Sunday, June 13, 2010

CSA, Week 5 (but the second post)

We're starting to get more summer vegetables at the farm this week, I was also able to pickup some asparagus and rhubarb at our local farmer's market to enjoy the last of the spring vegetables. This week, our family share included
  • Lettuce (6 heads, choice of red leaf and green leaf)
  • Choice of kale or collards (2 items)
  • Choice of fennel and radicchio (4 items)
  • 1 lb of swiss chard 
  • 4 heads of broccoli 
  • 4 summer squash (choice of patty pan or Cousa, aka Lebanese zucchini)
  • Green garlic 
  • 1 qt pick your own peas (snap or snow, mix and match)
  • Herbs
I supplemented that with a few purchases from the farmer's market, including
What I did / will be doing with this bounty is after the jump 

  • Salad. Of course.One of the baguettes will be used for croutons, and the radishes from the farmer's market and possibly the fennel from the farm will also find their way into salads this week.
  • Broccoli pesto pasta. A simple favorite of mine from when I was a kid, I simply washed, cut up, blanched, and shocked the broccoli.  Later this week, I'll toss it with some of the arugula walnut pesto I made last week and serve it with some whole wheat pasta. The green garlic may find its way in there as well.
  • Zucchini bread. Speaking of childhood favorites, I turned the squash (or at least one and half of them; I've got half of a squash left waiting for an application) into my Mom's recipe for Zucchini Bread. I'll post the recipe in the next post.
  • Zuni Cafe Roast Chicken and Bread Salad.  I'm having (non-farm) friends over for dinner on Sunday, so I thought I'd make one of my new favorite takes on roast chicken. This uses the chicken, arugula, and baguette. I'm also making Mark Bittman's Rhubarb Crisp for dessert 
  • Frozen peas. I shelled all the peas (from farm and farmer's market), blanched, shocked, dried down, and froze them. I really like peas in rice dishes, like mushroom and pea risotto and paella. Peas go starchy fast, and its the end of their very short season here, so the freezer seems like a good idea. 
  • Pickled asparagus. Before the season started, I bought this book on small batch canning and recipes for using those canned goods. I used the aspargus from the farmer's market to make my first canned recipe from the book, pickled asparagus. The book suggests their use in a chicken piccata or a skate wing recipe, or just with poached eggs. All sound like good possibilities.  Note: the recipe calls for canning a pint jar, which means lots of usable ends needed to be cut off. I roasted these and will serve them on goat cheese crostini for an appetizer to go with my roast chicken. 
  • Radicchio: While this could make more salad, I'm thinking that I could grill it up on my cast iron grill pan, and then use it to top pizza with the fresh mozzerella I have in my refrigerator, caramelized onion, perhaps some Griggstown chicken sausage from the freezer, and top it all off with a drizzle of good balsamic vinegar when its out of the oven.
  • Swiss chard: I'm still waiting for inspiration, so later this week this green may find itself blanched, shocked, dried, and frozen along side last week's kale.

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