We continue to get classic summer vegetables and fruit mid-August. Summer squash, beans, and tomatoes, especially. And more. This week we got:
1 pint mini tomatoes
1 pound summer squash
1 cucumber
2 peppers
1 bitter melon
1 eggplant
1 cantaloupe
2 pounds plums
2 pounds peaches
2 pounds apples
I have no idea what I’ll do with the bitter melon. It is a mystery to me. The tomatoes are gone, eaten in part with the cucumber. I think I’ll pickle the peppers. The eggplant was made into baba ghanoush – quite garlicky this time around.
I made the peaches into peach cobbler on Sunday, and it is quite tasty! The sprouted flour gives it a bit of a crunch. I may make this instead of crisp topping in the future, as I can get around the need to soak grains this way, plus it’s much less sweet. It’s sweetened with sucanat, which goes great with the peaches. It’s so far my favorite recipe in which to use sucanat.
I’ve been eating the apples out of hand. Sadly, the plums bit the dust after sitting out too long. Our plums this year have been a bit problematic, arriving over ripe to begin with. Still, the ones I’ve been able to eat have been fabulous.
It seems like everyone is confused about the bitter melon. My share partner and I cooked it into a stir-fry. We weren’t sure if we cooked it long enough, but it started out tasty and then OH! So bitter!! It wasn’t my favorite. Still, fun to try new things, that’s the best part of CSA 🙂
It’s still languishing in my refrigerator. I don’t like bitter things, in general, so I’ve been wary. But you are right – it IS fun to try new things! I’ll see if I can do anything with it later today.
I ended up making a black bean sauce stir-fry with chicken, some of the CSA squash (and a few other things) and the bitter melon. Although most recipes I found suggested blanching it before cooking with it (to calm the bitterness), I decided not to, but cooked it pretty well in the stir fry. It was still bitter, but not too much. And the black bean sauce helped. I also scooped out all the insides and seeds. Hope that helps. It was interesting and tasty, but not something I would seek out on a regular basis. 🙂
Heather, this sounds great! I’m assuming this is a Chinese (or other Asian) black bean sauce, so it’s fermented? I could see how those flavors would help with the bitterness. Maybe vinegar would help, too?