I recently found a salsa recipe from Simply Recipes that calls for either peaches or nectarines from recent fruit shares. We served this salsa with Bobby Flay’s shredded chicken and tomatillo tacos with queso fresco and David Byrne’s shrimp tacos. (Yes, David Byrne from the Talking Heads.)
I happened to have everything on hand for this recipe, including fresh jalapeño and mint from my community garden — two of the only things that survived in my plot this hot summer. – Josie Rubio
Despite my best intentions for healthy eating, it seems that almost every fruit from my CSA share happens to go well with ice cream. So when the plums arrived, I opted for a healthier frozen treat: This PureWow recipe for Roasted Red Plum Ice Pops from the People’s Pops: 55 Recipes for Ice Pops, Shave Ice and Boozy Pops from Brooklyn’s Coolest Pop Shop (Ten Speed Press, 2012) by Nathalie Jordi, David Carrell and Joel Horowitz.
People’s Pops, available at locations throughout New York City (including the Brooklyn Flea, Chelsea Market, New Amsterdam Market and the East Village), use local, sustainably grown fruits and herbs for their ice pops. They are a long way from the frozen Kool-Aid pops we used to make when I was a kid. – Josie Rubio
Join us on Thursday, September 13th, from 6-8pm, for Salsa + Taco Night on the farm! We’ll be making salsa on the spot from the farm’s produce and herbs. Share your favorite salsa recipes with us, and bring some tortilla chips, ingredients or trimmings for tacos. Hope to see you there!
Sunday night dinner in the Foley-Murphy household.
Among other things, I’m a mom to an almost five year old and a two month old. Before I was a mom I had hobbies and crafty creative projects going on in my life; now my main hobby is making good food. It works out nicely because my family likes to eat. And for this hobby I love the CSA season. There is nothing better than taking something that we’ve never heard of and turning it into something delicious, especially if my daughter agrees that it is delicious.
I get really excited about it. When I talk about it at social functions and family reunions, I’m met most often with people looking at me like I have three heads (oh, really you made kohlrabi “french fries”… ) but sometimes my excitement finds a kindred spirit. I’m guessing that in the CSA community there will be more in the later camp and thought I’d share my strategy and a couple of recipes that we have liked in the past few weeks.
When peaches and raspberries arrived with this week’s fruit share, we immediately turned to this recipe for Peach and Raspberry Crisp in The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook (Clarkson Potter, 1999). The simple recipe comes together pretty quickly and it tastes delicious warm, or cold from the fridge — even, say, if you’re standing at the door sneaking bites. (Hypothetically, of course.)
On our way back from picking up the share, we also stopped by Cacao Prieto at Conover and Coffey streets for a sampling of rum made on the premises from organic cane sugar and organic Dominican cacao. When we asked what we could make with the Don Esteban cacao liqueur, the person at the counter said that it’s served with muddled raspberries. Sold! So, with a few of the raspberries, I made a rum cocktail. – Josie Rubio
Remoulade sounds fancy, right? Just imagine, you can set this on your Thanksgiving table and announce its name, and your guests will swoon. It’s basically the French version of cole slaw, but we’ll keep that between us.
Remoulade is traditionally made with celery root, but it adapts well to other vegetables. To keep your remoulade crunchy, make the dressing tonight, then grate the kohlrabi and apple tomorrow and stir everything together. Easy, fancy-sounding, and a much-needed raw counterpart to all that starch? Yes, please.
- Moriah Simmons
Photo from Pumpkinrecipes.org
You know that charming little pumpkin from a share two weeks ago? (You may have magicked part of it into juice.) It really wants to be a pie. The thing is, the round orange vegetables we know as pumpkins are generally lighter in color and milder in flavor than a lot of their squash cousins, who make up most of the burnt-orange canned “pumpkin” pie filling we all know. But that’s ok because we are going to work with what we have, darn it!
The spices in this pie filling are adapted ever-so-slightly to work with the squash at hand, so it’s not the cinnamon-bomb you might have grown up with. Rather, it’s a classy citrus and nutmeg custard pie, which will fit right in at your classy Thanksgiving feast.
- Moriah Simmons
You’ve read at least one Harry Potter book, I’ll wager. So you know that the most compelling beverage in the whole series is the pumpkin juice served in the Hogwarts dining hall. I’m pretty sure this is made-up and not based on any traditional British recipe (unlike butterbeer), so I have invented a recipe for it, to make a tasty, booze-free Thanksgiving drink that conveniently uses the small pumpkin from the CSA share a few weeks ago. You’ll just need some pumpkin, sugar, spices, and water. Magic optional.
-Moriah Simmons
Thanks to the bounty of the fruit share, I (like the rest of you) have more apples than I can in a month. This is a great opportunity to preserve them via freezing and canning, so I don’t have to waste anything. I like to make a big batch of applesauce, save some, and turn the rest into apple butter. First up, an easy recipe for bright pink applesauce. - Moriah Simmons Continue reading
Now that we’ve got a batch of applesauce, let’s go a little further and turn it into apple butter. Have you had apple butter? It contains no actual butter (vegans rejoice!), just apples, spices, and sugar. This is a silky, spicy spread that can be slathered on toast for a quick breakfast or spooned into prebaked tart shells for an elegant dessert. -Moriah Simmons Continue reading
