Cooking With This Week's Box
Baby Spinach: Noodles with Miso Cilantro Sauce (see below); Moroccan Salad with Cilantro Orange Dressing; Chicken Bacon Avocado Salad with Roasted Asparagus
Potato Onions or Green Garlic: Noodles with Miso Cilantro Sauce (see below); Creamy Cilantro Dressing (see below); Pea Vine Cream Cheese; Pasta with Asparagus and Avocado-Pea Vine Cream Sauce; Pea Vine Pesto Pasta Salad;
Radish Top Pesto; Sesame-Soy Hon Tsai Tai Chicken Salad
Asparagus: Pasta with Asparagus and Avocado-Pea Vine Cream Sauce; Chicken Bacon Avocado Salad with Roasted Asparagus
Red Radishes: Pea Vine Pesto Pasta Salad; Radish Top Pesto; Quick-Pickled Radishes; Sesame-Soy Hon Tsai Tai Chicken Salad
Baby Arugula: Chicken Bacon Avocado Salad with Roasted Asparagus
Hon Tsai Tai: Sesame-Soy Hon Tsai Tai Chicken Salad
Cilantro: Noodles with Miso Cilantro Sauce (see below); Creamy Cilantro Dressing (see below); Moroccan Salad with Cilantro Orange Dressing
Pea Vine: Noodles with Miso Cilantro Sauce (see
below); Pea Vine Cream Cheese; Pasta with Asparagus and Avocado-Pea Vine Cream Sauce; Pea Vine Pesto Pasta Salad
Baby White Turnips: Sesame-Soy Hon Tsai Tai Chicken Salad; Spicy Pork & Turnip Soup with Soy-Pickled Eggs; Andrea Bemis’s collection of excellent Baby White Turnip recipes
Things are changing fast around here!
Crops are growing like crazy now that we’ve crossed over into June! Richard picked the first 5 ripe strawberries
of the season on Monday, the broccoli is starting to head up and it won’t be
long before the zucchini starts to blossom!
Get ready, there are so many good things coming your way!
This week’s box is packed with more green goodness and our featured
vegetable is cilantro, a very common and popular herb. I love simple recipes and in the midst of a
busy week I like simple recipes that are also fast and low maintenance. So the first recipe for this week is Noodles with Miso Cilantro Sauce (see
below). I really like this recipe
because it basically has two easy components.
Boil noodles and make a fresh sauce in the blender. This comes together in about 20 minutes! The sauce is very green, packed with not only
cilantro but also greens. The original recipe calls for baby spinach, but I
tried it with chopped pea vine and it was delicious! So, take your pick or use some of each. If you aren’t familiar with miso or don’t
have it in your pantry, you could leave it out and the sauce will still be
good. If you do have access to this
ingredient, I highly recommend you use it and keep a tub or jar of miso in your
refrigerator. You can usually find it at
food co-ops in the refrigerated section near the fermented foods, tofu,
etc. It stores for a really long time in
the refrigerator and a spoonful added to soups, sauces or vinaigrette can
really offer a nice flavor boost.
The second recipe is for Creamy
Cilantro Dressing (see below). This
is another quick recipe to assemble using either a food processor or a
blender. If you don’t have either of
these appliances, just chop everything finely using a knife and mix it in a
bowl with a whisk or spoon. It might be
more coarse, but it will still be delicious.
The thing I like about this recipe is that its uses are versatile. Use it as a dressing on salads, or use it as
a sauce on top of grilled meats, quesadillas, tacos, scrambled eggs, etc. This
morning I put it on our breakfast burrito and it was delicious!
This week we’re harvesting our first crop of Pea Vine. This crazy green
is actually an immature pea plant that gives us a teaser taste of that fresh
pea flavor we can’t wait to taste in crunchy sugar snap peas! My top three favorite recipes for pea vine
come from past newsletters. So, if
you’re new to HVF this year, I encourage you to start with one of these
selections. My all-time favorite recipe
is for Pea Vine Cream Cheese. This is so easy to make and is awesome on a
toasted bagel, spread on a tortilla to make a veggie wrap, or just use it as a
dip for fresh radishes. My second
favorite recipe was a recommendation from a member last year. This Pasta with Asparagus and Avocado-Pea Vine Cream Sauce is so delicious! My third favorite pea
vine recipe is for Pea Vine Pesto Pasta Salad. Along with fresh green onions and crunchy
radishes, this is just a simple, fresh recipe to make.
