Recipe Rut?

Have you found yourself stuck in the same routine when it comes to cooking food? Or are you not sure what to do with your radicchio? Thankfully, there are plenty of apps out in the technology world that can assist you with just a few clicks. Don’t worry most of the apps listed below are free of charge. If you are not interested in downloading another app, most of the apps listed have a website too. 

The below apps are in no particular order of preference. Descriptions are either directly from their site and/or other sites with their own reviews of the apps below.

1. Allrecipes: They have an app, a website, and it’s full of recipes. What’s great about the app it has a feature calls the Dinner Spinner. Dinner Spinner, allows you to choose the main ingredients you want to use, the type of dish you’re making and your time limit. It then gives you plenty of options and a list of ingredients to add to make your breakfast, lunch or dinner!

2. Epicurious: “It’s a Condé Nast Digital site, is the most award-winning food site on the web, incorporating more than 30,000 professionally tested and created recipes from the premier brands in food journalism, renowned cookbook authors, and celebrity chefs, as well as 150,000 member-submitted recipes. Each day, original content from Epicurious editors and leading food authorities around the world is published. Epicurious offers a wealth of articles and videos focused on cooking, entertaining, wine, cocktails, dining out, health, and shopping.” And now they have an app to make your life simpler.

3. Supercook: “Why go buy lots of ingredients just for one recipe when you can find the perfect recipe using what you already have at home? Supercook is the unique reverse recipe search engine to help you do just that.

Using Supercook is like having a super chef in your own home - challenged to cook a delicious meal using only the ingredients you have, except Supercook has over 600,000 recipes in its repertoire! 

Supercook is also a practical way to save money. Take full advantage of ingredients you already have, and naturally buy less groceries.”

4. Big Oven: “With BigOven, you can take your recipes anywhere, make grocery lists and easily share your favorite creations with your friends, family or even your future self when you need them, BigOven was the first recipe app for iOS, Android and Windows Phone, and has been downloaded over 13 million times, with over 3.3 million registered members.”

5. My Fridge Food: “Easy recipes using ingredients you already have in the kitchen.”

Bonus App: Kitchen Wizard!

What apps or websites do you use?

Be bold - pickle your beans!

I love botanical illustrations and I love BEANS! That's good, since we've been getting lots of beans in our share for the past couple of weeks. Beans are a very versatile vegetable, but it can feel overwhelming to cook and eat lots of beans week after week.  (Let's face it; it can also be boring.)

There are certainly lots of bean recipes online, but if you are feeling ambitious, I would like to recommend that you pickle some of your share with this sure-fire recipe for spicy pickled beans: http://allrecipes.com/recipe/62594/crisp-pickled-green-beans/ (Tip: Blanch the beans before you can them!)

A friend and I used this recipe a couple of years ago with yellow beans.  I still have dreams about those pickles!

Pickling and canning is actually a lot easier than it seems, and if you're not feeling the whole hot canning process, (which can be long and kind of intimidating), you can also use that same recipe to make refrigerator pickles.  They won't last as long, but they will still be really tasty and a fun new way to enjoy your beans. (If you make refrigerator pickles, definitely blanch them first.)

Pickling and canning is also more fun as a group activity, so if anyone wants to have a canning or pickling day in Woodlawn, let me know!  Maybe a tomato canning party can be in our collective future....

Enjoy your beans!  (Oh, and I as I just learned from online reading, using kitchen shears to prep the beans instead of a knife and cutting board can be quicker and easier.  Who knew?)

Pictured:
Phaseolus vulgaris L.
Revue horticole, serié 4, vol. 86: (1914)
Courtesy of the Biodiversity Heritage Library & Harvard University Botany Libraries

Fennel & relatives - tasty and abundant

This week and last, our shares included generous allotments of fennel, or Foeniculum vulgare. Fennel is a member of the Apiaceae plant family which also includes carrots, celery, parsnips, parsley, anise, dill, queen anne's lace, and poison hemlock!

This family can best be recognized by its inflorescence, or group of flowers. Have you noticed that dill, fennel, and queen anne's lace seem to have similar flowers? This is true for the majority of species in this group.

You can eat the bulb, foliage, (leaves), flowers, and seeds of the fennel plant--which means you can eat it all!

