Summer Corn and Peach Salad

peaches

A couple weekends ago, I had the pleasure to do a cooking demonstration at the Socrates Greenmarket. I did a demo last year and loved the experience, so it was nice to be back doing it again. I love Socrates Sculpture Park, and arrived about a half hour early so that I could get a tasty XXX Coffee iced coffee and sit and relax at the park before show time.

Since it was in the middle of summer, I chose to do a raw salad featuring corn, since it is at the height of its season. Fresh summer corn is so sweet, even uncooked. I chose to add peaches, also in season, for extra sweetness, with the bright flavors of lime and green pepper, the aromatic element from the fresh basil, and saltiness of the feta cheese. Everything went well together and people loved it! I was pretty happy about that. I also think it’s delicious.

meg-cotner-cooking-demonstration-socrates-greenmarket-astoria-queens

Here I am in the middle of my cooking demo. Image source: Queens Greenmarkets on Instagram.

I also learned that this demo had one of the highest number of attendees, so that also made me pretty happy. People asked a lot of questions and it was fun to answer and interact with everyone. I plan to return to the Greenmarket in the fall and make something appropriate to the season, so keep an eye out for that news later this year.

Summer Corn and Peach Salad

This salad is a beautiful combination of sweet, tangy, and salty flavors. A smoked element would also go well with this, either in the form of smoked paprika or some kind of smoked meat product, like bacon or speck. Another variant would be to roast all the vegetables—and the peaches— which would up the sweetness quotient.

4 ears of sweet corn, kernels removed
juice of 2 medium limes, about 4 tbs
1 small onion, diced
1 bell pepper, diced, or 1 hot pepper, diced
1/2 cup basil leaves, finely sliced (chiffonade)
2 peaches, peeled and diced
1/2 cup feta cheese, crumbled
ground black pepper

Juice two limes into a large bowl. Remove the husks and silk from the corn and cut off the kernels with a knife. Let corn and lime juice sit together while you prepare the rest of the vegetables.

Dice the onion and add to the corn and lime juice.

De-seed and remove the white ribs from a bell pepper, then dice the remaining pepper. If you would like to make this dish a little bit spicy, use a hot pepper and remove the seeds and ribs (keep any amount of the ribs and seeds in if you want more heat). Add that to the corn and lime juice.

Slice/chiffonade the basil and add that to the mixture. Lightly stir.

Peel and dice the peaches, and add them to the rest of the vegetables.

Stir everything together and add the feta, mixing it in until it’s incorporated. Add ground pepper to taste.

Yield: 4-6 servings

Cooking Demonstration at Socrates Greenmarket, August 10

socrates-greenmarket-j-glebocki farm-greens-potatoes-astoria-queens

This weekend, Saturday, August 10, I’ll be doing a cooking demonstration at the Socrates Greenmarket, located in the Socrates Sculpture Park in Astoria. I did one last year, which was really fun, where I prepared a Mexican Panzaella. This year I’ll be making a corn and peach salad. Yum, summer.

The cooking demo will be from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. It should be fun and delicious! Yes, there will be samples. Plus you can check out the rest of the market, which sells everything from produce to cheese, juice to coffee. The bread is also awesome. I’m definitely going to stick around and enjoy the day. The park has some works on display, too.

Socrates Greenmarket, Socrates Sculpture Park, Broadway and Vernon Blvd., Astoria, Queens, 11106 (map)

Hellgate CSA Week 13

CSA Week 13
What we got this past week in our Hellgate CSA share

This week was marked by a huge fruit share – awesome. Summer veggies are still with us, but fall arrived with some amazing crispy apples and succulent pears. In total, we got:

2 pounds of tomatoes
1 eggplant
1 pound green beans
1 pound peppers
1 bunch leeks
1 head lettuce
1 pound plums
2 pounds peaches
1 pound nectarines
2 pounds apples
2 pounds pears

I’ve been enjoying the tomatoes in quesadillas, with patties of turkey sausage (from the CSA), and I’ve also eaten them with the eggplant and peppers for a delicious saute (punctuated with home grown basil). I’ve been snacking on the apples and pears. The nectarines turned into a fruit crisp, the recipe for which I’ll post next week – it’s all naturally sweetened, with sprouted flour in place of the white flour.

I may end up making another shrub with last week’s peaches – needless to say, things got crazy last week, so no Week 12 will be posted.

Here’s to continued good eating!

Hellgate CSA Week 10

Week 10 Collage
Share from Week 10 of the Hellgate CSA

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.

Hellgate CSA Week 8

Hellgate CSA week 8 collage

This is the share we got a couple of weeks ago, on August 2. This was the day before I left for Washington, so I left most of it for our housesitter. So, we got:

1 head of lettuce
1 bunch radishes
2 pounds mixed of summer squash and cucumber
2 bell peppers
1 pound white peaches
1 pound plums
1 pound donut peaches

I ate half the tomatoes the night before I left. I took a few donut peaches and plums with me on the airplane, and they were a welcome change from the starchy snacks I was offered there.

I ended up fermenting the radishes with carrots from the week prior, and am excited to see how this mixture comes out.  The white peaches ended up going into peach thyme jam this weekend.

The following week, Week 9, will not be documented, for a variety of logistical reasons. Week 10 is this week, though!

Hellgate CSA Week 6

csa week 6 collage
Week 6 share from our CSA

This week in our CSA we moved full force into stone fruit season – yum. Nectarines and peaches made their debut, which made me really happy. There’s also lots of green stuff this week. We got:

1 bag of snap peas
1/2 pound of zucchini
1/2 pound of cucumbers
1 head of lettuce
1 pound of wax beans
1 bunch of spring onions
1 bunch of sorrel
1 pound of yellow plums
2 pounds of nectarines
2 pounds peaches
5 apples

I’ve already eaten the lettuce head. A recipe for a lettuce and mint soup arrived in my inbox, so I tried it. I must admit, it’s only ok. But ok enough to continue eating it over the next few days. I like drinking it out of a mug. I was able to use the onion heads in it, too. I also made a simple salad of chopped cucumber and onion in sherry vinegar and olive oil, with some hot peppers added.

I may pickle the snap peas again, and perhaps even make lacto-fermented dilly beans with the beans. Or saute them with garlic and ginger for dinner this week.

The peaches have been great in raw yogurt, and the plums are awesome for simply snacking on.

The way life has been moving at this point in my life, summer really will be over in the blink of an eye. Hard to believe we’re already at mid-July. September is just around the corner. I plan to enjoy the high summer bounty as long as possible and really savor it.

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.