Back in December I was very excited because I finally joined a CSA. I had been thinking about doing something like that for a very long time. The idea of getting a box of organic fruits and vegetables direct from the farm once a week was very appealing. December isn't usually the best time for growing things, but here in California some of the farms don't stop their boxes for the winter, and I was lucky to find one at Terra Firma Farm. Not only that, but there is a pickup four blocks from my house, so every Wednesday I grab the laundry cart and make the trek to pick up my box.
I have no control over what will appear in the box each week, and I have been surprised by all kinds of things I've never cooked or eaten before. Repeating the mantra, "Google is your friend" I have searched for recipes and cooking methods. I have amazed myself with a heretofore unnoticed interest in cooking creatively. I've been eating well and having fun and learning all about food.
Come with me below the kosquiggle to see some of the things I've learned about vegetables and about myself.
One of the peripheral things I've learned since I started picking up my vegetable and fruit delivery is how to use my son's digital camera. After all, I got tired of asking him to take pictures for me. Below are two examples of a week's worth of fruits and vegetables. This box had baby bok choy, delicata squash, spinach, navel oranges, blood oranges, leeks, beets, and pink lady apples.
This box had Asian pears, carrots, baby spinach, broccoli, navel oranges, arugula, meyer lemons, leeks, and potatoes.
The farm sends out an e-mail every week just before the pickup, so I can find out what is being delivered a little ahead of time. That's when I start the search for anything that I am not familiar with. Before this year, I had never cooked delicata squash, butternut squash, leeks, beets, beet greens, dino kale, red russian kale, escarole, fennel, green garlic, or watermelon radishes.
Sometimes I have to find out what is and is not edible, and what you have to peel. Since all the fruits and vegetables are organic, it is often not necessary to peel them. I leave the skin on the potatoes, and just clean them with a brush. For carrots, instead of using a peeler, I scrape a knife over the outside. I think that takes off less carrot that way. On the other hand, the peels of butternut squash are pretty hard. I usually cut the squash in half first, scoop out the seeds and then use a peeler.
I cut the tops off the leeks, although I have heard they can be put into soups. They seem very hard to me, so I've just been using the bottom of the leeks. I make a long cut halfway through the leek so I can peel off the layers and wash them, since there is sometimes dirt between the layers. One plus is that leeks don't make you cry like onions do.
I learned how to roast beets and silly me, I was surprised to see they looked just like canned beets when I sliced them.
My vegetables come right from the farm, and they sometimes aren't as "beautiful" as the ones you might see sitting in the grocery store. The spinach I get often has holes in it. If you had told me that I, a fussy shopper to be sure, wouldn't care about the holes, I would have been surprised. However, I just cook and eat them anyway. I do, however, draw the line at live bugs, of which there have been only two. A small price to pay for no unnatural pesticides, in my opinion.
I look forward to Wednesday, my pickup day, and enjoy figuring out what to cook and in what order so hopefully nothing spoils. So far I've been able to use just about everything, although we did give away some lemons because we had too many. Also, I admit that my family and I aren't too fond of arugula, so we might not have eaten as much of it as we could have. On the other hand, I never knew how good a spinach salad could be with some dino kale, sliced beets, sliced Asian pears, walnuts, and a little cheese.
After ten boxes, I have somewhat of a routine going now for the week. I usually make a stir fry. I was really weak on sauces, so I looked and found a stir fry sauce, which I add after I've cooked the vegetables and meat. So far I've used leeks, garlic, ground pork or chicken, and some combination of broccoli, bok choy, beet greens, asparagus, cabbage, or spinach, depending on what's in the box.
For the sauce, I doubled and slightly altered the recipe. I fry a teaspoon of minced garlic and a teaspoon of minced ginger in a tablespoon of sesame oil in a saucepan for half a minute or so, add a cup of chicken broth, 2 Tablespoons soy sauce, 2 Tablespoons brown sugar, 1/2 teaspoon of pepper, the juice of half a meyer lemon (1 Tablespoon), and then when the mixture is boiling, add a Tablespoon of cornstarch in 2 Tablespoons of rice wine (I use mirin sake, which is a little sweet.)
Theoretically, you are supposed to let the sauce thicken and reach a full boil and then simmer for 30 seconds, but I can never get anything to thicken. The taste is the same, so we just have runny sauce. Here's what the dish looks like:
After I got the delicata squash, I found out you can just clean it and not peel it. I found a recipe for delicata squash and spinach, and put my own spin on it. I cleaned out the middle of the squash and cut it into 1/2 to 1 inch rounds, put oil on the cut sides, sprinkled garlic salt and pepper on them and put them in a 375 degree oven until they were soft. In the meantime, I fried a cut up leek and a chopped clove of garlic in olive oil, and after the leek was soft added a little water and cut up spinach and cooked until soft. Then I put the two together, and this was the result:
When I got the cabbage, I immediately thought of okonomiyaki, which is an Osaka pancake dish. There was no way I was going to make a traditional okonomiyaki, but I figured out a recipe. I fry leeks or onions, garlic, ground pork, a chopped cabbage, and whatever else I want to add, like carrots, watermelon radishes, spinach, etc. In a large bowl I mix a can of chicken stock, 6 eggs, 1-1/2 cups flour and 4 teaspoons of soy sauce. I take about a half cup of the batter and put in some of the vegetable mixture, and fry it in sesame oil. It worked best in a small round pan, but it took me a long time to cook it that way, so I tried using a griddle. The batter is a little runny, so some of them turned out square instead of round. I think next time I will try frying one side in the small frying pan, and the other side in the griddle. I can probably cut the cooking time in half that way, while still using a small pan. I bought some tonkatsu sauce to go with the pancakes. They looked like this:
I guess I got a little carried away taking pictures, so I'll just add one more. I was trying to think of something different to make, and I decided to make salmon patties. I mixed a can of salmon, some eggs, some crushed matzo (because I didn't have any breadcrumbs), and some cooked spinach and leeks, and then I fried them. They looked like this:
I have mostly cooked with recipes in the past, so I really surprised myself with some of my decisions. I made a curry chicken with potatoes and carrots one week, and the next week I made the same curry chicken with butternut squash and spinach. I tried thenekkidtruth's recipe for Cincinnati Chili Spaghetti Sauce but I suppose by the time I finished with it, it probably wasn't recognizable. I've made the sauce a couple of times now, but the most interesting was when I added some diced butternut squash. I thought it was pretty good!
It's been fun cooking and eating for the last couple months, and I'm looking forward to seeing what will be growing in the next couple of months.