I have a new blog to recommend this week. A member mentioned this blog to me earlier in
the year and I finally had time to take a look at it this week. PinchOfYum.com is a blog by a Minnesotan named
Lindsey! She has a lot of really great
recipes on her blog including this one for Moroccan Salad with Cilantro Orange Dressing. Not only does it include our featured
vegetable, but also baby spinach, although you could easily sub in pea vine or other
greens. She also has a tasty recipe for Chicken Bacon Avocado Salad with Roasted Asparagus. This is a perfect way to use this week’s
salad greens, spinach and/or arugula along with asparagus!
There were more great suggestions coming through in our Facebook group this week, including a suggestion to make Quick-Pickled Radishes! The member who made this recommendation says “Tastes great on nearly everything!” I love having little treasures like these tucked away in the refrigerator to add to meals throughout the week. You can use these on tacos, salads, sandwiches, toast, or anywhere else you might want a little tangy, crunchy contrast! If you make these pickles with the roots, you still have the tops to make Radish Top Pesto. This recipe calls for 4 cups of radish greens. You may not have enough greens from one bunch, so I’d recommend making up the difference with some of the baby spinach or pea vine in this week’s box. This is another one of those refrigerator treasures that can help you put a quick dinner on the table in just a few minutes. Use it as a spread in wraps, quesadillas, pizza, on toast with cheese and/or egg, or as a condiment for grilled steak, chicken or fish.
My recipe for Sesame-Soy HonTsai Tai Chicken Salad made an appearance on several members’ tables over the past week, as evidenced by the comments and posts in our Facebook group. I created this recipe back in 2014 and every year members come back to this simple, fresh, tasty salad when hon tsai tai is in season. Hon Tsai Tai is the “greens” base of the salad topped with fresh baby white turnips, radishes and a flavorful sesame-soy dressing. You may have more dressing than you need for this serving size. If that’s the case, save it and make the salad again or use the dressing on some of your other salad greens this week!
If you missed last week’s vegetable feature and featured recipe for Spicy Pork & Turnip Soup with Soy-Pickled Eggs,
check it out this week. You can also
head over to DishingUpTheDirt.com and check out Andrea Bemis’s collection of excellent Baby White Turnip recipes!
That brings us to the bottom of another CSA box! Have a wonderful week, enjoy eating fresh, seasonal meals, and get ready for more vegetables next week including rhubarb and possibly broccoli and strawberries (cross your fingers!)—Chef Andrea
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| Pasta with Asparagus and Avocado-Pea Vine Cream Sauce |
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| Moroccan Salad with Cilantro Orange Dressing photo from pinchofyum.com |
There were more great suggestions coming through in our Facebook group this week, including a suggestion to make Quick-Pickled Radishes! The member who made this recommendation says “Tastes great on nearly everything!” I love having little treasures like these tucked away in the refrigerator to add to meals throughout the week. You can use these on tacos, salads, sandwiches, toast, or anywhere else you might want a little tangy, crunchy contrast! If you make these pickles with the roots, you still have the tops to make Radish Top Pesto. This recipe calls for 4 cups of radish greens. You may not have enough greens from one bunch, so I’d recommend making up the difference with some of the baby spinach or pea vine in this week’s box. This is another one of those refrigerator treasures that can help you put a quick dinner on the table in just a few minutes. Use it as a spread in wraps, quesadillas, pizza, on toast with cheese and/or egg, or as a condiment for grilled steak, chicken or fish.
My recipe for Sesame-Soy HonTsai Tai Chicken Salad made an appearance on several members’ tables over the past week, as evidenced by the comments and posts in our Facebook group. I created this recipe back in 2014 and every year members come back to this simple, fresh, tasty salad when hon tsai tai is in season. Hon Tsai Tai is the “greens” base of the salad topped with fresh baby white turnips, radishes and a flavorful sesame-soy dressing. You may have more dressing than you need for this serving size. If that’s the case, save it and make the salad again or use the dressing on some of your other salad greens this week!
 |
| Spicy Pork & Turnip Soup with Soy-Pickled Eggs |
That brings us to the bottom of another CSA box! Have a wonderful week, enjoy eating fresh, seasonal meals, and get ready for more vegetables next week including rhubarb and possibly broccoli and strawberries (cross your fingers!)—Chef Andrea
Vegetable Feature: Cilantro
By Chef Andrea
Cilantro is an important crop on our farm. We plant cilantro every week for about 20 plantings starting in April and going through the end of August. Our goal is to move right from one crop into the next as we harvest cilantro starting in mid to late May through October or the first part of November. Over the course of the season we will end up planting 16-18 acres of cilantro total! Each crop has the potential to yield as many as 18,000 to 24,000 bunches! Some of our experienced crew members can make more than 100 bunches of cilantro an hour when they are harvesting. That is a lot of cilantro and obviously more than we could use for CSA boxes. Cilantro is one of our top “bread and butter” crops that we supply to our major wholesale buyers supplying this region. As you can see, it’s a big deal for us!
