Wednesday, October 14, 2020

October 15, 2020 - This Week's Box Contents, Featuring Cauliflower!


Cooking With This Week's Box


Red Onions:  Fiery Grilled Beef Salad;  Wilted Spinach Salad with Butternut Squash 

Red-Gold  or Peter Wilcox Potatoes:  Roasted Poblano Pepper Potato Soup;  The Best Potato Salad 

Red Jalapeño Peppers:  Fiery Grilled Beef Salad

Korean Chili Peppers: 2020 Korean Pepper Vegetable Feature;  HVF Fresh Korean Chili-Garlic Sauce—Updated;  Spicy Korean-Style Gochujang Meatballs;  Spicy Gochujang Butter Popcorn; Thai-Style Chicken Soup  

Broccoli Romanesco or Cauliflower:  Leek & Cauliflower Puree (see below);  Linguine with Cauliflower Pesto (see below)

Broccoli:  Broccoli Cheese Soup;  Broccoli Cheese Casserole 

Poblano Peppers OR Mini Sweet Peppers:  Chile Rellenos Grilled Chicken Tacos;  Roasted Poblano Pepper Potato Soup 

Spinach:  Tangy Spinach & Apple Salad;  50 Spinach Salad Recipes You’ll Love to Eat;  Wilted Spinach Salad with Butternut Squash

Lemongrass:  2020 Lemongrass Feature Article;  Fiery Grilled Beef Salad;  Thai-Style Chicken Soup

Orange Carrots: Asian Turnip & Carrot Salad;  10 Healthy and Easy Carrot Recipes for Kids; Creamy Carrot Rice;  Broccoli Cheese Soup

Mini Romaine/Little Gem Lettuce or Magenta Red Summercrisp Lettuce:  Fiery Grilled Beef Salad;  Green Salad with Radishes and Creamy Mustard Dressing  

French Breakfast Radishes:  Green Salad with Radishes and Creamy Mustard Dressing;  Tangy Spinach & Apple Salad

Baby Violet Turnips:  Roasted Turnips with Wilted Greens;  Asian Turnip & Carrot Salad



Green Salad with Radishes
photo from epicurious.com
Here we are, halfway through another month!  The bounty of fall is flooding our coolers and some days we’re busting at the seams trying to find a place for everything!  It leaves us with no option other than to pack it in a CSA box and send it your way!  Lets dive into this week’s box, starting with cauliflower.  Check out this week’s Cauliflower Vegetable Feature article (See Below) which includes 10 links to additional recipes as well as 2 links to extensive cauliflower recipe collections.  We’re also featuring two recipes this week.  The first is very fitting for this time of year and is super simple, Leek and Cauliflower Puree (see below).  Serve this simple dish alongside roasted meats for a simple dinner.  The second recipe for Linguine with Cauliflower Pesto (see below) is an interesting recipe that actually uses cauliflower in its raw form to make a pesto like mixture to toss with hot pasta.  Serve this light pasta dish with a salad for a simple dinner.  If you’re looking for salad ideas, consider trying this Green Salad with Radishes and Creamy Mustard Dressing or perhaps this Tangy Spinach & Apple Salad.  This spinach salad does call for pomegranate molasses which may be found in the international section of your grocery store.  If you can’t find it, you could substitute honey instead.


Wilted Spinach Salad
with Butternut Squash
Photo from tasteofhome.com
After a summer-time hiatus from lettuce and salad greens, it’s nice to have both head lettuce and baby spinach to work with this week.  Last week we featured this recipe for Fiery Grilled Beef Salad which utilizes lemongrass and fresh chile peppers.  You could use either the red jalapeños or Korean Chili peppers for the heat.  I also found this recipe collection for 50 Spinach Salad Recipes You’ll Love to Eat which includes this tasty recipe for Wilted Spinach Salad with Butternut Squash, a nice fall salad option.


If you didn’t see last week’s 2020 Lemongrass Feature Article,  I encourage you to go check it out and learn more about how to use lemongrass.  We also included a fragrant recipe for Thai-Style Chicken Soup that utilizes fresh lemongrass.  Now that the chill of fall has set in, I’m feeling the need to make more warming soups.  This week I recommend sticking with some more traditional soup recipes, with a few little twists of course.  Jazz up the traditional potato soup concept by adding roasted poblano peppers.  Here’s a recipe for Roasted Poblano Pepper Potato Soup.  This week’s broccoli could become a comforting Broccoli Cheese Soup. 

