Wednesday, March 28, 2012

First boxes - an extra early option

Greetings!  Here are photos of the first boxes of the season!.  Greens harvested today include salad offerings, young brassicas, and some Asian greens that have just started to bolt with the heat.  Asian greens are still delicious when they first start to flower.  I tend to saute an onion and add rinsed, chopped greens, stir until they wilt, and top with an interesting vinegar or dressing.  Ken likes them in the bottom of a bowl with hot broth soup poured over them in the morning.  And a couple years back one of our CSA members had a great recipe for blanched greens added to pasta with Caesar dressing and a bit of your favorite meat.  I steamed some turnip tops and added sweet wine and umeboshi vinegar - a salty, sweet vinegar from making Japanese style umeboshi  - pickled plums.

And under the greens are roots - we dug the sunchokes and parsnips yesterday.  Parsnips dug in spring are sweeter than those dug in the fall.  This spring the skins had a slight grey cast.  I brought a couple inside and scrubbed them up for lunch and they were delicious.  I scrubbed, sliced, parboiled about three minutes, drained and then put in a heavy skillet with melted butter just to the point of caramelizing. 

We also had a few sunchokes with chicken .  I stir fried the chicken, added sliced sunchokes, then garlic, then a bit of tamari.

Also in this box is a potato mix - the last of the purple, some red skinned, and some yellow fleshed Carolas.  I have been doing boiled sliced potatoes for one meal, American fries for the next and the first batch of potato salad.  The mix of colors is nice.
We also have some carrots, beets, onions, and a celery root.

For more info on this box and farm status, check the CSA newsletter.

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