CSA Share #4

From the City (temporarily in a small town)...

So as you can see, I've been picking up a little of the blog slack lately. Laura is as busy as a bee on the farm working hard and I, let's just say, have a little more time on my hands.

Here's what I got in my share last week:

1 quart strawberries

1 quart cherry tomatoes

1 bunch garlic scapes

2 bunches of beets

1 bunch spring onions

1 dozen eggs

1 bag of salad greens

1 deliciously amazing roll of summer sausage (which we have easily eaten half of)

Our lunch pretty much all week.

Roasted Beet Salad with Goat Cheese

1 large bunch of beets

2-3 cups beet tops washed

2 large spring onions

1/4 cup goat cheese

Olive oil for drizzling

Balsamic vinegar for drizzling

chopped italian parsley (optional, only if you like it)

salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. In a baking dish add beets and a light drizzling of olive oil and salt and pepper. Bake for 30-35 minutes.

When beets are cool, peel them and set aside.

In a pan, saute finely chopped spring onion. Add beet greens, cover and turn off the heat.

In a bowl, combine beets, greens, parsley, goat cheese, olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Mix well and enjoy!

Simon and I ate this salad for the better half of the week and it really is quite delicious.

Queen of the Potluck

From the City...

I'm a big fan of Mollie Katzen. She has a ton of cookbooks but I use her Moosewood Cookbook as pretty much my kitchen bible, just don't tell my Joy of Cooking. I lean towards it in the summer when there is more fresh veggies than you know what to do with and even in the winter when you're freezer is stocked with frozen blocks of harvest waiting to be turned into a soup or casserole.

When I was at my local vegetable market this morning I noticed that there was a pretty good assortment of ontario grown veggies, hot house tomatoes and some herbs that would nicely fill out the vegetable component of the salad. The great thing about the recipe is that it's pretty adaptable based on what's in season. I omitted the cucumber and instead chose to sneak in a bright (not local) red pepper, I cheated, just a little but yes I cheated. I also totally pillaged my new herb garden by snipping off the baby shoots of dill, mint and like three tiny sprouts of oregano.

This recipe is the best for potluck's. You serve it cold, it tastes better when left for hours, days even and looks so pretty and colorful in the bowl. The recipe also calls for dry lentils and dry bulgur wheat but I prefer quinoa for the following reasons:

• It tastes amazing
• A relative of the green vegetables like spinach and swiss chard
• Not only high in protein but also considered a complete protein meaning that it includes all nine essential amino acids
• I have a huge bag of it that Simon's mom bought me for christmas last year

Here's the recipe, make it and totally rule your next potluck. By rule I mean graciously accept everyone's compliments and requests for the recipe while stating that it was something you just came up with with the leftover contents of your fridge.

Cooked bulgur (cooled) Follow the directions on the package.

1/4 cup olive oil

1/4 cup lemon juice

3 cloves garlic, minced

1 tsp salt

1/2 tsp oregano

2 tbsp freshly minced mint

2-3 tbsp minced dill

3 tbsp parsely, minced

fresh black pepper to taste

1/3 cup minced red onion

1 small bell pepper (any colour) diced

1/2 cup crumbled ontario feta

1 medium ontario greenhouse tomato, diced

1/2 cup chopped toasted walnuts, optional

*note: I use all of the herb measurements very loosely, I never ever measure herbs. I start with a little and gradually add until I have found the perfect taste.

Add everything to the cooked/cooled bulgur except the tomato chunks and walnuts. Mix gently but thoroughly. Cover and refrigerate.

Before serving, add tomatoes and walnuts.

The Perfect Salad

From the country…

Lately we have been enjoying greens with our meals. After a long monotonous winter of storage vegetables (potatoes, squash, potatoes, turnip, potatoes, beets and more potatoes) a fresh bowl of anything green is more than welcomed. Most of the greens in this salad however, are grown indoors without the help of Mother Nature. The greenhouse hasn’t started pumping out the lettuce and the cold frames (although seeded) are just sitting around waiting for that lovely warmth to come back.

Our springish salad consists of baby raddichio (over wintered in the cold frames), pea shoots, sunflower greens, rapini sprouts, arugula sprouts, China rose radish sprouts, red clover sprouts and lettuce micro greens (all grown in house). The combination of different tastes and textures make for a tasty, crisp mix. The sunflower sprouts have a nutty edge to them, the raddichio has a slight bitterness, the pea shoots are so tender with a really fresh pea taste, the arugula gives the salad some edge, rapini adds a cabbage zing and the radish brings the kick.

For the salad in the picture(below) I made a raspberry vinaigrette. Salad dressings are fairly easy to make and once you start, buying salad dressing will be a thing of the past.

Raspberry Vinaigrette.

So the thing with this recipe is I really don’t measure. Just slap stuff together until it tastes good. Start with some good quality olive oil in a mason jar(jar size depends on how much you are making), add some white (or black) balsamic vinegar (more olive oil, less viniger), Add some raspberries (I thawed out some frozen ones, fresh would do fine too) and honey for sweetness. Now the trick to a really voluminous dressing is a submersion (or stick) blender. Place the blender in the jar and blend away. Now taste the science experiment and add any more of the above ingredients until you reach your dressing nirvana. Some may like it sweeter, while others may like it a bit more tart. Enjoy!