Wicked Tasty Harvest

Area CSAs and Eating Locally

by April Paffrath

New England is a bounty of food goodness. On Friday I shared some of that tastiness with the readers of the awesome website BostonMamas.com

In that guest post, I wrote about the benefits of local eating and why that’s a bit easier for your life. Basically, local foods are fresher and you can have greater control over the growing practices that you like (sustainable, organic, heritage, whatever) than you can at a supermarket. Local, fresh foods that are packed with flavor make an easier dinner because you have to do so very little to them to make them amazing.

That’s the great secret I’ve learned from my family’s CSA adventure. Simple food is simply good. Ramp it up a bit for a special occasion, but in general you’re less stressed at dinner when you’re starting with great ingredients. You can do crazy preparations because they’re fun, not because you need them to mask bland or bitter veggies. (And seriously? I love me some crazy preparation. I also love a quick dinner that needs almost no work at all because it’s fresh from the fields and singing with flavor.)

Do I get everything locally? No. But I look local first. If I can find it locally, I know I’m getting a fresher ingredient and I’m supporting a part of our regional community that I want to see become even more robust.

Below is the list of local CSAs that I shared with BostonMamas readers. The Boston area is lucky enough to have vegetable, meat, fish and grain CSAs—pretty amazing, really. There are plenty of amazing CSAs available in the area (this is just a sampling). Check them out, read their websites, give them a call and ask questions about their growing practice and regular CSA quantities and you can find the one that suits you best. I listed the prices based on what is currently one their websites. Some are already in the midst of signing up new members.

Later today this week, I’ll post a recipe for amazing and creamy gratin potatoes. You’ll make it all winter long, so check back. Mmm, I’m hungry for it already. Your holidays will never be the same.

Siena Farms, Sudbury, MA

Pay $750 for the weekly box share and pick up at Sofra (Farmer Chris’ wife is chef Ana Sortun of Oleana and Sofra), or $500 for the market share, which is a discount of 50% at the Copley farmers’ market or at their Sudbury farm stand.

I happily renewed my “membership” for next year’s box share. The food is amazing and almost unbelievable. It comes to you pristine and glowing and full of flavor. They offer varieties that are grown for their amazing taste. It’s no surprise that the city’s best restaurants also get their produce from Siena Farms—places like No. 9 Park, O Ya, Beacon Hill Bistro, Craigie on Main, and more. When you prepare the produce from Siena Farms, it tastes amazing, even if you only treat it with a bit of olive oil and salt. Their mesclun is peppery and wonderful—a real highlight!

Chestnut Farms, Hardwick, MA

Pick up this meat CSA once a month in several locations, year round (Arlington, Natick, Northhampton, and about 5 more). Prices depend on how much you’re getting each month. It starts at $80 and 10lbs a month ($8/lb). It costs less per pound if you get more. A bonus is that CSA shareholders are eligible to sign up for one of their coveted natural turkeys. They raise cows, pigs, sheep, chickens, and turkeys. The pasture animals (like cows and sheep) are pasture-fed as long as the New England weather lets them, and they get hay with occasional grain over the winter.

Red Fire Farm, Granby, MA

Pay $640 for the summer season CSA. They have add-on shares like eggs, flowers, and fruit. You can pick up your weekly share in Brighton, Cambridge, and Jamaica Plain, as well as a handful of other towns. You can also get it delivered at extra cost through MetroPedal Power. Shareholders get special pick-your-own privileges.

Parker Farms, Lunenburg, MA

Steve Parker is a fixture at the Union Square farmers’ market. Pay $325 for the small share or $500 for the large share. Pick-ups are in Davis Square, Somerville, and Porter and Central Squares, Cambridge.

Lands Sake, Weston, MA

Lands Sake is an education farm. (It’s also a fantastic pick-your-own farm with strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, and more. What’s so nice about that is that it’s organic, and it’s hard to find u-pick organic fruits.) We love to visit the farm because it’s a little bit hippy and super calm. They had some trouble with their CSA last year due in part to weather, but it’s a long-running farm that cares about treating the land and the food right.

Stillman Farm, New Braintree, MA

Another meat CSA, year round. You can find them at farmers’ markets and they’re very popular. CSA members get a 20% discount at the markets! Like Chestnut, they have grass-fed, pastured animals that are raised in a sustainable and humane way. Shares go from 5lb for $46/month up to 20lb for $155/month. Pick-ups are in Jamaica Plain, Brookline, and Lunenburg.

Six Farms CSA at Silverbrook Farm

Pay $325–500 for a half share or $565–730 for a full share; prices vary based on pick-up or delivery location.

Silverbrook teamed up with 5 other farms to offer a CSA. Some farms specialize in certain products or add in something special to the whole partnership. You also get Hannabells from Shy Brothers Cheese, since they’re one of the six farms. Mmm. Pick-up locations around Boston, Cambridge, Cape Cod, Rhode Island, and more. In Cambridge, they’ll deliver your share through MetroPedal Power, included in the CSA price.

Cape Ann Fresh Catch, Gloucester, MA

This CSA is really a CSF, a community supported fishery. This unique program brings some of the local sea bounty to New Englanders, year-round. Each fish is valued the same, no matter the species. That allows the fishermen and women to go out and catch fish without chasing the highest paying species. There’s no toss-back of caught, dead fish that don’t get as high a price as other species. There’s less environmental damage in the quest for the priciest fish. They can fish unstressed areas and not risk their lives as much bringing it in. You’ll get cod, haddock, hake, shrimp, and more. They use innovative shrimping tools to minimize by-catch and environmental damage, and this shrimp is local — not the ecosystem-damaging shrimp you can find in the freezer section.

