​The CSA as freezer-cleaner, and what to do with all those strawberries

by Market CSA member Denise Graveline

Today, I not only grabbed good stuff at the Owl's Nest Farm stand at Petworth Community Market, I also picked up a shipment of seafood from a buying club I belong to. It lets you buy quantities of salmon, spot prawns, and more, flash-frozen right off the boat and shipped in a group shipment. So that prompted an early morning cleanup of the freezer to be sure I had enough room for everything, from veg to fish. Supermarkets will be seeing a lot less of me this season.

But I made sure there's some room in the freezer for a secret weapon: A strawberry puree to be used for making ice cream. I got five pints this morning, and after they soaked in water and vinegar, I trimmed the tops. I'm going to roast them, tossed with balsamic vinegar and a little sugar, then puree them and store at least a couple of pints of this mix packed flat in plastic zip-top bags. I just need one pint at a time to make this balsamic strawberry-rosemary ice cream, so freezing some of the puree means I can have this treat all summer long. I picked up fresh rosemary this week for the same purpose, although the rosemary gets infused in the cream-egg base of the ice cream.​ I'll save some strawberries to eat just as they are, and hope there's one more week for me to grab another stash. These strawberries are small and flavorful, sweet and firm. Perfect for all sorts of cooked and raw dishes.

I also got more of the sprouted broccoli--can't stop eating it--and the kohlrabi. I'm going to try the kohlrabi-carrot slaw that the farm recommended this week, and I'm going to saute the kohlrabi greens and bok choi greens together with some garlic, onion, and broth, to serve as a base for some scallops with sorrel sauce, made a couple of weeks ago. Spring is the season of green everything, strawberries excepted, so I'm also going to make the Silver Palate Green Sauce described here with some of my farm herb finds; it's easy to adjust this sauce to make it vegan. And this article from The Splendid Table about using scraps and ends shares some great recipes from the new book Scraps, Wilt & Weeds: Turning Wasted Food into Plenty; now that the farm is offering head lettuce, you can try the recipe for seared lettuce bottoms, and there's a thyme oil--one that uses stems and all--that I have my eye on.

Dealer's choice, the CSA share, and flavor

by Owl's Nest Market CSA member Denise Graveline

Today, I got to the Petworth Community Market too late for strawberries from Owl's Nest Farm, but told the farmers that I'm okay with the "dealer's choice" aspects of subscribing to a CSA. Liz observed that it pushes you into cooking that's based more on the seasons, and she's right. Letting the ingredients suggest what you cook, rather than shopping with a list of must-haves, leads to some great and unexpected meals.

This week, in addition to some seedlings for my own garden--hot and sweet peppers, and lettuce--I chose baby bok choi, sorrel, sprouting broccoli, cilantro, and the mild hakurei turnips. From last week, I had some sprouting broccoli, tat soi, and some radishes. Once I got home, I washed and started looking at my finds and figuring out what to make from them.

I cooked down the sorrel and tat soi and pureed it into a sauce I can use on vegetables, fish, or meat. The ingredients include butter, shallots, garlic, and broth. You can add lemon juice, but sorrel has so much tartness, I didn't add any. This New York Times recipe is a good guide. I have some Alaskan scallops that will be in this sauce soon, and I may make some of it into a cold soup.

Making sauces is a great way to cook down vegetables so they take up less space in the fridge. I have two bunches of cilantro from the farm, and this cilantro sauce may be what results. Cilantro sauce on tacos, breakfast eggs, in soups, in some mayo for sandwiches--I'm ready. In the meantime, I store my bunches of cilantro stem end down in a short glass of water, with a plastic bag over the top. And this is lovely, fresh, delicate cilantro that also packs a flavor punch, a far cry from the dry supermarket version.

You may choose a CSA for political reasons, but I've come to love my share for the flavor. Nutrition researcher Marion Nestle, in her landmark book What to Eat, recalls a tour of a California broccoli farm's warehouse and processing plant. She absentmindedly broke a piece of broccoli off from a crate of the stuff, and tasted it during the tour. She was shocked at how fresh, water-filled, and tender it was...before it got shipped 3,000 miles to her New York neighborhood. Owl's Nest Farms sprouting broccoli is just like that, and I've been getting as much as I can carry. All of it got steamed lightly, so it's ready to be served cold with a vinaigrette; go into a quiche or frittata; or get reheated as a side dish. And over tofu marinated in this way, from Faye Food. I make this tofu and serve it over soba noodles and then do as she suggests, piling on cooked and raw veg. I can see this with sprouted broccoli in a vinaigrette, some avocado, and maybe some of the bok choi.

Baby bok choi is such a gift, and another of those early season vegetables, as Liz reminded me, that has to be picked before it starts sprouting flowers. As a result, Owl's Nest Farm's baby bok choi has stalks, not bulbs, and is young and super-tender. I'm planning to stir-fry it using this recipe, which features sesame flavors. If you're new to vegetables coming straight from the farm, you'll find that sautes and stir-fries take much less time, as the vegetables are young and tender, and have a higher water content.

Why you should get to market early: Green garlic

by Denise Graveline, Owl's Nest Farm Market CSA member

Don't get me wrong. I'm a big fan of sleeping in...except on Petworth Community Market Saturdays. That's because I've learned that I can make best use of my CSA with Owl's Next Farm by showing up early...which is when you find the rare, only-here-for-a-week, or small quantity items that add so much variety to a share.

This week was the first market of the season, and I grabbed a long bunch of what I thought were spring onions. The long leaves hung over the sign and obscured it. But Liz corrected me: This was green garlic, thinned out of the rows of garlic. "We won't have too much of this, because if we harvest it all, we won't have fully grown garlic when the time comes," she explained. You don't need to tell me twice. I went back for another bunch.

When I got them home with the rest of my share and dumped them into the sink for a vinegar bath, you can see they dominated the sink as well as the stand. I've used garlic scapes before, the long green tails that grow out of garlic heads at a later stage. But green garlic was new to me, so I did some research.

This plant behaves a lot like a leek in terms of its structure, and needs to be cut and washed thoroughly because it can retain a lot of mud. There are no garlic cloves at the bottom, just a root plate that needs to be trimmed off, and like leeks, I found that removing the toughest outer layer also was a must. So was cutting these long stalks into manageable portions, the green part and the white part. I'd read you could use the entire plant, and when I cut off the green part, I smelled it at the cut. Strong garlic perfume emerged. That told me the leaves had plenty of value.

After combing through some references and recipes, I decided to blanch the greens in boiling water for a couple of minutes. At this point, I kept the green leaves separate from the whites and plan to store them separately. This helps reduce them in size (a good thing when your fridge is full of veg) and also helps preserve them; at this point, you could include them in a recipe or freeze them, once they dry. Blanching also evens out the sharpness of the strong garlic flavor, although you can cook green garlic without blanching it. Roasting and sauteeing also work.

I found a great variety of recipes, but think I will focus first on a green garlic hummus and a green garlic pesto. Those won't use up everything, so I will look to this list of green garlic recipes from the New York Times and this Indian spicy chutney, which can be made with either garlic chives or green garlic. Hummus and pesto will be easier to store, but I'm also going to save and freeze some of the leaves, which can be tucked into soups just as you would a bay leaf, or into risottos and stews as you would a spring onion--albeit one with a stronger flavor.

For the hummus, I always turn to Sarah Leah Chase's recipe for hummus bi tahini, in part because it makes a big batch and always turns out well. It's from her out-of-print Nantucket Open House Cookbook, and the recipe is here on Google Books. I'll have some fun figuring out how much green garlic to include, but I always like hummus with a lot of garlic in it.