Produce from a CSA Share

Big, somewhat eclectic box this week. This is a great example of what it's like to get your produce from a CSA share.

The way it generally works for us is:

• Watch the "What's in the Box" list.
• Start thinking about what we'll do with the food.
• Pick up the box on Thursday.
• Plan a few meals in which to enjoy the harvest.
• Decide what else we need for the week.
• Head to the grocery store.

What's really different here is where you start. With a CSA, you have to start with what you have on hand or risk wasting food.  Without a CSA, you start with what you want to eat and buy what you need. Given that each week involves some planning, I find having a list of ingredients to work with simplifies the process. Admittedly though, some weeks are simpler than others.  This week, for example, includes some interesting items. It's also a lot of food:

• Raw Peanuts
• Spring Garlic
• Gold Turnips
• Yellow and Purple Carrots
• Green Mustard
• Kale
• Red Bearded Scallions
• Red Cabbage
• Cilantro
• Arugula

For dinner last night we made Green Garlic Risotto from The New Cook's Tour of Sonomaby Michele Anna Jordan, served along side a green salad with Dijon vinaigrette and a long time favorite, Baked Carrot Oven Fries from Heidi Swanson's 101 Cookbooks blog. The spring garlic, yellow and purple carrots, and red bearded scallions were gone in a flash.

Some of the remaining ingredients (raw peanuts, turnips, and mustard greens) remind me of the South, where I lived for nearly a decade. For these I'll take my inspiration from Bryant Terry's Vegan Soul Kitchen for Spicy Goobers and a batch of Roasted Turnips and Shallots with Turnip Green Soup. Our turnips came without the greens, so substituting mustard greens in their place.

The cabbage will replenish our sauerkraut supply and the cilantro (which came with its roots intact) will be replanted.  The arugula from this week and last week will become Arugula Pesto. The kale will just have to wait...

Experimenting with Cuisines: Moroccan Food

This week's box contained:

• Chantenay Carrots
• Sweet Corn
• Red Cabbage
• Desiree Potatoes
• Bunched Parsley Root
• Melons
• Strawberries
• Lettuce (traded for more parsley root)

Having just finished LuLu in Marrakech, I took my inspiration for the week from Morocco.  If you've never tried it, Moroccan food is exceptional.  Intensely flavorful, simple to prepare and, for the most part, really healthy.

I happen to have a tagine pot that I look after for a Moroccan friend.  I decided to put it to use for dinner tonight and made a mixed vegetable tagine, loosely based on a recipe from the BBC's Good Food site.

Making a tagine is easy and can be done on the stove top in a Dutch oven or a small stockpot. The process is as follows:

• Saute aromatics (onions, garlic, and the like) in olive oil,
• Add the spices and stir till fragrant,
• Add a can of diced tomatoes,
• Add a mixture diced vegetables and beans
• Add a cup of water, mix well, then
• Cover and simmer till the vegetables are tender

Serve over couscous.  The variations are endless.  Tagines are really a braise, so anything you'd consider cooking that way can apply here.  The Moroccan spices are heavenly and well worth a go, but the cooking technique lends itself to any flavor variation.

Seasonal Vegetable Tagine
... serves 4 generously as a main course

2 small carrots, diced
2 small turnips, diced
2 small zucchini, diced
2 medium onions, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 14.5 oz can of diced tomatoes
1 14.5 oz can chickpeas, drained and rinsed
2t  agave nectar
4t  ras el hanout
3 T harissa
olive oil
water
salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Saute the onions in olive oil over medium heat till translucent; add minced garlic and stir till fragrant.  Add spices and stir till fragrant.  Toss the prepared vegetables and chickpeas together, then place in the base of a tagine. Top with tomato mixture, add water and cover.  Bake, covered, for 1 hour stirring occasionally.

Other Moroccan recipes I'd like to try include:

• Moroccan Spiced Carrots
• Spiced Tomato and Couscous Soup
• Vegetarian Harira

Kitty Morse is well known in the US for her Moroccan cookbooks. I've just ordered The Vegetarian Table: North Africa and am anxiously awaiting the book expected from Mourad Lahlou of Aziza in San Francisco.  More Moroccan food to follow!

Weeks that Don't Go So Well...

This week's box contained:

• White Turnips
• Lettuce (left in trade box)
• Scallions
• Strawberries
• Hamburg Parsley (Parsley Root)
• Young Walla Walla Onions
• Heirloom Tomatoes

It was a tough week for us this week for two reasons. First, available time; this was just a busy weekend. Second, the box contents did not really inspire...