This week we’re also finishing up the last of our Korean chili peppers.  If you’re not sure what to do with them, check out our blog post with our 2020 Korean Chili Pepper Vegetable Feature;  In this article you’ll find a simple recipe for HVF Fresh Korean Chili-Garlic Sauce—Updated which may be used in a wide variety of ways including this recipe for Spicy Korean-Style Gochujang Meatballs.  Serve these tasty meatballs with The Best Potato Salad or Broccoli Cheese Casserole for a nice dinner option.  If you didn’t try the Spicy Gochujang Butter Popcorn recipe a few weeks ago, I encourage you to do so this week.  It’s so delicious!

Carrots are a pretty common vegetable, so are often well accepted by children, especially when they are so sweet and tasty!  Check out this collection of 10 Healthy and Easy Carrot Recipes for Kids which includes a recipe for Creamy Carrot Rice (Recipe #2).  You could also pair carrots with this week’s violet turnips to make this Asian Turnip & Carrot Salad.  This would be another good accompaniment for the Spicy Korean-style Gochujang Meatball recipe.  If you’re looking for an alternative use for this week’s pretty little violet turnips, consider keeping it simple and following this recipe for Roasted Turnips with Wilted Greens. 


Chili Rellenos Grilled Chicken
Tacos photo from tasteofhome.com
Lastly, I want to share this recipe for Chile Rellenos Grilled Chicken Tacos.  We’ve had a great poblano pepper harvest this year, but sadly the season is coming to an end.

We still have 6 weeks of deliveries remaining and one of my missions for this week is to lay out a tentative plan for the vegetables we want to pack in these final 6 deliveries.  There is strategy in this plan as we try to balance packing nice boxes with good variety in addition to matching our plans to our labor resources all while dancing around the weather!  Thanks for joining us for the 2020 CSA season, now lets finish strong!—Chef Andrea



Vegetable Feature: Cauliflower


By Chef Andrea Yoder

Purple and Cheddar Cauliflower
This week the harvest crew will bring in an estimated 2,000 heads of cauliflower, possibly more!  While we grow cauliflower in the spring and fall, fall is the time of the year when cauliflower thrives, tastes the best and is in its prime.  The heat of summer can stress cauliflower and significantly impact its flavor, appearance and how it grows.  In the fall, however, the plants are less stressed so they produce better and the flavor is more balanced.  As with other brassicas, there is a bit of sweetness in the flavor once the plant has gone through a bit of a cold snap.  So while we’ve been delivering cauliflower for a few weeks, we wanted to feature it this week while it’s in its prime!

White is the traditional cauliflower color most individuals are familiar with, however you may realize by now that we have a tendency to go beyond tradition in favor of growing something a bit more unique.  In the world of cauliflower, this means we also grow purple and yellow varieties.  A common question we are often asked at the farmers’ market is if there is a difference in flavor.  The basic answer is that they all do still taste like cauliflower, however remember that different color pigments in vegetables indicate the presence of different nutrient compounds.  So, if you pay close attention you may notice subtle flavor differences between the different colors.  The yellow variety we used to grow was named “Cheddar.”  We’ve since switched to a different variety called “Flamestar,”  however another common question we get is whether or not the yellow cauliflower tastes like cheese.  While that would be pretty cool to have a built in cheese flavor, the answer to that question is “no.”  If you want your cauliflower to taste like cheese you’ll have to put the cheese on it!

You may not realize it, but all parts of the cauliflower plant are edible, even the outer wrapper leaves!  If you want to truly maximize the value of a head of cauliflower, save the leaves and put them to use.  Check out this article on theKitchn.com that talks about the different ways you can use the leaves including roasting and grilling.  In addition to the actual florets, you can also use the stems that connect the florets to the core, just cut them into smaller pieces.

White Cauliflower
I think it’s also important to mention the health benefits of cauliflower.  You likely already know that any vegetable in the family of brassicas (eg broccoli, turnips, bok choi, mustard greens, kohlrabi, cabbage, etc) is going to be packed with valuable nutrients.  Cauliflower in particular contains glucosinates which are plant compounds that help protect our bodies from cellular damage by free radicals and have anti-inflammatory, antibacterial and antiviral effects.  

