CSA farm subscription - week 15

There's an interesting variety of vegetables in the share this week with a bit of a challenge in dealing with the small amounts without falling back on a stir fry and if my crisper drawers weren't still full of last week's share I'd be pretty enthusiastic right around now. I think I'm going to have to take next week off to deal with this backlog.

Starting off we've got a head of escarole. It's just about tender enough to eat raw, but man is it bitter. Soup is traditional and it is a good way to use up a whole head. The details I'll have to work out as there are plenty of different possibilities.

The onion, well it's an onion. It'll get used.

The tomatoes appear to the be the same meaty variety we got before but they're too small for stuffing like I did before. They should be just right for making sauce, though.

I remember coming across an interesting recipe for the zucchini and/or summer squash but I have no recollection what. If I can't track it back down, I'd like to do the fritters again now that I've got some proper corn meal.

The turnips I'll probably roast as I've concluded I like them best that way. Maybe substituting in for the radishes in the fish recipe I made a couple weeks back if nothing else occurs to me.

The broccoli I'm surprised turned up in florets instead of a whole head. Maybe there wasn't enough to go around? It must have been an an enormous amount of work to cut them down and there's a lot of perfectly palatable stem missing. Plus they seem a little worse for wear already. All that said, I'm thinking of adding them to the stir fry lined up to finish off last week's mei qing choy. Or maybe not; they do best with a heavier sauce than the mei qing choy does. The other option is to stick them on the roast list; there were instructions for roasting broccoli in the issue of Cook's Illustrated with the Almost No Knead Bread recipe (which I'm still making with minor variations every week or two. The next significant variation I'm planning is pumpernickel).

Next up are the garlic chives. My half share allotment is four, just enough to toss into some dish.

Finally, the parsley. I haven't used last week's cilantro, but I see European recipes ahead this week so there should be uses for the parsley.

Now that I'm done I should admit that this whole post has been slightly disingenuous as I've had the chicken stock you've read about above (or will on your next visit) on the boil the whole time so I actually knew what I was doing with half the turnips and a some of the parsley. I'd have to do some serious introspection to learn why I made the decision not to mention it. But since I just did I now have it both ways and I can go happily on my way without that insight.