My Backyard, My Bronx

 By : Kerry McLean Jost

Kerry and Gregory's "pikliz" creations 

    

Being part of a farm share in the Bronx takes me back. Way back.

My relationship with vegetables and fruits began far, far away. I grew up with them nearby, so close I didn't even really see them. They were right in my backyard.

Within our stubborn border of hibiscuses strove one mango tree, three willowy coconut trees--the middle one permanently bent in surrender after the last hurricane, one fledgling lime tree, one cherry tree whose slender limbs always welcomed spindly, little-girl ones, and one avocado tree.

The hearty potatoes and sweet winter squashes we've savored from our Norwood winter farm share remind me of the tropical root crops near that avocado tree. Dasheens and yams nurtured by the rich brown earth, and beside them, the awe-inspiring pumpkins that my Uncle planted one year, one single dreadlock escaping his colorful tam.

Not far off was the big-leafed banana tree whose 'hands' could be counted on to flavor Grandma's Saturday breakfast of callaloo and codfish, dumplings, boiled bananas and fried (ripe) plantains. She sprinkled her pots liberally with love and the fiery scotch bonnet peppers growing next to our back door.

Here in the BX, imported scotch bonnets from the local store, plus flavorful red onions, radishes and garlic from our winter share and a dash of lemons, create the joyous, tear-inducing jar of "pikliz" we make each week. Yardie roots, Haitian connects and Indian influences happily collide, thanks to a farmer from Palestine's soil.

Bringing in the sweet this winter were the earthy carrots and juicy beets from our Bronx share. Their fresh sugariness made me recall the thickets of willowy sugar cane also in my old backyard, stretching to bless our neighbors to the left and the ones to the right. On many a warm evening on our island verandah, we'd sit with our friends and neighbors and regale each other with the day's comedies and tragedies over a bed of sweet, sweet, sliced cane.

I thank you, Norwood farmers, for building me a new backyard here in the Bronx. Many of us may be far from our ancestral homes today, but as we pull each straight-from-the-earth item from our biweekly box, your heart's labor succulently brings us all home again.

Making Saag Paneer

 By : Margaret Groarke

We’ve received a lot of lovely spinach in recent weeks. One week I made a spinach salad with roasted beets and goat cheese (all from our CSA). But the second time, I wanted to try making a favorite Indian dish, Sag Paneer. 

The challenge here was finding the paneer, the cheese. I went to Dhaka, an incredible Bengali market on E. 204th Street, where I found a Turkish cheese called Beyaz Peynir, which was more like a feta cheese. Strangely, my favorite Indian cookbook didn’t have a recipe for Saag Paneer. Using a recipe from the New York Times, I made the dish, and while the cheese tasted fine, it wasn’t what I was looking for. 

I asked a Pakistani friend, who said she buys paneer at Brother’s Indian Market on Central Avenue in Yonkers. I walked in and started looking around, and a man greeted me and asked me what I want. When I said I was looking for paneer, he brought me over to a refrigerated case. 

“Which brand are you looking for? Do you want a block, or cubes? We also have frozen.”

So many choices for a person who’s never bought paneer before! I picked out a brand called Sawad. 

“Is there anything else I can help you with?” he asked.

Oh, I’m just going to buy some frozen samosas over here. 

“But we have fresh!”

And sure enough, in the front of the store were several trays of clearly homemade samosas and other appetizers. The samosas were only 99 cents each, and they were delicious filled with potatoes and peas and slightly spicy. 

Saag Paneer is super-easy to make. Cleaning and chopping the spinach is the most time-consuming part, and that doesn’t take long. Kay Chun at the Times suggests chopping the spinach in batches in a food processor, but you can also chop it with a knife. It doesn’t need to be super finely chopped. Remember that spinach cooks down a lot – 8 cups of packed spinach made just enough for our family of three. 

Cut the cheese into cubes and fry it in a little oil on a pan. It will brown slightly as it fries; turn the cubes over so it gets brown on 2 or 3 sides. Then put the cubes of cheese on a plate. 