They have a bunch of different sign-up options, including all shrimp and a shrimp-fish combo. Pay $125-$400 for a 10-week share from anything from 5lb of shrimp to 40lb of fish. Pickups are all over the area, Cambridge, Jamaica Plain, Acton, Ipswich, and many more.

Drumlin Farm, Lincoln, MA

Drumlin Farm is a Mass Audubon Sanctuary. They also have a popular CSA, as well as a winter share that comes from their root cellar. Pay $575 or $525 if you work the farm for 8 hours. Pick up at the farm, Central or Porter in Cambridge, or in Jamaica Plain, Dorchester, and Quincy

Picadilly Farm, Winchester, NH

This certified organic farm has pick up in Arlington, Bedford, and Belmont. The form isn’t online yet for 2010, but 2009 shares were $525.

The Best Carrots

by April Paffrath

I know the CSA from Siena Farms has come to an end. I'm coming to terms with it, but it may take a while. And the Farmers' Markets that I frequent are finished for the year (although I do hope to find a few winter markets to visit). It's a wistful time of year, this end of the harvest season. It seems only last week I was reveling in all of the amazing food coming from, not only our great CSA share, but also from farm stands, markets, and local shops. I am reminded constantly throughout the season what amazing foods we have available here in New England. In addition to the end-products, we also have a wealth of committed farmers, growers, purveyors, brewers, chefs, and lovers of food and local goods. Let me tell you, it's easy to be thankful. It's also so easy to support these people in their efforts to make, grow, shepherd, and produce the most delicious things. Easy because our support comes back to us in so many tasty ways. It seems as though our regional food system is mutually nurturing, and that makes me glad.

It also makes me hungry. Yesterday was Thanksgiving and I found myself thankful for our local situation as I am nearly every day. How lucky we are! Still, the end of the CSA season and the farmers' markets makes me miss the high living of fresh crisp produce that will, by February, seem like a distant legend—we'll talk like old men on a porch about the shallots that were so fresh that they were practically luminous with their reddish-purple sheen. Or the kale that wasn't tough but was a joy to eat. Or the fresh berries that made a pie you would gladly travel 80 miles for. And how tasty were the carrots?! The carrots might induce a rapture of reminiscence, which no one would dare interrupt. (Check out the easiest way to make carrots evah, below.)

Like the Scarecrow at the end of the Wizard of Oz, carrots may be what I will miss the most. Store-bought carrots cannot compete with the bolero and rainbow carrots that thrilled us all season long and transformed our dinners, stocks, mirepoix and more into transcendent home cooking moments. The carrots straight from the farm tasted delicious and sweet and healthy—healthy in the best way possible. They tasted full of nutrients and flavors and—because they were always a joy to eat—you never shied away from seconds and thirds. It was easy to get your 7+ servings a day.

I recently bought some "regular" carrots and I swore something was terribly wrong with them. They were acrid and bitter and sharp, and not the sweet candy-like burst of carroty goodness that we became used to this whole summer. The sad truth is that's what's available and "normal" in many stores. It's going to end in tears, I can tell.

Luckily, carrots are a fantastic storage crop. We have pounds and pounds of them in our refrigerator. We've been fast and loose with the vegetable abundance, but I sense that we will begin using them with the reluctance that scarcity provokes. Maybe it will start with one fewer carrot in the stock. But until that day, we're enjoying every carrot we have—and using every bit of spare fridge space for storage crops like carrots and cabbage and celeriac. I think I want a root cellar. In my 5th floor apartment. That's not exactly normal, I know.

(Celery is a close second in vegetable wistfulness. The difference between the Siena Farms celery, which is bright green and full of impeccable leaves, and the chalky white-green, leafless store celery is just as vast as the carrot difference. I don't have any celery from the farm left and I will be missing it all winter.)

Carrots are delightful to eat straight. A simple cooking will highlight the natural sweetness and make the simplest food into a major side dish. The carrots at the end of the season are the sweetest because the plant is working on storing its natural sugars in the root of the plant—the part we eat— now that the leaves are matured or gone and the flowering is over. When you cook up the late-season roots, they taste sweet yet complex. The sugars caramelize, adding great depth notes to the flavors. You don;t need to add brown sugar or anything like that.

Here's the easiest way to make carrots, which I discovered half by accident not long ago.

The Best Carrots

• carrots
• oil
• salt

1. Before you do anything else with the meal, wash a bunch of carrots and peel them. Cut any thick ones lengthwise in half or quarters, so they are all about the same thickness, 1/2"-3/4" wide. They'll cook evenly that way.
2. Put the carrots in a roasting or baking pan and drizzle with oil and sprinkle with salt. Then toss them around with your hands, so the carrots are coated with oil all over. I keep them all going in the same direction, so more carrots are in touch with the pan and are more likely to caramelize.
3. Cover the pan loosely with aluminum foil to prevent the carrots from drying out.
4. Put them in the oven and then turn it on. I hardly even look at the temperature. I just turn it on. If I have something that will go in the oven next, I turn it to that temperature.
5. As the oven heats up, so do the carrots, slowly and evenly. Test them with a fork occasionally. Take the foil off at some point, when they really get cooking—that will help the carrots and oil brown a bit, enhancing the lovely sugar flavors. The best is when the edges and bottoms of the carrots caramelize and the oil and natural sugars make a kind of sticky syrup that clings to the pan-side of the carrots.
6. They should be done and fork-tender, but not fall-apart mushy. These are easy-eating carrots, so you don't want to have to use a knife. These are carrots that make it easy to say, "Oooh, just one more!" Before you know it, your dinner party has finished the whole roasting pan of carrots and feels very healthy, happy, and quite superior about it. And they should.
7. (Remember, if you still have plenty of cooking to do, remove them from the oven before they're done all the way and just reheat them when you're finishing up the other dishes. If you haven't eaten them all as a cooks treat in the meantime.)

