Hellgate CSA

I always had trouble cooking brown rice until I ran across a new method in Saveur. Although we haven't received brown rice in our shares, I cook it so often to go along with other items from our share, I thought it worth posting. This method is very different from any other way I've cooked rice in the past, but it delivers the best brown rice I've ever made!

In case you don't want to just eat the grapes we received this week, think about making this super-easy, tasty juice.

We got 3 lbs of pears this week! If you're wondering what to do with them, may I suggest the following recipe, adapted from Pam Anderson's USA Weekend column recipe.

1 tablespoon butter per pear

1/4 cup lightly packed brown sugar per pear

however many pears you want, halved and cored (and peeled, if you want). 1 pear per person.

I'm one of those weird people who don't much like raw stone fruit. Why did I get a fruit share? Strawberries and apples. But the middle of the season is a tedium of peaches, nectarines, and plums. What to do? Add lots of sugar and cook, naturally!

American fruit desserts include compotes (fruit simmered with sugar), crisps (fruit covered with a butter/sugar/flour/oat crumb topping and baked), cobblers (fruit covered with a buttermilk pastry dough and baked), and of course pies and their relatives, tarts and galettes.

I'm embarrassingly inept with pastry dough, so I've been making stone fruit crisps with great results. Below is a recipe for what I made yesterday, with half a fruit share, based on a Deborah Madison recipe from Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone.

What do you do with all this fruit?

This just came through my RSS reader today and looks delicious! I may try it tonight, in fact (especially if we get mini tomatoes).

Summer Green Bean Salad

3/4 pound green beans, stems pinched off

1 teaspoon finely chopped chives
1/4 teaspoon finely chopped fresh thyme
1 tablespoon minced shallots
2 tablespoons lemon juice
2 tablespoons heavy cream
scant 1/4 teaspoon salt
tiny pinch of freshly ground pepper
1/3 cup olive oil
1 teaspoon honey (optional)

a handful of frisee or little gem hearts

a handful of small cherry tomatoes, each cut in half
1/2 cup hazelnuts, smashed and toasted

We get a lot of beets and carrots throughout the CSA season, and we frequently get them together. They're both summer root vegetables, and in addition to being harvested together, they also work well cooked together. I've been making a simple recipe from a CSA cookbook (recommended!) for a few years, and today made another version of the same idea, to good results. Both recipes are below.

In honor of the Bastille Day, I'd like to share with you a French savory tart recipe for your sorrel as well as a spaetzle recipe using most other items in the July 14th share.

Tarte d'oseille
(adapted from "Dans la Cuisine")

Ingredients:

10 oz sorrel, stems removed
Salt
1/4 c. butter
10 oz. sweet onion, halved and thinly sliced
1 1/2 c. heavy cream
3 eggs
Pepper
1 half-baked pastry shell (you can, of course, make this from scratch)

If you are like me and have both a vegetable and an herb share, you're probably going "what am I gonna do with all this sage???"  I came across a recipe that looks promising, so here it is:

Rigatoni with White Beans and Tomatoes
Serving Size: 6

1 cup dried cannellini beans
6 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
3 cloves garlic, chopped
20 leaves fresh sage
1 1/4 pound fresh tomato, peeled, seeded, juiced and chopped
salt and freshly ground pepper
1 pound rigatoni

Soak beans in cold water to cover for about 12 hours

If you are getting an herb share this week, you'll have the lemon thyme already!

Fennel And Cherry Salad

1 lemon
1 fennel bulb, shaved into 1/8-inch rounds
1 jicama root, julienned
1/2 small Vidalia onion, very thinly sliced
2 tablespoon honey
1 tablespoon rice wine vinegar
2 tablespoon olive oil
1 teaspoon fresh lemon thyme leaves
20 cherries, pitted

Juice 1/2 the lemon into a medium bowl, and add some cold water.

Trim any of the greens off the fennel, remove any tough outer leaves, and the core.

Are you deterred from baking with fresh cherries because it's such a pain to pit them?  Here's an elegant solution to the problem: use a pastry/icing tip!