This week’s box included: cauliflower, lettuce, cabbage, spring onions, summer squash, cucumber, beets w greens, radishes, kohlrabi, tomato
Some weeks I am not sure how Riverview packs so much into a box or how the people who travel the metro area delivering those boxes are able to lift so many bountiful boxes with heavy, heavy produce! This is one of those weeks. Hooray for the farmers, but hooray for the farmhands who make sure our vegetables make their way to us each week.
So last week’s adjective was “green” but this week it’s got to be “heavy”!
I didn’t know lettuce could weigh so much! I hope you did as I did and spent a few minutes tearing the head apart and rinsing the leaves. These leafy, leafy heads gather a bit of dirt, or maybe sand?, between the leaves. I learned a trick from chef Lynn Sawicki many years ago during a cooking demo at Morningside Farmers Market. She chopped or tore whatever she was working with and put it in a big, big bowl (might have been a stock pot) of water, then swished the vegetables and waited a few minutes. Gently she removed the vegetables from the water, so the sand or dirt would stay behind in the water. Then into a salad spinner to dry things off, and then stored in a breathable produce bag. I find that lettuce in plastic bags just ends up getting slimy.
Thursday night I have people coming to dinner and they’re getting a big, big salad with lettuce, cucumber slices (so early in the year!), radishes, green onions and thinly sliced kohlrabi. The purple kohlrabi we had maybe two weeks ago was so sweet that it was a treat in salads. Hoping this green one is the same. And there’s one tomato (again, so early!) to dice carefully and arrange on top of the salad for that pop of color.
If you’re not inclined to eat your kohlrabi in a salad, grate it into your next bowl of slaw since you probably have plenty of cabbage thanks to the big, heavy heads last week and this week. Riverview’s cabbage page has at least a dozen slaw recipes if you’re tired of whatever is traditional at your house. I’m likely to be making the Indian Slaw since I’m on a peanut kick right now.
When we have a week with just one zucchini, or just one crookneck squash, like this week, I’m sometimes at a loss for what to do with them. But that’s just me thinking everything has to be made in big batches. I ran across a recipe that reminded me that simple and small is ok. It was suggested by the farmers market in Macon, Mulberry Market, that’s run by a community health center – so the focus is on healthy food for our state’s food deserts, and healthy recipes.
Roasted Summer Squash
Heat oven to 400 degrees. Slice your squash as thin or thick as you like and in a large bowl, toss with 1 tablespoon olive oil.
Make breading: In a small bowl, combine 2 tablespoons grated Parmesan, 1 tablespoon panko, some lemon pepper seasoning and salt. (This is plenty of breading for two or three squash.)
Sprinkle breading over squash slices and toss to coat evenly. Arrange slices on a baking sheet and roast 12 to 15 minutes. You can run these under the broiler if you want something that’s a little browner and crispier.
Finally, this week our box held a huge, heavy head of cauliflower. This broccoli or cauliflower risotto recipe from the now departed JCT Kitchen is delicious and the head note for the recipe has a shortcut version that we rely on a lot.