photo (cc) djkd on Flickr

In a Jam. A Delicious, Delicious Jam.

by April Paffrath

A favorite breakfast. Homemade raspberry-blackberry preserves on bread.

I've been working all summer on ways to enjoy the food when we have it, as well as ways to prolong that gorgeous rush of flavor well after the ground is frosty and dusted with snow. The gorgeous bolero carrots that Siena Farms includes in the CSA boxes will last for quite awhile, but other veggies won't. Like Cynthia, I froze things that are waiting for mid-winter debut. I also baked things to outlast their normal shelf life and I've flirted heavily with canning and preserving. I'm a small-batch gal when I'm trying to puzzle out the proper how-to, so most of what I pickled was eaten right away. The jam I made, though, should see us through part of the harsh of winter with a welcome jolt of flavor. We do all get tempted to eat it straight out of the jar with a spoon, though, so I hope it lasts a while.

Good jam on good bread is one of my constant cravings. When it's good, it's like a sunburst in the middle of February. When I finally snapped out of denial that summer had turned to fall, I knew that I had to make some of the fruit flavors last.

I've been fascinated with jam for a long time. Surprisingly, I hardly had any truly good jam until I was 10 or 11. Until then, I preferred jelly and I thought of it strictly as a component of the PB&J…until one fateful jam- and marmalade-filled trip. I went on a ski trip to a small Swiss village with my classmates and each morning at breakfast we were served continental breakfast. Every table had big bowls of jam and marmalade to spoon on top of toast.

Quite possibly, it may have been the first time I didn't put butter on my toast—just jam. It tasted like…fruit. I couldn't believe it. And this was even vaguely institutional jam—you just knew the chalet had outsize jars of the stuff in the kitchen next to the 3-gallon mayonnaise and a container of more capers than most people use in a lifetime.

Still, that non-fancy jam began a culinary quest that I'm just now fulfilling. On that trip, I filled up on bread (and marmalade) and left the ski trip with a deep love—not for the swift downhill and our instructor Antoine—but for blood oranges, vol-au-vent, and jam that tasted like sweet fruit instead of just plain sweet.

For years, I've harbored dreams of making marmalade (a task I will finally tackle this winter—stay tuned) and jam. Jam is a little scary if you've never done it before. But who ever let being scared stop them?

A couple of things finally got me stove-side and actively experimenting.

First of all, I spend a lot of time thinking about food traceability. I like to support local farmers, so I like it when good food comes from local sources. Still, I want to know about the sources and quality that goes into food, no matter where it comes from. I might buy a jar of jam from France, but I want to know where the ingredients come from and like them as much as the finished product. When local sources hold their own against anything else available, I feel excited and proud—and in my corner of the world, I luckily get to feel that way pretty often.

Secondly, that jar of jam from France that we've loved is now a dizzying $19 a jar. It used to be an affordable $7 indulgence. It's kind of hard to enjoy the fruit and flavor in the morning when your brain—without your permission—is tallying what that second piece of toast does to your monthly food budget. I firmly believe that one should never be meagre when offering guests (and yourself!) something delicious, so I dislike what that financial turn does to the taste pleasures.  (Boo, exchange rate and recession. Boo.)

Thirdly, if my efforts can rival that lovely jam, I would slash our breakfast and elevenses carbon footprint if I use mostly local produce. The carbon footprint might not have a flavor of its own, but it can surely affect the enjoyment of a meal. I'm totally OK getting imported food (and I do), but if I can best the quality in my kitchen, hurrah! I knew it was finally time to try.

Finally, I have a 3-year-old who does not eat fruit. Except bananas. (Have you ever heard of such a thing?) However, she does eat jam. I want to share all kinds of pleasurable jam flavors with her so she can taste the real fruit in a way that she likes. It's kind of like a gateway food. (A gateway to 7 servings a day, kiddo!)

 

To move on my jammy goal, I took a class at Stir and Chef Molly Loveday walked us through several jams from Christine Ferber's book "Mes Confitures." I can read about jam all I want, but sometimes you need to see it happen right in front of you. Stir is my favorite place for that, because the food is awesome, the space is small enough that you see every little detail, and you can ask endless questions (which I often do). I never had a grandmother who made jam, so I had no context in which to place the instructions I read. I needed a place like Stir to see all of the color changes, textures, reflections, and processes. (By the way, you should totally go there.) The basic take-away: Just get in there and do it. Use great ingredients, decide for yourself how sweet it should be and do it. Quit being so scared.

