CSA Week 14

Between learning Italian in our free time, me playing video games, and me working on writing my own video game, I have gotten myself very behind on the CSA post. I am going to attempt to do a flurry of catch-up posts, but we'll see how far I get before losing steam...

Assorted tomatoes I think of leeks as a spring thing, but this farm is rocking them in the fall. We have a ton of recipes that use them, and I don't think we've had to revert to subbing them for other onion-relatives yet. Nice! This farm has not been great about sending us what is in the share beforehand. With this share, we actually got that email two days after picking up the share. We did a lot of internet research on these two purple colored forms of peas. Turns out all our research was wrong. The first are a form of shelling pea (which we subbed into our fave pea pasta) called missippi crowder peas and the second are edible shell beans called dragon tongue beans. For the record, we had guessed purple hull peas and cranberry beans. This watermelon turned out to be yellow. We froze most of it and have been enjoying the resultant margaritas (they turn into a very fun color when you use both pink and yellow.)

Holy mother of bell peppers! This place sure likes 'em. Most of these either got stuffed (the larger ones) or sliced and used in a recipe for pepper chicken (which was quite tasty.) Caped gooseberries were less bitter than their non-caped brethren, but still had a certain oddness about them that it's hard to put my finger on. They had a sort of....almost savory or meaty flavor, but not in a necessarily good way. We ended up subbing them for fresh cranberries (augmented with some fresh cranberries) in a crisp with some of these pears. Apples mostly got turned into our favorite apple sauce. Fingerling potatoes got added to the giant pile of potatoes in our pantry. We have a few recipes for fingerlings, we just need to clear a whole in the menu plan for 'em.

CSA 2011 - Week 13

Last week's share went fairly well, and we even managed to use up the many peppers. We stuffed the poblanos and made an insanely spicy (but addictively delicious) salsa with the serranos.

Half of the watermelon got frozen and blended into margaritas where it takes on a pretty mild flavor. Since it's got more solids than ice at room temperature, the drinks keep their thickness even partway through drinking them. Next big thing, mark my words.

I did make the basil syrup for ice tea. It's actually pretty mild, and blends in pretty nicely with the tea flavor.

Summer squash is an item that we have been buried in by every previous CSA. We love it, but we are used to getting several a week for many weeks in a row. We have all sorts of savory and sweet dishes that use it, and we are fond of all of them. I wouldn't say that we look forward to the tenth week of it, but I will say this: We feel a little shorted this year. These guys (a mix of pattypan and odd little globular fellas) went into a dish with some leeks and feta cheese. These daikon radishes are getting split. Part will be shredded and added to slaw (with this blessedly small head of cabbage.) Part will be subbed for turnips in a root vegetable stew (our second foray into cooked radish!) Ah celery. You are a divisive vegetable. I like your crunch and your tang. Mary, less so. This went into a lentil soup that we love (as if we could not love anything with six slices of bacon) and will otherwise get snacked on. Though we got these potatoes, Mary still purchased yukon golds for the root veggie stew. Madness! These guys will go into our old standby, the Rosti (along with some shredded daikon.)

These tomatoes went all over this week. In pie with some of the corn. on Pizza with some of these peppers. Sliced and sprinkled with sea salt. Diced and tossed into salads (again with the peppers, I think there might be some kind of fling going on there.) Our carrots went into the lentil dish. When life gives you apples, you make apple sauce. Given that we will be grilling this evening in high-60 degree weather despite it being labor day, I fear we must admit that autumn is upon us. The good side of that is that we can finally feel good about making apple cake, which is what we'll likely do with the batch of apples we are sure to get in the next share. Radishes went in salads and got taken to work as snacks. This year's challenge veggie is definitely the peppers. We always get more than we need since we don't use a ton of them in cooking, but this CSA seems mad for them and sends a ton of them each week. They freeze very poorly (the texture breaks down) so we can't even fall back to that. Who would have thought that I'd be missing the cucumber onslaught from the last place?

