Hi everyone,
I hope the last couple of weeks have been great. As we cruise through peak season, we are planning and working on a number of preservation projects to build up the Larder and take advantage of the bounty of produce. We’re also brainstorming if/what form the CSA Club might take over the winter so that we can start planning towards that as well. If you have any ideas, please send them our way!
Enjoy the veggies!
-Ben
A mix of two varieties. The Yellow (green ) beans are crisp, with little to no flavor; great if you don’t like green beans much, and still great if you do. The Lewis green beans are thicker than the French green beans. This makes them great for slicing into about ~ 1/2″ pieces and sautéing. They have a mild flavor that leans towards the greener end of the spectrum.
A variety of fingerling potato, Red Thumb are red skinned and with blushy red fleshed. These creamy and firm. We like to simply steam whole (boiling also works) until fork tender, and then toss with oil and season. The skin stays firm and gives it’s own type of crispness that contrasts the creamy interior.
Crisp, sweet and deeply carrot-y. A fun fact is that historically, orange carrots are the newest to be popularized with purple, yellow and even white carrots having been consumed for most of history.
A mix of mini varieties of sweet peppers. There’s adorable yellow mini bell peppers, and orange lunchbox peppers.
As best as I can tell, there appears to be a mix of zestar, summar macs, and empire, but there might be as many as one more variety mixed in.
We hope you all aren’t getting tired of melon. They’ve been pretty great so far this year.
Besides corn, there isn’t anything that represents summer quite as well. Crisp, refreshing, and sweet.
Some times there are aspects of local produce that are worse than what you could find at the grocery store, and celery has a couple of those. Increased exposure to sunlight causes celery to develop more chlorophyll (the green color) and more lignin (what makes it tough), but whether its due to variety, conditions, or techniques, we couldn’t tell you why local celery doesn’t have the bulky greenish-white stalks of the grocery store version. The consequences are that this celery is small, tough, and bitter, but intensely aromatic.
Some ways to deal with this is to use the celery for stock, where it would be strained off anyway. Or you could chop it small reducing the tough long strings into small pieces. Or the most “french” thing (a term we use to refer to a task that’s overly laborious in the pursuit of perfection) would be to peel the celery to remove the strings entirely.
These are the leaves from the celery stalk. We like to use them as you would any other herb (more like cilantro or parsley, and a little less like basil or mint). Add as a garnish to about any dish for added freshness and aromatics. The celery flavor comes through for a nice earthy depth.
Candy onions look just like your standard yellow but their flavor is mild and sweet. This lends itself well to slicing and serving raw over something like a salad, as well as roasting to further develop some of those sugars. We also like to pickle these, where their sweetness balances well with some acid.
Patty pan is squash that is disc shaped, with both green and yellow varieties. Its flavor is about what you would expect from a summer squash, so take advantage of its adorable shape when cooking or try out this Patty Pan Taco recipe we shared last year.
Nichol’s refers to these banana peppers as ‘hot’ but out of all ones I’ve tried so far this season, I have yet to pick up on any heat. But maybe that’s just me (my disclaimer incase you find a hot one). Some of these have started to turn red as most peppers do if left on the vine long enough. The more red, the more fruity the flavor, while the more yellow ones have that characteristic flavor you might recognize from pickled banana peppers often on generic pizza-place salads.
Romas are the most famous variety of plum tomatoes. These are more fleshy than heirlooms or slicing tomatoes, making them great for making a sauce with as they are less watery. But they still taste pretty great just for a salad or sandwich also.
A very simple Salsa Verde; just tomatillos, onion, and jalapenos roasted and blended. Not too spicy with a thick consistency, it’s easy to eat a lot of this quickly.
From Tortilleria Atotonilco; Back of the Yards, Chicago.
Local Illinois-grown corn that is nixtamalized and ground in-house daily.
We almost always have tortillas in the refrigerator as they are, in our opinion, the best vehicle for veggies. No matter what you have on hand, you can always throw it on a tortilla with some sauce and something crunchy for a delicious taco.
