CSA in the Kitchen

We're back in the kitchen cooking up some recipes and ideas for you to make good use of your summer produce share!  We'll be doing our best to change things up as often as possible, but I will warn you now - we make lots of fresh salsa and we grill often - it's possible that we will eat fajitas every week for the entire month of July.  With that said, let's dive into our early summer meals.

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Early summer is the time of greens.  Greens and green lettuce and green garlic scapes ... and sometimes a few red radishes.  With all the lettuce, of course some good salads are in order.  Pictured above is Grady's grilled calamari summer salad.  

1/2 cup of chopped carrots

1/2 cup of chopped celery

3 - 4 green onions, chopped

grilled calamari - enough to satisfy 2 people

a few spoons of mayonnaise

a squeeze of lemon juice

salt and pepper to taste

Mix it all together, line your bowls with rinsed lettuce - at least 2 leaves each! - and fill with calamari mix.  This makes a wonderful, light lunch, especially with some bread and butter on the side.

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When you are given such wonderfully fresh ingredients, such as we get from Montalbano Farms, sometimes the best preparation is the simplest one.  Sweet raw carrots and lightly boiled chard with butter to compliment some barbecued chicken.  

The potatoes took a bit more effort here, though, because when Grady cooks it will never be straight-forward and not messy (it will always be good though, so it's a worthy trade).  The potatoes were chopped and deep fried in small batches, in a small pot - so as to use less fat - in duck fat.  We beyond recommend duck fat for frying; it's delicious.  For inquiring minds, we bought ours at our local local-foods store, Green Grocer.

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An essential part to properly enjoying your CSA, is to eat meals made with it outdoors (at least if you  have an outdoor dining area!).  You slow down, relax, take in the breeze and then eat more slowly and enjoy more fully.  Summer dinners don't need to be elaborate affairs to be fulfilling.  Here we're having a small salad (and by that I mean lettuce with basic vinaigrette), some aged Gouda, kofta kebabs with mint-yogurt sauce and a side of rice.

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We'd love to hear from you in the comments!  If you have other great recipes you've discovered, or questions related to what we've made/what we do with our CSA please share them with us.  Thanks!