This recipe is actually based on a chicken dish, but instead the broccoli gets the chicken treatment. This dish can be served hot with dinner or cold in small amounts as salad/snack/appetizer. You could also just blanch the broccoli until just crisp-tender and drop it into ice-water to stop the cooking, and then toss it in the sauce ingredients which were cooked together earlier and allowed to cool.
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There are many environmental and health advantages of farming organically the way we do – fewer toxic chemicals released into the environment or consumed, safer conditions for farm workers not exposed to pesticides, safer food sources for pollinators, more attention to maintaining the diversity of both food crops and native flora and fauna, and a long list of other benefits. One area that is sometimes overlooked is the connection between farming and climate change.
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This sauce is meant to go with a carrot custard, but would be wonderful with duck, chicken, or pork. Use with panna cotta or other desserts as well. You can make it sweeter by adding sugar or agave to it, as the sugar in the recipe here is just enough to wake up certain flavors in the berries. You could add liqueur to the sauce to sweeten it as well*. This will also intensify the berry flavor. If you want a perfectly smooth sauce, pureé all the berries instead of three-quarters as called for in the recipe.
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A variation on a theme, only here the butter and oil from roasting form part of a Meyer lemon dressing that garnishes the radishes and dresses the Little Gem lettuce salad this recipe is destined for. This recipe would be nice with fish, chicken or pork, or anything that would go with the word picatta.
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I can remember back to a time that I just didn’t get the appeal of fennel. This course, stringy, strongly scented vegetable didn’t seem worth the trouble to cook. But now I can honestly say that it is among my very favorite vegetables. I fully realize that there are many of our CSA members who still don’t “get” fennel, and if you are among these, you simply must try Jeanne’s recipe for roast fennel and onions.
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This dish uses ingredients that commonly are found in dishes that get named “Persian”. This is a pretty dish with the white cauliflower tinged with the deep purple of the syrup, and then the scattering of creamy pine nuts and green mint. If you are not a fan of mint, substitute fresh marjoram and some flat leaf parsley.
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Simply flavored, easy to execute, simply delicious. Much of the secret lies in the thickness of the cut, and having fresh squash which are moist and not bitter. The rest lies with finding the sweet spot on the grill, where it is not scorchingly hot, nor where the heat is sort of feeble. The heat should be a 5-second heat, meaning it should take 5 seconds for your hand, 5 inches above the grill, to become painfully hot and you have to pull it away. This would be like medium-high on the stove.
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Wow! We had the highest turnout ever for a u-pick in our Blueberry patch on Saturday. Fortunately the berry bushes were loaded with fruit and there was plenty for everyone to pick. It was great to see a lot of old and new faces of CSA members and others from our community out in the berry patch! We’re planning another u-pick for Saturday, June 4th.
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This dressing is to with the Arugula, Dried Apricots, and Pistachio salad, but it can be used with other components as well. Try with Butterleaf or oak leaf lettuces with plenty of sprouts.
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This is a Provençal inspired recipe with a twist. Some people find that summer squash has a subtly bitter flavor, which is unpleasant for them. This recipe plays that flavor up, and also counters it, by using caramelized sugar on the surface of the cuts on the squash. Caramelized sugar has both a bitter quality and sweetness, as do the squash. Costata Romanesco, Cousa, and tromboncini squash (look for this unusual squash at markets) all have firmer flesh than zucchini or crookneck, and can be seared and browned without getting mushy as quickly the latter. If using a mélange of these, add the zucchini and crooknecks later than the rest. These squash also pick up an almond-like nutty flavor when caramelized.
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This salad originated as a substitute for the salad that goes on Elephant Ears (see recipe on site), but has found its way onto grilled chicken, crisp multi-grain or mochi waffles, toast, mixed with seared scallops, and used as a side salad. Switch to hazelnuts and use hazelnut oil, do the same with almonds. Use fresh apricots when you find some that are fragrant, flavorful, but still a little firm.
