CSA week 14 wrap-up, week 15 start-up

After a couple weeks without, I've finally got something worth mentioning in the wrap-up section of this post.

I said I was thinking of pickling the broccoli in last week's post and I found a few different recipes out there. I decided to try a particularly simple one instead of over-accessorizing the broccoli with spices. It called for tossing peeled thin-sliced stems in a little salt, letting them sit overnight and pouring off the expressed liquid, dressing them in two parts olive oil to one part vinegar plus a few crushed cloves of garlic (I added a couple shots of hot sauce) and letting it sit overnight again. So, more a simple broccoli salad than a proper pickle. Mighty tasty, though. Well worth a try.

The broccoli crowns I served over penne as I often do. I tried cooking them along with the pasta this time but too much of the flavor ended up in the water so I'm going back to a quick blanch and cook-down in a pan with plenty garlic and olive oil.

The strawberries were disappointingly tart again this week so I cooked them down into a syrup and, along with the previously week's ice cream, made milkshakes. Also, mixed with a bit of raspberry jam and heated up a little, it made a lovely filling for buckwheat crêpes.

I was going to braise the celery with tomatoes and olives, but the recipe was annoyingly fussy and I wasn't feeling it. I could have simplified, but I ended up making a pretty good celery and smoked salmon salad and ate it with crackers instead. Still half the head left, but it was a small head so I can probably consider it an herb and not worry about it, just like I'm not worrying about the thyme, sage and rosemary I've got lurking in my refrigerator.

I've still got the cabbage too, but it's hodling up well so I'll just use it as the need arises.

As for this week...


We've got dandelion greens again (on the left). I'm not making the mistake of trying to use them without proper preparation to leach their bitterness. A recipe I made last year called for simmering them with baking soda. I might try that method again. Actually, I may well make that full recipe again. I wrote that I quite liked it.

The little squash I've already cooked, along with some mushrooms, onions and the remaining broccoli crowns in a macaroni and cheese. A good combination of flavors, but I overcooked the noodles a little so I'm not happy with the texture.

The spring onion, I'm just going to use in recipes calling for onion/shallot/scallion. If there was a second in the extras bin, I'd have had enough to make a savory tarte tatin that I've had in the back of my head for a while. I think spring onions would be particularly well-suited.

The bok choy is versitile, but only within a narrow range. I mean to say that it's only really good for stir fries and east Asian soups, but it'll work in just about any stir fry or east Asian soup. There's nothing else here that shouts out for a either one of those, though. I do have an unusual, but tradtional, recipe for creamed bok choy I might try. It might be the only recipe in the world that calls for both milk and dried shrimp.

The radish tops were past their prime so I've trashed them. The radishes themselves are the sort better cooked. I can see them working well with the dandelion greens.

The mint I'll ignore and then throw out in a month as ususal.

The garlic chives are an herb too, but one I have more use for. I want to use them in something where they're the primary seasoning, not just one more ingredient thrown in the mix. Just what, I'll have to think about.

The green beans I think I'd like to find a central Asian recipe for. I've made a lot of green bean recipes, but I don't think I've ever used them in something from that area. There's probably something; they're used on either side. I'll have to do some research.

The collards I want to do anything but cook Southern-style since I still got an enormous amout of gumbo z'herbes in the freezer. I tried wrapping sticky rice in collards last year but had some difficulty. In retrospect, I should have cut out less stem and steamed the leaves for a minute or two to get them flexible. And, as long as I'm switching in collards for lotus leaves, there's no reason to stick with Chinese fillings in the rice (other than the fact that that tastes really good). Maybe I'll try mixing that up a bit.

That's quite a bit to deal with. I wouldn't be surprised if some of this ends up in the freezer instead.

CSA week 14 - Cream of green bean soup

This is a cross between three cream of green bean soup recipes I found, all from the Hungary/Transylvania area. I liked the use of sour cream in one, the bacon in another and the blending from a third. This is probably the sort of thing that sparks border wars in the old country, but I think I'm sufficiently removed that I can do what I want here.

