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The Gems of Fall: Root Crop Season!

 Hello everyone!  For all of you Fall CSA folks, boy, do we have a great CSA line-up for you this week!  Just wait 'til you scroll down to see our list!  We've got for you an earthy selection of root crops, accented by a medley of fresh, leafy greens that we don't typically offer. 

Fall is the time for showcasing an entire range of colors and beauty possible in vegetables that are frequently overlooked at in the store.  For example: the humble turnip.  Turnips come in an array of colors.  There's the standard Purple Top, but we also grow ruby Red turnips, Gold turnips, and even the dainty yet tasty White variety.  Maybe you felt risky one day, ventured to the Co-op and bought yourself a turnip or two, and felt well-versed and worldly after wearily figuring out how to incorporate it into your meal somehow.  Then you forgot about it.  But turnips can be easier to prepare and integrate into meals than you'd imagine.  For all of you, especially those dedicated vegans out there, turnips are one of the highest sources of proteins you can find in a vegetable!  Turnip pastes are pretty delicious and simple to make: pastes are self-explanatory.  Eat the paste on your favorite sandwich!  You can easily find online the most basic turnip roasting recipes which, in my opinion, are the best way to prepare these roots.  Also, check out our scrumptious "Turnip Fries" recipe from an earlier newsletter this season!

We also have our wonderful lineup of radishes, both spring and winter!   In the last newsletter I told you all about winter radishes, the larger, more hefty, down-to-earth version of your light and crisp spring breeds.  Winter radishes come in a startling spread of colors.  Watermelon and Beauty Heart radishes have bright red, succulent-looking insides when you slice them open, looking very much like a cut-open watermelon (hence the names).  The skin on the outsides can range from a palish-green and white to more vivid rosy pinks and purple blushes, making one recall a beautiful fall sunset.  The intense Spanish Black radish, on the other hand, lives up to its name with a remarkably dark skin.  Spanish Blacks are notably more bitter, and this is actually due to this particular kind of radish's high nutritional content.  It is an excellent source of fiber and vitamin C, as well as boasting anti-cancer and anti-toxic properties, especially against hepatic cancers.

Our D'Avignon French Breakfast radishes have long been pulled since the last few times we've added them to your shares, but now we've got our other Spring varieties, the Easter Eggs and Cherry Belles, to follow in.  A hearty bunch of Easter Egg radishes looks simply mouth-watering and could almost be the vegetable equivalent of a gum ball machine!  They are perfectly round, coming in a variety of contrasting colors: purple, white, pink and rose.  Also relating to gum ball machines, sometimes you can't help yourself and it's hard to stop poppin' these radishes in your mouth once you get started.  Cherry Belles are similar, though they are our standard red, round radishes and come in one uniform color.  These two varieties are noticeably less tart and hot than the French Breakfast (which are my favorite!), though from my experience, they can be just as addictive after biting into that first one.

Last but not least, the lean-and-spicy Daikon!  An Asian icicle radish variety that is the biggest, the longest...and the hottest!  We pulled our record largest Daikon out of the ground today, it was at least two feet long!

Find us at the Farmer's Market and you'll get to see the entire spectrum of root crops before you!   We've been filling up baskets with turnips, spring and winter radishes respectively to put on our table, and the result is a quite astonishing display of those root crops the average shopper tends to overlook.  We hope you take a minute to take in an eyeful, and give these delicious and healthy veggies a chance.  Here at Echollective, it's one of the most beautiful things about Fall: all the colors!

Along with beautiful roots, we've got some special greens this week to accompany your vibrant root selection: Broccoli is back on the table after a little vacation!  A little bit of patience and a lot of rain has given us a lot of florettes recently.   You can also get a taste of some Broccoli Raab (a.k.a. Rapini) and we are happy to give to our CSA members, for the first time this year, a generous bunch of Yukina Savoy!  (Yukina Savoy is a larger, denser relative/version of tat soi.)  We'll provide some recipes for you to enjoy with these veggies in the coming week!

We're sure you'll enjoy the selection this week...see you at market!


