Farming is Risky

This summer was our 8th season with the same CSA.  We knew going into it that part of why CSAs work well for farmers is that the risks are spread among the shareholders.   For 7 years, we’ve won at our gamble, and gotten an excellent value.  This year was different.  The weather didn’t cooperate.  Our farmer lost a lot of plants including all of his corn crop.  Many weeks, our share was smaller than we’ve been accustomed to.  Finally, he had to end drop-offs about a month earlier than usual.  It was a very bad summer for farming here in Massachusetts.  Next summer should be better, and as long as our farmer is doing a CSA, we’ll be back.  Until then, I’ll enjoy the flexibility of choosing my vegetables at the farmers markets.

I worry, though, about how some of the other shareholders might be responding to the situation.  People tend to forget that it’s natural to lose a gamble.  We gambled on the weather, and this yer we lost.  But in our age of supermarket produce, it’s easy to forget that farms, particularly small farms in New England, do not produce like factories.  I worry that other shareholders, losing sight of this, will blame the poor harvest on the farmer, harassing him now and choosing not to join his CSA next year.   Granted, he can do without the sorts of shareholders who harass him.  I hope most people share my perspective and stick by their local farmers, especially when the weather is bad.

Oven-Braised Cabbage

Sometimes it’s nice to cook things in the oven, so that the hour or so before eating is not the time you have to be in the kitchen cooking. Braising is usually a stovetop procedure, but the idea of cooking with very little liquid translates well to the oven. Here’s a recipe I made this week. It was fun to serve alongside roasted blue potatoes from the farmers market.

• Quarter, core, and knife-shred one red cabbage.  (A green cabbage would probably taste just as good but not be as pretty.  They also tend to be larger, so increase all the seasonings accordingly.)
• Quarter, core, and slice about 2 apples.  (I used only one but it was a hefty ten ounces!)  McIntosh have a wonderful flavor, although by the time the dish is cooked, they’ll have turned into applesauce.
• Put half the cabbage into the bottom of a deep lidded casserole.  Layer half the apples over it.  Then the other half of the cabbage, and the other half of the apple.
• Sprinkle the top with salt and pepper to taste, and a generous sprinkling of caraway seeds.
• Pour about 3 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar and about 2 tablespoons of water over the cabbage and apples.
• Bake at 350 (or whatever temperature your other food needs, but adjust time accordingly) for about an hour.
• About 10 minutes before serving, remove the lid.  Stir together the cabbage, apples, and spices.  Leave the lid off to evaporate some liquid and gain texture.

I’d made similar dishes before, but this was the first time I tried it with caraway seeds, and I was very pleased with the results.  If you don’t have cider vinegar, you could use red wine vinegar, but the cider vinegar really kicks up the apple flavor.

My husband also found this tasty, but said he’d have preferred his cabbage and seasonings as colcannon, so I’m offering a link to my recipe for that, too.

Traveling and Coming Home

I think I’ve been away more than usual this summer.  I like traveling, and I was away doing things that I enjoyed or at least valued.  The food from a week at a camp and a week at a conference center, however, left me feeling lousy.  Dairy and eggs left this vegetarian craving beans.  Processed starches left me wanting whole grains.  And I acutely missed the abundance of fresh, local, delicious vegetables and fruits that I would have had at home.

At the end of the summer, I had the opposite travel experience.  We visited friends in Seattle and enjoyed plums and blackberries that grow on their property.  Then we went to a farmers market that was about 5 times the size of the larger of my local markets.  The variety of produce, cheeses, baked goods, and meat was overwhelming, in a good way.  The prices of fruits were much lower than what I’m used to paying.  I’ll admit a bit of climate envy.

At home, food this week has been about combinations.  A ratatouille included tomatoes, eggplant, zucchini, green pepper, and fresh garlic along with garbanzos, dried oregano, salt, and of course lots of  olive oil.  It would have included fresh basil, too,  if we’d had energy to pick some from out back.