There are lots of fennel recipes available online that utilize different parts of the plant.  However, this recipe of fennel in wine and honey is simple and delicious, making it perfect for summer:
http://allrecipes.com/recipe/95546/fennel-in-wine-and-honey/

Pictured:

Foeniculum vulgare Miller [as Foeniculum capillaceum Gilib.]
Köhler, F.E., Medizinal Pflanzen, vol. 2: t. 88 (1890)
From the Biodiversity Heritage Library and the Missouri Botanical Garden

Fennel and Bean Salad

Fennel and Bean Salad

I was SO excited to see we would be receiving both a fennel bulb and beans in our share this week. It's the perfect excuse to make or try this salad from the smitten kitchen blog. There is some alchemy in this recipe and the way the lemon juice and vinaigrette transform the taste of the fennel. I love all the components to this salad separately, but when thrown together it becomes something magical, and I usually end up eating the entire bowl in one sitting!

The recipe calls for a red onion to pickle, which I didn't have on hand, so I used the white sections of the fresh onions we received in the share. 

Here is a guide to cutting fennel if you've never used it before. Some people are a little put off by the licorice like smell from the bulb, but give it a shot, especially with the other components of the salad, you might be surprised!

Pictures from the kitchen of Laura, Matt and Melita

We are very happy to be a part of the Norwood CSA - our family just moved to the Bronx from Chicago. Laura works at the New York Botanical Garden as the Collections Manager for the section of the Herbarium that houses mosses, mushrooms, lichens and algae. We love coming to the garden with our 2.5 year old daughter, and look forward to meeting many of you there!

Purslane? Yes, please!

I've been told time and time again by plant people that purslane is edible, but in spite of being encouraged to eat this common weed in the past, I never have.  It was a surprise and a delight to see purslane, (quite possibly a cultivar of Portulaca oleracea),  in this last week's share.  Now, at last, I could taste what I was missing.

Firstly, I should say of course that the purslane we enjoyed this week was very robust and succulent.  I'm not sure that eating sidewalk purslane would be quite the same as the share portion, but I might still give it a try.

As I alluded to last week, my go-to way of cooking greens is a simple stir-fry.  That's how I first tried purslane, whipping up a quick hot dish with olive oil, scapes, purslane, squash, and salt.  The first time I cooked the purslane I threw away the stalks, thinking they would be tough.  This was a mistake!  The second time around I realized that the stalks have almost the consistency of asparagus, complimented by a sweet, spinachy taste from the leaves.  I savored the rest of my stalks throughout the week.

I haven't explored many ways of cooking purslane, but this so-called superfood appears to be as common in foraging blogs as it is in the landscape.  I hope for more purslane in my share this week, but, if not, I might hunt some sidewalk weeds now that I know what I've been missing.



Pictured: Portulaca oleracea L. Clark, G.H., Fletcher, J., Farm weeds of Canada, t. 18 (1906) [N. Criddle] from the Biodiversity Heritage Library, courtesy of the University of Alberta Libraries.

Note: Never forage and eat any plant that you can't identify with absolute certainty, be aware that without testing, you can't tell if the soil in which a plant is growing has been contaminated with metals, and, finally, chemical levels related to both poison and nutrition are different from plant to plant--a so-called "healthy" plant might not, in the wild, contain all of the nutrients you'd expect. Forage responsibly and with caution.  See Leda Meredith's great book Northeast Foraging for more information about foraging.

What is that? Kohlrabi!

Kohlrabi is an unusual looking vegetable that is fairly common at New York farmer's markets and in CSAs. Since I've been in the CSA I received it each season.  This veggie is quite versatile. It's in the cabbage family, so it kind of tastes and smells like a cabbage, but it has the texture of a radish or jicama.  Whether you use it raw in a slaw or fried in a fritter, it's definitely a lower calorie alternative to some root veggies.

Risotto

Kohlrabi

Norwich Meadow Farms has a cool facebook group for its CSA members, if you are for Norwood CSA or interested in connecting with CSA members join.  One of the members posted a New York Times kohlrabi risotto recipe, which I made with last week's share.

I followed the preparation, sauteeing the onions, garlic and kohlrabi first, but I had to improvise a bit. I used water instead of stock, which worked out fine, I just needed more seasonings (peppers, garlics). I also added some sundried tomatoes and bok choi.







Picture: http://turtletreeseed.org/product/179-lanro-kohlrabi/