CSA farm subscription - week ten

The share was more substantial this week but I have to admit being dismayed at seeing yet more lettuce and scallions. I don't know about what turned up in your share (should be you a reader who has one. I'm getting a surprising number of readers who don't. Mainly they're coming for the no-knead bread recipe, but sometimes they take a look around.) but mine were huge. I'm hopeful that means these are the mature vegetables from the end of the season and we'll be moving on to something else shortly. As for how to use them, I'm thinking of a Chinese steamed fish dish I remember seeing pictures of (or maybe I'll just seal it up in a pouch and let it steam itself) and I want to see if I can do a no-knead version of potato scallion bread.

For the lettuce, the lettuce soup recipe in this week's newsletter made me take a second look at that idea. Looking around on-line I found a surprising variety of recipes. I found French, Slovak, Italian, Indian and Chinese versions. Those that specified a type almost all called for iceberg so I'm going to use just the romaine as the closest approximation currently in my crisper. I haven't settled on quite which one I'll make, but I'll probably go with either this one (possibly substituting curry powder for the coriander) or this one. And speaking of lettuce, I did manage to down a couple of salads over the last week. I've discovered that the case is less that I'm not a salad guy as I stated and more that I'm not a lousy homemade vinaigrette guy. Once I tried my hand at salad dressings involving mayonnaise or bacon drippings the situation improved.

I'm trying to resist the urge to bake the chard into chips like I did with the kale. It's probably too tender for that; I should treat it more like spinach. It'll probably end up in a frittata or over pasta.

The cabbage is a good utility player so I may not come up with a meal for it and it will find its own way into fried rice, hash and the like. It's as if cabbage starts out as leftovers. If I wasn't settled on the lettuce soup, I might make my Mom's cabbage soup. And if I wasn't getting bored with the combination, I might make a Chinese cabbage recipe (it's a Chinese cabbage-recipe, not a Chinese-cabbage recipe so this is the right sort of cabbage) that briefly fries the cabbage with lop chong, shrimp, garlic and ginger, adds a cup of chicken stock and a bit of soy sauce and then simmers for five minutes or so. But don't let that stop you. (Serve over noodles with a drizzle of sesame oil.) I still might change the type of sausage, switch out the shrimp for clams and make a Portuguese variation. Or I may go German. I can't be bothered to make sauerkraut but there are plenty of other ways to pair it with brats.

The green beans I might use in a Szechuan stir fry again. I wasn't 100% happy with the first one I made and I'd like to take another shot at it.

The red pepper will take care of itself I'm sure, and the grapefruit I'll probably just eat straight.

I think that covers it. From last week I still have the canistel and the tomatoes, neither of which are in any hurry to ripen. The canistel I may give away. I've now had a sufficient number and types of sapote and prepared them in a sufficient variety of ways to confidently say that I just don't much care for them. I should find some takers at work, though. For the tomatoes, I've been thinking of a Greek salad if I can find a good feta around here.

Hmm, seems like a busy week after a couple of slow ones. Good.