Here is our Share! Week 12

Starting at the top from left to right: arugula, mizuna, celery, corn, potatoes, cherry tomatoes.

The Salted Cod gets excited when Steve opens his truck door and corn is pilled high, practically bursting from the seams. We can only imagine what it must be like growing up in the Corn Belt where these ears are everyone's source of income. The scent was sweet with a hint of the farm, something Midwesterners must be all too familar with during those hot summer months. It also reminded us of our favorite regional scent when we traveled to Hatch New Mexico. In Hatch, chilies are drying and roasting everywhere you turn (including rooftops). The scent was so thick in the air you could smell it on your clothes and hair the next day; a delicious combination of smokey, sweet and spicy. We are trying to think of what a true New England scent would be to represent summer. Maybe low tide or rotting cod from the fisherman’s catch...

Anyway, back to week 12:

Week 12 is all about corn chowder! We made LOTS of corn chowder…

In our wonderful Le Creuset dutch oven we cooked 6 slices of bacon (we like our chowda smokey here). Once cooked, we removed the bacon and left about 2 tbs of the grease to sauté our onions, celery, and a few celery leaves. That right, we said celery leaves. Once softened and translucent we added 6 ears worth of corn kernels, 4 cups of whole milk and 2 cups of chicken stock. We also added halved cherry tomatoes and precooked and chopped potatoes. A little salt & pepper and you are good to go.


We had enough for dinner and to freeze for the colder months.

Wilson Farm

Week 11 brought some excellent produce, maybe a little too good because we blew through the weeks share by Saturday. On a recommendation by our mom we hit up Wilson Farms in Lexington. We’ve known about this place for a while but for some reason or other have actually never been. Sure enough it is located conveniently about a mile of rt.2.

We’ve picked up a nice brandywine tomato for another caprese. No picture sorry.

We ended up picking up some San Marzano tomatoes, 2 Japanese eggplants, a zucchini, and 2 small summer squashes and 2 ears of corn and basil. We’ve made a fresh ratatouille of summer goodness. We even snuck in our last Parker onion into this batch. We baked this at 350 for just over an hour. We topped some fresh baked Italian bread which was grilled over the flame. The flavors screamed together and melted into the nice bread.

$1.98 for a huge bushel of basil! We actually had a random customer tell us we’d never use this much and it would go to waste. We made more pesto to freeze…

We also picked up a quart of fresh blackberries, 5 nectarines, shortcake and awesome homemade whip cream. We made a little blackberry sauce for the shortcake and topped this with a sprig of mint.

All in all we spent close to $40 for a 3 course meal for two. We are very happy we are part of a CSA program; they are a huge value and well worth it.

Here is our Share!Week 11

Starting at the top from left to right: purple basil, arugula, celery, green peppers, cherry tomatoes, onions, red potatoes

Tomatoes, tomatoes, finally week 11 brings tomatoes. We received a nice pint of plump cherry tomatoes. The Salted Cod was popping these babies like candy on the way home from the drop.

Week 11 also brings us a great harvest salad. Maybe we were a bit overexcited this week; it feels like most of the produce went into this salad. (We aren’t complaining)

We made mustard vinaigrette with a good grainy French Dijon. The vinaigrette dressed our arugula greens as seen in the middle. On top we have some quick pickled onions which were a nice zesty addition to this. Notice our new sea salt on the cherry tomatoes! Green peppers, purple basil and fresh mozzarella are also coming to this party.

This is a caprese omelette! Fresh mozzarella, tomato and purple basil fill this big guy.

Another very quick caprese, only this time we are out of basil, both from the share and home grown.









Finally, we made celery soup with our red taters and onions.

Here is our Share!Week 10

Starting at the top from left to right: carrots collards, baby bok choy, basil, corn, baby potato, green peppers, and zucchini.

Keep the carrots and potatoes coming! The carrots have been getting us through the work day, great snack. We used our potatoes again for an awesome Sunday breakfast. We can’t get enough of them.

Another batch of pesto is tucked away in my freezer for those chillier months. The Salted Cod is whipping through olive oil this summer. We need to start buying in bulk.

The baby bok choy was a great addition to a stir fry, it so fresh and tender.

It looks like it’s a two stir fry week, we sautéed down some green peppers, zucchini, and an onion from week 9. Put in a little but of soy, garlic, and hot sauce with a side of rice.

Good living.

kombucha brings good things

So after every batch of kombucha you end up with scooby's or kombucha babies. The Salted Cod posted a free ad on craigslist, we ended up with over 20 people looking to start brewing kombucha themselves. When we met up with one fellow to pass on our kombucha babies we were pleasantly rewarded with some freshly picked blueberries!

Our friend did say kombucha brings good things when we first recieved our kombucha baby.

We made blueberry muffins with our new gift. We used a very simple recipe from Bittman's "How to Cook Everything." They came out great, we enjoyed them two ways. First straight up as pictured above.

