It was great to meet several of you at our Spring Farm Tour last Saturday. It’s nice to put faces to our CSA members, and you always seem to have the most interesting, engaged children! We seem to have entered our summer weather pattern with fog in the mornings burning off to some sun later in the day. This type of weather is actually what makes our home farm and the Redman ranch so perfect for growing so many crops – including lettuces, greens, and strawberries–that do not do well with summer heat.
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This salad also features an oregano infused olive oil and calls for optional quickled red spring onions. The dressing has some fennel seed powder to echo the shaved fennel. You want to use a Ben Riner or other fixed blade slicer for this.
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The carrot top “pesto” isn’t really that pesto-ish to my mind as there is no garlic in it, or basil, but there you have it. Roasting the carrots on sprigs of oregano will give them a lighter aroma and flavor than chopping the herbs and putting it all over the carrots, and this way the more delicate topping will come through without interference. Serving these carrots on sautéed spinach will point up the sweetness of the carrots, but is entirely optional as the carrots are fine on their own.
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This oil is originally for a Provençal inspired shaved fennel salad, but has many other uses. Once made it will keep in the refrigerator for a week or two before the flavor starts to drop off.
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This dressing is for a shaved fennel salad, but the fennel would make this a nice dressing to top grilled fish or pork chops. You could make the fennel salad without the lettuce and use this dressing with it for topping the aforementioned.
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A favorite ice cream flavor of mine growing up was mandarin chocolate. When I started cooking I figured out what the “mandarin” part was and have played with those flavors in other things since then. Here is another dish inspired by those excursions. This recipe lists carrot, but they can be omitted if you choose. They are a good companion to fennel as they have sweetness to match the aroma of fennel and they have an earthiness that helps ground the fennel, onion, and orange juice.
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Not truly a pesto, but as it is close, and it is in the same spirit of “cucina povera” that true pesto was invented in, why not call it a pesto? No basil or pine nuts, but oregano and almonds stand in. Garlic could easily overwhelm this, but if you decide to give it a go, try using only half a small clove of peeled and de-germed garlic. Use this on roast carrots, sautéed mushrooms, or with cappelinni pasta.
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It looks like things will be dry enough here at our home farm by the end of the week for us to get back in with the tractors and continue to work up more ground to plant into. Before the last series of storms we had mowed and incorporated the cover crop on most of the fields and in the intervening weeks the residue has broken down to the point that we should be able to start planting into it in a week or so. My aim every year is to plant our large blocks of hard squash no later than May 1st, and it looks like we are on track to meet that goal.
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You are invited to our Spring Farm Tour on Saturday, April 12th, at 10 AM, at our home farm. Come out and see where your food is being grown! We’ll take you around to the blueberry patch, as well as pear and apple orchards and the various row crops growing in the field. Special features on this property include our riparian corridor, native insectary hedgerows, the habitat restoration area, and the four-year UCSC research project on crop rotation that we are participating in.
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This dish pairs roast carrots, which develop a sweet flavor combined with a rooty depth, with a bright compound butter which features chervil (which has a flavor like tarragon, but lighter) spiked with some Meyer lemon, or not as you choose. The fennel see on the carrots will add layers of flavor to the dish and will support the chervil in the butter. As the fennel seed roasts it will take on a nutty flavor as well.
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This dressing delivers a dressing full of smoky garlic flavor without the heat of clove garlic. Once the season for green garlic is past, you could grill thin leeks and a clove or two garlic instead for a good alternative. As well as topping sautéed or grilled vegetables, it will complement salads of sturdy lettuces like romaine and things like escarole, endive, and radicchio.
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This butter will have a light anise/licorice/tarragon flavor to it, and is good for poultry, light meats, fish and seafood, and vegetables. It is perfect for adding to a pan of mussels or shrimp at the end, or slipping frozen slices under the skin of a chicken to be roasted. You can use this butter to make a “buerre blanc” – a sauce of shallots, wine or vinegar, and bits of cold vinegar swirled into a pan to form an emulsification.
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One of the happier things to happen here in the last five years is that the neighboring 400 plus acre property was purchased by the Land Trust of Santa Cruz County. The three parcels that make up this property are now in agricultural easements which will protect them from development in perpetuity. The previous owners had drawn up elaborate plans for a 1000 plus unit development, complete with shopping center and golf course.
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The taste of fresh ground coriander is a refreshing floral, citrusy flavor with a little bit of nuttiness to it. I like to use it as one would pepper when I don’t want the bite or heat pepper can bring. I have a pepper mill just for coriander seed I like it so much. I suggest giving it a try. Find an old mill at the flea market, or grind some up and try it to see what you think before buying a new mill.
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This dressing was made to go with a salad of Little Gems and Oakleaf lettuces and Quickled Leeks, but would be good with a cabbage salad with peanuts and shrimp, or on grilled chicken or pork chops. This would be good in a shrimp cocktail with avocado as well.
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The CSA is starting up again and it certainly feels like spring at the farm. The pear trees are bursting out in blossom, the blueberry bushes are loaded with green berries, and of course the weeds are going gangbusters. The bees are thick around anything in flower, ducks are flying over in pairs, and the swallows are swooping about overhead catching flying insects. It’s hard to argue with these beautiful sunny days, though we’re still hoping for some more winter rain before the end of March.
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Use this to top grilled or roasted fish, or serve as a side. This would be good mixed into hearty grains or thinned with a little pasta cooking water and used as a sauce on pasta shapes like campanelle or dischi volante. The fava greens are the tips of some of the plants and may include flowers. They have a “green” spring quality to them, and you want to just cook them.
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The cabbage is rendered tender but still crunchy by salt-wilting it, then it is gently warmed in a sauté pan with a mélange of soft cooked leeks and green garlic. This method brings out the sweetness of the cabbage which works well with the sweetness of the alliums and makes a great foil to the silkiness of the leeks and garlic.
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This light soup celebrates spring. If you have asparagus, add some 1/8th inch bias cut slices and you have all the local vegetable harbingers of the season. This recipe is more of a guideline, really. Feel free to play with it. You could just add the chard stems to the liquid, but the sautéing brings out sweetness in the stems, and wilting the chard in a separate pan gives a lighter, cleaner flavor to the broth. The fava greens are the tips of the plants, including some of the flowers. Add mushrooms, carrot shreds, whatever you find.
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This week’s imminent rains are very welcome indeed. The timing of the first system, late Wednesday morning, should allow us just enough time to get the harvest done for our Thursday deliveries. Things greened up remarkably quickly after the last rounds of rainfall, the bell beans and peas in the cover crops are in bloom, and all is starting to feel right with the world again.
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