July 8, 2021 - This Week's Box Contents, Featuring Cucumbers!

 

Cooking With This Week's Box

Fresh Porcelain Garlic:
Garlic Butter Sauce Pasta
Garlic Naan Bread

Desert Sunrise Cipollini OR Sierra Blanca Onions:   
Fennel, Pickled Onion and Apple Salad
Onion Vinaigrette Salad

Zucchini and/or Sunburst Scallopini Squash: 
Zucchini Ribbon Skewers with Spicy Lemon Butter
Marinated Chicken and Zucchini Kabobs

Green and/or Silver Slicer Cucumbers: 
Cucumber Lime Popsicles (See Below)
Mexican Cucumber Snack (See Below)
Chile-Mint Sauteed Cucumbers (See Below)
 
Broccoli:
Freezer Friendly Broccoli Cheese Soup
How To Freeze Broccoli
Honey Chicken Stir-Fry (using fresh or frozen broccoli)

Snow Peas or Sugar Snap Peas or Fresh Green/Yellow Beans: 
Stir-Fried Snow Peas with Shiitakes and Ginger
Chinese Sugar Snap Pea Salad
Fresh Green Bean Casserole

Summercrisp  Head Lettuce: 
Greens & Lentil Salad with Dijon Dressing
In and Out Style Burger Lettuce Wraps

Cilantro: 
Chimichurri
Cilantro Lime Slaw with Crispy Baked Fish Tacos

Italian Basil: 
Summer Vietnamese Rice Noodle Salad
Nicoise Pasta Salad with Basil Dressing

Fennel: 
Fennel Vegetable Feature 2019 with 25 Recipe Ideas!
Caramelized Fennel and Apple Tart

Sweetheart Salad Cabbage:
Simplest Cabbage Slaw
Coconut Quinoa Coleslaw with Minty Tahini Dressing

OR

White Cauliflower: 
Easy Cauliflower Tikka Masala
Roasted Cauliflower Tacos

Marinated Chicken and Zucchini Kabobs
photo from tasteofhome.com

Happy July!

Now that summer is in full swing, things are happening fast in the fields!  Next week we’re going to be picking the first tomatillos and black eggplant.  The first tomato planting already has sizeable fruit set on and we’re scheduled to dig the first of our potatoes next week!  Next week we’re also planning to start harvesting the first of our green top carrots and hopefully green and yellow beans.  The first crop of sweet corn is also very near on the horizon.  I hope you’re ready for some delicious summer meals because we have a lot of delicious things to send your way!

This week we’re featuring cucumbers, which is a pretty common vegetable.  The thing I like about cucumbers is how simple and refreshing they are in the middle of the summer.  Around here, our crew members take home bags of them from our “take home pallet” and enjoy them as a refreshing snack, eat fresh slices of them with their meals, and put thin slices of them in their water jugs.  So this week’s featured recipes are pretty simple and straight forward because, well that’s just the way cucumbers are!  The recipe for Mexican Cucumber Snack (See Below) is inspired by our crew members who eat cucumbers this way, but also other vegetables like radishes, jicama and kohlrabi.  The recipe for Cucumber Lime Popsicles (See Below) is a fun way to turn cucumbers into a refreshing snack that can be enjoyed on a hot afternoon.  The third recipe is for Chile-Mint Sauteed Cucumbers (See Below) and demonstrates that cucumbers can also be cooked!  This recipe is super simple and quick and would serve as a nice side dish alongside Marinated Chicken and Zucchini Kabobs or served with Summer Vietnamese Rice Noodle Salad.

Fennel, Pickled Onion and Apple Salad
photo from everylastbite.com

We are finishing up the last of our head lettuces this week, which means we’re going to have to rely on other vegetables for our fresh salads until fall!  This week you have a lot of salad options to choose from including a Fennel, Pickled Onion and Apple Salad,  Chinese Sugar Snap Pea Salad, and Nicoise Pasta Salad with Basil Dressing.  Of course the sweetheart cabbage is another excellent base for a “salad” option and can be as simple as a creamy coleslaw.  My favorite creamy cabbage salad recipe is this Simplest Cabbage Slaw
recipe from alexandracooks.com.  I make this all the time!

I am happy to report that all of our garlic has been harvested and is tucked away safely in our greenhouses where it is drying!  This week’s garlic is still considered to be “fresh” garlic and it will be a flavorful addition to this simple Garlic Butter Sauce Pasta.  If you want to try something fun this week, make your own homemade Garlic Naan Bread to serve with this Easy Cauliflower Tikka Masala.  We don’t have enough cauliflower for all boxes this week as it’s just starting to come in, but don’t worry.  If you don’t get any this week it will likely be in your box next week or the following week!

Whether you’re cooking in your kitchen, grilling on the patio or taking your vegetables with you on your summer travels or camping trips, I hope you enjoy all these summer vegetables!  Have a great week!—Chef Andrea

Vegetable Feature: Cucumbers

By:  Chef Andrea Yoder

Jose Luis pausing for a photo-op 
while unloading cucumbers (2018)

Description: Cucumbers are a member of the gourd family along with melons, squash and pumpkins.  They are a fairly mild-flavored vegetable with a high water content which makes them the perfect summer vegetable to counter the heat!  In this country we are most familiar with the American green slicer variety.  However, in addition to green slicers we also grow a few other interesting varieties including silver slicers, our favorite cucumber.  Silver slicer cucumbers are a little smaller than standard green slicers.  They have a pale yellow skin and hold up well after picking without getting soft.  They also tend to have a more tender skin that doesn’t get bitter and it has an excellent fruity flavor that is more pronounced than other varieties.

