My first box of wintershare CSA produce arrived from Rock Spring Farm down there on the Minnesota-Iowa border.
What does one receive in a wintershare program from a farm in the Upper Midwest? Here’s the run-down, which farmer Chris Blanchard posts on his Eat Better News blog:
Carrots [NOTE: It's all about the carrots for me. If Rock Spring was offering a Winter Carrot CSA, I'd sign up. These are the sweetest, snappiest carrots I've ever had -- like biting icicles. La dragoncita, my daughter, ate a whole plate of them with peanut butter the night our wintershare arrived. ~El Dragon.]
Cipollini Onions – Use these flat Italian Heirlooms where you want to feature the onion flavor. They’ve got a much broader flavor note than regular onions. You can also use them where you would use a regular onion.
Rutabaga – Purple top, yellow bottoms
Turnips – Purple top, white bottoms
Celeriac
Black Spanish Winter Radish – Spicy, and very nice paired with cheddar cheese and dark beer. [!!]
Heart of Gold Squash
Red Cabbage
Gold Beets – Like regular beets, but with a sweeter flavor and less earthiness.
Spinach – From the greenhouses. We had some freezing damage in here after the extreme cold of December and January, so we worked hard to get the best leaves.
Rosemary – from the heated greenhouse, where we overwinter this crop.
We haven’t tried the Black Radishes at Chez Dragón, but I’m very eager to taste them. The spinach is crunchy and earthy — outstanding in a chef salad — and I did make a very successful root puree with the carrots, turnips, and rutabagas, like so:
DRAGON ROOT MASH
* 1 pound turnips, chopped into 1/2″ chunks
* 1 pound carrots, chopped as above
* 1 pound rutabagas, chopped. Ditto.
* 1 pound potatoes, chopped. Yup.
* 1/4 cup butter
* 1 clove garlic, crushed or diced.
* 1 cipollini onion, diced
* 1’2 cup milk (optional)
* Salt to taste
Boil roots the way you would potatoes for mashing, till they poke soft with a fork.
Sautee garlic and onion till translucent.
Drain roots. Add butter and milk (if so desired — makes it creamier — or just add more butter while roots are hot). Puree in a food processor, blend, or mash with a potato masher (my method) till smooth. Salt and pepper to taste.
This makes a lot of Mash, obviously. So the recipe below is for any leftovers you might incur:
DRAGON ROOT CAKES
Get a griddle nice and hot, and add a small amount of your choice of oil (butter, canola, olive, vegetable, etc).
Stir a handful of steel-cut oats (i.e., oatmeal) and grated cheddar cheese(optional) into the leftover Mash, just enough to make the cakes hold together better.
Form “patties,” a la burgers, and fry em up. Serve hot.
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