Zucchini Chips, Crisp & Tasty!

It was time to think outside the squash to prepare the zucchini in the share last week. Everyone loves a crunchy potato chip—how about zucchini chips? Some recipes call for breading and baking them, like the one below; I’ve done that before to make baked zucchini sticks, which are delicious with cocktail sauce, but I was looking for the real thing, thin and crispy.

So I got out my mandoline and sliced a zucchini very, very thin—paper thin, almost. You could definitely see through the slices. I set them between sheets of paper towels to get some of the liquid out, then I heated oil in an electric fry pot and threw in a few slices at a time. It took awhile for them to brown and crisp up, but when I drained them on fresh paper towels, then added a little salt and Cajun seasoning, they were just what I was aiming for—crispy zucchini chips, as you can see in the photo.

It’s probably no surprise that this is a way to take something good for you and make it not-so-good for you, and it’s not environmentally correct, either—the process used a lot of paper towels. But I think I would have to say it was a successful experiment in making locally grown junk food!

Next time I may try this more healthy (and less paper-towel dependent) recipe to make zucchini chips. I think I’d have to cut them a bit thicker, too; the paper thin slices just won’t hold up to batter. If you still have zucchini to prepare, you can decide if you want to go healthy or junk food all the way with your own zucchini chips.

Low Carb Zucchini Oven Chips

1/4 cup ground almonds
1/4 cup grated fresh Parmesan cheese
1/4 t seasoned salt
1/4 t garlic powder
1/8 t black pepper
2 T fat-free milk
2 1/2 cups (1/4 inch-thick) slices zucchini (about 2 small)
Cooking spray

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Combine the first five ingredients in a medium bowl, stirring with a whisk. Place milk in a shallow bowl. Dip zucchini slices in milk, then dredge in dry mixture. Place coated slices on an ovenproof wire rack coated with cooking spray; place rack on a baking sheet. Bake for 30 minutes or until browned and crisp. Serve immediately.

Preserving Some Squash for Winter Feasts

One of our Enright CSA members, Terry Sullivan, has her own "Real Food" blog, and I heartily recommend you take a look at it for recipes and suggestions on how to turn our "real" local produce into some delicious dishes. The latest entry is titled "The Problem of Cucumbers," and you may be experiencing that problem--what to do with so many of them--with cucumbers and with squash. Of course, making pickles from cucumbers is always a good way to preserve your excess produce, but did you know that you can pickle a lot of other things, too--including squash?

I looked at the collection of squash I had from this Saturday and what I had left from the week before, and I realized I had a "problem of squash." So, I decided to solve that problem by picking the pattypans. I'd gotten this idea a couple of years ago, from Angie Wolter Utley, who had seen a recipe for pickling baby pattypan whole. We didn't have too many small squash, so I tried cutting big squash into chunks, and it turned out deliciously. I served them at Thanksgiving dinner and took some to a party, where they were a big hit. So, I pickled all the pattypan squash I had left and now I have several jars to enjoy this autumn and winter. It's easy to do, and the recipe is already posted on the blog here.

Since I used the yellow squash for baking experiments earlier on Saturday (see those results here) and I had pickled all the pattypans, all I had left in the way of squash now were a couple of zucchini. I made one into a delicious concoction with a few of the tomatoes--just slice the squash and the tomatoes, put them in rows in a greased casserole dish, and sprinkle with a little olive oil, then top with chopped basil, bread crumbs, and grated parmesan. Cook for about 25 minutes in a 350-degree oven, and you have a simple and tasty side dish.

Then I had one more zucchini, and I had a really crazy idea about how to prepare it in a delicious but not-too-healthy way. I'll let you know how it worked out in my next blog!

Ask the Blog: Using Summer Squash to Bake

Today we got a question at packout that I had been thinking about myself: could you use other kinds of summer squash in place of zucchini in baked goods? It turns out you can, according to the Internet, which has lots of recipes for squash bread and squash muffins and so forth. Just to be sure, I did a little experimental cooking today.

I made some zucchini bread from the recipe I usually use, but I substituted grated pattypan squash for the zucchini. It worked and tasted just fine. Then I used some yellow squash to create a new (though similar) recipe for muffins with walnuts and cranberries. Those were pretty great, too, so I’ve included that recipe here.

So, the answer is, definitively yes—if you have yellow squash or pattypan or any other kind of summer squash, you can peel it, grate it, and use it as you would grated zucchini. So, while the weather stays cool, fire up those ovens and make some muffins!

