With apologies to the many awesome lunch ladies I have known, I am pretty sure the cafeteria at South Columbia Elementary School in Martinez, Georgia, circa 1984, is to blame. I remember dreary piles of the stuff, breaded and steamed and slumping forlornly, almost apologetically, in its compartment of the brownish melamine lunch tray. I looked at its dusty breading and its drab interior, utterly unconvinced, and occasionally gave it a nudge with my fork.  It yielded immediately, like pudding, and slid right back off the fork.  We got off on the wrong foot, okra and me, and I’m afraid now that I wasted more than twenty-five years holding a grudge.

Because this summer?  I’m on an okra bender.  I’m not sure what changed for me, exactly. We’re growing okra again after a hiatus of several years; perhaps I see those gorgeous plants with their flowers like delicate ivory trumpets and I just want to do right by them.  Maybe something clicked for me when Ali said, “I love okra because it’s the most vegetable-y of our vegetables.”  He’s right: when you cook it right, okra’s flavor is green and clean and bright, the very essence of fresh.  Maybe it’s because now, as a mother, I don’t want to waste any more time being virtuous.  What I want is joy at the table, a strong body and a curious mind and an open heart, a rich family life. I swear I’m finding all that in okra.

A few quick notes and then I’ll share four of our favorite recipes.

Storing okra: Keep your okra in a plastic or paper bag in the fridge, unwashed, and use it within a few days.

Using okra: Please don’t bread it and then steam it. You could steam it very gently, just till bright green and still with some snap to it, and then eat it warm, drizzled with butter and a squeeze of lemon juice, or chilled, dressed with a bright vinaigrette.  Try it breaded and fried, braised, pickled, skewered and grilled, in stews, in curries, in place of squash or zucchini in ratatouille. See below for four recipes we’ve been making over and over again this summer.

A word about okra slime: In Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, Deborah Madison writes, “Okra is slimy, and rather than try to ignore this fact, perhaps it’s best just to admit that’s how things are.” Maybe that’s what changed for me this summer.  I’m not trying to wish the slime away anymore.  Instead, I’ve learned how to make it work in a dish’s favor.  In our favorite fried okra, it binds with a cornmeal and parmesan coating to create a perfect golden crust.  In our okra and tomato braise, it thickens the juices of burst cherry tomatoes and makes the most lovely sauce.  And of course it’s essential for thickening up gumbo.  Maybe thinking about it this way will help you, too.

Our Favorite Fried Okra
(serves 4-6, unless you eat like we do, in which case: serves 2)

1 lb okra
1/4 cup milk or cream (an egg might work too)
1/2 cup cornmeal
1/4 cup grated Parmesan
1 teaspoon salt
1/4-1/2 teaspoon chili powder

Prepare the coating. In a large bowl, whisk together the cornmeal, Parmesan, salt, and chili powder. Set aside.

Prepare the okra. Trim off the stems. Slice the okra into 1/4-inch rounds. Place in a bowl and drizzle with the milk or cream – just enough to coat the rounds. You may not need all the milk or cream.

Prepare the skillet. Warm several tablespoons olive oil over medium heat in a large skillet.

Finish preparing the okra. Pour the okra into the bowl with the dry ingredients.  Using your hands or a large spoon, toss the okra in the breading until it’s well coated.

Fry the okra! When the skillet is ready, dump in the whole mess of okra. We use a 10-inch cast iron skillet and it’s a tight fit, but it works perfectly.  Use a large flat spatula to tamp the okra down.  Fry until the cheese begins to turn golden.  Flip the okra over with a spatula.  You’ll have to do this in sections and it will seem messy, but keep going!  Fry until the cheese on this side begins to turn golden.  Flip back to the first side, and fry another minute or two.  Flip back to the second side, and fry another minute or two.  Eat!

Braised Okra with Cherry Tomatoes
(serves 4-6, unless you eat like we do, in which case: serves 2)

This recipe comes to us from Noell, who used to host our Ginter Park CSA pickup. Don’t be fooled by its apparent plainness: this belongs in everyone’s summer arsenal.  It’s amazing eaten straight from the skillet, and pretty darn good eaten straight from the fridge as well.  It’s wonderful on top of quinoa and other grains, and it makes a great wrap or burrito filling.  Every time I take a bite I grin.

Quantities are approximate.  Use roughly equal amounts of okra and cherry tomatoes, and garlic to taste.

1 lb okra
1 lb cherry tomatoes
3-4 cloves garlic (or to taste), chopped
olive oil, salt & pepper

Warm a few tablespoons olive oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat.  Meanwhile, trim off the okra stems and then slice in half lengthwise, or slice into 1/4-inch rounds.  When the skillet is ready, add the okra.  Saute for about 10 minutes, flipping occasionally, until the okra begins to brown.  Add the cherry tomatoes, and salt and pepper to taste, and cover.  Braise 5-10 minutes, checking every few minutes.  The dish is done when most of the cherry tomatoes have burst.

Frog Bottom Gumbo
(serves a lot)

Ali comes from the Gulf Coast along the Florida Panhandle, and man is the eating good when we’re there!  Fried oyster poboys, crawfish étouffée, boudin, just-caught shrimp – all sublime.  But Pensacola is a far piece from Pamplin.  It’s a good thing the man can cook.  Here’s his gumbo recipe.  Almost all quantities, except for the flour and butter or oil for the roux, are flexible, and you can change quantities or even ingredients to suit what you have on hand. Beyond what’s listed here we’ve included things like green beans, carrots, and squash.  Trust that once you’ve got a handle on making a roux, the rest of this dish will come together easily.

