Mmmm, Melons!

I don’t think anyone would argue that our area has been experiencing something of a drought this summer (though that long steady rain last night was certainly welcome), and drought can cause havoc with a lot of things we grow. But we have a water supply at Ritter Farm this year (thankfully), and that has allowed the corn and melon crops to flourish.

The melons are just starting to roll in; there probably won’t be enough for everyone to get one on any particular Saturday, but there’s a melon checklist at the greenhouse, and using that, we should all be able to enjoy a succulent melon or two.

Botanically, a melon is a fruit and a berry, but obviously it’s not what we usually think of when we think of as berries. It is nice to have some fruit from the CSA, though. We’ve gotten muskmelons (the family that includes cantaloupes and casaba melons) for distribution, but I’ve noticed a few watermelons at the greenhouse, too.

All melons are originally from Africa and Asia, but they began appearing in Italy as early as the Roman Empire. They were domesticated early, both in the Old World and the New World, and apparently we have a pope’s gardener to thank for the development of the cantaloupe in the 18th century. He grew them in Cantalupo nel Sannio, Italy; hence the name.

Melons came early to the New World; settlers were growing them in the 1600s, and the Spanish introduced them to Native Americans, who developed their own melon cultivars in the American Southwest.

But enough of melon history—and this isn’t an item that needs recipes; just slice one open, scoop out the seeds, and enjoy a wedge. Sweet and tasty, it’s also good for you—melons are cholesterol-free and have very little sodium; they are a very good source of vitamin A, vitamin C, and potassium. I like mine with a scoop of cottage cheese in the concavity, which makes for a delicious summertime lunch.

When Life Gives You Cucumbers, Make Relish

In my refrigerator, I had homemade mayonnaise, mustard, and ketchup. Clearly I needed to give homemade pickle relish a try. And heaven knows I had enough raw materials, in the form of cucumbers and peppers.

So, I trolled the Internet looking for likely recipes, and I also consulted the Mango Relish recipe that has appeared on this blog. Then I looked at what I had in the way of ingredients, and I came up with my own recipe, which made three half-pints of relish, enough to enjoy and share. It was fairly quick and easy—and accommodating. I had intended to let the vegetables pickle for about an hour, but a small emergency called me away from the kitchen for longer than that, and the relish still turned out fine. Thus, “1 to 3 hours” in the refrigerator, depending on your own schedule, will work, I think.

After I made the pickle relish and it aged for a couple of days, I found I was the only one home for dinner one evening. I’m not a big hamburger lover, but we always have a few nice sirloin patties from Findlay Market’s Eckerlein Meats in the freezer because my son does like burgers a lot. So, I defrosted one and put it on the grill, then ate it on a homemade bun with homemade mayo, mustard, and pickle relish. I even baked some skinny fries (from a bag, I will admit) to dunk in the homemade ketchup. It was all delicious.

What’s next in the world of condiments? Well, there is still chutney, and as it happens, I have a few recipes for some delicious chutneys that use all sorts of things we have in abundance, such as tomatoes and peppers. So look for more condiment news soon!

Sweet Pickle Relish

2 cups cucumbers, peeled, deseeded,* and chopped (1 or 2 of the smaller ones)
1 cup chopped white onions (about 1 large onion)
1 green bell pepper, chopped
1 red or purple bell pepper, chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
2 Tbsps. kosher salt

1 1/2 cups sugar
1 cup cider vinegar
2 tsps. celery seeds
2 tsps. mustard seeds
¼ tsp. turmeric
¼ tsp. fresh ground black pepper

*Deseed a cucumber by cutting it in half longways and scooping the seeds out with a spoon.

Directions

Chop the cucumbers, onions, and peppers to about a quarter-inch mince. Using a food processor makes them too mushy and too fine; you can chop them with a knife or use one of those push-down choppers, they do the trick well.

Put all the vegetables and the minced garlic in a large bowl or pan and sprinkle with the salt. Cover with ice and let stand in the refrigerator for 1 to 3 hours. Drain the water and ice from the vegetables in a colander, and press out as much liquid as you can from the veggies, too.

Combine the sugar, vinegar, spices, and seeds in a large pot (big enough for the vegetables, too) and bring to a boil. Add the vegetables, bring back to a boil, then turn down the heat a bit and simmer for 10 minutes.

Use a slotted spoon to transfer the vegetables to sterilized jars—you want some liquid, but not too much. Fill jars to about a ½ inch below the top, then get out the air bubbles with a wooden spoon handle and pour in a little of the liquid to fill in the spaces between the chopped vegetables. Put on lids and bands and process in a hot water bath for 10 minutes. Make sure you hear the lids click when the jars cool.

