CSA farm subscription - week 19

Quite a heavy box today. It's an end of the season blowout cornucopia! Which makes me wonder what's left for next week's make-up share, actually. Time enough to worry about that next week.

First off, I've already polished off the breakfast radishes which I had sliced thin on slices of bread with butter and a bit of salt interspersed with the last of my grape tomatoes. No doubt there are more sophisticated ways of preparing radishes, but with good quality of all the elements involved there's really no need. The radish tops are rather wilted, but I think I might be able to salvage a little for a pasta sauce or somesuch.

Next up are the eggplant, squash and tomatoes which clearly constitute a construct-a-ratatouille kit (although I'll have to go get some yellow peppers to complete the color palette). I've never made ratatouille but it seems a straightforward and flexible recipe from my initial investigations. To me that means that it's easy to throw together something mediocre; I'll really have to look into what I want to do if I want to make something worth the effort. At a guess, I think I'll end up roasting everything first.

It's a shame we're only getting eggplant here at the end of the season. It's really versatile and I would have liked the chance the try a few different cooking methods and cuisines. I suppose I can always pick some up at the supermarket.

The baby bok choy aren't so tiny that you need to treat any different from plain old adult bok choy (which is a shame as the itty bitty ones make a lovely presentation). They store well so I'll hold on to them until until an interesting application presents itself. There must be something other than floating them in soup or stir frying them.

The cucumbers I've given up doing anything fancy with. I've come to the conclusion that this sort of cucumber is best raw so it's salad or carpacio or tartar or the like for them.

The garlic chives put the chives in my little herb garden to shame so I'd like to use them somewhere where their flavor can really stand out more as a final finishing touch than as an ingredient as I don't think the flavor will survive serious cooking. I was a moment ago going to use the leftover dill with the cucumbers, but the garlic chives sound like a better bet now.

The strawberries I have no great plans for; my ice cream for the week is set and has no place for fruit. Anyway, like the radishes, they're lovely just the way they are and don't need any dressing up.