Kielbasa Corn Chowder

This week's share contained: Head of Lettuce; 2 lbs Mixed Potatoes; 1.5 lb Mixed Tomatoes; 1 European Cucumber or 2 nice Slicing Cucumbers; 1 lb Mixed Zucchini, Patty Pan and Summer Squash; 1 lb Mixed Pac Choi; 1 lb Walla Walla Onions; 1 lb Romanesca or Mixed Cauliflower; 1 Cayenne or Jalapeno Pepper; Sweet Corn (6 ears); Elmore Mountain Country French; BreadVT Soy Maple Ginger Fried! Tofu; Les Aliments Massawippi Tamari

No picture this time! I'm finding I don't have the time lately.

But I did make a soup using some of the ingredients that was just wonderful. I don't remember ever cutting the corn off the cob and using it in soups and such -- it's such a treat that we always just ate it in corn on the cob format. But we've had it fairly often lately so I decided to try something a little different with this simple soup.

Kielbasa Corn Chowder

1/2 lb kielbasa cut into very small pieces
oil
2 medium onions, diced
corn cut from 5-6 ears
3-4 medium potatoes, diced about 1/2" cubes
bok choi or other greens, cut into very small pieces
6 c or so of stock (I used turkey because that's what I had)

Brown kielbasa, add onions and remaining ingredients. Cook until potatoes are tender and flavors are blended.

June Share

We're sharing the share with different people this time around so it's going to be a bit more sporadic. We'll have three weeks in a row starting this week but there will be a couple of times when we're without the share for two weeks.

This week we have mesclun, lettuce, French breakfast radishes, 2 lbs Nicola potatoes, green kale, dill, garlic scapes, beet greens with little beets attached, scallions, dandelion greens, tomatoes, Red Hen mixed northeast grain bread, maple cream from Echo Hill Farm, and chicken stock. We were supposed to get 1 lb Grafton Village farm cheddar but it didn't make it onto the truck. I noticed the tomatoes didn't make it into the picture -- there were two of them.



I processed some of the greens for the freezer, cooked the beets for salads, made a lemon dill potato salad, cleaned the radishes for easy eating, and made dinner, all after picking up the share as if it's not convenient, we don't use it in a timely manner.


Chickpea, Italian Sausage, and Greens

3 Garlic Scapes, chopped
1 onion, diced
olive oil for sauteing
2 Italian Sausages, sliced
2 cans chickpeas (the medium size cans), drained
3 tomatoes, skins removed, diced
1 bunch beet greens, blanched and chopped
salt and pepper to taste


Cook the sausage. Add olive oil and saute garlic scapes and onion until soft. Add remaining ingredients and allow to simmer for an hour or so adding water if necessary.

Shareday

Mesclun greens, lettuce, Nicola potatoes, basil, sweet salad turnips, beet greens, sorrel, wild arugula, Easter egg radishes, pac choi, cilantro, red giant mustard, Vermont Cranberry Company balsamic vinegar, Vermont Butter and Cheese fresh goat cheese, and Elmore Mountain Bread pizza dough.

Lots and lots of greens today! Too much for the refrigerator so I blanched, chopped, and froze five bags of assorted greens for future use. Two bags of beet greens, three bags of a mix of turnip, radish, mustard, and arugula. We like greens just fine in soups and such but we don't really appreciate the plain old cooked greens.

I struggle with the pac choi as well. We've gotten in in the last three shares and I've ended up composting most of it.

I made potato and sorrel soup with a recipe from the share newsletter and it's pretty good although a tad thick. I used sour cream in place of the cream because that's what I had. Very rich and tangy soup.


Sorrel & Potato Soup

The recipe below is adapted from a classic French sorrel soup recipe. It is also good cold, particularly with some plain yogurt swirled in. Serves 3 or 4.

1 bunch fresh sorrel
4 cups water
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
2/3 pound potatoes, cubed
1 large egg
1/4 cup crème fraiche or heavy cream (or more to taste)

Wash the sorrel and de-rib the leaves if necessary. Put it in a saucepan over low heat. Cook, stirring, until the sorrel has melted into a purée and nearly all of its liquid has evaporated. Add the water and salt and pepper to taste. Bring to a boil. Add the potatoes and cook over low heat until the potatoes are cooked through — about fifteen minutes. If you prefer a creamy rather than a chunky soup, put the soup into a blender or food processor and then return to the saucepan. Combine the eggs and crème fraiche in a warmed serving bowl. Mix until well blended. Add a ladle of the potato and sorrel mixture and blend well. Pour in remaining potato and sorrel mixture and serve immediately.

