Posts from CSA Members

What a great CSA share we got today. I took one of the heirloom tomatoes, seeded, chopped it up (kind of chunky), added some salt, pepper, a little olive oil and sprinkled goat cheese and a few olives over it. It was yummy.

Now I have one less tomato but I still have a huge box of them. So, please let send in what you are doing with all of the ones you got, as well as the other wonderful produce we received today. Send them to me, donb.sarahd@gmail.com, if you want them posted before winter. Kate just sent me your great pictures and ideas from previous shares and they look great. Here are a few.

Alden O'Brien made a salade composée with bed of lettuce, beets, hard boiled eggs, herbs, all from the farm. The one pictured at the right includes some cuke dice from Cemmy Peterson’s farm.

Alden also sent a picture of swiss chard and broccolini. She blanched them and then stir fried them with a little olive oil and those scallion or "whatever flower things and some slices of that stem."

Beautiful, Alden! Thanks for sharing!

CSA member, Lynne Becker, sent an e-mail to Kate on "CSA: This is how I used our beans last night." She linked to a recipe from Gourmet, August 2004, Poached Chicken with Tomatoes, Olives, and Green Beans. This looks ideal for what we got in today's basket. Lynne's comments on the recipe: "I can't imagine liking many recipes without onions and garlic, so I added diced red onion to the tomato mixture and subbed basil for oregano since that's what we've got in the garden."

Ed Zakreski sent some links to Kate for red cabbage and for duck!

"I’m going to use a little bit of my red cabbage to create a sourdough starter. Here’s the link from Michael Ruhlman – one of my favorite food writers - that inspired me: http://blog.ruhlman.com/ruhlmancom/2009/07/simple-sourdough-starter.html

"I’m also sending along the “How To Roast A Duck” link from Amateur Gourmet in case you can use it to inspire more duck purchases. It does show that roasting a duck is not as intimidating as it sounds. http://www.amateurgourmet.com/2009/05/how_to_roast_a.html

Ed also shared a picture of his dinner from GFF produce. Wow! Looks fabulous.

More tomorrow. Remember to send your ideas, recipes, and pictures.

What to Do with This Week's CSA?

Just in time for our CSA delivery this week, chow.com has chosen its August Cookbook of the Month and it is seems perfect for what we are getting this week. "Ottolenghi: The Cookbook," has caused a lot of chatter on the chow website and, from what I can see, the book looks terrific with some very creative recipes. In particular, there appear to be some pretty terrific recipes for this week's CSA.

The book appears a bit hard to get (not available on amazon). But discussion group has provided many, many links to on-line recipes. These include:

Peaches and speck with orange blossom (This looks awesome, pictured above. Speck is a dry-cured smoked Italian ham--if you find it tell me!)

Marinated aubergine with tahini and oregano

Roasted aubergine with saffron yoghurt

French beans and mangetout with hazelnuts and orange (mangetout are snow peas)

There are also some terrific chicken and duck recipes discussed on the site, including roast chicken with sumac, za'atar, and lemon, seared duck breast with blood orange and star anise, and barbecued quail with mograbiah salad.

I can't wait for my Monday delivery!

Week-end on the Farm... continued

Some day, Mike Davis will part with his guidance on the wonderful things to do with the GFF birds (I heard that he was pretty busy in Maine, roasting a pig and grilling a paella over an open fire). When he is back from his culinary adventures and sends me his notes, I will post them right here. Until then, I can only tempt you with pictures of the main courses and the menus from our week-end at Green Fence Farm.

Menu for Friday Night's Dinner

Pan-Roasted Quail with Port Reduction Sauce

Mahogany Rice

Sauteed Haricots Vert with Shallots

Green Salad with Peaches, Blackberries, and Roasted Walnuts

Plum Tarte Tatin

Menu for Saturday's Dinner:

Roast Duck with Plums

Pan-Roasted Partridge with Bacon

Grilled Quail and Chicken

Roasted Beet Salad with Fried Chickpeas and Goat Cheese

Corn on the Cob

Cornmeal Shortcakes with Peaches, Blackberries, and Mint

Plum Sorbet

On Friday, Mike prepared Pan-Roasted Quail in a Port Reduction Sauce. On the side, he served Mahogany Rice, which is a black, flavorful rice (it is unmilled so cooks for 45 to 50 minutes and is very good for you). I did a quick saute of shallots and Kate's thin green beans. I made a green salad, using GFF lettuce, peaches from the nearby orchard, blackberries that we had picked that day, toasted walnuts, and a balsamic vinaigrette.

