The produce challenge

My sister Kathryn gets a CSA box every week that's packed with both usual (lettuce, broccoli, strawberries) and unusual (cardoon, purple goosefoot orach, lamb's quarters) items. But occassionally, she can't keep up, and that's when she starts passing off her extras to me.

Recently, she did this twice in two weeks, and I got a little taste of the pressures of eating fresh and local in large volumes.

To digress briefly, right after college I lived in the Oakland Hills in one of the few houses on a street that hadn't burned down in the big fire in 1991. The fire story explains how bunch of young 'uns could afford the rent. Well, that and the fact that the owner had illegally developed the basement so that four to five people could live in what records indicated was a two-bedroom house. This house had a huge backyard with loquat and meyer lemon trees and a bunch of sunny open space, and one fine spring day we decided to build raised beds and plant a huge garden. I loved this garden and tended it carefully until the day it started yielding vegetables.

This didn't make any sense, because I enjoy fresh vegetables and really liked working in the garden. But once the tomatoes from the seven plants, 12 green bean stalks, and carrots, squash, and other veggies started ripening, I became so overwhelmed that I refused to even go in the backyard anymore. Ripe produce is an unstoppable force. You either stay on top of things and harvest, cook, and eat it as fast as it demands, or you create this cycle of waste and guilt. I couldn't handle the pressure, and I couldn't handle the guilt, so I gave up.

I'd like to think that if I had that garden today, I'd do a better job enjoying the harvesting and eating part. But receiving a bunch of veggies all at once induced that familiar panic. But I'm older and wiser and cook more, plus my kitchen is way less nasty than the one at the Oakland hills house (water had leaked into the wood under the plastic veneer of the counter tops, which made the plastic cave in and filled the whole kitchen with the aroma of rot. Incidentally, this is also the house where someone made a package of Top Ramen and only after they had eaten half the pot of noodles noticed that there were boiled maggots floating on the top of the broth. These are the associations I have with that kitchen).

So first I ignored the veggies for a few days, which was easy enough to do because I recently got some of those cloth produce bags, and since they're opaque the vegetables couldn't stare out at me and wilt accusingly in plain sight every time I opened the fridge.

But I knew they were there. So finally I took them all out, laid them on the counter (there were so many it took up most of the space), and stared at them. I knew I needed to assert my authority over this produce, but I wasn't sure how. I began to move them around, to think about how the flavors might taste together and what might go well with what. After a few minutes I had three neat piles. A salad pile, full of various lettuces, carrots of many colors, and radishes. A greens pile, with red chard, lamb's quarters, and purple goosefoot orach, plus some kind of heirloom onion. And a squash pile, full of...you guessed it.

I put each of the groups in a bag, and over the next few days cooked, prepared, and ate my way through the groupings. It was nice to be able to pull out a bag with all the primary ingredients already assembled. And next time Kathryn gives me veggies, I'll know what to do right away.

Here's an altered and summarized version of the Chez Panisse Cafe Cookbook Garlicky Kale recipe I used to prepare the greens:

2 pounds greens
EVOO
Salt
4 garlic cloves
1 tropea onion (that's the one that Kathryn gave me. It was a young, torpedo-shaped purple onion)
Red wine vinegar
Pepper

Remove thick stems from kale, coarsely chop leaves. Wash and drain, but do not dry. Heat a large saucepan, add 1/4 c. olive oil and enough kale to cover the bottom. Cook on high heat while stirring until greens wilt. Add more greens as the leaves wilt until you've got them all in there. Season with salt, cover, and reduce heat to medium. Cook, stirring occasionally until tender. Add a splash of water if the leaves start to scorch. When the leaves are tender, remove the lid and allow the extra liquid to cook away. Push the greens to one side and add a bit more olive oil, and the chopped onion. Cook it for about two minutes. Then add a bit more olive oil, the garlic, and a pinch of red pepper flakes to the bare spot. Just as you smell the aroma of garlic, stir it into the kale. Turn off heat, add a splash of vinegar, and correct the seasoning.

Ice cream ends the egg saga

To summarize the now-ended saga of the three dozen eggs: most went to the two batches of ice cream and the rest to Eva's poached-egg-and-soldier appetizer.

More about the ice cream

I had a ton of cherries (Rainier) because I initially thought I'd make a clafoutis, but then I was looking through the Chez Panisse Desserts book and found a recipe for cherry ice cream with kirsch. The cherries were simmered then blended, but I left them a little chunky. The kirsch went in right before blending (not because the recipe called for it, but because I didn't have any in the house when I was making the ice cream custard). The final product was good, but I actually think I don't love cherry ice cream. Maybe if I had used bing cherries, the flavor would have been able to stand up to all that dairy, but I felt like, as it was, it sort of lacked personality. The kirsch gave it a nice kick though.

I also made salted caramel ice cream. I used this David Lebovitz recipe, but left out the praline. Sometimes when I'm making caramel, I have trouble getting it to achieve that perfect brown, but this time it was no problem. Is that because I was using TJ's organic cane sugar that was already a little bit tan? I have no idea. But since it worked so well, I'll use it again in the future.

This ice cream was the all-around favorite. It was very rich and sweet--best eaten in small scoops with a crunchy cookie--but opinions differed on whether the caramel praline would have made it too sweet or just added a nice texture.

I'll certainly make the salted caramel ice cream again, but I may look for ways to pare down the sweet just a little bit. It was turned up to 11, but I think it would be better at about 8. Adding the salt doesn't have a super-dramatic impact but it does give the sweet something to play off of, and adds some depth to what would otherwise be a pure sugar bomb. Or in this case bombe? Sorry.

One more Eva recipe

I'm not sure I have retained the list of all the ingredients, so I'll have to check with Eva when she returns to civilization after her high-desert, BYO protein Sufi retreat, but as a sauce for salmon, she took mayonnaise and mixed it with chopped capers, white-wine vinegar (I think), lemon, and salt and pepper. It was delicious. A little heart-attacky, but delicious.

Soldiers!

I love soldiers! Those crustless slices of toast that you dip into poached or soft-boiled eggs. As the wait-for-Joel-to-come-home appetizer, Eva lightly cooked some asparagus, and topped it with a poached egg and some cheese shavings (she said Parmesan tastes best, but all we had was myzithra, which tasted good too). All served with Acme Pain de Mie (a true cake among breads) soldiers. I keep meaning to make this for myself, but it would require a new loaf of Pain de Mie and I don't trust myself to not eat it all in one day.

Secrets of the potato

My friend Eva was here from London until Thursday, and while she was here I learned all sorts of yummy tricks. Here are a few about potatoes:

• Boil new potatoes with mint and then serve with butter and salt and pepper. I haven't tried this one yet, but it sounds good.
• To achieve potato crispiness, boil new potatoes until they're tender, then roll them in olive oil and stick them in a roasting pan in a 425 degree oven for a bit, turning them once or twice, until they're crisp. Salt and pepper them at the very end. I have tried this one, along with salmon and these really good green beans that I'll also write about.
  

She also promised a potato recipe from her uncle, who owns a pub, and therefore I'm guessing, really knows his pub food. Roasted potatoes included.

Green beans

It's not difficult to prepare green beans well, but the way Eva finished her steamed green beans made them extra delicious.

After the green beans were done, she put some butter in a pan, then added a bit of minced garlic, cooked it for about 10 seconds, and then added a bunch of chopped flat-leaf parsley and more butter. Then she added the green beans, turned off the heat, and tossed them with the garlic-parsley butter and some salt and pepper.

Excuses

Houseguest and very ill dog, all at the same time.