3 tablespoons butter or neutral tasting cooking oil
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
2 onions or 3 shallots, coarsely chopped
1/2 lb okra, sliced into 1/2-inch rounds
2-3 sweet peppers, coarsely chopped
3-4 stalks celery, coarsely chopped
2-4 cloves garlic (or to taste), chopped
1 jalapeño or other hot pepper, minced
ketchup, cumin, cayenne, Worcestershire to taste
any meats or seafood you like — We like any combination of leftover chicken pulled from the bone, 1/2 lb sausage, 1/2 lb shrimp. The meats are delicious but optional – it’s untraditional but you might consider adding mushrooms or eggplant if you’re vegetarian or vegan.
3-4 tomatoes or 1 large can tomatoes — Some argue that tomatoes have no place in a traditional gumbo, but we think they’re delicious.
1 quart chicken or vegetable stock
1/2 cup uncooked white rice

First, chop your vegetables. It’s very important that they be ready to go before you start the roux, because adding the vegetables to the roux at just the right time is what keeps the roux from burning.  Everything can be chopped coarsely, except your hot pepper, which you probably want to mince.

Make the roux. A roux is made of equal parts fat and flour, cooked together over low to medium heat and stirred constantly until it’s done.  Set your burner to medium and add your butter or oil.  When the butter is melted or the oil warm, add the flour and begin stirring.  We use either a metal turner with a straight edge, or a wooden roux stirrer.  You could also use a whisk.  Do not leave the stove while you’re making the roux.  Stir constantly and pay close attention to the color of the roux.  For the purposes of a gumbo, you’ll be aiming for a brown roux, the color of a penny or darker.  A darker roux will give the sauce in the gumbo a richer taste, but know that the darker you try to get it, the more you risk burning the roux.  If black flecks appear, it’s burned.  You can’t fix this.  Throw it out and start over.

When the roux is a dark coppery brown, add all the vegetable except the tomatoes. They’ll absorb the heat and stop the roux from cooking. Also add any raw meats at this time.  Cook until the vegetables are soft and the meat is mostly cooked.

Add salt, pepper, ketchup, and spices to taste.

Add the tomatoes, the stock, any leftover meats you’re using up, and the uncooked rice. Cook until the rice is done.

Add the shrimp (if using) and cook just until they’re pink and firm, just a couple minutes.

And now: eat!

Lacto-Fermented Okra Pickles

I’ve been having quite a lot of fun experimenting with lacto-fermented vegetables this season.  In this approach, you ferment or pickle your vegetables in a brine of water, salt, and sometime whey.  The brine inhibits the growth of putrefying bacteria (the stuff that makes food rot and stink) and encourages the growth of friendly lactic-acid-producing bacteria.  These lactobacilli convert the starches and sugars in the vegetables into lactic acid – a natural preservative.  Lacto-fermented vegetables will last for months in cold storage.  This summer we’ve lacto-fermented garlic scapes, cucumbers, salsa – and okra!

Our preferred method uses fresh whey, which we get by straining plain whole milk yogurt for a couple hours. Fresh whey contains lots of lactobacilli and so gives the whole process a bit of a boost.  Lacto-fermenting is quite simple, but it can be unpredictable and is significantly affected by things like ambient temperature and the stuff that’s in your tap water.  Using whey seems to help.  That said, you don’t need it, so we’ll tell you how to do it both with and without whey. You’ll need a kitchen scale for our no-whey recipe.

Both recipes double (and triple, quadruple, etc.) easily. We love that you can lacto-ferment in such small batches, but by all means, if you have enough to make more, do!!

A quick word on water, salt, and jars: Don’t use tap water that is heavily chlorinated, because it will kill the lactobacilli. If you can smell or taste chlorine in your water, boil it first, and then let it cool.  Likewise, don’t use salt with iodine, which is also antimicrobial.  Sea salt and pickling salt both work fine.  Jars should be clean but do not need to be sterilized.

We’re greatly indebted to both Nourishing Traditions and Wild Fermentation for our lacto-fermentation education!  Both books are fantastic resources.

Lacto-Fermented Okra Pickles (with whey)

as many okra as will fit in a pint jar
1-2 cloves garlic, smashed with the broad side of a chef’s knife
1/2 tablespoon sea salt or pickling salt
2 tablespoons whey (see note above)
1/2 cup water
any spices or seasonings you like – black pepper, cayenne, coriander, cumin, curry, garlic, ginger, and mustard all pair well with okra

Wash the okra and stuff it, along with the garlic, into your pint jar. Pack it in there really tight; you don’t want any pieces to float above the brine when you add it. Make sure there’s about an inch of headroom between the top of the okra and the top of the jar.

Combine the rest of the ingredients and pour over the okra. (If you want, you can gently warm the water and salt in a pot first, stirring until the salt is dissolved, and then add the rest of the ingredients.  Alternately, you can simply gently turn the jar back and forth whenever you think of it during the first day or so of fermenting, which will also help the salt dissolve.)  Add a bit more water if necessary to cover the okra completely; lacto-fermentation is an anaerobic process, and if any vegetables are exposed above the brine, you risk either mold or mushy vegetables. The okra can expand slightly as it ferments, so be sure to leave about an inch between the top of the brine and the top of the jar.  Cover and keep at room temperature for 2-4 days, until bubbles begin to form and the okra is as sour as you like it. Taste it after 2 days; if you like how it tastes, put it in the fridge.  If you want it to be more sour, give it another day or two before putting it in the fridge.  That’s it!  Lasts several months.