I also went to an afternoon tea hosted by Edible Boston and D2E at Upstairs on the Square where their guest Eugenia Bone, author of Well-Preserved, discussed canning, jams, jellies, and preserving in general. She made several great points about why it makes sense to do it and what affect it has. The basic take-away: If you take a moment to make your own tomato sauce or jam, you can use local ingredients. You take that part of your pantry and make it local (or organic or whatever aspect is important to you). You have greater control over the source of your food and who you support with your spending. Small batch preserving is easy to do, takes very little time, and you don't have to set aside an entire day—the process of filling your pantry is calm and goes on all season long.

I dream of that kind of low-key approach. So far I've made several jams, but nothing in a quantity that requires "putting up." It turns out we want to eat it all right away, but luckily jam lasts a long time, thanks to sugar and heat. (Just think of how long that jam in your fridge has been there.) I've been working in small batches to refine the process and take advantage of a small amount of gorgeous produce. I'm still working out some kinks, but I've had some stellar successes.

I've followed Eugenia's advice a few times and just made jam with what was around and good-looking, but using Stir's technique. I had strawberries that were in danger of going bad but oh so fragrant, so I chopped them and cooked them up one night. We ate the jam for breakfast the next morning to cheers and applause, and second helpings.

The superstar jam, so far, is based on a recipe from Christine Ferber's book that we made at Stir. It's raspberry-blackberry preserves and it's so good. No, even better than that. I bought all the raspberries and blackberries that Formaggio had one day and went to town making a jar of lovely preserves.

Pluot, raspberry-blackberry, and strawberry jams lined up by the kitchen counter at breakfast.

Raspberry-Blackberry Preserves

I put the raspberries through a food mill to make them a liquid. I cooked the raspberry liquid with the whole blackberries and the sugar (50 percent of the fruit by weight). The bright red liquid coats the blackberries, making the deep berries glow a sort of luscious red when the light catches it. It gels up to the perfect thick jam consistency—exactly what you'd like if you were buying a favorite in a store. Everything about it is perfect…except that I only made one and a half jars. The half jar is already gone!

I've used this basic method for peach-nectarine-vanilla jam, pluot jam, strawberry preserves and a few others that have been greedily and happily devoured.

Basic Jam

• Buy yummy fruit that is almost luminous. The kind that you need to eat and distracts you from tasks at hand.
• Wash it very gently and cut it up or purée it.
• Give in this once and taste it to see how sweet it is. Stop yourself so you don't eat it all.
• Weigh it so you know how much sugar to add.
• Add sugar that equals somewhere between 40–60 percent of the weight of the fruit. The sweeter the fruit, the less sugar. 
• Boil it while stirring. Use a candy thermometer to tell when the temperature reaches 220 degrees F. The books all talk about the jam flaking off the spoon in sheets, but I've found that happens before 220 degrees F. I don't know what that means for long-term storage, since I'm still figuring this all out.
• Pour it into sterilized jars and lids and process in a way that you agree with. Do some research because NO one likes mold, sliminess, foul odors or Botulism. Seriously, there are 5 million books and websites each with slightly different techniques. I'm still learning, so I don't have a good feel for the exact one I want to recommend. 

The kinks I'm still working out are how to know how much jam a certain amount of fruit will become. Also, it's very difficult to reach 220 degrees F if you don't add a lot of sugar. A couple of batches have tasted like the sugar caramelized—which ended up tasting wonderful, but it wasn't what I was trying for. I noticed that for the batches where I added slightly more sugar, it reached 220 degrees with no problem or prolonged (caramelizing) cooking.

Anyone have tips for the sugar ratio that lets you reach 220 easily but doesn't overpower the fruit with sweet?

Beets with Red Onion Confetti

by April Paffrath

I never ate beets until college. Not only that, I hardly knew they existed. Sometimes we joke around about the first time we tried falafel, or hummus, or samosas—and how alarmingly late in life some of those amazing things can find us—but for me beets were one of the biggest surprises. They weren't part of my family's cuisine growing up, and I don't remember them showing up on the school lunch tray, although school gave us plenty of the ersatz vegetable, ketchup.

One evening in college, my boyfriend (now husband) said he would make me dinner. He's a couple of years older, so he lived in a collegetown house where he shared an actual kitchen with his housemates. I was living in a dorm single and everything in the nearly empty dorm kitchen was bolted down. It hobbled even the most determined cook. So when he wanted to make me dinner (somewhat nervously, I remember), I jumped at the chance to have non-takeout, non-dining hall, non-dorm food—food that was made for me, which is hard to come by in college. In exchange, I took advantage of non-bolted-down appliances and pans and made crepes for dessert.

He made a great meal that night and served...beets! (They were the punchline to a joke, surely, not part of a real dinner.) They were incredibly sweet and so intensely flavored—nothing like I had imagined. He made them simply—cubed with melted butter and salt—and they became an instant favorite. Ever since that dinner, we've made beets part of the regular rotation. I still can't get over how they taste—so sweet but also like the smell of topsoil after a warm rain. The texture is firm but silky, and they can go in so many flavor directions, although my favorite is still butter and salt...beets à l'université, perhaps.

Last week's CSA box had some beautiful beets, both chiogga and red. I put them in a pot of boiling water and let them go until they yielded to the fork tines. I don't go crazy poking to test them out or they leak their red and, I feel (perhaps incorrectly), some of their flavor. I had an event to go to the next night, so I couldn't walk around with red hands and nails. It's hard to avoid the tell-tale beet hands, but I discovered something one night making dinner when I was in such a rush that I didn't rinse my hands after hand-tossing an oily salad: Oily hands take on less color and come clean much more easily. So this time I rubbed a preventative teaspoon of oil around my hands and used paper towels to rub off the beet skin. The skin of a boiled or baked beet slides right off, so it's a pretty easy task.

