When the idea for this blog got its genesis, a lot of my thinking was the surprise I got when I heard that other CSA members have a tough time eating through their CSA box in a week. We never had a problem, and often, as a result of extra boxes left at our site can cook through 2 or 3 boxes in a week. Why is this? What do we do differently? That’s what I wanted to explore through pictures, words, and menus.
Case in point was last night. We cooked through the entire box in one meal. That’s right, 2 adults and two kids piled through the whole box in one sitting. The box had the following:
Yellow Potatoes
Tomatoes
Spigariello
Strawberries
Lettuce
Walla Walla Onions
Cucumber
Padron Peppers
Here’s how we did it.
First off, the strawberries. They were eaten so fast I didn’t even get a chance to take a picture! They are really tasting sweet and strawberry-like now after a long ramp up. Yumm.
Then the padrons. This was a fast (3 minute total working time) snack as we cooked the rest of the meal.
The spigariello got pan sauteed with one of the walla walla onions to serve as a base for …
The small pork tenderloins that I butchered out of the pig I bought for Pig Fest (more on that in future posts.)
Add in the potatoes, just simply gently boiled and tossed with butter, more-salt-than-you-think-is-healthy, and chopped taragon, and here’s the main dish of the meal
But there were lots more veggies in the box. The romaine got washed by Alexis and turned into her favourite …
… creamy salad (aka Caesar Salad)!
The tomatoes were snacked on while cooking and what was left over got combined with a cucumber and an onion from the box. Some fresh goats cheese was added as was some basil, and it got quickly tossed with some balsamic and olive oil.
There you have it. What’s left from this week’s box? One onion and one cucumber. The cuc is going into the kids’ lunch, and the onion will go whereever it is needed.
So how much active time did this meal take?
Padrons – 3 minutes
Spigiarello – 7 min to pull off stems and wash. 5 minute to cut up onion, garlic and cook it all. Total 12.
Pork – Excluding the butchering, which was an hour, it was about 7 minutes active time. Get a pan hot, throw in the pork, toss in some herbs and a few cloves of garlic, turn a couple times. Easy peasy.
Caesar – 5 min to tear and wash. Dressing takes a bit of time, maybe 10 min.
Potatoes – 1 minute to dump in pot, wash, cover with water and put on the stove.
Tomato and cuc salad – maybe 10 minutes to chop it all up?
Total? 48 minutes. And I had help from the family with some of this as we ate the padrons and tried to weasel info out of the kids (how was school? fine. what did you do? nothing.) So in the end, it was maybe 30 minutes.
And clean-up? The pork and the spigiarello was cooked in the same pan, in that sequence (the pork needed to rest). The potatoes in one pot. One serving platter, plus the salads served in the bowls they were tossed in.
Sure, we have had lots of practice in using up the CSA boxes, but with a little fore-thought I think you’ll find it easy too.
Just back from vacation and the kids were ravenous. Between piling clothes in the laundry machine, and putting the shorts back in deep storage (man, is San Francisco ever damn cold in the “summer”!), I didn’t have time for a large elaborate meal. So I took a look at the contents of the just-arrived Farm Box from Mariquita and threw together a big salad for dinner. In the end it took only about 10 minutes to make, was delicious, fresh, and actaully quite healthy! That’s how long it would have taken to go through a drive-through for heaven’s sake!
I started just by roughly cutting some pale green peppers into fattish strips, peeled and roughly chopped up some lemon cucumber, and chopped some medium sized yellow tomatoes into fair sized wedges. I didn’t want the pieces too small – I wanted large chunks. Here’s what it looked like so far.
There were some beautiful looking onions in the Farm Box, but putting them in raw tends to leave them too strong. So I macerated them in a sweet (cheap!) balsamic for a while to mellow them out.
Then I tossed it all in together, hit it with more balsamic and soem olive oil, more-salt-than-you-think-is-healthy, and topped it with a fresh light ricotta, which added a real nice creaminess.
