Confronting Root Vegetables

By Sarah Courteau

My mother met my father in her early twenties, fresh from a solidly suburban upbringing. He was significantly older than she and lived on an Ozark farm where he raised and grew much of what he ate. The first fall they were together, he butchered a hog and gave her the head of the animal to make into head cheese, which he prized as a delicacy. Horrified at this elemental presentation of pork, my mother put the hog’s head in a pot, slapped a lid on it, and pushed it to the back of the stove. It remained there, undisturbed, until the smell of decay outed her. 

In summers past, to my shame, the few root vegetables I received in CSAs got roughly the same treatment. They tended to molder in the veggie crisper until they were beyond salvaging while I salivated over the immediate accessibility of juicy tomatoes and crisp cucumbers. I found turnips intimidating. Becoming a member of a winter CSA—which is all about root vegetables—for the first time has forced me to overcome my phobia through exposure therapy. And it’s shown me just how wrong I’ve been about vegetables pulled from the earth. 

So far, of everything we’ve received, the garlic is what pleases me most. The plump, spicy bulbs we’ve been getting are nothing like the desiccated offerings in most supermarkets at this time of year. The single bulb that was in our box this week was gone within 24 hours. The carrots, too, so crunchy and with such personality in their twisted roots, have been a revelation. Since we got our first box of the winter season, my husband and I have eaten more healthily and been able to stretch out our trips to the grocery store to once every couple of weeks as we den up during this winter’s Covid surge. 

Here are a few things I’ve made with this week’s bounty.

Winter Salad

(Serves 2)

I was excited to try the kohlrabi salad recipe linked to in this week’s list of the CSA veggies, but our box didn’t have one. What we did have was lots of daikon radishes and tender beet greens. I made the following salad, loosely adapted from the kohlrabi recipe. I usually go with simple vinegar and oil dressings, but for a salad like this, the creamy, sweet tang of the mayo dressing is a welcome note.

Salad:

2-3 large handfuls of beet greens (or the green of your choice), washed, de-stemmed, and dried

½ giant daikon radish, peeled and thinly sliced 

1 large rainbow carrot, peeled and thinly sliced

½ a tart apple, thinly sliced (I used Granny Smith)

1-2 handfuls of pecans (or the nut of your choice), toast for 7-10 minutes on a cookie sheet in a 350-degree oven

Dressing:

2 tablespoons mayonnaise

1 ½ to 2 Tbsp. of white wine vinegar

A pinch or two of sugar or a dollop of honey

Salt and pepper

Directions: Toss salad ingredients together. Mix dressing, making sure to fully incorporate honey, if using, and adjusting proportions to your taste. Drizzle over salad and enjoy!

Breakfast Hash

(Serves 2)

This recipe is adapted from a Blue Apron recipe I stumbled on when I typed a few ingredients from the first CSA box into Google. It uses many different CSA items, is extremely adaptable in terms of portions and ingredient substitutions, and is just delicious. I’ve made it three times so far and plan to make it many more.

8-10 fingerling potatoes, scrubbed and sliced into ¼-inch coins

½ cup of sliced pepper of your choice (I use red bell, but any peppers—even jalapenos!—will do)

1 small to medium onion, diced

1 large clove of garlic, minced

A couple handfuls of the green of your choice (our CSA baby beet greens were a bit delicate for this dish, as you can see in the picture, though they tasted yummy; kale is particularly good here)

Two farm eggs

Grated or crumbled cheese (I’ve used cheddar, fresh mozzarella, and chevre—all delicious)

Olive oil

Hot sauce! (optional) 

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. In a medium cast-iron skillet (or other oven-safe pan), liberally salt and pepper potatoes and sauté them in a bit of olive oil on medium-high heat until crisp, 8-10 minutes. Add onions, garlic, and peppers, salt and pepper again, and sauté a few minutes more until the onions begin to look translucent. Add greens to pan, season again, and cook briefly until wilted. Create two wells in the veggies and crack your eggs into them. Sprinkle with salt, pepper, and cheese in an amount to your liking, and bake 7-9 minutes, depending on how well done you like your eggs. (Nine minutes results in a fairly firm egg, in my oven, which runs a little hot.) Top with hot sauce, if desired, and enjoy. (I’m currently obsessed with this NYC-made variety, a Christmas present from my brother and sister-in-law.)

