Wicked Tasty Harvest

How Does Your Garden Grow?

By Genevieve Rajewski

Although Nate and I spend a lot of time, food-wise, mulling what meat to cook and where to get it, this winter we were all about the veggies--the amazing ones we hoped to grow. For us, dreams of yard farming was the perfect mental getaway from the many feet of snow outside.

We considered two approaches, both involving raised-bed gardening for soil safety’s sake. (We live in a 100-year-old house in an older neighborhood, so we have to assume the soil may be contaminated with the lead paint and leaded gas fumes that were so prevalent once upon a time.)

First, we thought about hiring Green City Growers to come consult on where best to build a raised bed and then to construct it and get the seeds started for us. (I read in Edible Boston, that they can do a starter garden for $500, but somehow we never got the timing of a phone consultation right.)

Next, we thought about buying a raised-bed system like the one our friend Simone just installed. It is gorgeous and--no surprise given Simone’s green thumb--already off to a productive start.

But as grandiose as our garden dreams were, in no scenario did we ever think we’d actually have the time or construction skills necessary to build a raised system ourselves. Yes, I am sure we could slap something together that would technically hold the weight of soil and plants. But would it be polished enough to not trash-ify our front yard? Doubtful, and that's the only part of our yard with enough sunny space left to grow vegetables.

Amusingly, using the front yard was the most contentious part of our farming plans when we mentioned them to family members--not so much for appearances’ sake, but because they (as true, suspicious Massachusetts folk) all assume that passersby will steal the veggies. Is that even a real risk? I’d love to know if that has actually happened to anyone.

(I, on the other hand, was convinced that planting veggies out front might give us an opportunity to chat with neighbors and people walking by as we worked—and even to make a few new friends if we ended up with enough food to give away. Of course, as a true Masshole, I am sure I’d never ask the names of any of those people, even if I liked talking to them everyday. But I digress.)

Ultimately, Nate and I decided that we were perhaps being a little overly ambitious, given that we’d never grown food before. So we decided to start small and to just use our new patio and back stairs for container gardening.

Right outside the kitchen door, we now have a window box full of basil, thyme, oregano and sage; a huge pot of rosemary; and individual pots of mint, parsley and dill. (I have pillaged the parsley so much already that I plan to plant more next year; the dill I’d love recipes for as I love the taste but have too much crop already.)

But I am most excited, if cautiously optimistic, about our vegetable plants: fanfare cucumbers; crookneck summer squashes; and three kinds of tomatoes (including the heirloom varieties Brandywine and Cherokee purple) paired with marigolds.

All this leaves me wondering what are you growing? How’s it going so far? What are you going to do with the results? Has anyone found vegetable gardening to be their next step after joining a CSA?

Tomato Love

by Cynthia Graber

 

Dear Mom:

Your baby's all grown up. It's true. Remember when I was little? When I thought raw tomatoes were, to be frank, disgusting? Maybe that was because you weren't yet growing your own, and I had only taken bites of those flavor-free red shiny lumps that masquerade as tomatoes. Or maybe, in a past life, I lived in Colonial America and agreed with the general populace that tomatoes were poison.

Remember back when I was an exchange student in Switzerland, and I crowed to you that I'd forced myself to eat an entire raw tomato stuffed with tuna salad, when I was a guest at someone's house? I was so proud that I'd managed to force it down. Remember that?

How times change. I'm now addicted to these love apples, in all their colors and sizes: tiny ones, voluptuous ones, in flirty yellow, sexy magenta, cheery orange, and refreshing green. I probably shouldn't admit to a favorite (how to choose when they're all so enticing?) but I think I might love Green Zebras best. They have a slight citrusy tang that I can't get enough of. But that doesn't mean I ignore the rest; I bought a deep purplish variety that was perfect for a yoghurt-based gazpacho (recipe to follow).

I've heard farmers say that this summer, full of languid, sunny days, is one of the best for tomatoes in recent memory. So I'm standing by the maxim I told you last year, that a day without a tomato (in season) is a wasted food day.

I'm wasting no time. I just wonder if I can eat enough to satiate my tomato desire. I'm going to have to start freezing: roasting them, cooking some down into sauce, and I hear you can even just chop and freeze uncooked tomatoes to use in future dishes.