Weeks like this happen however, so what did we do?  Probably exactly what most people would do in the same situation:

• Lettuce: I'm not a salad fan, so I simply acknowledged that and left the lettuce in the swap box for someone else to enjoy.  Curiously enough, there was nothing in our swap box to trade.
• Strawberries: Ours had already started to mold on pick-up, so they went to the compost pile straightaway.
• Heirloom Tomatoes:  HEAVEN!  If you are a tomato fan, you don't need to do much to enjoy them when in season.  We ate a few sliced with salt and used the remainder for grilled bruschetta tonight.  See the recipe we regularly follow here.
• Everything else: Evert-Fresh bags for the win!  I trimmed the foliage and put everything else in storage to wait for time or inspiration.

What do you do when you're at a loss for ideas or without available time?

As I write this I realize I'm a tad more inspired than I originally let on. Scallions are certainly all purpose ingredients, but they shine on their own in Chinese Scallion Pancakes. If you've not tried them, please do. They certainly compliment a meal, but can also be a meal in their own right if you are OK with simple pleasures.

The turnips will surely be roasted. My favorite twist is adding white truffle infused olive oil or garnishing with truffle salt.  Given that the Hamburg Parsley is roastable too, I'll likely toss it in with the turnips.

Last but not least the onions.  I did make a sublime breakfast, quite ad hoc, with these: toasted bagel with cream cheese, sliced tomatoes, sliced onions, and capers ~ really fantastic.  Aside from that, they'll sit with our other onions until we're ready to cook something that calls for them.

Hamburg Parsley

CSAs have a way of making me feel like I need to "do something" with the produce. Evert-Fresh bagshelped me realize there's less time pressure than one might think...

Box Contents: April 23, 2010

This week's box contains:

• Strawberries
• Salad Mix (traded for more tarragon)
• Broccoli
• Butternut Squash
• Snap Peas
• French Tarragon
• Fennel

Strawberries
We'll eat these out of hand for breakfast tomorrow.  We've found the strawberries from the farm don't keep as long as those from the store.  No sacrifice of course as they are much, much more flavorful.

Broccoli
I chopped this up for use in a stir fry or simple steaming later this week.  The stems were steamed for adding to the beagles kibble throughout the week.  My good friend Teresa,  a fellow Two Small Farms CSA member, may post a recipe for a dish she made with pineapple, coconut milk, and a few other ingredients ~ it sounded delicious.

It is worth mentioning Evert-Fresh bags here; they really extend the life of produce.

Butternut Squash
No idea, thankfully it stores well for quite some time.  Highly likely this will be come soup if we are lucky enough to get another cold snap.

Sugar Snap Peas
I'll take this for snacks this week, served with hummus.

French Tarragon
Too much tarragon. My absolute favorite use for tarragon is Bearnaise sauce, which is absolutely not vegan.  Getting through two bunches will be a challenge...

Fennel
No problem!  We love fennel.  One bulb will go into tonight's dinner and the other will be roasted and served on a tartine.

Grilled Spring Vegetable Platter
Serves 2 generously

1 bulb fennel, cut into wedges
4 medium sized turnips. trimmed and quartered
1 artichoke, trimmed and halved
1 head of cauliflower, sliced into "slabs"
1 bunch asparagus, trimmed
1 red onion, trimmed and quartered leaving a small portion of the root end intact
fresh tarragon vinaigrette

Steam artichoke for 15 minutes prior to halving; remove choke.  Toss all vegetables with salt, pepper, and olive oil.  Cook over hot grill, cooking about 8 minutes per side for all of the vegetables.  Serve with fresh tarragon vinaigrette.

Box Contents: March 19, 2010

As expected, this week's box included:

• Savoy Cabbage
• Adolescent Lettuces (swapped for more turnips)
• Butternut Squash
• Fennel
• Leeks
• Portuguese Kale
• Red Spring Onions
• Baby White Turnips
• Chantenay Carrots

The first dish of the year was roasted vegetables, using ingredients from the box and a few we had on hand:

Roasted Vegetables

1 cup Brussels sprouts
1 cup baby white turnips
1 cup new potatoes
1 cup Chantenay carrots
1 cup red spring onions
small handful peeled garlic cloves

Preheat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.  Dice all vegetables to an even size and toss with salt, pepper and olive oil.  Roast for 30-40 minutes, stirring occasionally.

We also made Savoy Cabbage and Sausage Soup from Every Night Italian: 120 Simple, Delicious Recipes You Can Make in 45 Minutes or Less. Of course the sausage we used was vegetarian, but my omnivore husband Sean was quite happy with the result.

Other dishes planned for this week include:

• Portuguese Kale and Potato Soup
• Butternut Squash and Leek Soup