Summer Squash Walnut-Cranberry Muffins

1½ cups flour

½ teaspoon baking soda

¼ teaspoon baking powder

2 teaspoons cinnamon

½ teaspoon nutmeg

½ teaspoon salt

¼ teaspoon ginger

2 eggs

1 cup to 1¼ cups grated/shredded yellow squash, pattypan squash, or zucchini

½ cup (1 stick) melted butter or margarine

1 teaspoon vanilla

¾ cup sugar

3 Tablespoons plain or vanilla yogurt

¾ cups walnut pieces

½ cup dried cranberries

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Measure the flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and spices in a bowl and set aside. In a large bowl, mix together the eggs, melted butter, and sugar. Add the vanilla and yogurt and mix well, then add the flour mixture in thirds alternately with the grated squash in halves (flour-squash-flour-squash-flour) until well-mixed. Stir in the walnut pieces and dried cranberries, and half-fill muffin papers with the batter. Bake for 20 minutes. Makes about 18 muffins.

Aubergines and Courgettes

We call them eggplant and zucchini, but in other parts of the world, including France and England, eggplant are aubergine, and zucchini squash are called courgettes. Whatever you call them, they are both extremely versatile vegetables that can be prepared in so many different ways it might make your head spin. Eggplant are particularly multipurpose and can be used as a meat substitute in many dishes as well.

If you are looking for something to do with the eggplant and zucchini in this week’s share, be sure to enter either vegetable’s name in the Search box at the upper left in the blog and you’ll find lots of great recipe ideas. There’s even an article about the different types of eggplant that Suellyn Shupe posted a couple of seasons back, in case you are wondering about the purple versus white, yellow, and green varieties, and long or egg-shaped ones versus globe eggplant.

There are recipes for eggplant casserole, baba ganoush (a seriously delicious and easy to make Middle Eastern eggplant dip), braised eggplant, eggplant chili, eggplant enchiladas—we are talking multitudinous ways to enjoy this week’s eggplant! And of course, you can search for zucchini, too; we have not neglected those delicious and adaptable squash, either. Enjoy!

Growing Food for Everyone--A Great Idea, in Seattle, in England, and--in Price Hill?

I read recently that the city of Seattle is planning to establish a city park full of edible plants in a working-class neighborhood called Beacon Hill. It’s a project that was designed as a final assignment for a permaculture design class back in 2009, and it is supposed to have some food ready for harvesting this year.

The plan is to grow fruit, mostly—apples, pears, plums, grapes, blueberries, and raspberries, free for the taking for anyone who needs or wants it—a food forest in the city. That sounds a lot like what is happening with the perennial fruit and nut trees around the Terry Street Garden, although I’m not sure the Enright CSA wants just anyone to come pick the fruit yet. We already have to share it with the deer, after all.

The folks in Seattle are apparently concerned that some people may take more than their fair share of the fruit, but I have also read about a similar experiment in a village in Yorkshire, England, where the result has been a fairly equitable sharing of the bounty. In that town, called Todmorden, they have planted food in every available space, from the parking lot surrounds to the flower beds in front of the police station to the towpath on the canal that runs through town. People take what they can use, and no one—so far—has been too greedy. Everyone is so happy with the situation that they are working on expanding the crops to become totally self-sufficient (at least with regard to their food) by 2018.

“We are gentle revolutionaries,” one of the founders of the Todmorden project was quoted as saying. “Everything we do is underpinned with kindness.” What a nice sentiment, and one I hope prevails in Seattle’s Beacon Food Forest, too. To read more about the Food Forest, visit their website, and to read about the experiment in Todmorden, England, go to this article from the Daily Mail.

Permaculture Class in Delhi Edible Garden

A couple of years ago, on a dark and stormy night—the night before Thanksgiving, in fact—I worked the last Enright CSA packout of the 2011 season with Amy Stross. It was muddy and cold and generally gross, and we had an absolutely wonderful time.

Everyone who came to get their shares was in a holiday mood, and we had to keep moving to avoid freezing in place, so the time passed quickly and before we knew it, the produce was picked up and we cleaned up and headed home. It’s one of my best memories of the co-operative nature of the urban farm headquartered in Price Hill.

Amy and her husband Vince started their own co-operative gardening venture the next season, the Hillside Community Garden in Delhi. If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend going out on a Wednesday evening or Saturday morning to see what they’ve done with the hillside behind Mt. St. Joseph College. It’s a wonder; there were herbs and onions and strawberries when I was there in late spring, and I’m sure there’s even more growing now.

But that’s not their only garden project. They’ve also landscaped their own front yard in Delhi with edible plants. It is the neatest thing to see, very lovely and it just goes to show you that landscaping does not have to be just for the eye—it can make your stomach happy, too. And Amy and Vince are going to share some of their secrets at an upcoming Civic Garden Center class in permaculture that will be held in their yard.

