stir-fries and scrambles

By this point in the season, my fridge is full of an assortment of vegetables.

One thing I've learned over the years is that some vegetables lend themselves well to just using the whole thing up at once and making one side dish starring that vegetable. Also, this can be convenient and simple - plain sauteed greens with a little bit of seasoning, sauteed turnip, boiled zucchini dressed with olive oil, steamed green bean salad, sliced cucumbers with sour cream and yogurt - all take fairly little effort.

But no matter what, some vegetables will wind up being left in small quantities in the fridge, or will come in small quantities to begin with. Or you wouldn't want to eat them on their own - we've gotten one small jalapeno pepper, for instance! (The one small green pepper that arrived twice, on the ther hand, got eaten raw.)

One of my favorite things to do periodically to clean up the stragglers in the fridge drawer is to mix a small amount of a lot of vegetables up into a stir fry or a scrambled egg dish.

This morning's breakfast was a breakfast burrito - scrambled eggs with the last of some arugula, a scallion, a tomato, and some chopped jalapeno pepper, which I put into a tortilla with cheese and a dollop of sour cream.

Tonight for I will be making a stir fry with yellow squash, one tiny Asian eggplant, a few turnips that I hoarded a bit too long, the rest of the scallions, a few carrots, and the bok choy that came in this week's share. And whatever else I find in the drawer that makes sense.

I also try to make sandwiches that use our vegetable bounty - roasted eggplant or pepper plus pesto, a slice of tomato, cheese, and plenty of lettuce, or even a little leftover meat if I have some handy. But this time of year, the vegetables can be the stars of the sandwich!

adventures with cabbage

We got a giant head of napa cabbage two weeks ago, and then before it was finished we got another one last week. So I've been on a quest to use up the cabbage creatively that ended up in a recipe I'm pretty happy with.

the basics:

for every 4 cups of sliced napa cabbage

2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
1 tsp soy sauce
1 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp sesame oil
1 tbsp plain vegetable oil (we use safflower, but you could use canola, sunflower, etc.)

I don't usually measure while I'm making salad dressings, so taste this and feel free adjust a little to taste - more sugar if it's too sweet, more soy sauce if it's not salty enough, more sesame oil if you can't taste it, etc.

the rest:

Add whatever else inspires you (or whatever else you've got too much of in the fridge!) to the salad. Last night's version had some sliced sugar snap peas, some shredded arugula, and some scallions. If you want to make it a main dish, you could add the protein of your choice and more vegetables with a little more density than cabbage and leafy greens.


Which brings me to another tip - in addition to finding simple recipes you like with a vegetable you have a lot of, sharing it with friends is a great way to use more of it before it gets a little repetitive on your table. Last night's cabbage salad went to a potluck dinner. We've got about 2 servings left, and it keeps well enough that they should work for tonight's dinner.

Zucchini Season!

Who says I actually need to cook the thing before I suggest it to anyone else?
The forecast for this weekend is for weather close to 90, and we've got enough other stuff to do in the house that now is not the best time to heat up the kitchen. But I just read this idea in our CSA newsletter and thought "aha!" So I'm passing it on.

The brilliant insight: Instead of trying to freeze zucchini, freeze things you alredy cooked with the zucchini. Zucchini bread was at the top of their list.

No recipe, because I don't know that I'd use the one in the newsletter. Use your favorite, with nuts or chocolate or raisins to make the a bit sweet. Or ask a friend!

Sharing a Share!

Has all this talk about community supported agriculture and farmshare boxes got you thinking about trying it out?

I'm an enthusiastic CSA customer - of meat, vegetables, fish, and fruit so far (though we're skipping the fish this season) but lest you think that I'm some kind of crazy person I should mention that I've tried out all of these CSAs by sharing them with someone else at first. And added each one in gradually.

My very first season with Brookfield Farm, I think we signed up to take home a third of someone else's box - giving us a chance to choose those vegetables we thought would get eaten in our household, and to take home an amount small enough to feel managable and to adjust to how to plan my meals around which vegetables are arriving in the box that week. Hate brussels sprouts? (What's wrong with you?) Your share may be happy to take extra. Love rutabagas? You can probably bargain with you share partner to take them all home. You might want to find a partner who doesn't love and hate all the exact same things as you so that the splitting has two winners instead of a winner and a loser.

With our CSA, we moved up to half a share for a year or two, and then a full share's worth because eventually I felt confident that I wanted to cook and eat it all, and I couldn't stand seeing all that good stuff in the box and only taking half of it home. We still share our meat CSA - though in the end I take home a quantity that's about as much as having one small share, we save a bit more money per pound and get a bit more selection by having one extra-large share to divide up. I signed up for the fish share myself because it seemed like a lot of time-sensitive work to divide up a whole fish each week, and my eyes were a bit bigger than my stomach - though I did adapt eventually and we didn't waste much fish. Next time we do it, though, I've realized the best way to share it would be just to alternate weeks - one week I'd get a whole fish, the next week the next person would.

Even though the season has started by now, it may not be too late to find a friend who has a share and has decided that it's a bit more than they want to cook and eat each week. Keep your ears open and join us in cooking fabulous sustainably raised local food!

