CSA in the Kitchen

Let's start the week off right with a salad.  We got two lovely heads of lettuce this week and promptly turned them into a Caesar salad.  The salad part is quite simple - tears the leaves off of the stem and rinse thoroughly, then dry thoroughly (it's important to dry lettuce well so that the dressing actually stays on it).

We make our Caesar dressing from scratch, so it's a bit more labor-intensive but so very delicious.  Beat one egg yolk (yes, this involves eating raw egg) with the juice of half of a lemon.  Add one or two cloves of freshly pressed garlic, 1/3 cup of finely grated Parmesan cheese, 1 TBS of Worcestershire sauce and 1 minced fillet of anchovy.  While mixing, drizzle in about 1/4 cup of olive oil.  Add salt and pepper to taste.  Dress your salad greens and enjoy.

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These last few weeks we have found ourselves with quite a few bell peppers.  This is a wonderful thing but, you see, Grady and I enjoy certain foods so much that we will often eat them once per week - we have had fajitas or something along those lines involving fresh salsa at least that often and sometimes more.  You, however may not love fajitas so much and so we bring you: meatloaf.

Yes, we did chop a green pepper and add it to our meatloaf mix.  The carrots we added were from our share last week.  We like to top our meatloaf with BBQ sauce so while you can taste the distinct green pepper a bit, mostly it tastes like delicious sauce with some meat and veggies.  For the mix I would use 1 medium carrot, 1/2 an onion and 1/2 a bell pepper per 1 pound of ground meat.

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This share is also looking perfect for making a refreshing batch of Gazpacho (use tomato, cucumber, bell pepper, jalapeno, and possibly even the herb you picked up).  According to Cook's Illustrated magazine, the way to make a perfectly creamy soup is to slowly drizzle in the olive oil as the blender is running.  Take a look at the recipe on this website to guide you to your simple dinner-from-a-blender!

Photo taken from oui, chef blog

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Our love affair with the grill continues this week as we plan to attempt grilling beets and fennel - maybe at the same time, maybe not.  I would say this could be a recipe for burned roots and bulbs but Grady is determined and so we will seek to enhance these foods with grill-supplied smoky flavor.  We'll let you know how that works for us ... if any of you have tried grilling either of these items before, please do let us know.

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Got hot peppers?  I know we do!  We took a handful to attempt infusing in vodka for future use in such drinks as very spicy Bloody Mary's.  Not wanting to drink your peppers?  Well Preserved food blog had a great recipe for hot peppers fermented with whey.  Check it out here!

Have a great week, everyone!

~ Courtney and Grady

CSA in the Kitchen

Welcome to another week in the kitchen!

It seems that the temperature may finally be dropping a bit {I try to be as cautious as possible when talking about Chicago weather!} and yesterday we even had a rainy day!  Hopefully this means good things for Montalbano Farms. 

As I consider the coming cooler weather, I'm reminded of an excellent way to prepare essentially any vegetable: roasting.

A good friend of mine reminded me recently that it's not just beets and winter squashes that take well to this form of cooking.  Last night, we tossed some chopped carrots with olive oil (you can also use butter) and sprinkled with salt and pepper, set in the oven at 400 for 45 minutes or so - voila!  Dinner. ... ah well, part of dinner!  We had a tiny cabbage on hand as well, so I cored and chopped that, drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with salt and pepper - are you noticing a trend? and cooked it alongside the carrots.

Your new kitchen motto could be: When in doubt, Roast it.  Many vegetables are made sweeter by roasting, which can make even the ones you might think of as less-pleasing, more tasty.

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On with the sweet peppers!  I've already suggested quite a few ways to prepare these crisp veggies and I probably already suggested grilling.  If you haven't tried it, you should.  Cut the peppers in half (remove seeds and ribs), rub with olive oil and place on the grill.  You should use a lower flame or keep them partially away from the flame.  Here we were working with a charcoal grill and we put them over very hot embers.  {You also see onions, garlic, jalapenos and tomatillos here.  We're serious about grilling stuff}.

Predictably, these all went into some fabulous fajitas!

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Speaking of peppers, did you grab a handful of hot peppers when you picked up your CSA?  Or maybe you got a whole bunch in your share?  Great!  Aside from making excellent fresh salsa, jalapenos will serve you well in the form of Jalapeno Poppers.

As you may have guessed, these were also grilled.  Grady cut a little 'window' into each pepper to get the seeds and ribs out.  Then he mixed our fajita seasoning into cream cheese, the amount of seasoning will vary with your taste but I'd say he used a big pinch per pepper.  Stuff the peppers with the cheese mix, close the 'window' with a toothpick, then cook on the grill away from direct heat for 20 minutes until slightly charred and cheese is melty.  Beware the tips!  They'll be hotter (spice-wise) than the body of the pepper.

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This rather creepy looking jar of stuff is actually a rather delicious and easy way to make pickles.  We've been getting cucumbers of just the right size for the last few weeks and every new one has gone into this jar as it has arrived in our kitchen.  I can't say I love pickles, but Grady does so we make them.  For a batch of pickles you'll need a large glass or ceramic jar with a wide mouth plus a small plate that fits inside the mouth and a mason jar filled with water to weigh the plate down when the time comes.