What do you think? Not bad for 10 minutes, eh? And nutritionally it’s pretty good by my reckoning – fiber in the peppers and cucs, fat in the olive oil and cheese, and even a little protein from the cheese. Not to high in carbs, which doesn’t hurt either. And the most important thing – it was tasty!
We’re very sad here at the Farm Box blog household. Yvette and The Gordo have ended the “California Experiment” and moved back to NYC. For a year they lived with us, and then for another 6 months they were in the (awesome neighborhood of) Hayes Valley. We loved having them around, and Alexis and Emma sure did too. But jobs land where jobs land and they had to do what they had to do. Though a part of me thinks that if they could have more readily found black clothes here in San Francisco, they might have stayed! Damn colourful Californians!
We had a few last meals with Yvette (The Gordo had already decamped to Brooklyn) and here’s one of them.
One of the things I made with the Farm Box veggies was some roasted cauliflower. Ho-hum, you say? I make that all the time, you say? Well, this time I jazzed it up with an idea I stole from Sara. She had made a dressing/sauce for something or other and it was so damn good that I made it myself and drizzled it on top of these roasted cauliflower florets. Take a few anchovy fillets, some chopped garlic, and a handful of capers and throw them in the mortar. Pound away, slowly adding some lemon juice, and when it’s all pounded up nice, start adding in some olive oil. Took all of about 4 minutes. And so tasty – come on, how can you go wrong with that ingredient list! And it went great on the cauliflower. Take a close look at the photo and you’ll see some bits of the sauce on there.
Then we had a couple bunches of Andy’s oh so aromatic basil, so that got whipped into a pesto to go with the …
… steamed carrots and the …
… roasted “happy” chicken (aka marin Sun Farms).
A great simple meal that took about 20-25 minutes of busy time, and about an hour total time, with the 35 non-busy minutes spent opening up wine and soaking up some of our last SF time with Yvette. We’ll miss you guys! (But then again, we’re really glad you got a two bedroom place in NYC! Let’s book some tickets, Melinda!)
Except for maybe lasagna, I don’t think I’ve ever seen such an online recipe battle than I have when researching how to make bagna cauda. For some people it’s like their grandmother was attacked violently if someone suggested adding cream to it. To others, if the oil separated while making it, then it was like you stabbed them in the heart! Wow, such passion!
So what is bagna cauda. Well, it’s a dip. A garlicy, fishy-salty, oily dip that you have with parboiled and grilled veggies. The kind of thing you can have ready to go for a party, and just plunk down on a table as a first course with some charcuterie, some bread, and a bottle (or three) of wine.
Here are the veggies I prepared, all from the Farm Box. Parboiled cauliflower and carrots, and some grilled little summer squash.
This was my first time making bagna cauda, and after much research online, I decided to just let common sense prevail. How wrong can you really go when the ingredients are garlic, anchovies, olive oil, and butter?! Com’on, you’ve got to be making some serious mis-steps for that not to turn out great!
So I roughly slice up about 8 cloves of garlic, and filleted about 8 salt packed anchovies. Put it all in a pan with more olive oil than you think is needed and proceeded to cook it very gently on low heat. Then I put in a half stick of butter. Again, com’on, this is gonna taste great. Once the anchovies had pretty much dissolved and the garlic was gaining some colour, I threw it in the blender with the remainig half stick of butter and turned it on. It was still a little thick, so I added a slow drizzle of olive oil until, yup, you guessed it, it separated! So sue me! Here’s how it turned out, but the picture is hiding the fact that under that layer of oil is the most beautiful richly flavoured salty spicy garlicy goop. Heaven!
Along with the bagna cauda, I boiled up some potatoes from the Farm Box. My Danish mother will be so proud to see that I peeled them! Well, maybe she won’t be proud – she’ll just say “well, of course you peeled them! You *can’t* eat potatoes like that with their skin on!” 
I also brined up some chicken wings and some thigh/leg combos for the grill. And yup, again I wasn’t perfect – look at that nice char!! Ugh. Thankfully, Melinda likes the skin burnt so she was happy!
