October the Thirteenth CSA Box

Hi everyone! Waking to frost this morning. It definitely frosted over the weekend also. The sweet potato foliage is black and floppy. Tonight is supposed to be the deepest frost yet, so the rest of today will consist of lots of tossing pumpkins, delving for potatoes, burrowing for sweet potatoes, and tucking our cold hardy crops under their typar blankets. I cannot believe there are only two weeks to go! Somehow the boxes are still hard to close and we hope the fall season is feeding you just as heartily as the spring and summer. All this cold and damp weather makes us want to eat soup and sit by a fire. We hope this season's harvest is comfort food in the making. As always, you'll need to wash your produce, and some things should go into plastic bags in your fridge - lettuce, broccoli. Carrots and roots can get thrown in one bag and pushed to the back to store for quite a while. Squash can stay out on the counter or in the pantry, same for garlic and onions - they should all be dried. Kale will need a bag. Peppers might color up more on your counter but will last the longest in your fridge.
IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT: PICK-UP HOURS MUST BE CHANGED TO 3PM TO SUNSET (RATHER THAN 7PM). Call if you can't make it, we'll still have your box.

Now, to the share:

1 Butternut Squash. These should store at room temperature for quite some time if you don't want to use it right away. Squashes can always be roasted in the oven. Roasted Butternuts make a nice puree for filling raviolis or for an unconventional lasagna or using in a pumpkin pie or muffin recipe. The ease of peeling a butternut makes it a great candidate for peeling, dicing, and making into a soup or risotto or just sauteeing on the stovetop. Curried squash definiitely works.
For a traditional creamy squash soup I would dice it up, add a few coarsely chopped onions, a chopped carrot, a clove of garlic, a potato for texture, and cover it with stock. Cook until tender (in a pressure cooker makes this really fast) then puree with an immersion blender for the least dishwashing. Season with salt and pepper, a good pat of butter for richness, a dash or two of apple cider vinegar if it lacks tang, nutmeg, cinnamon, etc if you like that feel, curry and cayenne if you like that style. Some cream, milk, half n half if you want a true cream soup. Just keep tasting and adjusting until it is super great.
For something very different from an excellent cookbook for Southeast Asian cuisine, Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet
I highly recommend this recipe - in addition to the squash you'll need cilantro, coconut milk, stock, fish sauce, and shallots:
"Silky Coconut-Pumpkin Soup, Thailand, Laos: In a heavy skillet or on a charcoal or gas grill, dry-roast or grill 3 or 4 shallots, turning occasionally until softened and blackened. Peel, cut lenghtwise in half and set aside.
Peel the pumkin and clean off any seeds. cut into small 1/2 inch cubes. you should have about 5 cups of cubed pumpkin. place 2 cups canned or fresh coconut milk, 2 cups mild pork or chicken broth, pumpkin, shallots, and 1 cup loosely packed cilantro in a large pot and bring to a boil. add 1/2 tsp salt and simmer over medium heat until the pumpkin is tender, about 10 minutes. stir in 2 tbsp fish sauce and cook for another 2-3 minutes. taste or salt and add a little more fish sauce if you wish. (The soup can be served immediately, but has even more flavor if left to stand for up to an hour. reheat just before serving). generously grind black pepper over and finish with a sprinkle of fresh scallion greens to serve. freezes well."
Butternut Squash Risotto is another great recipe. A very good vegetarian option if you have vegetable stock on hand. I start out with finely diced yellow onions, sauteed in olive oil with a good pinch of kosher salt. When they are translucent, add the diced squash (the smaller dice the faster it cooks - just choose a size you want in your dish) and sautee until just becoming tender - at that point I usually remove half the mixture mostly to make space in the pan - but also to ensure that I have some good texture at the end. Add arborio rice to the pan (as much as you want - 2 cups is probably plenty for a family of four). Stir with your Italian grandmother's wooden spoon until it starts to crackle a little bit, get all the rice coated and tossed. then add white wine, just enough to almost cover the rice. stir thoroughly then let it sit until the wine is absorbed and more liquid is needed. Add a ladle or two of stock (homemade and heated in a saucepan next to your risotto if you are really on top of it - I sometimes just pour right out of the chicken stock box). stir thoroughly and wait for it to "talk to you" or crackle a little for more stock. continue stirring and waiting and adding more liquid. after a while you can start tasting for doneness. at this point, add the rest of the squash back in. al dente rice is what you are going for - i think that is the theory behind adding just a little liquid at once. At the end it is tasty to add something a little rich. a couple pats of butter or some shredded cheese - pecorino romano worked great. definitely add salt and pepper and make sure to taste for enough salt. you can be creative with your seasonings - curry, nutmeg, cinnamon, fresh sage or rosemary. crisped pancetta could be a nice accompaniment. 