Lacto-Fermented Okra Pickles (without whey)

If you have a kitchen scale, this method will definitely appeal to the math or food safety geek in you.  The amount of salt you use in your brine can vary quite a lot, but you do need to get it in the right range.  Too little salt and putrefying bacteria will survive (you’ll know if this happens – your ferment will mold and/or stink!).  Too much salt and all your bacteria will be killed, including the good guys.  Aim for a brine that is 3%-5% salt.  We prefer the tang of a 5% brine, but 3% is still strong enough to kill the bad guys and let the good guys survive.

Here’s how this method works.  Wash the okra and stuff it, along with garlic if you like, into your pint jar. Pack it in there really tight; you don’t want any pieces to float above the brine when you add it.   Add water to cover.  Make sure there’s about an inch of headroom between the water and the top of the jar. Put a bowl or jar on your kitchen scale and tare it.  Now pour the water covering the okra into the jar on the scale.  Note the weight and do a little math to determine how much salt you’ll need.  For example, if your water weighs 300 grams, a 5% brine requires 15 grams of salt, and a 3% brine requires 9 grams of salt.  Put the water, salt, and any spice or seasonings you like (see previous recipe for suggestions) into a pot and heat on your stove, stirring occasionally, until the salt is dissolved.  Pour the brine over the okra, cover, and keep at room temperature for 2-4 days, until bubbles begin to form and the okra is as sour as you like it. Taste it after 2 days; if you like how it tastes, put it in the fridge.  If you want it to be more sour, give it another day or two before putting it in the fridge.  That’s it!  Lasts several months.

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Hope these recipes are enough to get you on the right road if you’re an okra skeptic!

If you’re an okra lover, please share your favorite recipes in the comments!

We’re still mad for summer vegetables, but these tiny beet seedlings in the greenhouse also have us daydreaming about early fall.

Let’s get right to it, shall we?

It’s a Can-a-Rama! The folks at Canning Across America hope you’ll keep the momentum from National Can-It-Forward Day going all week long with home canning parties.

Simple Bites has a slew of great posts on food preserving. Canning 101: The Basics is a great place to start.

We’ve been on a lacto-fermentation kick here in the Frog Bottom kitchen – lately, with vegetables.  Famous lacto-fermented foods include yogurt, sourdough, sauerkraut, and kimchi.  Lacto-fermented vegetables use a simple brine of water and salt (and sometimes whey) – no vinegar – to encourage good bacteria to preserve the food.  We may write more about this at some point, so for now I’ll just say I love how fast and easy this is! A few minutes chopping, a few minutes stuffing a jar, and then just a few days of waiting for all that good bacteria to do its work.  No giant pots of boiling water, no hours at the stove – the salsa you see below took me about 20 minutes to prepare, and that was mainly because of all the chopping.  Cucumber pickles and okra pickles each took under 10 minutes.  Read a bit more, and find the salsa recipe we used, at Lacto-Fermentation: an Easier, Healthier, and More Sustainable Way to Preserve.

Check out this fun infographic on home gardening!

Tired of pesto and Caprese salads? Wait — not possible.  But, we think you should try these basil cookies anyway.

Here are five awesome tomato soup recipes.  Make ‘em now or freeze some of the incredible tomato bounty and try them when the first fall chill creeps in.

(Did you know freezing tomatoes can be as simple as waiting until they’re dead ripe and then throwing them whole into a Ziploc bag and stashing them in the freezer? A quick blanching/peeling/seeding will make them a bit easier to work with come thawing time, but if you’re feeling overwhelmed, seriously, just throw them into the freezer whole.)

From the pen and kitchen of the ever-reliable Mark Bittman: 101 Simple Salads for the Season.  More fantastic and fast summer fare!

Umm, how fun does Lucky Peach look? It’s a new food journal published by the McSweeney’s folks. Have a look here.

And finally, we loved this essay about processing peaches and the way the long slog through a bushel of seconds can be a kind of meditation.

More to come later in the week! We’ve heard from a number of you that you need some help with okra, and with the mad bounty of eggplant, so that’s where we’ll start.

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Weekend Links is a regular feature here on the farm blog: a weekly(ish) list of articles, recipes, and other resources that have been inspiring and amusing us of late. A tasty smorgasbord for brain and belly!

Heather picks okra while some of the new chickens have a look.

Our fields and fridge are full of vegetables – and eggs! – and we’re feeling mighty inspired these days!  Just a taste of what we’ve been reading and cooking:

Did you know this coming Saturday, August 13, is the first annual National Can-It-Forward Day? The folks at Canning Across America, along with Jarden Home Brands (they’re the ones who make Ball jars and other canning products), are encouraging everyone to gather with family and friends at home canning parties to learn the basics of canning.  One of the coolest resources they’re offering is a day-long live stream of several how-to canning demos (mixed berry jam, kosher dills, tomatoes in their own juice, more!) happening at Seattle’s Pike Place Market.  See the live stream schedule and find the link here.

The August 2011 Bon Appétit had a fun article about an LA canning party. The recipes for dilly beans, pickled beets with star anise, tomato jam, and zucchini dill pickles are all on our list to try this summer!

And this recipe for onion jam has been tempting us for weeks.  Just onions, balsamic vinegar, maple syrup, and butter!  I could do that today!  We think it would be especially delicious on pizza, topped with just about anything else that’s in season right now.

(We should point out the turn-the-jar-upside-down method of sealing is no longer recommended; we’ll probably just make one jar for the fridge and another for the freezer, but here are two good resources for safe canning guidelines.)

We’ve made this heavenly tomato & cheddar pie twice in as many weeks. It does require a little planning: the biscuit dough for the crust needs to chill for an hour, and the tomatoes need to drain for 30 minutes.  But otherwise it comes together quite easily.  And the crust is quite forgiving.  The second time we made it we didn’t use quite enough flour, and the dough seemed a sticky and hopeless mess as we eased it into the pie pan.  But it baked up beautifully, and didn’t get soggy even after a day in the fridge.   And seriously: tomatoes, mayonnaise, cheese, biscuit crust? Do we need to say more?  Make it! Any of the tomatoes you’ve been getting in your shares or at market will work great.

