CSA week four - everything else

Rounding out week four, I finished the rest of the vegetables in three dishes.

First, the tuna crudo is pretty much as described in my first week four post a week ago with the simple salt, pepper, lemon and olive oil dressing. You can just make out the bed of arugula on the bottom there. One thing worth mentioning is that I used salt cured capers instead of the more common vinegar cured. The salt cured version has a more intense burst of caper flavor with hints of fruit and flowers replacing the pickled onion notes of the vinegar cured version. I thought it a better match to the tuna.

The broccoli raab, or whatever that was, ended up part of one of my favorite too-tired-for-a-proper-dinner dinners. It's a slight variation of a Gabrielle Hamilton's Pasta Kerchiefs with Poached Egg, French Ham, and Brown Butter. Instead of making my own pasta, which I suppose I ought to try one of these days, I use pappardelle or sometimes big broken slabs of lasagna noodles. The latter give a better texture, but you've got to deal with pasta shrapnel bouncing around the kitchen when you break them up. I also boost the amount of greens and lighten the brown butter sauce with some olive oil. Sometimes I'll add onions, mushrooms or tomatoes or switch out the Parmigiano for some mild melty cheese, but those are all accents to the central ham and eggs on pasta aspect.

Finally, it was time for a Saturday morning hash to clear out the refrigerator for the next box of vegetables. This week that meant the beets--there wasn't enough to properly fill a pickle jar so I'm holding off on that idea--the remains of the green pepper and tomato and whatever else I had around. I'm sure I don't need to tell you how to make hash so I'll just note that the beets added a lovely sweet roasty flavor that came from roasting them until they were almost caramelized before adding them to the pan. Also, the tomato took better to this application than to eating raw due to its meaty texture. I think stuffing would be another good application for that variety of tomato should one turn up in later week's box.