What a pleasure, then, that fall vegetables taste so good this way.

Hearty Potato Soup with Kale
adapted from Simply in Season

This hearty soup is just the thing for these early autumn nights.  Slurp it with a big hunk of crusty bread or alongside a fresh fall salad.  A mug of warmed cider is optional but highly recommended.  You can get most of what you need right out of your CSA share or off our market table, and you can find the rest at market too.  It’s a soup for right now.

As with most soups, you’ve got a lot of wiggle room here.  You could use spinach instead of kale – but we’re not growing spinach right now!  Use an onion or a leek.  Water, vegetable broth, and chicken broth all work great here.  Add more potatoes for a really thick soup.  Blend completely, before or after adding the kale, if you like a really smooth soup.  Add extra garlic if you want!  You get the idea.

1 tablespoon butter or olive oil
1 large onion, chopped, or 1 leek, roots and toughest greens removed, thinly sliced
1-2 cloves garlic, minced
2 large potatoes or 4-5 smaller potatoes (about 1 1/2 lbs), diced
5 cups water, vegetable broth, or chicken broth
1/2-3/4 lb kale, chopped
1/2 teaspoon salt or to taste
black pepper to taste

In a large pot, melt the butter or warm the olive oil over medium heat.  Add the onions and sauté until they begin to soften, and then add the garlic and sauté for another minute.  Add the potatoes and enough water or broth to cover by an inch or so – probably about half the broth.  Bring to a boil and then reduce to a simmer and cook until the potatoes are soft.  When the potatoes are almost done, warm the remaining water or stock in a separate pot.

Using an immersion blender, carefully blend the soup until it thickens but some chunks of potato remain – or, ladle out about half the vegetables and set aside, pureé the rest of the vegetables and the cooking liquid in a blender or food processor, and then return everything to the pot. Add the kale and the remaining (and now warmed) water or stock and cook until the kale is soft.  Add salt and pepper.  Taste to see if you need to adjust any seasonings, and serve!

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 and the chopped garlic.  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!

But the tomatoes!  Last year’s record heat was hard on them, but this year they’re hopping.

So is the eggplant.  Which you might have noticed.

Bounty!

We love the stuff, but we know it can be intimidating.  Perhaps it’s because it’s one of only a few vegetables you really can’t eat raw; uncooked eggplant contains a compound called solanine, which can cause stomach upset at high doses.  Or is it that eggplant has a reputation for being bitter?  Eggplant can become bitter as it ages, so it’s true that you risk bitterness when you buy it at the grocery store – there’s no telling how long ago it was harvested.  But we pick ours within a couple days of delivering it to you and keep it in cool storage, so it’s not bitter.  Maybe eggplant is intimidating because despite the incredible culinary diversity in our country, most Americans don’t eat a lot of eggplant as kids.

But we’re here to tell you: eggplant is versatile and delicious.

Eggplant blossom

Storing eggplant: There’s no great answer here.  Eggplant does not store well.  It prefers a temperature of about 50°F. You can leave it on the counter for a day or so, or put it on the bottom shelf of the fridge, but in either place it will begin to age pretty quickly, getting brown spots and losing its mild flavor.  So plan to use it quickly.  Or pickle it!

Using eggplant: Was there ever a more versatile vegetable? Eggplant is such a fantastic element of vegetable-heavy summer fare because 1) it’s hearty and lends real bulk to a meal, and 2) it’s like a sponge, absorbing the flavors of whatever you’re cooking.  It’s great broiled, grilled, sautéed, and roasted.

To salt or not to salt? You’ve probably heard that you need to salt eggplant before cooking.  We disagree.  More or less.  Here’s the deal: since grocery store eggplant is sometimes not fresh, salting can help draw out the bitterness.  But our eggplant is young and tender, so this truly isn’t an issue.  The more compelling reason to salt eggplant has to do with its amazing ability to absorb.  If you’re going to be sautéing your eggplant on the stovetop, you might consider salting it; it will soak up far less of your cooking oil.  But if you’re roasting it (solo or with other summer vegetables like tomatoes and onions and squash, with which it pairs deliciously) or grilling it or broiling it, we say: don’t bother.

To salt: Cut the eggplant into cubes or slices.  Toss lightly with salt.  Put the eggplant into a colander and let it stand for about an hour.  Give it a quick rinse and blot or squeeze dry.  If your recipe calls for salt, wait till the dish is cooked and taste before adding additional salt.

Lots (and LOTS) of recipes below!