We haven’t tried it yet, but CSA members Yajaira and Domenick independently told us we also had to make this heirloom tomato pie.

And while we’re on the subject of tomatoes: how delicious does Tyler Florence’s Roasted Tomato Soup look?  Thanks to CSA member Tracy for this one.

We’re longtime fans of Mark Bittman.  We pull his How to Cook Everything down from the kitchen bookshelf at least weekly, often more.  The How to Cook Everything app is pretty great too!  For close to fifteen years he wrote a cooking column for the New York Times called The Minimalist.  We’ll admit to feeling a twinge of disappointment this winter when he decided to write less about cooking and more about food politics.  Certainly the systems of food production and distribution in this country are damaged, and we appreciate compelling writing from folks who can help us think about how we might begin to fix things.  But there are many people writing eloquently about these issues; fewer writers have Bittman’s skill for making home cooking seem simple, fun, and approachable.  So we were really delighted by one recent op-ed: “Make Food Choices Simple: Cook.”  In it, he argues we should cook more and eat out less – because it’s cheaper, because we have more control where the food comes from, and because it tastes better.  He writes:

When I cook, though, everything seems to go right. I shop an average of every two weeks in a supermarket, and make a couple of trips a week to smaller stores. I’m aware that my choices are mostly imperfect, but I rarely conclude that I should make a burger and fries for dinner or provide a pound per person of prison-raised pork served with fruit from 10,000 miles away, followed by a cake full of sugar and artificial ingredients. Yet, for the most part, that describes restaurant food.

Also fantastic?  ”101 Simple Meals Ready in 10 Minutes or Less,” a Minimalist column from 2007.  Loaded with awesome ideas for no-fuss summer cooking.

Oh! We’ve posted our favorite ratatouille recipe before, but it bears reminding — early August is definitely ratatouille time in Central Virginia!

That does it for this week!  We’ll be back this weekend with more tasty links.  And we hope to post later this week about two delicious vegetables that we know can be intimidating: okra and eggplant.

We’ll wrap things up with some more recent images from the farm. (Click on any to see ‘em big!)

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Weekend Links is a (soon-to-be!) regular feature here on the farm blog: a weekly(ish) list of articles, recipes, and other resources that have been inspiring and amusing us of late. A tasty smorgasbord for brain and belly!

But we do aim to make Weekend Links a regular feature here — a list of articles, recipes, and other fun stuff that’s been inspiring or amusing us lately.

Read on!

Mitch and Heather picking your basil!

First things first: it’s a Pie Party tomorrow! If you can, join the almost 1,400 (!!) people who are baking pies and posting their photos and experiences on Facebook, Twitter, or their blogs. This event evolved quite spontaneously during discussions on Facebook and Twitter but it took off like hotcakes.  Read more about it here – and make pie!

Are you intimidated by making pie dough? I feel more at ease in the kitchen than just about anywhere else, and yet until fairly recently I was scared of pie dough. I definitely allowed all the talk about cold butter and not overworking the dough to get in the way of delicious, homey pie.  But you know what?  It’s not so hard!  We’ve been using the pie dough recipe in this Orangette post – easy peasy!  And if you need to avoid gluten, try the recipe in the Pie Party post on Gluten-Free Girl and the Chef.  (Did you learn how to make pie from your grandmother, your dad, your next door neighbor?  We’d love it if you could share the recipe in the comments!)

I don’t have a great segue here – I do love pie – but I’m considering signing us up for the 30 Day Vegan summer session beginning August 15. This is a whole foods online workshop led by Heather of Beauty That Moves.  It’s for anyone interested in eating more vegetables and seeking a more balanced, centered approach to nourishment: vegans who feel they’ve been eating too many processed foods, people considering becoming vegan, or folks (like us) who aren’t vegan but who are looking for some inspiration and love the idea of getting some fresh perspective with a community of other eager eaters. The session costs $45 and includes access to a private blog, video cooking classes, loads of recipes, and one-on-one guidance from Heather if you need it.

Hey! Our farm was featured in an NPR story about cooking from a CSA share! Nicole Spiridakis’s “Oh the Things You Can Do With a Farm-Share Box” is one of the best things we’ve ever read on the challenges of learning to cook from what’s really in season.  She brings a spirit of adventure, ingenuity, and fortitude to her cooking – go get inspired!  I’m especially eager to try her Farm Egg Soufflé With Vegetables as soon as our new chickens start laying.

Here’s another great piece on making the most of a CSA share.  Author Kate McDonough shares several tips, including this shift in thinking: do your meal planning for the week after you pick up your share.

And here’s one more on cooking from a CSA share, from Meagan at The Happiest Mom. This one is really about coming up with a focused and mindful approach to summer eating.  Her Six-Meal Shuffle approach to menu planning is especially encouraging and I think we’re going to give it a try!

And a few fun links to round things out: How close to a train track can you set up a vegetable market? Have you tried an Eastside Fizz yet this summer?  And are you as excited as Guy Clark is about homegrown tomatoes?  I know we are!!

Happy Fourth of July, everyone! May there be lots of good food, fireworks, and lightning bugs in your (near) future.

I like to think of kale as a gateway green: although it may look a bit intimidating with all those ribs and ruffles, it’s actually quite easy to love.  It’s delicious chopped quickly and thrown into the skillet with some olive oil and garlic, and sautéed until it’s bright green and a little bit tender.  Eat it just like that, or squeeze a bit of lemon juice on top.  That whole process takes 15 minutes, tops.

