Ratatouille

Ingredients:

1/2 onion, finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, very thinly sliced
1 cup tomato puree (such as Pomi)
2 tablespoons olive oil, divided
1 small eggplant 
1 smallish zucchini
1 smallish yellow squash
1 longish red bell pepper
Few sprigs fresh thyme
Salt and pepper
Few tablespoons soft goat cheese, for serving

Preparation: 

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.

Pour tomato puree into bottom of an oval baking dish, approximately 10 inches across the long way. Drop the sliced garlic cloves and chopped onion into the sauce, stir in one tablespoon of the olive oil and season the sauce generously with salt and pepper.

Trim the ends off the eggplant, zucchini and yellow squash. As carefully as you can, trim the ends off the red pepper and remove the core, leaving the edges intact, like a tube.

On a mandoline, adjustable-blade slicer or with a very sharp knife, cut the eggplant, zucchini, yellow squash and red pepper into very thin slices, approximately 1/16-inch thick.

Atop the tomato sauce, arrange slices of prepared vegetables concentrically from the outer edge to the inside of the baking dish, overlapping so just a smidgen of each flat surface is visible, alternating vegetables. You may have a handful leftover that do not fit.

Drizzle the remaining tablespoon olive oil over the vegetables and season them generously with salt and pepper. Remove the leaves from the thyme sprigs with your fingertips, running them down the stem. Sprinkle the fresh thyme over the dish.

Cover dish with a piece of parchment paper cut to fit inside. (Tricky, I know, but the hardest thing about this.)

Bake for approximately 45 to 55 minutes, until vegetables have released their liquid and are clearly cooked, but with some structure left so they are not totally limp. They should not be brown at the edges, and you should see that the tomato sauce is bubbling up around them.

Serve with a dab of soft goat cheese on top, alone, or with some crusty French bread, atop polenta, couscous, or your choice of grain.

http://smittenkitchen.com/blog/2007/07/rat-a-too-ee-for-you-ee/

Chipotle Shrimp Taco with Avocado Salsa

Ingredients:

Avocado Salsa:

1 small onion, quartered
1 jalapeno, quartered, seeds optional
1 garlic clove, smashed
4 medium tomatillos, (about 8 ounces) husked, rinsed, and coarsely chopped
1/2 Hass avocado, peeled, seeded, and cut into chunks
1 1/4 teaspoons kosher salt
1/4 cup loosely packed fresh cilantro leaves, coarsely chopped

Shrimp:
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 teaspoon chipotle or blended chili powder
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 pound medium shrimp (about 20), peeled and deveined
8 corn tortillas
8 sprigs cilantro for garnish
2 limes, cut into wedges

Preparation:

Put the onion, jalapeno, and garlic in a food processor and finely chop. Add the tomatillos, avocado, and salt and pulse until chopped but still chunky. Transfer to a bowl and stir in the cilantro.

Heat a stovetop or outdoor grill to medium-high. Mix the olive oil, chipotle or chili powder, and salt in a large bowl. Add the shrimp and toss to coat. Grill the shrimp until translucent, about 1 1/2 to 2 minutes on each side.

Grill tortillas, until slightly charred and pliable, about 20 seconds per side. (Alternatively, wrap in a damp paper towel and heat in a microwave.) Spoon sauce on the tortilla, then top with about 2 or 3 shrimp and a sprig of cilantro. Serve 2 tacos per person, with a lime wedge on the side.

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/food-network-kitchens/chipotle-shrimp-taco-with-avocado-salsa-verde-recipe/index.html

Roasted Potato Leek Soup

***This recipe will be available for tasting at the pick up this week. Thanks to shareholder, Tanya Rotenberg!

Ingredients:

2 pounds Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled and cut into 3/4-inch chunks
4 cups chopped leeks, white and light green parts, cleaned of all sand (4 leeks)
¼ cup good olive oil
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
3 cups baby arugula, lightly packed
½ cup dry white wine, plus extra for serving
6 to 7 cups chicken stock, preferably homemade (or, try veggie stock!)
¾ cup heavy cream
8 ounces crème fraîche
¼ cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese, plus extra for garnish

Preparation:

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

Combine the potatoes and leeks on a sheet pan in a single layer. Add the olive oil, 1 teaspoon salt, and 1/2 teaspoon pepper and toss to coat the vegetables evenly. Roast for 40 to 45 minutes, turning them with a spatula a few times during cooking, until very tender. Add the arugula and toss to combine. Roast for 4 to 5 more minutes, until the arugula is wilted. Remove the pan from the oven and place over two burners. Stir in the wine and 1 cup of the chicken stock and cook over low heat, scraping up any crispy roasted bits sticking to the pan.

In batches, transfer the roasted vegetables to a food processor fitted with the steel blade, adding the pan liquid and about 5 cups of the chicken stock to make a purée. Pour the purée into a large pot or Dutch oven. Continue to puree the vegetables in batches until they’re all done and combined in the large pot. Add enough of the remaining 1 to 2 cups of stock to make a thick soup. Add the cream, crème fraîche, 2 teaspoons salt, and 1 teaspoon pepper and check the seasonings.

When ready to serve, reheat the soup gently and whisk in 2 table-spoons white wine and the Parmesan cheese. Serve hot with an extra grating of Parmesan cheese

http://www.barefootcontessa.com/recipes.aspx?RecipeID=95&S=0

Welcome to our 2,000 new friends at the farm!

