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CSA Bounty – Week Six

CSA Bounty Week Six

This week we got a wonderful variety of vegetables in our veggie share, and some delicious stone fruit in the fruit share.  I decided to display them in a grid this time.  From top to bottom row, left to right:

lettuce, green beans, spring onions, carrots, cucumbers, plums, nectarines, peaches, mint.

I forgot to take a picture of the zucchini!  This week I got a large one, which I’ll use to put in zucchini muffins most likely.  The zucchini from last week went into zucchini fritters.  I’ll post about them at some point, after I tweak a few things.

distribution on a humid cool day

The weather was better than last week – not great, but better.  It was much cooler, thanks to thunderstorms that passed through this afternoon.  It’s still humid, though, and a heat wave is expected this weekend.  I have hopes that it won’t be as intense as last time.

I have plans to make a sorbet out of some of the stone fruit.  Perfect for hot weather!

Additionally, I got a chunk of chevre and some ground pastured beef.  Looking forward to having hamburgers tomorrow!

And finally, our dry bean and grain share was this week and the most striking thing was the oats.  I don’t think I’ve actually seen whole oats before.  They look perfect to sprout – I’ll have to look into a grain mill attachment for my Kitchen Aid.  Or, perhaps I will eat them as hot cereal.  I also came across a recipe for a sprouted oat milk, which is intriguing.

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Fresh Pea Salad

in the bowl

Last week I was fortunate enough to have shelling peas in my CSA share. Usually we get sugar snaps or snow peas in a season, but hadn’t gotten shelling peas before.  I really wanted to find a recipe that highlighted the fresh pea flavor.

peas peas peas

It was also hot last week, so I wanted to find something that involved minimal cooking.

I found this pea salad recipe on the 101 Cookbooks site, which is a great source of recipes with a true vegetable focus.  Heidi Swanson, the site owner, is from the SF Bay Area, so a lot of her recipes remind me of home. Anyway, I found the date-mint combination in the dressing to be quite intriguing, and since I have access to amazing medjool dates here in town, that was a no-brainer to make it.  The mint is refreshing, and I love how the lemon and chile give it a pleasant kick.

date mint lemon spicy dressing

Beware, though – aside from the pepitas, this recipe has virtually no protein, nor is there much fat in it.  Perhaps a little olive oil could be added, but I think even that might weigh things down.  So, this dish is best paired with something containing plenty of good fat, like pastured eggs, a selection of raw cheeses, or perhaps even a grass-fed burger!

pepitas and peas

It is a delicious salad.  So refreshing and a wonderful combination of flavors.  It also allowed me to use up some of my lettuce, always a challenge for a CSA member this time of year.

salad put together

This salad makes a lot, and I ate it for three days, almost finishing it off.  It’s a wonderful salad to share with friends and loved ones.

Fresh Pea Salad
From 101 Cookbooks

I used a hand blender and it worked great! As you add more water to the dressing, it definitely gets easier to grind up.

1 cup fresh mint leaves (just leaves, no stems)
2 dried dates, pitted
1/2 of a small serrano chile, stem removed (half a jalapeño also works)
a squeeze of fresh lemon juice and zest from that lemon

1 1/2 cups fresh peas
1 small head of romaine lettuce, cut into shreds
1/2 cup toasted pumpkin seeds
fine grain sea salt

To make the mint-date dressing, puree the mint, dates, chiles and lemon juice and zest using a food processor or hand blender. Blend until uniform in texture. Thin it out by adding a tablespoon of water at a time until it is a consistency that you can drizzle. Taste and adjust for lemon and spiciness.

When you go to cook the peas, the key is not overcooking them. Fill a big bowl with ice water and set aside. Add some salt (as you would pasta water) and the peas. Bring six cups of water to a boil in a medium saucepan. You are just going to boil the peas for a very short time. Don’t leave the stove. Somewhere between ten and twenty seconds.You want them just barely tender, so they still pop in your – mouth. Quickly drain and dunk the peas in the bowl of ice water.