We’ve also won over many a kale skeptic with kale chips, also known as roasted kale or crispy kale. Kale chips are quick and completely addictive.  Arrange kale on a baking sheet in a single (or so) layer, toss with a little olive oil and salt, and bake at 375° for 10 minutes or 15 minutes, giving the cookie sheet a shake or two if you remember, until the edges get crispy.  We usually do a double batch.

Colcannon is delicious too.  This is a traditional Irish dish of potatoes and kale or cabbage.  A fun Halloween tradition is to hide a ring and a coin in the dish — whoever gets the ring will be next to marry, and whoever gets the coin is assured good fortune in the coming year!

Sautéed kale, kale chips, and colcannon are really so easy and so delicious, and so for a long time we were lazy about trying anything new.

But we just discovered something wonderful.  We’ve been growing kale for five years and yet this surprising little dish slipped quietly into our lives just last month.  But make no mistake: massaged kale salad is here to stay.

We’d come across the idea before but jammed it into an already crowded file folder of “stuff to try at some point.”  It might have languished there for years if not for my mom, who’s recently been exploring Mark Bittman’s suggestion to eat vegan until 6pm, a creative idea for improving your own health and for depending less on the unwholesome way most meat is produced in this country. Through her I discovered Choosing Raw, a website full of ideas for a natural, unprocessed, plant-based diet.  Gena, who writes the site, is cheerful and encouraging and never judgmental.  She makes me feel excited all over again about all the vegetables we grow.

So I was happy to give her raw massaged kale salad a spin, but I didn’t know how crazy we’d be for it.  Since we started making it in September, we’ve eaten it no fewer than three times a week.  It’s light and filling all at once.  And like a traditional green salad, there are endless possibilities.  Here are three we like.  Try it!

Basic Massaged Kale Salad

3/4 lb curly kale, chopped into 1-inch ribbons
2-3 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
salt to taste
lemon juice
grated carrots
toasted sunflower seeds

Put kale in a large bowl.  Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with salt.   Massage with your hands so that it’s well coated with the olive oil and it begins to wilt and darken, less than a minute.  Add the lemon juice (you might like up to a full lemon), grated carrots, and toasted sunflower seeds, and toss.  Yum! This is enough for two generous portions with some leftovers.  Doubles easily.

Massaged Kale Salad with Tahini-Apple Cider Vinegar Dressing

3/4 lb curly kale, chopped into 1-inch ribbons
salt to taste
1 Tbsp or so olive oil
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
juice of one lemon
1/4 cup soy sauce
3 Tbsp tahini
1-2 cloves garlic
2-3 dates, pitted
additional vegetables

Put the kale in a large bowl, sprinkle with salt, and drizzle with olive oil.  Massage with your hands until it begins to wilt and darken, less than a minute.  Set aside.  Put the apple cider vinegar, lemon juice, soy sauce, tahini, garlic, and dates in a blender or food processor, and process until smooth.  Taste the dressing; add more dates if it’s too tangy, or more apple cider vinegar if it needs a little more kick. Add about two tablespoons of the dressing to the kale, and massage again to coat.  Taste the salad at this point to see if you want to add more dressing.  Add any vegetables you like; we like grated carrots, sliced apples, golden raisins, and toasted sunflower seeds on this one.  Makes two generous portions with some leftovers. You’ll also have plenty of dressing left.  Store it in a jar in the fridge and use it on tomorrow’s kale salad!

Massaged Kale Salad with Avocado (our favorite!)

3/4 lb curly kale, chopped into 1-inch ribbons
2-3 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
salt to taste
1 avocado
lemon juice
additional vegetables, nuts, seeds

Put kale in a large bowl.  Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with salt.   Massage with your hands so that it’s well coated with the olive oil and it begins to wilt and darken, less than a minute.  Add 1/3 to 1/2 of the avocado, and massage again so that the avocado coats the kale like a thick dressing.  Dice the rest of the avocado and add it, along with the lemon juice and any other ingredients (try grated hakurei turnips, grated beets, or grated kohlrabi).  Toss.  Eat!

(Find more recipe ideas for greens here.)

Any time (my dad) gets to eat greens — of any kind — two days in a row, he considers himself extremely lucky, and he is not alone. In 1984, at the annual Collard Festival in Ayden, N.C., a man named C. Mort Horst set a world record by eating seven and a half pounds of collard greens in 30 minutes. (However, it was reported that he kept them down just long enough to claim his prize.) A year later, a woman named Colleen Bunting contributed to an anthology devoted to collards called ”Leaves of Greens: The Collard Poems.” In one the poems, she addresses (a common) prejudice: “Some say collards don’t smell so nice,/ But eat them once, and you’ll eat them twice.”

– from Green Party by Julia Reed, New York Times

Some of you grew up with these broad-leaved beauties, but I’m sure there are others among you who have arrived home with your shares in recent weeks and thought, “Ummm … this is as big as my head.  What on earth is it?”

These are collard greens, and they’re delicious, and they’re good for far more than playing peek-a-boo with your baby — although I highly recommend that as well.

You’ve probably been told to eat yer greens and they certainly are nutritional powerhouses.  Collards are probably the best vegetable source of calcium, on par with milk cup for cup.  They’re also very high in Vitamins A and C, iron, potassium, niacin, and protein.

So, short of gnawing on the raw leaves, how do you get all that good stuff in your body?

Traditionally, collard greens are simmered for a looooong time with a ham hock or a hunk of slab bacon or salt pork until they’re silky soft.  They’re quite good like this, although the sour smell of this long cooking is unpleasant to some people.