A stir-fry included green beans, broccoli, turnips, turnip greens, radishes, radish greens, and some cilantro.  As has become usual, we firmed up the tofu by heating it without oil in a single layer on a nonstick skillet, flipping it when the first side browned.  To work with the cilantro’s sweetness, the sauce used a generous amount of jarred hoisin sauce along with rice vinegar, soy sauce, and sesame oil.

We brought back a salad we particularly enjoyed last fall:  arugula with cheddar and apples, with a balsamic vinaigrette.  We’ve started to get apples from our CSA, and the rainy summer means this should be a particularly good apple season.  Flashback: last year I posted a catalogue of apples.  So far, we’ve gotten Ginger Gold.

Maps for Gastrotourists

A couple of Boston Globe articles alerted me to the existence of two types of gastrotourism maps for Massachusetts.

At hungrynomadmaps.com you’ll have the opportunity to buy maps of bicycle and walking routes to visit farmstands, vineyards, ice cream stands, and picnic spots.  There’s also some information available directly on the website.

At www.mass.gov/agr/massgrown/wineries.htm you’ll find a list of Massachusetts wineries and the chance to order a Wine and Cheese Trails map that covers the entire state.

Ridiculously Easy Biscuits

Inspired both by MangoChild and a novel that involved everyday sodabread, I’ve been playing around with soda-based quickbreads.  Tonight I made up a biscuit recipe that was so easy and came out so well that I have to share.

Mix together the dry ingredients:

• 2 cups flour (I used whole wheat)
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt

Then mix in the wet ingredients:

• 2 tablespoons oil (I used olive)
• 1 1/4 cup water (this is approximate, start with 1 cup, then slowly add more as needed)

Drop biscuits onto a cookie sheet.  I like to use 2 spoons: one to pick up dough, the other to push it into the sheet.  Leave an inch between biscuits because they’ll puff up during baking.

In an oven preheated to 400 F, bake for 10 minutes.

Yields about 20 biscuits.

***

Totally unrelated, but I might forget to write about this otherwise, a fruit report:

We have lots of blackberries growing this year.  It’s fun to watch them plump up, because some of the lobes plump up much sooner than others.

Our raspberries have been doing okay.  We’ve been able to pick a few at a time, every few days, for a couple of weeks.  Our total yield might be about 20 berries.  Since we only have 2 canes and we planted them only a year and a half ago, that’s just fine.

Unfortunately, birds (or maybe other critters) got our blueberries before they were ripe enough for us to have any.  Last year we only got 8, though, so it’s not like high expectations were dashed.  I splurged and bought a pint at the farmers market this week.  They’re good, but not as good as fresh-picked wild or homegrown.

Fennel Tabbouleh

During the summer, I find myself making a lot of variants on tabbouleh, depending on what vegetables I have around.  It’s great for using pretty much any veggies that are good raw, especially when I don’t have lettuce to make salad.  I often add chick peas to turn tabbouleh from a side salad into a satisfying lunch.  Last week’s tabbouleh confetti-colorful with orange carrots, purple-skinned kohlrabi, and green fennel.  I diced the carrots, halved the small fennel and quartered the large then sliced it thin, and the kohlrabi I made into matchsticks to make sure every piece showed some purple.  (You’ll notice a total lack of the traditional tomatoes or even cucumbers.)  While fresh parsley is best, frozen-thawed works fine.  When I don’t have either of those, I use some dried parsley, which mostly serves to add some color.

I liked the crunch of fennel in my confetti tabbouleh, and I liked the way its flavor played off the lemon juice.  Then I had an inspiration: I could use the fronds!  We haven’t had parsley the past few weeks, so it was easy to leave parsley out all together and use fennel fronds as the green instead.  Here’s my recipe:

Ingredients:

• 2 cups bulgur
• 4 cups chopped fennel:  bulbs and fronds (but not stems), which is probably 3 bunches
• 1 tablespoon dried mint (fresh would be lovely if you have it)
• 1 tablespoon salt
• 1/2 cup lemon juice
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 2 1/2 cups boiling water

Directions:

1. Put the bulgur and dried mint into a large bowl.
2. Pour the water over the bulgur and mint, stir, and let sit until water is absorbed (about half an hour)
3. Stir the salt, lemon juice, and olive oil into bulgur.
4. Stir in the fennel (and fresh mint if using).

