7 October 2010

Endive, Lettuce, Purple mizuna, Onions, Peppers, Numex and Burning Bush hot peppers, Potatoes, Radishes, Shallots, Thyme, Hakurei turnips, Butternut winter squash

I hope you will forgive the shortness of this note. Though come to think of it that is a rather presumptuous request. For all I know many of you will welcome, not lament, my rare attempt at brevity. Some of you may not even notice it because you gave up on the newsletter weeks ago, certain that you would never glean enough pertinent information to make wading through the mire of prose worthwhile.

Of course, if you are not reading this then there’s really not reason for me to say anything at all about the length of the newsletter and or how you might feel about it or, well, anything. But as anyone out there who does actually read the newsletter has probably noticed, such a lack of a sensible reason to write would hardly constrain me.

What does constrain me is my annual catering gig for the Agricultural Stewardship Association. Once upon a time I took on the task of making a nice dinner for a few major donors and members of the Board, all in all around 20 people. Somehow over the years that has evolved (perhaps a little like the antlers of the Irish Elk) into appetizers for 250. Putting together half a dozen or more different little dishes for a large crowd takes time and involves a lot of increasingly tedious repetition of small tasks.

Fortunately, I have come to realize that there are better ways to feed the masses than making several thousand individual pastries. Thus the little squash empanadas and onions tarts are off the menu, replaced by polenta cakes with roasted tomatoes, and bread stuffed with greens, and red pepper-walnut dip, and pickled carrots, which we can make in large batches and serve in small pieces. But it still takes time, time I might otherwise spend crafting ornate sentences on who knows what topic for the newsletter.

So I will get straight to the vital information. As a general rule you should approach small, brightly colored hot peppers with caution. As a specific rule, you should approach the small, orange/pink pepper in your share with extreme caution. I don’t mean to frighten you away from going anywhere near it. Just avoid, let’s say, slicing it and then touching your eyes or deciding it looks so delicious you will just pop the whole thing into your mouth. Instead, try putting some portion of one (depending on how much you like hot food) into a blender with some fresh pineapple or mango, garlic, onion, lime juice and salt and making a fresh hot salsa that would be excellent with grilled fish or pork. Or you could use a piece to spice up your chili or you’re a Thai soup.

The Numex peppers, the very smooth pointy ones, do not pose anything like the same threat. I have been roasting and peeling them and pureeing the flesh with garlic, a little vinegar and salt. It makes a great sauce for all sorts of things and you can stir some into an endive and potato soup.

Because they are relatively easy to peel (I just use a vegetable peeler and keep going until I am down to solid orange flesh) and fleshy, I like to cut Butternut squash into cubes and roast the them tossed with butter, maple syrup and paprika until the have started to caramelize. Or you can just bake them whole until soft and then scoop out the flesh use it as a filling for little empanadas.

The mizuna, the frilly purplish leaf, is a Japanese mustard green. You can cook it, but I prefer it in salads. I like the texture as well as the taste. You could add some minced or grated ginger, a little soy sauce and perhaps a splash of heavy cream to your vinaigrette to go with the mizuna.

Thanks to everyone who helped pick potatoes last Sunday. We had an especially enthusiastic crew of child laborers. I trust I will not be held liable if any of them decide to be farmers later in life. For those of you who would like to pick potatoes again or for the first time, we will have a potato day late in the season in order to harvest as many of the remaining potatoes as possible for a local food pantry, and afterwards we will eat potatoes in various forms.

And thanks to the entrants in this year’s pie contest. The judges had a hard time choosing a winner, but after lengthy debate we named Tracey Boyd the 2010 pie champion. She claimed the title with a plum tart that the whole judging panel agreed we would happily eat more of should Tracey ever feel like dropping off another one at the farm.