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?

I baked a cake.

Now, we’re not purists around here: our diet is so heavy with beets and chard and grassfed beef and eggs from our own chickens and milk from our goat that we don’t fret too much about some processed sugar and flour in our desserts.  But we like dessert so very much we’ve started experimenting with more whole grains.  And our recent bumper crop of summer squash and zucchini means it’s time to get creative.

There’s no way around it — y’all will be getting a lot of squash this summer.  So let’s just get right to it, shall we?

Chocolate Cake with Zucchini and Beets
adapted from this recipe at Chocolate & Zucchini

1 1/2 cups (180 g) all-purpose flour or whole wheat pastry flour
1/2 cup (60 g) whole wheat flour or spelt flour or other whole grain flour
1/2 cup (40 g) unsweetened cocoa
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
1 cup (160 g) brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp instant coffee granules or 2 tbsp strong coffee, cooled
3 eggs
2 cups zucchini, summer squash, and/or beets (any combination), grated
1 cup (170 g) chocolate chips or roughly chopped chocolate

Preheat the oven to 360°. Butter an 8″ or 9″ springform pan or 9″ cake pan.  Or try an 8″ cake pan, but proceed at your own peril — this is a fairly big cake!  If you have it, line the bottom of the pan with parchment paper and butter that as well.  Put a tablespoon or so of flour or cocoa into the pan and tap the pan from all sides to coat the butter with the flour or cocoa.

Put the flours, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder, and salt into a large bowl, and whisk to combine well.  Remove about half a cup to another bowl.

Using a food processor, stand mixer, electric hand mixer, or a spoon and some good old fashioned elbow grease, mix the olive oil and brown sugar well.  Add the vanilla and the coffee and mix.  Add the eggs one at a time, incorporating each one thoroughly before adding the next.

Add the wet ingredients to the large bowl of dry ingredients, and mix.  Add the grated vegetables to the reserved half cup of dry ingredients, and toss with your hands or a spoon to coat them lightly. Add them, along with the chocolate chips, to the batter.  Stir with a spoon until you can’t see any more dry flour.

Pour the batter into the prepared cake pan and smooth the surface with a spoon or spatula.  Bake for 40-50 minutes or until a cake tester comes out clean.

Cool for half an hour on a wire rack, and then unmold or turn out of the pan.  Let cool completely or just dig in.  Best enjoyed in a rocking chair while your partner and baby nap, with a cup of coffee and a view of the goldfinches partying at their feeder.  Also delicious shared.

(Additional notes below.)

Some notes:

This recipe is an old favorite of mine, but I played around with it just a bit to accommodate those extra beets and zucchini from lunch.  They didn’t quite add up to two cups, so I rustled around in the fridge and surfaced with half a sweet potato — how long had that been in there?  Anyway, I just grated that and added it to the beets and zucchini. Any combination of beets, zucchini, summer squash, and sweet potato will do.  They disappear almost completely into the cake and make it moist and sweet but not at all cloying.

Because a lot of the baking around here gets squeezed in during Arlo’s naps, I didn’t have time to wait for butter to soften.  I used olive oil instead to delightful results.  But feel free to use softened butter if you prefer.

This time, I just sprinkled powdered sugar on the cooled cake.  But it’s also great with toasted chopped hazelnuts, either stirred into the batter or mixed with a little brown sugar and sprinkled on top before baking.

And finally, if you have a kitchen scale, measuring the dry ingredients is a breeze!

And now, here’s Teri!

I have always looked at my Californian family and friends with a touch of envy.  Don’t get me wrong; I love Virginia and plan to live here until I’m pushing up daisies.  It’s just they seemed to have the advantage of having large groups of like minded people working together for the common good.  I remember reading about a CSA there and thought — that would be so amazing, to pick up a box of produce and try to figure out what everything was and what to do with it. I really liked how it changed the dynamic of what’s for dinner.  Instead of trying to figure out what to make (you know most people recycle the same 10 meals over and over and over = boring) you have all this stuff and just have to figure out what to do with it.  That’s where the fun begins!  Zucchini tart = amazing.  Summer squash and cornmeal pizza crust = not so much — but at the very minimum, not the same old thing again!