If you are nervous about the port-reduction sauce, you can try simply grilling the quail, which is what we did on Saturday night, along with grilled chicken. It was a mystery to me what we seasoned the chicken and the quail with--I think that I saw Mike walk out to the herbs and take his pick. He was particularly enamored with the lemon thyme. Here is the thing with the GFF poultry--because it is so good, you don't really need to do much with it. Salt and pepper and grilling works just fine. Add a few herbs of your choice (rosemary under the skin is always good or thyme or whatever you have that is fresh). Just remember for the quail, Because of their size, grilling does not take very long.

Saturday night's dinner was a display of the GFF bounty. In addition to the grilled quail and chicken, Mike prepared a Roast Duck with plums (pictured below) and Pan-Roasted Partridge with Bacon. I can only post the pictures and attest to how wonderful they both were. The Roasted Duck was so delicious that it made Nick admit that they were almost worth all the work that goes into raising them.

I made two vegetable side dishes on Saturday, both of which were based on the Sunday Suppers at Lucques (which I discussed below). One for lunch, first of the season succotash salad, I will post separately. Below is the beet salad.

Roasted Beet Salad with Fried Chickpeas and Goat Cheese

First, if you are ever wondering what to do with the beautiful beets that you get in your CSA, just roast them. They are so sweet and delicious all by themselves. Cut off the tops, clean well, and toss with olive oil and salt (Suzanne Goin uses 2T of extra virgin olive oil and 1 tsp salt for 3 bunches of beets). Place in roasting pan with a bit of water and roast at 400 degrees until tender (around 40 minutes, depending on the size). After cooling, remove the skins and quarter. Look at those beets--aren't they beautiful. We should just stop here.

I loosely followed the rest of the recipe. First of all, the fried chickpeas were okay--I don't think that I cooked them long enough and I don't think that they were completely necessary here since everything else was so great. Just remember, if you are doing this recipe to start the chickpeas first, since they have to cook for quite a while (originally this was going to be a side dish for Thursday, but I didn't start the chickpeas until late).

Using what we had, I made a vinaigrette of 2+ T red wine vinegar, 1 T lemon juice, pinch of cumin, salt, pepper, and 1/2 c (maybe less) of extra virgin olive oil. I used some of the GFF lettuce, tossing it in a bit of vinaigrette, and using it to line the plate. I tossed the beets and 1/4 c thinly sliced shallots in some of the vinaigrette. Added to the plate.

Then, crumbled goat cheese, the fried chickpeas, and flat leaf parsley over the salad to finish it up. As you can see, it was quite a beautiful display and a wonderful tasting salad. The goat cheese combination with the beets was terrific. The recipe calls for roasted cumin seeds and I can see that it would add an additional depth to the salad. Using what we had in the pantry seemed to go well here.

Plum Tarte Tatin with Creme Fraiche

Friday night dessert: Another creation from Suzanne Goin, Plum Tarte Tatin. I did not improvise on this and worked straight from her recipe with a couple of unintentional deviations.

In looking around the internet, I saw that some people had trouble with this dessert. Maybe it was beginner's luck, but I found this very simple. I also think that the plums were just right for this recipe. They were ripe but still firm enough to keep their shape.

Since I have linked the recipe, I won't go into every single detail. Most of the work was halving and pitting 3 pounds of plums. After adding sugar (1/4 c) and letting them sit for 30 minutes, it was time to make the caramel coating. Kate has a great big cast iron skillet which was perfect for making the tarte. Heated the pan over medium heat and added 1 stick of butter. When it foamed, I added 3/4 cup sugar and cooked for 6 minutes until it was a brown caramel color.

While it cooled, I drained the plums. I think that this step is critical, because too much juice result in a pretty soggy tarte. Goin suggests making a cocktail from the sugared-plum juice, but I am not imaginative to think what would go well with it. I am open to suggestions.

When the caramel had cooled for about 20 minutes, I placed the plums, skin side up in the skillet, in lovely, concentric circles.

I put the skillet in the fridge here and missed the step of cooking the plums and caramel on the stove. After refrigerating for a couple hours, I realized my mistake and put the skillet on the stove, cooking the plums--without touching--for 20 minutes over medium-low heat. Then, after cooling the plums and caramel again for about an hour or so, I topped it with store-bought puff pastery (sorry purests, but I like pepperidge farm for this). Brushed with beaten egg (from GFF, of course) and sprinkled with sugar. Baked at 375 degrees for 45 to 55 minutes.

After cooling for 30 minutes, it was time to flip the tarte. This is time when it is nice to have someone strong around, since flipping a cast iron skillet with plate on it is a little challenging. Cutting around the edges helps, but flipping it in one motion seems to be important too. Then, letting it just drop out of the skillet from its own weight.