For me, the best part of the meal was the bagna cauda. Does it get any better than bagna cauda! Wow. I’m going to be making that alot more often!
Nothing like an abundance of veggies from the Farm Box to get one thinking of preserving. This week we had an abundance of green beans and carrots. The carrots we actually had 5 shares worth! See, someone didn’t pick up their box, so we inherited their carrots in addition to ours. Then there were three people, count ‘em three(!), who decided they didn’t like carrots and put them in the trade box. Wow, these folks don’t know what they’re missing.
I’ve pickled a fair bit in the past, but was a bit rusty, so I pick up my copy of the Joy of Pickling, which I picked up at Omnivore Books. A pretty good book, in a category with a large number of books, none of which I really like. A couple tips though from me to you dear reader. One, ignore anything the USDA says about preserving. Sure, it’ll be safe enough to survive the armageddon, but it’ll taste like crap! And two, when preserving fruit, ignore the sugar add recommendations from the package of pectin you buy – they assume you’re buying tasteless commercially grown nasty fruit. The fruit from the Farm Box (or upicks, or bulk orders) are full of natural sugar. I seriously cut the sugar adds to about a 1/5th of what they say. So if the package says add ten cups, I add two.
So back to my surplus of carrots and beans. First I peeled, then cut either in half or in quarters lengthwise depending on original size.
And then tipped and tailed the beans.
The carrots were getting a fridge pickle treatment, meaning they were not going to be “processed” in boiling water in their jars with the lids on. So they needed to get cooked a little bit to soften up, then plunged in an ice water bath.
Then they got stuffed in freshly cleaned jars. The eagle eye will see that some of the carrot jars are different – in three of them I put in some fennel fronds from the fennel from the farm box, and also some sliced garlic. The other three jars were plain. In the beans I added some garlic, some mustard seed, and some hot chili flakes. I wanted the beans to be more reminiscent of the beans they put in bloody marys in New Orleans! Yumm!
The vinegar was basically the same. Half white wine vinegar (I ran out during this so I substituted in some rice wine vinegar, and when that ran out I used red wine vinegar!), half water, with some salt and pepper. The beans were processed in boiling water for what was supposed to be 5 minutes, but I forgot about them so they boiled for around 8 or 9. Hope they aren’t too soggy.
The carrots are happily ensconced in the fridge and the beans are in a cool place. Now I just have to wait a while for the vinegar to do it’s magic! I’ll report back.
Our dear friend Mark stopped by the other night to pick up some wine, and we were lucky enough that he was able to stay for dinner. Pick up wine, you ask? Well, Mark has a big birthday coming up and is throwing himself a party! Getting catering, bartender, the works, and asked me to help select some wines. So that’s what he was picking up that night – 5 cases of wine. I think he said he invited about 25-30 people – should be one hell of a party! Crazy Castro boys, I tell ya.
We were running around all evening, with soccer practice and the like, so I whipped together as low an impact dinner as possible.
First I boiled up some new potatoes, then made yet another mistake that has consistently proven to not be a mistake! See, once they were cooked I drained off the water, then put it back on the heat to dry them off completely. Then a couple pads of butter went on, a little shake, some salt and voila. Except I forgot to turn off the heat!! So I’m smelling browned butter and freak out, quickly pulling the potatoes out into a bowl. But look at that photo – they’re brilliant! And topped with some chopped up chives from the Farm Box and they were perfect. Yumm
I had taken out a pound each of Marin Sun Farms beef and pork the night before, so decided to ship up some Danish meatballs (aka frikadeller). Chopped up onion, some thyme, oregano, an egg, pepper, and more-salt-than-you-think-is-healthy. The batch in the picture here isn’t as brown as the second batch. The joy of a seasoned pan, I guess.
Then fried up some bacon and topped up some creamy salad (aka Caesar salad) for the girls, though we ate our fair share too!
For dessert, Emma got all creative in the kitchen and plated up 5 lovely looking plates for us all. Two strawberries from the Farm Box nestled along side a homemade chocolate chip cookie on top of a scoop of Ben and Jerry’s. Thanks Emma!