3 cups water
1/2 pound green beans, cleaned and broken into short lengths
1 clove garlic, smashed
1 slice bacon, finely chopped
1 Tablespoon flour
1/4 onion, finely chopped
1/2 cup sour cream (or yogurt)
sweet or hot paprika
salt and pepper
white vinegar

1. Bring the water to a boil in a medium saucepan. Add the beans, garlic and less salt than you'd use if you were just boiling green beans, but still a fair bit. Cook for a few minutes until beans are al dente.

2. Meanwhile fry bacon over medium heat in a small pan. When the bacon is crisp, remove it to a bowl retaining the bacon fat in the pan. [For a vegetarian version, substitute butter for the bacon fat and use smoked paprika later.]

3. Add flour and onion to pan and cook, stirring, to create a roux. (That's called a rántás in Hungarian I've just learned. Interesting.) Cook until the flour browns then remove from heat and add a few spoonfuls of the bean-water and stir to dissolve.

4. Mix the roux into the saucepan with the beans. Add the sour cream, paprika and salt and pepper to taste. Don't worry if you can't get the sour cream to fully dissolve. Gently simmer the soup for five more minutes until it thickens up a bit or you start worrying about overcooking the beans.

5. Remove half the green beans to a bowl, making sure to leave the garlic behind, and blend the soup, either in a blender or in the pot using an immersion blender. Return the beans.

Serve at any temperature you'd like, garnished with the bacon bits, a dash of paprika and a slosh of vinegar. And some parsley if you've got it. Oh, garlic chives wouldn't be bad. I should have thought of that.


Careful with the vinegar, particularly if you used yogurt earlier. The tanginess is just supposed to balance the creaminess, not overwhelm the dish. I cooked the beans about right;They're tender but not quite soft and have retained enough flavor that a spoonful with one ends with clean bean flavor after the creaminess, tartness and smoke have faded. It adds a little extra interest to an otherwise nice but not terribly exciting dish.

The roux didn't do a heck of a lot of thickening. I don't really know what I'm doing with rouxs--I can't even pluralize the word correctly--This isn't the first time I've squandered its thickening potential. (I did find the filé powder at Millams by the way.) Point is: blending some of the beans was a pretty good idea and helps a lot in giving the soup body.

More of the vegetable flavor comes out as the soup cools. I haven't tried it cold yet, but the flavors are well balanced at room temperature. On the other hand, I like the mouthfeel a bit better when it's warm, so it's a compromise.

OK, it's tomorrow and I've tried it cold. There are textural issues. Let's call slightly warmer than room temperature the optimum serving temperature.

CSA week 14 - A mizuna pesto variation

As Caroline wrote on her blog earlier today, pesto's an easy way to use up an overload of CSA greens and it works just fine with mizuna. I've been having trouble finding a good use for the mizuna so I decided to punt with a pesto, but I didn't want to make it too easy on myself. As long as I was switching out the basil, I might as well throw in a few more switch-ups and see where I ended up.

I had a vague idea of making a Southwestern-style pesto so to the mizuna I added a handful of cilantro. And to the garlic I added a modestly hot pepper. The olive oil I kept the same. For the parmesan, I substituted an aged queso blanco and for the pine nuts I substituted corn nuts.

And, in a last minute decision, for the pasta, I substituted pulled pork.



The results left something to be desired, but, surprisingly, it wasn't my substitutions that caused the problem. It was the bitterness of the mizuna. Once I added a couple pinches of sugar and a drizzle of vinegar to balance against the bitterness, it was much improved. Now it tastes like a proper pesto with a bright fresh grassiness and slight tanginess. Without the bitterness prominent, a lot of the distinctive character beyond a generic green comes from the cheese and the corn nuts which give subtle hints of funk and toastiness respectively. And a lot of salt from both. All of this plays surprisingly well against the savoriness of the pork. This was just a lark, but I've stumbled upon something really quite tasty. I wonder why there isn't a tradition of pesto-based barbecue sauces. Maybe the smokiness of proper barbecue (as opposed to my crockpot pulled pork) throws the balance off? Or does such a thing exist; have any of you heard of it?

CSA week 13 - Komatsuna udon

This is actually a cross between two traditional Japanese dish--sansai udon and ohitashi--to create something that isn't quite either but I think takes some good elements from both.