Preparation & Use: Cucumbers are most often used in salads, on sandwiches or they are pickled.  However, they can also be cooked in stir-fries, turned into cold or hot soups, braised or lightly sautéed.

It’s up to you to decide if you want to peel them or not.  If the skin is tender, I seldom peel cucumbers.  The tenderness of the skin is dependent somewhat upon the variety, but also the maturity of the cucumber when it was picked as well as the point we’re at in the season.  Thus, it’s your judgement call to decide if you want to peel them or not.

Vinegar Slaw with Cucumbers and Dill

Cucumbers pair well with a wide variety of ingredients including herbs such as basil, cilantro, dill and parsley.  They also go well with garlic, tomatoes, peppers, onions and cabbage.  They are delicious when dressed with tangy vinaigrettes, but also marry well with creamy dressings and sauces made from yogurt, sour cream, cream cheese and buttermilk.   

Storage: Cucumbers store best at 45°F to 50°F, but most refrigerators are set to lower temperatures than this.  Thus, we recommend you store them either in a warmer part of your fridge for just a few days, or just keep them on the counter at room temperature and use within a few days.  Wash cucumbers just before use and note that our cucumbers are not dipped in wax or wrapped in plastic as many are in the retail grocery world.  After several days they may become a little soft.  Don’t throw them out as they are still good!  It is natural for them to feel a little limp, just soak them in an ice bath before you are going to use them or use them in a recipe where they’ll be cooked or softened.

Our expert crew transplanting cucumbers.

Growing Information: Cucumbers may be grown in a variety of growing systems.  We choose to grow our cucumbers the old fashioned way…in the dirt outside in the field!  We do have a unique strategy, though.  We start all of our cucumbers in the greenhouse as a transplant.  They grow very quickly once the seed germinates, so we only have about three weeks from when the seeds are planted to get the field ready!  We plant them on raised beds covered with a reflective silver plastic that has drip irrigation lines running underneath it.  We do this for several reasons.  First, the reflective plastic helps deter pests such as cucumber beetles which can wreak havoc on the plants by chewing the leaves and scarring the fruit.  The plastic mulch also provides some heat gain which helps encourage growth in this heat-loving crop.

We plant an early crop that we put in the field as soon as possible in the spring and then do a second planting to get us through the latter part of summer.  We typically cover the first planting with a row cover draped over wire hoops.  This protects the plants from any chilly nights and also helps trap more heat to help the plants get established and take off.  Once the plants are producing fruit, you can almost predict the volume of a harvest by the temperature.  Ok, not quite, but they are very responsive to changes in temperature and if you have a really warm week you can really see some phenomenal growth and be surprised with harvests that literally double and sometimes triple seemingly overnight!

Chile-Mint Sautéed Cucumbers

Yield:  4 as a side dish

1 pound cucumbers

1 Tbsp olive oil

1 Tbsp unsalted butter

1 shallot or small onion, minced

¼ tsp crushed red pepper flakes

1 Tbsp freshly squeezed lemon juice

2 Tbsp chopped fresh mint leaves

¼ tsp salt

1. Peel the cucumbers if desired, cut them in half lengthwise, and then remove the seeds by running a small spoon down the seed seam.  Cut the cucumbers into ¼-inch thick half moons and set aside.
2. Heat the olive oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. When the oil is hot, add the butter and the shallot or onion and cook for 1 minute, until aromatic.  Add the sliced cucumbers and toss to coat.  Cook for 3 minutes, until the cucumbers are hot and just tender;  then add the red pepper flakes, lemon juice, and fresh mint.  Remove from the heat and season with the kosher salt.  Toss, and place in shallow bowl to serve.

Recipe borrowed from Hugh Acheson’s book, The Broad Fork.

Cucumber Lime Popsicles

Yield: 6

photo from everydaymadefresh.com

1 pound cucumbers

1 lime, zest and juice

¼ tsp salt

½ cup sugar

½ cup plain, Greek yogurt

1. Mix together all ingredients in a blender or food processor.  
2. Blend until nothing but juice remains.
3. Pour into popsicle molds and freeze for 6 hours or until solid.  Overnight is best.

Recipe borrowed from everydaymadefresh.com.

Note: If you do not have popsicle molds, you can just use small paper cups to freeze the juice mixture in.  Put popsicle sticks in the popsicles when the juice had started to freeze, but is not totally frozen.

 

Mexican Cucumber Snack

photo from thriftandspice.com

Yield:  2 Servings

1 cucumber

½ tsp chili powder

½  lime

Salt, to taste

1. Peel (optional) and cut the cucumber into slices and lay out on a plate.
2. Squeeze the lime juice over the cucumbers.  Sprinkle with chili powder and salt.
3. Serve and enjoy!

Recipe borrowed from thriftandspice.com