And, Mom, you know what else? I'm going to be a judge Monday morning at the Massachusetts Farmers' Market Week kick-off tomato contest on City Hall Plaza. That's right - it's true. I'm going to be judging raw tomatoes.

Like I said, your baby's all grown up.

Love, me

Eating tomatoes

• Just do it. With olive oil, salt. Maybe some cheese.
• Eat them like the Spanish do: Slice them in perfect rounds on a plate, drizzle a bit of olive oil, and drape oil-packed anchovies over top, one by one, about one or two per piece of tomato.
• My favorite: Tomato toast. Cut thick slices of a tomato. Put on top of bread, and scatter a bit of cheese (cheddar, feta, whatever) on top. Slide into the toaster oven until the cheese is melted and the tomatoes are hot. Take it out, sprinkle with salt, some fresh herbs, maybe a drizzle of olive oil. I've discovered that lavender salt (a gift from a friend) tastes sublime with tomato toast.

Yoghurt-based Gazpacho from the New York Times, by Melissa Clark

This might be my favorite soup so far this summer. I adore gazpacho, and I love the creaminess of the soups served in Spain. But that creaminess comes from left-over bread, and I haven't wanted to buy the right bread just to have left-overs. That seemed silly. So I was intrigued by this recipe from the New York Times, which Melissa Clark devised as a cross between a smoothie and gazpacho. It's amazing. I doubled the recipe for a dinner I made for four people. We did have some left-overs, but I slurped those down the next day for lunch. Find the original recipe here, and I'll write it out for you below as well.

• 6 tablespoons grated pecorino romano (for the crisps to crumble on top)
• 2 large tomatoes, about a pound
• 1 1/2 cups whole-milk yoghurt. She suggested sheep's milk, and I used it, and it was great. I'm sure it'll work with regular yoghurt as well
• 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
• 12 basil leaves - she says to roughly chop them, but I didn't bother and just threw them in the blender
• 2 large garlic cloves, peeled and roughly chopped 
• 2 scallions, white and light green parts, roughly chopped
• 1 3/4 teaspoons kosher salt, more to taste (that's her original amount, I think I just tossed some in)
• 1 1/2 teaspoons red wine vinegar, more to taste
• Pinch cayenne pepper
• Ground black pepper to taste
• 2 ice cubes

As I said, I doubled this all. If you do double it, remember that it won't all fit into a blender at the same time.

For the cheese crisps, heat a large skillet (I used cast iron, with a tiny bit of oil on it, or she said you can use a nonstick skillet). Spread about two tablespoons of cheese into a thin layer, and let it brown and crisp up on one side. It should take about a minute. Then flip it over, and let it cook on the other side until equally toasty. My pan was big enough that I could make a few of these at a time. Move them onto a paper town, and keep going until the cheese is all gone. Break the cheese into pieces for serving.

For the soup, put all the remaining ingredients into the blender. Add more salt, or vinegar, or cayenne, as necessary.

Here's what I did for dinner: I put everything except the ice cubes into the blender. My friends arrived. Once we were ready for soup, I went back into the kitchen, and I put the ice cubes in, and whirred everything together until smooth. Then I poured it into bowls and garnished with the cheese crisps. She says to garnish with extra basil and olive oil, and I'm sure that's lovely, but I didn't bother. Everyone asked for seconds. 

Panic

by Cynthia Graber

 

Let's say you have a friend who's a professional chef. That friend invites you over to his apartment and serves a meal that could command big bucks at top Boston restaurants - because he has, in fact, worked at top Boston restaurants.

You email him to thank him profusely and admit that you'd love to return the invitation, but are intimidated by the very idea of preparing food for him. He waves that away and says he loves going to dinner parties.

Do you -

A) Never write back and pretend that you lost the email?

B) Insist that you would be paralyzed with fear to cook for him, and just continue to enjoy his hospitality? or

C) Take him at his word, figure out a date to have him and his girlfriend over before he moves out of the state, and then panic?

I went with C.

