I’m not a math whiz, but I can count to ten. I was out of town for week 6, visiting family in North Carolina. I didn’t stay out of the kitchen, though, because my mom and I were hosting an engagement brunch for my sister. The guests indulged in breakfast bread pudding with berries, jalapeno frittata, mini Parmesan hash browns, strawberry shortcakes, fruit, bagels, and mimosas. Cheers to the happy couple!
The jalapeno frittata recipe is a winner. My sister-in-law made it for a family get-together, I asked for the recipe, and since then, it’s become a go-to dish for several of my friends and acquaintances.
It’s difficult to use everything in the box if you’re not around for part of the week, so I shared some of the week 6 vegetables with one of my neighbors. She received Napa cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, Swiss chard, sugar beets, daikon radishes, and green Italian garlic.
I kept the zucchini, the White Satin carrots and the fava beans, and I made a risotto with fava beans and zucchini. Fava beans are fun to eat once in awhile. They’re a lot of work. When popped open, each big fat pod yields a few beans. However, shucking the beans is just the beginning of the prep work. The next step is to boil the beans for a minute. Once they cool, you can make a slit in the tough skin and pop out the bean.
Bright green fava beans after being removed from their tough outer skins.
I blanched the White Satin carrots and the carrots from the week 7 box, then glazed them with butter and honey. In addition, week 7 included popcorn on the cob, Red Candy onions, Sweet Slice cucumbers, green beans, new potatoes, Savoy cabbage, Romanesco cauliflower, assorted summer squash, and fennel.
Green bean salad with feta and herbs.
As summer flies by, the farmers at Nichols Farm indicated the next wave of in-season vegetables will be cucurbits (cucumbers, pickles, squash, and melons). They also have started digging new potatoes, some of which were in the box this week. It’s important to note new potatoes have tender skins and can’t be stored at room temperature or scrubbed roughly.
What to do with an enormous head of cabbage? Spicy, tangy kimchi, of course. I found this recipe, which captured a lot of the flavors of the fermented version without the wait. The recipe suggested serving it on top of pork chops or fish, so I roasted some salmon and put the new potatoes on the plate to balance out the spice.
Cucumber salad, roasted cauliflower, and grilled summer squash and chicken brochettes rounded out the week. There were a lot of zucchini, so I also made some zucchini bread.
Zucchini bread fresh out of the oven. It's always nice to have baked goods in the house.
Finally, popcorn on the cob is so cool. You take the cobs, place them in a paper bag and microwave for 2 to 2 1/2 minutes. The popcorn pops right off and is ready to be tossed with your seasonings of choice—I like butter, salt, and something spicy.