Cooking With This Week's Box:
This Week’s Summary of Recipes
and the Vegetables They Utilize:
Zucchini or Yellow Summer
Squash: Vegetable Kabobs; Zucchini Breakfast Cookies
Cucumbers: Easy Greek Salad
White Spanish Onions: Corn & Tomato Salad with Torn
Croutons (see below); Vegetable Kabobs
Missouri Garlic: Greek Chicken Marinated Chicken; Cashew Curry
Red Grape Tomatoes: Vegetable Kabobs; Easy Greek Salad
Carrots: Roasted Carrot Hummus
Broccoli OR Cauliflower: One-Pan Cauliflower Mac & Cheese; Cashew Curry
Italian Frying Peppers and/or
Green Bell Peppers: Vegetable Kabobs
Jalapeño Peppers: Jalapeño Popper Cornbread Muffins
Sun Jewel Melons or
Sweet Sarah Cantaloupe: Melon Prosciutto Skewers; Melon Sorbet
French Orange Melon: Melon Prosciutto Skewers; Melon Sorbet
Sweet Corn: Corn & Tomato Salad with Torn Croutons
(see below); Jalapeño Popper Cornbread Muffins
Variety of
Tomatoes: Corn & Tomato
Salad with Torn Croutons (see below); Easy Greek Salad
Green Beans: Cashew Curry
Can you believe this week marks the halfway point in our CSA
season? This week we’re packing box #15
of our 30 week season. Yesterday Jose
Antonio asked me if I’d taken a look at the winter squash field recently. His observation was they look like they’re
almost ready to harvest! Yes, the
reality that fall is just around the corner is very present in our minds, but
we can’t dwell on that thought too long because we still have a lot of summer
distractions. So let's focus on some of
those delicious summer distractions this week starting with Sweet Corn! This is a bountiful week for sweet corn and
it is delicious! This week we’re picking
a new variety called Kickoff that is proving to be quite tasty. I hope you’ll agree. Of course you may choose to just boil or
grill your corn on the cob, slather it with butter and a sprinkling of salt and
pepper. You can’t go wrong with this and
often that’s the way we eat it. But you
don’t have to eat corn on the cob. It’s
a great addition to other dishes including salads such as the Corn & Tomato Salad with Torn Croutons that
we’ve featured in this week’s newsletter (see below). This is a recipe from Chef Joshua McFadden’s
book, Six Seasons, A new way with
vegetables. It’s a simple salad
combining fresh corn cut right off the cob combined with onions, tomatoes, a
light vinaigrette and rustic croutons. A
great salad to serve alongside a grilled steak for dinner.
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| Vegetable Kabobs Photo from damndelicious |
It’s been quite awhile since I’ve made kabobs, so this week
I found this recipe for Vegetable Kabobs that will make good use of the zucchini, white Spanish onions, green bell or
Italian frying peppers and red grape tomatoes.
This recipe calls for roasting the kabobs in the oven, but you could
also grill them if you prefer. Serve
this with a simple rice pilaf and you are set for dinner. If you have some zucchini left over, use it to make these simple,
yet tasty Zucchini Breakfast Cookies. I made them last week for our market crew snack
and they were a hit. I didn’t have any chocolate chips so I
substituted raisins instead. They are
great for a quick breakfast to go or as a snack. I had intended to make zucchini bread, but
didn’t have a lot of time. These came
together really quickly and only took about 10 minutes to bake. Super easy.
What are you going to do with those little jalapeño peppers
this week? If they don’t end up in a
bowl of fresh salsa, use them to make these Jalapeño Popper Cornbread Muffins. If you have a little extra fresh corn you
could even add some fresh kernels to the batter to jazz it up a bit. Serve them for breakfast with scrambled eggs
or as a side for dinner.
Now that we have tomatoes in the box, it’s time to pair them
together with the cucumbers to make this Easy Greek Salad. You can use your grape tomatoes or just cut
up some of the larger variety of tomatoes in this week’s box. Serve it with Greek Chicken Marinated Chicken. If you have any leftover chicken and salad,
mix the two together and put it in a pita pocket for lunch the next day.
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| Melon Prosciutto Skewers Picture from delish |
The French Orange melons are decadent and delicious all on
their own. I seldom recommend doing
anything other than just eating them as they are. However, this recipe for Melon Prosciutto Skewers would be a great way to use either the French orange melon
or the sweet Sarah melon. I also found
this recipe for Melon Sorbet. It calls for using a charentais melon, which
is similar to the French Orange melon, but you can make this delicious treat
using any melon including the Sweet Sarah cantaloupe or sun jewel melon.
I want to do something different with carrots this week and
thought this recipe for Roasted Carrot Hummus would be a great way to use this week’s sweet carrots. Roasting the carrots will enhance the
sweetness and flavors of the carrots.
You can use this hummus as a snack or eat it for lunch with pita bread
and fresh vegetables or turn it into a pita sandwich or wrap. Use the hummus as the spread and add chunks
of fresh cucumbers and tomatoes. This
might be a winner with kids too, making it a potential school lunch option and
a great way to include vegetables in their day!