I sliced the beets into coins and tossed them lightly with oil. Then I topped them with a mixture I made from bright and fragrant red onions, yellow mustard seed, and a juiced orange. The sweet of the red onion teams up with the sweetness of the beets. But it's sharpness keeps the monotony at bay, alongside the sharpness and warm heat of the whole mustard seeds. The orange juice turns it all into a sort of hot vinaigrette for the beet salad, adding plenty of the resonant sweet notes, as well as the acid required to bring it all into balance. 

Not only that, it looked so pretty. We dug in before I took a picture (Doh!), but a dish of beets with a confetti of red and white from the onion and dots of mustard seed looks very festive. OK, to be completely accurate, I started stealing the little beet discs while I finished making the rest of dinner.

When I eat beets for dinner, I always take an extra serving. I need to make up for all the pre-college years when I never had any, I think.

Beets with Red Onion Confetti

• cooked beets, peeled and cut into discs
• olive oil
• 1 red onion, diced
• 1 tablespoon yellow or brown mustard seeds
• juice of half of an orange

1. Toss the beets in a small amount of olive oil, enough to coat them and make them glisten
2. In a tablespoon of olive oil, sauté the red onion and mustard seeds. They should begin to turn translucent, but not fully, so they still hold their form and texture
3. Add the juice from half an orange. Keep on the heat and toss around to mix it thoroughly and get it evenly hot.
4. Put the beets in a serving dish and top with the red onion confetti

Top photo (cc) bdsworld

Happy Hitchhiker

by April Paffrath

 

I was cleaning the kale from Siena Farms a few weeks ago and this little guy jumped off the kale onto the book I had on the counter. It's not unusual to have little hitchhikers, but it's less common than I thought it would be, honestly. Instead of being freaked out, it made me happy. The food we're eating is fresh enough and devoid of chemicals that this little guy is making his way unhindered. And yet the produce is always unmarred and undamaged. Seeing the kale passenger is a good reminder that our food is part of an ecosystem. It grows in the ground, surrounded by animals and weather. What we eat is connected to the farm, it's not something that just shows up in your fridge out of nowhere. That's what makes the food taste so fresh and alive—because it is. Nicholas Kristof had a good column this summer about growing up on his family farm in Oregon and how he always had to be on the lookout for caterpillars in the dinner salad. But now, he realized, he's nostalgic for those buggy encounters.

Organic is a funny word. So many people think they know what organic means, but over time—and with the addition of regulation, certification and marketing—the terms is less a part of common understanding and more a part of legal marketing. What I care about is how the produce or goods are raised, what treatments are used, and what residues or systemic permanence those treatments have. Basically, I prefer organic food. But I don't always need the organic label—especially if I know the farmer or I know that the store stocking the food has asked the supplying farmers the important questions about chemicals and practices. A farmer has to pay for certification and for some farmers who still truly take care of the land, the produce and the animals, that cost is prohibitive. Lacking certification doesn't mean their food is magically non-organic, it just means it can't be marketed as such.

Earlier this season, my husband and I took our 3-year-old for a walk through the fields at Siena Farms. We loved showing her the fennel and how brussels sprouts grow right against the stalk. What struck us most were the sounds of the farm and what those sounds mean. We heard a cacophony of birds and buzzing insects and frogs. The frogs! Growing up in the country, I was used to hearing, not the quiet of nature, but the clamor of it all. Frogs sound like rubber band drums and they are one of the first species to react to the chemical applications in the fields. The fact that the creek burbling through the fields was loaded with frogs was as good a sign as the plentiful buzzing insects and the birds who feed on them—or of the happy dinnertime hitchhiker I found in the kale—that the farm and the farmers we look to for our food are doing right by the produce, but also by the consumers and the environment the farm depends on. The loudest farm, I've decided, may be the best.

Listen in! The frogs are loud. (You'll hear some other visitors, as well as my daughter playing with pebbles in the frog-filled creek.) These sounds are of a tasty farm.

FarmFrogs

Refrigerator Raid Pasta

by April Paffrath

I adore cooking, but with a busy life, some days it's hard to gather up the oomph required for several dishes and a delightful dinner. Some days it's enough to get people fed.

I have a quick trick for the days when you need something in between take-out and 3-course involvement: Angel hair pasta (cooks in 3-5 minutes) and a fast fridge raid sauté. I need to remind myself of how fast it really is before throwing in the towel and buzzing in the delivery person (even though we usually restrict our take out to some awesome local restaurants). Dinner can be on the table in 5-10 minutes.

Having a CSA share makes refrigerator raid meals exciting and tasty. The farm may have included a fennel bulb that I didn't get to yet. Or perhaps some green peppers that I forgot until now. The ready-packed CSA boxes add more variety than you'd get if you just bought the same produce every week. You're forced to try something new. It's one of the best CSA share perks, I think.

For this particular meal, I grabbed a big pan, heated some olive oil on med-high and added two handfuls of frozen chopped onions from the freezer. (It truly pays to chop and freeze, but it takes a scarce minute to chop a single onion while the pan warms up.) I chopped up two couza squash that were lingering in the fridge and needed to be eaten while they were still good and tasty. Add that and/or any other veggies laying around that seem tasty, and toss it all a few times. I wanted some color and a bit of a self-making sauce, so I added a half a can of diced tomatoes (I'll learn to do that myself in future years when there's no blight), some salt and pepper, and simply cooked until hot. Total time was about 5-10 minutes.

