FARM NOTES – Week 7, August 4, 2013
CONTACT INFORMATION:
Coordinator: Mike Rabinowitz: House Phone: Before 5:30. 895-2884
Farm Cell: 6 – 6:30 p.m.. 749-2884
From my perspective, pick ups are going well. The messages are coming in on time. Last Monday, there was only one delinquent picker-upper. After one courtesy phone call, it goes back to the farm chill room and Mike is off to Aquarena basement (Nautilis room), where he usually goes after pick-up.
What happens on holidays including Regatta Day?
Veggie Co-op Pick up will be same time, same place on all holidays.
Garlic Scape Pickles
When I help with pick up, it gives me a chance to chat. Last Monday, two people said they made garlic scape pickles. This seems like a great idea! I learned how to make pickles standing on a chair at the kitchen table, fitting the cucumbers in the jar for my mother. We have about a three week supply of garlic scapes, but this will be something we probably try as a value added product for Farmer’s Market next year.
Another member stood patiently in line with his wife, to report that they made salad soup and were very pleased with the results. A couple of others said, they are juicing the greens and feeling very healthy. Please e-mail me if you have a recipe to share.
Website Posting/ A challenge
Up until this week, the revisions and postings on the Website have been managed by Ryan Boyd who went home to England a few days ago. After the Website crashed in the fall of 2011, it was set up in Word Press, which everyone insists is the easiest program for beginners and IT Dyslexics. I am the Dyslexic. Mike is just a busy, retired college professor, who doesn’t have 5 minutes to fiddle with getting things in the right order. Bear with us, while we learn to
post without a crutch. It is our goal to get things posted weekly by mid-afternoon on Mondays and Wednesdays. So far, we have not met that target because the farm team, including Mike are making last minute decisions about “What’s In The Bag!” He wants to send everything he can on any given day and sometimes we don’t know the list until all of the crops are in. For example, last week the picking list Mike gave to Diane, the crop supervisor on Monday morning, was a potpourri, either broccoli, squash, etc. But when all of the counts were in – both products and number of members picking up on Monday, there was enough broccoli for each member.
In This Issue:
A Warning about hot peppers, How To Skin Broccoli. Secret Recipe for Farm Veggie Stir Fry and Death by Lobster.
HOW HOT IS HOT?
We know the catalogue description of the peppers we seeded in the spring and Mike can recognize the shapes and colours of the tiny little dynamites that are supposed to be the hottest. However, in my experience there is no guarantee that any of the hot peppers aren’t
too hot. My advice is to be very careful with those small “hot” ones. A small hot pepper in a pot of soup may set the soup a “blazing”. Been There! Done that! When you get ”hot” peppers, it is best to assume nothing. Some of these little guys are much more fierce than they seem.
Handling hot peppers.
Oils from peppers are like any other oils; they can stay on your hands for days. Avoid getting pepper oils on your fingers which can contaminate other things as you move around the kitchen. Also, been there. Done that! Be especially careful of touching eyes and other areas of the face or forgetting as you bend over to pick up a crying child. Slip your hand into a plastic bag to hold the pepper on the cutting board, cut thin slices crosswise, with a knife that
goes into soapy water in the sink. Don’t forget to wash the cutting board or you will wonder why the cheese you just cut on the same board is more spicy than usual.
SKINNING BROCCOLI!
Mike teaches our workers to clip broccoli where the plant stalk branches to form another shoot. Early in the season, this gives your broccoli bunch several inches of stalk. You didn’t get cheated. The stalk is the best part of the bunch, literally. Cut the stalk just below where small branching begins. Hold the stem like a stalk of celery and draw a sharp knife across the top edges as you would celery. As you pull the knife down gently, the outside sheaf will follow. Make your way around the stalk. Well done! You have a large chunk of stem, more tender than the smaller sheathed branches. Cut this in chunks and throw it in the bottom of the steamer basket, followed by the rest.
SECRET RECIPE FOR VEGGIE STIR FRY
This isn’t a secret recipe but it is a stir fry recipe with no oil, even olive oil. A few years ago, Mike and I began reading the work of Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn, who argues that plant-based, oil-free nutrition can not only prevent and stop the progression of heart disease, but also reverse its effects. The name of the book is, Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease. We also found a very convincing free lecture on line. Two of my brothers have serious heart disease. I had Amazon ship the book to them in Tennessee. The next time I was home, I watched the hour video with them. This particular lecture is no longer available but there are a few shorter videos available, including one posted on October 29,. 2011 for a Global Warming
Conference. If you have time, it is around eight minutes.