If you plan to eat and share the pickle relish within a couple of weeks, you can just ladle it into sterilized jars and refrigerate without processing; processed jars will keep in the pantry for six months or more.

Recycle Your Carrier Bags at the Enright CSA Greenhouse

Most members of the Enright CSA come each Saturday morning to collect their share with baskets, saddle bags, cloth carriers, and other reusable containers (I particularly like the market bags crocheted from old grocery carrier bags that Angie Utley makes). But no matter how diligent you are, you always seem to wind up with a few of those plastic bags from trips to the grocery store. There are plenty of ways to recycle those these days, but one way that we’d like to encourage is to bring them to the greenhouse.

It’s nice to have a few bags on hand for people who want to separate their hot peppers from mild, or slicing tomatoes from canning tomatoes and so forth; we also use them occasionally to pack up shares for people who pick up after hours. We hope everyone is conscientious about reusing the plastic bags they get at the greenhouse—bringing them back for reuse there the next time you come is an excellent, plan, in fact.

We certainly encourage reuse at the Enright CSA; food scraps and yard and field waste become compost, and many (or most) of the containers we use for produce at the greenhouse had an earlier life before we came to use them. So, it’s not so bad if you occasionally turn up with a few plastic carrier bags if you can bring a few to the greenhouse and we can keep reusing those plastic bags again and again for some produce toting.

If you have some bags to donate, just bring them along on Saturday morning when you pick up your share, and we’ll add them to our stock. And thank you for recycling!

Recipe Request: Cucumber Yogurt Sauce

The Enright CSA blog received a request at Saturday morning pickup for more cucumber recipes—specifically, a recipe for cucumber sauce. My first thought was of Greek cucumber sauce, the stuff you dribble on top of the tomatoes and onions on your gyro at Sebastian’s. I couldn’t remember the name of the sauce, but have since done a little research and found it is called Tzatziki sauce.

However, the requestor, farmer Dave (Rudy) Rudemiller, was thinking of Indian cucumber sauce. Ah, yes—forgot about that, it’s always on the lunch buffet at Amol Indian restaurant. And, a little more research unearthed the fact that it is called raita sauce.

Here’s the most intriguing part—it’s essentially the same sauce. Both are made with yogurt and cucumbers in equal amounts, two cups of yogurt and a medium cucumber, peeled, seeded, and diced. (Quick Tip: Cucumbers are easy to seed, just slice one in half longways and scoop out the seeds with a spoon.)

The difference is in the seasoning, obviously. For tzatziki sauce, add a garlic clove, fresh dill or mint, and salt and pepper to taste. For raita sauce, use ground cumin (or half cumin, half coriander), some chopped fresh cilantro, and sprinkle a little chili pepper and ground black pepper over it to garnish. You can also add a little lemon or lime juice to either one.

So, two sauces with one recipe . . . here are the directions with specific information about the amounts for both ethnicities of cucumber yogurt sauce. Both call for Greek yogurt because it is thicker than regular, but you can use regular as is if you don’t mind it being thinner. You can also strain regular plain yogurt through a sieve lined with a coffee filter to make it thicker, but that can take several hours.

Cucumber Yogurt Sauce

For either type:
2 cups Greek yogurt
1 medium cucumber, peeled, seeded, and diced
1 tsp. kosher salt

Put the diced cucumber in a colander, sprinkle with salt, and let stand for 30 minutes to draw out the liquid. Drain well and pat dry with a paper towel.

For Tzatziki Sauce:
1 garlic clove, chopped
1 T finely chopped fresh dill (use mint leaves for a different taste)
Optional: 1 Tbsp. lemon juice
Salt and fresh ground black pepper to taste

For Raita Sauce:
1 tsp. ground cumin (or ½ tsp. ground cumin and ½ tsp. ground coriander)
1 T chopped fresh coriander
Optional: 1 Tbsp. lime juice
Salt to taste
Chili powder and/or fresh ground pepper to garnish

Add all but about a ¼ cup of the diced cucumbers to the bowl of a food processor with the seasonings and optional lemon or lime juice and process until well blended. Stir this mixture and the reserved diced cucumber into the yogurt, taste, and add salt and pepper as needed. Let the sauce meld in the refrigerator for an hour or two before serving; for the raita sauce, sprinkle with a little chili powder and black pepper before serving.

Keeps in the refrigerator for several days, but you may need to pour off water that forms on top when you use it again.

