Home-Grown

Not by me, of course, but by Farmer Rich, my new favorite person.  Farmer Rich is master of our CSA, and thus responsible for the delivery of fresh, super-delicious veg that we get each week.  Tonight's dinner was a straight-up farm share affair: almost everything that you see on that plate was home-grown (organically!) by Farmer Rich and his helpers in Wantage, NJ.  Call me a CSA nerd, but a fully farm-share meal excites me.  And so do all the colors on that plate! 

Disclaimer: I am neither a food stylist nor a photographer. Both talents fall squarely in Diana's camp. Plus it was late, I was hungry, and my food was getting cold! But you get the gist. Stay tuned for far better visuals when Diana is on the job!

I got home from work around 9:30 tonight, without the energy (or patience) to spend an hour or two cooking.  So I opened up my crisper and pulled together a perfect light, late-night dinner: glazed carrots, a make-shift salad and "five-minute" beets, which were a leftover from last week's delivery.  Accompanied by some crusty sour-dough bread (yep, you guessed it, slathered in butter).  

Just for the record, every single vegetable and herb I ate tonight came from the CSA.  Here's what I pulled together (in about 25 minutes -- cause it's that easy, not cause I'm that talented):

Glazed Carrots 

Adapted from The Art of Simple Food by Alice Waters, goddess of local, seasonal, sustainable cooking

Carrots

Water

Salt

Butter

Brown sugar

Fresh herbs (suggestions: cilantro, parsley or basil)

Freshly-ground black pepper

If your carrots are fresh from the ground or relatively young (mine were both), don't bother peeling them.  Most of the nutrients lie close to the surface so it's preferable to leave the skins on and just scrub 'em clean.  

Cut the carrots into coins or sticks.  Put them in a wide-bottomed heavy pot and cover halfway with water (you don't want the carrots stacked more than an inch high).  Add a good pinch or two of salt and a couple of teaspoons of butter per serving.  Bring the water to a boil, then lower to a simmer and cover.  Cook until tender.  Remove the lid and boil until the liquid reduces into a buttery sauce that coats the carrots.  At this point I added a little sprinkling of brown sugar, in homage to a carrot recipe my mom makes that is simply delicious.  It's a great pairing, but I didn't want to overshadow the flavor of the super-fresh carrots and herbs so I just used a little.  After stirring in the brown sugar I added my chopped herbs -- basil (it was so fragrant and delicious that I literally wanted to bathe myself in it when we got our delivery this week) and salad burnet (don't worry, I hadn't heard of it either until it showed up in last week's delivery.  Incidentally, epicurious.com and foodnetwork.com haven't heard of it either.  It tastes more or less like a cucumber.  But it's an herb. Yeah.).  Remove the carrots from the heat, season with pepper and more salt if necessary, and enjoy.

Salad 

Super simple and totally adjustable based on what you got in the fridge.  I used:

Heart of red iceburg lettuce

More basil and salad bernet

Chopped carrot tops.  Did you know that your carrot TOPS are edible?  I didn't know until tonight when I wondered, and went digging online.  They taste pretty much like carrots, but are a bit bitter, apparently because of the high potassium content.  I ate them raw in the salad tonight but later this week plan on experimenting with cooking them.

Dressing of apple cider vinegar, minced shallots, salt and olive oil.  It's the simplest dressing ever, but always refreshing and tasty.  You don't even need the shallots if you don't have them. Let the first 3 ingredients sit together while you prepare the rest of the meal.  Just before serving whisk in the olive oil. Three parts olive oil to one part vinegar is generally a good ratio to work from.

5-minute Beets

From Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone (the bible of all things vegetable)

Fresh, raw beets, coarsely grated

Butter

Salt and freshly-ground pepper

Water

Lemon juice to taste

Chopped fresh herbs (suggestions: parsley, tarragon or dill)

Melt the butter (a tablespoon or more per pound of beets) in a skillet, add the beets and toss with salt and pepper to taste.  Add a quarter cup of water (roughly) per pound of beets, cover the pan and cook over medium heat until beets are tender.  Remove the lid and raise the temperature to boil off any remaining liquid.  Taste for salt, season with a squeeze of lemon juice (don't leave this out, it really adds another dimension to the flavor) and toss with the herb (I used parsley).  Can be served warm or room temperature.

All of these recipes are quite basic and totally adaptable, which makes them great staples for your kitchen repertoire.  Another thing I really like about both the carrots and the beets is that, although they're both cooked in water, it's a small amount and the water is boiled off, not drained, and thus most of the veggies' nutrients make it onto your plate.  Plus they both have butter, and you know how we feel about butter :)

Topped off with a dessert of Ben & Jerry's (Fair Trade) Vanilla Ice Cream and zucchini bread (baked by Diana), it made for quite a satisfying meal.