The veggies are starting to pile up. Production at our CSA is in full swing, and the quantities of vegetables we’re getting are copious. We went away for the holiday weekend, so we weren’t home to cook and eat as much as usual. Our plan was to freeze what we couldn’t use, but then the weather took a turn for the hot and muggy, so I didn’t blanch-and-freeze veggies after all.
We got two bunches of beets (with greens, of course), one bunch of Red Russian kale, one of collards, one of parsley, one head of Napa cabbage, three bunches of carrots (two orange, one yellow), one pound of fava beans, and two pints of strawberries.
One bunch of last week’s basil turned into enough pesto for a couple of dinners, with beet greens on the side, followed by ice cream topped with strawberries. The strawberries I picked over (and there were quite a few bad ones, and quite a few more that needed bad spots removed), then sliced and macerated in 3 heaping tablespoons of sugar and 1 tablespoon of lemon juice (if I’m remebering correctly). The beet greens I washed (salad spinner method), cut coarsely, steamed, then tossed with olive oil, lemon juice, and salt. The beets themselves keep well and are still in my crisper drawer.
The salad spinner method of washing greens is this: fill the colander of the spinner about 2/3 full of greens. For very sandy greens, rinse the leaves before placing them in the colander. For moderately sandy or dirty, rinse them once in the colander alone. With the colander in the bowl of the salad spinner, fill the bowl with water. Use your hands to agitate the greens. Lift the colander out of the bowl. Notice how dirty the water is. Pour out the water and rinse the bowl. Place the colander back in the bowl. Repeat the process, starting by filling the bowl with water again. When the water left in the bowl looks clean enough, you’re done. If you’re steaming the greens, leave them wet, otherwise spin to dry.
The collards and kale were too large to fit in our crisper drawer, so they sat on a shelf in the refrigerator and quicly became very limp. I had planned to freeze them, but then it was too hot to blanch them. I cooked them with black beans and served them over rice. My favorite way to season collards, which works with most greens (like turnip greens or kale) is with olive oil, fresh garlic, and dried basil, cumin, and cayenne, and salt. It’s a surprising and very tasty combination I got from the Green Cafe in Bethlehem, PA. It works for just the greens, as a side dish, and it also works for black beans and greens together. The beans need more cooking time, so do them first, and when they’re basically done add the greens, giving them only just long enough to soften.
The Napa cabbage was dense enough to go in a crisper drawer, and held up fairly well, so it’s still there. I expect that it will go, with tofu, into a stir-fry of some sort. The parsley is also still in a crisper drawer, and either needs to get packed in water and frozen (no blanching for herbs) or made into tabbouleh. The carrots (both orange and yellow) are also hanging out in a crisper drawer. They’ll last perfectly well until I figure out what I want to do with them. Some of them will get washed, cut into sticks, and packed in lunch bags. I’m thinking about buying a vegetable scrubber to be just for carrots – they’re covered in CSA dirt, and will be eaten raw, so there can’t be any “foreign contaminants” on the scrubber, like those acquired from grocery store potatoes.
I’m stumped by the fava beans. I think I’ve been stumped by them every year. I use a lot of kinds of beans in my cooking (I can think of 8 varieties off the top of my head) but not favas. Not only do I not know what to do with favas, I don’t know how to make fresh beans edible. Boiling? If you know what to do with fresh fava beans, please leave a comment!
Tags: bean, beet, carrot, collard, CSA, fava, greens, kale, napa cabbage, parsley, strawberries
