CSA Booty - Week 2

Week two's CSA pickup included some repeats from last week (not surprising) and a few new items.

This week's share was:

• 2 heads arugula
• 2 heads broccoli rabe
• 2 heads bok choy
• 1 head Chinese cabbage
• 2 heads lettuce
• bunched baby shallots
• cutting herbs: basil, Thai basil, parsley, thyme, chives (I took mostly the blossoms)
• Eagle-eyed readers will notice that I'm missing an item in my list. I got distracted taking pictures and didn't realize I'd shorted myself until I got home. Ah well.

So here's what I think I'm doing with these items this week:

• Arugula is going to get sautéed with some of the shallots and served on a pizza tonight along with some homemade sausage.
• The broccoli rabe will be sautéed down with a ton of garlic and served on a roast pork sandwich.
• The bok choy will be a side dish for some kind of brown rice-bedded stir fry, most likely with carrots, celery and more of those shallots.
• I'm going to make kimchi out of the cabbage - I love kimchi and it's super easy to make.
• ... and the lettuce goes into salads.

So how'd I do with last week's haul? Here's we ate (and what CSA items were used) last week:

• Greens soup (broccoli rabe, arugula)
• Bok choy stir fry (bok choy)
• Swiss chard tabouli (Swiss chard) - this was going to be chard leaves stuffed with tabouli, but the dinnertime showed up much sooner than expected.
• Beet quiche (beets, Swiss chard)
• Rhubarb caramels, rhubarb syrup
• The herbs and chive blossoms were sprinkled over salads and dishes as garnishes.
• The lettuces went into green salads.

This Summer, I am chronicling my first CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) experience. My CSA share is from Arrowhead Farm, a farm based in Newburyport, MA. Each week, I am posting about what was in my share and what I'm doing with it. By way of full disclosure, I won my share through a raffle and am not paying for it. However, Arrowhead did not know I was entered in the raffle, and I received no special consideration because of this blog.

Use Your Booty: Bok Choy Stir Fry

Two gorgeous heads of bok choy were in my CSA box. There wasn't enough to feed the two of us, plus enough for lunch leftovers, so I stretched it into a rice noodle stir fry. To the bok choy I added 4 carrots, cut into rough julienne; a 1/4 head of cabbage, shredded; scallions and cilantro. Then I topped the whole deal with a fried egg.

This Summer, I am chronicling my first CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) experience. My CSA share is from Arrowhead Farm, a farm based in Newburyport, MA. Each week, I am posting about what was in my share and what I'm doing with it. By way of full disclosure, I won my share through a raffle and am not paying for it. However, Arrowhead did not know I was entered int he raffle, and I received no special consideration because of this blog.

Use Your Booty: Beet Quiche

I grabbed a wee little bunch o' beets with my last CSA pickup. There were too few to use as a main dish, or even a side. Somewhere in the mists of memory, I remembered reading a recipe for a beet quiche. So that's what I made.

I cooked the beets until tender, sliced up and sautéed the greens and then combined them and a healthy handful of grated parmesan all into a standard quiche recipe. I made two smaller "quichelets" instead of a large one.

Dinner was a quiche served [cold, because it was crazy-hot here] alongside a ginormous salad (made with CSA lettuce). I included herb leaves and chive blossoms too.

This Summer, I am chronicling my first CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) experience. My CSA share is from Arrowhead Farm, a farm based in Newburyport, MA. Each week, I am posting about what was in my share and what I'm doing with it. By way of full disclosure, I won my share through a raffle and am not paying for it. However, Arrowhead did not know I was entered int he raffle, and I received no special consideration because of this blog.

Use Your Booty: Swiss Chard Tabouli Salad

Did you know that Swiss chard is actually two vegetables in one? You use the leaves like spinach and cook them down, or simply slice them and serve them raw. The steams are edible too and since they'll make up a large part of the bunch, it's best to use them. Cut the stems into small pieces and sauté. You can add them to soups, salads or bake them into a quiche.

This salad is a play on tabouli, the Middle Eastern parsley and bulgur wheat salad. I used sautéed Swiss chard leaves and stems as a substitute for the parsley and topped each serving with a few slices of ricotta salata.