Keep it Simple

One thing I've learned as farm season starts to ramp up is that it's easier to keep up if I keep my meals simple. The vegetables don't need elaborate preparations to taste good when they're this good to begin with (and that's a relief when it's over 80 degrees in the kitchen, too!)

So with the many cooking greens we've gotten in the past 2 weeks - mixed baby braising greens, tat soi, komatsuna, swiss chard, collards, turnip and radish greens - the first step I've taken is generally to sautee, boil, steam, or blanch.

Sautee
Two-thirds of the komatsuna got put away after sauteeing and eaten just like that.
The other third went into a quick grain salad - brown rice, komatsuna, raw scallions, and frozen corn from last year with a dressing of oil rice vinegar and a splash of soy. Grain salads are one of my go-to sides in summer - just mix some likely suspects including cooked greens up with something crunchy or chewy and sweet and some grains cooked in the rice cooker.

Boil
The swiss chard went into our favorite simple dish from the Croatian coast - chard and potatoes. ( Cook peeled potato slices in salted water, when they're close to done add the chard, then drain when the potatoes are cooked, mix, and season with olive oil and more salt.)

Steam
The braising greens got steamed in the microwave and sent to be part of a school lunch, and the remainder went into some scrambled eggs with greens.

Blanch
The tat soi, which I love, but was looking like I might not get to while it was still in good shape, got blanched and frozen so I can love it when the season's ending too. I pulled a little bit out before I was steaming to go in some fried rice while it was cool enough to cook last night.

One place I violated "keep it simple" was the turnip greens - which I steamed, then incorporated into a pasta dough. It was healthy and fresh, but such a pain to work with - the greens made the dough wet and sticky and I didn't get them dry enough first. I actually stopped when I'd made what looked like enough for dinner and still had some dough left over, which we experimentally made into some firm gnocchi a few days later. I won't rule this idea out entirely, but next time I won't try to pretend pasta making is simple just because sometimes I can pull it off without seeming like a Project.

single-jar pickling

Canning and pickling can be a great idea when you're faced with a bounty of some particular crop from your CSA, or find a great deal on a large quantity of something, or just want to make sure you're supplied with pickles you made yourself all year round.

But if you like the taste of pickled vegetables or homemade jam, there's no reason to limit yourself to doing it as a big project.

We've used up all of our homemade cucumber pickles (note to self: buy a few more jars worth of pickles this summer!) and the smaller batch of pickled beets I made last fall too. But we still had a few beets in the refrigerator drawer from our last winter CSA pickup. So before we get our first CSA box this week, I mixed up a quick jar of pickled beets to empty out the drawer a bit and to have more cold vegetable options as we head into the warmer season.

The recipe is simple, and no do for a quart of liquid and 4 beets than it would be for several gallons of liquid and a lot more beets. Honestly, with beets I think it's easier to make one jar than more since each jar you fill requires peeling and slicing enough beets to go inside!

easy pickled beets

(makes 1 quart size canning jar)

4-6 medium beets, cooked until tender, peeled, and sliced
1 crushed garlic clove
1 tsp caraway seeds

Sterilize the jar in boiling water (I actually skip this step when I'm making a small batch that will not be stored in the pantry forever... but please don't use me as your food safety authority!) Put the sliced beets directly into the jar as you slice them. Add the garlic and caraway seeds directly into the jar.

For the pickling liquid:

6 dl (or 2.5 cups) red wine vinegar
1.5 dl (or 5/8 cup) water
60 grams sugar (a quarter cup plus a teaspoon will do, if you don't have a kitchen scale)
22 grams salt (about 3.5 teaspoons)

Heat the liquid with the sugar and salt until the are dissolved and the water comes to a boil. Then pour the water directly into the jar, cover, and let cool. The beets should be ready to eat after pickling at room temperature for a few weeks.
Store in the refrigerator after you open the jar.

Steam and Freeze

Our CSA box still won't start up until June, but from our small urban backyard comes a surprise early season edible - weeds!


Stinging nettle is far more common around woods in Europe than I though it was in Massachusetts - but last year I discovered a single plant while trying to pull up another giant weed. (Me: "dear, can you go pull up that 6 foot weed with the purple berries? I can't quite seem to get it loose." Him, from the back corner of the yard: "Weird! Did you know we have a stinging nettle plant back here?" Me: "Ohhhh! That's why my hand is tingling.") This year, in the same corner of the yard, there's a small patch of it. It stings when you touch it with bare hands, but after cooking the stinging is gone.


Stinging nettle is a fairly versatile green, high in iron, and tasty in things like lasagna, scrambled eggs, spinach pie, etc. My wild edibles guide says to harvest it directly into a large pot, rinse thorougly in the kitchen sink with tongs, and then steam thoroughly and use the cooked greens. I chose to remove the greens from the stems after steaming so I didn't have to worry about stinging. And since it'll only be good for harvesting and eating for a few weeks and I don't really need to be having stinging nettle every 2 or 3 meals, I'm using one of my favorite tricks from when bulky greens are in season : steam and freeze. Once it's steamed, I squeeze it down to some fist-sized dense balls, put those in a plastic bag, and freeze them for later use. If your tastes run to more conventional vegetables and you don't have a patch of stinging nettle in your yard, this is a convenient way to wind up with handy frozen spinach, chard, or kale when you have access to more of it than you can fit in your fridge or eat in a particular week.