Sweet Peppers and Fennel

Late July CSA Share
In the CSA shares this week you will find Fennel, pictured on the right. We have some tips for using fennel in a post from last year but here is another recipe to try. This is slightly adapted from the MACSAC cookbook that many of you have purchased.

Orange and Fennel Salad with Mixed Greens

1 bulb of fennel, cut in 1/2 and remove core
2-3 blood oranges or 4-6 tangerines
salt & pepper
1/4 cup of extra virgin olive oil
1/4 cup dry sherry (optional)
4-5 cups mixed greens ( to divide on 4 plates)

Slice fennel as thin as possible (use a food slicer or mandolin if available).
Cut one of the oranges (two tangerines perhaps) in half and squeeze out the juice and pulp. into the bowl. Peel & section the remaining oranges. Poke the sections with a sharp fork so they will absorb the dressing.
Mix sliced fennel, juice & oranges with olive oil and sherry- season with salt & pepper.
Let stand for 10 minutes then serve over a bed of greens on individual plates.


No hot peppers in the share.... Those long green peppers may look like a hot pepper but they are not. The dark long green ones (on the left in the photo above) are "Carmens", an italian bull-horn type pepper. It is one of my favorites. They yellow one on the right is similar. We call it a cubanelle or italian sweet pepper. For some reason, most info about this pepper says it is often fried but we often just eat it raw like the other sweet peppers.
If we ever put hot peppers in your share ( and we hope to later in the season), we will put them in their own bag and label them so you will know.

Mixed spicy greens. In the shares you will often get a choice of a type of green that you can cook. Kale, Chard and mixed spicy greens are the most common in the middle of the summer. The bag of mixed greens are often a little on the spicy side. You can sautee them just like you would other cooking greens but you could also mix them with lettuce to spice up your salad.
Don't be afraid of cooking greens. Just try not to over cook. I usually start by sauteing some garlic and onion in butter or olive oil. Once they are translucent, I just toss in my greens (ususally chopped a bit and if necessary, I will seperate the stem from the rest of the leaf and cook that a little first since it is a little longer) Once the leafy stuff goes in, just cook for a little bit until the color gets bright and shiny then get it right off of that heat! drizzle a little lemon juice, vinegar or tamari over them. Serve as a side or on rice or pasta. Experiment and have fun!

BASIL, BASIL

We hope our CSA members have been enjoying all of the basil we have been sending in the shares. We imagine that many of you are already fans of pesto, but if that is now in your culinary repertoire, you can try this basic recipe:

A food processor is really good for this but I guess traditionally it everything was just chopped and then ground up with a mortar and pestle... I think a blender can work, but you need to be careful you don't burn out the motor.

Put in the food processor
3-4 cloves of garlic or a bunch of garlic scapes (pre-chop these a bit)
1/2 or so of walnuts (pinenuts are traditional but they are more expensive and exotic... but taste great)

run processor until you get a nice rough peanut butter texture
add
3-4 cups of basil leaves (although, I often just put the whole bunch, stem and all, in the cuisine art) You can also sub in up to about 1 cup of basil with parsley.
1/2 cup of olive oil

run processor again. You may want to add some more olive oil as it runs to help everything along... maybe 1/4 cup or so.

mix in about 3/4 - 1 cup of grated Parmesan cheese (if you have it in a chunk, you can pre-chop it a bit and put it in the processor in that first stage with the nuts and garlic)

You end up with a fairly thick paste that you can toss with hot pasta. It is a delicious, easy summer meal.

You can also dry or freeze basil. I usually freeze it by chopping up leaves in the food processor with some olive oil. I then glop big spoonfuls onto waxpaper on a cookie sheet, freeze it over night or so then put all those little chunks into a freezer bag. Then I can take out the amount I need during the winter. This year I just froze the leaves on a cookie sheet (that's the photo at the top of the page...) then put them in a bag. This is what Aurora's family does.

Introducing Kohlrabi......

A belated intro to one of our favorite vegetables: Kohlrabi. I really love Kohlrabi. One of our early CSA members, Jim Hornig, suggested that we grow it about 20 years ago. It is a fast growing brassica (member of the broccoli/cabbage family) that has been more common in Europe than the US. Of course, now that we have been introducing it to the Upper Valley for all these years, we see it more and more at other farmers' stands... just another example of Luna Bleu charting new waters from way back when.... or not...

