Week 3: Thinking inside the farmbox

Have you tried kohlrabi? I had never eaten it until I joined a CSA. I was missing out. Kohlrabi is from the same family as cauliflower, broccoli, brussels sprouts, and cabbage—cruciferous vegetables that sometimes are called cole crops. It’s delicious either raw or cooked, and, honestly, I can’t decide which preparation I like better.

I opted for raw kohlrabi this week because I had marked a recipe for a kohlrabi and apple salad in the February 2014 issue of Bon Appétit in anticipation of this year’s CSA.

Kohlrabi and apple salad

There also was a bag of sugar snap peas nestled in the box. I never liked them as a child, and that caused me to avoid them as an adult. Two years ago when they showed up in the share, I was a bit apprehensive. I shouldn’t have been. They were delicious and a good example of why you should always give vegetables another try. After all, the little girl who turned up her nose at sugar snap peas thought circus peanuts were awesome.

Besides crunching on them raw, this salmon recipe is one of my favorite ways to eat sugar snap peas. I like the flavors in it so much, I often make it with haricot verts if snap peas are out of season.

In addition to the snap peas and kohlrabi, this week I received fennel, joi choi, spinach, mixed large-leaf lettuce, yellow set onions, chard, and baby red beets.

Baby red beets

Although sausage, lentils, fennel, and onions accompanied by garlic spinach sounds a bit wintry, it was a rainy week here in Chicago, and a hearty dish really hit the spot. The joi choi was stir-fried with red peppers, pineapple, green onions, shrimp, ginger, and garlic. I also prepared my go-to chard recipe and crushed beets with a lemon vinaigrette.

Fennel, lentils, onions, and herbs

Finally, it seems a bit strange to wax poetic about lettuce, but the heads of leafy greens that come in the farmbox have given me a whole new perspective on salad. They’re extremely flavorful and don’t need to be weighed down with loads of toppings. In fact, I like to eat a big plateful tossed with nothing but a simple vinaigrette.

On tap for next week: garlic scapes and English spring peas. This past weekend, I had dinner at the Publican, and in addition to several delicious meat and fish dishes, I ate a plate of spring peas and burrata that was divine. I’m planning to make something similar. We’ll see how that goes.

Do you like kohlrabi? What’s your favorite way to prepare it?

Week 2: Thinking inside the farmbox

On to week 2. Spring is the time for leafy greens, commented the farmers at Nichols Farm in their weekly email, and this box and the last were full of them. There are so many ways to prepare greens. Sometimes I cook them Southern-style, with a bit of pork and hot sauce; sometimes they get sautéed with garlic; and this week I prepared a warm mustard green salad with black-eyed peas that definitely will resurface on future menus.

Fresh mustard greens

Sadly, this is the last week for asparagus. The farmers stop cutting the plant mid-June to ensure it remains strong for next year. This week’s box contained green garlic, onions, mustard greens, kale, asparagus, butter lettuce, radishes, turnips and Russian Banana fingerling potatoes.

Salmon is one of my favorite proteins, and it fell off the rotation the last couple of weeks. As a result, I thought I’d kick off this week with a slow-cooked salmon with turnips and kale. I riffed on this Bon Appetit recipe, substituting kale for the chard.

As an aside, I’ve made a couple of slow-cooked salmon recipes recently, and the fish always turns out perfectly without too much hovering over it to ensure it doesn’t come out of the pan overdone.

The weekly farmbox often is stocked with items rarely seen in typical grocery stores. Green garlic is one of those. At local farmer’s markets, it also might be labeled spring garlic. It looks similar to green onions with a small garlic bulb at the bottom. It’s immature garlic, and it can be used in recipes that call for mature garlic, scallions, onions, or leeks. However, when substituting green garlic, some experimentation might be necessary because it has a lighter flavor.

Green garlic ready to be chopped.

I added finely chopped green garlic to fresh ricotta and threw in some parsley and salt and pepper. This made a sauce for penne pasta. I also put together a butter lettuce and radish salad that had a sherry vinaigrette. The pasta was good, but I think that next time, I might cook the garlic slightly beforehand to take the edge off.

Summer days are made for grilling burgers. Sunday's main dish was patty melts with Swiss cheese and grilled onions on rye bread. Because the grill was fired up for the burgers, it was easy to throw the asparagus and spring onions on it, too. The other side dishes were fingerling potato salad and a warm mustard green salad with black-eyed peas and bacon. Both salads were good, but the mustard green salad was fantastic. It was one of those recipes where I couldn’t envision how all the different flavors were going to work together but it turned out delicious in the end. If you’d like to make it, here it is.

Fingerling potato salad

Do you have a great green garlic recipe? I’d love to try it.

Week 1: Thinking inside the farmbox

This is the story of my weekly CSA. My box comes from Nichols Farm & Orchard in Marengo, Ill. The farmers at Nichols Farm send out a weekly email that contains a list of items likely to appear in the share and details about what they’re planting and harvesting, which always is interesting to me because as a city dweller, it’s easy to be a bit out of touch with in-season crops.

The first week's box ready to be unloaded.

The start of the CSA brings excitement and a small amount of apprehension. I already can’t wait for tomatoes, peas, and shell beans. It will be a delicious summer, but the weekly delivery of my own little share of farm-fresh vegetables stretches my creativity when planning meals. I love to problem solve, but I’m not going to sugar-coat it—sometimes the box can be intimidating. My goal with this blog is to share how I used my box and exchange ideas and inspiration with other CSA recipients.

The first share arrived June 3. The week’s bounty included mixed baby lettuce, spinach, white globe radishes, arugula, mizuna, rapini, Yukon Gold potatoes, spring onions, asparagus, and rhubarb.

When I unload the box, my mind starts working on the menu. Radishes are easy. I’ll eat those with butter and salt on crusty bread. And fresh baby lettuce doesn’t need a whole lot to make it shine. For that, I prepared a lemon anchovy vinaigrette I saw as I flipped through the June 2014 issue of Bon Appétit.

The potatoes and spring onions got tossed with olive oil, salt and pepper and roasted in a 400-degree oven until tender. Once done, I stirred in a couple tablespoons of butter and adjusted the seasonings. This and the rapini were two very delicious side dishes to mushroom-gravy-smothered pork chops.

Roasted potatoes and spring onions

Spinach and asparagus paired well with gnocchi and a creamy lemon sauce and the mizuna ended up in a stir-fry with tofu and bok choy with a side of sesame spinach. And, watermelon and arugula salad with feta and balsamic glaze tasted like the beginnings of summer.

Tofu, mizuna, and baby bok choy in a stir fry.

The red bundles of rhubarb nestled in the bottom of the box were enough to make two desserts: a simple strawberry rhubarb crisp and a rhubarb strawberry cake, which consisted of a layer of fruit compote underneath a vanilla cake. I love rhubarb. It’s season always seems so short, so having it this week was definitely a treat.

Yum. Rhubarb strawberry crisp

Do you receive a CSA? What did you get this week? What did you make?