CSA Box This Week - Week 2

In our CSA box this week: kohlrabi, swiss chard, red & green head lettuce, fresh garlic, fennel, kale, peas, garlic scapes, dill.

We have so many greens between our garden and CSA, but I think it is a good thing to have enough to share! The heat has been like a furnace all week, so the greens will be slowing down just as the rest of the garden is kicking into high gear. Can't wait!

CSA Box - Week 1

Yay! It is time. Our CSA season has started. We switched to a new farm this year. We found one a bit closer, and in the perfect location to easily combine our farm pickups so that we can get eggs, dairy, meat and veggies all in one big loop each week.


We did visit this organic farm many times last summer to get a feel for them. Last week we finally had a farm open house, and then this week our first box! I can't wait to see what we get each week - a full season from our home garden, local farms and our CSA!

In our box this week: spinach, leek, spring onions, garlic ramps, kohlrabi, radishes, strawberries, fennel, kale, cilantro and 2 types of head lettuce!

back into the groove.

It is time! I didn't forget about this blog...I've just been stewing away some new ideas and projects for the upcoming year, as well as planning and planting all of our food gardens. With a family community garden plot, our home garden, and a CSA share, we have a whole season ahead of us of gardening, cooking, preserving, drying, canning and freezing. We had our first radishes this weekend, and are into our second round of greens. It is under way!

I plan to get back into the groove with cook.eat.think...growing as the garden is growing. I will be posting as we get rolling here, and will be updating the look and links as well. Looking forward to a long season!

home made mozzarella.

We get two gallons of fresh from the cow milk from a local farmer each week. We often make our own yogurt, yogurt cheese, and cream cheese, and sometimes butter. We have been wanting to delve deeper into cheesemaking, but just haven't done too much yet. After seeing a quick segment on a PBS gardening show about making mozzarella, I decided it looked like a fun and easy project to do with the boys.

Yesterday we looked up a recipe, and discovered that we had all of the ingredients needed already! This is so easy to make and the cheese is so good. Other than the time we waited for milk or whey to heat up, this took almost no time at all and was very simple to do.

::making fresh mozzarella at home::
*This recipe is adapted from the book Home Cheese Making by Ricki Carroll


ingredients::
2 tsp citric acid
1 gallon raw or whole milk (not ultra-pasteurized)
1/4 tsp liquid rennet diluted in 1/4 cup water (we use the vegetable rennet from here)
1 Tbsp sea salt
candy thermometer to check liquid temps


directions::

Pour the milk into a large pot, put on the stove on low/med-med heat. Add citric acid to the milk and mix well. Stir in the diluted rennet with an up and down motion, continue heating until the temperature reaches 105ºF. Turn off the heat and let the curd set for 5-10 minutes.

Scoop out the curds with a slotted spoon (or strain them with a fine mesh strainer) and put them into a large heat resistant bowl. Press the curds gently with your hands, pouring off as much whey as possible into a bowl. Reserve the whey.


Pour the whey back into the pot and heat it to at least 175ºF degrees. Add salt to the whey and stir.

Ladle the hot whey over the curd in the bowl (just to cover) knead the curd with 2 wooden spoons until the curd is smooth and pliable.

The internal temperature of the curd needs to reach around 165 degrees to become pliable and stretchy. If the curd breaks, it needs to be reheated (by pouring more hot whey over the top). If you want to add any dried or fresh herbs, do now. I added a teaspoon of an herb mix I put together which included ground pepper, dried garlic, and an italian herb mix.


Pick the curd up with your hands and quickly squeeze into a ball, tucking the ends under to make smooth. Go fast, will set immediately.

Eat immediately while warm, or if you want to store it for later, place your balls of mozzarella into a bowl of very cold water (you can add more salt if you want, to help intensify the cheese flavor). Let sit a few minutes. Wrap and store in the fridge! Eat within a day or so.

Yield: 3/4 - 1 pound

pizza.

I like recipes that my boys can make. They love to measure, pour, knead and bake. I particularly like recipes that use metric measurements and not only the US cups...not only is it more accurate for baking, but we can pull out the scale and the boys can set the scale to the correct measurement (g/oz) and then weigh each item themselves. They are learning about ounces and cups and grams and milliliters and pounds. They are learning the relative measurements and understanding the relationships between 250 grams of flour vs. 2 cups of flour. They are looking at the scale and comparing quantities on the recipe to the scale readout. Perfect.

Today we made pizza. We have been loving the recipes from the book "Baking Bread with Children" by Warren Lee Cohen. This pizza recipe fit the bill. It was quick and easy, and it had measurements listed in all of the above. The boys did all of the measuring, kneading and rolling. We only tweaked the recipe a bit using our favorite flours for pizza. Turned out great!


::pizza::

250g (2 cups) strong 00 Italian pizza flour (or strong white bread flour)
250g (2 cups) whole wheat pastry flour (recipe calls for 'plain' or pastry flour, I used whole wheat pastry)
15 ml (1 Tbsp) honey
10ml (2 tsp) sea salt
10ml (2 tsp) good yeast
300 ml (10 oz = about 1 1/4 cups) warm water (body temp or so)
45 ml (3 Tbsp) olive oil

pizza sauce, cheese and toppings.

In large bowl dissolve the yeast in the warm water with the honey. Let it sit in a warm spot for about 10 minutes until it is bubbly and smells yeasty.

Add the salt, olive oil, and then slowly add in the flour. The dough will start to come together - it should still be slightly sticky to touch. You can use your hands for this part, or use a Kitchen Aid with a dough hook just to incorporate it.

