21 March 2010

Sunday Cook-Off

I couldn't sneak out of work for my inaugural CSA pickup on Friday, so Ryan was nice enough to go for me. Walking into my kitchen Friday night, I found that my share was inspiring, and kind of overwhelming, to be honest. Farmer Tara hooked it up. The question was how to cook it all so it wouldn't go bad before I could eat it.

Who better to look to for help than your mom, right? I asked mine if she'd be interested in spending her Sunday afternoon cooking this amazing collection of veggies with me. And that we did.

Her first order of business was to resuscitate the two day old and rapidly wilting leafy greens. I'm not going to lie, I was amazed by the result. She snipped off the bottoms of all the greens, dropped them in a sink full of water, and by the time we were ready to start chopping, every leaf had perked up even more than when I first saw them Friday night.

We made three dishes.

1. Frittata - based on Slake Farms' recipe from a couple weeks ago. Eggs, mustard greens, broccoli raab (rapini), red onion, garlic, grated Manchego and Parmesan cheese, salt and pepper.

2. Stew - we (and by 'we' i mean 'she') winged it on this one and the next. Cubed red and golden beets and turnips, cauliflower, green garlic, tempeh marinated in Brags and salt & pepper, turmeric, water.

3. Sauté. we sauteed a hodgepodge of kohlrabi bulb and leaves, green onion, arugula, chiccoria, adolescent romaine, tempeh marinated in soy sauce and sesame oil, and cilantro.

Every year that goes by, I am more and more appreciative of growing up with a nutritionist as a mother. She can throw a bunch of vitamin- and nutrient-packed one- or two-ingredient foods into a pan and end up with a really tasty, complex, satisfying dish. I like to think that some of that has rubbed off on me.

Here's us. Yes, that's a french flag apron I'm wearing. Deep in conversation with my dad about either replacing the windows in their house or high school volleyball. The veggies pictured make up maybe 1/3 of the share. Silverlake Farms CSA is awesome.

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