This week’s boxes will contain either broccoli or
cauliflower, and thankfully both pair well with cheese! I’ve been hungry for mac & cheese lately,
but I like this simple recipe for One-Pan Cauliflower Mac & Cheese that doesn’t even contain pasta. While
the recipe calls for cauliflower, you could easily substitute broccoli. You could also use the broccoli or
cauliflower along with this week’s green beans to make Heidi Swanson’s Cashew Curry recipe. This recipe includes tofu as the protein,
which could be substituted with chicken if you don’t care for tofu.
Ok friends, we’ve reached the bottom of another box. We have more delicious summer vegetables to
send your way over the next few weeks.
Edamame should be ready for next week’s boxes and we’re hoping to
include tomatillos and poblano peppers very soon. The mini-sweet peppers should be ready for
picking very soon as well and we have a cool, new Chinese hot pepper we’re
anxious to try....it’s purple! Have a
great week, enjoy cooking and I’ll see you back next week.—Chef Andrea
Featured Vegetable: Sweet Corn
As for eating sweet corn, it’s important to keep sweet corn
cold. After the corn is picked, sugars
will start to convert to starch. Keeping
corn cold will slow this process down, preserve the quality and sweetness and
give you a few more days to enjoy it. One
of the qualities Richard looks for in a sweet corn variety is the rate of
conversion of sugars to starch. We choose ones that have been developed to
have a slower conversion rate, which gives you more time to eat and enjoy the
corn before it becomes starchy and compromised.
Despite the fact that you see people selling and transporting corn out
of the back of a pickup truck, this is not the best tactic. We take ice to the field when we harvest it,
ice it again when it comes in and store it in the cooler until we pack it and
load it on a refrigerated truck. We do
what we can to grow the tastiest corn for you, but you need to do your part
too! Take a cooler with you when you
pick up your box, store it in the refrigerator and eat it within a few
days. If you have limited refrigerator
space, husk the corn and put it in a plastic bag before refrigerating it.
While eating it off the cob is a special summer treat, fresh
corn can be enjoyed in so many other ways.
Cut it off the cob and add it to summer vegetable salads, salsas, or
relishes. Stir fresh corn kernels into
cornbread batter, make fritters or sweet corn pancakes. It’s also good in summer vegetable chowders
and light soups. If you cut the corn off
the cob, don’t discard the cob. Add it
to soups or stock where it will impart a delicious corn flavor.
If you’d like to preserve sweet corn, it’s a little messy but overall pretty easy to do. First you remove the husk and silks. Bring a large pot of water to a boil and salt the water. Cook the ears of corn just until you see the color of the kernels change to a bright yellow. Remove the corn from the boiling water and put it in a pan or sink of clean water with ice in it. Put the corn in the ice water to stop the cooking process. Once cooled, stand the ear of corn upright on the wide base of the ear on a cutting board. Cut the corn off the cob by running the paring knife down the ear. Try to cut as close to the ear as possible to avoid wasting any of the good corn or the juice! You can also run the back of a knife on the cob to get all the good corn juice. Once the corn is cut off the ear, just spoon it into a freezer bag, close the bag and freeze the corn. You’ll be glad you did this when you are pulling frozen corn out in January to make a delicious corn chowder!
Corn and Tomato Salad with Torn Croutons
Yield: 4 servings
1 lb tomatoes (all shapes and colors) cored and cut into wedges or chunks, or whatever looks pretty
1 medium white Spanish onion, sliced thinly
¼ cup red wine vinegar
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 cups torn croutons (see recipe below)
½ cup pistachios, toasted and roughly chopped
½ cup freshly grated Pecorino Romano cheese
1 handful basil leaves
1 handful mint leaves
⅓ cup extra-virgin olive oil, plus more to taste
- Put the corn, tomatoes, and onions in a large bowl. Add the vinegar and toss gently to mix. Season generously with salt and pepper and toss. Taste and adjust the seasoning so the salad is nicely bright.
- Add the croutons, pistachios, pecorino, basil, and mint and toss again. Taste and adjust the salt and pepper. Moisten with ⅓ cup olive oil and toss again. Taste and adjust. Serve lightly chilled or at a little cooler than room temperature.
Torn Croutons
Yield: about 2 cups
2 large, thick slices country loaf (about 4oz)
2 Tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
- Heat the oven to 400°F.
- Tear the bread, crust and all, into bite-size pieces. Toss the torn bread with the olive oil and a light sprinkling of salt and pepper.
- Spread the croutons on a baking sheet in a single layer and bake until golden brown, checking every 4 to 5 minutes and moving the outside croutons to the center of the pan so they cook evenly. Don’t let them get rock hard; leave a little bit of chew in the center. The total baking time will depend on the type and density of bread you’re using, but most likely will be 10 to 20 minutes.
- Slide onto paper towels to absorb any extra oil and season again lightly with salt and pepper. Store the croutons in an airtight container. (Be sure to make more than you need for your recipe because you’ll find yourself eating these as a snack.)
These recipes were adapted from Six Seasons, A new way with vegetables by Joshua McFadden with Martha Holmberg.
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