Then, in the same pan, saute some onion, chopped (one medium onion should be good), minced ginger (a one inch piece), and 4 cloves of garlic, finely chopped. Add salt and pepper. Cook it over medium heat, so that you can let it get slowly slightly brown. The Times recipe was a little underflavored for my taste – I would try using 2 teaspoons of coriander, 1 teaspoon of cumin, and ½ teaspoon of garam masala. Stir to mix the spices with the vegetables, and to allow the spices to cook. Add water if necessary to keep it from burning. 

Next add the spinach, and a half cup of water, stirring it to mix the spinach with the vegetable spice mix, and to let all of it cook. When the spinach seems well cooked, turn the heat down low or off, add back in the paneer, and a ½ cup or so of yogurt or heavy cream, and stir it gently. 

Serve with rice. If you go to Brother’s, you can buy some naan or chapati or other bread to go with it. Enjoy!

It’s so nice to be back!

By : Margaret Groarke

Several years ago, my family was part of Norwood Food Coop CSA. We enjoyed the vegetables, the yogurt, and the community. I enjoyed feeling like I was helping Zaid develop his farm. But at some point, my life became a little overwhelming, and we were composting too many of the vegetables, and we dropped out. 

Last spring, Laura C. sent me an email asking me if I’d like to join Norwood Food Coop. I hadn’t thought about it in a while, but the time seemed right. I signed up. And I’m so glad I did!

Things were a little different during coronavirus – no longer did picking up your vegetables at the Bainbridge Garden mean hanging around the garden for an hour chatting with other members. But I learned that three other members lived on my very block (and Laura nearby), so we arranged group pick-ups, building a small community. We ate well all summer, and when we were out of town we gifted our share to a neighbor, enticing them to join too. 

My favorite part of the CSA has always been the surprise of what we get each week. This year, everything comes pre-packed in a box – so opening the box reveals what lovely vegetables Zaid has sent us this week. There’s always some familiar vegetables; Zaid grows some wonderful potatoes, and this winter we’ve gotten a lot of beautiful red onions. And there’s always some less familiar ones, which send me running to How to Cook Everything, by Mark Bittman, the staple cookbook in my kitchen, to figure out what to do with Kohlrabi or Winter Radishes. 

A particular pleasure this winter has been the Raw Milk Cheddar and Yogurt from Ithaca Milk. The Cheddar is extra sharp and delicious. The Yogurt has a thick creamy layer on top, and a pleasant mild flavor. 

One of the nice things about the winter vegetables from the CSA is that so many of them take well to roasting. One of my favorite easy dinners this winter has been to cut various vegetables – carrots, potatoes, turnips, parsnips – into similarly sized pieces, toss them with some olive oil, salt, pepper and shake of a dried green herb, and roast them on a sheet pan in the oven until them brown. Roasted vegetables over rice, with or without a little sauce or yogurt, is a great weeknight meal in the winter. If you’re a meat eater, roast vegetables go well with any kind of meat – you can even roast a piece of chicken on the pan with the vegetables!

And now that winter is giving way to spring, we look forward to the tender crops of early spring – garlic scapes, and salad greens, and other things that will surprise me when I see them in my box. Rejoining the coop has introduced me to new people and new vegetables, and reacquainted me with the rhythm of the seasons. If you aren’t already a member, Join us for the Summer 2021 season – go to http://norwoodfoodcoop.blogspot.com/p/what-is-norwood-csa-and-how-to-join.html to find out more. 

Please follow our Instagram and Facebook page!

Creamy Parsnip Soup

By : Chris Ekstrom

What do you do with a parsnip?  Parsnips have a unique subtle flavor I was first introduced to in the form of a soup, Creamy Parsnip Soup.  Sure, there are many ways to eat a parsnip but this soup is a simple delicious way to experience the goodness of parsnips.

