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.

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.