Add Some Color to Your Freezer

We’ve been getting a goodly number of peppers in shares recently, and there’s more on the share table if you are inclined to do some pepper preservation. Of course you can dry some hot peppers, like chiles, but I found out recently that it’s even easier to preserve sweet peppers and other kinds of hot peppers so you have them on hand for stews and chili as the weather gets colder. As it turns out, it’s a fairly easy process—you don’t have to can or even blanche peppers to keep them for use all winter long.

Wash the peppers, seed them, and cut them into strips. Then arrange the strips on wax paper-covered cookie sheets (as shown in the photo, I kept the strips segregated by color and hotness). Put them in the freezer uncovered, and when the strips are frozen, bag them in freezer bags and put them right back in the freezer. If you want, you can take out just what you need, or thaw a whole bag to add a little fire to a pot of chili.

Another vegetable that’s easy to freeze for future use is the beet. Beets are already about the most versatile vegetable around, great for anything from pickling to adding to chocolate cake or salad or . . . well, the list goes on and on (here's a great recipe for beet fritters and another one for beet or carrot soup). If you want to keep them on hand after the growing season, just roast them, then peel, dice or slice, and put them in freezer bags.

I roasted a dozen or so medium-sized beets in a Pyrex pan, adding about a ¼ cup of water and covering with foil before putting them in a 350-degree oven for about 45 minutes. Then, when they cooled, the skins slipped right off, and I diced them for salads, to add a little color when everything is grey and cold.

Now my freezer is a riot of color, with green, yellow, and red peppers stacked along side deep purple beets. It’s enough to remind me that spring will come again every time I open the freezer door!

Call It Chinese Celery

In the latest shares from the CSA, we've had a choice of bok choy or Chinese cabbage, which might have been confusing to some folks, because bok choy is sometimes called Chinese cabbage. But at the greenhouse, the two leafy vegetables available are Napa cabbage, also called Chinese cabbage, and bok choy, which apparently has the same nickname.

If I were in charge of vegetable nicknames, I would call bok choy Chinese celery. Though the leafy part is different, darker green with unserrated leaves, the stalks are quite like celery, and I’ve used it in the same ways in things like gazpacho this season. It really doesn’t seem much like cabbage to me at all, but whatever you call it, it is good in stir fry and soup.

Speaking of soup, a lot of my soup recipes begin with “pick the leftover meat off a roast chicken and then boil the bones for stock,” and my Hearty Chicken Bok Choy soup is one of them. I always figure on getting two or three meals out of a roast chicken; if you cover the bones with water and add a small peeled onion cut in half, a peeled carrot cut in half, and a celery rib (or bok choy stalk), some thyme, salt, and pepper, and a bay leaf, in an hour and a half you’ll have a nice pot of stock. Strain it, pick off any leftover meat still on the bones, cool the broth and skim the fat off, and then move on to the “real” recipe.

Hearty Chicken & Bok Choy Soup

Leftover meat from a roast chicken

5 or 6 cups of homemade chicken stock

2 cloves minced garlic

1 large onion, diced

1 bunch bok choy, leaves and stalks, chopped

6 small potatoes, peeled and sliced or diced

4 carrots, peeled and sliced into rounds

1 tablespoon olive oil

Salt, pepper, and herbs to taste

Put the olive oil in the bottom of a soup pot, heat, and add garlic and onion, cooking until soft but not brown, about 4 or 5 minutes. Add the bok choy, potatoes, and carrots, and toss with the onions until they are heated, 3 minutes or so. Then add the chicken stock and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to a simmer and cook for about 10-15 minutes, until vegetables are beginning to get tender. Then add the chicken meat and whatever herbs sound good—a little thyme, some basil or a bit of pesto, maybe some diced hot pepper if you are so inclined. Continue to simmer until chicken is heated through and vegetables are fairly soft, another 10-15 minutes, and it’s ready.

Two Tickets to Paradise (It's a Fundraiser!)