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For this recipe you will need to find a Japanese market or a good fish market. In the Santa Cruz/Watsonville area you can find what you need at Yamashita Market in Watsonville. As the tuna is served raw, be careful in your selection. This recipe is a contrast of crunches and a synthesis of flavors. The tobiko pop, the cucumber crunches, and the tuna sort of melts and has a little chew to it at the same time. The clean wet taste of cucumber harmonizes with the briny roe while acting as a foil to the saltiness. The sweet, slightly oily, and umami flavors of the tuna are set off by the other elements. The dressing is used sparingly, as a surprise accent that pops up as a little jolt of bass-line to the rest of the salads higher notes of flavor. This is an appetizer, or part of a string of dishes. The recipe is written as a small appetizer-just a few bites, as in 3-4. If you wish a bit more, double the volume.
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Westernized variations of traditional Japanese dips and sauces. For the Tuna Tobiko Cucumber dish, use sparingly. You can use this for sashimi, as a noodle dip, or on a salad.
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I was listening to the radio recently and heard a brief he-said-she-said “debate” between a supporter of conventional agriculture and a supporter of organic agriculture. The conventional agriculture supporter’s main argument was that organic growers use pesticides too, just organic ones.
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This salad of sharp and/or bitter greens is cut with a sweet-ish dressing made with port wine as part of the base, along with roasted almond oil to link to the nuts and the microgreens. If you can’t find the broccoli greens, use some others, but the broccoli micros from New Natives have a wonderful sweet and nutty flavor cut with a bit of sharpness that is perfect here. This salad would be good with rich foods or simple dishes such as a roast chicken cooked with little other than salt and pepper, some oil or butter rubbed on and maybe thyme. It will also play well with roast winter squash dishes.
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Use port you are drinking, or buy a mid-range port if you wish. Don’t buy a great vintage just for this dressing, but don’t buy something really cheap, and NEVER buy “cooking” port or wine. Typically, any wine product labelled “cooking” will have salt in it. This was to discourage chefs of old from drinking the wine, but it was also made with inferior wine You could use hazel nuts and hazel nut oil if you wish as well.
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This is a riff on a recipe from NoMAd by Daniel Humm and Will Guidara. I like how the dish explores the different textures of broccoli and different flavors based on temperature. The recipe takes a little bit of work, but no more than most people lavish on a meat course for a weekend dinner. So why not spend that attention on vegetables? Much of this work can be done ahead of time, with the cutting and fricco being done the day before, along with the steaming of the florets. You want broccoli with long stems for this recipe.
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This is a simpler version of a sauce from my sushi bar that was known as Venus sauce. Its origins lie in an old traditional Japanese fair dish known as “dengaku”, where it was painted onto tofu and vegetables and grilled over coals. Use this in a similar fashion, but use the broiler as it is less messy. Try it on marinated firm tofu, blanched vegetables, and fish.
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This dish will work perfectly with Tokyo or Harukei turnips as well as the scarlet turnips, although I would be less sanguine about success with full-sized red-topped or white turnips. If the greens are present and tender, you should add them to the dish. This dish is sort of a 2 for 1-the roasted turnips for 1, the sautéed greens for 2.
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A salad with some substance, and a good amount of crunch. If you can grill over wood, the salad will taste even better with a bit of smokiness. Be sure not to cook the squash and lettuce through. Your Little Gems just want some charring, and the squash wants only to be cooked until no longer raw and a bit charred outside. This salad could be a starter, part of a mezze/antipasti table, or buffed up with some other vegetables and some proteins to make for a light dinner.
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I’ve always liked sweet alyssum flowers. We planted them back in our San Francisco community garden plot before we moved out of the city to start farming, and they made a lovely delicate ground cover that attracted the most beautiful little crab spiders. The spiders are experts at camouflage, and can turn different colors depending on the color of flower they are on.
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Simple, basic, and full of flavors. Eat this as a salad off a plate or pile it onto very hot crostini so the heat can melt the cheese a little and wilt the arugula. Use using oil with a soft bite but big fruity flavor is a good idea here so it softens the bite of the arugula and doesn’t mask the nuttiness of the favas.
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