Good Eats Weekly Newsletter - August 8, 2018

This week in your share:

Everyday Large (Orange bags)

Arugula, Red Lettuce, Broccoli, Pac Choi, Cucumber,
OUT OF THE BAG
1 Bag of Tomatoes
8 ears Sweet Corn
1 pint Blueberries

Everyday Standard (Yellow bags)

Arugula, Yellow Onions, Red Norland Potatoes, Peppers, Kale, Cucumber,
OUT OF THE BAG
1 Bag of Tomatoes
6 ears Sweet Corn

Fancy/ Localvore

(Purple bags)

Arugula, Cippolini Onions, Broccoli, Red Norland Potatoes, Eggplant,
OUT OF THE BAG
1 Bag of Tomatoes
8 ears Sweet Corn
1 pint Blueberries

Lean & Green

(Green bags)

Arugula, Red Lettuce, Carrots, Cucumber,
OUT OF THE BAG
1 Bag of Tomatoes
4 ears Sweet Corn
1 pint Blueberries

Bread Share

Slowfire Bakery
Table Bread

Pete's Pantry

Slowfire Bakery Bread, Ploughgate Creamery Butter, Parish Hill Creamery Kashar

Cheese Share

Parish Hill Creamery
Kashar

Around the Farm

There are some really exciting things in this week's share! I'm thrilled to welcome back new potatoes! These are a special treat - early season, fresh eating potatoes with a delicate skin. We also have blueberries for many of our veggie share members and two pounds of tomatoes for all veggie shares! We keep thinking our tomatoes will take a break here but they keep producing! I've provided some tips for enjoying this bounty, below.
This week we also have a new cheese to share! You can read more about Parish Hill Creamery below but oh wow, this is some good stuff!
We also have the arugula this week that we didn't have last week. For me, arugula and tomatoes are the best combination around in the summer. I love taking in all this healthy goodness that becomes so rare in the winter.
~Taylar
Going out of town?
Need to skip a delivery? We can donate your share to the food shelf, send it the next week, or credit your account for a future share. Please notify us by Monday, 8 am, at the latest for any changes to that week's delivery.
Every week we'll send you snapshots of veggies in your share. You can always find more recipes and storage info on our blog and website.
Sweet Corn: More corn this week! After last year's corn drought, this year we're swimming in it! I started to freeze some ears - just a quick blanch and then slice of the kernels, stick 'em in a bag, and you have some frozen corn for the winter! I love corn on the cob and mixing it into a salsa. Or, try a yummy garbanzo bean/ black bean/ corn/ tomato salad.
Arugula:  Also known as Rocket or Roquette. It's a very popular and versatile green that can be eaten raw, but also stands up well in the sauté pan. It has a peppery mustardy flavor and is great on sandwiches to give them pep, and into salads to take it up a notch. It also does well with a quick wilt added to pastas, frittatas or calzones, or as a stand-in for lettuce on an Italian-inspired sub. It blends particularly well with goat cheese and balsamic and olive oil. It is delicious simply sautéed in a pan with olive oil with a sprinkle of coarse salt & pepper.
Red Norland Potatoes: The first of our potato harvest this year! We hand wash these potatoes because they are delicate, so you may notice the skin coming off. Don't worry! That is normal. Becaue they're handwashed, you may find some dirt on them. Just wash it off before cooking. You'll receive either larger potatoes or a lot of little ones, perfect for those new potato recipes! Store these in the fridge as they haven't cured yet and are not a storage potato.
Green Kale:  Curly green kale, jam packed with nutrition and flavor! Great for making chips or sauteeing. Store greens loosely wrapped in plastic in your crisper drawer.
Cucumbers: Slicing cukes this week! We grow a much smaller amount of slicers than Euro cukes and I was able to send out all slicers this week. Great for pickling, snacking on raw, or adding to your salad.
Pac choi:  Bunched pac choi coming your way with week. Part of the cabbage family, it packs in nutrition with high scores for vitamins A and C and calcium. Pac Choi is mild enough to be chopped up for a salad, particularly if you give it a quick wilt in a hot pan. It's also great in stir-fries and sautes and in asian soups (and other soups too). As leaves become more mature they are more often served cooked. Pac Choi has a mild flavor. The leaves taste similar to Swiss chard and the stems (called ribs) are deliciously crispy and can be substituted for celery in recipes. Store pac choi loosely wrapped in a plastic bag in your crisper drawer. You may notice some little holes in the leaves. This is okay; it is some pest damage from the growing process but the leaves are still edible and are just a reality of organic growing!

