The CSA Meta Blog, Plus Meta Zucchinis

As we start to get more kinds of vegetables, you’ll find that there have been blog entries in past seasons that address a surfeit of certain things, such as cucumbers or tomatoes or squash. Just enter the name of the vegetable in the Search This Blog at top right, and you’ll get a whole list of blog entries that mention that particular produce.

That means that rather than having too many self-referential, meta blog entries, mentioning recipes already posted, we can just direct you to the search feature and you can look for them yourselves. That said, I still have to mention some of the great zucchini recipes that have appeared in years past (click any of these to go to the recipe on the Enright CSA blog):

Zucchini Pancakes 

Zucchini Blondies 

Zucchini Pate 

Zucchini Cheese Pie 

Zucchini Bread 

Zapple Cobbler 

Zucchini Vegetable Gratin 

And remember that squash are like greens in that you can often substitute one type for another. I don’t know if I’d use pattypan squash to make sweets, but you can use them or summer squash in gratins and other vegetable dishes quite interchangeably.

Don't forget to go all meta on this blog, and look up what we've had to say in the past about various kinds of vegetables that turn up in the weekly shares.

More Greens Make Indian Carryout—At Home

An Enright CSA email last week suggested using some of the greens in our share to make saag paneer, an Indian dish usually prepared with spinach. This sounded like a really great idea, but alas, there is no paneer cheese to be found within a bike’s ride of Price Hill. Nonetheless, I was intrigued with the idea of homemade Indian carryout, so I started thinking about other delicious dishes found on Indian restaurant menus, and that brought me to saag choley.

Saag choley is also spinach-based, and I quickly found a recipe for it online that called for a package of frozen spinach, which I planned to replace with fresh greens. I gathered the other ingredients, most of which I had on hand. That was kind of odd, especially the fact that I had coconut milk in the house, but I had used half a can the day before to make a totally awesome satay sauce for some CSA share-based stir fry, so trying saag choley would also allow me to use up the leftover coconut milk. But don't worry, you can use more yogurt if you don't happen to have any coconut milk in the fridge.

The result was absolutely delicious, and along with the homemade garlic naan I baked to accompany the dinner, it made my kitchen smell just like an Indian restaurant, which was pretty great, too. Though there are a few steps, it’s not hard, and one nice thing is that you can leave it to simmer for as long as you’d like, so you can take a break and enjoy appetizers on the deck on these long days of summer after the basic preparations (which don't take too long) are complete.

Saag Choley

3 bunches of greens (I used kale, mustard greens, and some goosefoot from my front yard)

2 Tablespoons oil

1 teaspoon coriander

2 teaspoons curry powder

1 teaspoon red pepper flakes or two dried chili peppers from last year’s crop, seeded and chopped

1 onion, chopped

3 cloves garlic, chopped

1 cup sweet peas (canned or frozen; if you use frozen, thaw them first)

1 can garbanzo beans (chickpeas), drained

½ cup coconut milk

½ cup plain yogurt

½ cup chicken stock (more if you want to cook the greens in stock rather than water)

Salt and pepper to taste

Cooked rice for serving

Start by cooking the greens. Wash, stem, and chop the greens and add them to a large pan with about an inch of boiling water (or chicken stock) in it. Cook covered over medium-low heat for about 10 minutes, until bright green, and then turn off heat and leave covered to continue cooking a bit longer while you chop the onion and garlic.

Drain the greens in a colander and let them cool a little while you add the oil, spices, garlic, and onion to the pan. Cook until onion is translucent, about 5 minutes. Meanwhile, puree the drained greens in a food processor and add them to the pan. Put the peas and garbanzo beans in the food processor, pulse a few times to mash them up a bit, and add them to the pan.

Stir in the coconut milk and yogurt (you can change the ratio or use all yogurt or all coconut milk if you prefer) and then add chicken stock until the mixture is soupy but not too thin (you may not need all of the stock, depending on the amount of greens you started with). Cook uncovered over medium-low heat for at least 20 minutes and up to an hour. Add salt and pepper to taste and serve over rice. Makes 4 large servings.

