What To Do with Your Celtuce

I love that the CSA introduces me to foods that I've never heard of or tasted. At least, I love it most of the time. Other times, the unfamiliar produce rots in the back of my fridge while I curse myself for not sticking to a grocery-store run of iceberg and green beans.

This week is going to be different. This time, I'm well prepared for the wild-card ingredient. In this case, it's celtuce.

Celtuce, a varietal of lettuce, is also called “stem lettuce,” “asparagus lettuce,” “celery lettuce,” or, in Chinese, wosun.¹ One HuffPost writer describes it as "cooked leek" with "the homogeneity of a noodle and some of the crunch of shaved jicama. Its bright flavor was a little like a mix between bok choy, celery root and water chestnut, but was far milder than any of those."

Sounds tasty. But, how does one prepare it? I did some research on ways to serve your celtuce ranging from easy to adventurous. Here are 6 ways to enjoy what just might become your new favorite vegetable.

1. Chop it up and eat it

Because it's a type of lettuce and a near-anagram of lettuce, celtuce (or at least the leafy part of it) is no different from any other lettuce. To make your salad especially spiffy, try serving it with shaved nuts or with fried potato slices and pecorino, as shown above.

2. Make celtuce pancakes

Chop up your celtuce, mix it with eggs, salt, flour, and oil, fry it, and you've got celtuce latkes. 

3. Pickle it

One way to mask the flavor of celtuce is to make your celtuce taste like vinegar! On his blog, Kian Lam Kho provides a recipe for the comforting breakfasts of his childhood that featured pickled celtuce. "What makes the meal so special is the crunchy salty and sweet celtuce pickle," he writes.

4. Make a slaw

 

This looks so easy and doesn't involve any cooking. Soy Rice Fire has a recipe for solo celtuce, but I bet it'd be great with carrots, cucumber, zucchini, or cabbage mixed in, too.

5. Cook it like a noodle

Celtuce stalk has a thicker consistency, which makes it a great sub for noodles. Spice the Plate has a recipe for a ham and celtuce dish that has all the flavor of a stir fry but blanches the celtuce instead of frying it.

6. Get fancy

By and large, my searches on celtuce led to haute cuisine. Tops chefs serve it under pork fat, lamb breast, seared scallops, and Alaskan halibut a la Jordan Kahn. But my favorite, by far, is the SWEET CORN / custard, frozen uni powder, rambutan, lemongrass, chervil, young ginger, celtuce served in a fish bowl (via pocketfork, pictured above).

Go on, impress everyone you know. You've got celtuce on your side.

For more tips on cooking and eating celtuce, check out Food52.

Calling all Winter squash! Fall is here!

by Elizabeth Burgos

We have been receiving Winter squash the last couple of weeks.  Not knowing anything about it, I decided to do some research on the benefits of winter squash and ways to prepare it.  According to Wh.foods.com, winter squash are members of the Cucurbitaceae family and relatives of both the melon and cucumber.  Each squash is unique in its taste, shape and color.

Check out Epicurious, it’s a website that I often go to for some great recipes and breaks down the characteristics of each winter squash.

Did you know that Squash is chock full of nutrients!

Winter squash is an excellent source of vitamin A and C which both help our immune system. Its is also a good source of dietary fiber, omega- 3 fatty acids (helps fight inflammation), vitamin B6, manganese, copper, potassium, vitamin B2, folate, vitamin K, panthothenic acid, magnesium and niacin (Squash, winter)

One specific winter squash that I feel in love with is the delicata squash.

The taste of the delicata squash reminds me of sweet potato. I prepared this squash by cutting it in half (lengthwise) I used a spoon to scoop out the seeds and cut the squash creating moon shaped pieces. I tossed the squash in olive oil, Himalayan salt and garlic powder. I arranged the squash in a single layer in a baking pan and roasted it at 350 degrees for 30 min.

It’s Delicious!

