Week Fourteen: Mixed Bag of Weather

Over the past few years, I’ve been finding September to be a very strange month. The days leading up to Labor Day are hot and sticky, and then on that darned Tuesday everything gets all confused about what season it’s supposed to be. Do the leaves start to fall now? Do I need to keep blooming? Should it get cold at night? How hot are the days, again? Does it rain, or should it hail instead?

Seriously. Please explain.

We had beautiful days and cool nights this weekend. Friday I had to dress for two seasons: fall on top (sweater and fall-colored nails) and summer on bottom (skinny jeans, sandals, and pink toenails). I can’t say I minded; it really was a beautiful day. I unfortunately wasn't able to post last week, but don’t worry, nothing exciting happened. We got more of our usual: carrots, tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, lettuce, and so on.

More tomatoes, including a few "orange blossom", this week.

This week we got a bunch of good stuff: peppers (two kinds), broccoli, collards, a melon, tomatoes, beets, radishes, onions, and carrots. I pickled the radishes, half an onion, and a couple of the peppers... can't wait to try those! Unfortunately it does seem that most of the “delicate” summer veggies are going away for the season since the weather’s turned cooler… thanks for everything, cucumbers! It was great while it lasted

Collards and broccoli (!)

I signed up for some “techniques of cooking” classes over in Cambridge, and the first class this past weekend was knife skills – so I’ve been practicing the proper grip and slicing technique. I’ll try to play with (and document!) my newfound skills and cuts as I get more stuff to slice up. My immediate takeaway from the class was that I have a weird mental block about using the “claw” grip… I totally get that it’s supposed to protect you from slicing off your fingertips, since you have your knuckles out in front, but then I worry about slicing my knuckles off. Even though that’s not supposed to happen at all!

Frying peppers, bell peppers, and onions.

Little radishes and another melon.

I got an “all vegetables all the time” cookbook from my aunt for my birthday (wohoo!), so I’d been eager to try out one of the beet recipes in there. I got a chance to try it tonight – it’s sort of a beet and potato latke thing. I’ve also kept up (of course) with my regular pickled things… the frying peppers I got a couple weeks ago were great, and last week’s tiny bell peppers were, too. 

Golden beets this week

Crisp Beet and Potato Cake (from Vegetables Every Day by Jack Bishop)
We halved this recipe since I was making something else alongside... and I'm very glad! I'm sure we would have had too much for the pan if we'd used the full amounts. I think next time we'll try draining the beets a little bit; the outside seemed to be overly crisp and the inside a little mushy, although it still tasted great! It had the potato-y goodness of a latke and the "red" taste of the beets, which I thought made a great combination. Confession: Most of (okay, all) the hard work of washing, grating, and mixing was done by Dan, so thanks, honey!

1 lb russet potatoes (we used farm potatoes, no idea what kind)
1 1/2 tsp salt
4 medium beets (we used one red and one golden in the halved version)
1/4 c fresh snipped chives (subbed in leeks instead)
2 T butter

Peel the potatoes and grate with a box grater (don't forget your safety glove!) or a food processor. Toss with the salt. Peel and grate the beets, then mix with the potatoes. Throw in the chives and mix well.

Melt 1T butter in a wide (10-inch) nonstick skillet. Once the butter stops foaming, add the beet-potato mixture to the pan and press down to spread in an even layer. Cook over medium heat about 10-12 minutes until the bottom is nice and crispy. Press down with a spatula every now and then.

This is the tricky part: getting the cake out of the pan, onto a plate, and flipping it back into the pan so you can cook the top. Once the bottom is cooked, carefully slide the cake onto a big plate (ours wasn't quite done so it didn't slide very nicely). Melt the last tablespoon of butter in the pan until it stops foaming. As I'm re-reading the recipe now, I realize there is a much easier way to have done this: flip the cake onto another plate and then slide back into the skillet. (In the heat of the moment I just asked Dan for help, since I was stirring risotto and he happened to be there. He saved the day.) Cook the second side another 8-10 minutes until crisp on the bottom.

Slide onto a plate and serve in wedges.

Week Eleven: Halfway

Well, we crossed the halfway mark of the CSA this week… time certainly has been flying. The weather’s been weird, which seems to have led the farm crew to worry that the harvest would start shifting into autumn mode. Given this week’s harvest, though, I’m pretty sure the plants are still in summer production mode. The tomatoes, anyway.

We could pick a half-pint of raspberries from the fields. This one is about the size of the pad of my pinky finger.
And now I understand why these are so darn expensive at the grocery store!

We could pick ten (!) things this week… and we could double up on a few things. When Matt & Aly learned that they had the option to double the “five pounds of tomatoes” item… I think they actually jumped for joy. So we came home with ten pounds of tomatoes! They also got shallots to share, some potatoes, and lettuce. I got more purple peppers, carrots, beets, corn to share, and a watermelon.

There's nothing here to compare for scale, but this is what ten pounds of tomatoes looks like.

The size of my cookie jar!

  

After we sweated buckets at yoga, we came back to revel in the tomato glory and make some salsa, which Aly’s going to post about, yay! Matt and Aly grilled up some of the corn for dinner with chicken drumsticks, and I made some pickled peppers and carrots. I had a couple leftover white ones, so I chopped up two each of the purple and white peppers, then diced up about four large (for the farm) carrots about the same size. I poured my usual made-up-proportions pickling mix over everything, and it’s all sitting in the fridge getting yummy.

What's up, doc?

Peter Piper is jealous of my pickled purple peppers.

 I’m not sure what I want to do with the watermelon just yet… I mean, there are so many things I could do! I’ve used a melon baller to make watermelon ice cubes for my water (also did this with sliced cucumbers for Pimm’s cups!), but I feel like I should do something more exciting than that.

Speaking of Pimm’s cups, the English dinner with our parents went really well! Dan, my pie crust expert-in-residence, learned something about how we can apply the pie crust next time (what exactly, I already forget – crusts are not my thing!), the stew itself was great, and my Pimm’s cups were ratest “best ever”. I also exploded the Camembert container again, but I made sure to put it on a small foil-covered baking sheet before putting it in the oven!

Still not perfect... but not all over my oven!

We got the Pimm’s cups recipe/proportions straight off the Pimm’s web site: 1 part Pimm’s to 3 parts lemonade. As I was making the first batch, Dan realized that in the UK they might refer to Sprite as “lemonade”… but as we already had a gallon of Market Basket’s finest in the fridge, we stuck with that – to great success, I feel. The week prior I had washed, quartered, and frozen a container of strawberries, so those were ready to do double duty as ice cubes and a little flavor. I also froze cucumber slices (same deal), and lemonade in an ice cube tray. I garnished each glass with some mint from the yard (what little I could find after Dan had gotten to it with the weed whacker), and by Jove, they were delicious.

It's Pimm's o'clock somewhere!