This Week’s Share
Recipes
Garden Lettuces and Arugula with Radish, Goat Cheese, and Hazelnuts
Adapted from the Fields of Greens cookbook.
Salt
¼ pound radishes, sliced into wedges
Light olive oil
Pepper
Sherry vinegar
Hazelnut-shallot vinaigrette (recipe follows)
9 to 10 cups of lettuce
Large handful of arugula
¼ cup hazelnuts, toasted
1 or 2 ounces mild, creamy goat cheese such as chevre or Montrachet, crumbled
Bring a small pot of water to a boil and add ½ teaspoon salt. Drop the radishes into the water and cook them for 3 to 4 minutes, until just tender. Drain and rinse the radishes under cold water, then toss with a little olive oil and a sprinkle of salt and pepper. Just before you’re ready to toss the salad, add a splash of sherry vinegar to brighten their flavor. Make the vinaigrette. Wash and clean the lettuce. Cut or tear the larger leaves and keep the small leaves whole. Mix the lettuce with the arugula; rinse the greens and dry them in a spinner. Combine the salad ingredients in a large bowl and toss with the vinaigrette. Sprinkle with freshly ground black pepper.
Hazelnut-Shallot Vinaigrette
2 tablespoons sherry vinegar
1 small shallot, diced
¼ teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons hazelnut oil
2 tablespoons light olive oil
Combine everything but the oils in a bowl, then slowly whisk in the oils.
Ginger and Green Garlic Joy Choi
Adapted from Vegetable Love
1 ½ tablespoons vegetable oil
1 head of joy choi, cleaned and coarsely chopped
2 quarter size slices peeled fresh ginger, cut into matchstick pieces (about 2 tablespoons)
1 or 2 stalks of green garlic, thinly chopped
1 teaspoon rice wine vinegar
¾ teaspoon kosher salt, or to taste
In a 10 inch frying pan, heat the oil over medium heat for 3 minutes, or until very hot. Add the joi choi, ginger, and garlic. Cook, tossing regularly with two wooden spoons, for 15 to 20 minutes, or until the leaves are completely wilted but the whites are still slightly crunchy. Keep the heat between medium and medium-high so that the pan is sizzling but the oil is not sputtering. Add the vinegar and salt. Cook for 1 minute more. Remove from the heat and serve.
Radish and Anchovy Open-face Sandwich
From Chez Panisse Vegetables
Choose a very fresh sweet baguette. Cut it in half lengthwise and spread liberally with unsalted butter. Wash and trim radishes, leaving on their tender leaves. Cut the radishes in half lengthwise and place them on the buttered baguette. Garnish with salt packed anchovy filets and ground black pepper.
Resource List
Here is a list of books we recommend having in the kitchen when needing some inspiration and/or direction on how to use your weekly share:
Fields of Greens, by Annie Somerville, and Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, by Deborah Madison, have lots of great vegetarian recipes, along with any other cookbooks by the chefs from the Greens restaurant.
Chez Panisse Vegetables, by Alice Waters, has beautiful illustrations and great recipes highlighting vegetables.
Vegetable Love, by Barbara Kafka, was recommended to us by a CSA member, and contains tons of recipes, as well as excellent information for cleaning, storing, and choosing vegetables.
How to Cook Everything, or How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, both by Mark Bittman, are also great reference material, and generally just come in handy.
Farmer John’s Cookbook, by John Peterson, is unique in that it was written with CSA shares in mind, by Farmer John and others at Angelic Organics.
The Farm to Table Cookbook-the Art of Eating Locally, by Ivy Manning, is an appropriate new cookbook by a local Portlander. I have not had the chance to use it myself, but looks both beautiful and useful.
The Silver Spoon Cookbook, published by Phaidon Press, is an enormous and wonderful Italian cookbook, and an excellent source for recipes.
Here are also some useful websites:
www.epicurious.com is an excellent website compiling so many recipes from both Gourmet and Bon Appetit magazines. You can search for recipes by vegetable- just type in one or more vegetables you are hoping to use, and any recipes that feature those ingredients will come up. It is the first place to look on the internet.
www.recipesource.com is the “searchable online archive of recipes”, and contains many great recipes from around the world.
www.allrecipes.com and www.cooks.com have some more run-of-the-mill recipes, but they make up for it in quantity, with lots of recipes to search through.
Planning for the 2008 CSA Share
Long before you sit down to dinner and enjoy an ear of sweet corn or a ripe tomato, we have planned and plotted for the season’s share. The crop planning process for the share begins in December when we evaluate the season that has just finished. We look at a number of factors including; crop varieties, yields, planting dates and harvest dates. With the past seasons records in mind, we create an ideal share plan for the coming season which includes a week by week projection of what we will harvest and when. From here we work backwards to determine the tillage, seeding, and planting dates to achieve this harvest plan. We take the same planning steps to create a crop plan for the restaurants we sell to. The restaurant crop plan is created independently of the CSA crop plan.
We thought we would wet your appetites by sharing the CSA crop plan for the 2008 season. We also hope this will help those of you who share your CSA share to divide up the vegetables to your liking. While planning out the share this season, we paid special attention to planning for share amounts that are easy to find a recipe for. To achieve this we created a few distribution rotations. This means you may receive some crops less often but in an amount that will allow you to make a dish that focuses on the crop. The explanations below will tell you which crops will go out according to this plan.