A wise friend, also in the food business, told me to buy the best ingredients and do very little to them. As that was already my basic game plan, I liked that advice. I did intend for the dishes to be fairly simple, but of course they didn't quite turn out that way. Why make something simple when you can make it complicated? The complications here turned out to be time-related, as I needed to shell a pound of peas, shell two pounds of favas, blanch them, then slip them out of their white casings. And then make, oh, about six different dishes.

The food was generally good. Some recipes worked better than others. I loved the silky fava soup, but the arugula sauce I'd devised for the salmon was a little too bitter, and the rich, fatty fish didn't quite cut the bitterness. The sauce did, however, taste fantastic on the left-over herbed rice/risotto the next day.

And the chef? I kept sneaking glances at him as he ate. The entire meal. I couldn't help it. A professional chef! Eating my food!

But, really, I don't think anyone was analyzing the balance of tarragon versus parsley in the rice. The laughter and friends were the best part of the meal, the food was a (hopefully tasty) side-note. At least that's what I'm telling myself.

Pea Spread, to be scooped up with bread, chips, or whatever else you have around, as a shockingly green first course

• 1 lb fresh peas, the sweetest you can find
• about 1/4 to 1/2 cup of ricotta, the richest, earthiest you can find
• sprinkle of salt
• other spices to taste - I've now made this twice, and the first time I used thyme, and a bit of spicy pepper. This time I added Spanish paprika for a smoky note.

Shell the peas, and bring a pot of water to a boil. Blanch the peas in the water for only a minute. Take them out and plunge them into cold or ice water to keep them from cooking, and to keep their nearly fluorescent color.

Put the peas in a food processor with the ricotta (you can start with 1/4 cup, and add to taste). Pulse the processor so that it turns the peas into a blend but not a smooth puree. When you have a consistency you like, stir in some salt spices to taste. Refrigerate until the company comes, then oooh and ahhh over the color and fresh taste.

Fruit

by Cynthia Graber

 

Earlier this week, I heard a friend give a book talk. Afterwards, I stopped by JP Licks for a treat. Usually, I ask for a taste of a flavor before I choose, but this time, the flavor of the week - fresh strawberry and rhubarb - leapt out at me. I chose it without hesitation.

And then, after a few bites, I threw it away. Yes, you read that right. I threw away ice cream.

Where was the bit of the rhubarb? The snap of the strawberries? How could fresh strawberry and rhubarb ice cream be bland? MY strawberry ice cream is far from bland. It has sparkle, verve. In fact, I knew right then that I had to pick up more strawberries and make strawberry/sour cream ice cream, one of my favorites. This weekend.

But I'd recently cooked up a strawberry-rhubarb compote, and I'd already decided that it would taste divine swirled into goat cheese ice cream. Okay, that's two ice creams to create this week.

And then, when I biked to Copley today to up more strawberries, miracle of miracles! A stand was selling sour cherries! Ever since I churned out sour cherry frozen yoghurt two years ago, from fruit purchased at Copley, I've dreamt of the magic those flavors produced. Tart, sweet heaven.

That makes three frozen treats for this weekend. Time to head to the store for the rest of the ingredients. Anyone want to come over for dessert? I have a feeling I'm about to go overboard...

Creamy Green Soup

by April Paffrath

My daughter's lunch: Creamy Green Soup and tiny carrots.

Summer food is amazing. When our Siena Farms CSA shares started the other week, our dinners were transformed. There’s just a world of difference between food from the average store and food from the farm. With a CSA share, you never know exactly what you’ll get, but you do have an idea, based on the growing season. Right now, lettuces are amazing and sweet, radishes are vibrant and spicy, beets are tender and lovely, and the deep greens—oh, the greens! I swear that Siena Farms grows their radishes and beets for the greens more than for the roots. The beet and radishes themselves are stellar, but the greens are perfect.

There are plenty of greens to eat all week long. That can be a windfall, or it can be overwhelming if you’ve had a busy week, if you’ve gone out a lot, or you’re just done already with the greens sautéed in garlic and oil. Some weeks last year, on the eve of our next CSA share pick-up, I would look in the fridge and see that we hadn’t eaten as many greens as I thought we would have. With another share of Boston’s best on the way, you could be looking at a domino effect of mounting greens. No one wants that because it can lead to waste, which is pointless.

