Saturday, January 29, 2011

CSA week seven wrap-up, week eight start-up

Margie gave the blog a very nice mention in the newsletter this week. That usually brings in a handful of new readers so I'm feeling a little pressure to be interesting. I'll see what I can manage.

Yesterday, I was going to make the potato/collard salad I mentioned in last week's start-up post, when I went to get the collards out of the refrigerator there were the braising greens I had completely forgotten about. So, instead, I wilted them a little Chinese bacon and a whole lot of garlic and ginger and added them the pot to simmer while I made ramen.

That leaves the collards and potatoes unused, but they'll both keep a little longer. I've also still got the black sapotes. I've harvested the pulp from two and the third is about ready to go. I've got a couple ideas for flavor combinations to go with them, but I'm not sure if the final result will be in cake or ice cream form.

On to this week...

It's another greens-centric week, but they're all different enough that there's still some interest here.

For the chard, I can't argue with the taco recipe from the newsletter. I've made variations on it a few times and have been pretty happy with the results.

For the dill, I'm in the mood to make another batch of gravlax which should use up this small bunch plus the extra stems I've got stashed in the freezer.

The canistel won't be ripe for a while so I won't bother worrying about it too much now, but I since just one isn't quite enough for more recipes I'll probably do another round of my savory canistel recipe experiments.

The mizuna, next over, I think I've found the trick for. That's to remove the stem ends and treat it like baby spinach: salads, last second additions to soups or such or a quick saute to use with pasta or eggs or as a base for a chunk of meat. Not a lot of promise for anything particularly exciting, though.

Peashoots (in the bag above the mizuna), I like in tea sandwiches or on crackers with a bit of, for instance, gravlax. Delicate applications like that. Put them in a salad and they'd get lost and I can't see cooking them giving great results. On the other hand, that is quite a lot. Maybe they'd work in a cold noodle salad.

And finally, the yukina savoy. That's the only one of this lot hearty enough to survive a stir fry but that's kind of an obvious way to go. Maybe a slaw?

If any of you have better ideas, (for the yukina or otherwise) please share them in the comments.

3 comments:

drlindak said...

Hey! I braised the chopped Yukina in olive oil, lots of garlic, a bit of sea salt, pepper and red pepper flakes, added a can of canellini beans and cooked a bit longer, served it over leftover polenta. Not too exciting, but it was really good with a glass of wine after a LONG day at work. 10 minutes max.

billjac said...

That's a traditional Tuscan way to prepare kale, isn't it? There was an interesting variation on this preparation in the New York Times today where you cook the greens with the beans for a full half hour. I'm thinking of trying it with last week's collards.

As for the yukina, there are so many blog posts praising it creamed that I thought it might be good mixed into mac & cheese. I'll let you know how it turns out.

drlindak said...

Yum - sounds delicious! I'd love to hear how it turns out.

I've done the Tuscan thing with Kale. Actually, I've done it with just about every green that's ever been in the CSA box, including collards. No complaints from my family, who have become pretty adventuresome when it comes to my experiments... Tonight it's carambola pie with the tail end of this year's bumper crop. Something tells me it's going a bit too far, but we'll see shortly!