The common element between the two is greens--komatsuna commonly--and a soy-dashi broth. I created a somewhat richer and more complex broth by caramelizing (or at least browning. I haven't got the patience or temperature control on my stove to properly caramelize onions.) half an onion and then sautéing the CSA oyster mushrooms until they'd browned a little and started releasing moisture. Then I added:
4 cups water
2 teaspoons instant dashi crystals
4 Tablespoons soy sauce
2 Tablespoons rice wine
4 teaspoons mirin, and
2 teaspoons sugar.

Once I had brought that to a simmer I added a pack of udon noodles and cooked for the three minutes recommended on the package. Then I fished those out and set them aside.

Then into the broth went the thicker komatsuna stems and six ounces of deep fried tofu. You can buy pre-fried tofu, but the stuff you buy is puffy and I prefer the chewy texture of homemade. The six ounces is half a standard block of tofu. After a minute of simmering I added the komatsuna leaves, waited until they wilted down, and then turned off the heat and let them soak for ten minutes. One of the recipes I drew from instead left the komatsuna whole and had you tie the leaves into a bunch with butcher string and dangle the stem ends in the broth for a minute before dropping the leafy ends in too. I didn't really have room in my pot for that, but it's an interesting idea.

After the ten minutes are up, warm the soup back up and put serving portions of the noodles into individual bowls. Once the soup's at serving temperature, add greens and tofu to each bowl, ladel over the soup and garnish with scallions, garlic chives and shredded nori.


I accidentally deleted my first draft (first time since starting the blog which isn't a bad run) so I don't have a detailed description of my impressions of the dish when I ate it last Thursday. The broth, I recall writing, was rich and complex, having absorbed flavors both from the onion and mushroom but also komatsuna. The noodles, greens and tofu each absorbed some flavor from the broth too, but not so much that they lost their own distinctive flavors. There's a nice variety of textures in the bowl too. I particularly liked how the tofu squishes out stock when you chew it. It's a tasty and pretty hearty dinner considering the lack of meat (beyond a bit of fish in the dashi).

Another interesting idea in one of the source recipes was, instead of udon, cooking rice in the broth. I tried that the following day but was a bit disappointed in the result as a lot of the broth's flavor disappeared, locked away inside the rice. Plus the rice got kind of mushy. That's probably more because of my rice cooker's sensors getting confused than anything inherent in the broth, though. I did like the suggestion in that recipe of adding a beaten egg to the rice when it was just about done cooking, but you'd be better served adding an egg to the noodle variation.

CSA week 13 wrap-up, week 14 start-up

I only posted about the spinach this week, but I did actually manage to use all of the various greens we got. The komatsuna dish was interesting enough for a blog post, but since I got two posts out of the spinach I'm saving it for Monday. Most of the garlic chives ended up in that dish too.

The turnip tops I used as a pizza topping and the kale I shredded and fried up in pan drippings like I said I was going to a week ago. Some of the turnips went into a batch of chicken stock and most of the rest I pan fried pot-sticker style.

Is that everything? I think that's everything. I've still got a small head of cabbage from a couple weeks back lurking in the crisper drawer, though. I may get around to that this week. I've got a Serbian stuffed cabbage recipe I've been wanting to try.



There's less in the box this week than we've been getting lately, at least with the lettuce left behind, but enough to be the basis for four, maybe five, meals anyway.

I've got a couple recipes for the celery. The coq a vin variation looks more appealing at the moment, but I might go hunting for something else to make. I've found a new appreciation for celery when it's braised so probably something along those lines.

I'd like to make that cream of green bean recipe I passed over for a generic vegetable soup last time we got beans. The bag we got today is small, but I have some left over in the freezer that can suplement.

I took a head of broccoli from the extras bin because I didn't see the second head in my box. Now I've got a little too much. I'll end up separating the crowns and stems for two different recipes, probably pickling one or the other since it's been a while since I've pickled anything. Speaking of which, I never threw out the inedibly over-salty green beans I pickled ineptly last month. I'm going to go check to see if they've improved any...yes they have, but not enough to fix them. Out they go.

The dill is not, I think, going to go into the pickle jar. Pickled cauliflower is better spicy than dilly so broccoli is probably best that way too. Some of it will probably go into the green bean soup, though.