Ingredients:

2 lbs. Of chopped parsnips (approx. 1” cubes)

1 onion or leek, chopped                                       

1 clove garlic, chopped

4 tablespoons butter

4 cups vegetable broth

2 cups milk

Parsley or cilantro

Salt and pepper to taste

Steps:

Melt butter in a large pot over medium heat.  First, add chopped onion or leeks and stir frequently until creamy but not brown, about 10 minutes, then add garlic; cook an additional minute or two.  Next, add chopped parsnips and vegetable broth, then heat and simmer until parsnips are tender, about twenty minutes.  Next, blend the mixture with either a hand held immersion blender or an Osterizer-type blender; if using the latter, let prepared ingredients cool and blend in batches.  Finally, gradually stir in milk while simmering; be careful not to curdle milk with too high a heat.

Garnish with parsley, cilantro, ground pepper and/or salt.

Beets in a different way—what’s not to beat?

by : Sabine Stezenbach

As I child I had unhappy experiences with beets and thus tried to avoid them as an adult. But we all know they are good for you. They are low in calories, yet high in valuable vitamins and minerals. In fact, they contain a bit of almost all the vitamins and minerals that one needs. And as we all know as members of the CSA, they are a frequent part of the winter shares as they have a long shelf life and are ready to be harvested in late summer and fall. On one of my searches for what else I could do with beet root aside from roasting I came across a recipe for “Chocolate Beet Muffins” which since has become one of my favorites. They taste earthy yet chocolately and are easy to take along to a picnic.

Ingredients

 2 medium size beets, raw

 Scant 1 ½ cups of all purpose flour (I use whole wheat flour)

 2 tablespoons cacoa powder

 1 ½ tablespoons of baking powder

 ¼ tablespoon salt

 2 large eggs

 ¼ cup of whole milk

 ¾ cup of brown sugar or equivalent natural sweetener

 ¼ cup of unsalted butter, room temperature

 ¼ cup of sunflower oil

 1 cup of semi- sweet chocolate chips

Instructions

 preheat oven to 355 degree Fahrenheit

 peel the beets if you wish and grate

 in a medium bowl, sift together the flour, cocoa, baking powder and salt

 in a small bowl, whisk together eggs and milk

 in a large bowl using a hand mixer on medium speed, cream together the sugar, butter and oil. On low

speed, beat in the egg mixture. Slowly fold in the flour mixture.

 Using a spatula, mix in the grated beets and chocolate chips.

 Evenly divide the batter into 12 muffin cases in a greased muffin form. Each case should be a bout ¾ full

 Bake for 20—25 minutes until the muffins are springy to the touch. Remove from oven and allow to cool in

pan for 5 minutes. Transfer to a cooling rack to finish cooling

 Enjoy!

Please follow our Instagram and Facebook page!

Two Recipes: Open Face Egg Sandwich and Crab Chowder

By: Andrew Li

Open-faced breakfast sandwich:

Used the onions and eggs in we have in the food delivery.

First take any thin fatty meat and fry in a pan. I used some leftover salami.

Once meat is crispy set it to the side and toss in sliced onions to cook in the meat fat.

Once the onions are brown, can remove and set to the side.

Take a slice of bread, butter one side and put face down in a skillet. Use whatever cheese you want and put in on top. I used a mild cheddar.

Cook an egg.

Assemble by putting meat on the cheese side of bread, fried onions, then an egg. Garnish with whatever you feel like. I did black pepper and green onion.

Winter crab chowder:

Used potatoes from delivery.

Take king crab legs, remove the meat. Boil in a pot the shells with black peppercorns, garlic,  and sage for 1-2 hours to make a quick seafood stock. Strain out the solids.

Add finely chopped potatoes to stock and boil for 15 min. Then add corn.

10 min later add black pepper, tomato paste, heavy cream. I go more tomato than cream but do it to your own taste.

Stir around. Add in chopped crab meat. I didn’t need to add any salt but season to taste.