Sprinkle some flour on your counter and hand knead the dough for about 10 minutes.


Oil a bowl with olive oil. Put the kneaded dough (ball) into the bowl and cover it with a moist towel - put in a warm spot. Let it rise for 1.5 - 2 hours until double in size.

Pull the dough out of the bowl and cut into two pieces (or 4 pieces if you want little individual pizzas).

Roll or stretch into a round or whatever shape you want and put onto a baking sheet sprinkled with cornmeal or semolina flour (to keep from sticking) ...

Pre-heat the oven to 400ºF.

Put on the sauce, toppings and cheese. Let the prepped pizzas sit and rise for 15 minutes while the oven pre-heats.

Bake for 7-15 minutes or so, depending on how thinly you rolled your dough...bake until golden and cheese bubbly.

Let cool a bit before slicing.



ingredient tip:

00 pizza flour is a high gluten finely ground flour. It is usually called Italian Tipo "00" flour. It looks like baby powder - it is a finer ground than normal flour, is high gluten, and it will give your dough an incredible super-smooth texture. I find it at the local Italian deli. I liked this recipe using the '00' flour mixed with the whole wheat white flour. It was a great texture and was still a light crust with the whole grain bonus. It is really good - my kids will eat it, and they are picky about pizza dough!

banana bread.

While I haven't had a recipe or post up for a bit, we have been busy in the kitchen. I have been experimenting with some new bread recipes. We have been soaking/sprouting/drying wheat berries and making our own (malt) flour and learning to use it. I also have found a new local source for wheat (hard red winter) and so have been testing how it works with both the standard and soaked loaf breads to get a feel for its chemistry. We have had a few flops, but have had some really great tasty bread too. I have also been testing a different wheat grinder to see the difference in a finer flour! In between all of the bread baking we have also been making some other goodies.

Today I had a sick boy, so we were home and pretty quiet. I decided to make a loaf of whole wheat banana bread. It is sooo good. I like it because it uses 100% whole wheat pastry flour, but the flavor doesn't overshadow the bananas at all and it is a nice moist bread. It also isn't too sweet, but is rich with flavor. It made the house smell amazing, too!

::whole wheat banana bread::

1/3 cup softened butter
1/4 cup honey
1/4 cup packed dark brown sugar/muscavado
1 tsp. vanilla extract
2 eggs
1/4 cup yogurt (I used home made vanilla yogurt)
1 1/2 cups mashed ripe bananas (about 3 bananas)

1 3/4 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1/2 tsp. sea salt
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 tsp. freshly grated nutmeg
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. baking powder

In one bowl cream the butter, honey and brown sugar together, and then add the vanilla, eggs, bananas and yogurt. Mix to incorporate. The bananas should be a little chunky, but not big pieces (using a fork to smush helps).

In a second bowl mix the dry ingredients together and stir a little to mix.

Mix the wet into the dry a bit at a time stirring to incorporate. Don't over mix.

Spoon into a buttered bread loaf pan and put into a pre-heated 350ºF oven. Bake 40-50 minutes, until done. Pop out of the pan onto a rack to cool. So good served with fresh butter.


ingredient tip::
Bananas are at the top of my list to buy organic. Commercially grown bananas not only are grown in not very environment/worker/wildlife friendly ways, but the end product exposes us to a cocktail of chemicals as well. No thank you. Look for fair-trade organic bananas at your local coop or Whole Foods/Wild Oats type of store!

whole wheat strawberry-orange muffins.

We have a freezer full of delicious strawberries we picked last June. We have been working our way through them for desserts and smoothies - but there is something extra wonderful about the color, taste and smell of strawberries once January hits. I opened the bag today and the smell was spectacular. Yum.

I used this basic muffin recipe for the base, but tweaked it a bit to add additional liquid so that I could use whole wheat flour rather than all purpose white flour. By using the juice of a mandarin, I got that extra liquid as well as a really good flavor boost. The muffins are so good - the flavor is more like a tea bread...not too sweet. But the texture and crumb is all muffin.


I sprinkled unsweetened organic shredded coconut on top before baking. Nice combination with the strawberries.

::whole wheat strawberry-orange muffins::

ingredients::
2 cups whole wheat pastry flour
1/4 cup turbinado (granulated) sugar
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 Tbsp baking powder
1 tsp cinnamon

1 cup milk (room temp)
1/4 cup softened butter
2 large eggs
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
zest and juice of one organic mandarin (small orange or clementine would be fine too)
1 1/2 cups roughly chopped frozen strawberries
unsweetened shredded organic coconut (optional)

directions::
Preheat your oven to 400°F.

Mix together the dry ingredients in a bowl. Set aside.

In a second bowl, beat together the milk, butter, vanilla, and eggs until creamy. Squeeze in the juice and add the zest.

Toss your chopped frozen strawberries (not cut too small, but not whole) into the flour. Turn to coat. Putting the fruit in the flour first will help keep it from sinking to the bottom during baking.


Pour the wet ingredients into the dry. Lightly stir to incorporate. Do not overmix. Let the mix sit a few minutes.

Fill paper muffins cups or a lightly greased muffin tin about 2/3 full. Sprinkle on coconut (optional). Put in the middle rack into your pre-heated oven. Bake about 15-20 minutes...until done.

Makes about 18 normal sized muffins.


If you use normal all purpose flour (and not whole wheat), leave out the mandarin juice (keep the zest if you like) or the batter may be too thin.