Tag: recipes

One of the things you have to do when a farm share is dumping a
large box of produce into your car’s trunk every week is have some
general recipes to use up the stuff from last week when the stuff
for next week is coming.

So Tuesday I put all the salad greens I still had into a salad
and fed it to the band. Then yesterday I made a stew of the
cookable stuff still hanging around.

This was basically the Bok Choy from the first week and the
Kale from last week. So I took two cans of tomatoes, a cup or so
of quinoa, two cups of liquid (in my case, a cyser that’s too dry to drink straight) a can of pinto beans (if I’d been organized, I would
have soaked beans early in the day, but I wasn’t), two medium
onions, several cloves of garlic, and some seasonings, and threw
everything in a pot. I sauteed the onions, the garlic and the
stems from the leafy vegetables in olive oil before adding them to
the pot. I let this simmer while I practiced tuba and recorder
and vocalized, and then had it for dinner.

I don’t have feedback from anyone else, but I went back for
seconds. It will be a good thing to have around for meals when I
don’t feel like cooking any of the wonderful things in this week’s
share.

One of the exciting things that happened last week that didn’t
have anything to do with Early Music was that my farm share
started delivering.

Of course, I had less time for cooking and spent more time
eating out than usual last week, so I haven’t done much with it except eat
a lot of salads for lunch. But the band is coming over tonight,
and I have dinner with friends on Thursday and the party on Sunday, so I’m sure I’ll start getting rid
of all those bags in the refrigerator faster than I have been.

Here’s some of the email they sent me last week before I picked
up the share:

Spinach, one pound. We’ve had a warm spring, and this first spinach is big! The flavor is outstanding, and you can eat it stem and all. The spinach, like just about all of our produce, is washed once by us. You will likely want to wash it again, to remove that last of our fine sandy loam topsoil from the leaves.

Salad mix, 1/2 pound. Our mesclun is a mix of lettuces, tat soi, mizuna, baby red kale, and a handful of other mild greens. We washed it twice, but it will want another washing. The key to keeping the mesclun and other greens fresh all week is to store the greens dry. You can pat them dry with a towel, or, better yet, wash and spin them dry with a salad spinner, then store in a sealed plastic bag or plastic container.

Lettuce, 2 heads. We grow a dozen or so head lettuce varieties over the course of the season. The butterheads are especially delicious this time of year (my 10 year old niece, a picky eater, had 3 helpings of “really good” salad last night). We’ve included one butterhead and one leaf lettuce today.

Radishes A crunchy addition to salads, we grow these only in spring. Their grand size is evidence of the warm spring. I just found a recipe for Sauteed Radishes with Radish Greens or Arugula in the Farmer John’s Cookbook. Basically, sautee quartered radishes and the greens in butter, lemon, salt and pepper. Sounds interesting…

Bok Choy Also known as Pak Choi, this Asian cooking green is lovely sautéed, in stir-fries and soups. Store it loosely wrapped in a plsatic bag in the fridge, so the outer leaves don’t wilt. To prepare, pull or cut the stalks away from the base. Cut the stalks in crescents like celery. The leaves will only need brief cooking time, so add them at the very end. See the recipe below.

Arugula This green is slightly peppery, and very tender today. We grow it under row covers, to protect the leaves from nibbling beetles. Try in salads or on sandwiches. The snappy taste will mellow if you slightly wilt the arugula.

Salad Turnips These “Hakurai” turnips are like a sweet radish, and are delicious raw in salads, grated or chopped. We also like them sauteed with greens. Unlike the more traditonal fall turnip, these Hakurai are too watery for roasts or stews – I find they get mushy.

Coming Soon: Strawberries.

I had Hakurai turnips in the farm share last fall, and I didn’t
think of eating them raw, so I braised them in white wine, and it
was good, but I’ll probably try them in a salad this time.

This is making me hungry, so I’m going to go cream the spinach
and have it on toast.

The last I heard, there were still a few shares left, so if you
live in this part of the world (Boston area or Winchester, New Hampshire) and this sounds interesting, go to
the Picadilly Farm
site and sign up.

I had lots of ingredients but limited time to make a contribution to a
cookout last Monday.

So I decided to just roast all the vegetables and then put them
in a salad.

I sliced a bulb of fennel, quartered an onion, added a pound
of potatoes, slathered all of this with olive oil, put them on the
broiler pan in a 500 °F oven until the potatoes were done.

Then I let them cool, cut the potatoes into halves or thirds,
and put it all in a covered bowl to take to the picnic.

At serving time, I added some of my tofu vinaigrette.

Tofu vinaigrette is basically like regular vinaigrette, except
you blend in some tofu. If you’re buying the tofu specially for
this purpose, you get the silken kind, but whatever you keep
around works.

There was a nice roasty flavor, and the tofu vinaigrette is a
really pleasant dressing. It isn’t overly acidic, but still has
flavor.

Several people took seconds, and my mother took most of what
was left, so I had only a small contribution to Tuesday’s lunch
when I got home.

The last two company dishes I’ve made have been lots nicer
because I bought an 8-ounce package of dried trumpet mushrooms from Earthy
Delights.

It was recommended on the New York Times Bitten
Blog, with some very flowery language about the texture of
the mushrooms after reconstitution being very similar to fresh
mushrooms.

That isn’t my experience — they seem as slimy and rubbery in
texture as other dried mushrooms I’ve reconstituted. But if you
buy in bulk they are cheaper, and if you chop them up fine
enough you don’t mind the texture.

And you get the reconstituting liquid to cook with. These seem
to have less sand in them than some, although you still watch
the tail end of the liquid when you’re adding it to
anything.

My favorite thing to do with the liquid so far was to use it to
cook kasha. The kasha is already an earthy taste, and having
the mushroom soaking liquid makes it even better.

I got this recipe from the WildYeast
blog. I baked it yesterday morning, and fed it to dinner
guests last night. We all enjoyed it.

I don’t cook with a scale, so I converted the grams to cups of
flour and water. The dinner guests are vegans, so I converted
the grams of honey to cups of maple syrup. And I used whole
wheat flour instead of all-purpose.

I also threw everything into the bread machine and baked it on
the quick bread cycle instead of
making syrups and adding ingredients a quarter cup at a time.

The result was a pretty thin batter, that baked into a very
moist loaf, not the hard dry one that needs to be dunked in
coffee described in the post.

Another subtle flavor I ended up adding was coffee – I didn’t
have an orange to zest, but I did have some hard-as-rocks
bitter orange peel with my brewing supplies. My little mortar
and pestle wasn’t doing very well turning the rocks into
powder, so I used my coffee mill, so some coffee grounds got
into the recipe along with the anise, mustard, cinnamon, maple
syrup and
orange peel.

In any case, it was a fine combination of subtle flavors. I
was interested in seeing how the mustard went with the other
flavors – I don’t think I could have identified it if I hadn’t
known it was there.

If I weren’t cooking for vegans, I think I’d use the honey
instead of the maple syrup – I think it would go better with
the anise and orange peel.