The mizuna I'm not sure about. The idea I had set aside for mizuna is too similar to what I did with the komatsuna so I'll have to head in some other direction. With its stemminess I'd like to avoid cooking it beyond a light steaming. Unless I was going to purée it. A pesto might work.

That leaves the strawberries. Like last week's these are tart enough to prevent me from eating them out of hand. Maybe I'll make jam. That should be incentive to bake some good bread.

CSA week 13 - Strawberry lavender ice cream

This ice cream was supposed to have a lot more flavor notes in it, as you can see from the list of ingredients, but at the end it was just the strawberries and four tiny drops of lavender extract that come through. Not that anyone was complaining, mind you. This is based on a more straightforward strawberry ice cream from Lebovitz's Perfect Scoop book.

Ingredients:
1 pint strawberries
1 banana, frozen and defrosted
1/2 cup chopped mango
1/2 cup plus a bit more sugar
1 Tablespoon vodka
1/2 cup Possum Trot cas guava and passion fruit sauce [There was plenty leftover after the Potato Pandemonium dinner and Robert let us pack some up doggie bags. It was very nice with buckwheat crêpes, but I thought it freeze up well too so I threw it in. And the chopped mango that was floating in it too.]
1/2 cup sour cream
1 cup cream
1 squeeze lemon
4 drops lavender extract
1 pinch of salt

I cleaned and sliced the strawberries and put them in a bowl with the banana, the sugar and the vodka and set it out on the counter for an hour to macerate. I blended the bowl of fruit with the rest of the ingredients in the food processor until the fruit was in little flecks but not completely pulped. I checked for sweetness and drizzled in a Tablespoon or two of agave nectar to bring it up to par.

Then I chilled it in the refrigerator overnight and churned. Unlike a lot of other ice creams I've made recently, this one just wouldn't harden up. After 20 minutes it was starting to overflow the churn and it had reached about a soft serve consistency (which is when you're supposed to be removing ice cream from the churn anyway) so I got it out then.


The texture is very soft and creamy right out of the freezer and a little lighter than usual from the extra air churned in. It's a remarkable texture from an ice cream without a custard or corn starch. There isn't enough banana in there to account for it, but I think the vodka and the fructose in the agave nectar help too. The ice cream melts away in the mouth pretty quickly, like a bargain over churned ice cream, but it coats the mouth the way premium ice creams do. Kind of an odd combination of sensations. The coating carries a lot of flavor so it's still there when you're chewing on the little bits of strawberry and mango.

Because there's only half the strawberries you'd find in a batch of proper strawberry ice cream this size, the flavor is balanced with the slightly tangy cream and the aromatic lavender. Luckily, unlike my last attempt, the light touch with the lavender leaves it floral, not chemical, and it enhances the berry flavor in a lovely way.

I'm pretty happy with how this turned out. Now I know you can't reproduce the recipe as written without access to leftover Possum Trot cas guava and passion fruit sauce, but a little more sour cream and a little more mango or guava should substitute in well enough, I think. It was a big hit around the office so, if you've got the strawberries and the ice cream churn, you really ought to consider giving it a try.

CSA week 13 - spinach ricotta croquettes

As promised, here's the final result from tinkering with yesterday's recipe, rolled in panko breadcrumbs and deep fried.
So that's:
1 pound spinach, cleaned and washed
8 ounces ricotta
1/2 cup finely grated Parmesan
2 eggs
1/2 cup breadcrumbs
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 cup flour
salt and pepper

Blanch the spinach, squeeze out the excess moisture and chop it fine. Mix with everything else (including the breadcrumbs I forgot to mention yesterday). Chill well. Form into 1-2 Tablespoon balls, roll in panko breadcrumbs, flatten slightly and deep fry 2-4 minutes until bronze brown. (Usually I say golden brown, but I liked these a little darker.)

Not bad at all. Crunchy outside, creamy and a little melty, but with a little firmness to the bite too inside. Good spinach flavor and the raw flour flavor's all gone. Not as fancy, but just as good as the gnudi.

Unlike the gnudi, this definitely doesn't need to be doused with butter. Instead, I found a spicy vinegary dipping sauce to complement it well. And beer too. These are darn fine bar snacks.