The Enright Ridge EcoVillage CSA is having an end-of-the-season party and fundraiser on Sunday, October 20,  at the new and improved Paradise Lounge & Garden, located right down the street from the greenhouse at the corner of West Eighth and Enright Avenues. 

Price Hill oldtimers will remember the bar (formerly called the Lyon’s Den) as the place to gather after a football or baseball game. Historically, it was also a popular place to have lunch and a beer after visiting the graveyards nearby. But for this party, we promise no cemetery visits. Just plenty of good food, good music, games, and fun.

The Paradise Lounge is under new management, committed to being neighborhood-friendly, so we’re going to have a nice neighborhood gathering there, which we also hope will raise some funds to balance out the CSA budget as we wrap up this season.

Everyone is invited, so bring your friends and family to Paradise to enjoy music by local bands, a chili supper, local brews, cornhole, and other down-home games.  You can even make your own scarecrow!

It starts at 4:00 pm and goes until 8:00 pm (don’t worry, there’s a television for football fans to stay current with the Sunday games). 

Two can enjoy Paradise a little more cheaply than one; the cost is $20 per person and $35 per couple presale, and tickets will be on sale during pickup and after (from 10:00 am to 2:00 pm) on the next two Saturdays, October 12 and 19, at the greenhouse, 824 Enright Avenue.

If you buy tickets at the door on October 20, the price is $25 per person and $40 per couple. All proceeds support the Enright Ridge Urban Ecovillage Community-Supported Agriculture project.

Your Recipe + Greens

I’m always looking for new ways to cook greens, but though there are many ways to prepare them, the list is not endless. So, I’ve developed a new system as this season begins to wind down. I’m adding greens to any recipe I think they will work with.

How does that work? Well, I’ve already made it a practice to cut up and add some kale or chard to any quiche or frittata I’m making. Wash the greens, chop or slice into thin slivers or small pieces, and add them to the pan before the egg mixture, and they are a great addition. (There’s a blog from 2012 called “Understanding Your Greens” that talks about different kinds of greens and how to use them.)

Baked beans work with lots of additions—I always put in plenty of chopped up green peppers, but next time I may try some chopped up greens, too. You can add them to macaroni and cheese, and definitely to mashed potatoes—adding steamed cabbage and mashing together with the potatoes creates a time-honored Irish dish called colcannon, which is traditional at this time of year, particularly at Samhain, the Celtic celebration that gave us Hallowe’en.

Greens are good in soups, too. You can add them to chicken soup or minestrone, and they aren’t bad in tomato soups either. Add them to broth soups toward the end of the cooking time; for tomato soup, homemade or store bought, steam the greens and then stir them in. There’s a recipe for an African soup or stew made from greens on this blog, and another simple but tasty Swiss Chard Soup with Cream Cheese Croutons that you can make in minutes.

This past week, I made Chicken and Dumplings, a good southern standard, but when I added the chicken to the broth, I also put in a bunch of kale, washed, stemmed and chopped. It tasted great and made the dish a little more healthy for us, too.

So, I encourage you to use your imagination. What recipes can benefit from the addition of greens, or other vegetables? You don’t always have to find a recipe that specifically uses what you have in your share—make dishes you often make and add greens.

“Flavors of the Garden” at Civic Garden Center

Members of the Enright CSA will once again participate in Flavors of Community Gardens at the Civic Garden Center this week. Jeanne Nightingale, Elaine Wolter, Diana Lewis, and Suellyn Shupe will bring recipes prepared from our CSA gardens vegetables for participants to taste. We will also taste from the bounty of many other gardens sponsored or supported by Civic Garden Center.

You may not be aware that the fenced garden on Terry Street was originally a Community Garden sponsored by CGC and established as such via the efforts of Jennifer Belisle, who is a five year member of the CSA. That garden was vital to the project in its first year, and continues to provide plenty, as well as being one of the few that is securely fenced.