For the wine, we started with a Beaujolais Blanc (made from 100% Chardonnay) from Dominique Cornin, but for the dinner we switched to red and had a 2007 Crozes Hermitages from the producert Albert Bouquin. A Crozes is a region in the Northern Rhone valley in southern france, and is usually made from 100% Syrah, though a little Marsanne or Rousanne (yes, white grapes!) can be added in to soften the Syrah and/or to add a perfumed character. This Crozes went will with the meatballs, as they were somewhat delicately flavoured, and the wine was a lighter style (at least compared to the US or Australia) so didn’t overpower the food.
It was great to see Mark and we’re so looking forward to his birthday party!
It was raining last weekend, and there is no better time than in the rain to make some stock. I had a bunch of chicken stock from a session a couple weeks ago, so I went ahead and made a veggie stock and a pork stock. Why veggie and pork? Well, veggie is great to have around if you need a very mild stock for a soup where chicken stock would overpower the flavours, and pork is great for braised pork dishes and for dishes where you want a little more umpf than chicken stock. This is not stricktly a Farm Box ingredients post as the quantities needed were more than I had left over from my Farm Box (I picked them up on a Rainbow run), but if you find yourself saving some of these items up over the course of a few weeks then go for it!
For both the stocks I lightly roasted up carrots …
… leeks …
… onions, celery, and a little garlic.
Almost all of it went into the veggie stock. I just put the veggies in a pot, covered with water, and brought it up to a boil and immediately turned it down to a simmer for an hour. For the last 10 minutes I added in a little parsley, a couple sprigs of thyme, and one small sprig of oregano. I was trying hard to control the flavours so that’s why I only did a 1 hour simmering, and why I only put in the herbs for ten minutes.
For the pork stock, I started by roasting up 15 pounds of pork bones (two trays worth of what you see in the picture), then hucked it all in a big pot, covered with water, brought to a boil, turned down to a simmer, and then let it go for FOUR hours. Meat stock requires more time than veggie stock as the intent is also to draw out the collagen from the product. This time the lightly roasted veggies I saved from going into the veggie stock went in to the stock pot for only the last hour.
Both the stocks got cooled in an ice bath, and then it went in to the fridge for the night. This way it is easy to remove the fat from the pork stock – it floats to the top and gets solid and can easily be scooped off the thick stock below. then it was just a matter of putting it all into labeled “deli” containers.
In the end here’s what I ended up with …
That’s the veggie stock on the left – seems like I made 6 1/2 pints. There was more pork stock – looks like 12 1/2 pints.
Is making your own stock worth it? Well, it was about 30 bucks in ingredients, and about 3 hours of active time (full process was over a day). Is that worth it for 19 or so pints of homemade stock? As a comparison, before the chicken stock session a couple weeks ago, we had to buy 2 pints of chicken stock from Bi-Rite. Now, Bi-Rite has high quality product, but I gotta tell you it still paled in comparison to homemade. And those two pints were $6.99. So assuming equal quality, the stock I made was maybe 60 Bi-Rite dollars, and I paid 30 bucks plus labour – if I paid myself 10 bucks an hour then I’d come out even!
Sara and Jim invited us over for dinner last night. I asked what I could bring and Sara was a little worried that maybe the chicken they planned might not be enough for all four plus two of us. Did I have another small chicken we could add to the meal? Just a small one. Did I have ever have a small one! Must be the worlds smallest chicken!
Next up, a long post on two different stocks I made last weekend.
My cousin Massimo has been spending the last 2-3 years doing an MFA at the prestigious San Francisco Art Institute, and Saturday marked his graduation and the affixing of the title Master to his name. We are so excited for him, and got to go out twice to see his show on Treasure Island. And we were also very excited to host him, Meagan, his parents and her parents and a friend from LA for dinner after the graduation ceremonies.