We also whipped up a fresh blueberry compote. Our compote had a bit of fresh lemon juice to help cut the sweetness. The muffins were grilled old school diner style with our compote drizzled on top.

The Salted Cod would also like to take a minute to share some muffin humor.
Check out Cunninghams Muffins on youtube.

Site updates

Just want to share a few updates with everyone.

We have a new logo which we're digging. The picture is from our most current post about fresh blueberry muffins. We may update our logo again depending if our artsy friends want to give us a hand.

We also have a bit of new formating.

The most exciting update is our new RSS Feeder! You can now subscribe to The Salted Cod through a RSS Feed. Just click "Subscribe in a reader" on the right hand side. Our subscribers will have our blog posts sent automatically to your RSS reader of choice.

Pretty cool.

As always we love to hear suggestions from our readers, so don't be shy.

Here is our Share!Week 9

Starting at the top from left to right: napa cabbage, spring onions, carrots, mizuna, corn, potatoes, cucumbers, yellow squash.

Let me state right now that week 9 makes us feel good inside. The Salted Cod had a half work day on week 9's pickup date so we took our bike down to central square to make the pickup. Little did we know that it would be this large.

Corn, this was some great corn, very sweet with small kernels. We almost ate a weeks worth of corn in one sitting. Steamed for a 5 minutes lots of good butter, sea salt and black pepper.Made a quick lunch of sauteed squash, spring onions and rice for lunch.

We've also attempted to make kimchi with our napa cabbage. Unfortunately we had a bad recipe and it's not looking too good.

A great Sunday breakfast with our potatoes and onions.

Finally we made a nice fresh sauce with our squash, onions, mizuna and corn. We even threw a corn cob in the sauce for extra flavor! Very nice!

Kombucha!

The Salted Cod has come across a "scooby" or a baby Kombucha culture. Kombucha is a tea which is fermented by a colony of healthy Bactria's and yeasts. The colony can be seen floating on top of the tea here. The colony feeds off of the caffeine and sugar in the tea. The end result is an acidic slightly carbonated tea, reminiscent of apple cider vinegar.


Once you acquire your kombucha colony you will want to brew 1 gallon of strong black tea. While the tea is boiling, I add 1 cup of sugar to dissolve. This will be you kombucha colony’s lunch. I add 5 tea bags; I’ve had good luck with tazo black tea. After brewing is complete I cover the pot and let it sit overnight to bring it down to room temperature. The tea is then transferred to the glass jar. The kombucha colony is plopped in shinny side up to live in harmony with the sweet room temperature tea. The fermentation process usually takes around two weeks depending on how acid it you’d like it. I’ve had one batch go for a month and it still tasted great.

We then bottled this brew after 2 weeks of fermentation with some slices of ginger. We have this bottle chilling in the fridge where the flavors mellow out a bit. During this time it will gain some natural carbonation as well.

We've compared our brew to the popular GT's Kombucha which retails for $4.00 a bottle. Our home brew was actually quite comparable just a bit sweeter (and a hell of a lot cheaper.)

If you're in the Boston area The Salted Cod will be more than happy to hook you up with you're own scooby and more detailed instructions on how to brew your own.

Here is our Share!Week 8

Starting at the top from left to right: carrots, superstar spring onions, beets, cucumbers, basil, cauliflower, broccoli, red bliss potatoes.

Week 8 is summer vacation week for The Salted Cod. This week we took a road trip out to Lancaster to pick up our share at the farm. It was a fun morning, I got to see the where all my great produce is grown and had a bit of time to hang out with Steve as well.


The star of week 8 is our veggie roast! The Salted Cod loves roasted vegetables. We had a nice selection of the great sweet onions with tops, extra creamy potatoes, carrot and lots of fresh basil.

The veggies were mixed lightly with olive oil and seasoned aggressively with black pepper and lightly with sea salt. We let it roast at 450 until the potatoes were just crispy on the outside. This roast took right around an hour.
MMM…

Here is our Share!Week 7

Starting at the top from left to right: yellow carrots, "superstar" spring onions, beets, cauliflower, cilantro, basil, cucumbers.

This summer is flying by. We were so excited for more basil that we whipped up a batch of pesto to freeze for later use. The yellow carrots were an awesome snack for the work week as well as the sauteed beets for use in salads. The cilantro was excellent in some homemade guacamole.

We've roasted our cauliflower with lemon, fresh balcony grown dill, garlic and olive oil. The oven was set to 450 and let it go for about an hour. The cauliflower came out nice and crispy. It had a deep nutty roasted flavor but the lemon and dill kept it fresh which was a nice offset.






15 minute pickles!

We have adapted this recipe from The Salted Cod's favorite cookbook How To Cook Everything by Mark Bittman.

We sliced one cuke into chips, which were then put in a strainer and heavily salted. Toss them around to make sure each chip gets salted.