Served with creme fraiche on the side, we ate this all up and left none for Don who arrived late from DC on Friday night.

Cornmeal Shortcakes with Peaches, Blackberries and Mint accompanied by Plum Sorbet

Here is my suggestion for the plums and peaches in your CSA basket next week. Although this looks like a lot of work, it was surprisingly easy. We had the amazing plums and peaches that Kate and Nick had found for us, blackberries that we picked from at Orchardside Farm, Kate's mint, and from Staunton's farmers' market, honey from the Honey man and fromage blanc from the cheese lady.

The shortcake recipe is based on Suzanne Goin's Cornmeal Shortcakes with Peaches, Mint, and Soured Cream. The shortcakes are very simple and quick. Since I have the link, I won't go into detail on it. But they were so easy and delicious. If you have a food processor, the shortcakes won't take you longer than 30 minutes to make. The challenge is to keep from eating them before finishing the dessert.

I added the freshly picked blackberries to the peaches and followed the recipe for adding the simple sugar syrup (I can imagine a number of combinations working here and look forward to seeing what other fruit Kate and Nick find for us this season). The recipe calls for pureeing a portion of the peaches, which I did before we added the blackberries.

For the soured cream, I brought mascarpone from DC, but not enough. So I added some fromage blanc that we found at the Farmers' Market and added syrup to sweeten and lemon to sour. This worked wonderfully. I can see going more local here and using different combinations of local fresh cheeses. This was a breeze and tasted like summer.

We could have stopped there, but my daughter Josie insisted that we make Plum Sorbet.

We dug out our ice cream maker, which someone gave to Don and I as a wedding present seventeen years ago and which we have never used! Since it made the trip to the farm, it only made sense to give it a try. This recipe is also from the Suzanne Goin, but I think it is the fruit that makes it so wonderful. I took about a pound of the plums, cored and pitted them (Josie was not a great deal of help here). I then added sugar (1/2 cup) and 2T of honey and let it sit for a while. Puree (keeping the skin on makes some wonderful flecks in the sorbet) and add some lemon juice to taste (a tablespoon or so) and leave in the fridge to chill. Then, we dusted off that ice cream maker (ours is a little Donvier) and Josie took charge of freezing. It didn't take long and, well, you can see the results for yourselves. It was pretty fabulous. So dig out those ice cream freezers and give it a whirl.

Week-end on the Farm

Who knows what Kate and Nick were thinking when they agreed to host an invasion from NW DC last week-end. I am certain that I could not work the hours that they work--and as hard as they work--and still be such wonderful hosts to a bunch of city folk. On the other hand, a more enthusiastic group of city folk would be hard to find.

Hi, Green Fence Farm fans. I am Sarah, Kate's old friend (and be nice, I only feel old). Some of you know me as Kate's lobbyist friend or as the NW DC CSA drop-off host or as ... well, just don't tell me. But this week, I am Sarah, Green Fence Farm's guest blogger. This is not because of my writing--no one can write as well as Kate. But I have a high-speed internet connection and she doesn't!

Kate asked me to blog about our visit to the farm last week-end and share what we made from the farm's offerings. This was not a spur of the moment visit. For several months, we planned our farm invasion. The chief instigator was Mike Davis, fabulous cook and premier GFF customer. Mike is passionate about the local farm movement. His wish was to recreate the feel of the french farm kitchen. Our test: how quickly can we get it from the field to the table? The winner was Mike, with child-like glee, grabbling a fresh laid egg, running down the hill, up the stairs, into the kitchen, cooking it in a soft-boil, and eating it right there. That is our Mike Davis.

So, we joined forces to invade the farm and dedicate ourselves to food and the farm: Mike, Kris, Maggie, and Everett, along with my family (my husband, Don Blanchon, our daughter Josie, and my father, John Ducich--minus our older daughter who was at girls lacrosse goalie camp down the road in Salem, VA).

Mike took charge of any course involving poultry--quail, duck, chicken, and partridge. I took the side dishes and, most importantly, the desserts.

Mike is a far more creative cook than I am--he has mastered technique and now works directly with what is available to him. I am waiting for him to give me his descriptions of his pan-roasted quail in port-reduction sauce and roasted duck with plums so that I can post them here.

I am a recipe-driven cook, although my confidence is growing and I am doing more experimenting. This past week-end, I used Suzanne Goin's fabulous "Sunday Suppers at Lucques" as my base and worked with what Kate and Nick and the wonderful Shenandoah Valley provided us.

Over the next few days, I will be posting our creations. I will start backwards, with desserts, since I know those the best (and those are the prettiest pictures). Next post, Cornmeal Shortcakes with Peaches, Blackberries, and Mint, accompanied by Plum Sorbet. Yum!