This week's share

Green pac choi, 2 lbs frozen strawberries, scallions, Easter egg radishes, cilantro, Norland and Nicola potatoes, baby spinach, Vt Soy maple ginger baked tofu, Maine sea salt, pink turnips, some sort of greens that could have been, sorrel or red giant mustard, Pete's chicken stock, European cucumber.


I wasn't sure what to do with all the greens so I made up a recipe to use some of them and then blanched and froze the turnip and radish greens for future use.


White Beans with Cilantro Pesto

Amounts are approximate

1 small bunch of greens
1 bunch of cilantro
1 jalapeno pepper (including seeds and ribs for some zip)
1/2 onion
Olive oil
Juice and zest of one lemon
Juice and zest of one lime
Salt

1 can small white beans.

Mix all ingredients except the beans in food processor to desired texture. Drain and rinse the beans, then mix in as much of the pesto as desired. Serve over salad greens.

I had a lot left and froze it for future very easy dinners on hot days. Ben and I each rated it as a thumbs up dinner. Too spicy for Sam though.

Very large share

It's huge! We got kohlrabi, sugarsnax carrots, leeks, daikon radish, savoy cabbage (3!), red kuri squash, delicata Squash, red mars onions, bright lights chard, bull's blood beet greens, cilantro, Butterworks Farm plain yogurt, Champlain Orchards liberty apples, and a frozen chicken.

I always like to attack the greens first as they don't keep very well and take a lot of space in the refrigerator. Today I cooked the chard in butter and used it in some baby quiches.


Chard Quiche

425 degree oven
Makes about 16 mini quiches

Recipe for 2 crust pie

(amounts are approximate)
1 bunch chard, cleaned, chopped, cooked in butter
1 small onion, diced, sauteed in butter
6 eggs
1/2 c milk
4 oz assorted cheese, grated (I used aged cheddar and jalapeno cheddar)
salt and pepper to taste

Make the pie crust and roll out as usual. Cut into 4" circles and fit the circles into muffin tins.

Mix all filling ingredients. Spoon filling into the crust. Bake 20-30 minutes until firm. Remove from pan to cool.



Verdict: Sam loved these! He ate 3 1/2 of them. I thought they were really good too but isn't anything good when encased in pie crust?

Oh, I also made myself a salad using the beet greens in place of lettuce. Excellent. Very similar to spinach but with a much more interesting color.

The orange red share

Beefsteak and heirlooms tomatoes, Ailsa Craig sweet onions, sugarsnax carrots, garlic, chard, leeks, mesclun, raspberries, oyster mushrooms, eggs.

I'm swimming in onions! Those Ailsa Craig onions are huge and we got four of them. We like onions but that's a bit much.

The raspberries were gone within 15 minutes of picking up the share. Yum!

We were supposed to get tomatillos today but they forgot to load them on the truck. We got cherry tomatoes this week because we were supposed to have raspberries last week that weren't there. Oops.

And of course we got carrots because we hadn't had any for so long I bought some last week. Now I've got plenty but those we'll use.

I like to use the greens up right away because they take up so much space in the refrigerator so I made this recipe from the share tonight:

Sauteed Greens with Tomato and Chickpeas

2 TB sunflower oil or bacon fat
1 leek washed and sliced thin
1 bunch chard or kale, washed and chopped
salt and pepper to taste
1 tomato, seeded and chopped
1 cup pre-cooked chickpeas
squeeze of lemon or lime juice

* If using chard, chop stems separately. Add the stems to the skillet about 2 minutes before the greens.

Heat oil in a large heavy-bottomed skillet over medium heat. Add leeks and saute until translucent, about 5 minutes. Add greens, salt and pepper and toss to combine. Cook uncovered for 2 minutes, tossing occasionally. Add tomato and chickpeas and toss to combine. Cover, reduce heat, and cook for 3 minutes. Remove from heat, add the squeeze of citrus and serve immediately.

Verdict: I liked it, Ben and Sam didn't. Ben said he just doesn't like chard but truthfully, I think he just doesn't care for greens in general as he's never enthusiastic about anything based on greens.

Blogger apparently doesn't like to put spaces between paragraphs today. I don't know why.