CSA This Week!:
  • Kale
  • Sweet Peppers
  • Yellow Zephyr Squash
  • Garlic
  • Spring Radishes
  • Winter Radishes
  • Red, Purple Top, White, or Gold Turnips
  • Daikon Radishes
  • Bok Choy
  • Arugula
  • Head Lettuce
  • Broccoli
  • Tat-Soi Bunch (Yukina Savoy)
  • Broccoli Raab (Rapini)
  • Winter Squash

Recipes

Moroccan Yukina Savoy and Red Quinoa Skillet (Gluten-Free!) (www.glutenfreecat.com)


Ingredients:
  • 1 lemon – juice and zest
  • 1 T paprika
  • 1 T ground cumin
  • 1 tsp sea salt
  • ½ tsp pepper
  • 1 T olive oil
  • 4 garlic cloves, minced
  • 1 yellow onion, chopped
  • 2 ½ c. carrots, chopped
  • 2 cans white cannellini beans, drained and rinsed
  • 2 bunches yukina savoy or 4 c. of another green (bok choi, spinach, kale…)
  • 1 c. dried apricots, chopped
  • 1 c. red quinoa
  • 3 c. gluten-free vegetable stock
  • 1 handful of chopped parsley
Directions:

1.  Place the red quinoa in a bowl of water and soak while preparing the next four steps.
2.  Combine the paprika, cumin, salt, and pepper in a small bowl and set aside.
3.  Zest the lemon, juice it, and set them aside separately.
4.  Chop the onion, carrots, yukina savoy, and set them aside separately.
5.  Heat the olive oil in a large skillet or wok over medium heat and sauté the minced garlic until it’s lightly browned.  Add the onions, lemon zest, and apricots and cook until the onions are soft.
6.  Drain and rinse the red quinoa, and add it to the skillet.  Then add the lemon juice, carrots, cannellini beans, spices, and chicken stock.  Raise the heat, bringing the mixture to a boil, and stir for 3-5 minutes.  Cover, reduce the heat to medium-low, and simmer for 20 minutes or until the liquid is absorbed.
7.  Add chopped yukina savoy, or greens of your choice, stir to combine, and cover for 5 minutes or until the greens have softened.
8.  Keep covered, remove from heat, and let it sit for 5 minutes.
9.   Gently stir, serve, and garnish with parsley.

Serves 6


Broccoli Raab & Orzo Salad (www.eatingwell.com)

 

Ingredients

  • 1/2 cup orzo, preferably whole-wheat
  • 1 bunch broccoli rabe (about 1 pound), trimmed and chopped
  • 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
  • 2 cloves garlic, minced
  • 2 teaspoons chopped fresh oregano
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
  • 1/4 cup crumbled feta cheese
  • 2 tablespoons lemon juice

Preparation

  1. Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Add orzo and cook 3 minutes less than the package directions. Add broccoli rabe; cook 3 minutes more. Drain in a colander and gently press out as much water as possible.
  2. Heat oil in the pot over medium heat. Add garlic; cook, stirring, until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Add oregano, salt, pepper, the broccoli rabe and orzo. Cook, stirring, until heated through, about 2 minutes. Remove from the heat; stir in feta and lemon juice.

Nutrition

Per serving: 192 calories; 10 g fat ( 2 g sat , 6 g mono ); 8 mg cholesterol; 20 g carbohydrates; 0 g added sugars; 8 g protein; 6 g fiber; 288 mg sodium; 247 mg potassium.
Nutrition Bonus: Vitamin A (61% daily value), Vitamin C (45% dv)
Carbohydrate Servings: 1
Exchanges: 1 starch, 1 vegetable, 2 fat

Daikon Radish Stuffed Flatbreat/Mooli Paratha (www.yummly.com)

 

Ingredients

  • 2 cups wheat flour (add)
  • salt
  • 12 tsp chili powder
  • 12 tsp cuminseed (jeera powder)
  • 2 tbsps oil
  • water (grated radish for kneading the dough will be explained)
  • 1 radish (diakon, grated after grating squeeze out the water/juice use it for kneading dough)
  • 12 ajwain (indian stores optional)
  • 14 turmeric (powder)
  • 12 tsp jeera (powder)
  • 12 onion (grated juice squeezed out discard)
  • salt
  • 14 chili powder
  • 2 tbsps cilantro leaves (finely chopped)
  • oil (frying)