Swiss Chard Tabouli Salad

Serves 4 as a main dish or 6 or more as a side dish.

This is great made a day or two ahead.

• 2 cups bulgur wheat, medium or fine texture
• 2 bunches Swiss chard
• 2 tomatoes, diced
• 1-2 lemons
• olive oil
• 6 ounces ricotta salata, farmer cheese, or feta

Cover the bulgur with boiling water and let it steep. Depending on the texture, it will take between 20-40 minutes to soften. Add a little more water if the wheat soaks it all up. When the wheat is tender, drain off any remaining water, squeezing the wheat to make sure it's not soggy.

Trim the chard stems from the leaves. Cut the stems crosswise into 1/2" pieces. Cut the leaves into thin strips. Sauté the stems in a little oil over medium-high heat until just starting to soften. Add the chard leaves and continue to sauté until the leaves are wilted.

Stir the chard and tomato into the wheat. Squeeze lemon juice over the salad and add a good glug or two of olive oil as well as some salt and pepper. Stir and taste. Add more lemon, oil or salt as needed (remembering that you're adding a salty cheese at the end).

If you're serving this a main dish, it's nice to lay slices of cheese across the dish. If it's to be a side dish, crumble the cheese into the salad so it's evenly distributed.

Garnish with a drizzle of olive oil and some edible blossoms if you have them (I used chive and broccoli rabe flowers).

This Summer, I am chronicling my first CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) experience. My CSA share is from Arrowhead Farm, a farm based in Newburyport, MA. Each week, I am posting about what was in my share and what I'm doing with it. By way of full disclosure, I won my share through a raffle and am not paying for it. However, Arrowhead did not know I was entered int he raffle, and I received no special consideration because of this blog.

Tegame alla Vernazzana

In October of 2008 we traveled to the Italian region of Liguria. One of the best things we ate on that trip (and we ate a lot of great things during those two weeks) was a dish called Tegame alla Vernazzana. We (well, I) ordered it by mistake, and what a happy mistake it was. We were served a gorgeous dish of anchovy fillets stewed with slices of yellow potato and tomatoes. The whole thing was laced with a rich, fruity olive oil and sprinkled with parsley. We scraped the plate clean, using all the bread we could to get every bit of that tomatoey-olive oily-fishy sauce.

After doing a little research it looks like "tegame" is a word for a covered baking dish. Vernazza was the town where we ate it. I guess the English translation of the

dish's name is "baked dish from Vernazza" - super descriptive. Working from the picture we took of our meal and a little web research, I pulled together this version.

In Vernazza our dish was made with fresh anchovies (see how nice and shiny they are?), but they are hard to find over here. In fact it's hard to find fresh sardines either. I decided to use canned sardines in my version. This also makes it a year-round dish, as opposed to a seasonal one. (An aside: For those who haven't ever tried a fresh anchovy and are thinking of the fillets found in cans, fresh anchovies are a totally different thing. They are oily, but no more than salmon. Their flavor is gently fishy, not strong at all and they are fabulous grilled, fried, sauteed or stewed. If you see them at your local fishmonger, snap 'em up.)

Here's my version of the dish. I hope to get back to Vernazza to try this dish again, but in the meantime, this will have to do.

Tegame alla Vernazzana

Serves 3-4

This dish was very good the next day, gently reheated. I added a splash of water to rehydrate the sauce.

• 1 pound Yukon Gold potatoes or another buttery, boiling-type potato
• good quality olive oil
• 2 cups chopped tomatoes or good-quality canned whole tomatoes, toran into pieces (I used Muir Glen)
• 2 cans sardines in olive oil
• 1 cup white wine
• dried oregano

Preheat the oven to 350.

Slice the potatoes into thick slices: about 1/2" thick. Simmer the potatoes in a pot of salted water until just tender, about 10 minutes.

Drain the potatoes.

In a casserole or baking dish with a lid (mine is an 10" braising pan), start layering the ingredients: glug a healthy dollop of olive oil into the pan. Lay in half the potatoes, half the tomatoes and all of the sardines. Season with salt and pepper and healthy sprinkle of oregano. Lay the rest of the potatoes and then the tomatoes over the top. Sprinkle more oregano over the dish and pour in the white wine.

