Rosy Beet/ Napa Cabbage Slaw

From Global Cookbook. Serves 4-6.
6 c. Thinly sliced Napa cabbage leaves
1 1/2 c. Minced red onion
2 med Beets, grated
1 c. Minced fresh parsley
1/4 c. Red wine vinegar
1/2 c. Water
2 Tbsp. Brown sugar
1/2 tsp Salt
1/3 c. Minced fresh dill leaf
3 Tbsp. Minced fresh chives
1/2 c. Low fat lowfat sour cream
Salt and freshly ground pepper

Combine vegetables and parsley in a large bowl. In a saucepan, combine vinegar, water, sugar, and salt. Bring to a boil, stirring till sugar is dissolved. Pour over vegetables and toss. Add in dill and chives and fold in well. Cover and let marinate overnight. Stir well once or twice. Just before serving, drain off excess liquid. Stir in lowfat sour cream and add in salt and pepper to taste.

Sweet Italian Lamb Sausage Roti

1 package Naan bread or similar

1 package lamb sausage

1 onion, sliced

1 hot pepper

2 cloves garlic, minced

1/4 cup vinegar

3 tbsp. curry powder

oil

Roast or grill sausage and set aside. Heat oil in sauté pan and add onion, pepper and garlic and sauté until just lightly browned. Add vinegar and curry powder and season with salt and pepper. In each roll, pace a sausage and top with onion mixture. Serve with a few wedges of lime.

Seared Wild Caught Salmon Salad

4 Salmon fillets

Pesto, as needed

Salad:
Mesclun Greens
4 tbsp. olive oil
3 tbsp. fresh lemon juice
salt and pepper, to taste

Heat large non-stick skillet with just enough oil to shimmer the pan. Carefully add salmon and lower heat immediately. Sear until lightly brown and turn. You will cook on each side approximately 3-4 minutes for a medium rare fillet .

Remove to a plate and let rest. Meanwhile, place mesclun in a large bowl, toss with olive oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper. Split the greens up amongst 4 plates, place a salmon fillet, belly side up, on top of each salad and top with pesto. Garnish with lemon zest.

*** The beauty of the wild salmon is that is considered a “green fish.

Our ramps (aka wild onions, wild garlic, wild leeks) this year were brought to us by a friend who harvested them in E. Montpelier.  As with the fiddleheads, when we get foraged products, we get what we get and we stretch them as far as we can in the CSA share for the week or two they might be available to us.  Use them raw or cooked in any recipe calling for scallions or leeks, or cook them in a more traditional way, scrambled with eggs or fried with potatoes. Since ramps aren't cultivated in the way leeks are, they're much easier to clean. Just cut off roots, rinse thoroughly, and scrub off any excess dirt on the bulbs.  You can use both the white bulb and the leaves.  The leaves are much milder in flavor but make a nice green addition.

In Spring we try to gather foraged food for members to mix it up.  We are dependent on our foragers and whatever they bring us we pass along to you, but it's not always enough for all members.  We have just enough fiddleheads this week to put in the small veggie only share bags.  Fiddleheads are the tightly coiled tips of ferns, usually the ostrich fern.  Fiddleheads have a grassy, spring-like flavor with a hint of nuttiness. Many people agree that they taste like a cross between asparagus and young spinach. Some detect an artichoke flavor as well, and even a bit of mushroom. Prepare your fiddleheads for cooking by running them under cold water and rinsing free the brown soft skin around the heads.  To cook them, bring a pot of salted water to a boil, and toss in the fiddleheads for one minute.  Then remove them and run cool water over them to stop the cooking.  This blanching step will tenderize them uniformly, and you can now toss them into any other dish you are making, pastas, alongside rice, sauteed with garlic and crushed red pepper as a side, etc.

At the end of each storage season we find ourselves unable to part with our seconds onions.  These are onions with blemishes or with a soft outerlayer.  They aren't first quality and can't go to share members, but they have perfectly good onion within.  At the same time, it's also the time of year when our stores run low in anticipation of the new harvest.  In order to keep our members in local organic onions, we slice and freeze these seconds.  The bagged frozen onions  may be used in any saute or soup you are making.  They are great to have on hand.  Just take bag from freezer and saw off a chunk of the thin sliced onion in the amount you need for your recipe and toss in your pan or pot just like you would fresh onion and simmer til soft. If you don't need the whole bag of sliced onion, return the remainder to the freezer.

Our Frozen Green or Red Peppers are grown on our farm, come in from the field and go straight into the freezer. Our peppers are washed, chopped, bagged and frozen within hours of harvest.  Frozen peppers tend to not have the same rigidity as fresh peppers so they aren't great in salads or where you need crisp vegetables.  But they retain all the flavors and yummy summer goodness and are great in all cooked dishes.  We find it best to use the vegetables straight out of the freezer and into the pan.  If you aren't using the whole package you can saw off a hunk and use just what you need.  While the peppers are frozen, or just off frozen, you can easiuly chop them to whatever size you need if the pieces are too large for your dish.  Kids love the red ones frozen as is, they are that sweet. 

Our frozen broccoli was blanched for a minute or two in our kitchen before cooling and freezing.  It is not a substitute for fresh broccoli in salads or places where you really need the veggies to be crisp.  But they are fantastic for pastas, burritos, casseroles, quiches, soup etc. To reheat, bring some water to a boil in a pot and put in all or a part of the bag of broccoli (you can saw off chunks of frozen if you don't want to use the whole thing). Heat for 2-5 minutes, testing each minute after 2 minutes to see if it has reached the tenderness you seek.

We grow many varieties of kale at Pete's, including Green, Lacinato, Red Russian and Redbor.  Kale is in the super veggie club and is just about the healthiest vegetable you can eat. 1 cup packs 1300% of your daily requirements for Vita K, 200% of your Vita A, and nearly 100% of vita C, along with lots and lots more vitas and minerals.  Over 45 different flavonoids have been identified in kale that combine to provide both anti-oxidant and anti-inflammatory benefits. It is now believed that kale offers risk-lowering benefits for five types of cancer including bladder, breast, colon, ovary and prostate cancer. It also has the ability to lower cholesterol (and for this purpose steaming is best). It is also now recognized that kale provides much support for your body's own detox system. We are lucky that it is also one of the longest season northern vegetables.  And what's more, it's tasty, so eat lots.Keep kale loosely wrapped in a plastic bag in your crisper drawer. Strip the leaves from the stems and wash them well before chopping and cooking.

Winterbore is one of the most winter hardy kales.  It has finely curled, thick, blue-green leaves, handles frosts well and lends itself to successive cuttings.

Lacinato Kale aka black kale or dinosaur kale has very dark and bumpy and somewhat leathery looking leaves (hence the dinosaur nickname) that stand up really well to cooking. This kale will retain its shape even in soups and stews.