Just before serving gently toss the peas, lettuce, and pumpkin seeds with about half of the dressing and a couple pinches of salt. Taste and add more dressing if you like. Finish with a pinch or two of your favorite finishing salt (I like fleur de sel).

Serves 2 – 4

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CSA Bounty – Week Five

hot distribution

Well, this week brought searing heat, wilted CSA members, and serious summer vegetables and fruit!  Peaches, apricots, and plums scream “summer” to me.

peaches

plums and apricots

All the fruit has been fantastic eaten out of hand.  It would make good sorbet, too.

The vegetable I was most excited about was the fava beans.  I look forward to them every year.

fava beans

I think they are gorgeous pods, but the beans inside are even more fantastic. I shell them and then remove each bean’s outer covering, throw them into a pan containing a little hot olive oil, and cook them till they start to brown a bit.  Sometimes I cook them with onions.   Then I eat them with fleur de sel on top.  Perfection!

We got more greens – butter lettuce and curly cress.  Not much to do with them except make a salad, which I did.

butter lettuce

cress

We also got fennel – I’ll probably braise it.

fennel

Oh, and spring onions!

spring onions

And peas! Shelling peas – I made a tasty salad with them that involved mint and dates (recipe to come).

shelling peas

Lastly, we got zucchini, which was a surprise! I chose 5 perfect medium sized squash, which I will make zucchini fritters out of this weekend. I’ll probably grate whatever is left and freeze it for zucchini bread.

zucchini

So much great produce!  I just love my CSA.

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CSA Bounty – Week Four

This week brought us a variety of things, more than just greens (oh, they were there, too).  The vegetable that most excited me was beets!  We got some gorgeous ones.

beets

I plan to roast them and make  salad out of them with a light vinaigrette and chevre; I got a nice soft grassy chevre this week, too, which will go great with these beets.

We got a couple kind of peas – snow peas and snap peas.

snow peas

sugar snap peas

One way I really like to prepare snow peas is to grill them, add a little olive oil and fleur de sel.  They are very tasty this way.   Snap peas are great just raw, by themselves or cut up in salads – that’s how I ate some of them last night, in a giant salad.

More lettuce. More lettuce!  The common cry of the CSA member.

romaine

I’ll be eating salad all week.

The fruit share got pretty interesting this week.  We got a big pint of blueberries, and they are fantastic!  They are perfect eaten out of hand, but would be good in ice cream, or on yogurt, or even in sprouted wheat muffins.

blueberries

We also got some of the first stone fruit of the season, plums and peaches.

plums

peaches

I was actually surprised to get peaches, because I think of them as a late July-August fruit, but things have been so hot so far this summer that it’s understandable that we might get them earlier, or perhaps this is an earlier variety.  I love peaches, so I’m pretty excited about this.

Hooray for good, local, seasonal eating!

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CSA Bounty – Week Three

Wow, this week is like Christmas!  Everything is green and red.  Well, except for the lavender.

lavender

As gorgeous as it is, I have lavender growing on the back deck. So, I traded mine with a woman who loves lavender, for more chard!

chard

We got a couple of spicy greens – cress and green mustard greens.

cress

green mustard greens

I’ll need to find a recipe for these greens – on an initial search I came across a recipe for balsamic-glazed chickpeas and mustard greens, but I’d need to make a number of adjustments, as fat-free is not my kind of thing.  I could add some of my pastured chicken broth, naturally fermented tamari, and use coconut sugar.  I’ll definitely post about it if it turns out well!

We also got a bag of sugar snap peas.

bags of snap peas

I ate a bunch tonight, all raw and some dipped in homemade mayonnaise – so good!  It’s a nice lemony mayo, which tastes great with these peas.

This was the first week of the fruit share!  We got cherries and apples.  Haven’t tried the apples, but the cherries are divine.

cherries

apple

We weren’t sure we’d get cherries, as at this growing season has accelerated a lot of the traditional spring fruit. I’m so grateful there were cherries for us!