Smokin'

I always joke that I should take up smoking. I actually find it to be a pretty gross habit, but man those smokers get a lot of breaks. Well as of this past weekend, I believe I am converted to the cause, thanks to this recipe for bourbon smoked chicken.

The great thing about the recipe is that there is no need for a smoker: You can do it right in a normal grill, even a gas one. We do have both gas and charcoal grills, but we use the charcoal one for special occasions (we'll be grilling a T-Bone on it for the long weekend, for example.) For weeknight cooking (or long cook times where we'd have to add more coals) it's hard to beat the convenience of turning on a knob.

The equipment and layout is shown here. Other than the grill, you just need a few disposable pans, a trustworthy thermometer (see below (we call this foreshadowing)), and some wood chips. In the layout shown, I am only heating the front burner, which is why the chips are piled in that area. The chicken in at the back of the grill, where it has the most clearance (the lid slopes more in the front.) Following the recipe, we tossed in half the (presoaked) chips and placed the brined and patted dry chicken over a pan of water (to help keep the temperature more even) and then kept the grill at 275 for two hours, adding more wood chips halfway through. We used a probe thermometer to monitor the temperature of the bird, so we didn't need to do anything other than adding the extra wood chips.

The other key piece of equipment is a comfy place to sit for two hours and a beverage or two. Unfortunately, the grill thermometer was right over the one active heating element, so it reported the grill as being hotter than it really was. Because of this, our two hour smoke turned into a three and a half hour one. Our probe actually has two readings, one for in the bird and one for the ambient temperature. In the future we will trust that, which should shorten the cooking time to the recommended length. And will there be a next time? Oh yes. Despite the long cooking time and some frustration with grilling in the dark due to that, the chicken had a great flavor and texture. It was totally cooked, but still very juicy with a great flavor imparted by both the brine and smoke. Definitely a keeper.

CSA 2011 - Week 12

Oh melon. Melon, melon, melon. This week we got two watermelons. Mary is a bit particular about not consuming any seeds, so cutting this up for consumption was pretty involved. The more solid colored one of these was the normal pink and the lighter one was yellow. We ate some of it and froze the rest for margaritas. This rutabaga is a harbinger of autumn, I am not at all happy about it. Thankfully they are called "storing vegetables" for a reason, so I can tuck it in the back of the fridge and pretend that it's July for a few more weeks. Glorious tomatoes. Most of what we planted this year were grape tomatoes, because they tend to do much better on our deck. It's nice to get the larger varieties from the CSA. These will go into this and that, including a corn and crab salad we're having for lunch today. Onions Garlic I am not quite sure what to do with this odd looking basil. We have a few pucks of pesto in the freezer already, so I may attempt something creative (basil simple syrup for flavoring ice tea?) or I may go easy and just make more pesto. Time shall tell.

Leeks to us are more of a spring thing for us, so we're a bit adrift with these. We'll likely sub them in for green onions, which is a bit of a stretch. What can I say, I'm a rebel. Beans I had always thought that Serrano chilies were milder than jalapenos, but it turns out I had that backwards. We are going to put most of these into a salsa that cooks the peppers to soften the heat, so hopefully that comes out well. Pears went into our fruit butter along with some of these (and if I'm being honest, last week's) apples. I also have an apple pie in progress as I type this, though it turns out our uglier apples are actually ugly pears, so it's more of an orchard fruit pie. I'm sure we'll muddle through. Pablano peppers got stuffed, and while the recipe wasn't horrible, it also wasn't anything special. The remaining ones (there are two left) are going into poblano burgers, so with luck that'll be a hit. We've thankfully found a potato salad that we love, so we've been a lot better about using them as they come in this year. Thanks Ina!

CSA 2011 - Week 11

Ah, midsummer. The corn is flowing, the tomatoes are ripe, and I am slacking off on the blog posts. All is right with the world.