We weren’t quite sure the number of folks until the last minute so I decided to cook up a big turkey that I’ve had a few months since the last bulk delivery day from Marin Sun Farms to our site. I brined it for a day in a simple 50:50 kosher salt / sugar mix, then dried it and rubbed in a spice rub with a bunch of differ spice I heated on the stove and ground up. I think there was coriander, cumin, mustard seed in there, then I added some garlic powder and some tumeric too. I cooked it for about 3 hours (I think it was about 15-18 pounds) on indirect heat on the BBQ.
I had to restock the coals a couple times which was fine, but the indirectness allowed for a safely unburned skin that got super brown-ish red and crispy. Looks pretty good, no?
I also didn’t want to make anything that had to be served and eaten quickly, as I just wasn’t sure of the timing, so I pulled out some bacon (panchetta from Bocalone, actually) and got it crispy-ish, then added some shallots and 4 big bunches of collard greens.
They cooked down and then I just left them on a gentle low heat until serving. Oh, I might have slapped in some extra bacon fat. Com’on, collard greens just go with bacon fat!
I had soaked up some white beans the night before and got them cooking in some light chicken stock
Then I sauteed up a bunch of shallots, sweated them down, added tons of garlic, and then threw in that bowl of greens you see there in the picture.
After the greens were cooked down a bit, the beans got added and the flavours allowed to come together. Then it was final seasoning time – more-salt-than-you-think-is-healthy, pepper, hot pepper flakes, olive oil, and then the secret which is white wine vinegar. Lots of it too. The beans are so rich and starchy that they need tons of salt, but they also need acid. I guess you could use citrus of some sort, but for my palate the white wine vinegar worked well.
Then I made my “famous” asian style coleslaw, and laid it all out on the table. I say “famous” cuz no matter what crazy seemingly difficult dish I have prepared as part of a dinner, the dish that always gets the most comments when I serve it is the asian coleslaw, and it’s the easiest dish to make! Just thinly slice up some red and green cabbage, add in an onion and/or some fennel bulb, squeeze in some lemon, add some soy sauce (in lieu of salt), some mayo (homemade preferred) and then most importantly some toasted sesame oil. Simple and oh so tasty …
We had a great time with everyone, and we all took turns quizzing Massimo on obscure art questions to check if he earned the Master label. Don’t worry, he passed all tests!
Busy afternoon yesterday! My Aunt and Uncle were joining us for dinner of course, as they’re staying with us for a little while. And Sara’s out of town, so we invited Jim over with the twins so that Jim could actually get some food for himself that wasn’t mushed up leftover baby food! And then my friend Richard, who was also one of the best men at my wedding, texted me that he was in town and taking the red-eye home – could he stop by for a visit on the way to the airport? Of course! The more the merrier!
But first we all met at the Bartlett/22nd street Thursday farmers market to watch Alexis and Emma play in a concert in the market. Aren’t they so cute there playing a “duet” with their teacher Katie?
Then we rushed on home and while Alexis was at soccer practice I scrambled to get dinner for 8 ready.
Sorry, I have no prep or process photos, but here’s what I did.
I soaked some white beans overnight, then cooked them in chicken stock. Separately I sauteed more leeks than you’d think possible, plus the same amount of spring garlic. Then I took every single wintry leaf from the Farm Box and added it in. That’s kale, chard, and that dark spindly one – I forget what it was called. I set that aside and browned up some spicy sausage, added in some chopped carrots from the farm box, and when it was all done I added in the leek/garlic/greens, and a whole bunch of beans from the pot. Then I made some garlic bread to use as a dipping/topping type thing. (As an aside, can someone please explain to me why anyone would buy pre-made garlic bread?! It’s so easy to make. Melt some butter in the microwave, microplane in some garlic, add salt, spread on bread, broil in oven. 2 minutes of work, 5 minutes of time!)
In the end, I made a critical mistake of overcooking the beans making for a more mushy consistency, but the flavour was all there. Great with some drizzle olive oil and hot pepper flakes.
We had already gone through all the strawberries from the Farm Box, so Melinda bought some more at the Thursday market after the girls had finished playing … (Continue Reading…)