While doing that tiny bit of chopping and tossing, I put angel hair pasta into boiling water. I always choose angel hair for the quick meals because it cooks before you know it. I have an electric tea kettle that boils the water super fast, so there's no waiting around for a pan of water to start bubbling.

In 5 minutes, the pasta is done and drained, the veggies have been tossed around and cooked. Add the pasta to the pan of veggies and give it a stir. When you plate it up, grate some Parmigiano on top. (Don't be stingy with the cheese, ever.)

Done.

It's the fastest meal available in our house. It uses veggies that might otherwise be forgotten in a busy week and turn evil. It's faster than delivery and pick-up and it's recession-hardy to boot. Food that you might have to throw away because of neglect on a busy week is the least expensive food there is. You're saving it from being wasted and you're making something that really is a fantastic and fast meal.

This speedy meal was gobbled up by five hungry people and it was a fun race to make it and serve it before tummy rumbling got out of control.

Escarole and Chickpea Stew

by April Paffrath

Escarole just sounds lovely, doesn't it? Escarole. I think it actually sounds ruffly with a bitterness that cuts through the frilly looks. And so it is. I am crazy for bitterness along the lines of escarole. It's not the heavy and unrelenting sort that you suffer through just to prove you can. It's like a good bitter beer—the bitterness adds to real flavor tones to mount into a full-profile experience. Escarole is no sissy lettuce (although, I'm sure you'll agree, most lettuces aren't actually sissy lettuces, either). Escarole has meaning. Escarole.

This year I've been experimenting with cooking lettuces and greens instead of just eating them raw, as I usually do. I love chard sautéed. I love kale in ribollita and oven baked into paper-thin crisps. I love cooked lettuce tart. In the weeks of spring and summer when we were almost overrun with lettuce, I sautéed or blanched several batches and put them up in the chest freezer for a green bitter hit mid-winter. Escarole is no exception.

Escarole and bean stew is an easy dish that is full-bodied and hearty, while still light enough and healthy-feeling to eat several servings. This stew isn't a traditional potato and carrot affair, with root vegetables and deep flavors. This stew is intense yet comforting. Brothy and filling. It's like a new kind of chicken soup.

I'm not sure where this idea comes from, honestly. The phrase "escarole and bean soup" probably stood out in some conversation and I ran with it. Or perhaps I saw it made somewhere. Sadly, I have no memory, but I know the idea originated with someone else long ago. (Thank you, someone else.)

The mild flavor of the leeks with the brightness of the escarole are wonderful. The starchy (and adorable) chick peas are a perfect match for some homemade vegetable broth. All together it's yummy.

Escarole and Chickpea Stew

• 2 leeks, chopped finely
• olive oil
• 1 head of escarole
• 1-2 cans of chickpeas (or your own made from dried beans)
• vegetable or chicken stock (the amount depends on the size of the escarole and the amount of chick peas. It also depends if you like the stew a bit more soupy. I used 3-4 quarts). I used veggie stock that I made early in the season and put in the freezer.

1. Cook the leeks in a tablespoon or so of olive oil.
2. In another pan, warm the stock.
3. When the leeks have cooked for several minutes, add the escarole and let it wilt a bit in the heat.
4. Add the stock until it's the right balance of liquid for your tastes.
5. Add the chickpeas and make sure they get good and hot. The escarole should wilt and its bright green color should mute a bit.
6. Ladle your stew into a stoneware bowl. Grate plenty of parmesan over the top.
   
7. Cradle the bowl in your hands and spoon up the comforting meal. It's especially stellar on a day when you didn't expect rain, but it rained anyway.

Baked Celery Root Mash and Eggs

by April Paffrath

At Siena Farms last weekend, I picked up a celeriac, or celery root, to supplement our CSA box. I love celery root…I think on it deliciously and fondly. The thing about it is, though, that I usually prepare it with other hearty root vegetables, like potatoes—and that's a wrong that I hastily righted this weekend.

On this recent trip to Oxford, it all changed. Before the elaborate Samuel Pepys dinner made by Fergus Henderson, I bought his two cookbooks Nose to Tail Eating and Beyond Nose to Tail. I asked him to sign one for lovely Genevieve, our "meat blogger," hoping it might inspire and inform her culinary quests. Since I haven't seen her since getting back, her cookbook has been sitting in my dining room, tempting me. I've read most of it by now. Although the premise of the book is all meat, there are several vegetable dishes, including the celery root one that rocked my world.

The dish is so simple in terms of flavor and concept: baked eggs nested in a mash of celery root and celery leaves. The round flavors of golden, runny yolks combine with the green of celery leaves and the deep root flavors of the celeriac. It's all a bit like a fresh breakfast hash and I think it would be lovely as a brunch or lunch dish—although we thought it was a perfect dinner dish that we'll repeat often. I love eggs for supper.

Don't go for a super smooth mash because the consistency with the eggs would be boring, so when you boil the celery root, stop before the pieces fall apart. The celery at Siena Farms is not like the celery at most grocery produce sections. Store celery can look pale and taste like bitter cardboard—and have almost no leaves at all. For this dish you want something more vibrant (and leafy). Siena Farms celery is bright green, so you taste plenty of those verdant, vegetal flavors that you look for in, well, vegetables. The tops of the celery stalks are crowned with perfect splays of gorgeous leaves. I've always been a fan of celery leaves—the parts of the plant all have different flavors and the leaves are delicate yet potent. I used the leaves from an entire stalk, so there was plenty of bright green in the dish and I think that set off the roundness of the eggs well.

