Unsurprisingly, COVID-19 may have cancelled most of our summer travel plans. But, silver lining: Finally we will be home long enough to enjoy partaking in a summer CSA!
Sort of, anyway. A friend in Richmond tipped us off to Fall Line Farms and Local Roots (FLFLR), a non-profit local online farmer’s market for which you can buy a super-cheap membership (we paid $25 for a 3-month one) to shop online for as much (or as little) produce etc. as you’d like weekly, and only pay for that. Then, once a week, you drive to a designated pick-up location in the Richmond area to retrieve what you ordered. Need to skip a week? No problem, no financial penalty, no rotting produce to deal with.
So, for the past 4 weeks, we have dabbled in ordering and consuming greens, root vegetables, and baby vegetables, all grown in glorious central Virginia–green garlic, raab, baby radishes, baby turnips. SO DELICIOUS. We’ve also ordered fresh steaks, fresh pork loin chops, beef chorizo (omg) and my new favorite protein: super fresh cheese. While arguably it would be smarter to create a meal plan for the week and then order from FLFLR, I’ve instead been ordering anything that looks good within our weekly budget (mostly vegetables) and then figuring out what to do with them after bringing home the weekly haul each Thursday.
This week, I decided to roll the produce dice: For $25, I let one of the farms (Manakintowne) choose which greens and vegetables we would get. Oh, the suspense! I also ordered fresh chèvre from Caromont, since this sounded like something that could top any salad and taste amazing. And asparagus, because you can never have too much fresh spring asparagus.
Here’s what rolled in:
So, in a valiant attempt to use these vibrant veggies while they’re as fresh as possible, here’s the “plan”:
- Side salad with everything. Dressed with a light herbal vinaigrette. (I particularly love the recipe from Claire’s in New Haven.)
- Grits and greens, using what (I think) is arugula. Or baby swiss chard. Not really sure. I’ll probably add bacon instead of sausage.
- French glazed turnips (and quick sautée of turnip greens), with guidance from Mark Bittman’s Best Recipes in the World.
- Grilled asparagus.
- Rosemary biscuits: Spoiler alert, already made these and (oh boy oh boy oh boy) they are really good. Recipe forthcoming.
- Lentils with fresh herbs, roasted tomatoes, and goat cheese.
I doubt I will post recipes for all these dishes, but the lentils turned out so good that I thought I’d share that one. Read on for a simple, fresh, and delicious lentil dish that you can probably vary endlessly with respect to herbs and cheese.
from Yotam Ottolenghi’s Plenty, renamed and adapted by me to use what I have.
INGREDIENTS:
- Extra-virgin olive oil
- Red wine vinegar
- Balsamic vinegar
- Salt, pepper (freshly ground if possible)
- 1 and 1/3 cups green lentils
- 1 large garlic clove
- 1 small red onion
- 2 tomatoes-on-the-vine (or 5 plum tomatoes)
- Fresh herbs: I used dill, garlic chives, and rosemary.
- Fresh chèvre
INSTRUCTIONS:
1. Roast the tomatoes:
- Heat oven to 275 F.
- Cut tomatoes into 8ths (if plum tomatoes, into quarters). Place them skin side down on a baking pan prepped with parchment paper.
- Drizzle 1 Tbsp olive oil + 2 Tbsp balsamic vinegar over tomatoes. Sprinkle with salt. Place rosemary sprigs over the tomatoes (or thyme sprigs, which I didn’t have).
- Roast tomatoes for 1.5 hours until nearly dried. Remove from oven and let cool.
Note: I was tempted to skip this step and use canned sun-dried tomatoes instead. Now that I know how this tastes, that would have been a really bad idea. You should definitely roast the tomatoes, even if they are mediocre tomatoes from Walmart, as were mine. I put them in the oven this morning and let them roast while I did other things (umm, recorded another virtual church choir video–insert laughing emoticon).
2. Prepare red onion:
- Thinly slice 1 red onion. (Update: Probably half a red onion is plenty.)
- Add onion slices to a bowl of ice water and let sit for 10 minutes. The cold water will draw some of the sharp tang out of the onions and make them sweeter.
- While the lentils simmer (in step 3), drain the onions, then put them in a large bowl. Add 1 Tbsp red wine vinegar; sprinkle with salt; stir; and let onions sit and macerate.
3. Prepare lentils:
- Heat a pan of lightly salted water to boiling.
- Add 1 and 1/3 cup green lentils to the water. Stir, reduce heat to a light simmer, and let lentils simmer for c. 20 minutes. Stir every 3-5 minutes so they don’t stick to the bottom of the pan.
- Start testing the lentils after 15 minutes of simmering. They will probably only need 18-20 minutes, max, until they are tender.
- Drain lentils in a sieve in the sink, rinsing with cold water.
- Add lentils to the large bowl with the onions and let them start cooling.
4. Finely chop fresh herbs (c. 1/4 cup of each), crush and coarsely chop the garlic clove, and add these to the lentils and onions.
- Original recipe calls for dill, chives, and parsley, c. 1/4 cup of each.
- I used rosemary, dill, and garlic chives, and eyeballed rather than measured quantity. It obviously turned out fine.
5. Pour roasted tomatoes, and their juices, over the lentil-onion-herb mixture.
6. Top with dollops of fresh chèvre.
- Original recipe calls for 3 oz. gorgonzola.
I topped my lentil salad with pea shoots, and served it with a side salad of fresh salad greens and a rosemary biscuit.
Happy summer eating, y’all!