Eat your Greens

If you’re used to getting your vegetables at the grocery store, then you’re used to getting only the most sought-after or unique parts.  Or that’s all that survives the journey from wherever-far-away to the produce isle.  When you get farm-direct vegetables, either from a CSA or at a farmers market, you get much more of the plant.  Including those unfamiliar parts.  Most often, those unfamiliar plants are the leaves or greens.

Which are edible?  And how do you eat them?

The short answer is you can (and should) eat greens sold with pretty much everything except carrots.

Okay, the longer answer:  Radish, kohlrabi, and broccoli leaves are not only edible but nutritious.  Beet and turnip greens are not only edible and nutritious, but sought-after.  While you’re selecting beets or turnips for the best roots, the person shopping next to you may be selecting for the greens, with the roots as an afterthought.  Fennel fronds get used as an herb, although the stems are completely discarded (possibly after being used to flavor broth).

I’m told that radish greens can be added to the same salad as the radishes themselves, as a flavorful lettuce.  Their texture seems wrong for that, so I’ve never done so.  I simply toss the radish, kohlrabi, or broccoli leaves in with any other greens I’m cooking.  Radish greens are very much like turnip greens, while kohlrabi greens and broccoli greens are very much like kale.  Discard stems that are too tough.

Many vegetables just aren’t sold with their leaves.  Rhubarb leaves are poisonous, so the leaves are cut off before they’re sold.  Corn, tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, squash, and the like are picked off of plants and won’t come with leaves.  Turning over the earth to dig potatoes seems to separate them from their leaves.

Freezing Greens

This week’s CSA haul was 14 greens, and  carrots: 4 heads of lettuce (red leaf and romaine), 1 bunch of arugula, 1 head of bok choy, 1 head of broccoli, 1 bag of snap peas, 2 heads of chicory, 1 bunch of mustard greens, 1 bunch of red chard, 1 bunch of turnips with greens, 1 bunch of radishes with greens, and 1 bunch of carrots (with greens, but their greens are inedible).

Our refrigerator was still overflowing with greens from last week, so it was time to do a large batch of freezing.  We ended up freezing 2 bunches of kale from last week, both of the 2 heads of chicory from this week, the 1 bunch of mustard from this week, and this week’s turnip and radish greens together (because together they were roughly the quantity of one bunch of other greens).

I was initially leery of freezing anything that I wasn’t used to buying frozen at the grocery store.  I had it all backwards.  We rarely get peas, so we’ve never tried freezing them.  Green beans sometimes freeze well but sometimes end up stringy.  Broccoli that we freeze ourselves loses most of its texture and appeal.  Spinach doesn’t seem sturdy enough for home freezing.

On the other hand, we’ve had great success freezing kale, collards, mustard greens, eggplant, peppers, beets, corn, zucchini, and butternut squash.  We’ve had moderate success with tatsoi (leaves are good, stems get even more difficult to chew) and green beans (as I said before, sometimes they’re excellent, sometimes they’re stringy).  I gave general directions for freezing stuff last year, but I think it’s time to give directions more specific to greens.  If you really want to know what you’re doing, and in a form easy to have in the kitchen, invest in a copy of Putting Food By for which you can find bibliographical information on my References and Resources page.

Directions for Freezing Cooking Greens

1. Wash the greens thoroughly.
2. Cut them into whatever size you’ll want later.
3. Immerse the greens in a pot of boiling water for 2 minutes (except for collards, which get 3 minutes).
4. Immerse the greens in ice water for 2 minutes or longer, to stop the cooking process.
5. Drain the greens as well as possible.
6. Freeze.  For easier defrosting, freeze one bunch in a gallon bag, spread flat, so the greens form one thin layer.

Tips:  A deep-fry basket or metal colander works well for holding the greens.  Metal tongs work well for moving the colander from boiling water to ice water.  Use the tongs to pick up the greens and put them into a bag for freezing, too.  It’s important to keep everything sterile, because anything that gets into the greens could cause them to go bad sooner.

