Week #3
This week’s half share includes: salad greens, Pac Choi, Hakurai Turnips, carrots, kale, and garlic scapes.
Rainbow carrots! We love carrots, every one of us, even our dogs! They’re sweet and crunchy and taste so yummy raw and cooked. We add them to just about every dish (smoothies included!).
Curly purple kale. We can’t get enough of it at our house. Seriously, our kiddo goes through a bunch at one sitting. We sauté the kale in oil until it starts getting a little crispy, then we turn off the heat and pour soy sauce on top. Try it. It’s so good. Or…. add it to your smoothie, make kale chips, chop it up into small pieces and slip it into soups, stews, casseroles, even pasta dishes.
Garlic scapes. Here’s the skinny: they are these funny tassel-like growths on the end of the garlic leaves (i.e. where eventually they would become flowers, then seeds, etc). The key is to snap them off for an awesome early summer green garlic. You can use the scapes just as you would garlic. They have a slightly subtler, springier flavor. We enjoy making pesto with the scapes because the results are smooth and really accentuate the fresh green flavors of early summer. Here are some more specific ideas if you want to get creative.
Last but certainly not least, the Hakurai Turnip (also known as the Salad Turnip). This beautiful vegetable is a real surprise as unlike storage turnips (which is what most people think of when we talk about turnips), salad turnips are slightly sweet, almost juicy, and perfectly crunchy. They are a lovely addition to salad, but we really just like to eat them out of hand. They go nicely on a vegetable dipping tray. We love to sauté them in a fry pan in sesame oil, a spoonful of miso, cook them well and then after turning off the heat adding a spoonful of maple syrup. One of our favorite dishes, that hardly ever make it to the dish!
Enjoy the share, we wish you a week full of sweet summer days :)
