We have a magnificent crop of big and perfectly grown shallots this year.
I love how the mild flavor of shallots elevates just about any dish. There is no bitterness or hot bite like an onion or garlic. Shallots are lovely raw in salads or salad dressings because of the mild flavor they bring-rounding out the different flavors in a dish. Raw they have a pleasant crunch not fibrous like an onion. Cooked they melt into the background of a dish, only bringing a bulby allium background flavor with no texture.
Shallots are a great substitution for garlic if you don’t want the punch or bite garlic brings to dishes like guacamole or hummus.
I went to Culinary School (years and years ago). The first thing we learned to make and and incorporate into our dishes was a vinaigrette using shallots. We learned to taste for balance-the flavors of the oil, vinegar, salt and shallots in different proportions. When these 4 ingredients are in harmony it is magic and can make any simple vegetable or salad shine.
Start with;
2 large shallots minced
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup balsamic vinegar or a mix of any really good vinegar you like
1 cup really good olive oil
In a bowl or jar combine the shallots, salt and vinegar and stir until the salt has dissolved. Gradually whisk in the oil and taste, really taste. Is the vinegar to sharp? Add more oil. Is it too mild? Add more vinegar or a squeeze of lemon or lime? Want it a little sweet? Add honey or orange juice. Taste and adjust, taste and adjust.
Use this as a dressing for any fruit, vegetable cooked or raw, legume, proteins or cheeses you like. Serve it with a crusty bread for sopping up the juices left and you will be very happy.
My new favorite dish this year is using this vinaigrette on the roasted chilies we have been getting in our CSA share. I just clean and cut up the roasted Anaheim’s and top it with this vinaigrette and some queso fresco (chef’s kiss*). So simple.
We have a bumper crop of beautiful peppers this year. That means this week we lucky CSA members are getting 2 pounds of roasted peppers! Most of the peppers will be mild Anaheim peppers, all I have had are very mild with great fruity flavor and very thick juicy walls.
I am going to post a few photos of how I used my roasted chiles this week to maybe inspire a few ideas. But also check out our past recipes here for green chili or green chili sauces, breakfast potatoes, casseroles and more. Remember too, you can stash some roasted peppers away in your freezer to use this winter.
After cleaning the charred skin and most of the seeds off the chiles I have been making sandwiches and salads with them. They are so mild and tasty we have been eating them like we would tomatoes or cucumbers…just eating them. Nothing fancy.
I got some ground beef from Gamma Grass and Livestock. They are selling their grass fed beef at the farmers markets around here and also at some of our CSA pickups (This week on Wednesday at our farm on 63rd St and on Thursday at our store in Lafayette! Pick some up for dinner). I love supporting local food and this is so tasty – like expensive bison. I cooked a burger and stacked two roasted peppers and as many vegetables as I could fit on top! That orange stuff is cheese, it got kind of translucent when I melted it, but darn, it was good. I did the same ‘stack’ a few nights later with a veggie burger (if beef isn’t your thing) and it was so delicious too.
I get home pretty late on nights I work and I’m hungry and I want something fast. Grilled cheese sandwiches are often what we have. I always add some vegetable from the farm to my grilled cheese, kale grilled cheese has always been one of my favorites. This might be my new favorite now, grilled roasted pepper with tomato and cheese.
Fall is sneaking up on us, enjoy the summer vegetables for a few more weeks.
Salsa is basically salad, right? This is a very very basic raw salsa that comes together in less then 5 minutes and can be endlessly adapted to whatever you have or are serving. Start with this basic recipe. The flavors are intense so adding other ingredients are fun because they don’t get lost. Try adding some black beans, corn or tomatoes to make it more of a salad or relish or you could blend in some avocado to make it creamy. Adding some crumbly cheese like feta might complement a dish you are serving it with like burritos or tacos?
I used only 6 ingredients;
6 tomatillos peeled and husked,
1 peach blended in the salsa I used one more for garnish I didn’t put in the picture
1/4 of an onion
1 clove of garlic
juice of one lime
a large handful of cilantro
I put it in a blender all at once and ran it until it was smooth and add salt and pepper and tasted it if I needed more lime or salt.
Voila Simple as is but have fun to make your special house salsa with your own add-ins.
Summer is in full swing and we have lots of basil, that means it’s time to make some pesto.
