Author Archives: Renate Valencia

The CSA Experience: Part 4

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Rainbow carrots from my CSA box

Rainbow carrots from my CSA box

In an effort to use everything that arrived in my CSA box while in its prime, today I made the rainbow carrots.  There wasn’t much to them, and I didn’t want them to get soft.
They look large in the photo above, but look at them here.

By the way, if you want to know what I did with the favas, check out the previous entry in this series.

Rainbow carrots taste like really good young orange carrots, by the way.  Serving your crew one side of rainbow carrots apiece will give them a good hit of phytonutrients in addition to the big players like Vitamin A, which the body is able to metabolize from carotenes.  Apparently each color offers a specific extra benefit.  Yellow carrots, for example, are said to contain lutein — good for your peepers.

If you want to learn massive amounts about heirloom rainbow carrots, check out this Mother Earth News story.

So what to do with the carrots?

I wanted a simple side that would allow the sweetness of the little carrots to shine, to retain a good amount of texture and nutrients, and to capitalize on their simple beauty.

To be honest with you I was pressed for time.

I trimmed, peeled, quartered or halved them lengthwise and sauteed gently in seasoned butter. I finished with a little hazelnut oil and sea salt.

They were perfect.  We all wanted more.

Rainbow Carrots with Hazelnut Oil & Sea Salt
 
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Rainbow carrots sauteed in seasoned butter and finished with hazelnut oil and sea salt.
Author:
Recipe type: Side
Cuisine: Vegetable
Serves: 4
Ingredients
  • 2 bunches (about 14) rainbow carrots, trimmed, peeled and sliced (halved or quartered, depending upon thickness)
  • 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
  • 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
  • ½ teaspoon onion powder
  • ¼ teaspoon Kosher salt
  • Pinch white pepper
  • Sea salt, as desired, for finishing
  • Toasted hazelnut oil, as desired, for finishing
Method
  1. Heat butter and oil in a saute pan
  2. Add carrots and saute over low-medium heat for a moment
  3. Add onion powder, Kosher salt and pepper
  4. Saute until tender-crisp
  5. Remove to a serving bowl and drizzle with a little hazelnut oil and sprinkle with a little sea salt
  6. Serve warm
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The CSA Experience: Part 3

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What it looks like inside a fresh fava pod

What it looks like inside a fresh fava pod

I never tangled with fresh favas at home.  Always bought dried.

They showed up in my CSA box last Thursday, so I had to deal, and this is the day I penciled this veg in.

I heard that they had to be not only wrestled out of their pods, which would have to be destrung prior, but also that each bean needed to be liberated from its leathery cover after blanching and an ice water bath.

I don’t think so.  No time due to a birthday and Mother’s Day.

One of my blogger friends makes fava pods in the style of edamame — the salty little soybean pods that you pop open as a snack.  She pointed me to a recipe in the San Francisco Chronicle for roasting the pods that render the skins of the beans edible, for sure, and maybe even the pod covering — if the pods are young enough.

My fava pods do not look young to me, but what the hey.  I washed and trimmed them, rubbed them with oil and salt and spread them out on a sheet pan.  Blasted them in a very hot oven, per the recipe provided.

Want to see the finished pods?

Whole roasted fava pods

My son, husband and Mother had them as a snack — with lemon wedges — while watching TV.  They ate pods and all.  A bit messy, but good.

I did not serve them with a nice chianti.

Whole Roasted Fava Pods
 
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Whole roasted fava pods in the style of edamame
Author:
Recipe type: Snack or side
Serves: Depends
Ingredients
  • Whole fava pods, washed and trimmed (and destrung, if you like)
  • Canola oil
  • Kosher or sea salt
  • Pepper
Method
  1. Arrange favas on sheet pan and add some oil
  2. Coat favas with the oil (mix with your hands)
  3. Sprinkle with salt
  4. Roast at 425 deg. F for about 25 mins -- until golden and tender
  5. Add more salt to taste
  6. Add some pepper
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The CSA Experience: Part 2

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These are the leeks that came with my CSA box last week

The first installment of my CSA series covered quite a bit of ground about what the CSA concept is all about, and a bit about the company I chose for my own home-delivered organic produce:  Albert & Eve.

Let me now tell you what and how much was in my first box, which arrived last Thursday. There’s a photo of the contents here.

1 huge romaine lettuce
2 bunches of rainbow carrots
1 large broccoli
5 massive leeks — so long I had trouble fitting them in the fridge
2 bunches red bohr kale
1 bag fresh fava beans (about 15)
3 medium artichokes

It all came in minimal packaging: a paper bag with the odd inner bag or two, one plastic.
Everything was fresh as can be and looked and smelled great.

Now, here’s where you have to plan a little based on shelf life.  Artichokes and broccoli can hang around for a good week.  The lettuce was already slated for a family-sized Mexican entree salad for that same night — and a lunch salad the next day for my son — so I had to think about leeks, kale, carrots and favas.

The favas and carrots were in quantities fit for one side or one snack each for the four of us. The kale could make a meal if I used both bunches, or two sides, if I used one at a time. The tremendous leeks would serve as the base for two meals:  one using the tender parts, another using the tougher end greens.

