Thank you early subscribers! As we gear up for the year, the people who sign up early for the coming season are the backbone of our CSA. We use the early flush of money to pay for the cost of seed, compost, labor, land rent, and insurance that we incur before we can start to harvest the spring crops. We also use the number of early subscribers to gauge how much to plant and to make important decisions about land use and what improvements we can afford to spend some money on.
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This dish can be made with any beets you wish. If you have red beets, and fuyu persimmons, this is a great combination, both for flavor and visuals. The contrast of cold persimmon and hot beets is another layer of interest. This dish can be served as a side or starter, but is hearty enough to be a main course, although the flavors are bright. This recipe was inspired by a dish from Gramercy Tavern.
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Use this dressing with the Little Gems, Feta, Red Onion Quickles salad, or anything with orange or pistachios in it. You could use this dress lentil salads, or scallop dishes as well.
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Pistachio oil is pricey, but is a wonderful indulgence. It works magic in dressings, lentils, and grains, and is a nice way to finish scallops or fish. It matches well with orange and other citrus. Look for smaller bottles and keep it in the refrigerator. If you do not have pistachio oil, just use a plain red wine vinaigrette.
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In a typical year we start hoping for a break in the winter rains sometime in early January so that the ground will dry out enough to allow us to get in and plant. Although the overall long term water picture for the state looks increasingly ominous, the dry weather has allowed us to keep on top of tasks around here like never before.
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This is my take on something I learned in cooking school. Fujian cuisine is known for full flavored yet light dishes that showcase the main ingredients. The area is also known for wet dishes such as soups, stews, and braises, as well as seafood, along with an emphasis on umami flavoring. This dish hits all those points. The chicken version is another dish that uses a store bought roasted chicken or left-overs. This dish goes together pretty quickly.
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Persillade is classic of French cuisine that ranges from ridiculously simple to fairly simple. At its most basic it is a cup of flat leaf parsley and a minced garlic clove, chopped and combined. It can be thrown into a dish right at the end to warm it and bring out the aroma of the garlic and parsley, or it can be stirred into soups. Some are made with olive oil (the south of France) or butter (the north). Garlic versus shallots, some have lemon zest added, or juice. You can find them with other herbs as well. This version is simple and is combined with blanched turnip tops to sauce the turnips.
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This dressing was made to go with a roasted beet, orange, and mizuna salad, but would work with other bitter or sharp leaves (arugula, radicchio, and escarole) or roast cauliflower, as well as going well with shrimp, hot or cold, grilled fish such as sword or tuna, or even pork chops.
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These are the nice uniform slices of citrus you find in salads and dishes in nicer restaurants that look like a segment of orange but there is not white skin of pith on the segments. In restaurant lingo these are known as “suprêmes”. You want a good sharp knife for this, preferably one with a thin blade.
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This is a dish to be made at the start of the New Year when the new olive oil has just been bottled. The carrots are cooked simply and act as a sweet and earthy foil to the bright and peppery pungent oil. The oil is drizzled in at the end as a seasoning with a few drops of vinegar and some parsley. If you do not have any olio nuovo, a bright and bold Tuscan oil would serve. This is one of those dishes where the combination is greater than the parts, and there is nowhere for inferior ingredients to hide, so fresh carrots, fresh oil, and good vinegar are all a must.
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There actually are no roasted mushrooms in this dressing. It gets its name from the fact that the trimmings from a recipe for roasted mushrooms are what is used to give this dressing its flavor, although you could roast the trimmings instead of sautéing them if you wish. This dressing would be nice on grilled or roasted fish topped with roasted oyster mushrooms and this dressing, with some baby mustard greens, mizuna, or arugula tossed in.
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This originally was made for a salad of cabbage, roast oyster mushrooms, and roast chicken, but would work with many other items as well. Try it on noodles, or for a light chicken salad with celery, carrot, water chestnuts, and pine nuts. This would be good with lightly sautéed cucumbers on a piece of roasted or gently sautéed fish, as well as on other salads.
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“Lemon Roasted” because Meyer lemon juice is used in the marinade for these. This is a dish that was designed for a cabbage and chicken salad, but could be used in soups, noodles, on fish, omelets, you name it. Try to find larger mushrooms for this, and using your hands to shred them means you will have rough edges that will caramelize beautifully. Trim the ends and any base clumps and save for making Roast Mushroom Dressing.
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This recipe uses a store bought roast chicken, but feel free to use leftover chicken if you have it. If you wish, substitute soba or udon for the ramen, as each noodle type has something to offer to this dish. A Ben-Riner or other fixed blade slicer makes this dish a lot easier to prep. Thin slices help keep cooking time down.
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This is a satisfying main course salad with plenty of crunch and lots of umami flavor, thanks to the roasted mushrooms and the roasted chicken. This recipe is based around the roasted chickens you find at the store or any leftover chicken you have on hand. Using a Ben-Riner or other fixed blade slicer makes the prep for this salad fly. You could even slice the vegetables the day before and bag or box them until needed. Tearing the mushrooms with your hands is quick and leaves lots of edges to crisp up and add texture to the dish.
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INGREDIENTS:
2 tablespoons cider vinegar 2 tablespoon white balsamic vinegar 1 tablespoon apple cider 1 teaspoon honey mustard or Dijon style mustardContinue reading »
The drought continues. The National Weather Service website tacked a startling fact on to the end of their forecast discussion last week. With only two weeks to go and no rain in sight, the city of San Francisco is 3 inches below the record low rainfall year, with records going all the way back to 1849! For the 2013-14 “rainy” season, most areas in our region are currently only at 15-25 percent of normal.
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This is a fairly straight forward iteration of this classic. Many versions include tomatoes, onions, chilies, cilantro, some even add beans or diced vegetables, but this one only has a little garlic, some spices, and a little lime juice. Eat this straight with chips or use it as a topping for quesadillas, eggs, or whatever strikes your fancy. You can make this smooth or chunky.
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This is a variation on a theme for soup we call “Monday Soup”, which is a hearty vegetable soup, usually with sausage added, that can be eaten for 2-3 days after for lunches or whenever. This one uses a fair amount of fennel, and so will be a little sweet, which is countered by the greens and with vinegar added at the end.
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I hope you all enjoyed your Thanksgiving (and Hannukah!) holiday.
We finally got some rain last week—though much more is needed. Including the dry second half of the last rainy season, this is the longest dry stretch that we’ve experienced since we’ve been here. Here in Watsonville, with the exception of Harkins Slough which our home farm is situated beside, nearly all of the five fingers of the freshwater slough system have dried up.
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The “Sweet and Sour” in this dish comes from the apple cider and cider vinegar employed to sauce the greens. This is a fairly quick dish to cook, and the flavors go well with richer dished or will cut through the fog of a head cold also. The sweetness of the dish is cut by the sharpness of the greens themselves, and the acid of the Granny Smith apples and the vinegar.
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This soup has a rich and creamy texture, and a light body. It is a little on the sweet side from the onions and squash. If you wish to add substance to it, you could add cooked rice- Forbidden or wild rice would be nice for color and texture- and various vegetables such as carrots, mushrooms, spinach, etc. If you wish, you can roast the squash or steam it instead of sautéing it.
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