Pickling

Spike Gjerde (of Woodberry Kitchen) did a talk about pickling on Homewood Campus a while back. I've been using his very simple recipe to preserve some of our CSA goodies so we can enjoy them in the off months. You can use this recipe for almost anything. Spike gave us yummy samples of pickled wild ramps, and so far I've had good success with cauliflower, carrots, and radishes. I might try kohlrabi next?

Brine:
2 cups white wine vinegar (any vinegar will work)
2 cups water
3 TBLSP sugar
3 TBLSP salt
spices as desired (black peppercorn, mustard seed, bay leaf, dried chiles)

Trim off any ends, cut to desired shape and size. Wash with cold water. Drain.

In a saucepan, bring the brine to a boil.

In a separate pan, sterilize canning jar and lid in boiling water 5 minutes. Keep water on heat.

With clean hands, pack veggies into sterilized jar. Pour hot brine 3/4 way up in the jar. As the veggies soften, pack in more until full. Fill jar to fill line with brine, reserving any left over for your next pickling project - it will stay good for a long time. Using a clean spoon, jostle the contents of the jar to let any air bubbles escape.

Wipe the rim of the jar and seal it. Place jar in boiling water, fully and well submerged, for 10 minutes. Remove from hot water and let cool at room temp. Store in a cool, dark space. Can enjoy as soon as 2 weeks and for up to one year.

Behind-the-Scenes at One Straw Farm

Check out these sweet behind-the-scenes clips of what happens at One Straw Farm before their produce reaches our garage each Wednesday. Cool stuff!

http://vimeo.com/search/sort:date/format:thumbnail?q=one%20straw%20farm

Parmesan Squash Latkes

So I think we can all agree, after receiving so many greens in the CSA over the past few weeks, the yellow summer squash was definitely a welcome change color-wise! The squash presence in the CSA inspired me to experiment with the golden veggie last night. My friend and I were feeling a little adventurous and wanted to do something a little more creative than simply roasting it, so we ended up trying a zucchini fritter/latke recipe. We ended up amending it based on what we had in the kitchen, and of course substituting the zucchini for yellow squash. It was super easy and turned out really well! 

- 2 medium squash, grated (or you can just chop it into really small slivers)
- 1 egg
- 1/4 clove garlic
- 1/4 cup parmesan cheese, plus more to sprinkle on top before serving
- salt, to taste

Combine all the ingredient into a batter. Place about a two tablespoon dollop in a saute pan on the stove (with olive oil to prevent sticking) and slightly flatten them to whatever thickness you prefer. Cook until golden brown - which was for us I think around 2-3 minutes each side. Some of the recipes suggest serving with sour cream, but we used plain yogurt instead which worked really well. So obviously our version didn't photograph as well as some of the pics from online recipes (uh, can you tell which pic is ours?), but don't let the image fool you - it tasted pretty great! 

left photo from: http://www.cinnamonspiceandeverythingnice.com/2010/07/zucchini-fritters.html

Spinach and mizuna pizza!

Sorry the picture is awful, I lost my camera so I had to take it with my phone!

Today I spent a couple of hours figuring out how to use up some of these 7 (!) kinds of leafy greens. Going with my half-idea from yesterday... the sauce on the crust is a freshly pounded kale pesto. Sadly my arms were too tired to keep going with the mortar and pestle so it is pretty chunky. But man was it delicious! I used this pesto recipe: http://www.twice-cooked.com/2012/02/12/vegan-kale-pesto/ but with sunflower seeds instead of walnuts.

Topped it with some torn mizuna and spinach, a few small dollops of crushed tomatoes, and some sweet potatoes (sliced to 1/8th inch, they take about 10 minutes to cook, since my crust bakes in 8 minutes I had to pre-cook them a bit) to counteract the bitterness. Finished it off with a generous sprinkle of parmesan cheese and a turn of the Italian herbs grinder.

The good news: All of us really liked eating this pizza, it tasted great and we felt good about the amount of vitamins and minerals we were probably getting from all of the leafy greens. We thought maybe a little more tomato would be better, just to add some moisture. Maybe I'll redo it with fresh ones when we get them ;)

The bad news: Not only did this barely scratch the surface of my mizuna or spinach (I did use all the kale though), but I still have the other 4 greens left. Maybe I should have made 3 pizzas! I hope some more people will share their ideas for this week's crop!!

Kale, Peppers, Onion, & Apple

Dinner tonight focused on using up the last of last week's kale, as well as some peppers (1 orange bell pepper and 1 yellow, plus 1 jalapeño) that had seen better days.  In lieu of a recipe, here's how I threw this all together. 

I sliced an onion and the peppers, minced some garlic,  and threw it all into a sauté pan with some olive oil.  After letting the onions carmelize a bit, I added the kale (handful by handful, letting it cook down to fit in the pan).   As the vegetables started sticking, I added some water.  A quick taste confirmed that that jalapeño was REALLY hot.  (I had included the seeds.)  The flavors needed balancing, so I added some seasoned rice vinegar.  The sour was a welcome addition, but it needed a bit more sweetness to round things out.  So, I diced an apple and threw that in.  Then I let it cook with the cover on until the apples softened.  Turned out great.  It was gone before I had a chance to take a picture.

Mizuna, mi-whatta?

Learning about new veggies is one of my favorite aspects of participating in a CSA. Today's pick-up included something called mizuna. It has long, deep green, serrated leaves and a peppery taste.

A quick Google search reveals that mizuna is a Japanese mustard green, and apparently is good for stir fry. I'm looking forward to trying this Soba Noodle Salad w/ Mizuna recipe.

What are you planning to do with this piquant green? 

White Beans Make All Greens Amazing!

I have to say that in the past year my love of white beans - cannellini, northern, white - has skyrocketed but they need that ever present CSA produce item to make them sing...greens! Right now of course we are getting lots of kale and chard but white beans make good culinary friends with any green really. We prepared this recipe last night with both our Tuscan kale and Red Chard (from last week! store well and it will) and it rocked! http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Cannellini-Beans-with-Kale-361670

bon appetit!