The Bell-Shaped Curve of Vegetables, or the Semi-Circular Harvest of Life

I was thinking while I was preparing a fairly delicious meal made with some of the greens in this week’s harvest that the CSA season is kind of a bell-shaped curve, with lots of greens at the beginning, building up to root vegetables as we’ve had this week and last, and then starting into the season for things like squash, then we head into the high season for tomatoes, peppers, corn, beans, eggplant, melons. As summer ends, we wind down to some more root vegetables, and then we're back to greens in the fall. Or you could think of it as The Semi-Circle of Harvest, starting and ending with greens, greens, greens.

I also had the thought that it kind of echoes the diet of life. That is, we start with high-vitamin greens, which is the adult equivalent of fortified formula, then we start to get semi-solid food (mashed root vegetables and sautéed squash would qualify), and then we move into the solids and introduce lots of variety into our locally sourced meals, with all the abundant vegetables of mid- and late summer, enjoyed by our “grown-up” palettes. Then, as we (and the harvest season) age, we start to eat a lot of mashed up food again, finally relying in old age/fall on fortified and vitamin rich greens (or Ensure!).

Okay, it’s not the greatest metaphor ever, but you get my point . . . I don't want to get too heavy or philosophical here, but the harvest is a reflection of life, and the year at a local urban farm brings you face to face with the abundance and variety of life as well as its stages.

I hope you are enjoying your greens and mashies right now, and also are looking forward to more variety and "solid foods" coming soon!

Grilled Bok Choy: Not Every Recipe Is a Success

We post a lot of recipes on this blog, always after someone has successfully made whatever the recipe is for. Well, today I have to say the recipe I tried was not exactly a success. So I have a bone to pick with Ms. Rachael Ray—the recipe was in her bimonthly cooking magazine. I have one of her cookbooks, and the recipes always work well (though I have never actually accomplished one in the requisite 30 minutes), and the recipes in the magazine have generally been great, but I don’t know what she was thinking when she suggested making bok choy and tofu kebabs. There is some secret to skewering both items that she forgot to provide.

That said, the food was delicious; it just didn’t “present” well, and about half the tofu is at the bottom of the grill, waiting to be fished out. (You can see the tofu scattered everywhere in the photograph.) But, I have to say that what made it through the cooking process turned out quite nicely and tasted good. So, if you need a new way to prepare bok choy and are interested in trying this recipe, perhaps the way to do it would be to put foil on the grill first, so everything doesn’t slip off the skewer and into the coals.

Grilled Bok Choy and Tofu

(adapted from Rachael Ray’s Every Day magazine)

2 small heads of bok choy

Half a package of extra firm tofu, cut into large chunks and patted dry

8 ounces snap peas

3 Tbsps. soy sauce

2 Tbsps. rice vinegar

1 Tbsp. sesame oil (or substitute olive oil)

3 Tbsps. vegetable oil, plus more for brushing the bok choy and tofu

Small piece of peeled and chopped fresh ginger

1 clove of garlic, chopped fine

3 or 4 green onions, sliced

Clean the snap peas and cook for about a minute in boiling water; drain and put in a bowl with the sliced green onions.

Mix the soy sauce, vinegar, sesame or olive oil, 1 Tbsp. of vegetable oil, garlic, and ginger in a bowl. Reserve about half the sauce for basting on the grill, and toss the peas and sliced onions in what remains.

Thread the tofu and bok choy onto skewers (good luck!) and brush with vegetable oil. Grill (use foil on the grill if you don’t want to lose all the tofu and char the bok choy leaves) for 4 minutes on one side. Turn, baste with the reserved sauce, and grill for another 4 minutes. Serve the hot bok choy and tofu with the room temperature peas and onions, as is or over noodles or rice.

Strawberries and Greens Make Good Eating

It’s been awhile since there has been an Enright CSA blog posting; sorry about that! I have been out of town, and so have not been cooking the local produce around here. (Though I did enjoy the local food in Maine, where lobsters and blueberries were abundantly available.) But I’m back now, and I found a bag of assorted greens and some strawberries waiting for me from last Saturday’s share.