Heather in the eggplant patch

Whole Roasted Eggplant. Preheat your oven to 400°F.  Prick the eggplant in several spots with a fork.  Bake on a cookie sheet or in a casserole dish until soft to the point of collapsing, 30 minutes to 1 hour.  Eat this as a vegetable, drizzled with a little olive oil and some fresh herbs and salt.  Or scoop out the flesh and purée it (or mix it by hand) with some olive oil, garlic, chopped parsley or other herbs, and salt and pepper; serve with crackers, bread, as a dip for other vegetables, or as a sandwich spread.  Add some tahini and lemon juice and you’ve got baba ghanoush. (Bonus: I think roasting eggplants smell like brownies in the oven.)

Our Favorite Ratatouille. This stuff is fantastic. Serve it as a side with dinner, but make enough to have leftovers.  It’s also great in wraps and as a pizza topping!

Chinese Noodle Salad with Roasted Eggplant. Scrumptious. Lots of chopping, but so worth it.

Khoresh Bademjan (Persian Eggplant Stew). Thanks to CSA member Bethany for this one!

Bhurtha. A wonderful Indian dish of eggplant and tomatoes with lots of great spices. Thanks to CSA member Stacey for this one!

Eggplant Fries. We haven’t tried these yet but they look so interesting.

Roasted Eggplant Dip. Mmm! From Noell, who used to host our Ginter Park CSA pickup.

Melanzane Sott’Olio (Pickled Eggplant under Oil). Mmm again!  How about a jar of this stuff, a couple sliced Brandywine tomatoes, some crusty whole grain bread, and a glass of wine? Dinner.

And if you still have eggplant left, check out: these eggplant recipes at Tasty Kitchen, The Crisper Whisperer – How to Handle Eggplant Overload at Serious Eats, and A Good Appetite – Counting the Ways to Cook an Eggplant at The New York Times.

Happy eating!

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!

Ain’t that the truth?  Here at Frog Bottom as I’m writing this it’s 96°F, with a heat index of 108°F. While Ali, Joseph, Eric, Heather, and Claire tend to the irrigation, keep all the animals well watered, staff the CSA pickups, and daydream about swimming in the James River, Arlo and I are doing what we can to stay cool: lots of iced coffee (for mama), peach and basil smoothies (for both of us), picture books read while parked between two fans, splashing in a cool bathtub.

Perhaps the heat has addled our brains, because we’re also slow-roasting tomatoes.

I suppose it’s a stretch but I argue we can still call this a great activity for a sticky summer day, since, after all, slow-roasting doesn’t involve very much participation or even movement on your part.

Slow-roasted tomatoes are simple as can be: put your tomatoes on a cookie sheet or in a casserole dish.  Drizzle with olive oil.  Sprinkle generously with salt.  Toss.  Roast in a low oven (about 225°F) for three or more hours, until nice and wrinkly.

We decided to slow-roast today because the tomatoes are in in a big way – more than we can eat even when we eat them three meals a day.  So we’re roasting them, and, if we don’t eat all four pans in one sitting, we’ll freeze as many as we can.  There’s little that lifts the spirits so well, in the deep dark icy depths of winter, than these little bursts of summer flavor.  (Well, maybe pesto as well – make some; it freezes great too!)

Slow-roasting is more method than recipe.  Play around!

For example:

Cook them in a hotter oven for less time, if you need to.  I prefer to roast them low and slow, because it really concentrates their sweetness without drying them out  — sometimes I even set the oven as low as it will go and slow-roast them overnight — but they’re quite delicious any way you do them.

These don’t need anything more than olive oil and salt, but those two ingredients can also anchor more complex flavors from additional herbs and spices.  Try chili pepper or cayenne.  Try them with fresh or dried thyme or rosemary or oregano.  Cumin is also very good!

Or try adding some balsamic vinegar too.  That gives them a lovely pungent sweetness.

Use bigger tomatoes, coarsely shopped, and seeded if you have the patience – or not.

Later in the summer, when our Roma or paste tomatoes are in, we’re mad for pomodori al forno – a dish of lightly herbed slow-roasted tomatoes that marinate in olive oil with parsley and garlic for a couple hours before you eat them with goat cheese and bread. It’s out of this world.

But for now, plain old slow-roasted cherry tomatoes will do.  They will most certainly do.

We love them straight out of the pan … tossed in a green salad or potato salad or pasta salad … stirred into a frittata before it bakes … alongside roasted eggplant and caramelized onions and tangy goat cheese as crostini toppings … on pizza.

