When I brought everything home (soaking wet due to yet more rain here in soggy NYC) after picking up my share at the park, I laid everything out on the counter to figure out just what I had and that’s when I realized: I didn’t have enough room to store all these veggies! Our apartment isn’t small by Manhattan standards, but it’s definitely not big and we only have a 3/4 size fridge. Oh and it’s a rental, so no way am I upgrading!
What’s a girl to do but try to eat through the CSA share as quickly as possible?
In this week’s share we had the following:
- Radishes
- Peas
- Kale
- Fava beans
- Onions
- Carrots
- Butter lettuce
- Mint
- Cilantro (a LOT of cilantro!)
When Adam saw the radishes he immediately wanted to eat them the way we’d had them in an appetizer at Blue Hill (hey if it’s good enough for the president!). Since it’s easier than easy, I was totally sold! All you do is dip the radish in some salt and take a bite:
At Blue Hill the salt was rock salt, but I didn’t have any on hand so we used coarse Kosher salt, and it turned out just as good in my opinion. These radishes were incredibly spicy and it was hard to eat more than one! And mind you I love radishes, and spicy stuff in general! I only managed to eat two or three of these before my mouth was overwhelmed.
After our radish appetizer I decided to use the fava beans to spice up some leftovers, and set about preparing them. The amount of work involved in prepping favas is kind of ridiculous in my opinion! They start out like this, looking deceivingly like a sizeable amount of food:
Then after shelling them, you end up with lots of pod:
And significantly less volume in beans:
But wait, of course you’re not done yet! Then you have to blanch them:
And then peel yet another inedible layer off to get to the good stuff!
Now I’m not complaining, because I totally love favas, but man is that a lot of work! I definitely suggest prepping them as a separate exercise from cooking them, otherwise by the time they’re ready to be used you probably won’t feel like cooking anymore . . .
Oh, and if you’ve never done it before and want step-by-step photos of the actual shelling process, check out this guide. I hate to link to an about.com site but they really do a good job with this particular subject (and they seem to have gone away from pop-up ads recently).
Now, anyone got any ideas for what to do with a ton of cilantro?
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Hi Ivete! Make a chimichurri sauce using cilantro instead of parsley. Yum. See you Saturday!