Week 5 share from the Little River Market Garden CSA
CSA Share 5
5 bananas
1 lemon
1 black sapote
1 head Napa cabbage
3 black Spanish radishes
1 bunch collard greens
1 bunch baby mustard greens
1 yucca
What I Made With My Share
I made a baked pasta casserole type dish with the cabbage, which was pretty great.
I made an inedible tart with the mustard greens. Just… yuck. The crust was decent; the greens, not so much.
Grits & greens – Collard greens with roasted tomato, buttermilk grits and bacon.
The Best Thing I Made This Week
Instead of boring you with another grits & greens recipe featuring tomatoes and bacon, I will instead dig into the archives for this week’s recipe and share something I made with the watermelon radish from last week.
Roasted Sesame Radish Soba with Kale
Up Next Week
Next week, we’re taking a CSA vegetable break. No veggie share this Saturday, so I will have to be creative on my own. I see a lot of grains and veggies in my future in a futile attempt to balance out our ‘retro midwestern appetizer night’ on Christmas Eve, and obscene amount of beef (and Yorkshire pudding) on Christmas day. Cleansing grains & veggies in preparation for one last indulgence night (dumplings on New Years Eve) before the reforms of January roll around.
I have the Spanish radishes and yucca leftover to play with.
New To Me Veggies
Spanish Radishes
I’d seen these radishes but had never cooked with them. Apparently these are popular among food bloggers and CSAs, the top page of Google results brought up blog after blog. From what I’ve gathered (and was told by my CSA grower), black radish works just like regular radish, but is spicy and zippy.
Yucca
I’ve had this in Cuban restaurants, but have never cooked with it. Yucca root is actually named Cassava and isn’t related to the Yucca plant. It is a woody South American shrub prized in tropical and subtropical regions for its starchy tuberous root. According to Wikipedia, dried cassava is used to make tapioca. Apparently, Yucca must be cooked in order to get rid of its toxic cyanogenic glucosides. (Again according to Wiki) Improper preparation can leave enough cyanide to cause “acute cyanide intoxication and goiters, and has been linked to ataxia or partial paralysis.” Well, then. I guess I’ll be cooking mine. Yucca can be used as a potato substitute, served as tapioca, fufu, a flour, or a syrupy juice. You can also turn it into a liquor.
Gastography 