Can you tell that I like cherries? Heee!

I look forward to good eating this week.

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CSA Bounty – Week Two

We had another week without radishes, but with plenty of lettuce. Last year we got a head each week for almost the entire season; I wonder if this year will be the same.  I will eat a large salad tonight.  This week we got:

week 2 menu

The strawberries were better this week than last week, I think, which is kind of like saying we got 12 oz of gold this week over last week’s 11.5 oz.  Both weeks have brought us amazing strawberries. We ate them for breakfast this morning with some cantaloupe I cut up last night.

strawberries week 2

This week’s lettuce head was a leaf lettuce in a very unusual color – kind of the color of manzanita wood.

red lettuce

We got cilantro this week!  Also dried black beans.  I’m thinking of making a black bean salad tonight with them both.

cilantro

bagging black beans

I have a share of beans and grains from Cayuga Organics, which grow the best beans I’ve ever had.  Their grains are also amazing.

We also got asparagus – I think we are at the end of the season.

asparagus

Last night I had some of it and it was so good.  Simply pan roasted with some salt.  I ate it with a quesadilla I fried in coconut oil, made with raw pepperjack cheese (also from the CSA), some cilantro and Tortilleria Nixtamal tortillas.  We had stopped in over the weekend and picked some up on our way home from touring the Louis Armstrong House in Corona (fabulous).  They really are the best tortillas around.

In addition to the veg, berries, black beans and grains (farro!), my meat and dairy order came in – my freezer is now full of grass fed/finished beef, organic chicken breasts and turkey sausage, and I’ve got a nice goaty chevre to look forward to tonight, too.

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Jerusalem Artichoke Fritters

plated

[This post is based upon a post I wrote for the Hellgate CSA blog earlier this week.]

So, our CSA started up this week – I am so happy about this!  We have six months of beautiful, local, organic produce ahead of us, and I can’t wait to see what the season will bring.

This week I was intrigued by the inclusion of jerusalem artichokes in our initial season share (I thought for sure we’d get radishes!). I didn’t want to eat them raw, nor did I want to roast them, so I searched the internet for something interesting and tasty-sounding. I found that in these jerusalem artichoke fritters, which I prepared Tuesday night.

in the pan

I loved them! The combination of the jerusalem artichokes, carrots, and shallots is lovely, and the chive-lime sour cream is wonderful – this is some seriously good sauce. These fritters are easy to put together and take only about a half hour, start to finish, to make.

cooked fritters

I was also happy to be able to use some of my Cayuga Organics cornmeal in them as well! Sprouted wheat flour worked perfectly in place of conventional white flour, so I was pleased by this adjustment.

Jerusalem Artichoke Fritters
Lightly adapted from the New York Times

While grating them, the jerusalem artichokes oxidize quickly, so don’t be alarmed by dark coloring that appears after grating.

1/2 pound jerusalem artichokes, scrubbed
1 carrot, peeled
3 shallots, thinly sliced
2 tablespoons yellow cornmeal
1/4 cup sprouted wheat flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
Fresh black pepper to taste
hot sauce to taste
2 eggs
3 tablespoons chopped chives
1/2 cup sour cream
1 tablespoon fresh lime juice
Oil for frying (coconut oil would be wonderful)

Heat oven to 250 degrees. Grate Jerusalem artichokes and carrot into a mixing bowl. Add shallots. Stir together cornmeal, flour, salt and baking powder, and stir in, mixing well. Season with pepper and hot sauce to taste. Add eggs, and mix thoroughly.

Combine chives, sour cream and lime juice, and set aside.

Pour oil into a large skillet, so that it just covers the bottom of the pan. Heat over medium-high heat until sizzling. Drop mixture in by tablespoons, flattening slightly. Fry until crisp and golden brown, turning once. Transfer to oven on a baking sheet lined with paper towel while frying more. Serve with sour cream mixture.

Yield: 4 servings.