Spring always provides plenty of greens, both for salads and for cooking, and the nice thing about greens is you scarcely need anything like a recipe. Last night I cleaned some of that tender leaf lettuce, sliced some strawberries, and added goat cheese and sliced almonds for a really tasty salad. I also fried up a couple of slices of bacon, set them aside and poured off most of the grease, then sautéed those curly garlic tops (chopped up). I added washed and chopped chard and broccoli (wash the produce but don’t dry it, and that’s enough water to slightly steam the greens as you sauté them). I put a lid on the pan and cooked the whole thing up for about 10 minutes over medium heat, then added a 1/4 cup of pine nuts and the crumbled bacon. Served with grilled salmon and sweet potatoes, it was a veritable Monday night feast.

I hope you are enjoying your greens, too—and let us know if you have a way of preparing them that you’d like to share. They are so versatile; I add them to soups and quiches and casseroles as well as cook them southern style and now African style, too. I did find a recipe for bok choi that I may try with what I still have from this latest share, and if so, I’ll post that later this week.

For now, enjoy the easy preparation of spring greens. In fact, I may make another strawberry and goat cheese salad for lunch today. 

Collards!

Many people know Collards as a Southern dish traditionally made with ham, but Collard greens are very versatile and go well with a number of different flavors. Collards, Cabbage, Kale or any type of green in the cabbage family can be used in this very tasty vegetarian African dish.   Even if you didn't get Collards in your share this week, try using any of the Brassicas to make yourself an awesome version of Zambian Ifisashi and impress all of your friends!

Ifisashi is a simple and common ndiwo-a soup, stew or sauce made with greens and peanuts that is always served with Nshima, the staple food of Zambia made with pounded white maize meal.  You can try this on grits, polenta, or rice.  Other ndiwo dishes are made from various sorts of fish, meat, beans or peas.  The combination of nshima and ndiwo is the only thing that most Zambians call a real meal, much like meat and potatoes in the United States. 

Ingredients:
2 bunches fresh collard greens (or other greens), washed and chopped
1 cup raw peanuts, ground (or chunky peanut butter-try freshly ground peanut butter from Whole Foods or another health food store)
Salt to taste
1 onion, sliced
2 medium tomatoes, sliced (or canned chopped tomatoes)
Water (you can also use vegetable broth or chicken broth to add flavor)

Preparation
In a medium-sized saucepan, boil the onion and tomatoes with the ground peanuts, adding salt to taste and water as needed.  After a few minutes, add chopped greens, stirring occasionally, continue cooking until the peanuts are soft and the mixture has become a fairly thick buttery sauce (15-20 minutes). Serve hot or cold.

Cabbage Roundup

We may be seeing more Chinese (or Napa) cabbage in the share this week, and those heads of cabbage are so big, they can sometimes be overwhelming, especially when we get it a couple of weeks in a row. Never fear, there are some great ways to use your cabbage, even some that don’t involve any cooking at all!

Since we’ve often gotten a lot of cabbage, this has been a common theme of some past blogs. So, I decided to round up the cabbage recipes that have already been posted in past seasons, and you can take your pick of those listed below. There are recipes for cooking cabbage in a crockpot, using it raw in a really delicious salad that makes a large amount—perfect for a Memorial Day picnic—and even a recipe for kimchi, a method of Korean cold pickling that can make your cabbage into a spicy treat that lasts for weeks.

And this is also a good time to point out the Search feature on this blog. The Search This Blog box at top right will help you find recipes and information about many of the types of produce you’ll get in your share over the course of the season. Just enter an item, such as Eggplant or Tomato, and click the Search button. A list of blog entries that refer to that type of food will list at the top of the blog page.

There have been almost two hundred posts on the Enright CSA blog since it started in 2009, with lots of recipes people have shared on how to prepare the great local produce we receive. Be sure to use this resource to find interesting ways to enjoy your weekly share. For now, here are some quick links to tasty cabbage recipes.

A Couple of Cool Ways to Cook Cabbage

Use That Chinese Cabbage for a Tasty Holiday Salad

It's Kimchi, Not Land Mines: Asian Cold Pickling I

Winter Vegetables Lend Themselves to an Ethnic Approach