Finally, we know you are aware that joining a CSA means expecting a little bit of farm adventure. Although we have a pretty mapped out plan, please remember that this plan is subject to all the factors of the season. Though we put lots of time and careful planning into creating the “ideal share”, sometimes Mother Nature gets the last say.
Here is your season from A to Z:
Arugula- A salad serving in the share – a couple of times in May and early June.
Asian Greens- In the spring you’ll get Joi Choi heads and Fuyoshomi heads, in the fall Tatsoi heads and Joi Choi heads again.
Basil- We are aiming for a one pound share for everyone once – hopefully enough to make a batch of pesto. Then another couple of smaller 6 ounce distributions.
Beans- In early June look forward to fava beans, followed by several harvests of snap beans through the season.
Braising Greens- Twice in the spring and once in the fall.
Broccoli- We will harvest broccoli in June and July. We’ll try to distribute about eight pounds per share over this period.
Brussels Sprouts- You’ll have to wait till November to see these in the share a couple of times. Some good cold nights will make them all the sweeter.
Cabbage- A couple heads in July for your summer slaws. Then a couple more heads in the late fall for soups and sauerkraut.
Carrot- After a lot of damage from the carrot rust fly in the 2007 season, we are hoping some of the strategies we have put into place this year will make for a bountiful and beautiful carrot harvest. The plan is for carrots most weeks starting in mid June until the end of the season.
Celeriac- Look for this celery flavored root in November and enjoy it at your Thanksgiving table.
Celery- September and early October, about three times.
Chard- A few times in late May until mid July, then back again in late September and October.
Cilantro- Mid August to mid October.
Corn- Sweet corn debuts in late July or early August. Nine consecutive plantings will show up in your share in mid-summer to early fall.
Collards- November, a couple of times.
Cucumbers- After the first cucumber harvest in late July, cucumbers will be in the share every other week switching off with summer squash. Our hope is to give you a more usable amount of cucumbers rather than a smaller amount more frequently.
Dill- Mid August to October.
Eggplant- Every other week from mid August until early October either Japanese or Italian eggplant will be in your share.
Fennel- These delicious bulbs will be in the share twice in June and twice in October.
Green Garlic and Garlic- Green Garlic will be in the share in the first month of CSA. In late June to early July you’ll start to see the first mature garlic bulbs. These will be in the share through the end of the season. If you share your CSA share we suggest that you switch off with your share partner in taking home the garlic bulb each week.
Kale- Kale switches off with chard in the share from late May until mid July. It returns to the share again in October alternating with chard and collards till the season’s end.
Leeks- Leeks alternate with onions in the share from mid September till the end of the season.
Lettuce- Lettuce goes out in the share most weeks of the season until the end of October. From the beginning of the season until about mid-July, there will be two heads per week in the share. For the next couple months there will be one head per week, returning to two heads per week in late September until the end of lettuce season at the end of October.
Melons- The melons start to ripen in mid-August. We are growing five melon varieties this year and will try to give you a taste of each of them.
Mizuna- A salad serving in the share – a couple of times in May and early June.
Onion- You will see a variety of onions in the share over the season. Walla Wallas start off the fresh onion season in June with other fresh onion varieties to follow – Purplettes, Red Torpedo Onions, and more Wallas. In September the cured onions begin. Red or yellow storage onions will be in the share, alternating with leeks from early September till the end of the season.
Parsley- About once a month from June thru October.
Parsnips- Look forward to these delicious roots a couple of times in November.
Peas- Our plan for this year is for one distribution of shelling peas in early June.
Peppers- Green peppers will be in the share a couple of times in late August and early September. Colored peppers last about six weeks from mid September till the end of October.
Potatoes- The SIO tradition is to start the potato season with a mix of red, white, and blue new potatoes just in time for the 4th of July. They will reappear in the share a few more times through the summer before being on a regular bi-monthly distribution schedule.
Radish- Twice in the spring to add a little spice to the share.
Shallots- In November, a couple if times, four per share.
Spinach- Spinach is a tricky crop for us. We have had so much trouble with low germination when we direct seed spinach that we now transplant our spinach crop. At three beds with 1800 plants in each bed, it takes a long time to plant. Our plan for this year is for one big spinach harvest in the spring and another in the fall.
Summer Squash- It is easy to be overwhelmed by the explosion of zucchini, patty pans, and yellow straight neck squash that summer can bring upon us. After a few smaller distributions of summer squash, you will start getting summer squash every other week (alternating with cucumbers) in a larger amount.
Tomatoes- We grow sauce, slicing, and heirloom tomatoes at SIO. Sauce tomatoes will be in the share in September and October. You will receive about five pounds in two separate distributions. Slicing tomatoes will be in the share about every other week – enough to make a salsa or tomato based recipe.
Heirlooms will go out each week of tomato harvest for slices on summer sandwiches and salads.
Turnip- We planted twice as many Hakurei this year since last year’s yields were lower than we would have liked. We are hoping to have enough for two spring distributions and one fall distribution. There will also be Scarlet Queen turnips in the fall.
Winter Squash- Winter Squash starts making it’s appearance in early October and sticks around for the rest of the season. You will receive two to four squash per distribution. This should make it easy to split with share partners. The only exception to this will be Blue Hubbard squash, just one of these.