Cauliflower may be eaten raw or cooked and there are so many different ways to use it!  It can be roasted, grilled, baked, stir-fried, boiled and sautéed.  It’s delicious in soups, gratins, salads, pickled, and the list goes on!  To get you started, I’ve compiled a list of 10 cauliflower recipes and links to two pretty extensive collections of cauliflower recipes.  If you try something new, be sure to post in our Facebook Group and let us know how it turned out!



Leek & Cauliflower Puree


Yield:  4 to 6 servings

2 medium leeks, dark green parts removed
2 Tbsp unsalted butter
Salt, to taste
1 head cauliflower (about 1 ¾ pounds)
2 garlic cloves, coarsely chopped
2 ½ cups chicken stock, plus more if needed

  1. Slice the leeks lengthwise, and then into half-moons.  Wash them thoroughly and drain.
  2. Melt the butter in a large saucepan over medium-low heat.  Add the leeks and season with 1 tsp salt.  Slowly cook the leeks for about 15 minutes, stirring often to avoid caramelization.
  3. While the leeks are cooking, core and cut the cauliflower into 1-inch pieces.
  4. Add the garlic and the cauliflower to the leeks and continue to cook for 5 minutes.  Add the chicken stock, raise the heat to high, and bring the liquid to a boil.  Reduce the heat to medium-low and simmer, covered, until the cauliflower is cooked all the way through, about 15 minutes.
  5. Place all the contents of the pot into a blender and puree on high speed.  If needed, add more chicken stock to thin the puree.  The consistency should be slightly looser than polenta.  Season with salt to taste, and serve.

Recipe borrowed from The Broad Fork by Hugh Acheson.


Linguine with Cauliflower Pesto


Yield:  6 to 8 servings

1 small head or ½ large head cauliflower (about 1 pound), trimmed of leaves, cored, and cut into large     chunks
1 garlic clove
Generous pinch of red pepper flakes
½ cup almonds or pine nuts, toasted and cooled
2 ounce chunk Romano or Parmesan cheese, plus a little more for serving
4 sun-dried tomatoes (see note below)
1 Tbsp drained capers
Few tablespoons fresh parsley leaves
⅓ cup olive oil
½ to 1 tsp sherry vinegar (to taste)
1 pound linguine

  1. Set a large pot of salted water to boil.
  2. Prepare the pesto:  Pulse half the cauliflower in a food processor until it looks like mixed sizes of couscous.  Transfer the cauliflower to a large bowl, and repeat with the second batch, adding it to the same bowl when you are finished.  If your cauliflower looks like the perfect texture, but one large chunk insists upon escaping the steel blade’s grasp, pick it up and pulse it separately.  You’ll have about 3 ½ cups of fluffy, delightful cauliflower-couscous like crumbs.
  3. Pulse the garlic, pepper flakes, almonds, cheese, sun-dried tomatoes, capers, and parsley in a food processor until the mixture looks like coarse breadcrumbs.  Transfer to the bowl with cauliflower, add the olive oil, the smaller amount of vinegar, and a few pinches of salt, and stir until combined (If you do this step in the food processor, it becomes and unseemly paste.  Best to do it by hand.)  Taste and adjust seasoning as needed—either adding more salt, pepper, or remainder of vinegar.  I start with about ½ teaspoon salt , but often go up to nearly a full teaspoon.
  4. Assemble Dish:  Once water is boiling, add the linguine and cook until it is al dente (cooked, but with a tiny bite left).  Reserve a cup of the cooking water, then drain the rest.  Immediately toss the hot pasta with the cauliflower pesto and half of your reserved cooking water, until everything is nicely dispersed.  If the pesto still feels too thick, loosen it with the remaining reserved cooking water.  Divide among bowls, and serve with additional Parmesan cheese.
Note:  With regards to Sun-dried tomatoes, use the dry variety;  if oil-packed, be sure to drain them and mince them by hand separately, so the oil doesn’t gum up the food processor mixture, before you add them.

Additional Author’s Notes:  
  • Want to skip the pasta? This is also incredible as a tapenade on olive-oil-brushed toasts.  
  • To make this like an Italian grandmother, or without a food processor, simply chop everything by hand.

Recipe borrowed from Deb Perelman’s book, The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook.

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