Hi everyone,
Are you doing anything Tuesday Oct 15th? Come join us for a meal full of CSA veggies! We’re putting on a dinner with Next Door Dinners to raise money for Food Not Bombs Humboldt Park Chapter. We’ve done a couple dinners with NDD in the past but this will be the most Gard Mo-y yet. We’re calling it a ‘CSA Dinner’ and will be basing the menu off of this week’s shares. The menu is posted here. It will be a lot of fun with a ton of tasty food. Get your tickets here. We hope to see you there!
Interested in volunteering to help put the meal together? Sign-up here! There’s opportunities to help at prep night (10/13) or the night of the dinner. Be sure to sign up soon to join!
Hope you all enjoy the share!
-Ben
From On Food and Cooking by Harold McGee:
“Unlike onions and garlic, leeks don’t form useful storage bulbs, and are grown instead for their scallion-like mass of fresh leaves. (…..) The upper green portion of each leek leaf is edible, but tends to be tougher and to have less onion, more cabbage-like flavor than the lower white portion. It’s also rich in long-chain carbohydrates that give the cooked vegetable a slippery texture, will gel when chilled, and can lend body to soups and stews.”
These are a fun different brassica. They’re a cross between brussels sprouts and kale, forming small heads on a stalk similar to brussels sprouts instead with kale leaves. We’ve trimmed the outer large leaves off and packed them separately. This way you can cook them separately since the large outside leaves tend to be fully cooked before the cores are tender. Use the leaves as you would kale and kalettes as you would brussels sprouts.
Sweet Sixteen was developed by the University of Minnesota. Its a cross between Northern Spy and Frostbite apples. They’re very sweet with notes that brought coconut to mind for us.
Jonathans are an old school apple. The origin story for it is a bit misty, but they’ve been around since at least the early 1800’s. With a relatively thicker skin, Jonathans have a nice sweet tart balance mild aromatics.
You thought we were past corn. This a pretty fun one and easy to make. Just put a full cob into a large paper bag and use the popcorn setting on your microwave (3.5 oz, ~1.5 mins). Season with some Cherry Bomb Pepper or Green Garlic Salt.
A member of the brassica family, collards have a deep savory flavor in comparison to kale. It’s hardy, and stands up well to long slow braising. Check out our recipe here.
These French Green beans are a slender variety of green beans. They tend to be one of the more fragile vegetables. Because of this, local ones are much tastier than those at the end of long supply chains. These are sweet, crisp, and have a depth of flavor that’s lightly floral with notes of fresh mushroom. I enjoy snacking on them raw, but with a quick sauté and some shallot they are exceptional.
Golden Globes are a solid all purpose potato with a waxy texture and buttery flavor. I love using them in potato salad since they absorb the dressing well, but aren’t too dry and starchy.
These are some large radishes. You’ll often see daikons pickled in Korean cuisine, and these would be very pretty prepared that way. Otherwise, they do well roasted or sautéed.
Spaghetti Squash is named such because of the way the the flesh breaks apart when cooked. You’ll often see it in recipes replacing pasta but I think it stands alone pretty well with just some butter. Roasted is a sure-fire way to cook it, but if you’re in a rush microwaving it works as well (quartered, ~3 mins).
