish Strawberries will get cut up and eaten over lemon pound cake. The pound cake is the French Pastry School recipe that I love to fiddle with (Lemon Ginger Pound Cake and Earl Gray Pound Cake were both amazing) but since the berries are the star here I will likely just make the original recipe. It's still great. Swiss chard will get scrambled with eggs and herbs for dinner. Every year I struggle to figure out a great use for garlic scapes and every year I end up subbing them for regular garlic. Since we already made our eight clove garlic lover's rub this past week with the green garlic and associated scapes, I hope that this will be the year I get inspired. We'll see. An idea is forming to char them on the grill to mellow the flavor and bring in some smokier tones, then puree the lot into a white bean dip. We'll see if that happens...