Classic oven shot

Pete and Jen's Backyard Birds eggs were the choice for this dish. The yolks on their eggs are amazing and golden—almost orange. The pasture-fed chickens produce eggs that have flavor and color. I would not attempt this dish with insipid pale-yolked eggs, since the eggs are kind of the showcase piece. If you don't have a local producer of pasture-fed laying chickens, go for a brand you love, like Country Hen.

Celery Root Bake
adapted from Fergus Henderson in Nose to Tail Eating

• 1 celery root
• 1 to 1 1/2 sticks of butter
• celery leaves from one bunch
• 6 eggs
• salt

1. Cube and boil the celery root in salted water. When tender, drain well.
2. Mash with the butter. Use as much as looks tasty, but don't be shy. Worry about it for another dish.
3. Chop the celery leaves and stir into the mash
4. Put the mash into a baking dish and make 6 indentations. Fill each one with an egg. Henderson calls for 8 eggs, but I couldn't fit that many in my dish. If you can, go for it. Season each egg with a bit of salt and top with a dot of butter.
5. Bake in a hot oven (I set mine for 475F) until the eggs set but the yolks are still runny. It took about 8-9 minutes for mine.
   
   Eat and think of all the meals you could so easily make this for—breakfast, lunch, dinner.

Local Food Outing

by Cynthia Graber

field trip with Tom Schlesinger-Guidelli to the Copley Square Farmers Market

Recently, I had the chance to wander downtown with one of my local food loves. But the story begins earlier.

I was thrilled last year that Craigie Street Bistro was doing so well that chef Tony Maws decided to expand and move his operations to a new home. (Which, of course, was no longer on Craigie Street, and so morphed into the aptly named Craigie on Main.)

This brought a note of danger into my life - danger to my wallet, that is. I'm a huge fan of Tony's cooking. And when the restaurant had beautiful little tables in a cozy, basement hide-out of a restaurant, I only went a couple of times a year.

But last November, Craigie moved into its new digs on Main Street in Central Square. Right down the street from my old apartment. With a bar area. (And an open kitchen, which you can read about in my Boston Globe article from last February.) Suddenly, a place I'd held in reserve for special-occasion dining became a neighborhood hang-out.

And Tony now has to share my undying affection with a new love in my life: Tom Schlesinger-Guidelli, who runs the bar. Tom recently won Boston's best mixologist from the Improper Bostonian in July. His name may also ring familiar to many of you locals, as his uncle is Chris Schlesinger, chef/owner of East Coast Grill and the nearby All Star Sandwich Bar, both in Inman Square.

Tom shares Tony's obsession with quality, taste, and local ingredients. I love to sit at the bar, watching him measure, pour, chop, muddle, shake. He's happy to share tales about what he's made lately, what he's experimenting with, or what he's seen at the market. One of my recent favorite drinks was a short-lived concoction made with his own "corn syrup": he took the best of the local corn, boiled and strained and concentrated until he had a syrup of pure corn sweetness, then mixed it with alcohols I can no longer remember. It was light, sweet without being cloying, with a hint of corn's earthiness.

Last Friday, Tom and I went on a jaunt over to Copley market together. I was curious to watch him interact with the produce, and I wanted to hear more about how he works it into his drink menu.

I wish I had a transcript, but I didn't want to tape a casual conversation with a friend. So instead, I'll be as exact as I can be. As these aren't direct quotes, I'll use dashes. (Tom, feel free to correct me.)

Tom told me one tale from before he took over at Craigie, from when Tony visited him at Eastern Standard: - It's difficult to be as seasonal as I'd like to be, because I have to use citrus all year round. Tony came to Eastern Standard an I made him a drink, and it had lemon in it, and he asked, is it local? -

At which point we both laughed. Citrus of course is never local in Boston. Florida and California, sure. New England? Maybe not until global warming wreaks havoc on our local climate.

We wandered around Copley, picking up husk cherries to snack on (tiny, sweet tomatillo-like delights, you can read about them in an Edible Boston article I wrote). He scooped up a bunch of peaches and nectarines. He mentioned a drink he's working on with apples and celery.

We were staring at about ten different types of apples, and I commented that I haven't yet learned to tell one from the other. He selected four different varieties and tossed them into bags.

- I'll use them in mocktails and get to know their flavor profiles, - he said.

It turns out mocktails, made for the alcohol-averse, have become something of a surprise hit. Tom even creates a flight of mocktails to accompany dinner, upon request, and he enjoys cooking up drinks that compliment and play off Tony's food. (He course creates alcoholic versions!) For example, he explained, Tony may use one flavor in a dish as an undertone, but Tom will seize on it as the main note of a drink.

- This is where I get to use more savory, - he said.

Tom said he's also looking to expand the season by canning, and we chatted about all the different methods for preserving fruit. Unfortunately, our summer downpours shortened both the strawberry and raspberry season. But he's now got a couple hundred jars of fruit, such as blackberries and peaches, behind the bar.

"What will you do with them?" I asked. "Muddle? Blend? Chop?"