Making it couldn’t be easier. You just need a few ingredients and most of them are pretty much optional. Don’t like garlic? Leave it out. Don’t have any nuts? OK it will be delicious without them. Want it vegan? Leave out the cheese or use a vegan option. Have extra herbs like mint or tarragon or any other soft herb? Add them! It will make it more interesting.
This recipe is for a fairly small batch. You can easily scale this up if you have more basil or other herbs. I gave a span of amounts in the recipe, so start with the small amount and taste and add more as needed.
Start by grabbing your bunch of basil.
This bunch is about 4 cups loosely packed basil, like I said, scale this up or down as needed and taste!
2 to 4 cloves garlic, peeled
1 to 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1/4 to 1/2 cup grated Parmigiana (optional)
1/4 cup toasted pine nuts, almonds, or walnuts (optional)
1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil
You’ll notice I didn’t add salt or pepper. I used Parmigiana cheese and it was plenty salty. Taste and see if you need salt or not.
Strip the basil leaves off the stem. The soft stem on the top are ok to leave.
Combine basil, garlic, nuts, lemon, and the cheese in a food processor. Pulse to combine. Add the oil and purée until smooth. Taste and add more salt, lemon or oil if needed.
This made a little more than a cup which was plenty for a pound of pasta. If you have any leftover you can put it in a Ziplock bag or ice cube tray and freeze it for winter or add it to any salad, roasted or grilled vegetables or any grain dish. Pesto makes everything better.
I didn’t freeze my leftover pesto. I slathered on a few sandwiches.
Yay summer. Have a great week. I’ll see you at pickup.
This week we are getting leeks in our share, they are one of my favorite alliums to eat and cook. Leeks are mild and tender and beautifully compliment just about any vegetable or protein you want to pair them with. The taste is distinct and the texture meltingly tender. We usually see leeks in the Fall or Winter CSA shares where soups and braising techniques are seasonally popular. What a treat it is to have them now, in July!
If you are new to leeks, or really any vegetable, I suggest preparing them simply to showcase their most basic taste and texture. See how to clean your leeks here then maybe try grilling them whole like this? You could serve your grilled leeks with a simple dressing or just olive oil and salt and pepper.
If you don’t want to grill or even have a grill maybe cut them into coins
and sauté them in a little olive oil and or butter. I like to use both. I added some zucchini but you could certainly just have sautéed leeks as a lovely stand alone side dish.
Herbs would be nice added here at the end of cooking. I have some pesto I think I’ll add to this and have it with salmon tonight for dinner. Here is a photo with the pesto. It was really a nice addition, yum.
Shakshuka generally is a creamy saucy tomato dish made with tomatoes, cream, herbs and spices. This green shakshuka uses lots and lots of greens and herbs. I used nut milk because that is all I had and it wasn’t very creamy but had a nice mild rich flavor. This is one of those dishes that is endlessly adaptable to use whatever you happen to have and customize it to your personal taste.
Here is the recipe I veryloosely followed with my changes in parentheses.
Green Shakshuka
1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
1 large onion chopped (I didn’t have an onion!)
3 large cloves garlic crushed
1 1/2 pounds mixed greens (I used 2 bunches of collards. ANY greens will work here), stems removed and roughly chopped.
1/4 cup vegetable stock (I used water)
1 cup packed mixed fresh herbs finely chopped (I used parsley and chives. Basil, cilantro, tarragon, a little mint, any soft herb would work. Feel free to mix and match what you like.)
1 tablespoon finely chopped jalapeño, (I didn’t have a jalapeno. I would have added it if I did)
salt and pepper to taste
1/2 to 3/4 cup half-and-half, cream, yogurt or nut or oat milk depending on how creamy or saucy you like it. (I used cashew milk)
8 large eggs (I used 4 for two of us and had leftover shakshuka)
Heat a skillet to medium heat, add the olive oil. Once the oil shimmers, add the onions and garlic and cook, stirring, 1 more minute or so. Add the chopped greens and water or broth and cook that for a few minutes until it wilts.
Add the herbs you are using and cream or milk and cook that for a few more minutes until it all sort of collapses and melds together.
Make some dents in the greens, add the eggs then cover the dish and cook that over a medium heat for about 5 minutes.