Anyway, what should be done with this wild looking vegetable that looks like it may have floated down from outer space? Typically, people eat the "bulb" (really, a swollen stem), but you can also eat the leaves like you would collards or kale. It is best to peel the bulb with a paring knife because the skin is a bit fibrous. Then you can cut it up and enjoy it raw... use with dips or put into a salad. One of our apprentices, Aurora, made a lovely salad with julienned cucumbers, kohlrabi and carrots (we still have some in the cooler from last fall!). I don't know exactly what sort of dressing she made... maybe sort of a lemony vinaigrette... You can also cook with it. At this time of year, I like to put it in stirfry. It has a crisp and juicy texture... sort of like a water chestnut or maybe jicama (although I don't think I have had either for years... not since I have kohlrabi!). Of course it is also good in soups and other cooked medleys of vegetables or just on its own.

Enjoy your kohlrabi. If you would like to share any of your favorite ideas or recipes, just let us know.

Pizza Oven House

It has been about a year since we built our pizza/bread oven and now finally we are getting a shelter built for it. Steve Hoffman, a good friend of ours is doing all of the skilled work and we helped with a little of the heavy lifting. Now we have the beginning of a beautiful frame and all we need is the roof... Not sure if it will be completed by our next open house... but maybe...

It will be really nice to put away the tarp that now covers the oven all the time. We will also be able to store wood next to the oven and keep other supplies out there. Oh it will be so spiffy!

Tonalli, one of the WWOOFers who helped build the oven last year, is here visiting for a few weeks so she gets to help put this shelter up now!

Bridge Construction causes detours to farm

MILL ROAD BRIDGE UNDER CONSTRUCTION: Alternative Routes to the farm. The best route for most people is to go over Happy Hollow Road from Route 14. Happy Hollow is between route 110 and Welch's Hardware (on the right if going toward Bethel, on the left if coming from Royalton Village or Bethel)Go all the way up the hill to the end of the road (2.5 mile). Turn right at the T. Go about a mile. Look for a Luna Bleu Sign by our mailbox on the right. Our driveway is a sharp left turn. You might find it easier to go a little farther to the end of the road and turn around.

If you are coming from Tunbridge or points north on route 110, take Russell Road from Route 110 to get to the farm. Turn right up Russell Road. Go 1.6 miles and take a left to continue on Russell Road. Go a little over a mile. Take left at the next intersection (Mill Road) and go down the hill. As you go down the road you will actually see the farm and greenhouses on the right. Continue down the road, curve to the right and take the right on Rix Road. We are the second driveway on the right.

We'll try to make sure signs are up during this time. Don't forget to drive slowly on those back roads!!

Farm Open House

Here is a photo of the Catamount Solar guys putting up the first panel on our new pole barn roof. Long time follows will remember a post from back in December when we were working on this barn... in the freezing cold.. Well, these guys waited for one of the hottest days this year to get up on that nice metal roof. I think that is sort of a nice balance.

To celebrate the completion of this big project and the beginning of summer, we are having an open house on the farm this SUNDAY, June26 3pm to 6pm. Dan Kinney, one of the solar guys will be around to answer questions about our set up. We'll also give tours of the farm and fire up the pizza oven. Catamount Solar is bringing some things to nibble on and drink. Summer is here. Lets have some fun!

Just remember the Mill Road bridge is out so you have to go over Happy Hollow Road from Route 14 or Russell Road from Route 110 to get to the farm. We'll make sure some signs are up. Don't forget to drive slowly on those back roads!! RSVP can help me know how much pizza dough to whip up! 802-763-7981 or lunableufarm@myfairpoint.net

GARLIC SCAPES! I think of these as some of the great examples of local farms introducing people to a new and beautiful (in a weird and wild way) food. They are the "flower" of the most popular type of garlic grown in the Northeast. Despite what you might think from the previous post, we did not introduce this culinary treat to the world... we won't even try to take credit.

Young and tender like these, you can use them anywhere you would use garlic. They are also great brushed with oil and thrown on the grill. CSA members will find them in their shares for these next few weeks. The rest of you, just come to the farmers' market, or go out to your garlic bed!

What else is in the share this week... well, a little like last week... lettuce, bokchoy AND bokchini, a few zucchini and cukes, basil, spinach or chard, scallions... I think that is all.