What to do with all that bok choy?

This week, Green Fence Farm made its first delivery, on Capitol Hill, and both the full and half share members got what had to be the biggest bok choy ever grown. I have to admit, in handing these out, I broke one the rules my daughter, Viv, wrote when she was six years old (in a treatise called “Rules for the City”): “Never eat anything bigger than your head (sensible advice, almost as good as the rule that said “don’t spread tacks around where people are going to drive”).” But, unless our poor CSA members want to try to keep the heads alive and enter them in county fairs come August, eat it we must. To that end, here are some ideas on what to do with it. The first is from a NW CSA member, and it is what I’ll be cooking tonight:

I love bok choy. So far I've had no luck growing it so I'm excited to hear
we'll be getting some. Here is one of my favorite recipes for it. It's
straight from "A Taste of China" by Ken Hom.

1 lb bok choy
1 T. peanut oil
2 garlic cloves, crushed
1/2 t. salt
1 T. water

- Prep bok choy by quartering (if big) or halving (if small) and removing core.
Cut leaves from stem.

- Heat oil over high, add garlic, stir fry for about 30 sec.

- Add salt and bok choy stem, stir fry about 1 min.

- Add bok choy leaves, stir fry for till all is cooked. If the mix gets dry,
add water.

This next recipe is what I WAS going to cook tonight, but it is too hot, plus I have no milk or cheese in the house:

Bok Choy Gratin Gourmet | February 2003

The most commonly found Chinese vegetable is also one of the oldest — bok choy has been cultivated in China since the fifth century a.d. You can find many kinds of bok choy at Asian markets, all differing in shape and size; this recipe works well with any mature variety.

Active time: 40 min Start to finish: 1 hr

Yield: Makes 6 side-dish servings

Active Time: 40 min

Total Time: 1 hr

1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons fine dry bread crumbs
2 1/2 lb bok choy (not baby), tough stem ends trimmed
1 shallot, finely chopped
5 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 1/4 cups whole milk
1/8 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
2 oz Gruyère, coarsely grated (1/2 cup)
1/2 oz finely grated parmesan (1/4 cup)

Preheat oven to 425°F. Lightly butter a 2-quart gratin dish and dust with 2 tablespoons bread crumbs.

Cut bok choy stems and center ribs into 1/2-inch pieces and coarsely chop leaves. Cook stems and ribs in a large pot of boiling salted water until just tender, about 5 minutes, then add leaves and cook 30 seconds. Drain in a colander and rinse under cold water until cool enough to handle. Squeeze out excess water by handfuls.

Cook shallot in 1 tablespoon butter in a 12-inch heavy skillet over moderate heat, stirring, until softened, about 2 minutes. Add bok choy and cook, stirring, until greens are coated with butter and shallot, 1 to 2 minutes. Spread bok choy in baking dish.

Melt 2 tablespoons butter in a 2-quart heavy saucepan over moderately low heat, then add flour and cook roux, stirring constantly, 2 minutes. Add milk in a slow stream, whisking constantly, and bring to a boil, whisking. Reduce heat and simmer, stirring, 5 minutes. Add nutmeg, salt, and pepper, then stir in Gruyère and 2 tablespoons parmesan and pour evenly over bok choy.
Toss remaining 1/4 cup bread crumbs with remaining 2 tablespoons parmesan in a small bowl and blend in remaining 2 tablespoons butter with your fingertips until mixture resembles coarse meal. Season with salt and pepper. Sprinkle mixture evenly over gratin and bake in upper third of oven until bubbly and golden brown, about 20 minutes.

Kate again – there were several comments on this recipe, but this one summed them all up:

I've made this recipe a few more times w/ minor changes and it's now become one of my favorites. I mix half of the mornay sauce in with the greens and spread the remainder on top. This melds veggies and sauce together and makes the whole thing taste delightfully cheesy. I also double the breadcrumb topping, for extra crispy contrast. I've used swiss chard, kale, chinese mustard and bok choy. I also like to add thinly sliced potatoes and/or turnips into the boiling water before adding the stems from the greens. The potato/greens combo is fantastic and will make anyone love leafy greens. Doing the shallot step in the pan you used for the greens will eliminate one extra pan. Still, this makes a lot of dishes.

And finally, a recipe I would have made (since it is so hot, I don’t even want to stir fry), but we already have salad greens out our ears, and my traditionalist family would balk at more than one salad on the table:

ORIENTAL BOK CHOY SALAD
1/2 c. butter
2 tbsp. white sugar
1 bottle of sesame seeds (1 oz.)
2 pkgs. Ramen noodles (broken up), do not use flavor packet
1 sm. pkg. slivered almonds
2 lbs. bok choy lettuce (chopped coarsely)
5 to 6 green onions, tops and all chopped
In large skillet melt butter over medium heat. Add sesame seed, noodles, almonds and sugar. Stir all the time until lightly browned. Set aside to cool to room temperature. Toss bok choy and onions together, mix and chill until ready to serve. Just before serving, break up the crunchy mixture, add to bok choy, pour dressing over, mix and serve.