First up on the chopping block:  leeks.  If you haven’t hung with many leeks in your life, they’re related to onions and garlic, but are much milder.  They look like really big scallions.  Only the white and light green parts are eaten and the rest is used for stock.

They’re popular in the UK — especially Wales, and often show up in soups.

I decided on a leek and feta scramble.  With preserved lemon, which I always have in spades because my lemon trees are good to me.

A little sumac, too.  Sumac is a tart spice made from dried berries — very popular in the Middle East.  It’s generally sprinkled on top of finished dishes.

Feta, sumac and preserved lemon on wooden board

Feta shards, sumac and chopped preserved lemon for the scramble

A recipe accompanies this post, but the idea is to chop the tender part of the leeks, saute until soft, add whisked eggs and cook so that you have large, soft curds, adding the feta and seasonings at various stages.

Please purchase blocks of sheep’s milk, or sheep’s/goat’s milk feta — in brine, if you can — and not the cheap, tasteless, pre-crumbled stuff so popular these days.  Good feta should be salty and tangy with real mouthfeel.  If you buy fat-free feta, well, you’re going to be sorry.  When dishes have only a few ingredients, you need them to be the best they can be. Just sayin’ — don’t mean to be preachy, but better to have a little real feta in there rather than lots of the cardboard kind.

Pastured eggs would be a good choice here, too.  They taste like eggs used to taste, because the hens producing them roam around and eat bugs and worms and whatever else they like to peck at in addition to their feed.  If you can’t afford them for general use, spring for them when you’re making a scramble or some fried eggs.  You’ll really enjoy the taste of their deep yellow yolks.

Leeks cut in half

OK, leek prep.

Once you trim and liberate the tender from the tough, as in the photo above, store the latter back in the crisper.

Then clean the leeks by cutting them lengthwise all the way through from about a half-inch from the bottom.  Then make a similar cut between your original cut, which will ribbon the leaks, allowing you to clean nooks and crannies as you flagellate them in a sink full of water.

Then you can dry them off and chop away.

leeks being chopped

Then saute slowly until soft.

sauteed leeks

Then add everything else in stages.  I sometimes add the cheese along with the seasonings, as I did here, but generally I add it as indicated in the recipe — right at the end.  This time around the cheese was on the dry side, so no worries about it releasing too much brine during extended cooking.

Leek and feta scramble in frying panWe were so happy about the soft, mildly-oniony scramble that I neglected to photograph the finished product — which we consumed with a side of good toasted bread, which is all you need.  The addition of the sumac and lemon added a whisper of citrusy tartness to the salty, creamy, funky feta backbone.

Trust me, it looked good, too.

Tune in next time for favas.

Leek, Feta & Preserved Lemon Scramble
 
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Soft scrambled eggs with leek, feta, preserved lemon and sumac.
Author:
Recipe type: Brunch
Serves: 5
Ingredients
  • 4 to 5 leeks, chopped (the white and very pale green parts only)
  • 2 tablespoons canola oil, or more, if your leeks are large
  • 2 tablespoons butter, or more, if your leeks are large
  • 10 eggs
  • ½ pound feta cheese, broken into medium shards
  • 2 tablespoons preserved lemon, finely chopped (If you can't find jarred Morrocan preserved lemon, just chop a quarter of a lemon finely, mix with a ½ teaspoon of kosher salt, and store in fridge overnight)
  • ½ teaspoon sumac
  • Kosher salt
  • Ground black pepper
Method
  1. Add canola oil and butter to a large, heavy skillet over medium flame
  2. When hot, add leeks and turn flame down to low
  3. Add a little salt
  4. Saute leeks until nice and soft
  5. Whisk eggs with a little water (water will help soften them), the lemon and the ground pepper
  6. Add egg mixture to pan over leeks
  7. At short intervals, pull eggs from the bottom of the pan with a spatula to form large curds
  8. When eggs are still quite runny, gently mix in feta
  9. Keep pulling up the eggs gently until the feta is very soft
  10. Remove scramble to serving platter and sprinkle with sumac
  11. Serve with good toasted bread
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The CSA Experience: Part 1

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First Essential Organic Veg box from Albert & Eve

First Essential Organic Veg box from Albert & Eve

I finally bit the bullet and ordered a semi-weekly home-delivered organic produce box.  AKA a “CSA box,” with the CSA referring to community-supported, or community-shared, agriculture.

Not only will this encourage the fam to eat more veggies, it will almost ensure that we do.  No way I’m going to throw food out.

It will also serve as the muse for a multi-part series here, which may be helpful to readers who want real life information about CSAs before taking the plunge.

Choosing a first CSA in the SF Bay Area is no easy task.  Ask 20 people, get 20 opinions. Look on the Web, get another 20,000.

I went with Albert & Eve.  After considerable research.  They have a loyal client base and support local, small-scale farms.  They also offer home delivery.  Not all CSA entities do.  With some you have to select a local pick-up point.

I just want stuff to show up on my porch — no car, no parking, no schlepping.

How does a CSA actually work?

