CSA-Summer Starts Up

Each week, our CSA sends our a newsletter, which usually includes a letter from the farmer. He makes an effort to give us insight into all the workings of the farm, good and bad. This year, although the produce has been excellent as ever, it seems like it's been a hard farming year--wet, cold, and threatening crop diseases. Especially because our farm is near Saratoga, comparatively far to the north of here, we are still working on our leafy greens well into the middle of the possible tomato/corn season. But, as you see above, the first chunky, heavy summer fruits and roots are starting to appear. This week, we got:

A small lettuce
1 green pepper
a few beets
1 head chinese cabbage
2/3 summer squash
3 enormous cucumers (as Carrie put it, someone must have looked the other way during the ten seconds that they zoomed past ideal size)
2 cipollini onions
1 bunch arugula (yay!)

....and probably something I've forgotten. We used the cucumbers and last week's kohlrabi in salads for a little weekend cookout, and I just stirred the arugula into some sausage pasta this morning.
This coming week's pickup will be our last for a while, as we're going out of town, and a friend will be taking over our share. I'm already sorry about the tomatoes and corn and eggplant we'll miss, but since we'll be up all over New England, I'm sure we can work something out. Who am I kidding, I'm sure we'll be grinning like bandits with blueberry juice running down our chins. I love New England and our brand new tent, and can't wait for the trip to begin. But first, one more week for Chinese cabbage et al.

The cucumber salad recipe I've been using comes from one of my favorite new book discoveries (I've had it out of the library for six months, and yes, I've been renewing it), Seductions of Rice, by Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid. It's very simple, and very addictive. In fact, just the smell of it was so strong and appealing that almost no one could walk by the dish without taking a handful. Here it is, with my comments:

Cucumber-Sesame Salad
Minimally adapted from Seductions of Rice, by Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid.

Ingredients:

1 European cucumber or 1 pound pickling cucumbers (6 to 8)
1 tablespoon kosher salt or sea salt
1 teaspoon grated ginger
2 tablespoons rice vinegar or red wine vinegar
2 teaspoons roasted sesame oil (I used regular sesame oil)
1/2 teaspoon sugar
1/2 - 1 teaspoon dried chile pepper flakes (I've been using crushed whole chiles or a drop of chile oil)

Directions:

Wash, trim, seed (and peel only if necessary) cucumbers. Cut lengthwise into quarters. Cut each quarter lengthwise into 3 or 4 slices, then cut into approximately 2-inch lengths, or the size of your choice. Place in a colander, sprinkle on the salt, and mix gently with your hands to ensure all the pieces are salted. Let drain over a bowl or in the sink for 20 minutes.

Rinse the cucumber pieces thoroughly with cold water, wrap in a cotton towel, and gently squeeze dry (I just realized that I have always inadvertantly skipped this step).

In a small bowl, blend together the ginger, vinegar, sesame oil, and sugar. Pour over the cucumbers and toss gently to coat. Sprinkle the chile flakes over. Serve immediately, or within 2 hours, or cover with plastic wrap until ready to serve.

CSA 2009 Week Two

I thought we'd be just fine sharing our share this year, as last year we often had overrun, and there were more people living in the house. Either I've become a better cook, we just eat more greens, or the season hasn't really properly gotten underway upstate yet, because we've eaten through our share and it's only Monday morning, without another distribution until Thursday. Luckily, we'll be out of town for the weekend, so it shouldn't matter. Everything is tasting very good, though, and I am welcoming the return of familiar vegetables that I never would have grown familiar with if it hadn't been for the CSA. Turnips. Who knew?
This week, our half was:

5 garlic scapes
1/2 head of romaine lettuce
1/2 head broccoli
1/2 lb snow peas
bunch small white turnips
bunch small breakfast radishes
1/2 bunch 'lance-leaf' kale, which looked like dandelions and tasted like bitter lettuce
1/2 bunch scallions
and a basil plant, which Jon carried off to murder sweetly.

We ate everything very simply, just sauteed or raw.
I'll put my own pictures up this evening, but to tide you over I just noticed that a neighbor of mine is also blogging her Prospect Heights CSA share here.

