This week’s box included: cabbage, apples, bell peppers, potatoes, tomatoes, pumpkins, sweet potatoes, mustard greens, daikon radish, carrots, grits. You can see a photo that can help with identification on our Facebook page or check out our weekly video on Instagram.
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There are only three more weeks of the 2024 Riverview Farms Produce CSA and I don’t feel as if I’ve gotten my fill of winter squashes (butternuts, I’ve missed you!) and roots. And greens. We won’t be far into December when I’ll start thinking longingly of these bountiful boxes and looking hopefully towards spring.
Enough of that. How exciting to have a bag of grits today. I plan to stew those tomatoes and peppers and serve them over grits for a summer meets fall meets bow of comfort food. There are plenty of ideas, too, on the grits page and I can heartily recommend the recipe for Ma Ethel’s Mixed Bread that’s been up on the website for a decade.
And our first daikon of the fall has arrived. We have daikon recipes at grassfedcow.com and I’m adding one more to the list. It’s Daikon Porridge from Happy Donabe Life, appended below if that’s easier. I’ve been coveting a donabe and doing a little research and this recipe seems so simple and delicious, I can’t wait to try it. Basically it’s just rice, daikon and salt. Just the ticket if you’re feeling under the weather. And good news is that the daikon will keep, wrapped maybe in a damp dish towel, in your refrigerator for a month or two so if you don’t feel like porridge now, it will be waiting for you when you do. The recipe calls for daikon greens and sprouts so we’ll have to be creative, or wait and see if another bunch of radishes with their greens shows up in one of the last few boxes.
We got a perfect head of cabbage – again, lots of recipes available – and more red-skinned potatoes. In our box there was also an assortment of sweet potatoes. Some orange and some, I think, purple. I didn’t check closely. On Instagram, Charlotte unpacked a box with a sweet little pumpkin and what looked maybe like a big butternut? Our box had just one smallish pumpkin and when that reminded me that I hadn’t cooked that pumpkin we received a few weeks ago, I pulled the pumpking out of its bowl on the counter. Only to discover it was rotting! So I lost the chance to eat that pumpkin but I’m not going to lose out with this one. I plan to cook it like an acorn squash – cut in half, seeded, roasted cut side down and then turned right side up and filled with butter and honey. It’s the way we ate winter squash when I was a child and it makes me happy.
Daikon Porridge
6 tablespoons short-grain white rice, rinsed
2 cups water
About 1/4 pound daikon cut into discs and then quartered
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
a small handful of chopped daikon leaves or leaves from radish
Ginger, cut into very thin shreds, for serving
Chopped daikon sprouts, for serving
Combine the rice and water in the donabe (or a medium saucepan). Cover with a lid and set over medium-high heat. As soon as it starts boiling (about 10 – 12 minutes), turn down the heat to medium-low. Add the daikon, and stir with a wooden spatula and make sure the rice is not sticking to the bottom.
Slide the lid slightly to leave a small open space. Gently simmer for about 12 minutes (the surface of the mixture bubbles gently but not loudly), or until the mixture is smooth and slightly thickened. Meanwhile, stir occasionally to make sure the rice is not sticking to the bottom. Uncover, add the sea salt and the daikon leaves. Gently stir, and remove from the heat.
To serve, scoop a desired amount of rice into a rice bowl. Garnish with the ginger and daikon sprouts.