Bialas Farms CSA: Week 2

Monday, July 7, 2014

We’re into week 2! We picked up our CSA box on Saturday and spent another great week cooking more vegetables than we can usually handle.

This week’s box had some new vegetables including broccoli rabe, and Adirondack blue potatoes. I should have kept some of them separate for our mystery food challenge since neither I, nor the kids, have tried them before. But they were so perfect for a July 4^th red, white and blue potato salad that I used them all in one fell swoop.

Given that we had a few families visiting the lake this weekend, I also loaded up on a few extras that weren’t in my box.

Here were the contents of Week 2’s box:

Green leaf lettuce
Italian parsley
Yukon Gold potatoes (from their regular farm stand)
Sugar snap peas
Garlic scapes
Bok choy
Red radishes
Adirondack blue potatoes
Sage plant
Swiss chard
Baby carrots
Broccoli rabe

*not pictured (in hiding?) were a boatload of English peas

Aside from the Bialas produce, I picked up some local strawberries and blueberries from another vendor at the Ringwood Farmer’s Market, The Orchards of Conklin, and a pork shoulder from Snoep Winkel Farm.

The kids have been pretty excited to pick up the box because it brings mealtime and playtime together. After I set out the vegetables and get them ready for washing & bagging, Lauren now asks me if she can do her own vegetable artwork. In theory I don’t have a problem with it, but it makes for a gigantic clean up effort. But if that’s what it takes to get the kids interested in eating their greens, I’m game.

One of the first things that the kids like to eat are the carrots. With the greens and peels intact. I’m a peeler myself, but the skins on these baby carrots are so thin, that they’re downright delicious straight from the ground with nothing but a quick wash.

This week, my first dish was a beet hummus, using some leftover beets from last week’s box, to serve as a dip for the radishes. To call this dip hummus is a bit of a stretch since it contains no tahini, and a fair amount of yogurt. But with its chickpeas and garlic, it’s about as close as Lauren will come to tasting true hummus given her sesame allergy. Potato potah-to, it’s still pretty fantastic, and I’ve included the recipe below.

To make the beet hummus:
Blitz a garlic clove in a food processor until minced.
To the processor, add a few roasted beets (roast the beets in foil at 350 degrees for an hour, let cool, and then slip from their skins), a 14-oz can of garbanzo beans, 14-oz can of butter beans and then pulse. With the motor running, add a ¼ cup of olive oil in a slow stream to emulsify. Add a 6-oz container of yogurt and a tablespoon of Harissa; blend to incorporate. Season with salt and pepper.
(Optional) Serve with a drizzle of olive oil, a sprinkling of Maldon salt, and/or chopped fresh herbs.

The hummus was also really great stuffed into a toasted pita with a basic tabbouleh which I made with our farm share parsley, a tomato, bulgur and some lemon juice + olive oil. Feeling like I was going with a Mediterranean vibe that day for lunch, I rounded things out with some green leaf lettuce topped with grilled calamari. We don’t do this every day, but we should. It took almost no time to prepare and was a great combination of healthy and delicious.

We had fun with our greens at lunch this week and opted one day for a pasta bar instead of our usual sandwiches. I was skeptical about whether this approach would encourage the kids to eat more veg, but was shocked when Sam layered broccoli rabe and blanched English peas over his pasta. On top of the mountain of bacon of course.

Lauren, my resident vegetable eater, just went for bacon and a splash of the pasta cooking water, which she referred to as “dishwater”. Appetizing. Feeling bad for my neglected vegetables, I loaded up on ricotta, heaps of English peas, mint, lemon zest and chili flakes and it was one of the best pastas I’ve had in a long time.

With the heat this week it was hard not to go crazy for cold things, so we made a lot of pops. Thinking that it might help entertain the kids this summer, I went hog wild on Amazon before we left the city, ordering a few different types of popsicle molds. The added benefit being that it gets the kids off of the neon ice pops from the A&P, and gives them some added nutrition.

These ring pops were one of their favorites – we pureed strawberries with some mint simple syrup and poured them into the molds. The best kind of accessory for beating the heat…

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CSA

Bialas Farms CSA: Week 1

Sunday, June 29, 2014

We’ve done it again! Against all odds, we decided to sign up for another year of CSA adventures, this year with Bialas Farms, which operates a farm in the black dirt region of the Hudson Valley.

Although it’s not our first year with a CSA, things will be different this Summer, given that I’m a) not pregnant and b) lucky enough to have more space to prep and store each week’s haul. We have (pinching myself) a brand new beverage fridge that we’ve installed in the basement, so taking the beer out of the crisper and the wine out of the top shelves has given us a few acres of storage space for vegetables.

My plan is to document each week’s box and some of the meals cooked from the produce received, at the very least in short form. If you want more details about what I did to prep or cook one of the dishes, just leave a comment on the post. This week’s post will likely be more detailed than the ones to come, since many of the recipes will be riffs on what I’ve done this week. That’s what I’m telling myself anyway. I know that once I start to get new vegetables, my brain will be spinning with new ideas which I’ll want to put to paper. If you see me doing this kind of detailed post every week, yell at me to get out from behind the computer and go enjoy my summer for crying out loud.

My first box was highly anticipated – by me, and potentially my kids, who have been listening to me yammer on about the damn box for weeks. And it was great to finally meet Kasha, the woman, the myth, the legend behind Bialas Farms, who grow some of the best produce in the region. Kasha also writes the blog The FarmGirl Cooks, and at my first pickup, gave me some recipe inspiration, which I’ll share with you below.

So let’s get on with it, here is the Bialas Farms CSA farm share, week 1:

Garlic scapes
Red leaf lettuce
Yukon gold potatoes
Tuscan kale
Green leaf lettuce
Red radishes
Bok choi
Sugar snap peas
Rainbow chard
Red beets and beet greens

As you may know by now, one of the kitchen strategies that I stick to without fail is my veg prep when I get home from the market. So my heart was palpitating ever so slightly when I was faced with the mountain of greens that I’d have to wash and bag. But the work moved quickly, and within the hour, I had all of my greens prepped, labeled and stored in the fridge.

But it really does save time in the long run, and keeps your greens fresh throughout the week until you can pick up your next box, so in my book, it’s worth the extra effort up front.

Now for the fun part. I couldn’t wait for my first dinner with my new veg, but first, it was snack time. I scrubbed and trimmed the bunch of radishes, and scooped some sour cream into a bowl – the perfect vehicle for the new finishing salts I picked up in Chelsea Market last week.

Even the kids loved the treat, with the super smoky Alderwood smoked salt as the runaway favorite. Their assessment of truffle salt: “disgusting”. They’ll learn the error of their ways…

And here is where our first dinner with our CSA box went off the rails – one beer led to another, next thing we knew it was time to watch the sunset with a bottle of rose in hand. Prepping dinner took a backseat, and it was 8:30PM cheese quesadillas for everyone, followed by smores. Not a green in sight. Bialas, we apologize.

But we made it up the next morning when I fried up some eggs and locally-made pork sausage patties for breakfast, and served it alongside a heaping pile of lightly-dressed kale.

To make kale salad: In a large bowl, whisk a tablespoon of Dijon mustard with a tablespoon of white wine vinegar and a splash of lemon juice. While whisking, add ¼ cup of extra virgin olive oil, and season with salt & pepper. Tear a few handfuls of kale greens right over the dressing, and toss to combine. Let the salad marinate for 30 mins to an hour before serving, tossing every so often, to let the kale soften and absorb the vinaigrette.

One of the best things about kale salad is that it can sit in the fridge overnight, in its dressing. Perfect for tucking under poached eggs on toasted Portuguese muffins.