Cabbage Soup

This cozy cabbage and farro soup was a sleeper hit in our house. SmittenKitchen is one of my favorite recipe sites—Deb Perelman never fails me. But I live with a cabbage skeptic, and I was myself a little dubious that this soup could be as full of flavor as promised. Ha! We gobbled it up, and I was sorry that I hadn’t taken Deb’s advice to double the recipe. The tartness of the vinegar and lemon juice balance out the sweetness of the cabbage. I used Italian barley instead of farro and cooked the cabbage way longer than the 30 minutes recommended. (It got very soft but never caramelized.) Will definitely make again.

What I’m looking forward to cooking next … is this New York Times recipe for three-cup vegetables. I’ve made three-cup chicken and am eager to apply the same treatment to potatoes and turnips. I plan to throw in a little tofu, as some reviewers of the recipe suggest.

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Abundance Even in the Dark

 By Evan Casper-Futterman & Katherine Howitt

Our first haul from the winter CSA was a double whammy: our neighbors in the CSA emailed us to ask us if we were interested in their share for the week since they were out of town. This being our second winter season, we had some idea of what to expect in terms of quantity (the potatoes and turnips in our box did not disappoint), but a double haul of those great little fingerling potatoes was nothing compared to a double dose of what are BY FAR the largest cabbages I have ever seen. For example, the photo above is a photo of a cabbage with a substantial amount already used to make sauerkraut. Lucky for us this week we are staying with my mom at her home in Ulster county, about 2 hours north of the Bronx, so we have more space to store all this bounty. 

Our typical triage and assessment process to figure out how we’re going to deal with the contents of each CSA box can take up to 45 minutes with just one box. Four or five pounds of potatoes and 6 pounds of cabbage is a bit overwhelming, so we needed a family strategy session, which we didn’t even get to until Thursday. 

Here’s what we came up with for the immense quantity we are facing down for the next couple weeks:

Homemade sauerkraut  with caraway seeds (see photo above)

Winter slaw:This is an improvisation of my mom’s. 

-Shredded cabbage (about ⅕ of the green cabbage)

- 4 shredded carrots

- 1-2 parboiled and shredded or julienned beets

- 1 shredded turnip or radish

- 1 leek thinly sliced, mostly the green part

- caraway seeds (yes my mom puts them on/in everything)

- salt and pepper

- two sprigs of cilantro 

- tablespoon of minced ginger

- one minced garlic clove

Optional nuts or raisins if you like

Dash of hot pepper flakes if you like

Dressing: a sesame vinaigrette with 3 Tbsp sesame oil, 1/4 cip rice vinegar, and a dash of Bragg’s amino. 

The kraut used up the rest of the first cabbage so we’re one down, but have barely touched the potatoes, turnips, and carrots. For those, here’s what we decided to do:

Martha Stewarts Turnip and Potato Mash

Besides being from Martha Stewart, there’s not much special here but a solid mash is indispensable as a side dish and has that extra comforting quality in the winter. 

Moroccan Spice Carrot Potato Soup

This is a carryover recipe for our house from last winter. It's useful because it's almost completely interchangeable with many of the roots we get in our CSA. You could substitute a rutabaga or kohlrabi into this soup base instead of potato, or mixed with potato, etc. 

Stuffed Cabbage Rolls

We typically are vegetarian at home but Evan’s family is partially from Eastern Europe and this style of preparation is the Polish-derived one. We got chicken from our neighbor’s omnivore share, so the beef was from the supermarket, but we’re looking forward to it anyway. 

Keep the lights shining in these dark days!