After 10 minutes the chips should have released most of their water content. Go ahead and wash the chips under running water, you want to remove all of the extra salt. In a small bowl big enough to hold your chips pour 1/4 cup of white vinegar over the cuke chips. Mix in 1 tablespoon of sugar and a teaspoon of dried dill. Eat them quickly because they actually don't last all that long. They have been a favorite treat of many of The Salted Cod's companions this summer including confirmed pickle haters. It's a nice salty/acidic balance. Good stuff.

Here is our Share!Week 6

Starting at the top from left to right: beets, cauliflower, cucumber, swiss chard, "superstar" spring onions, cilantro, lemon basil, arugula.

The Salted Cod was surprised to see so many herbs in this weeks delivery and quickly put them to work. This basil smelled a bit more fragrant than our own growing on the balcony because it was actually lemon basil. The Salted Cod was especially excited since we've never had it before.

After work we stopped by Dave's fresh pasta to get a pound of fresh cut tomato fettuccine for our lemon basil pesto which we are making tonight.

We used a basic pesto recipe which called for olive oil, toasted pine nuts, grated Parmesan, and the whole bunch of lemon basil. It's pretty basic, just keep adding the oil until you get a consistency that you like. We like it "sticky." Not too thick, not too runny. Enough to stick to the pasta (think of the three bears and their porridge). This pesto is in the middle and just right. We threw a little left over steamed cauliflower on there too for good measure. Between the lemony basil and tomato fettuccine this was a killer pasta. Steve promised more lemon basil is to come and we can't wait.

Ratatouille.

Generally, the Salted Cod prefers to post strictly about food but how could we not mention our love for the most accurate representation of a cook's life to date, Ratatouille? If you don't believe us, check out this great blog post from Michael Ruhlman and Anthony Bourdain. It appears that some of the accuracy in this film might be due to Bourdain's inside info given to the screenwriters, who receives a "thank you" in the end credits.

fresh berries.

While driving on route 9 in Hadley, the Salted Cod picked up a quart of the sweetest (and freshest) strawberries we've ever tasted. Not only were these berries incredibly delicious, they were quite tiny, reminiscent of the Woodland Strawberry. After arriving home, we created a quick and basic shortcake topped with our "just barely" crushed berries and a generous amount of whipped cream. We found that the shortcakes definitely taste best right out of the oven, so be sure to have the toppings ready for consumption.

Here is our Share!Week 5

Starting at the top from left to right: carrots, broccoli, mustard greens, spring onions, romaine, arugula, baby bok choy , boston lettuce.

Steve was kind enough to take time out of his 4th of July holiday to do the Wednesday drop. Much appreciated. This weeks fresh greens arrived just in time for a last minute independence day bbq . We made a HUGE salad with the boston, romaine and arugula then mixed with some homemade lemon vinaigrette and spring onion greens.

The Salted Cod loved the chicken & broccoli so much we've made it again this week with more of our sauteed spring onion greens. Man, those were sweet and tender. We're hoping for more next week.

Carrots carrots carrots...mmm bugs would kill for these. We brought them camping and had a few each day. Excellent.

Sorry for the lack of pictures this week. Our camera is making us sad.

Here is our Share!Week 4

Starting at the top from left to right: Beets, Red Chard, Red Russian Kale, Fennel, Lettuce, Broccoli, Baby Bok Choy.

Week Four is here!

Ziti, chicken and broccoli pasta












This is roasted fennel potato salad with a mustard vinaigrette base. The Salted Cod thinks the fresh fennel frawns on top is a nice touch.

This is the Salted Cod's first attempt at a quiche. Red chard with some other kitchen veggies.

The Salted Cod thanks the Parker Farm CSA Members

Live Jornal community for some great ideas this week.

A hearty Maine feast

The Salted Cod went north and found some fresh haddock for about $5.00 a pound at the lobster co-op in Pine Point, Maine. Luckily, we had an excess of PBR from the night before which made for a sweet beer batter. Homemade chips accompanied this fish. The evening progressed with excellent company and a new found love for Bert and I, and a few more PBR's. This is Maine at it's best.

Photo courtesy of SGE

Balcony Garden

Just wanted to share a picture of my balcony garden progress. Things are looking good for the most part, just some slight yellowing of leaves is occurring in my basil. I'm trying to determine if I'm over watering or if they need to be fertilized. On a positive note, my pepperoncini peppers are looking great!

Here is our Share!Week 3

Starting at the top from left to right: Red Chard, Broccoli Rabe, Arugula, Beets, Sugar Snap Peas, Japanese Turnips & lettuce.

With week three upon we are starting to receive a more diverse share. Things are looking up and tasting good!

We could not wait to get our hands on the broccoli raab. I have to admit I was jealous last week when I heard that the larger shares were receiving some. We gave the raab a quick steam bath to loosen them up and make them feel good before stewing them in some fresh sausage sauce. The raab and sauce went over some fresh gnocchi from Capones.

We couldn't stop popping the sugar snap peas au natural.

Sauteed red chard, grilled salmon and lemons.

The last honorable mention this week;
The Salted Cod has pickled some baby beets to save for a later date.