 Directions:

1  Make up the dough using the water (as much as you need from the radish) Discard any left over water.
2  Leave the dough covered in a warm place to rest for half an hour.
3  Add salt to the grated radish.
4  After 15 mins squeeze out more water and discard this.
5  Then to the dry grated radish add the rest of the filling mix.
6  now make small balls of the dough a little bigger than an egg.
7  Flatten them out, dip in dry flour and roll them out using a rolling pin to a teacup saucer size.
8  Make smaller balls of the filling mix about the size of an egg yolk and place each filling ball in the center of the dough soucer.
9  Gather the rest of the dough around it so that the dough complety covers the filling.
10  Dip it in dry flour and roll it out again theis time bigger than a saucer.
11  Heat a tsp of oil in the frying pan.
12  Add the bread and shallow fry on each side until brown spots appear.
 
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 Please tell us if you can't identify something on the market table, don't know what to do with a particular item, have a food allergy we should know about, or if you have other questions or comments. We love to hear from you! 
 
 
broccoli raab Cherry Belle radishes Easter Egg radishes
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Summer Farm Happenin's

Well, summer isn't really here yet, but it might as well be.  Summer CSA has begun already!  This past stretch of hot, hot weather has really got us all sweating out in the fields...running around and watering things...getting our skin to burn, peel, and tan.  It's been so dry, and we avidly await the next series of storms...we really need it.  And we need a break!

Of course, summer also means the hot vegetables are coming!  That would be tomatoes, basil, peppers, eggplants, and squashes.  This morning we got a whole lot more tomatoes and peppers into the ground in our greenhouse.  More freshly planted squashes are sprouting between our head lettuces, in the spaces that the big ones we pulled left behind.  No eggplants in the ground yet!  We have yet to make room.  Fortunately we have a variety of eggplant that doesn't take too long to get to maturity...most varieties take four months to mature from germination!  We still have cool weather crops for harvesting too, so don't worry!  We have a LOT.  Another round of pac choi heads are on the way.  We've got arugula and radishes in plenty.  No end to our lettuces yet, spinach keeps coming on, and it seems that we'll have a few more weeks of asparagus!  Our beets are getting bigger and bigger, and we'll have some sugar snap peas ready for the picking in no time.

We also have a vegetable that will appear in your next CSA box, but which most of you might not be too familiar with, it's kinda like broccoli but the florettes are smaller...broccoli raab!  Also called rapini.  We harvested a pound of it in a restaurant order just the other night, I got a few nibbles and it was pretty tasty.  Apparently some Italian cooks are nuts about putting rapini in their dishes.  An interesting thing to know is that broccoli raab and turnips are both the same species!  They diverged when they were selected for different traits: some plants for their swollen, tasty root, and some for their succulent florettes.  Thus you get broccoli raab and turnips...both share the same common wild ancestor.  If you were to take them both before some biologist or taxonomist, he/she would say they are the same...yet on a culinary level, they are entirely different.  Anyways, you will get that in your next box!

We were stoked to see everyone show up to market to pick up their first big CSA box of the year!  Well, except a few people, we hope to see them soon too!  Saturday market will bring a whole other group of CSA members to pick up their shares.  We hope everybody will like everything, and we all hope that you have a great week filled with delicious food.  See you next week!

What to expect next week:
  • Salad Mix
  • Braising Mix
  • Arugula
  • Cilantro bunch
  • Spinach (bag)
  • Pac choi head
  • Broccoli Raab/Rapini (bag)
  • Spring Radish bunch
  • Asparagus bunch

(We are out of rhubarb!  :(  Sorry it did not appear in the last CSA box, even though we said it would.  It abruptly left us.)
 

