Raw Panic

There was a great article in the NY Times yesterday about being inundated with raw vegetables, either because you went crazy at the farmer’s market, you have a garden that’s doing very well, or you belong to a CSA. I highly recommend reading the entire article, but if you don’t have time to do so because you are up to your ears in squash and tomatoes, here are some highlights—

First, try to deal with as much of the produce as you can the day you get it. Sometimes easier said than done, but I am happy to say I have learned this lesson in the last couple of CSA seasons. I do my best to clear Saturday afternoons in July, August, and September to blanch, pickle, freeze, and can. (That sounds like a song chorus, doesn’t it?) The NY Times article also suggests simply roasting the vegetables (each kind separately) with a little olive oil and salt in the oven, then cooling and refrigerating. This gives you a refrigerator full of cooked vegetables, which are easier to deal with during the upcoming work week. A good plan.

Not in the article, but my quick tip for the day, is “blanch and freeze.” This works great for green beans and tomatoes, but you can also use it for many other things (corn, eggplant, even some summer squashes). For tomatoes, put in boiling water for about 8 to 10 minutes, cool, peel/core, and freeze in freezer bags. For green beans, snap the ends off, cook for about a minute or two in boiling water, remove to a bowl filled with ice and water, drain, put in bags and freeze. This doesn’t take long, and you’ll have nearly fresh vegetables all winter long.

The article also says that greens should be washed before storing. I’m not sure I agree with that; I think lettuce, anyway, starts to wilt faster if it is washed and then stored. But the article does give a good tip for washing greens of all kinds: wash them in lots of water (that is, don’t stick them under the faucet, but fill the sink, douse the greens, swirl them around, and let the dirt sink). But soft herbs like basil shouldn’t be washed until just before they are used; the water will speed deterioration.

Vegetables and fruit should be stored separately, because the gas ethylene, which is produced by ripening fruit, can damage vegetables. Some produce will continue to ripen if left out on the counter, including apples, pears, and tomatoes. Others will not, including bell peppers and squash. They will only deteriorate if left out, so do refrigerate them.

Back to cooking—the article notes that though raw vegetables are definitely good for you, you can only eat so many of them. When you are eating all those good vegetables anyway, there is some justification in lavish applications of fat (bacon bits, butter, cheese, oil) to make those vegetables eminently palatable. Or, as Mike Flanders likes to refer to greens: “bacon delivery systems.”

A quick and easy way to add a little tasty fat to your vegetables is to sauté a little onion, garlic, or shallot in butter, turn the vegetables in the pan and move them around a bit until they start to soften. Then cover tightly and let them cook in their own steam, testing them often.

That’s it for the recap of the article; I do recommend reading the whole article online!