DRESSING:
3/4 c. vegetable oil
1/4 c. red wine vinegar
1/2 c. white sugar
2 tbsp. soy sauce
Mix well and chill until ready to use.

Rhubarb Crisp

Thank to Capitol Hill CSA member Jean Flemma for pointing this out.

So easy – and I have to agree with Mark Bittman: better rhubarb alone than with strawberries. CSA members, take note. You should have enough rhubarb for this, and for the rhubarb bread I am making later this week (recipe to come)…

The only thing I disagree with is the whole peeling off the fibrous outer strings “as you would with celery.” I’ve never peeled celery OR rhubarb.

Rhubarb Crisp That Stands Up to Pie
By MARK BITTMAN
WHEN you think of rhubarb you probably think of strawberry-rhubarb pie, a quintessential spring dessert, especially if it’s made by someone who makes good pies. I usually manage around one pie crust annually, so I need alternatives. Thus, when the spring’s first rhubarb showed up, I adjusted the execution and produced a crisp.
Perhaps equally intriguing is that I ditched the strawberries. Not that I don’t like them, or the combination, but good rhubarb arrives much earlier than good strawberries do (they don’t really show up in the Northeast until June). Besides, with each passing year I appreciate rhubarb solo more.
If rhubarb is young and fresh, you can trim it in seconds. If it has fibrous outer strings, peel them off as you would those of celery. Just slide a paring knife under the topmost layer, grab the outer skin of the stalk with your thumb, and pull. This might take a minute.
Toss the rhubarb with orange or lemon juice and zest, and only a little sugar. I use a quarter cup or so — it seems to be enough — though you won’t go awry by adding another couple of tablespoons. (You can also substitute strawberries for some of the rhubarb if you want the classic combination.)
Blend the ingredients for the crisp topping in a food processor, but be sure to add the oats and pecans last so that you retain some crispness in your crisp. Crumble the topping over the rhubarb mixture, and bake — it is nearly effortless and as good or better than a pie.

Rhubarb CrispTime: About 1 hour, largely unattended



6 tablespoons cold butter, cut into small pieces, plus more for greasing pan

2 1/2 to 3 pounds rhubarb, trimmed, tough strings removed, and cut into 1 1/2-inch pieces (about 5 to 6 cups)

1/4 cup white sugar

1 tablespoon orange or lemon juice

1 teaspoon orange or lemon zest

3/4 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon, or to taste

Pinch salt

1/2 cup rolled oats

1/2 cup pecans.



1. Heat oven to 375 degrees. Grease an 8- or 9-inch square baking or gratin dish with a little butter. Toss rhubarb with white sugar, orange or lemon juice and zest, and spread in baking dish.

2. Put the 6 tablespoons butter in a food processor along with brown sugar, flour, cinnamon and salt, and pulse for about 20 or 30 seconds, until it looks like small peas and just begins to clump together. Add oats and pecans and pulse just a few times to combine.

3. Crumble the topping over rhubarb and bake until golden and beginning to brown, 45 to 50 minutes.

Yield: 6 to 8 servings.

Happy Belated Mother's Day

I actually wrote this post last week, but the original picture I had of Mary the lamb was on one of my many emergency back-up cameras, the one with the battery that works, but with the picture storage thing that doesn't seem to fit into my computer or any of the other 319 cords I have for transfering pictures from one place to another. So this week, I took another picture on the right camera, then took it again after recharging the batteries, and only today got it uploaded. In any case, this is what I wrote last week, when it was timely, and to go with a completely different picture:

Our first (and thus far, only) lamb arrived last week, but I thought I would save her (yes, a she) for today. She is a week and a half early, but not premature, her birth coming around 143 days after our stud jumped the fence (143 days being the gestation period of the Icelandic sheep, give or take a couple of minutes).

Her mom is from our Bambi breeding family, a long line of horned, hardy sluts – a compliment in the sheep world. She is the first non-white sheep we’ve had from this line (the white gene is super dominant, and the moorit (that’s sheep for brown) is recessive. The mother’s father was a moorit, and the father this year was a moorit, so there was a 50-50 chance we’d get one).

The rest of the sheep are ready to pop any minute. Get ready for more pictures!

DC Kids to Get Good Food in School

I am so proud of the District!

This article makes me happy – I’ve stopped drinking soda, but I might just go out and buy a crate full just to support this program.