1 Napa Cabbage. it's back! fresh slaw. Asian style slaw works really well with this super-tender type of cabbage

2 lbs carrots

1.25 lbs celery root. probably the most unrecognizable item in this week's share. Also known as celeriac. Peel this root and dice or slice for oven roasting (just the usual baking sheet method) excellent in a medley of roasted roots - carrots, turnips, rutabaga, potatoes, sweet potatoes, onions. If you are roasting a chicken all these same diced roots can roast right in the same pan with the bird. you can add it to a pot of boiling potatoes and make a mashed potato/celery root. 
Celery root remoulade is a tradition in France. It is basically a slaw. Normally the root is peeled and made into very fine matchsticks with the help of that fancy kitchen tool, the mandoline. Alice Waters' cookbook, The Art of Simple Food (which would be super for any CSA member to own) has a reliable recipe for remoulade:

"Cut away all the brown skin and small roots from about 1 lb of celery root. make a julienne - chop into 1/8 inch thick slices then slice into matchstick size pieces. toss with salt and 1 teaspoon of white wine vinegar.
in a small bowl, mix together: 2 TBsp creme fraiche (or substitute one egg yolk with 3 tbsp olive oil whisked in), 2 tsp dijon mustard, juice of 1/2 lemon, 2 tsp extra virgin olive oil, S&P. stir well, pour over the clery root and toss to coat. taste for salt and acid. the salad can be served right away or refrigerated for up to  day. 
She suggests serving this winter salad alongside other little salads such as marinated beets, carrot salad, arugula salad. Other variations are to add other julienned root vegetables such as rutabaga, carrot or radish or to toss with fresh arugula or to sprinkle with chopped parsley, chervil, or mint."
 
The restaurant, Oleana, in Cambridge served a wonderful twist on raviolis with thin slices of blanched celery root instead of pasta. some delicious filling and a sauce with wild mushrooms. yum. 
A box grater is all you need to make a grated salad of celery root and carrots, maybe with a light mayonaise based dressing with some mustard and lemon. some thinly sliced shallot or red onion would go well with this, perhaps some parsley.

1.5 lbs purple-top turnips. Great for roasting with your other roasted roots. these little cuties can just be scrubbed and quartered and they'll retain their integrity/identity.

1.5 lbs rutabagas. same as the other roots. mashed with butter and salt and pepper is a popular Thanksgiving treat. cream of turnip soup is very good. Al Forno makes a Westport turnip soup - pretty much just onions melted down in butter, diced turnips, cover with stock, puree and add cream, adjust for S&P. they serve it with a beautiful apple sauce cooked with the peels on so it comes out of the food mill a beautiful rose color. a swirl in the white soup looks beautiful.

red and yellow onions. if you can't use 'em, put 'em in a basket somewhere dry and use them in a month. otherwise, enjoy!

1 bulb garlic

sweet peppers

winterbor kale. look up potato and kale soup. Chop this variety a little more before cooking, make sure to cook with generous olive oil and lots of sliced garlic, kosher salt, and stock, soy sauce, or balsamic vinegar if you need more liquid. Chopped up kale can be good in a cheese quesadilla to accompany a soup.

"Red Cross" red butterhead and "Adriana" green butterhead lettuce. these are good for lettuce wraps, sandwiches, salads, burgers.

Broccoli. Good roasted. My elementary school friend, Martha, taught me the naughty trick of dipping steamed broccoli in mayonaise for a snack. why is it so good? Throw into a vegetable soup or a warm pasta salad.

That's all! Enjoy this gorgeous sunshine and the peak of fall foliage!