Featured Recipes

Green Kale and Pasta
My mom loves this recipe! It's her summer go-to. From The Pioneer Woman.
1 pound Bowtie Pasta (farfalle)
3 Tablespoons Pine Nuts
1/4 cup Olive Oil
6 cloves Garlic, Minced
1/2 teaspoon Salt, More To Taste
1 teaspoon Black Pepper, More To Taste
1 bunch Kale, Finely Sliced
4 ounces, weight Parmesan Cheese, Shaved
2 Tablespoons Balsamic Vinegar (optional)
Cook pasta according to package directions. Drain, rinse with cold water, and add to a large bowl. Set aside. 
Add pine nuts to a small skillet over low heat. Toast slowly over the course of 8-10 minutes, tossing regularly. Remove from the skillet and set aside.
In a large skillet, heat olive oil and garlic over low heat so that the garlic slowly infuses the oil. When the oil starts to cause the garlic to sizzle, stir around so the garlic doesn't get too brown. When garlic starts to turn golden, add salt and pepper, stir, and set aside for 5 minutes. 
After 5 minutes, pour the oil mixture (scraping the salt, pepper, and garlic) all over the bowtie pasta. Toss to combine and set aside.
Set the same skillet (without cleaning it) over medium-high heat. Add the kale and cook for 5 minutes, or until partly wilted. 
Add kale and pine nuts to the pasta and toss it all together. Check to make sure it's no longer warm, then add Parmesan shavings and toss. Taste for seasonings and add more salt and pepper if needed. 
Chill for at least 2 hours before serving. 
(Hint: This is great warmed up and served as a hot pasta dish!)
(Optional: May add 2-3 tablespoons balsamic vinegar if desired.)
Blueberry Buckle
You could use small berries in this recipe but I think it's best with the big highbush varieties, as they melt into the dough and form big pockets of sweetness. If you're freezing berries, this would totally work as a winter dish—just thaw the berries before you throw them in.
for the cake:
3/4 cup granulated sugar
4 tablespoons soft butter
1 egg
1/2 cup milk
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup whole-wheat flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon fine grain sea salt
2 cups blueberries
for the crumb topping:
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
4 tablespoons butter at room temperature
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Grease a 9-inch square cake pan. In a large bowl, beat together the sugar, butter, and egg. Stir in the milk.
In a separate bowl, whisk together the flours, baking powder, and salt. Fold the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients until just mixed, then fold the berries in carefully. Spread the mixture into the prepared pan.
To make the topping, whisk together the dry ingredients in a small bowl and then cut in the butter. Spread evenly over berry mixture and bake for 40-50 minutes, until just set.
Cool for at least 15 minutes before serving. After dinner, a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top is nice. In the morning, it's especially good with milky coffee.
Sweet and Sour Pac Choi
This is a great dish - the greens are a little tangy and the sauce is sweet. Serves 4.
2 tbsp oil
1 onion, cut in slivers
pac choi, left whole, bigger ones cut in half the long way
2 tbsp maple sugar
2 tbsp vinegar
1 tbsp soy sauce
Combine sugar, vinegar, soy sauce in a small bowl. Set aside. Heat 1 tbsp oil in a wok or large skillet. Stir fry the onions until browning, remove to a bowl. Add remaining tbsp oil, stir fry the pac choi in a couple batches until they have a few browned spots, the green tops wilt and the stems are crisp tender. Add the onions back into the wok with all the greens and stir in the sauce. Cook another 30 seconds. Sprinkle with red pepper flakes if you like.
Baked Kale Chips
Kale chips are a low calorie nutritious snack. Like potato chips, you cannot stop at just eating one. They are great for parties.
1 bunch kale
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 teaspoon sea salt or more to taste
Optional - add a splash of lemon juice too!
Preheat an oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Line a non insulated cookie sheet with parchment paper. With a knife or kitchen shears carefully remove the leaves from the thick stems and tear into bite size pieces. Wash and thoroughly dry kale with a salad spinner or the old towel spin. Drizzle kale with olive oil, and rub with fingers to spread oil all over the surfaces of the torn kale. Sprinkle with salt. Bake until the edges brown but are not burnt, 10 to 15 minutes.
 

Pantry Lore 

We have bread from Slowfire Bakery in Jeffersonville: Today’s bread is the table bread, a lighter and more rustic cousin of the country bread, which should pair well with cheese, veggies, or grilling.
And, artisan, slow churned butter from Ploughgate Creamery in Fayston! We also have a brand new cheese producer (new to us!), Parish Hill Creamery.
Here's a little more about Parish Hill, from co-owner Rachel:
We are a very small scale producer, last year we made ~16,000 pounds of cheese. We get our milk from the Putney School, just 6 miles up the road from us. We only make cheese when the cows are grazing, usually mid-May through October. The thing that sets us apart from other makers is that we do not buy our cultures, rather we propagate our starters here at the creamery. In fact, we've been using the same four starters since 2013. Helga, Clothilde, Sonia, and Abigail were all hand milked, and that milk was let clabber, and that is the genesis of every batch of cheese we've made since!

We buy salt from the Maine Sea Salt Company, and purchase rennet from a small company in Quebec.
Peter Dixon, the cheesemaker, came up from Westminster to visit a couple months ago and give us some samples of his delicious and very special cheese. We had some fun learning all about his adventures making cheese around the world. His style is in Eastern European cheeses, which tend to be harder and more aged than other styles. This one is Kashar, which is a provolone type cheese.
Here's more info about this week's cheese, from their website:
Balkan-style style pasta filata cheese is made from the same curd as the Suffolk Punch, but turned out in basket molds to form drums. Kashar is also aged for at least 2 months, then rubbed with olive oil. Like the Suffolk, the flavor is buttery, tangy, and somewhat peppery, particularly when aged over 6 months.
Kashar ages for at least 3 months.
Below, Peter explains the minutiae of cheesemaking at Parish Hill and in his adventures consulting in cheesemaking over the last 30 years. Parish Hill is unique in its practices - in its style of cheeses, in the closeness of the milk to the processing, in how they make their own cultures, and much more. This is very special cheese this week - I hope you enjoy!

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