Have you noticed the beans in the you-pick section a few weeks ago had many, many holes in the leaves? Well, WE did, and we found the culprit: the Mexican Bean Beetle. After a few weeks of hand picking them off the plants, we decided we needed to bring in extra help. So we called in 2,000 helping hands! Farm apprentice Emma did some research and found a good source for a natural predator:Pediobius foveolatus (Pediobius is pronounced “pee-dee-OH-bee-us”), a parasitic wasp. We ordered 2,000 from the New Jersey Department of Agriculture and they arrived in the mail 24 hrs later. We released them at dusk on Friday night, as instructed. Don’t worry, these wasps are smaller than a fruit fly (1-3 mm) and can cause absolutely no harm to humans. The wasp lays its eggs in Mexican bean beetle larvae, then wasp larvae feed inside the bean beetle larva, kill it, and pupate inside it, forming a brownish case or ‘mummy’.  The wasps can travel a few miles, so perhaps we’ll be helping out any neighbors that may suffer from the same bean beetle pest!

Volunteer Day: Great Success!

Thank you to farm apprentice Emma, as well as shareholders/coop members: Ali, Denise, Jim, Sue, Jo, Duncan, Leah and Matilda who helped weed EVERY tree in the orchard on Saturday. The weather was overcast which was actually nice and cool for the hard work that was in store. Many of the vining weeds were so aggressive, they were growing up the cages surrounding the trees (for deer protection), and were starting to get entangled with the top branches! The orchard is in a MUCH better state thanks to everyone’s hard work!

How Does the Farm Stand Work?

Recently a shareholder who volunteers every week (Katy) was helping us weigh our tomato harvest. We were calculating how many lbs each shareholder receives. We were discussing the nuances of this calculation- the fact that it’s impossible to fit the tomatoes into exact units, the fact that some will go bad within the five hour pick-up because they are so fragile, and the fact that we open our CSA pick-up to the public with our “farm stand.” She asked about this last part. I’m grateful she asked because I value transparency and I want shareholders to be well educated about the workings of the farm they support. Her question led to a great conversation over lunch that I want to share with everyone.

In an effort to provide food that is accessible to a large range of people, we have always had a farm stand on site. This enables us to capture and nourish the customer and community member for whom a CSA model is not a good fit (maybe it’s not flexible enough, it’s too much food, it’s too much money to pay in one or two installments, or they are a student or teacher who is only at Saul in the spring and fall but not in the summer). For the past four years, our farm stand was on Wednesdays, and the food on the table was the leftovers from the Tuesday pick up, as well as the crops that grow so fast they need to be picked three times a week (for example, if we only picked zucchini twice a week everyone would have HUGE zucchini which are seedy and less desirable for cooking). This farm stand always limped along; never had huge sales and I stubbornly kept it open despite low sales on the principle that it filled an important niche in the local food system.

Finally, after four years of averaging $40 a week, I realized this was not a practical way for a valuable staff member to spend their time. There was too much work to be done in the field and sales were too low to justify keeping the farm stand going as it was.
Over the winter of 2012-2013, a couple coworkers and shareholders helped me brainstorm a new approach: Incorporate the farm stand into the Friday pick-up. Not only would this be a more efficient use of staff time, but the product will be of higher quality: it will be fresher (being harvested the day before), and out of the sun and wind and rain. We chose Fridays because Tuesday pick-up days are typically more popular than Fridays, so that meant we could harvest the same amount for each day, but the farm stand would absorb the small amount of harvest which was above and beyond the CSA needs on Fridays (otherwise, when you divide the harvest by a smaller number of people, each person receives a larger amount of the harvest). This seemed like a win-win: the farm stand would be better, the farmers would have more time in the field, and the harvests would be even between Tuesday and Friday, which means shareholders would receive more consistently sized shares between the two pick-up days. 

This plan was going well…until we looked at the numbers of Tuesday people vs. Friday people and realized they were almost exactly the same. That blew that rationale out the window! Another thing that happened was we submitted our farm budget for fiscal year 2013-2014. We came in at a loss, as usual. Weavers Way is tightening the belt on finances, and while the co-op is still interested in supporting and operating an urban farm, it was made clear we had to find a way to bring in more income…immediately. So, we creatively edited the painted farm stand sign on Henry Ave. and opened our Tuesday CSA pick-up to the public.

So now, when we calculate the lbs of tomatoes that each shareholder receives, we pretend there are about 5 more people in the CSA, and this covers the sales to the public. Given that we did a farm stand on Henry Ave. for four years, I’m confident in predicting the number of sales we might have to the public. So far, it’s been going well: the farm stand sales are up, shareholders are still receiving more than what they paid for in the value of their share (more on these numbers in an upcoming newsletter), the share has been on par with the size it was last year, and I’m happy to be even more accessible by opening a farm stand twice a week instead of just once. And on the rare occasion that there are popular items that are limited because of an unexpectedly small harvest, we simply say these items are not available to the public at the farm stand and they only end up in shareholder’s bags.

I wouldn’t say any part of this is system is terribly easy to manage or plan, but what in farming is?! It is only the latest rendition of a constantly evolving method of CSA distribution. Every CSA farm does it differently, which is empowering for a farmer who can create a system that works well for their individual farm, but it requires that the farmer also be clear with the CSA shareholder, so the shareholders know exactly what they are supporting, and where their money is going. In the end, in my fifth year managing Henry Got Crops I think this latest version of the CSA/farm stand model is the best way I have come up with to balance: staff time, the privilege a shareholder deserves for investing in a farm up front, being accessible to a wide customer base, and being as financially viable as possible.

If you have any questions about all this, please do ask me- just like Katy did when she was helping at the farm last week. This type of dialogue is exactly what I want to have with shareholders! This direct, transparent relationship with customers is exactly why I like CSAs, as opposed to the many other options for vegetable distribution. So please, take advantage of being part of a CSA, get to know your farmer, and don’t be shy to ask a question that you are wondering about your farm.