Dissolve 6 TBS of sea salt in 1/2 gallon of filtered water, add your cucumbers, up to 2 heads of peeled garlic, and a few branches of fresh dill.  Make sure everything is fully submerged under the brine (this is where the small weight and plate come in), cover with a cloth and leave on the counter for up to 4 weeks after which time you can move it to the fridge.  Over the course of these weeks, the salt will inhibit the growth of bad (food-spoiling) bacteria and encourage good bacteria that will sour and preserve the cucumbers.  If the water level gets low, add 1 TBS of salt dissolved in 1 cup of filtered water.  If white stuff grows on the top, just skim it off - no worries!

This recipe is taken from Wild Fermentation by Sandor Katz and I strongly recommend reading the book for further questions and excellent recipes!  Our pickles have turned out quite well, so don't be afraid!

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Finally, here's a picture of that pasta dish from last week that involves fresh chopped tomatoes.  If you haven't tried it, this is a great meal to throw together at the last minute.

 

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 Love selecting your herb every week and then by mid-week you sadly realize you've yet to use it?  Most herbs can be dried very easily and they make so much of a difference in your cooking that you simply must try it!  I soak the herb in a little bowl of cold water and swish it around just to make sure all the dirt gets rinsed off.  I spread it to dry and, once dry, place loosely in a paper bag, fold the bag closed and leave in the pantry (away from heat and light) until I forget about them.  At the point that I remember them, which is hopefully about a month all together, I strip the dried leaves from the stems and store in an air-tight container.  The smell of thyme mid-winter or a little crushed oregano to brighten your chili - just these things make it worth your while.

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We are always looking for new ideas and feedback about how to prepare CSA veggies!  If you'd like, please share any tips or recipes you've discovered along the way.  Thanks!

~ Courtney and Grady

Fermentation: Successes and Failures

A few months ago I ordered two very exciting books:

The Essential Urban Farmer is filled with excellent information about all things urban/small-space farming and I'm sure I will gush more about it's usefulness when I finally get around to writing about our little community garden space.  But the other book - wild fermentation, well, it's been causing a stir here in our kitchen.

The only real fermentation I've been doing has been yogurt, which you can read about here, and because we don't buy raw milk at the moment there isn't much that's truly wild about that process.  Thanks to Sandor, though, we're branching out!

Fermentation #1: Sourdough

The basic way to make a sourdough starter is to mix equal parts flour and water, stir a few times per day and wait for wild yeast to show up and feast upon the meal you made for them.  We caught our little critters within 48 hours!

Once you catch them, you need to keep feeding and watering them, but you're also free to bake with their natural leavening power!  This is mostly where the success/failure comes in - we made the "Alaskan Hotcakes" recipe in the book and they were generally a success although I still need to figure out how to cook them properly.

They were quite edible, noticeably sour and improved greatly with maple syrup and apple butter.

Next I tried bread.  Bread brings with it a long list of failures for me (see this post for an example).  When I first started, things were OK but I was using all white flour and commercial yeast and that's just not what I'm after for regular consumption anymore.  After exploding glass in a hot oven on two occasions and attempting many "foolproof" and "scientific" methods, I still am mostly disappointed.  But it's bread for goodness sake!  Haven't people been making bread for almost forever?  How could it be so hard and complicated?  So, based on Sandor's kitchen ethic of never measuring, I mixed up some sourdough bread (I did this also because I really couldn't find a plain sourdough recipe that uses whole wheat flour, only sourdough starter, and makes 1 loaf).  Serious failure.

I've read many times that the main problem with novice-made bread is that they add too much flour while kneading, so you're supposed to wet your hands to keep the dough from sticking.  Let me tell you - I kneaded this dough with wet hands, dry hands, floured hands and everywhere in between for probably 45 minutes and never achieved the smooth, elastic dough that all bread makers aspire to.  I also got embarrassingly angry and frustrated with my dough.  Eventually, I got it in a semi-manageable state, let it rise again and dumped it in the oven.  The resulting bread was edible but seriously dense and had a pathetic crust.  I'm giving up on bread making for the foreseeable future.  Grady says he may try his hand now and that's just fine with me!

On to successes...

Fermentation #2: Cabbage aka Sauerkraut

 

Pretty straightforward: chop cabbage, add salt, pound it to release water to cover and let it sit and do it's thing.

I have actually failed at this before too and I'm not totally sure why except I think I didn't get the water level high enough (I added salt water to the crock above because the amount pictured is definitely not enough).  Our kraut is coming along nicely now and we may begin eating it tonight (it was started about a week ago).

Fermentation #3: Honey Wine

This one is also very simple.  Mix honey and water and let it sit out, stirring a few times per day.  In the same way as with sourdough, the sweet mixture attracts yeast and starts the fermentation process.  Once you've got some bubbles going (ours fizzed like soda when stirred), transfer to a carboy with an airlock to finish.

This is also a more immediate gratification concoction than other alcoholic ferments in that it can be ready 2 weeks after starting, although you can let it go for about 4 and bottle and age it, if you want to.  We haven't tasted it yet but all seems to be going according to plan, so hopefully we'll be enjoying it soon!