A slightly chunky vinaigrette with a bright, funky aroma, this dressing works on salads and is excellent as a topping for grilled fish such as snapper, tilapia, or halibut. Use with pork medallions, chicken with cumin and oregano, or even on noodles like ramen tossed with vegetables and leftover shredded meat.
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Another item inspired by a trip to a taqueria. This time it was a plate of tacos, with the charred meat, lettuce, tomatoes, and green onions that led to this. I really like the surprise of grilled lettuce with the hot/cold contrast and the play of flavors the lettuce gains from the light charring from the grill. There are plenty of fun options that can be added to the salad listed to add interest as well. Having a spritzer for your oil makes this dish simpler, and keeps it lighter.
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I’ve been getting some questions about tomatoes already so I guess people are getting in the mood for summer vegetables and fruits. It certainly feels like summer with these long days, kids out of school, and the solstice just around the corner. The thing about summer vegetables is that they need those long warm days to grow! Our tomatoes are shaping up to come in earlier than we’ve ever had them before, but they still need a few more weeks.
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I like to make berry infused vinegars which I use as parts of marinades or sauces, and of course I also use them for salad dressings. When using them for dressing, I tend to either use them to contrast with sharper, bitter leaves such as escarole, dandelion, rocket, and the like, or I pair them with more delicate lettuces and then add some fruit and or nuts to the mix. I could see a salad of butterleaf lettuces with strawberries, slivered roasted almonds, and maybe a little bit of crumbled blue cheese with a strawberry vinaigrette made with the vinegar, a little agave syrup, some shallot, a little ginger juice, black pepper, and a light oil such as grapeseed with a touch of almond oil. Garnish the salad with candied ginger bits and a little black pepper that has been dry roasted in a pan-this neutralizes much of the heat and leaves the pepper fruity-and freshly cracked.
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I hesitate to call this a jam as it is useful for more than toast. Try this with pork, chicken, or turkey. Good on sandwiches or as a smear, and would be nice on a cheese plate. This would be good made with berries that are a little over-ripe or starting to look less than perfect.
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This soup is a riff on borscht, with kale filling in for the cabbage, and the vinegar on the roast beets filling in for the things that are often pickled in borscht. Some borscht uses sauerkraut, some have chopped pickles, some use a soured broth or kvass as the base. Although written as a hot soup, it could easily be chilled and served cold with yogurt or labne.
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This is a very pretty dish if you can get the rainbow carrots, but it will still taste great if all you have are monochromatic carrots. It is important to watch the sugar as it browns. It only takes a split second and it can go from caramel to charcoal. Feel free to remove the pan from the heat to slow it down, and have your butter cut and ready to toss in. Do it a couple times and it is no big deal. Besides basil, you could use cilantro or mint. Might even work with shiso. Many rainbow carrots have color that is mostly on the outside, so scrub rather than peel.
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Last Tuesday I went to the Elkhorn Slough Water Quality Workshop at the Moss Landing Marine Labs. I had signed up for it months ago when things were less busy, so when I received an e-mail reminder a few days before the event, my first reaction was that I could never afford to take half a day off.
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This could be considered a hearty miso soup, or a stew. To add more depth of flavor to the dish, make your dashi using “blond” vegetable stock (see recipe on site). They type of miso will also affect the flavor a lot, with white miso being lighter and sweeter in flavor, whereas red miso tends to be deeper flavored and saltier. For a flavorful contrast, you could quickle the stems from the turnip greens if they are thick and use them as a garnish. Adding dumplings of some sort will certainly make the dish more substantial, as would adding noodles.
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This is a dish of bolder flavors with hints of bitterness to it, so it goes well with fattier dishes such as pork chops, chicken thighs, or things with cheese or cream in them. If you wish, you can dice the chard stems and use them, but they will add more of the “fuzzy teeth” feeling to the dish. Save them with the turnip greens for a stuffing for ravioli or pork chops instead.
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We’ve been enjoying meeting a lot of you at our u-picks! One more to come this Saturday, and then stay tuned – we’ll probably do some more in the summer. We should have both strawberries and blueberries for you to pick this weekend.
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You could do this with the vegetarian dashi, but the smoky aroma and depth of flavor from the hana-katsuo really make this dish. Although it is not quite the same, and it will tint the dish red, you could use smoked paprika if you wish to go vegetarian. Use this dish as a base for seared fish or roasted King Oyster mushrooms. You could also use this as a base for noodles/pasta.