There are lots of tomatoes in the CSA shares this week, and more are available at market.  Here are some more recipe ideas.  Tomato season comes but once a year.  It lasts awhile here in Virginia – tomato plants adore this heat! – but before you know it, it’ll be time for kabocha squash soup and kale chips.

How have you been eating your tomatoes this year?

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.

Celery is making its first appearance of the season in the CSA shares and on our market tables right now.  Farm celery is not your average party tray crudité, so we thought we’d make a proper introduction.

The Roman poet Horace wrote, “Fill the cups with Massic wine, which makes us forget all our ills; imbibe the flowers of these mighty springs, and make in haste crowns of ache (celery) and myrtle.”  This is a very pretty way of saying the ancient Romans believed wearing celery wreaths was protection against hangovers!  Could this be where the idea of a celery stalk in a Bloody Mary comes from?

The celery we grow is certainly potent stuff!  We don’t blanch the stalks, so this celery is dark green, full of nutrients, and packed with flavor.  Use it sparingly.

Storing celery: Celery has a very high water content, so get it into a cold fridge as soon as possible.  It’s best stored in a loosely closed plastic bag, sprinkled with water every day or two to help prevent dehydration.  If it seems a bit limp when you’re ready to use it, you can crisp it up by putting it in a bowl or dish of ice water in the fridge for a few hours.

Using celery: Celery is commonly used raw to season all kinds of salads.  Try a potato salad with our new potatoes and celery!  Remember that our celery is much stronger than supermarket celery, so you’ll need less of it.  Cooked, it lends a lovely flavor to casseroles and stuffings.  It’s also in the trio of aromatics (along with carrot and onion) that make up a mirepoix, a classic flavor base for stocks, sauces, soups, and stews.  The ratio is two parts chopped onion, one part chopped celery, and one part chopped carrot.  Mirepoix can even be used to add complexity to storebought stock and broth; just simmer it in the stock (about a quarter pound mirepoix per pint stock) for half an hour.  But its familiar status as condiment or seasoning belies celery’s identity as a vegetable in its own right.  It can be a major ingredient in a puréed soup.  This week I’m of a mind to try a chilled celery and beet soup, topped with a little yogurt or crème fraiche – I’ll report back!  And braising!  Braising turns celery, which I, frankly, sometimes find too assertive, into something tame and sweet.  Try slicing the stalks in half lengthwise and putting them in a casserole dish with a couple cups of stock (or water), a few tablespoons of lemon juice (or wine), a few tablespoons of butter (or olive oil), and some salt and pepper; cover tightly with aluminum foil and cook at 350° for an hour and a half.  Drizzle with melted butter and parmesan and run it under the broiler until the cheese is browned, or cool and toss with your favorite vinaigrette, or drizzle with brown butter.

Do you have any favorite family recipes for celery?  Please share in the comments!

And bon appétit!

Tzatziki is a classic Greek appetizer made from strained yogurt, cucumbers, garlic, and herbs, and similar dishes are made all over the Middle East and Mediterranean.  It manages somehow to be both refreshing and substantial at the same time, which is exactly what I’m after these days.  Heavy braises and long slow roasts make me sweat just thinking of them – but these hot sticky early summer days are tiring, and a girl needs some fuel!  Enter tzatziki.

Here’s our version.

Our only caveat is that you need to plan ahead here.  The recipe is straightforward and easy, but you’ll need to strain your yogurt, and salt and drain your cucumbers.  And ideally you stick it in the fridge for a couple hours after you mix it up, to let the flavors blend.  So it’s not something you can whip up at the last minute for a potluck or to accompany a Sunday dinner outside by the grill – although it would be right at home in either of those settings!

Frog Bottom Farm Tzatziki

1 quart yogurt (preferably full fat with no added stabilizers or sweeteners – just cultured milk; or, substitute 2 1/2 cups Greek yogurt and skip the yogurt straining step)
2 large cucumbers (or 3 picklers), peeled, seeded, and chopped (instructions below)
1 tablespoon salt
juice of one lemon
one clove garlic, chopped
1-2 tablespoons chopped fresh dill or mint or both
additional salt and pepper to taste

First, strain the yogurt. We use a nylon nut milk/sprouting bag like this, but you could also use coffee filters or cheesecloth. If using a nut milk bag, hang it into a large jar (a half gallon or one gallon jar works well) and secure with a rubber band.  If using coffee filters, line a colander or large strainer with two coffee filters and set the colander/strainer inside a large bowl.  Cheesecloth can be used either way. Carefully pour the yogurt in.  Whichever method you use, you want to leave room for the whey to drain out of the yogurt, so be sure the bottom of your bag or filter isn’t touching the liquid as it drains out.  Some whey will drain out immediately, but be patient; the longer you can wait, the creamier your tzatziki will be.  You could probably use the yogurt after 45 minutes or so, but wait about two hours if you can.  Or strain the yogurt the day before you make the tzatziki and store it in the fridge overnight. When we use a quart of Dannon All Natural Plain Yogurt, we end up with a little over two cups of thick strained yogurt and a little more than a cup and half of whey.  We’ll try straining our own yogurt later this summer, and anticipate the ratio of yogurt to whey will be a bit different.

