CSA Week 3
Posted by Red | Filed under Everyday, Food
Scheduling a group of people for an entire summer is a tricky thing. Especially the group that we’re in the CSA/Meal Share with. So this week, being a holiday week (Happy Canada Day & 4th of July everyone!), the crowd was small. Just three adults and a toddler around the dinner table.
Still tons of food though!
This week the box brought:
- lettuce
- sugar snap peas
- escarole
- bok choy
- turnips
- arugula
- kohlrabi
We had some radishes left over from last week and the daycare co-op sent over a pile of fresh bread. Once again, the counters were full to the brim. Menu a bit different too:
Italian Sausage Soup, Tofu & Bok Choy stir fry, kohlrabi with herbs, green salad, and espresso bread pudding for dessert.
Sounds good, right? Well it was for the most part. We were given a small kohlrabi this time, so it went into the stir fry instead of a dish on its own. The soup was bitter – our first attempt with escarole didn’t turn out as well as planned. So we looked it up (after cooking of course) in our handy dandy cooking chemistry book (On Food and Cooking – read it – great reference for the experimental chef) and turns out you need to cut the flavor of bitter cabbages, like escarole, with something in the onion family and salt. Next time the soup will have more sea salt and some scallions.
The soup is excellent to dip bread in, though. So that’s what I did.
The stir fry turned out fabulously. Big hit all around. That and the bread pudding. Mmmm fresh bread pudding.
Next week I won’t be able to be around for the meal as I’m teaching an Intermediate Outdoor Cooking class at an outdoor facility that evening. Hopefully someone will take the camera and snap a few of what was going on. It’s the Big Guy’s turn at the menu planning – should be fun!
July 22nd, 2009 at 8:37 pm
Don’t forget, garlic is an onion too! I would worry that scallion might not have enough flavor to counter the escarole….although a leek would work beautifully.