After Apple-Picking

Image: Library of Congress & The Biodiversity Heritage Library

After Apple-Picking
by Robert Frost

My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,
And there's a barrel that I didn't fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn't pick upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking now.
Essence of winter sleep is on the night,
The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.
I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight
I got from looking through a pane of glass
I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough
And held against the world of hoary grass.
It melted, and I let it fall and break.
But I was well
Upon my way to sleep before it fell,
And I could tell
What form my dreaming was about to take.
Magnified apples appear and disappear,
Stem end and blossom end,
And every fleck of russet showing clear.
My instep arch not only keeps the ache,
It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.
I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.
And I keep hearing from the cellar bin
The rumbling sound
Of load on load of apples coming in.
For I have had too much
Of apple-picking: I am overtired
Of the great harvest I myself desired.
There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,
Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.
For all
That struck the earth,
No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,
Went surely to the cider-apple heap
As of no worth.
One can see what will trouble
This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.
Were he not gone,
The woodchuck could say whether it's like his
Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,
Or just some human sleep.


https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44259/after-apple-picking

The divisive beet

Image courtesy of the USDA and the Biodiversity Heritage Library

When thinking about what share item to blog about this week, I couldn't resist the call of the beet.  Beets have a fascinating culinary history eloquently summarized by Tori Avey on PBS.org.  Humans originally ate beet greens and not beet roots, and maybe in part for that reason early botanical illustrations of Beta vulgaris (common beet) focus on the foliage and flowers more than the root.  Beet roots were first recorded as being cultivated as a food crop in Europe in the 16th century, and they have remained a part of Western diets ever since.

Some people love beets and some people don't, and whether you're one or the other may come down to how much you love the beet's signature "earthy" taste which comes from the organic compound Geosmin, produced by a type of Actinobacteria.  This is also the compound that is responsible for the "fresh soil" scent after rain.

I love eating beets, but I hate cooking beets.  Thankfully, there are a slew of quick recipes using raw beets that are available online.  I'm intrigued by this extremely minimalist recipe from thekitchn.com:

Quick Beets with Chile and Lemon
Serves 2

4 small beets
Juice of 1 lemon
Chile powder

Peel the beets and thinly slice using a knife or mandoline.

Toss with lemon juice and a pinch of chile powder. Taste and add more chile powder if desired.

If you don't like beets, stop worrying about changing your mind and finding the "perfect recipe" to change your tastes.  Consider, instead, gifting your unwanted beets to a fellow CSA-er with a jones for Geosmin.

James Beard's Glorious Tomato Pie (by way of Ruth Reichl)

Can there possibly be anything better than a juicy, red tomato this time of year? Thankfully we have an abundance of them this year in our share. I always think of Ruth Reichl talking about James Beard's "Tomato Pie":

"People have been bringing me tomatoes – fat, gorgeous red orbs, like Christmas ornaments – and this morning when I went into the kitchen the aroma just reached up and hugged me. I suddenly had this sharp taste memory of James Beard’s Tomato Pie – a dish I used to make all the time when I was in my twenties. I haven’t had it in years, but I had this urgent need to taste it, right now."

And so I share it here from Ruth Reichl. It really wouldn't be the end of summer for me without this.


James Beard’s Tomato Pie

Begin by making biscuit dough. (I like buttermilk biscuits for this recipe, although any biscuit will do – even the ones that are in the freezer case of your supermarket.)

Buttermilk Parsley Biscuits
Combine 2 cups of flour with 2 and a half teaspoons of baking powder and a half teaspoon each of salt and baking soda. Cut in 1/3 cup of butter until it’s the size of peas, and add a little flurry of chopped parsley (mostly it looks pretty). Stir in ¾ cups of buttermilk until the dough holds together, turn out onto a floured surface and knead a few minutes. Pat it into the bottom and sides of a 9 inch pie pan.

Cover the biscuits with 4 to 6 ripe tomatoes, sliced into nice fat rounds. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Shower a couple of tablespoons of shredded basil on top.

Mix a cup or so of grated Cheddar cheese with a cup and a half of mayonnaise and spread the mixture on top of the tomatoes.

Bake at 375 for about 35 minutes, or until it is golden brown.

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