Cover the dish and put it in the oven until the dish is hot and bubbling, about 30 minutes. Serve in a soup plate, drizzled with more olive oil.

Grill-Roasted Mussels with Green Garlic and Sorrel

My Sundays are spent at the Newburyport Farmers' Market, selling my bakery items. While it's great to be outside and meeting people, one real drawback to selling at the market is that I don't get to shop at all. So imagine my pleasure at the end of last day's market when a boy ran up to me and handed me a bag of wild mussels (what a gift!). They were from Eastman's Fish Market, a fisherman-owned and operated seafood market in Seabrook, NH. Eastman's offer a CSF (Community Supported Fishery) program. They are a fantastic addition to our market.

Anyhoo, back to the mussels. It was such a beautiful day yesterday that I wanted to stay outside; so I decided to grill-roast the mussels. Grill-roasting is a great option for seafood in that the seafood can pick up the smokiness from the grill, but you're never in any danger of losing your meal through the grill grates.

My garden is loaded with sorrel and green garlic (immature garlic plants) so I decided I would use them as my primary flavorings. With a loaf of [my] olive bread from the market and a green salad it made a great dinner.

Grill-Roasted Mussels with Green Garlic and Sorrel

Two generous servings

• 2 lbs mussels, prepared for cooking: rinsed well, any beards removed, dead mussels discarded
• 3 tablespoons butter
• 1/2 cup chopped green garlic (or 1 bunch scallions, chopped and 2 cloves minced garlic)
• 1 dried chile pod (optional)
• 1 cup sorrel, cut into thin strips (or minced herbs like parsley, dill, chives, and/or fennel)

Place a large cast iron skillet (12" or more) on a hot grill (I use a gas grill set on high). Let the skillet get super hot - leave it on the grill for 5-10 minutes.

Add the butter, green garlic and chile pod to the pan. The butter should sizzle up and start to melt very fast. Add the mussels to the skillet. Cover the grill. Let the mussels cook, giving them a stir every few minutes or so. My mussels were cooked through in a little less than 10 minutes. Yours may take more or less time depending on their size, their temperature when you started cooking, etc. Toss the sorrel over the cooked mussels and give it all a stir.

Serve the mussels in deep bowls with bread for dipping. These won't be super-soupy mussels because a lot of the liquid will simmer off on the grill, but the liquid that's left will be concentrated and very flavorful. You might want to add a sprinkle of salt if your mussels aren't briny enough.

Use Your Booty: Green Soup 1

If you're getting a spring share from your CSA, or if you're tempted by the mountains of springtime vegetables at the farmers' market, there will come a time when you have to face down a MOUNTAIN of leafy greens (you know the ones: those huge bundles of flowering leafy lovelies like mizuna, arugula, rabe, kale, etc.). You could do what most people do: throw them in a bag in the back of your refrigerator and then throw the soggy mess out in a week or so. Or, you could make this soup. (Sorry, I know this picture is just awful - the soup is really a gorgeous emerald green.)

I don't really have a recipe: use what you've got on hand, cook it down and blend it up. But for those who would like a little more direction than that, here you go:

For each person you will need one - two bunches of greens (those four bunches down there made enough soup for two to three servings). Pick the leaves from the stems. You 'll end up with about 4 cups of greens per bunch. Take 1 medium potato per person and slice it super thin. Put the potato in your soup pot and cover it with water. Simmer until the potato is soft and starts to fall apart. Stuff the greens into the pot and add 1-2 cups water (more or less depending on how many you're feeding).

You will think to yourself "this is an obscene amount of vegetation No way in hell can I eat all this." etc. etc. etc. Within 5 minutes that bunch of greens will be cooked down to almost 1/4 of its original mass and you'll start to understand why I had you start with so much.

Keep turning the greens, so the cooked ones come up to the top and the unwilted greens get pushed down into the simmering liquid at the bottom of the bottom. The idea is to get the greens all wilted down and cooking.