But I have a solution, and it’s so tasty.

It’s so tasty, in fact, that my 4-year-old asks (no, begs) for more helpings. It’s green soup. Well, a sort of crema de verduras, if we’re going to be specific about the origins of the idea. When we travel in Spain, one of our many favorite dishes is a velouté of green vegetables and greens. It’s a smooth and wonderful soup, easy to eat, and so packed with delicious flavors.

This soup is fantastic because it’s fast, it’s bright and appealing, it uses up any greens that are threatening to go bad, and you really taste the intricate flavors of the greens. And for you parents out there, it’s way easier for our daughter to eat this soup than it is for her to chew on greens forever (and with little kid teeth, it really can be forever).

I use whatever greens I have. Actually, it works with all kinds of vegetables, but I find this soup absolutely shines with greens. For this week’s soup, I used a medium bunch of beet greens, a large bunch of brightly colored Swiss chard, and a salad spinner packed full of arugula. I de-stalked the beet greens and the Swiss chard, to avoid overly fibrous soup. Separately, the Swiss chard stalks met with a fine chop and sauté, which was sweet and wonderful. (Swiss chard is quite sweet, actually, and I think it worked perfectly with the spicy arugula and the earthy beet greens.) Don’t be afraid to try different combinations, and don’t forget about lettuce. Lettuce is actually a soup standard from our grandparents’ days. It's underused beyond salad these days, but so fantastic.

I’ve made this soup before with broccoli rabe, escarole, pepper cress, and so much more. It’s so easy to wing it. It’s important to use a LOT of greens to the volume of stock for a soup that just sings out with flavor and punch. No one wants insipid soup. No one. It’s also important to let this go in a blender for quite a long time—you want the greens to break up thoroughly. We strained the final version, but you don’t have to if the greens are young enough, your blender is powerful enough, and it’s not too thready when you taste it.

Creamy velouté of deep greens

• olive oil
• 1 medium onion, chopped (I always keep some pre-chopped in the freezer)
• 1 qt of stock (i use vegetable stock, but a chicken would be nice, too.)
• 1 med bunch of beet greens, de-stalked
• 1 large bunch of Swiss chard leaves, de-stalked
• 1 big bunch of arugula—fill up a large salad spinner and that’s a good amount
• whole milk
• salt

1. Sauté onion in olive oil until just turning translucent, about 5 minutes
2. Add in the stock and heat to a boil
3. Add the thoroughly washed and prepped greens, and put the lid on the pan. I had to work to get all the greens in the pan—they shrink as they wilt, but initially, it takes a little maneuvering.
4. Stir, or prod the greens down into the stock, so they wilt.
5. Let them wilt and simmer for 3-5 minutes.
6. Turn off the heat and then put the soup into the blender. You’ll need to do a couple of batches. (Hot soup in a blender can be very dangerous, so don’t fill the blender container very high or you could be looking at a hot explosion. That turns a quick dinner like this one into a long, painful, and messy one.)
7. Turn up the blender and watch as the leaves break down into smaller and smaller pieces. You want it as smooth as it can get in your blender.
8. Optional: When it’s all blended, you can pour the soup through a medium mesh strainer (don’t go too fine, or chinois, or it won’t work well). Use a spatula or spoon to help it strain thoroughly. Depending on the tenderness of the greens, you might not need to do this—you can just serve with a hearty bread. I like to do it, even though it removes some of the fiber. Plenty remains and I think when you freeze or refrigerate leftovers, it retains its smooth consistency if it’s been strained. 
9. Return the soup to the pan and add a cup of whole milk (or yogurt, or half and half) and heat gently, but do not allow it to come to the boil. (To paraphrase a friend of mine, when we make this for the family, we use whole milk. When we make this for company, we use something richer.)

I pour leftovers into pyrex bowls and place them on a tray in the freezer until they’re frozen. Then I remove them from the bowls and put in freezer containers or bags. It’s fresh bright soup available in a flash all year long, then, with no waste during the season. Just make sure you label them well, because beet green soup looks an awful lot like broccoli soup.

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