CSA Week #1

After years of wanting to do this, we finally signed up for a CSA, from RedFire Farm, in Granby MA. Ed is mostly excited about visiting the farm and picking herbs and stuff, I'm mostly excited about having a new challenge of cooking in-season and using different vegetables than my usuals I get every week from Russos. Of course this is a little more expensive, but I like that our money is going directly to a farmer, and our food is coming from somewhere less than 100 miles away.

I figured this was an excellent reason to reinvigorate the blog a bit. I'm going to try and post the recipes that we're cooking with this stuff, and how I'd improve on what I've made. I'm sure my photos will consider to be mediocre at best, but the food will be good.



This week, we got:
2lb carrots
1lb spinach
2 heads redleaf lettuce
1 bunch green garlic
1 head napa cabbage
1 head red russian kale
1 bunch parsley
1 bunch radishes
2 cucumbers

Some of this stuff I knew I wanted to use quickly - radish greens, for example, wilt quickly. When I picked up the radishes, the greens looked gorgeous, but I knew they wouldn't keep.

The kale, carrots, cabbage, parsley, radishes, and cucumbers, on the other hand, would keep all week just fine.

So, the first thing was some roasted carrots with a radish green pesto, served alongside a spanakopita-like thing. Sort of a spanakopita cobbler. In the future, we're going to skip the cobbler part, and either do a pie crust as an upside-down pie, or just bake the filling and spread on toast. I mean phyllo dough would also be fine, but that's finicky.

Roasted carrots with radish green pesto
1 pan's worth of carrots, washed but not peeled
~1tbs olive oil
a pinch of kosher salt

1 bunch radish greens
1 handful walnuts
1 clove garlic
1 sprig green garlic
half a lemon's juice
salt to taste
A glug or two of olive oil

Dump the carrots on the pan, pour on the olive oil and roll them around until they're coated. Sprinkle on some salt, and put in a 400 degree oven for 15-20 minutes until they're as done as you like them. If you put them into the oven as it's pre-heating, you'll get more concentrated heat from the heating elements, which will help brown the side closest to the elements (for my oven, that's the bottom), without overcooking the carrots. I like my veggies with good caramelization, but not overcooked.


For the pesto, toast the garlic clove and the walnuts in a pan. Once those are fragrant and slightly browned (not blackened), dump into a food processor with all the greens and some salt and the lemon. Blend, adding oil as needed to make it blend right. Not enough oil and you won't get a paste. Taste, adjust seasoning, taste.

This will keep for a week or two, if you don't use it all immediately on the carrots.



The carrots with their radish green pesto, served alongside the spanakopita thing and some fried loukaniko sausages. The sausages, while delicious, weren't really necessary.

Spanakopita Thing
I started with this recipe. But I changed things, so here is my version:

1lb spinach
4 cloves garlic
1 small onion
2 scallions
half a bunch of parsley
Salt to taste
~1/4lb feta cheese
4tbs olive oil, divided
2 eggs

1.5C flour
1/2tsp baking powder
1 tbs olive oil
1/4tsp salt
1C water

I used a cast-iron pan, so that I could cook all the things in one pan, and then stick the whole thing in the oven to bake.

Sweat the onion and garlic in about a tablespoon of oil. Roughly chop the spinach, and add to the pan with a pinch of salt to help it lose moisture. You may need to cook in batches. Chop the parsley, scallions, and green garlic, and add near the end. You may need to add more oil as you go, in which case, do that.

Mix together all the stuff for the topping. It'll look like pancake batter. Like pancake batter, don't overmix, or it'll get too gluten-y.

In a big bowl, crumble in the feta cheese, and mix it all together with the spinach stuff. Beat the eggs together and add to the bowl. Put more oil in the pan just to lube things up again, then dump in the filling. Smooth it out, then put globs of filling on top. No need to try and make it a crust, let it be more like a cobbler or biscuits. Bake for 40-50 minutes at 400F, until the topping looks golden brown.



Changes for next time:
- The filling could absolutely use the squeeze of a half lemon
- The topping was entirely unremarkable. Next time either make a pie crust and lay on top, or make biscuits and drop on top, or bake without a crust and serve on toast/in pitas/with a spoon/as a pie with no crust
- could have used more egg

The flavor, however, was delicious! Would we make this again? Absolutely, with an alternate crust.