Let's start with the elephant in the room, and by elephant I mean giant, elephantine mellons. The small one in the picture is a normal mellon size. The other two are....larger. Much larger. Most of the biggest one got turned into sorbet, and the other two are getting eaten as-is. If we get more next week (which seems likely) then I am going to cut it up, freeze it, and use it for a base to margaritas like we did with the watermelon last year. Corn is still sweet and delicious. So many peppers, we have no idea what to do with them. We actually made Chili over the weekend to consume some, even though that's much more a winter item. We also had them raw in salads and in a few other dishes. We'll like have to do a fridge-clearing roasted pepper salad soon. Red onions

We got two different types of apples this week, and it's looking like they will end up in pie. We also have a great fruit butter recipe that we usually make with pears that I am stumping for. We have one recipe that calls for watercress and we can never find it in the store. Do I remember what recipe that is, now that we have it? I do not. Red okra got roasted, just like the green stuff. This time I tossed it with a spice blend instead of just salt and pepper, and it turned out well. We made a fantastic vegetable gratin with these tomatoes and some zucchini. Potatoes Cucumbers These odd little fellas are actually eggplants, despite not being aubergine (see what I did there?) They are the size of a small apple and shockingly orange. We chopped them and used them in a new componata recipe, so we'll see how that is once I toast up some pitas.

CSA 2011 - Week 10

Last week's share went swimmingly, and the okra recipe we used (roasted with salt and pepper) was actually very good. There was a bit too much salt, but otherwise it was quite tasty. I'm still not buying okra.

Nice melons. These were cantaloupe and while they averaged to a normal size the standard deviation was, shall we say, high. Green peppers Garlic We were pretty thrilled to get more beets. This time they are golden beets and are going into our root vegetable gratin (along with several of these shallots.) The mail from the CSA describes banana peppers as being spicy, but I find them fairly mild in general. Not sure what we are going to do with such a pepper bonanza. Every head of cabbage is a little betrayal.

Tomatoes have arrived! We got quite a variety, with a few different types of full-sized ones as well as a bag of cherry-sized ones. We will make a salad with some of them, and a pie with the others (along with the corn from this week.) Baby artichokes are actually mature specimens of a variety that grow small. They supposedly are easier to prepare and have no toxic choke on the inside. We plan to make a salad with them. This mix of apples already contributed to a dessert with last week's pears, and the rest will become delicious maple applesauce. Baby white carrots will contribute to the gratin along with the beets.

CSA 2011 - Week 9

Despite me being gone for a fair chunk of last week, we actually did well keeping up with the share.

The cooked radishes were a success. Before cooking, these were pretty spicy and a bit fibrous and cooking really mellowed the heat and soften the flesh. It helps that the dish also had a wine, mustard, and tarragon sauce.

The other tricky bit had been the garbanzos. I had hoped to roast them, but on the day we wanted to have them we were running late, so we just boiled them in shell, popped them out (which was a huge pain in the butt since each pod contains just one to two beans), and tossed them with salt. I do still want to try roasted ones, but we can use a can for that.

I ended up triggering some bad settings on the camera this week, so the pictures are pretty low quality. I'd save live and learn, but it's hardly the first time I've done that.

This week's corn is mirai bicolor sweetcorn which the CSA administrator guy says is the the best they grow. We'll probably eat it mostly off the cob, this time around. Savanah Green Beans These six little fellas are yellow gypsy peppers. Even though we just did our grilled pepper salad, we will probably repeat that. We'll also toss some on a pizza this weekend. We have a great recipe for camponata that we'll make with this sicilian bicolor eggplant. A huge bunch of fidenza basil will get used mostly for pesto (which we'll freeze) but also allows us to make Chicken with Peaches and Basil. Yum. How surprising to see more broccoli.

This week's challenge will be okra. It's not a veggie that either of us particularly likes, though Mary is more forgiving of it than I. As with all troublesome veggies, the plan is to try it roasted. Baby vidalia onions These cool breeze cucumbers will get used for science pickles this weekend. It's hard for me to name this melon. It's milder than cantaloupe, but more strongly flavored than honeydew, with green flesh that turns orange near the seeds. Oddness. Regardless, we are just cutting it up and eating it as-is. We don't yet have a plan for these seckel pears, but I suspect that a dessert is in their future. Red thumb fingerling potatoes These tokyo green onions got eaten on tacos. How international of us.