Beets and greens

I'm trying to be creative in my use of the various share items so today I did a take off on this recipe at Epicurious.


What did I change? Several things. First, rather than rice I used the seven grain mix from the share. I added a couple of cloves of garlic and I used Parmesan cheese rather than goat cheese. Then I sprinkled the final dish with fresh basil. And I liked it a lot, in fact, I liked it a lot better than the squash risotto I made awhile back. The problem with beets is that everything cooked with beets ends up looking like beets. Here is what it looked like right after I added the beets:

At the end, it was quite a lot more dramatic:



I also made a puree of the the rutabagas from the share. I boiled them with the remaining two parsnips, two accidental turnips (I couldn't tell they were turnips until after I peeled them) and three peeled and cored apples.

I mashed them with my new and wonderful toy, the immersion blender. Oh how I love using that thing for smoothies in the morning.

I mixed them until they looked like this:
Then added some butter, salt, and maple syrup.


Now, that was a decent side but it wasn't as good as the beet pilaf. The funny thing though? My favorite part of the meal was the salad I made with the lettuce from the share, some of the topping from the Judyboo's Bok Choy salad recipe, a generous handful of dried cranberries and a simple dressing of vinegar, sunflower oil, hot sauce, sugar, and salt.


I served everything above with a roast whole chicken but who wants a picture of a chicken? And why were there pictures today anyway? Ben broke my cheapie tripod so he bought a new one on eBay and it's an amazingly complicated professional tripod. I'm still trying to figure out which controls move the camera and tripod in which direction however, I make no promises to take more pictures as I'm cooking. But I might.

'tis time to share

It's funny how sometimes it seems as though the share is intentionally color coded. This week it's all about the green and off white/tan family. In the green corner there is more bok choi, an asian cabbage of some sort, braising greens, and turnip greens. In the off white/tan corner we've got parsnips, potatoes, buttermilk, bread, multigrain mix, oatmeal, turnips, and smoked cheddar cheese.

I cooked some of the greens yesterday with a little garlic, olive oil, and a some pine nuts and, er, they were still pretty bitter. I guess they're an acquired taste and I hope that Sam will acquire the taste as a kidlet so he won't be looking at them and wondering what the hell to do with them the way I do each week when I open the package.

As time goes on I intend to freeze some of them to use in place of the frozen chopped spinach I use in various dishes. Wonder if they'd seem more bitter? And should I blanch them then chop them? I'm sure a little googling would answer my questions.

It also amazed me to see how much things have grown in a week. Last week we got some of the salad turnips and they were about 1/2" in diameter, this week they were about an inch and a half. I'm sure the braising greens are the same as last week's mesculin mix but a week older and that much less tender.

Today I got an email at work that someone has organized a CSA that will be delivered right to my work. Of course it's delivered on a day when I don't work so I think I'll stick with our current provider. But I like that it's become so commonplace that it's being hosted by area employers.

Crockpot test

I'm not a huge fan of the crockpot, they seem to make everything taste the same but in the interest of experimentation, I thought I'd give it a try.

I had a bunch of yellow peas, not split, from the farm share. I've never worked with whole peas but was told that should soak them over night prior to use so I got everything ready to go yesterday and tossed the soaked peas in there this morning. Did I mention that I'd tossed some frozen stuff in there? I had some frozen moose stock (doesn't everyone?) and my spinach was also frozen but I just tossed it is.


Andouille & Pea Stew

1 lb dried peas, soaked
1 lb Andouille Sausage, sliced
1 onion chopped
2 stalks celery chopped
1 large can diced Tomatoes
black pepper
3 cloves garlic chopped
1 box frozen chopped spinach
1 1/2 c moose stock

I cooked this for nearly 12 hours and guess what? The peas are still hard as rocks. I guess they need to be cooked before tossing them in here but wouldn't you think they'd cook IN the crockpot after all that time? Dang! I'd been expecting them to fall apart into split peas and turn into a thick mass, similar to pea soup but that's definitely not what's happened so far.

At this point I think I'll keep it cooking until tomorrow morning and see if the peas turn edible otherwise this needs to be categorized as a great disaster.

Update: The peas stayed hardish even with another 8 hours or more of cooking. They tasted fine but I hope they don't have, er, digestive side effects. The stuff tasted ver good overall but I think if I make something like this in the future I'll precook the legumes.