kale ideas

I farm (and therefore…) and I try to cook, but I farm, so cooking isn’t always in the front seat of the priority truck. But when I choose and grow crops, I try to do it with a cookbook in my mind, as much as a technical crop manual. I started getting Cook’s Country, which isn’t as intense as Cook’s Illustrated and they have some great ideas.

A N-side regular asked for some kale ideas last week. And another N-side regular & potato planter outed all farmers by humorously noting that we hardly ever seem to eat what we’re growing (in my defense, going to market and selling everything this time of year is like emily’s list- “early money is like yeast, it makes the dough rise”). There is something to that though, I knew one friend who went on a growing season streak of eating salad and popcorn with tamari & yeast because it was easy, fast and simple. I knew another friend who couldn’t stand the taste of tomatoes.

Back to the topic at hand, some Kale ideas:

Here’s a something called crispy kale (which I’ve seen described as something kid’s will like and also as kale crack)

Take a big bowl of kale greens, removed from the stems, broken up into smallish pieces (I bought a bag of kale already prepped at the store). Toss with a TBSP of oil and a good sprinkle of salt. Crisp up on a baking rack set over a sheet pan at 250 degrees for about 25 minutes. Toss about halfway through. The kale will darken in color and diminish in volume dramatically. UPDATE: I made these at lunch and they’re really good. Just make sure that the kale gets crispy (it’ll darken)- use the toss to make sure each leaf is exposed.

Here’s a Trader Joe’s recipe (I have another one from the back of a bag I need to dig up).

This one looks really good: braised kale with chix stock & garlic

This one mixes kale with orzo (for those so inclined add some sausage and/or white beans and you’re in business).

Quick Thought

It’s getting dark earlier and there’s little time to do much outside when many of you get home. Depressing? I think not.

During the spring, all that’s available is kolrahbi and seriously…

In the summer, it’s hard to get into cooking much because there is so much to do, so much daylight to do it in, so much of what’s available is just as good raw or slightly cooked and how many times have you said, “it’s too damn hot to cook today”?

But now, there’s plenty of time, it’s too damn cold and there’s lots of amazing produce & meats available at market to try out. So get on over to a farmer’s market, grab Bittman or Cooks Country or the Art of Cooking from Star Market (ha), crank up the stove and oven and get to it.

What do I do with it: Cooking Blog

I just heard about this blog, public radio kitchen

As they say, it’s a site devoted to

“Recipes and cooking tips & opinions on all things edible served up by  You, Our Listeners. From locavores to omnivores, professional chefs to local food bloggers, all are welcome!”.

It looks to be a site with some good ideas, amazing pictures and either instructions or links to instructions on cooking (roasting chicken example ). Also the blog roll of related cooking sites (on the right hand panel) is so extensive, it’d have to rain another 5 days in a row for me to get through it. Go to the category box and scroll down to salad for great ideas & pictures.

It is a Boston based site (sponsored by WBUR, public radio), so if your vacation was at home this Summer, it’s also a vicarous travel site. The pictures of FISH! are really cool and the restaurant descriptions are fun to read.

Salad Mix Testing Center

We pull market bags of salad mix from time to time and test them for longevity, leaf quality, etc. in order to make sure that we have a really good salad mix product. It’s a way to make sure that our post-harvest handling (we don’t process anything) is effective.

This afternoon, I just went through some salad mix from market 5 days ago that I had placed in moby dick, the big white market cooler, with some frozen water bottles. I don’t seal the bags, just let them flop open/closed in an pile. And I stopped at 5 days since I needed to clean out the cooler and hope that most of you will eat a quarter of a pound of mix within that window. Or at least by the next market!

The cooler was sort of cold by today (most of the water had thawed), but it was certainly warmer than your home refridgerator. Needless to say the salad mix and arrugula was looking fine- good enough to eat! The only trouble spots were where excess water had accumulated or the bag was next to the ice, something that wouldn’t occur in a fridge since they tend to be drying environments.

Arrugula

You love it in salad (well, most of you); here’s two more ideas from Mark Bittman:

• Arrugula Pesto- no cheese & use it within a day on grilled veggies or rice (p.768)
• Grits Gratin with Arrugula and Garlic- polenta made with grits and 4 cups of arrugula (p.550)

First couple of people that come to Northside next week and volunteer to make either one will get a free bag of arrugula.

How to Cook Everything

I just got Mark Bittman’s book “How to Cook Everything: Vegetarian” out of the library this week. It’s a great resource, especially when you’re trying to eat locally, which means cooking, which takes time, which most of us don’t have a lot of at the end of the day. The hard part for me is not copying his recipes to this blog to give you some ideas…

The book has a 200 page section on vegetables, that walks the reader through a zillion veggies (alphabetically) from the basic- simpilest way to get something on the table to some more interesting things. Fav’s like Kale or Chard Pie?, what to do with starchy potatoes versus waxy potatoes (much of what we grow). This one is going to be overdue, I suspect.

Pesto ala Peg

Here’s a pesto receipe from friend Peg- very helpful for proportions when you don’t want to wing it.

Using a quisinart or a blender.

2 cups basil leaves (slightly packed) from our basil-tacular

1/2 cup olive oil

2T pine nuts (toast them!)

2 cloves garlic (sorry we’ll have it next year)

1t Salt (or sea salt or see salt)

1/2 cup grated parm cheese

Blend up the first five ingredients. Add the cheese. It’s more than enough for 1lb of pasta (which means you can freeze the bit you don’t use minus the cheese for later OR give it away)

Keeping Fruit

The NY Times has this really short, very cool article on keeping fruit from molding. It turns out that short exposure to boiling hot water kills of mold spores without noticable effect on the fruit. The question is, when will we start doing it to vegetables as a post harvest treatment?

What it’s all about

what's for dinner

Sunday dinner- three kinds of fingerling potatoes (have to come to market to find out what they are)
& garlic (99% of what we grew this year is for seed). That’s what I’m talkin’ about.

Something for the Eaters

coming attraction

coming attraction

Most of the posts so far have been oriented to growing or about the farm operation. So, I wanted to pause and remember the reason, which is producing great food.
We had some pesto the other night with garlic and basil from the home team that was incredible. And I’m hoping and looking forward to some late season watermelon, which you can see peeking out from the vines.

I’m hoping that an advantage of the late start this summer (practically speaking, we were about 1-2 months behind) is that while the main season tomatoes & melons, etc. fall off due to “old age”, our stuff will be coming into it’s own. Young and healthy enough to ward off disease and drought pressure and ready to shine.

I was sort of depressed when one grower told me that things slack off as soon as school starts and don’t pick up again until pumpkin season. In that chicken & egg sense, is it because what growers have to offer slacks off as well or because grower availability doesn’t shift with the changes in our customers’ schedules or are customers bored with summer produce and waiting for a change or does convenience win again and cooking loses out?