They’re quite versatile though.  You can chiffonade them and sauté them with garlic in olive oil.  This takes less than five minutes and the greens taste bright and fresh. These short-cut collard greens resemble traditional collards, but you microwave the greens for about 5 minutes first, which cuts the cooking time significantly, and you add chopped bacon at the end instead of cooking the greens with the pork.  Of course, simmering collards in a pork-based stock gives them great flavor; mushroom stock is a great vegetarian option.  And if you’re open to trying them raw, how about collard wraps? This recipe is a great jumping-off point — you could fill collard wraps with all kinds of things!  If raw collards are too strong for you, you can blanch the greens for a minute or two first to mellow the flavor.  And of course, hoppin’ John and collard greens is a traditional Southern New Year’s Day meal for good luck!

Our very favorite way to eat collards comes from the quite irresistible The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook: Stories and Recipes for Southerners and Would-be Southerners, via our friend Eunice. Eunice is a tireless cook with an impeccable palate and I am doing all I can do bring her to the farm for a week next year as a chef-in-residence.  Wouldn’t that be wonderful?  A gal can dream.  But right now, what we’ve got are her delicious collards.

Sneaky collards.

They’re so called because they have a wonderful spicy smoky flavor, but they’re cooked without pork. They’ve got no animal products in them at all, actually, so this is a great vegan dish.  Don’t let that deter the meat-lovers among you, though.  This is a fine, fine meal.  In fact, we’re having it for dinner tonight, so I’d better give you the recipe right now so that I can get cookin’!

We love to spoon a heap of sneaky collards over a big wedge of custard corn bread in a soup bowl. It’s fall in a bowl. We’re ready.

Sneaky Collards
adapted from The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook by Matt Lee and Ted Lee

8 cups water
3 dried chiles or 1 Tbsp crushed red pepper flakes
1 Tbsp plus 1 tsp kosher salt, plus more to taste
3 3/4 pounds collard greens, ribbed, washed, and cut into 1-inch ribbons
1 large onion, trimmed, peeled, and quartered
1 large tomato, cored and quartered, or 1 large can whole tomatoes (1 can diced tomatoes works in a pinch!)
2 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 Tbsp balsamic vinegar, sherry vinegar or red wine vinegar
1 tsp Spanish smoked paprika (pimenton) or Hungarian paprika
3 cloves garlic, unpeeled
1 tsp freshly ground black pepper

In a very large stockpot, bring water to a boil over high heat. Add the chiles and 1 Tbsp salt, and reduce heat to medium-low and simmer until the stock has a nice salty spiciness, about 10 minutes.

Add a few handfuls of greens to the pot. They will float on the surface, so stir them frequently, submerging with the spoon, until they have turned a bright kelly green, 3 to 5 minutes. They will become floppy and more compact, so you can add more handfuls of greens. Continue adding handfuls of greens, stirring and submerging them until all the collards are in the pot (6 to 10 minutes). Turn the heat down to the gentlest simmer and note your time at this point.

While the greens simmer, place the onion and tomato in a small bowl. Drizzle olive oil and vinegar over them, add 1 tsp salt, the paprika, and the pepper, and toss to coat. Transfer the vegetables to a medium cast iron skillet (a cookie sheet or casserole dish works too) and add the garlic. Place the skillet under a hot broiler, about 3 inches from the flame or heating element, until the vegetables are nicely charred, 6 to 8 minutes. Set them on the stovetop to cool.

When the garlic is cool enough to touch, peel the cloves and discard the charred skins. Transfer the broiled onion, tomato, and garlic to a blender or food processor and blend at high speed until the mixture is completely smooth, about 3 minutes. You should have close to 1 1/2 cups of purée.

With a ladle, remove most of the stock from the collards pot and discard or save for soup. (Traditionally, you dip corn bread into this pot liquor left over after the greens are done.  It’s delicious for sure, and has lots of the vitamins and minerals that leach out of the greens when you cook them for a long time.)  Add the purée and continue to simmer the greens, for a total of 1 hour from the point at which you noted the time. The greens will be a very dark matte green and completely tender, bathed in pale red gravy.

Cut a generous wedge of buttermilk skillet corn bread and put it in the bottom of a soup bowl.  Ladle the collards on top.  Sometimes we also add an egg over easy.  Dig in!

Buttermilk Skillet Corn Bread
adapted ever so slightly from our trusty Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone by Deborah Madison

You can make this corn bread without the cream if you like, and it’s still delicious.  But the cream, added just before you slide the skillet into the oven, magically transforms into a custardy layer just under the surface.  Vegan folks might like to give this recipe a spin.

3 tbsp butter
1 cup flour
1 cup stone-ground yellow or white cornmeal
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
2 eggs, beaten
2 Tbsp sugar or honey
2 cups buttermilk (or 2 cups milk plus 2 or so Tbsp lemon juice or vinegar, left to sit for about 10 minutes to curdle)
1 cup cream

Preheat the oven to 375°F.  Put the butter in a 10-inch cast iron skillet (a cake pan or a deep dish pie pan will work if you don’t have a cast iron skillet) and place in the oven while you get everything else together.  Sift the dry ingredients in one bowl and mix the eggs, sugar, and buttermilk in another. Remove the pan from the oven, brush the butter over the sides, then (carefully — the skillet is still hot!) pour the rest into the wet ingredients.  Combine the wet and dry ingredients, and stir long enough to make a smooth batter.  Pour the batter into the hot pan.  Gently pour the cream over the batter — don’t stir!  Gently slide the skillet back into the oven and bake until lightly browned and springy to the touch, 50-60 minutes.

Leftovers make an excellent breakfast!  We’re particularly partial to eating it with a fried egg and maple syrup on top.  Try it!

