CSA Box #6

CSA box #6 includes:  Japanese eggplant x2, golden beets x3, varietal summer squash, broccoli, vidalia onions, green kale, baby lettuce mix, music garlic, Lewis green beans (which are yellow and I don't know what that means for their edibility -- they don't look like they are meant to be yellow but they also don't look rotten), French breakfast radishes, rainbow carrots, shishito peppers, mini cucumbers, red new potatoes, Japanese turnips, and a red cabbage.

First I washed the radish greens, beet greens, and kale and put them in the freezer for use in breakfast smoothies.  I would've included the turnip greens too but none of them looked like they were in good enough condition to eat.  This should supply us with enough or nearly enough smoothie greens for the next week.  Sameer has already called dibs on the broccoli, which he plans to eat with this sauce.  I will probably just quarter the carrots and eat them raw with the hummus I made last Sunday.  The baby lettuce mix will end up in sandwiches or eaten plain by Simran.  I'm not sure what we'll do with the sweet onions.  I rarely use sweet onions, so I'll just substitute them for other onions whenever it seems like it'll work.

Charred shishito peppers with smoked salt (Vedge, pg. 25)
I just ordered smoked salt for this.  This will use up the shishito peppers.


French breakfast radishes with nori, tamari, and avocado (Vedge, pg. 43)
Because it's delicious.  I don't see the need to ever find another French breakfast radish recipe.


Red potato "ash" with sauce gribiche (Vedge, pg. 82)
This is supposed to be like a new take on potato salad.  It calls for a charcoal grill, which I do not have, so I'll end up doing the oven version.  Who knows how this will turn out, but the cookbook says gribiche is a close relative of remoulade, which I love.  I'll be substituting dried thyme for the fresh because I am not going to the store to get fresh thyme for this.


Seared French beans with caper bagna cauda (Vedge, pg. 97)


Eggplant with Catalan spices and saffron aioli (Vedge, pg. 120)

Japanese Turnips with Miso
I'm going to try this recipe again.  This time I'll use vegan butter to mix with the miso since it'll end up less salty than it did with the salted butter (recipe calls for unsalted, which I don't usually bother buying because it rarely matters).  I want to experiment with making the turnips less bitter.  I'm wondering if I overcooked them last time.  I don't know.  I haven't enjoyed any of the turnips I've made, but I also know it took me until my thirties to taste brussel sprouts that weren't bitter and gross, so I assume it'll just take some more tries to figure out turnips.

Carrot Zucchini Chickpea Fritters
To use the summer squash

Lauki Paratha
To use up even more of the summer squash.

Red Cabbage Slaw
I'm going to cook a big batch of black beans tomorrow and this will go well with them for lunches.

The beets were unexpectedly the golden kind, so I'm going to find a different recipe than the one I'd been planning to use.  There is a salt roasted golden beet recipe in Vedge that looks good but it also looks like a lot of work.  The cucumbers look like short, fat pickles, so I'm just going to quarter and pickle them.

[Edited 7/11/2020:  I decided to make the salt-roasted golden beets with dill, avocado, capers, and red onion.  This is what the beets looked like on their bed of coarse sea salt going into the oven to roast for TWO HOURS.  They are currently cooling so I can peel them, slice them with the mandolin, which I'm not comfortable with, and marinate them for the remaining hours leading up to dinner.  The recipe says the finished texture should resemble lox.  There is also a cucumber dill sauce I have to make to go with them.  I really hope these are good because it's a pretty ridiculous time investment.  I'm going to make the French breakfast radishes too (a no-cook, relatively easy dish) and just call that dinner for tonight.  We can air-pop some popcorn and fill up on that afterward as necessary.  Simran likes that.]

[Edited 7/12/2020:  The beets turned out well.  The mandolin was not actually hard to use.  Here is the finished product next to the French radishes, which never look pretty when I make them but whatever.]