Stir Fry with Tomatoes
Inspired by Esselstyn, Mike started using fresh tomatoes as a base for stir fry. This was a slam dunk in Arizona where the local health store has voluptuous, organic tomatoes, not nearly as costly as regular tomatoes here . By late summer, 2012, we had ripe tomatoes for salads and stir fries, that is until Hurricane Leslie dropped in on us, in mid-September. Then, Mike turned to canned tomatoes, chopped or stewed. We still use tomatoes as the base for
stir fries. A few days ago, Mike said he was looking forward to having the first snow peas of the season made into a stir fry. He also brought in more goodies – green peppers, garlic scapes and a small black pepper, Black Hungarian, which he says was not too hot and should be great for the stir fry. I looked at the few Sungold tomatoes in a basket on the table, our first for the season and decided they were too precious to use for cooking. I started the stir fry with a couple of Costco tomatoes, but they didn’t yield enough liquid. What else could I use? I had already put in tomatoes so it was to late to use apple juice or pineapple juice. As I stirred gently, waiting to add the snow peas, I remembered the jar of Motts Spicy Clamato in the pantry that I use occasionally to make pea shoot smoothies. I added some of this around the same time I added the snow peas and cooked a few more minutes. The stir fry was perfect with a hint of spicy, hot, which may have been the little black pepper, the Clamato, or both.
Anyway. That’s the secret! I realize the ingredients of spicy Clamato does not meet Michael Pollan’s Guidelines to “Avoid foods you see advertised on television” but it can be an option if you don’t have fresh tomatoes.
DEATH BY LOBSTER
When we had dinner at Atlantica Restaurant in early July, I learned Chef Battcock was planning a Death by Lobster event the last two weeks in July. This is an account of that experience, but the most interesting tidbit of the whole piece is that Chef Battcock is allergic to Lobster. When he came to the table after the meal, he explained that he has to rely on his Sous chefs to do the tasting, otherwise the big news in the restaurant world might be a real
death by lobster at Atlantica!
Even though I recently had surgery for a fractured jaw and am restricted to soft foods, I was determined not to miss this. Lobster only happens once a year in my life now and only if I am lucky. In our younger years, we had lobsters cook-ups at home and cookouts on the beach, but nowadays, it is a special outing with special guests. I explained my situation to Chef Battcock when he dropped by the farm earlier in the week, to look for more spicy micro-greens, which he planned to use to enhance the taste of certain dishes. He told me
regardless of what the others ordered, he could make a Lobster Bisque for me and reassured me that I would not leave hungry. And I didn’t. The Lobster Bisque was a generous portion and very filling. In addition, to that, I was able to enjoy the full experience of seeing the series of little dishes, all presented with some light garnishes from the Organic Farm. In included Lemon butter poached lobster tail presented on a small bed of kale, which was better than any kale we have ever tasted. A long white individual serving dish, shaped like a gondola, a Lobster Carpaccio displayed in the form of four little, Barbie Doll size trees, resembling palm trees. These were made with
Shungiku, a new Japanese green from the farm. I had a few bites of Mike’s lobster risotto which was amazingly delicious. The last serving of the meal was Surf and Turf. I rejected Mike’s offer to shave off thin slices of his bison rib eye but did share some tiny bits of lobster
claws.
Lobster Ice Cream?
The dessert was an ice cream sandwich, which apparently had lobster gelatinous ingredients. It was a large thick square of ice cream, with a wrap so it could be held in the hand to munch. No spoons. Mike and our friends said it did not taste like lobster. Trying to brush up on this lobster ice cream thing, I just read about the topic on line. I didn’t find an actual recipe but learned that the BEN and JERRY Ice Cream chain make a lobster ice cream with chunks of
lobster, the same as if it were chocolate chips. Right! Not interested in learning how to make ice cream, but I could make the bisque, but perhaps from crab which is more plentiful.
Definition of Lobster Bisque
Bisque is a smooth, creamy, highly seasoned soup of French origin, classically made from a strained broth (coulis) of crustaceans. Can be made from lobster, crab, shrimp or crayfish.
We were again delighted with the food, the creativity and how the Chef went out of this way to create dishes using farm products. However, we will probably not go again until we get back from Arizona in the late spring. We like eating at home with friends as much as we like a more formal dining experience and we only go out three or four times a year Have you eaten out anywhere you especially liked? Or experienced any meals that used ingredients from the Organic Farm. Would love to hear from you.
Melba Rabinowitz
August 5, 2013