If you are a District resident, please contact your councilmember and let them know how much you appreciate their support for this (I think it is important to contact politicians when they do something you like, not just when your angry – the chai latte antidote to the Tea Party). You can find their email and phone numbers here; the vote is supposedly tomorrow. Post if you call!

The picture, by the way, is Alice Waters – THAT Alice Waters – who has endorsed the DC program.

Duck, Duck, Egg

If they weren’t loud, stupid, smelly, and dirty, ducks would be the perfect farm animal. They don’t mind the cold, we didn’t lose a one during the snows this winter, and the ducks don’t even have to have a house. The chickens, with their insulated gypsy wagons, still managed to die in astounding numbers, but the ducks weren’t put off their daily routine of quacking wildly at every single thing that came near their pen and pooping.

And now that it’s Spring, we are getting 21 duck eggs a day (with only 20 female ducks – someone is overachieving). There is a small, but fiercely loyal, group of regular duck egg customers. These are either folks who are allergic to chicken eggs (and most are NOT allergic to duck eggs) or fanatics like Nick who think chicken eggs are pale imitations of the bigger, yolkier, robuster duck egg. The latter treat the arrival of duck eggs like white truffles straight off the plane from Italy. The other group of customers is the curious and culinary adventurous. And it was from one of these, a new CSA member, I got a good duck egg tip.

I had passed on to him my baking rule for duck eggs – 1 duck egg = 1.5 chicken eggs. He tested that on soft boiling, cooking a chicken egg for 4 minutes and a duck egg for 6. Perfect in both cases!

OK, I know this is not really a recipe, but as we get into the season of fresh everything, I realize that recipes are oh so not important. Really, you want to cook that fabulous 1 day out of the ground asparagus INTO something – to what? Mask its flavor with cheese (normally something I applaud, by the way)? Why cook it at all? Eat it raw and on the way home from buying it. Come to the farm and eat it out of the ground. No, this is the time of year when you don’t need a cooking channel. You need a “eat everything as fresh and unprocessed as possible channel.

Green Farm at WIS in NW SUNDAY, 11-3

That’s right, Kate and Nick will be hawking eggs, greens (including ASPARAGUS), gourd bowls, sought-after Green Fence Farm T-shirts, guinea fowl, ground beef, and other assorted goodies 11 AM – 3 PM, Sunday, April 18 at the WIS bazaar. If you missed out on the greens at our last DC drop, come on over this time -- we should have more to sell.

Also, bad news for our CSA and Buying Club friends, contrary to what I told you earlier, this is our LAST DC delivery until the season starts on May 26 on Capitol Hill, so you may want to lay some eggs in now. We had planned to come back 2 more times before that, but massive confusion (our normal state) over when it was our oldest daughter was graduating and a date for our pigs to go to the butcher messed everything up. So come to WIS on Sunday and don't complain later that I didn't warn you.

WIS is located in NW DC very close to our NW pick-up point (see directions below). The bazaar is an annual fund raising event that includes an incredible international lunch buffet (the reason you won’t see much of Nick at our stand), kid’s games, REAL high tea, arts and crafts booths, and, of course, US.

We should have a good load of vegetables at this showing – for those of you who came to the drop off last week only to find the first three people took all the greens. And eggs, lots of eggs.

We’re not taking pre-orders this time, but mention you are a CSA or Buying Club member and get 10% off.

Come for the discount, come for the cool kid games, come for the great food, or just come to keep us company! Hope to see you there.

Directions to WIS Bazaar at the Tregaron Campus From Washington DC (downtown): From Connecticut Avenue, Macomb Street is located between the National Zoo and the Uptown Theatre. Take Connecticut north and turn left on Macomb Street two blocks past the Zoo. Entrance gates for the school are on your left marked by signs.

Metro: Cleveland Park Metro is about four blocks from the school – South on Connecticut, right on Macomb, the school driveway will be on your left.

Parking: Available on Macomb before you enter the school, along the driveway of the school, in a lot to your right as you go down the Hill leaving the school, and on Klingle after you exit the school.

Green Fence Farm Offering On Farm Pastured Poultry Seminars this Summer

Sign up now for Green Fence Farm’s pastured poultry seminars this summer. All day, on-farm experience for the hobby farmer or small farm wanting to get into the lucrative pasture raised egg and meat business. Covers everything from the economics of feed, housing, equipment, and sales to butchering to specialty fowl and rabbits. Seminars run from 10 AM – 4 PM several Saturdays and Sundays through the summer. Read more in the document I really hope I attached here.

And you urbanites, you don’t have to want to raise chickens to enjoy this day on the farm. You’ll get an up close (or as up close as you want – you don’t have to attend the butchering segment) look at how we raise our meat and eggs. And you get lunch!