The cream or milk does two things, 1. it steams the eggs so they cook evenly and 2. makes the dish luscious and rich. Serve it with crusty bread, pita or potatoes.
It has been years since I made couscous. Quinoa and farro have been my go-to grains for years and the other day I saw some couscous on the shelf at the store and thought, hello old friend.
Look how the fluffy light grains cling to the vegetables, much lighter and less chew than quinoa and farro.
The honey lemon mint vinaigrette is so good. After I made this salad I immediately made a double batch of the vinaigrette while everything was out so I can dress all my vegetables with it, cooked or raw, this week. You should double the recipe if you try this, you’ll want extra.
The dressing is super easy.
Lemon Mint Honey Vinaigrette
1/4 cup olive oil
1/4 cup fresh lemon juice
1/4 cup fresh mint leaves
2 tablespoons honey
1-2 tablespoons mustard. I used a grainy mustard, you can use that or dijon
salt and pepper
Put everything in a small food processor and blend until it is smooth. Taste for more mustard or salt and pepper.
For the salad I used;
1 cup of couscous soaked in 1 cup of hot water (package directions)
1 cucumber
1 zucchini
1 fennel
optional; a handful of almonds and at the last minute I added some cherries and some feta cheese, as always, use what you like and what you have.
Slice the vegetables very thinly with a mandolin or with a vegetable peeler.
Add everything into a bowl mixing, tossing, gently but really well and enjoy!
Summer is here finally. It’s time for salads for dinner.
So far it has been a cold, wet start to the growing season. Way too wet! The Daily Camera says that Longmont has received 14.26″ of rain through June 20 as opposed to the average of 7.56″. And there was a day about two weeks ago when we got 2″ of rain at our farm on 63rd St!
The weather has caused some of our crops to be behind and it has also caused a few crop failures. One of the biggest problems with too much rain is that we can’t get into our fields when they are muddy. The tractors compact the soil when it is too wet. We also can’t use our seeders because the wet soil sticks to the seeders. And the seeds would rot anyway in wet soil.
Speaking of rotting due to wet and cold…our sugar snap pea seeds rotted this year. We planted them on time in March but the soil conditions weren’t right for the seeds to germinate so they rotted. I’m pretty sure this is the first time we’ve lost our sugar snap peas in the 20 seasons we’ve been farming. I know it is a huge disappointment as they are one of the highlights of the early spring crops!
Fava Beans
We always plant the fava bean seeds in February and you’ll start seeing these at CSA pickups this week. The plants were established enough to make it through by the time all the rain started to hit.
We plant a lot of our crops on plastic agricultural mulch and that is what has saved us. The mulch keeps the soil from turning into mud when it’s this wet. It also heats up the soil and helps protect against the cold weather. There are many other virtues of using mulch. We would not be able to grow the wide variety of crops that we have without using mulch!
One of the challenges with agricultural mulch is that you have to have the right soil moisture to be able to lay the mulch with the tractor. Fortunately we had a few days here and there when we were able to lay a lot of mulch. (Thanks for working so hard to make it happen, Javier!)
We had a few dry gaps during all that rain and were able to put in a lot of our spring transplants: kale, chard, collards, broccoli, cauliflower, bok choi, celeriac, celery, leeks, and onions. We lost a lot of our onions due to very cold weather around April 15. We will still have some onions but the rest of these crops are a little bit behind but are looking pretty good.
We were also able to get our summer crops transplanted: tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, tomatillos, zucchini, cucumbers, and melons. They’re a little bit behind but they’re all doing well and we should start seeing them before too long.
Tomatoes in Caterpillar Tunnels
A few years ago we decided to start growing the majority of our tomatoes in caterpillar tunnels. They really save us in challenging weather years like this one! Regardless of the weather, we get higher yields and nicer quality tomatoes out of the tunnels. And they protect against hail. We are able to do a good job of pruning the tomatoes and using the overhead supports to trellis the plants. Each year I tell our crew that if they do a good job trellising the tomatoes they’ll actually have a crop that they can harvest while standing up!
We currently have 6 caterpillar tunnels in the field–each about 100 feet long. I’d love to see us using more because they help many of the crops do better. Easy for me to say! I’m not the one who has to spend all the time and energy to build them each year! They are portable which has advantages in terms of crop rotation. So we move them to a new location each year and spend a lot of time putting them up and taking them down.
