All posts in category Recipes

Garlic Scape Pesto | The Grey Plume

As part of the Black Sheep Farms 2012 Community Supported Agriculture program, we’ve teamed up with The Grey Plume to provide recipes that use ingredients fresh from the farm. Chef Clayton Chapman and his team are happy to share some inspiration to your kitchen.

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Pesto is one of our favorite things of all time. It is such a versatile sauce. It can be used in pastas, on fish, chicken or as a spread on an appetizer or something of the sort. While traditional pesto is made with loads of basil, garlic scape pesto is pretty incredible. It can be served fresh, which is preferable, but can also be frozen to be used at a later time. If freezing, put your pesto in a double layer zip-loc bag to help protect it from freezer burn. This recipe calls for blanching the scapes, this helps takes a little bit of the raw punch out of the garlic, but if that is what you are looking for, you may omit this step. This pesto recipe should yield a couple cups of finished product and can be applied to any dish, any which way you like…enjoy!

Directions
1) Take one garlic scape and slice into 1/8” slices. Place in olive oil and heat gently on stove. Once oil starts to make small bubbles (it is reaching about 140-150 degrees), remove pot from stove. Allow garlic scape to sit in oil for as long as possible. You can even do this step a day in advance if you like. If you are prepping this the day before, make sure the oil is placed in the refrigerator until ready to assemble the pesto.
2) Heat pot of boiling water and make an ice bath. Blanch scapes in water until tender and shock in ice bath. The scapes should still have a little crunch to them when they are removed from the water. They should be in the boiling water for less than 1 minute.
3) Remove scapes from ice bath and split lengthwise down the middle. Mince the scapes into as tiny as pieces as possible.
4) Strain the single scape out of the olive oil and mince the parsley and basil. Mix the remainder of the ingredients as well as the oil, parsley and basil.
5) Season TT with salt and fresh ground black pepper.

*TT = to taste

Great first day!

Today was the first pick up day for our CSA season. It was a bit smaller than we had hoped. We’ve had lots of rain and cool weather, which has slowed us down considerably. But we managed to harvest enough to give everyone a delicious sample of what is to come! This time of year is great for greens like kale and chard. Spinach is the green that usually gets the spotlight, but if you’ve not used kale or chard, you’re missing some unique flavors. CSA member Jenni was kind enough to send me some of her favorites:

Sweet and Savory Kale

From www.allrecipes.com

Ingredients

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 small onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
4 teaspoons white sugar
1 tablespoon cider vinegar
1 1/2 cups chicken broth
4 cups stemmed, torn and rinsed kale
1/4 cup dried cranberries
salt and pepper to taste
1/4 cup sliced almonds

Directions

Heat olive oil in a large pot over medium heat. Stir in the onion and garlic; cook and stir until the onion softens and turns translucent, about 5 minutes. Stir in the mustard, sugar, vinegar, and chicken stock, and bring to a boil over high heat. Stir in the kale, cover, and cook 5 minutes until wilted.
Stir in the dried cranberries, and continue boiling, uncovered, until the liquid has reduced by about half, and the cranberries have softened, about 15 minutes. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Sprinkle with sliced almonds before serving.

Radish Dip

FROM www.allrecipes.com

Ingredients

4 cloves garlic, peeled
6 radishes, quartered
2 (8 ounce) packages cream cheese, softened

Directions

Place garlic in the container of a food processor, and pulse until finely minced. Add radishes, and mince. Add cream cheese, and mix until well blended. Transfer to a serving dish, and chill until serving. Serves 16.

This season, we decided to stick with Lacinato Kale, aka Dinosaur Kale, because it is the best variety with which to make kale chips. They couldn’t be easier to make, simply remove stems from kale and cut into bite sized pieces. Place onto a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. Sprinkle with olive oil and salt and bake in a 350 degree oven for 15 minutes. Watch them closely. The edges should be brown, but not burnt. They don’t keep well, but it really doesn’t matter because they’re so delicious you’ll want to eat them all right away!

How to make yummy tomato sauce

These days, when I am not out working in the fields, you can generally catch me in the kitchen. I’m either making apple sauce or tomato sauce. Many people ask me how to make tomato sauce and there are as many recipes as their are tomato varieties, but this is how I make it.

I am a pretty low maintenance kinda gal, so my method is to dump whatever I happen to have at the time.

I wash my tomatoes, generally the split or damaged ones. Then I core them and cut out any bad spots. I tear them in half and place them on a jelly roll pan (you could also use a 13 x 9 pan). Then, I pile on anything else I have around, onions and garlic (of course!), peppers, eggplant, celery, etc. A little salt and pepper and then sprinkle on some olive oil. Place in the oven for about 20-30 minutes at 350.

Once that is done, throw in some fresh herbs. Then, you have two options. Dump it all into a food processor or blender, or put it in a stockpot. I put mine in a stockpot and let it simmer on an extremely low heat to let the herbs blend in. Then, I use a handheld blender to mix it all up in the stockpot. You can make it as chunky or smooth as you like. Since I don’t skin my tomatoes, I blend it pretty well so all the skins will get chopped up. Then you can either can it, or pour the cooled sauce into freezer bags and freeze it.

Now, if you are thinking that this recipe looks great, but you really would rather not make your kitchen into a sauna when it’s already 90 degrees outside, don’t worry. Wash your tomatoes and place them whole into a freezer bag. Pull them out when the weatherman announces our next blizzard and you’ll have plenty to do to keep you occupied AND well fed!

2 Comments

by blacksheepfarms on August 30, 2010 • Permalink

Posted in DIY, Recipes, Show me How, Tomatoes

Posted by blacksheepfarms on August 30, 2010

http://blacksheepfarms.com/2010/08/30/how-to-make-yummy-tomato-sauce/

Spotlight On…

Every week, we’ll spotlight a particular item we love at Black Sheep Farms. It may be a fruit, vegetable, flower, animal, or something else. If you have any suggestions, send it to us at farm@BlackSheepFarms.com.

The Radish!

I’ll be honest with you, the radish has never been my favorite vegetable. When placed in a salad, I would always pick it out and there it would sit, unloved and unwanted on the side of my plate. But, I have learned to appreciate it in recent years, mostly because I’ve learned that it works in so many other dishes besides a salad!

In our house, the cooking motto is, “When in doubt, sauté.” This works beautifully for our friend the radish. If you don’t care for the heat of a radish, sauteing or baking it takes most of the heat out of it. Brian is a big fan of pickling (me? not so much) and radishes are excellent pickling candidates. Oh, and did you know that you can eat the tops? They won’t stay fresh as long as the bottom, but you can eat them like any other green, but like other greens, it wilts down to practically nothing in a saucepan!

This year, we are growing 3 kinds of radish. First up, we are offering the Cincinnati Market, a slender variety, unlike the traditional radish, it resembles a carrot and can grow up to 6″. It looks beautiful julienned, grated or sliced.

Need more ideas for the mighty little radish? Here are some yummy recipes we’ve found. If you try any, let us know how you like them!

Pickled Radish

Radish Curry

Radish Chips

All posts in category Recipes

Garlic Scape Pesto | The Grey Plume

Great first day!

How to make yummy tomato sauce

Spotlight On…

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