Now puree that mess. I like an immersion (or stick) blender because I can do the whole process right in the pot, but if you want the best results use your blender. You'll have to do it in batches, but the blender gives a much finer puree than the hand blender. Either way, puree until very smooth. Then, one step to gild this lily: strain the soup through a medium or fine strainer (you'll find a rubber spatula is helpful to push the soup through. This is a good idea if you've used tougher greens with strong stems; those fibers can be unpleasant to find in your finished soup.

Adjust the soupiness by adding more water if needed. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Serve hot or very cold, topped with a drizzle of cream or a dollop of yogurt. If your greens had them, the little yellow or white flowers are a lovely garnish. They are a great addition to a green salad too. Keep them in a glass of water, bouquet-style, until you use them up.

Note: for a chance, saute some curry powder or other Indian spices in a little oil first, then add the potato to the pot and proceed as above. Top the soup with yogurt and more spices that you've toasted in oil. The Indian flavors are really nice with the strong green flavor of this soup.

This Summer, I am chronicling my first CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) experience. My CSA share is from Arrowhead Farm, a farm based in Newburyport, MA. Each week, I am posting about what was in my share and what I'm doing with it. By way of full disclosure, I won my share through a raffle and am not paying for it. However, Arrowhead did not know I was entered int he raffle, and I received no special consideration because of this blog.

CSA Booty - Week 1

I have struggled with whether or not to join a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) group. I have grown a fair number of my own vegetables, and usually supplemented with a local farm stand. But since starting my own business two years, commercial enterprise has supplanted my personal agricultural efforts. So I was thrilled when fate intervened and I WON A CSA MEMBERSHIP! Hell yeah. The Newburyport Choral Society ran a raffle and gave away a [generously donated] membership to the Arrowhead Farm CSA. I never win anything, so I was even more excited to win such a useful prize.

Today I made my first pickup. Arrowhead offers an early spring add-on to their regular (summer) CSA shares. Today's bounty included:

• 2 bunches of broccoli rabe
• 2 bunches of arugula
• 2 heads of bok choy
• 2 heads of lettuce
• 2 bunches of rhubarb
• 1 bunch Swiss chard
• 1 bunch beets
• sprigs of basil and Thai basil
• a ton of chive blossoms

I realized as soon as I got the great news, that I need to do a menu plan each week when I pick up my vegetables. Otherwise, I am confident that a large portion of each pickup will end up in the compost pile. So here's my plan for this week:

• The rabe and arugula are little bolted and flowering, so I'm probably going to cook them down to use as side dish or to stir in to a soup.
• The beets and beet greens are going into a quiche with some goat cheese.
• The Swiss chard leaves will be blanched and then stuffed with a bulgur wheat salad made with tomato, feta, scallions and parsley.
• Bok choy goes into a noodle stir fry with broccoli, celery and carrots. The stir fry will be topped with a fried egg.
• The lettuce will become salads.
• The chive blossoms went into right into rice vinegar and will be chive blossom vinegar in two or three days.
• and, I think, the rhubarb will put in a tart and turned into juice for rhubarbaritas.

This Summer, I am chronicling my first CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) experience. My CSA share is from Arrowhead Farm, a farm based in Newburyport, MA. Each week, I am posting about what was in my share and what I'm doing with it. By way of full disclosure, I won my share through a raffle and am not paying for it. However, Arrowhead did not know I was entered int he raffle, and I received no special consideration because of this blog.

Drink of the Week: Cynar Sour

This is not a drink for the timid. Cynar is a Italian digestivo: it's super bitter and has a very assertive personality. Traditionally it's drunk neat, in tiny glasses, before or after a meal. Using it in a cocktail smooths the rough edges down and makes for a very intriguing drink. This cocktail comes from Food & Wine's Cocktails 2010. This series of cocktail books is a great resource if you're looking for interesting cocktail bar recipes.

An egg white produces the nice frothy cap on the top of the drink. It also softens any harsh notes in the Cynar. The inclusion of the egg white requires that you shake the drink very hard to blend the white into the cocktail.

Cynar Sour

Combine in an iced cocktail shaker:

• 2 ounces Cynar
• 1/4 ounce maraschino liqueur
• 1 ounce lemon juice
• 1/4 ounce honey
• 1/2 egg white

Shake very hard, until the shaker frosts over. Strain into a cocktail glass or coupe and garnish with a long strip of orange peel.