Caterpillar tunnels at sunset
We are really struggling with beets and carrots due to the rain and cold. It is especially hard to get carrot seeds to germinate even in the best weather. They have to be planted close to the soil surface, they need consistent soil moisture. and they take about 14 days to put out roots that keep them alive anchor them in to the soil. Wyatt has planted carrot seeds a few times already this year only to have a huge rain storms wash away all the seeds a few days later. We’ll keep trying!
One of the crazy things we’re doing is starting our winter squash seeds in our greenhouse. Wyatt would normally plant the seeds in the field around June 1 but we were still getting a ton of rain then. Planting the seeds in the greenhouse buys us a few weeks as we let the seeds get started in a protected environment. We’re hoping to start transplanting thousands of winter squash plants into our fields later this week.
Winter squash seedlings in the greenhouse
Every year on a farm has good and bad. Last year the spring was really hot and dry. This year we’ve been dealing with cold and wet. We have our failures every year, but so far we’ve always had lots of successes as well! Thanks for sticking with us on this crazy journey of farming on Colorado’s Front Range!
We grow loads of different onions here at Red Wagon. Check out this post to get an idea just how many. One type of onion not in that post, that you’ll be getting week is Spring Onions.
Spring onions often get confused with scallions or green onions. Scallions and green onions are the same. Spring onions are different, they are on the bottom in this photo, scallions are on top.
Spring onions are onions harvested very young once they start to develop bulbs. The whole plant, bulb and green stalks are very tender. Scallions have a longer white shaft and won’t bulb and will get tough if left in the ground to grow too long. Spring onions if left to grow will get bigger round bulbs and basically grow into a common onion.
The whole plant of any allium/onion is usable. In older plants the green part might be tough and you might not want to eat that part raw, but you could use tough onion greens in stocks or braises or chopped in soups or stews. I made a pesto out of my spring onion greens. I followed this recipe. and subbed the onion greens for the scapes.
Spring onions are tender and delicious. Add them raw into salads or sandwiches. If you are roasting some vegetables add some spring onions. I roasted my spring onions and I added the fennel we got this week too. This will be a great addition to a grain salad or Buddha bowl or just add a vinaigrette and you have a really nice side dish.
This is a vegetarian version of classic shrimp scampi. I used delicious mushrooms from Hazel Dell and sprouting broccoli to stand in for shrimp but stuck with the familiar-wine, butter, garlic sauce. (CSA members can add a mushroom share to their subscriptions.)
I added sprouting broccoli because all the shrimp scampi recipes called for a pound to a pound and a half of shrimp and I only had a half a pound of mushrooms so I added about 1 pound of broccoli. You could use all mushrooms, asparagus or kohlrabi here too, adjust the amounts called for with what you like and what you have.
This was a really fast meal to pull together. It was done faster than I could boil water and cook pasta.
Mushroom Broccoli ‘Scampi’ generously adapted from a NYT recipe, my changes are in parentheses
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 shallot, thinly sliced (didn’t use)
1½ pounds cremini or button mushrooms (I used 1/2 pound of mixed lions main and shitake mushrooms and about a pound of sprouting broccoli)
4 garlic cloves, finely chopped (I used garlic scapes)
½ cup dry white wine (I always use vermouth in recipes calling for white wine, its shelf stable and neutral, unlike lots of white wine)
½ cup vegetable stock or water (I used stock)
Pepper and salt
¼ teaspoon red-pepper flakes
½ cup parsley leaves (I used spinach more like 2 cups)
3 to 4 tablespoons lemon juice
Heat a large skillet over medium melt the butter and oil, then add the garlic, stirring until softened slightly, about 1 minute. Add the mushrooms and cook until the mushrooms are soft but still plump, 3 to 5 minutes.
Add the broccoli and wine and stock or water.
Let that cook for 3-5 minutes and add the spinach or parsley. You don’t want to cook the spinach or parsley too much, just wilt it. Then add the lemon juice a little at a time, taste before you add more, you don’t want it too lemony, taste for salt too.
Add the red pepper if you are using it. You can eat this with any grain or bread or pasta.
We ate it with pasta. I used 1/2 pound of pasta for the above amounts and it would feed 4 people IMO. The leftovers make a delicious pasta salad.
Lots of vegetable options this week. Summer is here!