- I don't know - he shrugged. - Whatever I feel like. -

Which, of course, sounds a bit like his creative approach to drinks in general. And I can assure you that 'whatever he feels like' usually tastes fantastic.

We sat outside in the sun, ringed by farmers and produce, surrounded by the sounds of the city, talking about food, cooking, eating, life. There where many times I thought - oh! this would be great to share! But I had no interest in taking out a notebook and making it official. I just drifted along with the lazy meander of our word and enjoyed the afternoon.

So you'll have to forgive me for not writing down more of our conversation. Instead, I'll offer this advice. Next time you go to Craigie on Main and somehow manage to squeeze in at the bar, see if Tom has a spare 30 seconds or so as he's putting the finishing touches on someone's drink. Ask what local flavors he's enjoyed lately, tell him what types of alcohol and drinks you like, and ask for his recommendation.

Braised Sunflowers

by April Paffrath

 
Siena Farms grows beautiful sunflowers. They are impeccable (like their produce) and intensely golden, just like you would imagine they should be. Somehow they look even brighter in huge groupings, like gigantic bouquets sitting in big buckets instead of vases.

Recently, I went to an event at Erbaluce Boston and chef Charles Draghi presented a buffet of meats, veggies and more with a bagna cauda. Included in the veggie line-up were some sunflower heads. For real. I was shocked. It's so rare that I eat something that I've *never* had before, much less something I didn't know was in the realm of possible dinner options. It was almost emotionally thrilling.

The sunflower heads looked like artichoke hearts, and tasted not too far off, either. They have that familiar tangy hit that's a tad bitter followed by the sweet sweep at the end. The sunflower, though, is less harsh and more sweet. The texture and color are very similar to artichoke, but not exactly the same. You need to try them to find out the difference.

Ever since that event, I have wanted to make sunflowers in my own kitchen. Luckily, How2Heroes posted a great video of Charles Draghi making sunflower heads (watch it below), this time filled with a ricotta herb mixture. On my next visit to Siena Farms in Sudbury—I like to go there, even though I get the CSA box, to pick up extras and see what's not making it into the box—I chatted with Trevor about the giant yellow flowers.

You want to make sure that flowers you choose to include on your plate are free from pesticides and other treatments that might not be safe for consumption. (You even have to take care with any organic treatments because "organic" does not equal "edible" in all cases.) Flowers often get different treatments if they aren't considered a food crop, so you need to ask. I asked Trevor just to be sure, even though I know Siena Farms is organic and was likely supplying food-grade sunflowers to restaurants (they are). You just need to be safe when you're dealing with chemicals and dinner. He loaded me up with a bagful of sunflowers, several of them past their bouquet prime, but perfect for dinner because they were tender and fully ripe.

I watched the video and decided to follow it pretty closely, but with a couple of tweaks….as always.

When you look at a pile of golden sunflower heads, it's hard to know where to start. I picked off the petals and trimmed around the outside edge, removing the green sepals of the calyx (the green petal-like leaves that are underneath the petals), and exposing the pith of the flower head. Next, I turned the flowerhead on edge and trimmed off the yellow face of the flower. I learned through a few practice passes that it's easy to cut too deep or too shallow. You want to remove the yellow face and be left with the pithy meat. Don't take off too much, just remove the yellow. Finally, trim off the stem that you've used as a handle, as well as the green underside of the flower. That can be a little tricky because of its concave sections, but it only took one flower to figure out the best way to go. As I prepped each one until it looked like a giant white, flat artichoke heart, I popped it into acidulated water (water + a bit of lemon juice) to stop oxidation. I went slowly on my first flower head and I noticed some browning by the time I finished, so they all got a lemon juice and water bath while I got the rest of the dish set up.

On the first flower, I trimmed the back before the face, but in doing so, I lost my handle. Oops.

I braised them in olive oil, white wine (Mâcon is what I was drinking, so that was the choice), lemon juice, garlic and herbs. When they were tender after about 40 minutes, I carefully put them in an oven-safe pan and filled them with the ricotta-herb combo. It was a difficult choice to diverge from Draghi's recipe, because it looked so good, but I split the filling in two to try different herbs. One batch was close to the parsley-thyme-basil that he envisioned and the other half was more like an herbes de Provence mix. So, each ricotta batch was a bit different: nutmeg for low flavor notes, and lemon zest for the high notes, and then different herbs for the middle range.

I sprinkled the top of the filling with bread crumbs and let it cook in the oven. It took close to a half hour to get the ricotta hot and the bread crumbs crisp and golden. Draghi suggests a vinaigrette with capers, which we tried on one part, using a caper tapenade (Formaggio was out of my favorite salted capers, so the tapenade was a compromise). I liked it, but I was in the mood for sunnier, rounder flavors. I toasted some pine nuts to sprinkle on top. Instead of vinaigrette, I drizzled a bit of the braising liquid and followed that with a very light drizzle of rosemary honey. Oh my. It was the perfect blend of sweet, toasty, bitter and awesome. To experiment, I drizzled a bit of my homemade basil oil around the plate to set off the basil notes in the braising liquid—just a touch.

Yum.

You can see how the texture is very like artichoke. The flower face feathers a bit as it braises.

Pepper with some of the plucked petals and serve with a salad and a gorgeous dressing. Then, just wish that you had thought to make this earlier in the summer when you'd have an entire season of sunflowers ahead of you, instead of mere weeks.

Check out the How2Hero video to walk you through. Then rush out and get some organic, edible flowers and try it.