What do you do with escarole?

This week brought more greens from our CSA.  Amazingly, there were no repeats from last week, although many of the items were similar:  bibb lettuce instead of romaine and red leaf, Napa cabbage instead of bok choy, Swiss chard instead of spinach, escarole instead of chicory, and cilantro and collard greeens, both of which are not remotely replacements for the pea tendrils we got last week.

Escarole is related to chicory but the with big, broad leaves, more like bok choy.  It’s much less bitter than chicory, however.  Cookbooks suggested it as a salad green, but, while the stems are pleasantly crisp, the leaves are not.  They’re thicker, and have a sort of leathery quality, much like dandelion greens, although not nearly as bitter.  Escarole seems most often to be a soup green, but summer is the wrong time for soup.  If we freeze the other bunch, I’ll make soup with it in the winter.

I think of escarole as being an Italian food, or at least having an affinity for them.  I tried sauteeing it with garlic, olive oil, and  crushed red pepper flakes, then sprinkling with parmesan cheese, the way I would for chicory or broccoli rabe.  The escarole just tasted mild to the point of blandness.  The texture was lovely, though, with wilted greens and stems still a bit crunchy.  So I played around, adding some red wine vinegar, oregano, basil, and salt.  It works.  My seasonings were essentially an Italian vinaigrette:  olive oil, red wine vinegar, garlic, oregano, basil, salt, and parmesan, so I can now say that escarole makes a lovely cooked salad.  To make a meal, add cannelini or mozzarella and serve over pasta or rice.

CSA starts and Apple Bread

Our CSA began this week with greens, greens, greens, greens, and some more greens.  Specifically, we got two bunches each of red leaf lettuce, romaine lettuce, pea tendrils, spinach, chicory, and bok choy.  The bunches were so big that they wouldn’t all fit in our refrigerator without difficulty.

That gave us the push we needed to start right away saving for winter.  My husband washed, chopped, blanched, shocked, and froze one of the heads of chicory.  It will be good over pasta with cheese and mushrooms.  Between the time they were first cultivated and the time air conditioning was introduced, mushrooms were a winter crop.

We also cooked the spinach, both bunches, because it takes up so much less space that way. It ended up in a pasta sauce that is basically bechamel sauce with chopped spinach and parmesan cheese.  It made a lot of sauce.  When we have the leftovers, I think we’ll puree the sauce so that it spreads over the pasta better.   I hope that pureeing it doesn’t take away its fresh, green, spinach-y flavor.

We can almost defrost our chest freezer for the summer.  Everything but a few tubs of soup fits easily into the freezer attached to our refrigerator.  I could probably make it all fit, with some time and effort.  We’re reducing what’s in the freezer, still.  The night before our first CSA drop-off, we enjoyed a stir-fry of tofu with tatsoi and Asian eggplant, both from the freezer.  I am pleased to report that both froze satisfactorily.  The tatsoi stems became even tougher and harder to chew than when they’re fresh, and the eggplant was on the softer side but it did still have texture.  I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how well just about everything freezes.  Putting Food By seems to get it right, every time.

The apple bread I wrote about in my last post turned out pretty well, so here’s the recipe.  If you didn’t save a glut of apples this year, come back to this recipe in October when there are lots and they’re cheap.

Apple Quickbread or Muffins (vegan)

Most quantities are guesses.

2 1/2 cups flour, white or whole wheat (dark spices make it brown anyway)

1/2 cup brown sugar

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp cloves, nutmeg, ginger

2 tsp cinnamon

2 or 3 tsp salt

3 apples, diced small

1 cup water, or less

1 1/2 cup applesauce

Mix dry ingredients.
Mix apple pieces in to coat with flour mixture.
Add half of water and then applesauce, stirring to mix evenly. If dough is too dry, add the remaining water.
Oil and flour a 9×9 baking dish (or a dozen muffin tins).
Pour in batter.
Bake at 400 degrees for 50 minutes.