A Dutch Treat: Koolsalade or . . . Coleslaw

We’ve had a number of cabbage recipes on the blog, but none for good old coleslaw. Then I had some delicious cole slaw made by Enright CSA member Leah Berger last week, and so asked for the recipe. That got me thinking about the name, “coleslaw,” so I had to do a little research on that. Turns out that it was originally a Dutch treat, and kool is the Dutch word for cabbage. Now it has a distinctly American reputation; it’s a staple at fast food chicken places (which have been in the news perhaps too much this past week) and a Southern specialty as well. And if you make a kind of coleslaw and then pickle it, it’s called “chow-chow,” which in fact derives its name from the French word for cabbage, chou.

So, that’s it for the etymology lesson for today. Let’s turn this blog over to Leah and her recipe for cole slaw, along with what she plans to do differently when she makes it again . . .

Spicy No-Mayo Coleslaw

This recipe is from Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything. I have only tried making it once, and feel it leaves room for improvement. I would add a little bit of honey or agave nectar and extra olive oil to balance the mustard, and maybe use lime juice and cilantro instead of lemon juice and parsley. He also suggests adding a Granny Smith apple and carrots, using apple cider vinegar, and adding a little onion for a different twist. I added carrot to mine.

Makes 8 servings
2 tablespoons Dijon mustard or to taste
2 tablespoons sherry vinegar, red wine vinegar or freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 small garlic clove, minced
I tablespoon minced fresh chile: jalapeno, Thai serrano, or habanero, or to taste (optional- I used jalapeno and it wasn’t spicy enough for me. If you like spice you might add a little more!)

Whisk above ingredients in a bowl, adding gradually:
¼ c peanut or olive oil

Combine & toss with dressing:
6 cups cored and shredded Napa, Savoy, green and/or red cabbage
1 large red or yellow bell pepper ( I used purple), diced or shredded
1/3 cup chopped scallion, more or less

Sprinkle with:
Salt and pepper to taste

Toss with:
¼ cup chopped parsley leaves

Lammas and Lughnasa at Imago This Saturday

Although Lammas was officially August 1, it's not too late to celebrate--there is a Lughnasadh celebration at Imago on Saturday, August 4, 7:00 pm to 8:30 pm. If you are confused at the different names, see the Enright CSA blogs about Lammas here and here.

The reason you'll see the holiday spelled as Lughnasa and Lughnasadh is simply because Irish uses a somewhat different alphabet than English, and when words are transliterated into English, the spelling can vary (like Chinese place names, such as Peking, which is now Beijing). It's all referring to the same thing, a first harvest celebration. [Note that the "dh" at the end of one spelling is silent; the holiday is pronounced "Loo-nah-zuh."]

The Imago website includes the following description about the celebration they have planned for Saturday evening: "Lughnasadh marks the time between Summer Solstice and Fall Equinox. Lughnasadh, also called Lammas, is the Celebration of Harvest . . . This is the time of the first harvests." We're lucky that our harvests at the Enright CSA started much earlier and will go on for several more months, but that's just all the more reason to celebrate this harvest festival of Lughnasa.

Celebrating Lammas

Happy Lammastide to all today. It’s August 1, the least-remembered pagan holiday. It celebrates the beginning of the end of summer; the name comes from “Loaf Mass,” which is kind of funny, because it’s a lot older than the Catholic mass. But they tried to christianize it a bit by celebrating the baking of the first loaves of bread with the new crop of wheat.

Its old name is Lughnasa, for the Celtic sun god Lugh. It’s one of the four holidays that comes between equinoxes and solstices. The others are Imbolc (which we call Groundhog’s Day or Candlemas, a holiday for prognosticating an early spring), Beltane (also known as May Day, celebrating the first of the warm weather), and Samhain (we call it Hallowe’en these days). If you notice, all these old holidays are associated with warm weather—expecting it, celebrating its arrival, cautiously noting it is slipping away, and then marking the end of the warmth.

Just being warm meant a lot to folks in the old days, that’s pretty clear. But of course warm weather also meant it was the growing season, which meant there was plenty of food, another big deal for folks in years past. It’s a big deal for us again, since we are growing our own food at the Enright Ridge CSA, so I think it’s nice to celebrate these holidays. (Though I would celebrate them anyway.)

There’s more about Lammas in a post last year that you can read here, but for today, if it doesn’t get too hot, bake some bread (though we’re not growing wheat quite yet) to celebrate.

It’s also the full moon tonight, and I think it’s always auspicious when a full moon falls on one of these four holidays (last year there was a full moon on Halloween). If you’ve had enough of the sun for awhile, get out and enjoy basking in the light of the full moon tonight, eat that bread, and celebrate Lammas.