3 lbs 1 oz!

Autumn is really here!  Three cheers!  Another three!  Who else is with me?

We’re a bit crazy about fall vegetables, and what better way to begin talking about that than with this beautiful monster of a sweet potato?  Perhaps Deborah Madison says it best in her inimitable, indispensable Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone*: “Nearly every time I bite into a roasted sweet potato, I ask myself if anything can be more delicious.”

Sweet potatoes have a lot going on nutritionally: they’re chock full of Vitamin A in the form of beta carotene (which means they’re a great immune system boost, and help you see better too!), are a very good source of Vitamin C, and also contain a significant amount of fiber, iron, and potassium. Lots of their nutritional value is found just under the skin, so consider leaving the skin on when you cook or bake with sweet potatoes.  We don’t use any pesticides, so you can be sure the skins are safe to eat!  And remember, carotenes are fat-soluble.  This means it’s important to eat carotene-heavy foods with some fat, to fully digest and absorb all the good stuff.  So butter those sweet potatoes!

Storing sweet potatoes

We dug the sweet potatoes going into this week’s shares last week, and so they’re only partially cured. You can eat them right away and they’ll be delicious, but their sweetness will intensify if you cure them a few more days at home.  Just leave them in a box, covered with paper or heavy cloth, in the warmest place in your house, for up to a week.  After that, we suggest keeping them in a cool, dark location, ideally not the fridge.  Try wrapping them in some newspaper and putting them in a reasonably well ventilated cabinet or pantry closet.  They should last several weeks, but do be gentle with them. Despite their tough-looking skin, they’re not as rugged as regular potatoes.

Some of our sweet potatoes this year are pretty enormous!  Don’t be afraid of them.  If you slice off as much as you need, you’ll see a milky white fluid begin to appear.  This is naturally occurring latex! It will form a film over the exposed flesh, and will preserve the sweet potato for another couple days at least.  Generally raw sweet potatoes shouldn’t be stored in the refrigerator, but we sometimes do put them there after we’ve sliced off a piece, and we make a point to use the remaining sweet potato fairly quickly so it isn’t damaged by the dry cold.

Sweet potatoes come in all shapes and sizes — just like people!

Eating sweet potatoes

I grew up eating sweet potatoes smothered in marshmallows at the Thanksgiving table … and that was about it.  While I’ll gladly eat them that way even now, golly, I was missing out on so much!  Sweet potatoes are delicious just about any way you cook them: roasted, grilled, braised, steamed; whole, sliced, cubed, mashed, puréed.

Our favorite way to eat sweet potatoes is to slice them into thin rounds, toss with a few good glugs of olive oil, salt, and a few cloves of minded garlic, and arrange in a single layer or so on a cookie sheet. Bake at 400°F for about 15 minutes on one side, and then flip them and cook another 5 or 10 minutes, until they to start to caramelize at the edges.  So good!  We eat them this way a couple times a week but never time the cooking exactly, so do cook them a bit longer if they’re not caramelized yet.

Green things like kale and collards are a happy complement to the sweetness of sweet potatoes. Recently we’ve been eating these roasted sweet potato rounds, or baked sweet potatoes with butter, alongside a raw massaged kale salad (more on that soon in a few days!) and salmon fillets seared in our trusty cast iron pans.

They make wonderful casseroles, of course (savory and sweet), and are also great roasted right alongside chicken, pork, or beef.  They’re fantastic in stews — try a stew of sweet potatoes, tomatoes, onions, and beans, seasoned with peanut butter, garlic, ginger, and cayenne, and served over rice or quinoa.  Puréed, they make an easy early baby food (puréed sweet potato freezes great) and a wonderful soup.  They’re also wonderful cubed and then steamed or roasted, and added to burritos or tacos with black beans and cilantro.

They’re a great addition to breads too!  We make a seriously good braided Hawaiian Sweet Potato Bread from a delightful little cookbook called Goddess in the Kitchen (we thought it was out of print, but it seems it’s just been repackaged as Romancing the Stove: Celebrated Recipes and Delicious Fun for Every Kitchen Goddess).  Last Thanksgiving we made these yeasted sweet potato rolls from James Beard via Joe Yonan at the Washington Post: heavenly.  We haven’t tried these sweet potato biscuits, but they look darned delicious as well.

Have you tried mashed or puréed sweet potatoes in pancake or waffle batter yet?  So good.  And sweet potato pound cake is out of this world.

Other things I’m itching to try: sweet potato gnocchi, a sweet potato soufflé with a bit of cayenne and some crumbled fried sage leaves on top, bread pudding with cubed sweet potatoes.  Ohhh, and how about a sweet potato milkshake with a bit of maple syrup??  Ahem.

One more cooking tip: try substituting sweet potatoes in any recipe that calls for other orange foods like carrots, pumpkin, or winter squash.  It almost always works!

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(Sweet potato pound cake recipe below!)

Sweet Potato Pound Cake
adapted from Southern Cakes by Nancie McDermott

We started making this pound cake in February 2009, right around the time I found out I was pregnant with our own little sweet potato.  Perhaps that explains why I ate that first one for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and dessert till it was gone.  Perhaps not.  This recipe makes a big cake. You stand forewarned.

3 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla
2 sticks butter, room temperature
1 cup sugar
1 cup light brown sugar
4 eggs
2 large sweet potatoes, baked until soft, peeled and mashed (you want 2 cups — eat the rest!)