The class is scheduled for next Saturday, July 20, from 10 a.m. to noon. Cost is $10 per person, and you can register for the class online at the Civic Garden Center’s website.

I Do, I Do Like Those Greens, I Like Those Greens with Everything!

You may be thinking by now, what else can we possibly do with greens? Well, the possibilities are pretty much endless. With apologies to Dr. Suess,

You can cook them with your eggs,

You can pickle them in a keg.

You can steam them in a pot.

You can chop them up a lot.

You can bake them in a quiche.

You can serve them up with fish.

You can put them in your soup.

You can make them for a group.

You can use all these greens you get,

Just remember, don’t forget,

You can add them to most anything!

You can invent recipes on the wing!

That’s what I did the other day, I invented a recipe on the wing, but it turns out it's fairly standard fare. I was looking at the greens I had, and checking what else was in the pantry. I found a bag of lentils and thought, hmmm, I wonder if you can cook greens with lentils. Of course you can, and all the recipes I found were pretty much the same, and quite basic and simple.

So here’s what you do: Cook lentils according to a recipe, or the instructions on the bag, or using your own tried and true method. When the lentils are ready, take them off the heat and add washed and chopped greens. Stir it up so the hot lentils cook the greens. After 5 to 10 minutes, add some things: chopped onions and garlic cooked in a little olive oil are nice; so is some thyme and oregano and basil. Add some grated romano or parmesan cheese. Serve over polenta (or rice, or orzo, or heck, eggs or chicken) and drizzle a little more olive oil on them. Add more grated cheese, and you have a very Italian-tasting dish that is ridiculously healthy, too.

Now take those greens, and cook them up, just the thing when you want to sup.

Add spices, herbs, and olive oil; put them on the stove, don’t let them boil.

Versatile, fresh, and delicious, your greens will never turn malicious.

They’re good to the stems, they’re really swell. 

Greens taste good and keep you well!

Louis Bromfield and Malabar Farm

The concept of community-supported agriculture has caught on quickly in towns and cities around the world, since it was originally introduced in Europe and Japan in the 1960s. The idea of sustainable farming is quite a bit older—for millennia, farming had to be sustainable because, quite simply, the land had to sustain the farmer and the other people the farmer grew food for.

But gradually farming became industrialized, like many other production chains. Someone who saw what was happening and made a conscious effort to return to organic and self-sustaining farm methods did so right here in Ohio. If you’ve never heard of Louis Bromfield, you might be surprised to learn that he was far ahead of most folks in thinking about how farming could work with nature instead of against it, right in the middle of Ohio, way back before the middle of the last century.

Bromfield grew up in Pleasant Valley, Ohio, not too far from Mansfield, and his grandfather had a farm there. Louis began college at Cornell University, where he studied agriculture from 1914 to 1916, but then he transferred to Columbia University to study journalism.

He became a novelist, and won many awards, including a Pulitzer Prize, for his best-selling novels. They aren’t as well known today as they were in his own day, but at the time he was one of the country’s leading writers. Bromfield and his family lived in Paris for years, but they came back to America when Europe was heading toward war in the 1930s. He returned to Pleasant Valley and bought an old farm in 1939; he bought adjacent farms in 1940 and 1941, until he had almost 600 acres of land.

Bromfield was an early proponent of organic and self-sustaining gardening, and his farm was one of the first to ban pesticides. His farm was also used as a government test site for soil conservation practices. Bromfield developed a technique known as conservation farming, based on grass farming, which produced large quantities of forage and pasture. Malabar Farm became a national model for sustainable agriculture and was one of the first modern farms to experiment with composting using manure from livestock on the farm.

As he became more interested in farming and conservation of farmlands, Bromfield’s writing turned from fiction to non-fiction. He invited many guests to Malabar Farm to visit and learn about what he was doing there, but perhaps his most famous guests were Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, who were married at the Bromwell house on May 21, 1945 (the first celebrity wedding at a secret, undisclosed site). The photo at left was taken at their wedding at Malabar Farm.

Louis Bromfield died in 1956, but his innovative and visionary work continues to influence modern agricultural methods. Malabar Brazil, under the direction of Bromfield’s daughter, Ellen Bromfield Geld, brought his ideas to South America, and a foundation named for Bromfield created a center for study of agricultural methods at Malabar Farm in Ohio, which is now a state park.

Malabar Farm is still a working farm, and a fascinating place. It’s only about 2½ hours from Cincinnati, if you ever have the urge to visit one of the first modern organic farms, right here in Ohio.

