Make the Most of Your CSA: Week 1 Standard Share

CSA season begins! For those of you who are new to the site, every Friday I will post the CSA share we received from Vermont Valley with recipes and tips on the making the most of your produce share.

Here is what we got this week:

 

Potatoes

Rhubarb

Chives

Turnips

Radishes

Basil

Spinach

Lettuce Head

Salad Mix

Potatoes

Recipes: I can promise that I will be making roasted potatoes with this week’s share, but before I get into roasting potatoes, I wanted to share one of my favorite potato salad recipes which I made last summer. Though we don’t have red potatoes, this would still work if you cut the potatoes into fourths.

Tips for Roasting Potatoes: My husband is not a huge fan of potatoes but I can always get him to eat potatoes when we roast them. Cut the potatoes in fourths or at least so all pieces are relatively the same size. Toss with 1/4-1/2 cup of olive oil, salt and pepper. Roast at 450 for approx. 30-45 minutes.

Here are some tips/ideas for roasting potatoes:

• To get rid of the little air bubbles that can appear post- roasting, blanch the potatoes ahead of time. This was a tip I learned from Patrick O’Halloran, chef and owner of Madison’s Lombardinos and The Tipsy Cow.
• Toss potatoes with chopped rosemary, salt and pepper.
• Toss potatoes with sliced jalapenos, but watch out! The potatoes touching the peppers will be very hot. We learned this the hard way when a dinner guest gave a bite of potato to her one year old who promptly started to scream. Oops.
• To make smashed potatoes, boil the potatoes until tender. Remove the potatoes and place in a dish towel. Using a glass, smash the potato but make sure it still retains it shape. Roast smashed potatoes.

 

Rhubarb

Recipes: I know I can never resist a strawberry rhubarb pie but there are tons of things you can do with rhubarb. This website is a great place to start.

Tips for Freezing: Rhubarb is one of my all-time favorite things. So what did I do with my rhubarb? I froze it. Though I love rhubarb, I also know that I just plain won’t have time to do anything with it until next week. It would break my heart to risk it going bad and it stresses me out when I know something good from the CSA is just sitting in my fridge. By freezing it, I know it will stay good and be there when I am ready to do some baking.

The Easy Way to Freeze Rhubarb

When I did some research, I saw information about making a sauce or blanching the rhubarb. I am too lazy for that. I was thrilled to find this easy way to do it.

1. Clean the rhubarb.
2. Make sure it is dry.
3. Cut into 1 inch pieces.
4. Put in a ziplock bag.
5. Throw it in the freezer.

Chives:

Recipes: I am saving my chives for when I have a time to make Dorie’s savory cheddar and chive bread. For another cheese fix, check out the cheese filling I made for my zucchini blossoms. We ate it from the bowl with spoons and plan to make it again for stuffed mushrooms or to spread on a toasted baguette.

Tips for freezing:Chives are another freezer friendly food. Simply chop off the flowers, put in a ziplock bag and throw in the freezer. As you need it, simply remove it from the freezer, chop what you need and put it back in the tundra. Chives add a nice extra kick on salads, baked potatoes or mixed into an omelette.

Turnips & Radishes:

Recipes: I combined these two because I always end up eating them together. I am partial because I generally just slice them up and snack on them. A few weeks ago, I improvised a radish slaw recipe from “The Ultimate Cookbook” so I could use up some turnips, radishes and fresh fennel. If you don’t have any fennel, just omit it from the recipe.

Turnip/Radish/Fennel Slaw

6 Tbsp Champagne or white wine vinegar

1 Tbsp sugar

1 Tbsp chopped parsley

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp black pepper

3 Tbsp canola or sunflower or grapessed oil

1 bunch of radishes, ends sliced off

1 bunch of turnips, ends sliced off

1 fresh fennel bulb (optional)

2 medium cucumbers, peeled and sliced in half lengthwise, seeds scooped out

2 large carrots

1. Whisk together first 5 ingredients.
2. Slowly whisk in the oil.
3. Shred radishes, turnips, fennel, cucumbers and carrots with a box grater or using a shredding blade on a food processor.
4. Toss with dressing.
5. Refrigerate for 4 hours before serving.

Basil: At this point, it’s not about eating the basil, it’s about keeping it alive.

Tips for Not Killing It

• Re-plant in a bigger pot and put outside.
• Water it: A good test for deciding if it needs water, feel it’s leaves. When it feels paper-y, it needs water. Like right now or ten minutes ago.
• Don’t remove all of its leaves in one go. Not that I have done that.
• Don’t underestimate the power of Miracle Grow.
• When you see a blossom, pinch it down.

Spinach, Salad Mix and Lettuce

As you will learn from reading this blog, my husband and I LOVE salads. We eat an abnormal amount of salad which is how Manatee got his cyber identity.

For tips on jazzing up that salad, check out this past post.

Flavor Matches (Spinach): Try these combinations to create your own dishes in seconds.

Raw: Balsamic vinegar + Parmesan cheese + dried cranberries

Raw: Balsamic vinegar + strawberries + roasted almonds

Raw/cooked: Rice vinegar + sesame seeds + chopped green onions

Cooked: Butter + Nutmeg + Salt

Best Dressing EVER Recipe:

1 cup olive oil

3/4 cup balsamic vinegar

1/2 cup Dijon mustard/whole grain Dijon

Mix, shake and enjoy!

More Recipes

The lettuce we received is perfect for making lettuce wraps.

Spinach is our favorite lettuce to use for salads. You can throw it into your regular salad or use this recipe to make a special occasion salad that combines flavors of sweet and salty.