Nigella-Inspired Potato Vegetable Pies

Hopefully, recession cooking is creative cooking, ways to make what you have on hand delicious and interesting. What I had on hand last night was a large selection of root vegetables, some leftovers, and Nigella Lawson's How to be a Domestic Goddess, an uneven but appealing early addition to my cookbook collection that has been overdue for a revisitation. What Nigella had in mind for me last night was comforting and just classically British-little filled pies.

I adapted her crust by subbing in neufchatel for some of the abundant butter (cream cheese makes every dough better), and then improvised a refrigerator filling: potatoes (yukon gold and purple), turnips, kale, peas, carrot, salt, a little butter, a lot of buttermilk, scallion tips, a little minced garlic, onion powder, leftover braised cabbage, salt pepper. I cooked anything hard until it was less hard, and then mooshed it all together and added a lot of Parmesan cheese, filled little pies, and baked them. The buttermilk was a great substitute for the usual bechamel-like sauce in a pot pie, which this basically was.

They were nothing special, but they were good and simple and easy to take for lunch. Thanks, Nigella. I think this book is still amusing me, so look out for a few more Nigella recipes in the near future.

Everybody Digs

A few more subjective thoughts on the Ugandan food economy.
According to the Bradt guide, a very large percentage (in the high eighties, I think, or more--someone with a Bradt guide?) of the Ugandan population participates in agricultural activity. There are large farms and export crops, but the majority of this activity seems, from unscientific observations out of bus windows and a few conversations, to be subsistance. Almost everyone is growing a substantial proportion of what they are eating. In the words of the deputy headmistress at Liana's school, 'everybody digs.' Digging, the all purpose term for working in the kitchen garden, is largely conducted with small hoes, and is the province of women, children, hired day laborers (usually men).
There are markets, and there are certainly imports (rice, particularly), but the cassava, the plantains, the bananas, the sweet potatoes and 'Irish' potatoes, the maize and beans and greens, most of the fruit, the tomatoes and eggplants, the cabbages...most of this is, if a family is smart, coming from their own plot, or a few others that they rent or own nearby. Even most of what's in the market is coming from no further than a few towns away, (the larger Kampala market excepted). Tea is grown commercially, and widely drunk with spice influenced by and named after Indian chai. Coffee is mostly grown for export--if you ask for it in country, you get instant. Bread is available but terrible, usually stale.

In many ways, it's the locavore's dream--subsistence eating without chemicals. The diet probably relies too heavily on dubiously nutritious starches (plantains, cassava) and fats, and the water isn't always clean, but at least you know where just about everything came from. And it's so matter of fact. That's the part that kept blowing my mind--it wasn't some fad or some back-to-the-landiness, it was just how people were eating.Liana's thinking about going more seriously into farming, maybe getting some chickens, digging a good garden. I'll update on her progress as she sends me pictures, if she does, and in the meantime continue trying to convince her that a: nasturtiums and their leaves are great in salads, and b: that salads are food.

Skimbleshanks the Carrot Cat

Winter. Icy wind. Raw face. Root cellar. Broadway shows and twinkly lights.
That's right, I live in New York, not rural New England. And winter is one of my favorite seasons here. Sure, I do a little hunkering down, but I also love wandering around freezing myself in gaudy coats, looking at Christmas trees and glowing waves in Grand Army Plaza, music and pretzels and Central Park and all of it. When I was young, Christmas was time to go to New York and visit grandparents, try on lipstick at Bloomingdales, run around in the snow, go to shows and the Big Apple Circus and eat hot dogs at Fine & Schapiro's (yes, it is (was) our family deli), drink cocoa and hot toddies, and just generally love the way a city glows.
When all that gets old and I'm hiding in my house in Brooklyn wishing I was in Massachusetts, the next best thing to a root cellar is my CSA winter share. It comes in a big cardboard box, which we lugged home on the trolley and opened like a present. Kale, turnips, onions, potatoes, garlic, arugula and vitamin green, pears and apples and cider. So many tiny sweet carrots inspire creativity--I made little flowerets and Jill created...

Skimbleshanks the Carrot Cat! A tribute to Broadway shows and root cellars everywhere.