Me hosting a pick-up happened completely by accident.  I went to a hooping workshop (as in hula hoop) at the Carver Healing Arts Center and saw a brochure for Frog Bottom Farm.  It was beautiful.  I left it there because it was the only one and thought, I hope I can remember that name.  A couple of days later I looked it up online, and amazingly, they were looking for a Midlothian pick-up.  I flipped out.  I was so excited at the prospect of hosting.  Not only would this really cool thing be happening in Midlothian, but I would be a part of it!  My California friends and family (who by the way are Midlothian transplants) thought it was really awesome too!

What I have found is there are like-minded people here and probably everywhere who want to eat locally grown, freshly harvested foods, and have a connection to the people who grow it.  They get excited about seeing what each week brings.  Some anxiously await tomatoes while others dream of ratatouille recipes.  I have noticed personally I didn’t eat enough vegetables.  And, when you do, you feel great!  I am so looking forward to the rest of the growing season.  The interesting people I have met.  The adventurous recipes I have yet to try.  They all make me look forward to each and every Wednesday with a smile and excitement so big I feel like I have to pinch myself.  What an awesome ride.

Below are two recipes from Teri that highlight ingredients you’ll find in your CSA share right now: zucchini and tomatoes.  The Zucchini Tart — which would be equally wonderful with any of our summer squash — tastes somehow fresh and rich at the same time.  Teri warns that “you’ve really got to be in the mood to look at and fool around with zucchini for quite a while –  it’s a labor of zucchini love!” and so she also offers a quick crowd-pleaser recipe for Tomato Pie.

Zucchini Tart with Feta

Adapted from a recipe in Saveur magazine, May 2006
Serves 6

Lynne Curry serves this tart by the slice from her stand at the Matakana farmers market in New Zealand.

1 10”x13” sheet frozen puff pastry, thawed and chilled
12 small zucchini (or other summer squash) (about 2 ½  lbs.), trimmed
Salt
3 Tbsp butter
1 small onion, finely chopped
10 cherry tomatoes (or better yet, Frog Bottom Farm tomatoes of equivalent amount), finely chopped, strained in a sieve, excess moisture pressed out
1 cup (4 oz) crumbled feta cheese
½ cup ricotta
2 Tbsp chopped basil
Freshly ground pepper
1 egg, lightly beaten

Preheat oven to 350°.

Fit pastry into a 9”x12” baking sheet, pressing it against the sides.  Score around bottom inner edge of pastry (beside crease where bottom meets sides), being careful not to cut all the way through, with a paring knife.  Prick bottom of pastry all over with a fork, line with a sheet of parchment paper that fits the bottom only, and fill with pie weights or dry beans.  Bake until edge of crust begins to puff and color, about 25 minutes.  Remove weights and paper.  Bake until bottom is golden, 6-8 minutes more.  Let crust cool.

Grate 4 of the zucchini on the large holes of a box grater into a large bowl.  Add 1 Tbsp of salt, toss well, and set aside to let weep for 30 minutes.  Transfer to a clean kitchen towel and wring thoroughly to remove moisture.

Meanwhile, slice remaining zucchini into ¼”–thick rounds.  Working in batches, blanch rounds in a large pot of boiling salted water for 1 minute.  Drain and spread out on a paper towel- lined sheet pan; set aside.

Heat butter in a large skillet over medium heat. Spoon out and reserve 1 Tbsp.  Add onions and cook until soft, 5-6 minutes.  Add grated zucchini and cook, stirring often, until just beginning to brown 5-7 minutes.  Transfer to a large bowl; let cool.

Stir tomatoes, half the feta, ricotta, basil, and salt and pepper to taste into zucchini mixture.  Stir in egg and spread mixture evenly in crust.  Arrange zucchini rounds, slightly overlapping in rows, like tiles on top.  Bake for 15 minutes, then brush the top with reserved butter.  Continue to bake until crust is deep golden, 10 minutes more.  Let cool to room temperature, then sprinkle remaining feta over top.  Cut into squares.

Tomato Pie

Frozen pastry crust
Tomatoes
Red onion
Basil
Hellman’s Mayonnaise – about a cup per pie
Shredded Mexican cheese blend – about 2 cups per pie

Preheat oven to 350°.

Slice tomatoes and onions in rounds and layer into the crust, sprinkling with fresh chopped basil — stopping to close your eyes, smell the basil and smile.

Mix the mayo and cheese into a paste –- sort of.

Press the mayo/cheese mixture on top of the pie. Decoratively add basil leaves.

Bake until gorgeous.

Try to wait ‘til it cools to eat it or it will be a mess –- but who cares? Make 4 of them and then you’ll be sure to have one to cool that will slice pretty.