Week Ten Farm News
Hello to all farm share members. We hope all is well with you. The goings on at the farm have been the usual, planting, harvesting, seeding and planning for the coming season. This week you will find in your shares tomatillos, tomatoes, kale, treviso, radicchio, cucumbers, squash, potatoes, and garlic. The recipes to follow are actually from last week’s share as will be explained shortly, but the shares this time of year are quite similar and recipes are easily adaptable.
Probably the most frequent question we get about the farm share is how much food is in it and how many people it will feed or how many meals one can make with it. The answers vary so much depending on how much people cook, if they are vegetarians or vegans, if they cook all the vegetables or try to eat them fresh or if they make smoothies or juice during the week. We usually say that the shares are designed to supplement meals for a family of four. However, given that most of the produce we all consume on the farm is leftovers from the market or some items that did not make the cut for various outlets and we can can pick and choose items to take home, (we have all been eating a lot of split tomatoes and chicories lately), most of us do not really have a full share to work with at any time. So last week, the experiment was to actually take home a full share and use it and see what we actually came up with. In the end, it made the bulk of five meals for two. And by bulk of the meal, we mean basically that the meals were all vegetables. One could easily use these recipes as sides and stretch the share. Anything else that went into the recipes was something most people might have on hand or an extra protein. Though the shares vary a bit each week, these recipes are very adaptable and if something is missing one week, there is a good chance it will show up again soon.
Here are the dishes we made:
Grilled chicories and nectarines (shown above)
Skirt Steak and Escarole Salad
Creamed Collards and Roasted Potatoes
Zucchini Parmesan
Chard with Tomatillo Salsa, Potatoes and Chorizo
Grilled Chicory Salad (uses garlic, 1 and 1/2 chicory)
1/2 head escarole or 1 whole head radicchio
1 head treviso
2 ripe but firm nectarines or peaches, cut into thin wedges
1 clove garlic, minced
1/4 cup fresh oregano
1 tsp. brown or dijon mustard
1/4 cup olive oil
1 tbs. sherry vinegar
1 tbs. apple cider vinegar
Salt and pepper to taste
Heat grill. A gas grill was used in this recipe, but a charcoal grill or hot cast iron pan would work too.
Cut the chicory heads in half, drizzle with two tablespoons olive oil and salt and pepper. Place on hot grill cut side down. Grill just a few minutes, till edges are charred but greens are not fully wilted.
Remove from heat and make the dressing. Combine vinegars, remaining oil, minced garlic, mustard and salt and pepper in a jar and shake well.
Chop chicory heads roughly and place in a mixing bowl. Add dressing and oregano and toss. Arrange on serving plate and top with fruit slices. Make this more of a meal and serve with grilled chicken or tempeh. Be sure to eat right away.
Skirt Steak and Escarole Salad
1/2 head escarole or 1 whole radicchio
1/2 pint cherry tomatoes, halved
1 cucumber, sliced thin
2 cloves garlic, minced
One small skirt steak or similar thin cut of meat. The one used here was about a pound, and there was leftover steak for sandwiches the next day.
Dressing
1/4 cup rehydrated sundries tomatoes
2 tbs. tahini
2 cloves garlic
2 tbs. olive oil
1/2 lemon
1 tbs. apple cider vinegar
2 tbs. water
Season steak with salt and pepper. Combine all dressing ingredients in a high powered blender. Blend till creamy and adjust seasonings or add more water if dressing is too thick.
Cook steak in a hot cast iron pan, about four to five minutes each side. After flipping over, top with two cloves minced garlic and a few tablespoons dressing and finish cooking. Remove from heat and let rest while preparing the rest of the salad.
Wash and dry escarole. Roughly chop and place onto two serving plates. Top with tomatoes and cucumbers. Pour on dressing as you like and top with thinly sliced steak. Try this with the radicchio in this week’s share.
To make zucchini Parmesan, just follow any eggplant Parmesan recipe and substitute the squash for eggplant. We pan fried ours in a coating of egg, and equal parts flour and cornflour with a pinch each of salt and pepper. The sauce was made the night before, by cooking a few cloves garlic, 1/2 cup chopped onion, 2 tbs. chopped fresh herbs (basil, oregano, thyme, etc.) and about 2-3 cups chopped heirloom tomatoes. We used up all the heirlooms in the share for this sauce. Sautee garlic and onion, then add tomatoes and herbs and cook down till thickened. This took about a half hour. 1 tbs balsamic vinegar was added with salt and pepper.
More specifics on the other recipes to follow, but they were both versions of sauteed greens and roasted potatoes, which most of you are probably familiar with. The collards were cooked up with two cups of whole milk, as one of the employees has a cow and supplies us with fresh milk. From there we added curry spices and cooked the greens down till they were soft ad added a cup of cooked red lentils. They are very soft and made the greens like a thick stew that was great with salty roasted potatoes. This would work really well with kale as well.
For the chard, sautee and add one recipe of fresh tomatillo salsa. Cook down till greens are soft, about 25 Minutes. Steve with roasted potatoes and grilled chorizo or andouille sausage links.
Again, these recipes were all very loose, very easy and fast. The eggplant Parmesan was the longest, taking about an hour, only half was active. We also tried to make more than one thing at a time, like roasting all the potatoes and using them twice and cooking the greens at the same time as cooking down the tomato sauce. We are pretty busy at the farm and so are most of you out there, so all recipes and food suggestions have to pass the fast, easy and use what most people have on had test. We hope you are enjoying your food and are cooking up some great dishes.