All CSA members are invited to attend this free event to hang out with garden people and get some good recipe ideas. You probably won’t need dinner when you get home.

Flavors of Community Gardens

Thursday, September 12

5:30 to 7:30 pm

Patio at Civic Garden Center

2715 Reading Road, Mt. Auburn

—Suellyn Shupe

End-of-Summer Pickled Cabbage Salad

I’ve made various salads with Napa (or Chinese) cabbage before, and I’ve pickled it with carrots and radishes into a kind of Korean kimchi. Over the weekend, I was looking for something that was somewhere in between—a tangy salad, but not quite as tangy as kimchi. I also wanted to eat it the same day as I made it, rather than burying it in the backyard (or, these days, the refrigerator) for a few weeks, as you need to do with kimchi.

I searched for pickled cabbage online and found some recipes for sauerkraut and pickled red cabbage, and I also found various recipes for cabbage salad. I took a little from one recipe, a little from another, and came up with this tasty version, with oranges, golds, and reds mixed in with the green cabbage—a perfect color combination for the beginning of September.

Pickled Cabbage Salad

1 head Napa (Chinese) cabbage

2-3 small carrots (gold or orange varieties)

1 red sweet pepper

1 purple onion

1 small piece of ginger, about 1 inch to 1½ inch

1 teaspoon celery seed

1 teaspoon sea salt

½ teaspoon black pepper

2/3 cup cider vinegar

3-4 tablespoons honey or agave

Wash and separate the leaves of cabbage; cut them into strips long ways, then cut the strips into about 2” pieces. Peel the carrots and cut into matchstick size pieces;  seed the red pepper and dice it into small pieces; peel and slice the purple onion thin and chop into bite-sized pieces. Put all the vegetables in a large container with a lid, then sprinkle with celery seed. Peel the ginger and slice very thin; cut the slices into strips. Heat the vinegar and honey or agave in a small sauce pan. Bring to a boil, turn down to simmer, and add the salt and ginger pieces. Turn off the heat and let the mixture cool down for about 5 to 10 minutes. Pour it over the vegetables, sprinkle with black pepper, put the lid on, and toss until all the pieces are coated with the dressing. Refrigerate at least four hours (overnight is okay, too) before serving.

Improvise and Compensate!

I was involved with a few local theatre troupes in my youth, and we always had rather laughable budgets to put on shows, so our motto was always “Improvise and Compensate.” It’s stuck with me all these years; there are always ways to make do with what you have or substitute something you can get for something that just isn’t attainable.

Well, over the weekend I realized that can apply to cooking, too. I dearly love gazpacho, a cold soup, usually made with tomatoes (but I also have a recipe for a delicious cucumber version). The standard recipe calls for peppers and celery and cucumbers along with the tomatoes, and I’ve posted the recipe in the past. 

But this season, when I had enough tomatoes, I didn’t have any cucumbers, and I had more hot peppers than green peppers, and no celery at all. Still, I had tomatoes that needed to be used quickly, so I decided to try a little improvising, compensating for what I lacked.

What I wound up with was a slightly different but very tasty version of the traditional tomato gazpacho. Since I used mostly things that were in the share last week and this week, I thought I’d post my improvised version of this fresh vegetable favorite.

Improvise and Compensate Gazpacho

6-7 stalks bok choi (just the stalks, not the green part)

2 cups cubed watermelon, seeded

8 small to medium tomatoes, peeled and chopped

2 green peppers, seeded and chopped

1 jalapeno pepper, seeded and chopped

2 red onions, peeled and chopped

½ cup cider vinegar

¼ cup vegetable oil

¼ cup olive oil

1 teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon fresh ground pepper

Put all the chopped up vegetables in a food processor (in batches if necessary), and puree until there are no chunks left. Add the oils, vinegar, salt, and pepper and mix well. Chill and serve cold with croutons, onions, parsley, or chopped cucumbers as a garnish.