June 1, 2011

CSA News for the Week of May 30th

This Week's Vegetable Harvest:
  • Baby Carrots
  • White Japanese Turnips
  • Spinach
  • Green and/or Purple Asparagus
  • Fennel Bulbs
  • Rhubarb (grown by Steve Pincus and Beth Kazmar of Tipi Produce in Evansville, WI)
  • Radishes
Announcements
  • Next week is the final week of the Spring Vegetable Season. The Summer Vegetable Season starts the following week (June 15/16) and the Fresh Fruit Season starts June 29/30. Please note that in an earlier email I gave an incorrect date for the start of the Fruit Season. It actually starts two weeks after the start of the Summer Vegetable Season.
  • My apologies for an abbreviated newsletter this week. A few days ago I broke my ankle playing baseball with our son, and I'm not quite ready to resume all of my regular duties. I hope you enjoy your share this week. It's really a beautiful assortment of vegetables. Farmer Matt and the rest of the crew are doing a great job!

Notes from the Farm Kitchen

This week's share includes a number of vegetables with beautiful leafy tops--carrots, turnips and radishes. If you'd really like to make the most of all of your vegetables, look for ways to use the tops in your cooking. Two of the recipes below--the gumbo and the roasted radishes--call for call for using the nutrient-dense leafy tops. There are other simple ways to incorporate these greens into meals. Use sauteed greens as a pizza topping, or stuff them in a pita pocket with feta cheese and olives. Combine steamed greens and soba noodles and dress with vinegar, oil, ginger and sesame seeds. For a really quick meal, heat a jar of Indian curry (Korma, masala, etc), add a couple of handfuls of chopped greens, and serve with rice. If you are new to cooking with greens or if you are unsure about using these particular greens, try combining them in a 50-50 ration with spinach. You can then use them in any of your favorite spinach recipes.



Speaking of spinach, I hope you enjoy all of this beautiful spinach now because it doesn't grow particularly well in the heat of summer. Once the spring crop is gone, it usually doesn't make another appearance until fall. So go ahead and pile it on your sandwiches, enjoy it in salads and omelets, on pizza or on hot pasta, in cold rice or orzo salads or whatever else strikes your fancy.

This week's baby carrots were sown in one of our unheated hoophouses in February. The heat of the sun was enough to get the seed to germinate and to keep the plants growing happily through some pretty cold weather. The carrots you will receive for the rest of the season will come from outside in the fields. The first field planting should be ready to harvest in 4 to 6 weeks.
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Raw fennel has a distinct anise flavor that becomes wondefully mellow when cooked. You can use both the bulb and the feathery leaves. Try substituting chopped fennel for celery in most any recipe, including chicken salad, tuna salad and potato salad.  You can also try using it in place of dill. Sauteed or braised fennel is excellent paired with baked or broiled fish with butter and lemon. In addition to fish, it also has a natural affinity for carrots, so the recipe below is a great way to prepare it. One of my favorite ways to use fennel is to sauté sliced fennel with onion and some Italian sausage. Then I add it to hot pasta, mix in wilted greens (beet, turnip, chard, etc), drizzle some olive oil on top and sprinkle with freshly grated parmesan cheese and salt to taste. Are you hungry yet?!


This Week's Recipes


Next week's harvest (our best guess)... head lettuce, baby beets, green onions, arugula, napa cabbage, mushrooms, cilantro and more!
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