I’ll get to the nitty-gritty of CSAs as I write this series but, in a nutshell, one can subscribe to single-farm CSAs or co-ops, or get their produce from a middleman-type organization, which either partners with farms or purchases fruit and veg outright for distribution to subscribers.  There are numerous types of arrangements.

I was looking for a small operation offering local organic produce (we’ll get into what “local” means in the next installment, but know that this term can be a slippery-slope) with  solid agricultural values.  Albert & Eve fits the bill.  The company (it’s not a farm, but a distributor, though the term doesn’t do justice) partners with Agricultural & Land Based Association (ALBA), really does source locally, and offers eggs and a few other select goodies.

They also allow you to choose what you want from among what they believe they will have available.  Because this is seasonal eating, it doesn’t mean you can ask for peaches instead of apples in January, but it does mean you can tell them “enough, already!” with the leeks and to send you more fennel instead.  Provided they have it.  Again, this is not stuff cranked out in a factory.  You have to be flexible.

There are some huge, corporate-type CSAs around here.  I didn’t want that.  I like the personal touch.  I want to know the people behind the operation.  I want to count to them.

Organics and cost

Now, organic produce ain’t cheap no matter how you buy it.  A CSA subscription, however, allows you to get the freshest local organic produce delivered to your door — or a drop-off point — at a very reasonable price.  Depending upon the CSA, you’re looking at about $20 to $35 per box in the SF Bay Area, which provides 3 or 4 people with vegetables and fruit for a week.  If you take just veggies, as I have, you’ll be able to throw in a couple vegetable main courses along with sides.

I’m paying $33.20 per box, which arrives in a paper bag, in fact, so there is no dealing with boxes.  The price includes the cost of their Essential Organic Veg Box, and the surcharge for feeding more people, which means they give you extra of each item.  The box officially contains 6 types of vegetables, but I got 7 this time.

Many CSAs offer small and large boxes, so you can choose based on your needs.  Some offer more flexibility that others.  Do your research.

If you buy cheap conventional produce at Safeway, CSA subscription prices may bring on sticker-shock.  Perhaps you’ll realize, by and by, that it’s worth the extra. Organic produce involves no chemicals or synthetics.  It’s not genetically modified. Sure there are studies claiming that conventional produce is “just as safe” as organic.  For me, though,  it’s about common sense.  If you offer me an artichoke from a plant treated with Supracide 25 WP, and one from an organically-grown plant, I’ll take the one without the chemicals, please.  Wouldn’t you?

Tips and things to think about if you go CSA

Make sure you have a salad spinner on stand-by.  A good one.  Why?  Now and then the leafy greens that arrive may contain harmless critters, and the only way to get them off is a good bath.  That’s where the spinner comes is.  You’ll need to get the water off very well, and nothing does it better.

The other things you’ll need on stand-by are creativity and a sense of humor.

You can’t boil every turnip.  You wouldn’t steam every artichoke.  You shouldn’t bury all your kale under braised pork shoulder.  I do that now and again, but I have a pescatarian in the house, so mostly I can’t.

I’ll be developing new and interesting vegetable recipes to deal with items that might otherwise wear out their welcome — and still may, for all I know.  I guess I’ll find out how many leeks my brood can handle in one season.

In the next installment I’ll tell you all about this week’s box, pictured above, and my evil plans for it.

Curry fish balls: A Hong Kong snack on the run

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Curry fish balls and coconut juice

Curry fish balls and coconut juice from Hong Kong Snack Shop (Richmond, CA)

If you find yourself running around in the El Cerrito area and are in need of a substantial snack, hop on over to Hong Kong Snack House in Pacific East Mall (3288 Pierce).  The mall is in that section of Richmond that juts into the Albany side of ‘Cerrito to the west by the bay.

Pretend you’re going to Costco and head west on Central, only turn left onto Pierce at the intersection from hell — by the two gas stations.  The mall will be to your left as you travel south on Pierce.

This little stall shop carries lots of good eats, and the propietors are nice as can be.  There are pandan leaf waffles, egg puffs, Vietnamese sandwiches (bánh mì), crepes, shumai, spring rolls, fish balls, rice rolls and all kinds of tropical drinks.

I always get the curry fish balls and fresh coconut juice.  You get 5 big curry fish balls on a stick for $1.95.  Buy 3 and you get 1 free, which is what I do.  I eat two skewers in the car and give Matthew the other 2.

The fresh coconut juice is to die for — especially in the summer, when it’s particularly cooling and refreshing.  It’s not cheap, running upwards of $4, but worth it.

I don’t know how the coconut juice at Hong Kong Snack House is concocted.  It’s a little thick and very creamy with just the right amount of sweetness.

It’s not coconut milk, which comes from grated coconut.  It’s not coconut water, the liquid inside a young coconut.  It’s not coconut cream, which is more or less a thicker coconut milk, and it’s not cream of coconut, the sweetened stuff one uses for a piña colada.

It’s as if the best of all of these coconut products were whipped together in a blender.

If you don’t want to have your snack in your car, park yourself on one of the benches in the mall.  Hong Kong Snack House has only one or two tables, and they’re often full.