Preheat the oven to 350°F.  Butter and flour a Bundt pan. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, nutmeg and salt, and set aside. In a small bowl, combine the milk and vanilla, and set aside. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugars until they’re light and fluffy, and then add the eggs one at a time, blending well after each egg.  Add the mashed sweet potatoes and mix on low for about a minute. Add half the flour mixture and mix on low or with a wooden spoon until it’s just incorporated into the batter.  Now add half of milk, continuing to mix gently, then the rest of the flour, mixing gently again, and finally the rest of the milk, mixing gently until the batter is smooth. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake for 60-75 minutes, until a cake tester comes out clean. If you can bear it, let it cool in the pan on a rack for about 20 minutes before gently flipping it out of the pan and onto the rack.  Our friend Shari, who told us about this recipe, warned that it makes your kitchen smell like heaven.  Make some coffee while you wait.  Have your first cup while browsing the archives of this joy+ride, the lovely site co-curated by Shari.  When the cake has cooled just a bit, slice yourself a piece and take it, and the coffee, out to the porch. Exhale. Also makes a great breakfast toasted.

Two notes:

1) If you prefer, you can peel, cube, and steam the sweet potatoes, instead of baking them, before mashing them.  We prefer the sweetness that baking them brings, but either method makes a delicious cake.  We don’t recommend boiling sweet potatoes because they can become a bit waterlogged and also lose some of their nutrients.  (And we know you’re eating this cake for its nutrients.)

2) You can use two 8″x4″ loaf pans instead of a bundt pan.  The baking time will probably be shorter — keep an eye on the loaves and check with a tester.

]]> http://frogbottomfarm.com/2010/09/28/we-dig-sweet-potatoes/feed/ 1 http://frogbottomfarm.com/2010/08/05/58-quarts-of-tomatoes/ http://frogbottomfarm.com/2010/08/05/58-quarts-of-tomatoes/#comments Thu, 05 Aug 2010 20:43:32 +0000 Lisa http://frogbottomfarm.com/?p=1313 Guess where we went last week?

It all begins in a land far, far away…

In 2005, I planted exactly three pots on my terrace in New York City.  I grew four kinds of lettuce, two kinds of thyme, oregano, lemon verbena, and one variety of cherry tomato.  In 2008, I married a farmer, and we bought 25 acres in Central Virginia, managed a flock of 800 pastured laying hens, and planted approximately 7000 tomato plants.

In a similar tale of living at full tilt, I made my very first batch of jam ever last month: apricots from our neighbors’ tree, simmered slowly with a vanilla bean, and tucked right into the fridge, in part because there were only two pints and in part because I’m still a little scared of canning.*  And then last week we** went to the Prince Edward County Cannery and put up 58 quarts of tomatoes.

We had a fantastic time, and the Huddlestons were such generous, patient, congenial teachers.  Mrs. Lena Huddleston has been working at the cannery since it opened in 1975, and she knows a thing or two (hundred) about canning.  She showed us how to use all the big equipment to steam the tomatoes before peeling and chopping them and to cook the tomatoes gently before putting them in cans.  After that Mr. Huddleston took over and sealed everything up.

Meanwhile we cleaned up our mess (and now I want a hose in my kitchen).

When all the cans were sealed, we placed them in an enormous metal barrel, and Mr. Huddleston used an elaborate system of pulleys and chains to lift them all at once into a giant kettle of a pressure canner, where they were processed for the better part of an hour.  (During that time we walked next door to Granny B’s Market, where we had some fine fine reubens for lunch.)  And at last they were plunged into a cool water bath, to stop the cooking and to cool them enough to load everything up into the truck and head home.

Guess what everyone’s getting for Christmas?

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* I know!  A farmer’s wife, scared of canning!  I just have to begin.  My excuse is that the times when we have the most abundant vegetables here on the farm are also our busiest times.  Freezing has always been more manageable — and, I maintain, an excellent choice for many kinds of vegetables. But I do dream of being a food preservationist extraordinaire, and I really want to make jams and pickles.  So I really will learn to can.  Maybe soon.  I’ll keep y’all posted.

** Let me say right now that by “we” I mean, “Miles, Katie, Shannon, Ali, and the Huddlestons.”  I arrived late with Arlo after his morning nap, and we cheered everyone on in the final stretch.

This gal swears she’s a great radio voice.

Last Wednesday Arlo and I traded the juicy tomatoes and the excruciating heat of the farm for some blessed A/C and delightful conversation at the WRIR studios in Richmond. (Don’t get us wrong: we love the farm! But the cool of the studio was something else.)  We joined our good friend Eli of Eli’s Greens and Sunny Gardner of Lightly on the Ground for a great chat about farm life and local food systems.

Have a listen!

Lightly on the Ground radio interview, 21 July 2010

Down below the photos, we’ve listed a few recipes we’ve been loving lately.  Some CSA members have also been sharing recipes via email, the comments sections here on the blog, and over at our Facebook page.  We’ll try to highlight some of those soon as well.  And plans are still afoot for adding forums to this website, so you can share your recipes and cooking adventures directly; we’ll keep you posted!

Here are some tasty ideas for working through these early summer CSA shares and farmers market finds.  Most of them would be fantastic fare for your Fourth of July BBQ!  Lots of these posts link to other great recipes too.

Ginger Scallion Sauce at Chocolate & Zucchini

Red, White & Blue Roast Potatoes and Firecracker Potato Salad (two recipes) at Babble

Fondant Fennel from Edward Schneider at Mark Bittman

Raw Beet Salad at Just Braise

Quick Sauté of Zucchini with Toasted Almonds at Smitten Kitchen

Chard, Onion, and Gruyère Panade at Orangette

101 Fast Recipes for Grilling at The Minimalist

Soon, it should be easier to search recipes we’ve posted or linked to here on the farm blog.  In the meantime, you might enjoy just browsing the posts with recipes.

Enjoy your holiday weekend!  What will you be eating?