(Don’t pour that whey down the sink! It’s full of good healthy stuff including lots of Lactobacilli, which are said to be good for gut health and general immune health. It will last for about forever in the fridge. You can add it to a smoothie, use it in place of water or other liquids in baked goods, use it as a starter culture for all kinds of lactofermented fruits and vegetables and beverages, use it in soaked grains like overnight oats … most recently we’ve been using it in a our daily almost-no-knead bread and in a pickle recipe, which we’ll share here soon.)

Next, prepare the cucumbers. This process takes about 45 minutes, largely unattended.  We pick our cucumbers quite young and of course never wax them, so we rarely peel or seed them for any recipes.  However, tzatziki really does benefit from cucumbers that have had a lot of the liquid removed.  First, peel the cucumbers.  Then seed them.  You can cut them in half lengthwise and run a spoon along the seeds, scooping them out.  Or quarter them lengthwise and use a small paring knife to cut out the seeds.  Next chop up the cucumbers and place them in a colander, place the colander in a large bowl, and sprinkle the cucumbers with about a tablespoon of salt.  Toss.  The salt will draw water of out of the cucumbers.  Let them drain for about half an hour.  Press to release any remaining water, and then pat them dry with a paper towel.

Now you’re ready to mix it all up! Put the strained yogurt in a large bowl.  In a food processor, blend the cucumbers, the lemon juice, the garlic, the herbs, and a few grinds of black pepper until well blended.  Add the cucumber mixture to the yogurt and stir to mix.  Taste to see if you need additional salt; we don’t find it necessary.

Tzatziki tastes best if you put it in the fridge for a couple hours to allow the flavors to meld. But we won’t tell anyone if you dig in right away.

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Serving ideas: Use tzatziki as a dip for vegetables like carrots or cucumbers.  Spread it on crackers or nice bread.  Use it as a spread in a sandwich with other summer vegetables.  Add it to falafel in a pita.  It’s also a great side dish or dipping sauce for meats and fish.

(Photo of the finished tzatziki coming soon! We ate our last batch so fast we didn’t get a photo.)

We’ll get right to it: this is a recipe every CSA member everywhere should have in their arsenal.  It’s easy, it works with just about any vegetable you find in your share these days (except the leafy stuff like lettuce and cooking greens), and it’s seriously delicious.

To braise means to cook in a small amount of liquid in a covered dish for a long time at a relatively low temperature. It’s a perfect cooking method for the tough roots, firm winter squashes, and strong-tasting cabbages you’re seeing in your CSA shares and on market tables everywhere right now. Braising tames even the most pungent vegetables into something earthy, tender, and sweet.

Here’s the basic idea: grab a couple casserole dishes.  Chop two or three or four kinds of vegetables very coarsely, arrange them in crowded single layers in the dishes, and douse with olive oil and/or broth and/or white wine and/or water.  Add salt, pepper, and red pepper.  Cover tightly with foil and cook in a 325°F oven for about two hours, turning the vegetables about midway through the cooking. And that’s it!  (If you have time, uncover the dishes, turn the oven up to 400°F, and cook everything for another 15 minutes to brown the vegetables lightly. But if you’re ready to eat, you can certainly just dig right in.) This dish is a classic example of the whole being far, far greater than the sum of its humble parts.

Tonight’s version includes arrowhead cabbage, Sunshine kabocha squash (from our friends at Waterpenny Farm in Rappahannock County, since our winter squash fared so poorly this year), and rutabagas.  It, along with some gingerbread and whipped cream, will warm our bellies as we say our sad goodbyes to Shannon, who’s leaving us this week after two years on the Frog Bottom crew.

It’s also delicious with carrots (coming soon in the shares!) and onions.  We often add garlic — keep the cloves whole and unpeeled, and everyone can squeeze their own garlic from the peels when they eat (it’s fun!).  It’s very, very good with a poached egg on top.  And chicken is a perfect addition — just tuck some legs or wings in among the vegetables.  Or try it with sweet potatoes, beets, turnips…

Read the step-by-step instructions over at Orangette.