You know, I’m just not sure what those greens are in this week’s box. They taste like a mild form of mustard greens – perhaps they are an Asian variety that I just don’t know. But they’re delicious. I like this in this recipe adapted from one put out by Whole Foods Market.
A simple recipe perfect for some Riverview pork and either your butternut or delicata squash.
This recipe is from Matt and Ted Lee of The Lee Bros. Charleston Kitchen, author of several terrific Southern cookbooks. Scale down according to the amount of peas in your bag. The recipe was written for butter beans, but will work just fine with your field peas.
About this recipe, they say:
Along with muscadine grapes, butter beans are among the farmer’s market treasures of late summer—reason to wake up with gusto to another day of stultifying heat and oxford-soaking humidity. We do all kinds of things with butter beans: we make a hummus-like spread for the cocktail hour, we simmer them with seasoning meats of all sorts, and we compose marinated salads aplenty. But this may be our most simple treatment yet, and one of the most satisfying.
Butter beans come in many varieties: Some beans are green with purple speckles, some are reddish brown, a few are ivory colored, and there’s a shade of green besides. For this simple side dish, we like to use the small green ones (though you may use frozen baby lima beans if butter beans aren’t in season).
No, we haven’t received our first sweet potatoes yet, but they’re on their way soon. In the meantime, you could make this with the white potatoes that have been part of our recent boxes, or just make the mustard green salad and serve it alone. Demonstrated by Joey Ward of Gunshow at Peachtree Road Farmers Market. Love the yogurt chutney.
This is a recipe from Melissa Clark of the New York Times. Precooking the lemon slices eliminates some of the bitterness that comes from the pith. A great tip.
This recipe for okra stew is adapted from one in Saveur magazine and is from Senegal. They credit it as a predecessor of Louisiana-style gumbo which makes sense to me, given how much of our Southern cuisine comes from African culture and the cooking of slaves. It takes a good while to cook, which is absolutely typical of West Africa food, but is well worth it. In Senegal, this would be made with eggplant, but I’m substituting the green beans from this week’s box.
Using spaghetti squash in a sweet dish might be a surprise, but try this recipe from Vicky Murphy. It will remind you of a chess pie with a twist. “A friend shared [the recipe] with me back in the late 1970s when I first became aware of the squash. You can use almond flavoring or probably most any flavoring you like. I like to serve it with low-cal whipped cream, from the can, not the good stuff, to keep it as low calorie as possible,” Murphy said. She also said you can vary the amount of flavoring up to 2 tablespoons.
If your spaghetti squash provides more “noodles” than needed, toss the remainder in vinaigrette with chopped fresh tomatoes, garlic and basil for a quick mock pasta entree.
This last recipe is an adaptation of one from Marc Sommers, executive chef of Parsley’s Custom Catering in Kennesaw, who demonstrated it at the Morningside Farmers Market a year or so ago. He says he “borrowed” this recipe from his Belarusian mother-in-law. I just had a beet-and-potato salad at an Ethiopian restaurant last night and I can’t wait to try this one.
This recipe is great for using up some more of those greens. It will work with your beet greens, radish greens, turnip greens or chard. I wouldn’t use the collards, they just need a little more cooking to be tender. An adaptation of a recipe from Rebecca Lang’s “Quick-Fix Southern: Homemade Hospitality in 30 Minutes or Less.” Greens and onions are such natural companions.
The first recipe I’m sharing is one I learned at the cooking class. The class was led by Gulshan Singh who teaches the most accessible Indian food I know. As much as I cook, and I cook a lot, I always learn something new from her. Tonight’s class was full of recipes featuring onions. Here are some lovely onion fritters – delicious served with yogurt mixed with a little chopped cucumber and some cumin and salt. Saute some of your greens in a little olive oil to serve alongside the fritters and you’ve got a wonderful dinner in very little time.