Hi everyone,
A couple of weeks ago, it felt like everyone was ready to usher in fall, but the recent heat and abundance of summer produce has us feeling like we’re still in the thick of summer. Farmer Todd reported that cool weather crops were being seeded last week, so we have a few weeks before we start seeing those. He is worried though that the heat and continuing drought may force him to reseed, so fingers crossed. Either way, we still have a lot more summer produce to enjoy.
August has been a pretty busy month for us. Over the last couple of weeks, Lisa and I coordinated a couple of dinners. One, a collaboration with our friend and sous chef at Waldorf Astoria, Thom DiCarlo. And the other, in our roles as the Culinary Coordinators for Next Door Dinners. We love getting all of the veggies ready for the CSA Club to cook with, but these dinners are an opportunity for us to get to cook and serve them to people. It’s a lot fun and with how delicious the produce is, it’s always super tasty. We’re hoping to do more of these towards the end of the season so keep an eye out.
Enjoy the veggies!
-Ben
Fermented with dill, garlic, and coriander these are crunchy, funky, and everything you want in a pickle.
Cherry Bomb Peppers from Nichol’s Farm, dehydrated and blended with salt. If you can get past the capsaicin, the aroma is floral and fruity, like raisins and roses. Heat isn’t too crazy, with a nice warm linger. Use on popcorn, potatoes, grilled meats, roasted veggies, or anywhere you might use a chile powder (just mind the extra salt).
Basil, mint, and nasturtium leaves. This mix is aromatic, and complex. The basil brings lots of floral notes while the mint and nasturtium are earthy and add complexity.
An all white variety of corn. Its super sweet. Don’t be afraid to toss it in the freezer if you feel like you won’t be able to get around to cooking with it. You’ll be happy to have it in a couple months when you’re missing summer.
From Harold McGee’s On Food and Cooking:
“Unlike most edible fruits, the fruits of the bean family were not designed to appeal to seed-dispersing animals. This group of plants is often called the legumes….. Green beans are immature pods harvested before they begin to dry out.”
An all blue variety of potato. The color is water soluble, so the best method to preserve the color is to roast the potatoes (steaming would also work well for a lighter blue).
Similar to the Melrose peppers in the previous share, these peppers look like spicy, but aren’t. They’re skinnier and taste intensely fruity. With how long and thin they are, they do well being cooked whole and with high heat (grilling or broiling).
Fresh beans are something that you’ll never at the grocery store. The red speckling of the cranberry beans is pretty, but will fade when you cook them. Being fresh, they cook much quicker than dry beans would. To cook these, first sauté a bit of shallot, onion, and/or garlic in a pot until fragrant. Then add the beans and enough water cover. Bring the pot up to a boil, reduce to a simmer and cook for ~ 20 mins or until the beans are soft. You can add any other seasoning, veggies, vinegars, as you’d like.
It’s pretty wild how aromatic and complex these melons are. Even uncut, they perfume the entire room. An interesting problem that we run into is that without cutting open a melon, its very difficult to tell what variety/color of it is, and there is so much diversity that we’ve seen 4 different varieties in a single week. The beauty of the CSA Club is that we are able to make sure that everyone gets some of each of the varieties.
Cipolinnis are a small-ish and flat variety of run that some what sweet. All of this together makes these great for roasting or grilling whole.
This will be the first of a lot of apples that will be in the shares through the remainder of the season. The beauty of them though is that they will last for a good long time in the crisper box of the refrigerator. Last year, Lisa and I were still eating apples from our shares in February. Just keep putting the newest apples in the very back so you eat the oldest first. This variety, Zestar, is crisp and tart with a really nice green apple flavor.
‘Heirloom’ is pretty generic term for a large group of closely related tomatoes. They are open-pollinated so cross-breeding is more likely which causes these to be somewhat irregular and unique tomatoes. Heirloom tomatoes are also generally from fragile so handle with care. I find it best to use a serrated knife to cut these.
An other opportunity to press the pause button here would be to do a quick-pickle. We like to cut into spears and use a brine of equal parts water to acid with sugar, salt, and spicy peppers to taste. Pickled like that, the cucumbers will stay good for months in the fridge.
