After a lot of contemplation and soul searching (meaning budgeting), my husband Dave and I decided to get a CSA share this year. I was extremely excited about it all throughout the winter and spring. But as the time came for my first CSA pick up, I started to get nervous. What if we couldn't eat everything before it spoiled? What if I didn't like the veggies that were available? I decided to keep track of the dishes I made over the 20 weeks of the CSA to help motivate me to eat in and use the beautiful organic vegetables. As I am a vegetarian (with occasional lapses into pescatarianism), we end up eating a lot of vegetables anyway. But having to use specific vegetables predetermined by someone else is a new experience for me. So here goes...
Week 1- Kale with Toum, Fresh Salad Greens with Scallions and Tomato and Cumin-Rubbed Salmon
This week's pick-up was rather small. With all of the rain and cold weather in the spring, the planting was delayed. However, everything is in the ground and growing beautifully, so there will be more bountiful pick-ups to come. It was actually good for me, because it let me adapt my cooking to the farm produce. This week, it was one bunch of Lacinato kale, baby bok choy, spinach, scallions, thyme, and salad greens. My share partner, Reva, took the bok choy this week, and I took the kale. The rest we split in half. I used the scallions in a pesto dish I made yesterday, but decided that I needed to get down to business with the rest of the produce today. So I attacked the kale. Dave and I had an amazing kale dish at a restaurant named Oleana and I decided to try and recreate it.
First, I took the bunch of Lacinato kale leaves and washed them in tepid water twice. The kale looked clean, but even when it looks clean, make sure you wash it! Contrary to popular myth, you don't have to use ice cold water to wash greens. I used to wash my green in ice cold water, wincing every time I had to put my hand in the water to pull out the greens. Reva watched me do this one day and laughed. She is a CIA graduate and interned at the Lumiere. She told me that a chef at Lumiere saw her do the same thing and laughed. He told her to be kind to herself and that tepid/cool water was just fine for greens washing.
From there, I cut the kale into a chiffonade.
I then sautéed the kale in a wok with a tablespoon of olive oil, until the kale had wilted.
I dressed the kale with a Lebanese garlic sauce called Toum.
To make the Toum, I used a 1/2 cup of peeled garlic, 1 teaspoon salt, 1/4 cup of lemon juice and 2 cups of olive oil. Blend the garlic, salt and lemon juice together and slowly add the oil until it emulsifies. If it doesn't emulsify, don't worry, it still tastes great! If you don't have a blender, just cut the garlic finely and just whisk the ingredients together.
I mixed the dressing in with the still-warm kale. Make sure you season to taste. I added a teaspoon of honey to my kale. I also added a few raisins for sweetness. I thought about adding pine nuts, but started munching on the kale and decided to forget about it. So yummy! And to think that I was not a big fan of kale before!
The rest was pretty simple. I washed the salad greens, dried them and cut up some tomatoes and scallions to mix with them. I took a little of the leftover toum, a teaspoon of honey and made a light dressing for the salad.
As my husband loves his protein, I did a pan seared Alaskan Salmon with a cumin rub. Simply put, I rubbed the fillets with some salt, pepper and ground cumin and seared with with a little olive oil and a tablespoon of butter. I have to say, I was done in 30 minutes. Rachel Ray, you have nothing on me!
This CSA thing might not be so tough after all....
