This week’s box included: radishes, tomatoes, Chinese eggplant, kale, turnip (or mustard) greens, spaghetti squash, mild peppers, purple sweet potatoes, apples, green beans. You can see a photo that can help with identification on our Facebook page or check out our weekly video on Instagram.
Need storage instructions? Visit our fruit & veggie home pages. Click on the pic and a new page opens with storage instructions and a list of recipes curated by Conne over the years.
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Love the red and purple vegetables in this week’s box. Bright red tomatoes and radishes. Purple sweet potatoes and Japanese eggplant. Just when I’m expecting cabbage and butternut, these summer-ish vegetables appear. Slicer tomatoes in mid-October feels like such a gift. If only there were a few pickling cucumbers. Oh, well.
If you are in the mood for a cold salad, substitute those radishes for cucumbers in a variation on tomato-cucumber salad and dress it in minutes with a vinaigrette made by whisking together lemon juice and pepper jelly. Taste for salt and pepper. It’s got to be one of the easiest vinaigrettes ever, and I love it because there are always jars of jellies and jams and preserves in our refrigerator with just a few tablespoons left in the jar. Great way to cut down on all the accumulation on our refrigerator shelves.
Or serve those radishes hot with Hetty Lui McKinnon’s recipe for Miso-Butter Glazed Radishes. Five ingredients plus salt and noodles. And it uses the greens as well as the radishes. It’s from her “To Vegetables, with Love” cookbook which is a constant reference in my kitchen. She just published “Linger: Salads, Sweets and Stories to Savor” and I can’t wait to get a copy. If a bunch of hakurei turnips appears in a box in the next few weeks, this would work well with those, too.
And I look to local chef Ilene Rouamvongsor for ideas for that Japanese eggplant. The box Charlotte unpacked on Instagram had two big eggplants. Our box had just one.
Ilene’s Sticky Five Spice Eggplant is easy and quick. She prepared it for a demo at the Decatur Farmers Market and maybe you can relate to the headnote from the market manager: “Eggplants, admittedly, can be hit or miss for me. It’s funny how you can dislike or love the same vegetable, depending on how it’s made! Maybe you feel the same way about eggplants or other vegetables? That’s why I encourage you to explore the many sides of something you may dislike forever – you never know until you try! Here is one of the easiest and most favorite ways to cook eggplants – sautéed garlicky Asian eggplants in a sticky 5-spice soy sauce. These eggplants were sitting in my fridge for a while, but if you cook it the day of or within a couple of days of buying, you’ll find that these eggplants’ purple color can remain vibrant when cooked in this recipe.”
Miso-Butter Glazed Radishes with Noodles
Thick rice noodles or other pasta
Radishes, quartered and greens reserved
4 tablespoons vegan or salted butter
2 cloves garlic, grated
1/4 cup white miso
4 teaspoons maple syrup
Sea salt
Bring a large pot of salted water to the boil. Add the noodles and cook according to packet instructions. Drain and rinse until cold water. Drain again.
Meanwhile, heat a large skillet over medium-high heat. When hot, add the radishes, 3 tablespoons of the butter, the garlic and miso and stir until the butter has melted and the radishes are coated. Add 1/4 cup water and, when the liquid is bubbling, reduce the heat to medium and cover with a lid. Cook for 2-3 minutes, tossing once halfway through, until the radishes are just tender, juicy and golden.
Remove the lid, add the remaining 1 tablespoon of butter, drizzle with the maple syrup and toss well. Add the greens to the pan and toss for 30 seconds. Rinse the noodles with water to loosen them and then immediately add them to the noodles (don’t drain them, the water will deglaze the pan) and toss until combined. Taste and season with about 1 teaspoon of sea salt, if needed (some brands of miso are saltier than others so season accordingly).
Sticky Five Spice Eggplant
Eggplant
Salt
3 tablespoons soy sauce or tamari
1 teaspoon unseasoned rice vinegar
1 tablespoon light brown sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons five spice powder
Neutral oil
Potato or corn starch
Garlic
Cut the caps off the eggplant and cut (with peel on) into 1-inch cubes. Toss eggplant with salt and let sit 10 minutes. Rinse and pat dry.
Make the sauce by combining soy sauce, vinegar, sugar and five spice powder. Stir and set aside.
Heat a little oil in a large skillet. Toss cubes in potato starch and add to skillet.
Smash as many peeled garlic cloves as you like and add them to the eggplant. Cook over medium-high heat until eggplant and garlic turn golden. Turn heat to low and add sauce. Cook until sauce thickens and remove from heat. Serve right away!