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 7

week 7 csa collage
Week 7 share from our CSA

This week’s share was a bit more modest than last, but still full of amazing fruits and vegetables. We got:

1 bunch beets
1 pound zucchini
1 head red leaf lettuce
1 pound string beans
1 bunch carrots
1 bulb fennel
1 cucumber
2.5 pounds red plums
2 pounds nectarines

The carrots came with the fronds, and I’m looking into ways to use them. They could be good!

I was considering lacto fermenting the fennel with carrots, but I’ve read that fennel can get bitter in the fermentation process, with lots of shrinkage after a few days. Carrot fennel slaw I think is in my future, instead.

The fruit continues to be amazing and I am loving eating the plums with raw yogurt for breakfast. Jenny from Nourished Kitchen recommend poaching yellow plums in honey-vanilla syrup, and I bet these red plums would also be great that way.

We’ll be eating salad with the lettuce as opposed to the no so successful lettuce soup I made last week.

Zucchini will be eaten with tomatoes from my garden!

Summer is amazing.

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.

How To Make a Shrub Syrup

bottled shrub

Lately, I’ve been on a preservation kick. So far, I’ve made jam/preserves, simple syrup, vinegar pickles, and now… shrubs. Actually, just one at this point.

Yes, shrubs. It sounds like a plant, but it’s a fruit syrup that basically consists of fruit, sugar, and vinegar in a 1:1:1 ratio. It’s another way to preserve seasonal fruit, hooray! And it’s easy to make.

My main reference in learning how to do this is this great article on Serious Eats, Cocktail 101: How to Make Shrub Syrups. Apparently the shrub was popular in Colonial America. They’d mix the shrub syrup with water, making for a refreshing summer drink. It pretty much got forgotten after refrigeration and products of the industrial food system became more and more popular in this country.

The shrub has been sort of  “rediscovered” here in the 21st century – I actually first heard about the shrub at The Queens Kickshaw after our food swap. Ben, one of the owners, was experimenting with them. I tasted a few he had put together and they sure were vinegary and tasty, but I like the tang of vinegar, so it was all good with me. It wasn’t until I was poking around online that I came across the Serious Eats article that talked about making shrubs in more depth.

So, we got a lot of plums in last week’s CSA share, and by the beginning of this week, they were really starting to ripen. I wanted to do something with them to extend their life – I didn’t have enough for jam really, so the shrub was a perfect solution. I had a cup of raw apple cider vinegar in the fridge, too, and some organic sugar on the shelf. Everything I needed!

I decided to make my shrub with the cold-process method. This way, the raw vinegar would get to stay raw. There is a way to make a shrub by cooking the fruit, too, which is preferred by some people. With the cold-process method, the brightness of the fruit will shine through and be a strong match for the vinegar.

quartered yellow plums
Yellow plums, washed, depitted, and quartered

I started by washing, pitting, and quartering enough yellow plums to make a cup of fruit. I then combined that with a cup of organic sugar. I stirred it together, put it in a glass bowl, covered it in foil, and set it in the refrigerator.

plums with organic sugar
Plums mixed with organic sugar

I let the fruit macerate for 24 hours. At the end of the 24 hours, I was looking for fruit sitting in syrup created by its juices and the sugar, which is what I found.

plums after 24 hours of macerating
Plums after 24 hours of macerating

Really ripe fruit would probably take less time to exude its juices and make a syrup, but even then you can leave the fruit in the fridge for a day. Even two or three days, it will be ok.

I then drained the fruit over a large stainless steel bowl, pressing the plums a little to get the last bits of juice out.

plum shrub - draining fruit
Draining the fruit

There was a bunch of sugar sitting on the bottom of the glass bowl, so I scraped that out and into the syrup.

plum syrup
Plum syrup

I then added a cup of raw cider vinegar to that, whisked it, then poured it into a bottle and capped it. Finally, I vigorously shook the bottle, attempting to dissolve some of the remaining sugar.

plum syrup with raw vinegar added
Plum syrup with raw vinegar added

I’ll likely have to shake the bottle more times to get the sugar to dissolve. The acids in the juice and vinegar will dissolve it all eventually.

I tasted it – it was tangy! And fruity. Reminded me of kombucha when it’s got a big tang. The shrub will mellow, though, and I’ll likely notice a substantial change in that direction after a week.

All in all, this is very exciting. I can see myself making shrubs all summer long. I expect the syrup would be great mixed with sparkling water, or make into this suggested cocktail from Serious Eats:

Pair a small amount of shrub (about half an ounce) with 2 ounces of vermouth or sherry. Top that with some seltzer or club soda.

It also might be good in wheat beer (just a splash) or with some gin.

Shrubs should last quite a while – at least a year in the fridge. Some believe you can keep it on the shelf instead, but I like my syruped drinks cold, so I’m just going to store mine in the refrigerator.

As far as the science behind the drink goes, here’s a great explanation from mixologist Neyah White:

When a shrub ages, it is like an ecosystem. The ambient yeast (yeast on the fruit itself and yeast from the air) turns the sugar into alcohol, and the acetobacter (the bacteria in unpasteurized vinegar) turns the alcohol into more vinegar. Eventually this will stabilize and not turn the whole shrub into fruit vinegar since the bacteria-induced pH change will stall out the yeast’s fermentation process (and thus the bacteria’s acetic acid-producing pathway).

Very cool. I like it when people talk about ecosystems in food.

So there you have it – shrubs!

This post is participating in Real Food Wednesday, hosted by Kelly the Kitchen Kop.

Hellgate CSA Week 5

CSA Week 5
Week 5 shares from the Hellgate CSA

This week we resumed receiving CSA shares (last week there was no delivery due to the Independence Day holiday). The biggest surprise was a pint of cherry tomatoes in our fruit share!  All in all, we received:

1 pound of fava beans
1 bunch of fennel
1 bag of snap peas
1 head of lettuce
1 bunch of swiss chard (broccoli rabe was another choice)
two apples
2 pounds of yellow plums
1 quart of sour cherries

I’ve already eaten a lot of this. The tomatoes are gone – last night I cooked half them with two of the zucchinis in olive oils and garlic, plus fresh herbs from my deck. Today I had them in a raw salad with more zucchini. The favas were sauteed in olive oil with garlic at the end and topped with a little fleur de sel.

The sour cherries will become cherry liqueur and hot cherry preserves. As I write this the cherries are macerating with dried peppers, vanilla bean, and sugar for preserves, and the liqueur is coming to be with cherries and sugar sitting in rum and vodka.

I may make a plum syrup with any of the plums we don’t eat simply out of hand.

Let me tell you – it is so great to have the veggies and fruit back!