This is the seventh year that we've participated in a local Community Supported Agriculture program, and it's easier than it used to be to make use of the food we get. I thought I might blog about it this year, on the chance that it might be useful to someone googling "what do I do with this kohlrabi?" (Answer: make kohlrabi slaw; peel, shred, and mix with shredded carrots, mayo, squeeze of lemon, drizzle of maple syrup.)
Week 1: sunchokes, sweet potato, beets and beet greens, rhubarb, sorrel, green garlic, green onions,
One of the keys to using things up is batch processing. Last week I roasted the overwintered sunchokes at the same time as the overwintered sweet potato and the new season's beets. I also slid the chopped rhubarb into a corner of the oven with a little water and bunch of sugar; there they cooked down into soft stalks basted with cerise syrup. I didn't plan to use the beets or the rhubarb that night, but they were one step closer to being edible.
Rachel-who-needs-a-blog told me a few years ago to try cooking sorrel in cream and using the resulting sauce on fish. It is a dreadful drab color but just close your eyes: it tastes amazing. I also put some of the sorrel into scrambled eggs, where it was tart enough to be pretty penitential.
Over the weekend I took my rhubarb syrup and turned it into a gelatin dessert with a little coconut milk. It was not a hit. The kids don't really like the taste of rhubarb. I like the way it tastes, but you need so much sugar to make it edible that I prefer not to eat it. When I first unmolded the jelly it lay on its plate like a pale pink flower. The kids ate about two-thirds of it, after which it warmed up into a flabby mess the color and consistency of an uncooked chicken breast, left out on the dining room table for any peckish children. I pitched the last third of it.
Some of the green garlic went into scrambled eggs along with the beet greens, but I finished up the week with green garlic and green onions left over.
Week 2: more green garlic and green onions, basil, arugula, mesclun, carrots with tops, sugar snaps, and a big bunch of funky unfamiliar greens
The sugar snaps vanished over dinner, as they always do, straight out of the bag of CSA goodies.
I am going to use the green onions and most of the green garlic in this recipe from the NYT. I probably don't want the baby garlic bulbs in there, since overbrowned garlic gets unpleasantly acrid, and I am going to save out the scapes for my scrambled eggs. But I figure it should work to add in the greens. I'll report back.
The mesclun and some of the arugula will turn into lunch salads, which I will enjoy more if I make myself a batch of carrot-miso dressing. And hey, I have just the carrots for that. Our farmer encouraged us to use our carrot tops in pesto, but probably we will feed ours to the guinea pigs instead. The big bunch of funky unfamiliar greens will go into green potato soup, where they will be joined by the remaining arugula. That leaves only the basil. Caprese salad tomorrow, I suppose, to accompany the...whatever I decide to serve under the garlic-onion sauce, and pesto on Thursday with the remainder.
Top tips for CSA newbies overwhelmed by greens: cook 'em down (spinach soup for one meal rather than spinach salads for six meals), blend 'em up. That bunch of herbs is less likely to turn black and squishy in the fridge if you turn it into pesto than if you dole it out a few leaves at a time.
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