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A sort of culinary pun on the theme of peas and carrots. Usually the peas carry a sweetness that matches the carrots, but here the favas act as a foil to that inherent sweetness with their almost cheesy nutty flavor and slight bitterness. The basil bridges the sweetness and earthiness of the carrots and the earthy and sharp notes of favas with sweetness and the slight edge that basil has. If you do not have basil, oregano would be great here, or even mint.
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Very simple, but lots of flavor. Watching the broccoli blanch so it does not overcook, and cutting it to the right size, is key here. Don’t overdo the mint or it will overwhelm the dish. Use just enough to taste as an accent. Also, try to use as little oil as you can get away with for this dish as it helps the broccoli to stay firm and bright.
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For at least the past decade, we (and CSA members) have been donating vegetables and fruit each week to a local food pantry called Pajaro Valley Loaves and Fishes. For years, Loaves and Fishes volunteer Bob Montague was the face of the food pantry program for us. He would arrive every Thursday with an old Ford pick-up truck and load up the CSA vegetables donated by members who were on vacation that week or had even paid to provide a donation share weekly. Since the old truck gave up the ghost, we’ve been delivering the vegetables directly to the food pantry ourselves.
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This dish is a pretty jade green color flecked with gold and velvety black and white. The flavors seem to appeal to everyone and the dish tends to disappear rapidly. The key to this recipe is restraint; use a light hand when blanching the broccoli, adding the sesame oil, as well as the candied ginger. Prep for this dish could be done ahead of time.
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This dressing goes with a salad of strawberries, lettuce, and pepitas, as well as with a dice of corn, red onion, bell peppers, and cilantro. Sauté it or use raw and dress with this vinaigrette. Use this vinaigrette to dress fish tacos or pulled pork sandwiches. Although the roasted garlic is an extra step, the flavor really is subtler than raw garlic, and the roasted garlic adds a creamy texture to the dressing.
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The blueberry bushes are in full swing! You’re invited to come out and pick your own blueberries on May 23rd, May 30th, or June 6th between 10 am and 2 pm. Please bring your own containers if possible. Friends and family are welcome too. No charge for entry. Blueberries cost $5/lb. You do not need to be a current CSA subscriber to come to the u-pick.
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Here is a salad with lots of contrasts, as well as room for lots of variations. If you have cilantro instead of basil, use that. Use a dressing with lime and cumin, or coriander and Meyer lemon. See Chef’s Notes for further ideas. For the pepper cress, use a really sharp thin bladed knife to “whittle” the leaves off the stems if your cress is in a bunch.
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This grew out of my liking for carrots and orange juice. Mint often appears with carrots at my table, and basil and mint often swap places in recipes, so it just seemed natural. Using bigger chunks of carrot allows the flavor of the carrot to develop while keeping it from getting really soft.
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Sometimes I have artichokes and am not sure when I will get them into a menu, so I will just cook them when I get the chance whether I intend to serve them at that moment or not. They are good cold, can be re-heated, or worked into something else, as happened here. The combination of artichoke and potato is a great one, especially with sweet waxy potatoes such as Yukon Golds or a fingerling type. This salad would be good with some cauliflower florets blanched and dressed while hot, then cooled and added in.
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The activity level on the farm has been ratcheted up these last few weeks. This time of year finding time to do anything other than harvesting is difficult. We have three crops—strawberries, blueberries and squash—that have to be picked 2-3 times a week and when you throw in all of the other crops we are harvesting there is very little time left for all of the planting, weeding, pruning and other activities that have to happen to keep the farm going.
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This salad is indeed inspired by traditional tabbouleh, and resulted from a hurried “tour du fridge” one night. For the cucumber, be sure to avoid any with waxed skin, or peel it, especially if the skin is thick. Smaller Japanese cucumbers are ideal. Any squash will do, but Costata Romanesco or Cousa are great because they take on color without getting mushy or bitter better than most other summer squash, and this salad is about the contrast between the chewy farro and the crisp cucumber and squash.
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Another dish in the Moroccan “salad” style. If you wanted to make it more of a Western style salad with lettuce, use romaine. Remove the darker outer leaves and cut the pale inner leaves across the length into thin ribbons and lay them down as a bed for the carrot ribbons. A Ben Riner or mandolin is best to make this recipe, but if you do not have one, slice the carrots on a diagonal with your sharpest knife, or use a really sturdy peeler.
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We ran into a little glitch on Wednesday when we tried to irrigate a new planting of lettuce—the sprinklers never came up to pressure. The well at our home farm is very shallow and very old and we’ve known for the past year or so that it was failing. We are on the waiting list to have a deeper well dug, but with the high demand for wells right now, we’ve got another 6-7 months before that happens.
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