Salad Mix
Fingerling Potatoes (Rose Finn)
Heirloom Tomatoes (all purpose, slicers, & salad)
German White Garlic
Genovese Basil
A small something extra…
What a beautiful week. This week made summer seem easy and we moved a bit faster as the humidity lifted. We are able to work the crop land, getting ready for fall plantings and seeding summer cover crops. We amended many of our fields with lime last week and compost was dropped off this week, so we can get our brassica and carrot beds ready for planting. Our fall seedlings are looking fabulous. We started over 90 trays (6000 or so plants) this week as a last big push before the days get shorter. Our seedlings include fennel, parsley, Chinese cabbage, red mustard, Swiss chard, spinach, beets, lettuce, chicories, overwinter cabbages, Tuscan kale, and on and on.
Remember during May and June all that constant rain that we kept talking about, well now we are feeling the effects. Our eggplant, beans, okra, cucumbers, and sweet peppers are coming on later than we hoped, so the share has a few less options than normal, but delicious options all the same. We hope that you enjoy the summer lettuce as much as we do. We are giving extra big basil bunches and more garlic, in the hope that you can all make pesto to freeze for later in the year. It is one of our favorite things to enjoy during the winter months and holds its flavor superbly. Or you can use it now for a pesto potato salad, yum. Check out the recipes below and enjoy the share… Autumn and Brian
“Like much good poetry, pesto is made of simple stuff. It is simply fresh basil, garlic, cheese, and olive oil hand ground into sauce. There is nothing more to it than that, but every spoonful is loaded with the magic fragrances of the Riveria…. In Genoa, they use equal quantities of Parmesan cheese and of a special, mildly tangy Sardinian cheese made of sheep’s milk. the Romano pecorino cheese available here is considerably sharper than the Sardo Pecorino. You must therefore increase the proportion of Parmesan to pecorino, or you will throw the fine equilibrium of flavors in pesto out of balance. A well rounded pesto is never made with all Parmesan or all pecorino. The old, traditional recipes do not mention pine nuts or butter. But modern pesto invariably includes them, and so does this recipe.” Marcella Hazan, The Classic Italian Cookbook
Blender Pesto by Marcella Hazan, The Classic Italian Cookbook
2 cups fresh basil
½ cup olive oil
2 Tbls pine nuts
2 cloves garlic, peeled and lightly crushed
1 tsp salt
½ cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
2 Tbls freshly grated pecorino chesse
3 Tbls butter, softened to room temperature
Put the basil, olive oil, pine nuts, garlic cloves, and salt in the blender and mix at high speed. Stop from time to time and scrape the ingredients down toward the bottom of the blender cup with a rubber spatula.
When the ingredients are evenly blended, pour into a bowl and beat in the two grated cheese by hand. (This is not much work, and it results in more interesting texture and better flavor than you get when you mix in the cheese in the blender.) When the cheese has been evenly incorporated, beat in the softened butter.
Before spooning the pesto over the pasta, add to it a tablespoon or so of hot water in which the pasta has boiled.