Tomorrow’s supposed to be 90 degrees again, so hopefully you’ll all be able to take your veg straight home to the fridge. We’re going to have corn, beets, chard, parsley, beans, jalepenos, and carrots for you. Some of the beets are chioggia, which means the insides are concentric rings of white and red, which is very cool. The others are golden and also beautiful.
One of the easiest ways to prepare beets is to cut them into chunks, toss them with a little bit of oil, then roast them (stick them under the broiler on your oven), shaking the pan occasionally to turn them, until the fork test indicates they’re softened – but not mushy – through. Be careful with this as it’s easy to get distracted and burn them up. Remove them from the oven, salt and pepper them, and serve with sour cream mixed with horseradish. YUM.
Roasting is a great thing to do to almost any vegetables (excluding leafy things which just sort of crisp and burn). It’s incredibly fast and easy, and the roasting process carmelizes the sugars in the vegetables, making them sweeter and enhancing their flavor deliciously. Another way to mix it up with vegetables you’ve had for several weeks in a row is to marinate them in something tasty (teriyaki or a yummy salad dressing are easy options) for a few hours, then grill or stirfry them.
We have to give Annie yet another shoutout because the other night she did a delicious thing that we wanted to share with you. She baked sweet potatoes (she used the barbecue but you can do it in the oven, at say 375 degrees – don’t forget to stab them with a fork first so they don’t explode!). She made creamed corn (you can find a creamed corn recipe here: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Creamed-Corn-242617 but you can also just put corn and milk and maybe some thickener like flour into a pot with some herbs and cook it up a little). Then, she cut open the sweet potatoes, spooned creamed corn into the gap, then topped the whole thing with grated muenster cheese. It was very delicious.
Also, creamed corn is good on fresh tomato slices.
Jalepenos are hot but not really really hot like, say, cayennes. Their flavor goes well with cheddar cheese, and a really tasty thing to do is to make a cornbread recipe (or a mix), and add diced jalepenos, grated cheddar, and fresh corn kernels to the batter before you bake it. An exciting twist on plain old cornbread.
Remember that beet tops are just as goot as beet bottoms. You can combine them with the chard when you cook it to change the flavor a little. Here’s the easiest way to prepare greens like this: Sautee some minced garlic in a little olive oil for a minute, then put coarsely chopped greens in the pot with a little bit of water, cover, and cook until wilted. Add salt and either freshly ground pepper or red pepper flakes to taste.
Here is a recipe for a beet-and-parsley salad from Gourmet Magazine (via Epicurious.com). We haven’t tried this specific recipe but have had similar dishes in the past.
Italian Parsley and Beet Salad
yield: Makes 6 (first course) servings
active time: 30 min
total time: 1 hr
- 1/4 cup fresh orange juice
- 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
- 1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil plus more for drizzling
- 2 1/4 pounds assorted beets with greens (such as Chioggia, white, golden, and red; 1 1/2 pounds if already trimmed)
- 1/4 small red onion
- 1 1/4 cups Italian (flat-leaf) parsley leaves (from 1 bunch), torn if desired
- Equipment: an adjustable-blade slicer
- Accompaniment: fresh ricotta or farmer cheese, or grated ricotta salata
Whisk together juices, oil, and 1/2 teaspoon each of salt and pepper in a large bowl.
Trim beets, leaving 1 inch of stems attached, then peel.
Using stems as a handle, slice beets paper-thin (less than 1/8 inch thick) with slicer (wear protective gloves to avoid staining hands), then cut slices into very thin matchsticks.
Thinly slice onion with slicer.
Toss beets, onion, and parsley with dressing and season with salt. Let stand, tossing occasionally, 30 minutes to soften beets and allow flavors to develop.
Toss again and season with salt and pepper before serving drizzled with additional oil.
In case you’re not familiar with it, Epicurious.com is a website with jillions of recipes. The thing that makes it preferable to many other sites is that it’s run by Gourmet and Bon Apetit magazines and the recipes are reliable both for being tasty and for being accurate on measurements and such.
Oh, and this is short notice, but we’ve got a few pounds of pickling cukes this week if someone wants to buy them. We’ll have more by next week!
Hand-dug Hopeful Farm 
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