Cilantro is used extensively in a wide variety of cultures and cuisines across the globe ranging from Mexico to Asia. While we often think of it as an herb which is used more sparingly as an accent to other foods, don’t be afraid to use cilantro in more bold ways where it is the main ingredient. With many herbs, recipes tell you to pick the leaves off the stems and only use the leafy part. I am an advocate for using stems as well, especially for herbs with tender stems such as cilantro. There’s a lot of flavor in those stems, so it seems like such a waste to throw them out!
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| Cilantro-Garlic Scape Pesto served on fish |
Cilantro is often used in salsas, fresh vegetable salads and as a condiment for tacos, curries, soups and more. It’s also a delicious ingredient to incorporate into spreads and sauces such as chimichurri (with cilantro in place of traditional parsley), Cilantro-Garlic Scape Pesto, vinaigrettes, etc. It is also often incorporated into smoothies and green drinks because of its contributions to health related to detoxifying the body. So, as you can see there are many different ways to use a bunch of cilantro!
Some people love cilantro, others are learning to like it and some have an aversion to it because to them, it tastes like soap. This latter group is actually a pretty small subset of the population. To them, a natural chemical compound in cilantro has an unpleasant soapy taste. If you experience this, we’ll let you take a pass on eating this vegetable. But for everyone else, eat your cilantro as it has some valuable health benefits! It is an excellent source of zinc as well as vitamins A, C, E and K. it also works as a chelator and detoxifier for our bodies removing toxins, heavy metals, molds, yeast and fungi. It’s on the green cleaning team, which is why it’s a common ingredient in green smoothies and drinks!
For the longest shelf life, we recommend you remove the twist tie and wash your cilantro in a sink of clean, cold water. If you have a salad spinner, use it to remove excess water from the cilantro before storing it in a plastic bag or container. If you don’t have a spinner, just blot or shake off as much excess water as you can. Before storing, remove any damaged or spotty leaves. It may also be helpful to put a dry paper towel in the bag or container you’re storing it in. For best results, use within 7-10 days.
Creamy Cilantro Dressing
Yield: 1 cup
1 cup packed cilantro
1 clove garlic or one stalk green garlic
4 Tbsp plain yogurt or sour cream
2 ½ Tbsp olive oil
1 tsp honey
1 tsp lime juice
Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
3 tsp water, as needed
- Place all ingredients in a food processor or blender and blend until smooth.
- Taste and adjust seasonings to your liking. Add the water as needed to adjust the consistency of the dressing.
- Serve as a dressing for green salads or as a sauce on fish, chicken, vegetables, etc.
Recipe adapted from PinchOfYum.com
Noodles with Miso-Cilantro Sauce
Yield: 2-3 servings
1 Tbsp white miso
1 garlic clove or one stalk of green garlic, roughly chopped
½ cup sunflower oil
1 tsp toasted sesame oil
1-2 tsp fresh lemon juice
1 Tbsp rice vinegar or apple cider vinegar
¼-⅓ cup water (as needed)
4 cups baby spinach or chopped pea vine
2 cups cilantro leaves and stems, rough chopped
Kosher salt, to taste
10-12 oz ramen noodles or other thin noodles
1 Tbsp unsalted butter
Toasted sesame seeds, for serving
- Bring a medium pot of salted water to a boil.
- While the water is heating up, make the sauce. In a blender jar or food processor, combine miso, garlic, oils, lemon juice, vinegar and a few pinches of salt. Blend until the mixture is smooth and very green. You may need to add ¼ to ⅓ cup of water to the blender to adequately mix all the ingredients. Use the water sparingly. Season the sauce with salt and set the sauce aside.
- Once the water is boiling, cook the noodles according to package instructions. Once cooked, drain the noodles and add to a medium size bowl along with the butter. Allow the hot noodles to melt the butter, then toss until all noodles are evenly coated. Mix in enough of the miso-cilantro sauce to generously cover all the noodles.
- Divide the noodles between individual bowls for serving and top with toasted sesame seeds. If you have any extra sauce, save it and store in the refrigerator for several days or freeze it.
This recipe was adapted from one originally published in Bon Appetit Magazine in March 2018.
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