Jaime's Summer CSA Delivery #2 - June 13, 2013

This week's bounty included more swiss chard, snap peas, cucumbers, radishes, and cucumbers. Also, a head of fennel (which I braised with shallots and cardamom, following the recipe in From Asparagus to Zucchini - delicious!), a head of napa cabbage, raspberries, and the first appearance of summer squash.

It has been fruit central around here. We have been picking mulberries from the neighborhood trees and were happy to get our first little harvest of tart cherries from our new tree. We also managed to make it out to Hollin Farms for the first and only day of pick-your-own cherries for the season. And we harvested the peaches from our tree today. We filled this basket four times!

The mulberries and cherries have been frozen for now. When things settle down, I'll make some jam. I have canned 15 pints of peaches and still have a full basket left of underripe peaches that need to soften up.

Roasted Cod and Radishes - June 4, 2013

Richie is traveling this week and so that means I'm on my own for dinners and that means only one thing... FISH! I also had a bunch of radishes from our last CSA share and I don't really care for them raw (nor does my digestive track), so I wanted to use them in some kind of cooked recipe.

This dish was inspired by a recipe for roasted cod and potatoes in Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything, except that I used radishes in place of the potatoes and then adjusted the roasting time to account for the smaller size of the radishes. I topped the portion with a little homemade yogurt and some fresh dill. The nice thing about this dish is that everything cooked in a single pan in the oven, so clean up was minimal and the fish smell didn't permeate the house. Next time, I might not thin slice the radishes as I would have liked a little more substance to them. Otherwise, a winner!

Strawberries - June 1, 2013

I was just looking over last year's posts and realize that it isn't just my imagination and impatience that thinks the spring/summer fruits are taking forever to come into season this year. Last year we were picking strawberries in mid-May and already had peaches canned by June 1!

2013 is off to a later start, but the fruit that we are getting is tastier than I remember. We got up early this morning and drove out to Hollin Farms in Delaplane, VA. It is just a bit more than an hour drive from our house, but such a beautiful drive that we don't mind taking multiple trips out there, beginning with strawberries today! We each got a flat and decided just to pick until we were sick of picking or until the boxes were full, whichever came first. That ended up being just a bit over 20 lbs.

Then a spent the rest of the day sorting, cleaning, washing, jamming, and freezing! I put up (love that quaint phrase) nine pints of honey-sweetened jam and seven quarts of whole berries in the freezer. There are another three quarts or so that were less than ripe sitting on the counter, and another quart that I held back just for us to enjoy.

Tonight we had a few of them as grain-free, lactose-free, and refined sugar-free strawberry shortcakes.

The cake is an almond flour, honey sweetened cupcake and the cream is whipped coconut milk. I haven't quite perfected the technique yet, but it was delicious.

Memorial Day Crustless Quiche - May 27, 2013

Nick and I were in Madison over Memorial weekend (yay!), celebrating a special anniversary with dear friends (Happy 10th, Matt and Nikki!), but were back home in time for a Monday brunch.  When my sister, Kate, was in town the last couple weeks, she made herself these fun, crustless quiches that she would re-heat for a quick and easy, protein-packed lunch.  Stealing inspiration from wherever I can find it, I decided to do something similar for a holiday brunch.

The great thing about these quiches is that you can use any wild and crazy combination of vegetables and cheese that you have lying around.  I do so love a good "kitchen sink" recipe.  For my egg base, I consulted the ever-useful "How to Cook Everything," and found a suitable recipe.  For our quiche add-ins, we used blanched asparagus, spinach, chopped green garlic, chopped ramps, feta, and ricotta cheese.  It turned out really well, although it did need to bake about a half hour longer than the directions implied.  Oh well, it was worth the wait. I didn't even miss the crust.