Rainy Holiday, but Great Roasted Vegetables

Fourth of July was a damp affair by anybody’s standards. The constant rain was great for crops but not so good for picnics and barbecues. Still, it was a holiday and holidays are for celebrating—my kids both had parties to go to (indoors, I surmise), and they both called with food questions. My son just needed the coupon code for a free pizza, while my daughter wanted to know if you could eat summer squash raw with dip, so you can tell which one is more inclined to eat food from the CSA . . .

Speaking of squash, and other CSA vegetables as well, I made a really simple dish for Fourth of July dinner that turned out to be much better than I had any right to expect. I rummaged through the crisper drawers and found some turnips from a few weeks back that I hadn’t gotten around to using, plus beets, carrots, a pattypan squash, and some green onions from last week’s share. I also had a poblano pepper that was grown at the Findlay Market Liberty & Elm garden; I had bought it on Tuesday at the new satellite location of the market at Roberts Academy in Price Hill. (Not a lot of selection but I hope they will get better.)

I peeled the root vegetables, cut everything up into chunks, and then tossed them with a little olive oil. Then I spread the vegetables on a foil-covered cookie sheet, added a little salt and pepper, thyme and basil, and roasted them for 20 minutes in a 375-degree oven. Everything was tender and tasty; I have to say it was one of the best things I’ve ever made with CSA produce. And definitely one of the easiest ones!

The Color of Carrots

Carrots are immediately identifiable by their bright orange color at the farm stand or market, but did you know carrots weren’t always orange? The first domesticated carrots were purple and were grown in central Asia for centuries before they spread westward.

Purple carrots spread gradually to the lands around the Mediterranean, and yellow carrots, also of Eastern origin, were grown in Roman gardens. Red and white carrots, which were likely mutants of purple and yellow carrots, also became popular later, as the carrot spread through Europe.

But how did the more well-known orange carrot develop? For a long time, it was thought that orange carrots were a fairly recent innovation, dating from about the sixteenth century, when they were then carefully selected and bred to achieve the orange color, probably in the Netherlands. But much-older manuscripts from the Byzantine world have turned up with illustrations of orange carrots, so it is likely they were propagated along with purple carrots in Asia centuries earlier.

The Long Orange Dutch cultivar, developed in Hoorn, Netherlands, is generally considered the progenitor of all modern, western orange carrot varieties, which often have “Horn” in their names, such as Early Scarlet Horn.

The Emperor Charlemagne’s records list carrots among the vegetables grown in his royal gardens. Carrots reached England in the 15th century, and the Spanish introduced them as crops in South American not long after that. Carrots were grown in the first European settlement in North America, in Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607, and when the English began to colonize Australia in the eighteenth century, they brought carrots with them there, too.

There’s a World Carrot Museum, at least online, at www.carrotmuseum.com, and it has some recipes posted if you are looking for a way to prepare the colorful carrots that were in some shares last Saturday.

Baking with the CSA Share

When Suellyn’s perennials—elderberries, currants, and other fruits and nuts—start to bear fruit, CSA members will probably be doing more baking, but there are some things that lend themselves to baking even among the annuals providing our produce right now.

Zucchini is the first thing that comes to mind when you want to do a bit of baking with locally grown food. Over the weekend, my kitchen was transformed into a zucchini bakery as I shredded a couple of zucchinis (I had one left over from last week that was still good but needed to be used). I used the big bowl of grated zucchini, enhanced with some more exotic fruit in some cases, to make loaves of zucchini bread, some zucchini-blueberry muffins, and a really delicious pineapple zucchini upside down cake.

There’s a basic zucchini bread recipe* in a blog from two seasons ago, and fresh blueberries and pineapples are both available at Findlay Market right now, even though they weren’t grown around here. The blueberries came from North Carolina, and I suspect the pineapple was all the way from Hawaii. Still, they are in season and quite tasty despite the fact that they didn’t come from around here.

I just added whole blueberries to half a batch of zucchini bread batter and put it in muffin papers, baking them at 350 degrees for about 20 minutes. I had about a dozen moist muffins bursting with blueberries to enjoy for several breakfasts. The zucchini pineapple upside down cake wasn’t too complicated either: I melted ¼ cup butter (half a stick) in a pan in the oven, already at 350 degrees for the zucchini muffins. Then I spread ½ cup brown sugar over the melted butter, and topped that with pieces of pineapple cut small—it probably took about a third of the fruit from one pineapple. Then I poured the other half of the zucchini batter over the fruit carefully, and baked it for about 35 minutes.

If the zucchini keep rolling in, I’m thinking I might try a zucchini relish or salsa, but the zucchini bakery this weekend was definitely a success!

*I use less sugar than is called for in the recipe; usually 1¼ or at most 1½ cups of sugar. You can use even less if you are using fruit in the recipe, or as in the case of the zucchini pineapple upside down cake, you use a ½ cup of brown sugar in the bottom layer.