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Recipes

Broccoli Raab with Carmelized Onions Recipe (simplyrecipes.com)

Ingredients
  • Olive oil
  • 1 yellow onion, sliced into slivers, lengthwise (with the grain)
  • 1 large bunch of broccoli rabe (raab, rapini), rinsed and cut into 2-inch long pieces
  • 2-3 garlic cloves, sliced
  • 1/4 teaspoon red chili flakes
  • Salt
  • Freshly ground black pepper
 1- Heat 2 Tbsp olive oil in a large sauté pan on medium heat. Add the onions, spread out in a thin layer. Cook, stirring occasionally until softened and then lightly browned. (Tip: to speed up the caramelization process you can sprinkle a pinch of sugar over the onions.) If the onions start to dry out at all, lower the heat (you can add a little water to them too.) They should brown, but not get dried out.
  
2- After you start the onions, bring a large pot of water to a boil. The onions take at least 15 minute to cook, so you'll have time to get the water boiling. Salt the water (about a tablespoon of salt for 3 quarts of water). Prepare an ice bath, fill a large bowl half way with ice water. Add the rabe to the boiling water. Blanch for 1 minute. Use a slotted spoon to remove from the boiling water and put in the ice bath to stop the cooking. Shocking the rabe with ice water will also help keep the rabe bright green colored.
Note that some people blanch their rabe, some do not. Rabe can be rather bitter, so blanching will help take the edge off of the bitterness. If your rabe isn't particularly bitter, or you like bitter greens, you can easily skip this blanching step.  Drain the ice water from the rabe. Use a clean tea towel to gently wring out the excess moisture from the rabe.

3- Once the onions are lightly browned, remove them from the pan to a bowl. Using the same pan, add another Tbsp of olive oil and heat the pan on high heat. Add the chili flakes. Once the chili flakes start to sizzle, add the garlic. Once the garlic just starts to brown at the edges add the broccoli rabe and the onions. Toss the rabe mixture so that it gets well coated with the olive oil. Cook on high heat until most of the moisture is gone, about 5 minutes if you blanched first, a minute or too longer if you skipped the blanching.

Penne with Sausage & Broccoli Raab (cooks.com)

1 lb. of penne pasta
1 lb. sweet sausage
1 bunch fresh broccoli rabe
1 clove garlic, minced
1 can chicken stock
1 tbsp. cornstarch
3 to 4 sun-dried tomatoes in oil
Grated Parmesan cheese
1. Clean broccoli rabe and steam or boil in water. Strain and set aside.2. Cook sweet sausage in frying pan, adding a little water so it does not burn. Cover pan and cook until sausage is no longer pink. Set sausage aside and cut each sausage link into 1/4 inch diagonal slices.
3. In sausage drippings, saute minced garlic. When garlic is golden, but not brown, add can of chicken stock. Stir and simmer for 10 minutes.
4. Put cornstarch in small bowl and add a ladle of chicken stock. Mix and stir until thick and smooth.
5. Add cornstarch paste into rest of stock and continue to cook for 10 more minutes, stirring continuously until thickened.
6. Boil pasta and strain. Place in serving bowl.
7. Combine cut up sausage, 3 to 4 sundried tomatoes broken into bits and broccoli rabe. Stir into sauce and top over pasta. Serve with grated Parmesan cheese.


 Honey-Topped Radish Tartines (brightonyourhealth.com)

Ingredients
  • 1-2 medium slice Rye or Pumpernickel Bread
  • 1-2 tablespoon Fromage Frais or Greek Yogurt
  • 5 Mild Flavored Radishes such as French Breakfast Radishes, sliced thin (Milder tasting radishes are best for these breakfast tartines.)
  • 1 tablespoon Honey (Best if the honey was slightly runny in order to top the tartine properly.)

Note: French Breakfast Radishes are well known in France for their year round availability and mild taste. They are a perfect topping for this breakfast tartine. Don't be weary of the potential strong flavor of this breakfast sandwich. It is a wonderful combination of slight tartness and texture, soft cheesy feel and sweet honey.  High health benefits of radishes are abundant and are a great addition to the breakfast tray!

Directions

1- Spread carefully the fromage frais or greek yogurt completely onto the bread.



2- Add the sliced radishes on top of the fromage frais or greek yogurt.
3- Drizzle the honey on top of the tartine from top to bottom.
4- If the bread is a large slice, cut in half and serve.


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Please tell us if you can't identify something on the market table, don't know what to do with a particular item, have a food allergy we should know about, or if you have other questions or comments. We love to hear from you!

broccoli raab rapini
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