We’re entering summer veggie heaven now at the farm, so this is just a little note about the possible items in your mystery this week. You will get either summer squash, tomatoes, or Padron peppers this week.
Summer squashes are extremely versatile for use in the kitchen, and we grow several types that we really like. The standard zucchini is perfect for most anything you like to do with squash, but the other varieties add liveliness to your squash repertoire. The costata romanesco is a prominently ribbed Italian heirloom zucchini that is currently my favorite. The flavor is excellent though the plants yield is much lower than the hybrid zucchinis. These are super cut in slabs, tossed in olive oil and salt and pepper, and grilled or broiled. This is the treatment I like best for the cousa squash (my last year’s favorite) as well. These are the lighter green, plump, “middle eastern” zucchini. They have an excellent, nutty taste. The multicolored patty pans are sweet and beautiful, lending themselves to stuffing or slicing horizontally to keep the visual effect of the round scalloped shape.
Tomatoes are still at their beginning harvest stage here. We are stoked with the ones we are getting so far, and the wateriness you might be noticing is already starting to decrease and the flavor increase as we cut down the water we give the plants. We grow the tomatoes in a fairly sandy soil which prevents us from truly “dry-farming” them, so it’s a bit of a balancing act to give the plants enough water to fully mature and then cut it down at the right time. Expect the flavor to continue to improve as the plants really kick into gear over the next few weeks. We’ll be putting flats of tomatoes for your saucing, canning, and drying needs on the webstore to add-on later this summer. We’re growing several varieties of tomatoes this year including cherokee purple heirlooms, beefsteak types, saladette types, and cherry tomatoes.
Padron peppers are a seasonal treat. It is easy to get hooked on these little tasty peppers, and the feeling of roulette as you taste each one to see if it’s spicy adds a sense of adventure to your dining experience. The basic way to cook these is to get a skillet (preferably cast iron) very hot, add a tablespoon of good high temperature oil, and cook the peppers, stems and all, a couple minutes on each side until they are blistered all around. You can add some garlic to the pan too if you like. Sprinkle with salt, pick a pepper up by the stem and eat it whole. They are completely addictive. While most of the peppers are truly mild, about one in ten peppers has some kick to it (of the ones I’ve tried from this harvest so far, it’s about one in five, but the spicy ones are not inedibly spicy, even for my very spice-averse palate). These peppers are popularly grown in the Galicia region of Spain, and actually prefer a cooler climate, so we did not put them in the hoop houses this year with our other peppers. We tried that last year with somewhat poor results.
Speaking of other peppers, Steve harvested a couple of gorgeous green bell peppers yesterday from the hoophouses. We’re allowing them to color up before we harvest them for you. Last year we had some disease issues in our pepper crop and had to harvest all of them in the green state because we would have lost the crop if we left them on the plants long enough to turn red. This year the crop is trouble free and we’re keeping them longer to develop the sweetness and improve the nutritional value. While all colors of peppers are good for you, red bell peppers have more vitamin A, C, and beta kerotene than green ones. We’ll probably harvest some greens, but will have a lot more red bell peppers this year.
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