CSA Day

K and I belong to a great Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) run by Common Ground and farmed by the fine people up at Norwich Meadows. During the winter, we head down to the stunning Prince George building once a month for pounds upon pounds of fresh produce, dairy, and meat. It's all ecofriendly, organic, humane, dirt-cheap (and, for what it's worth, often still caked it dirt from the farm--but K and I think that's a very good thing!) and tasty. While right now it's mostly storage crops, from May-November we have weekly pick-ups of incredible fresh fruits, veggies, beef, cheeses, maple syrups, honeys, yogurts, eggs, poultry, hummus, and more, all for an annual fee that adds up to less than a few weekly trips to Whole Foods.

This week (for 1/5 of the winter share cost of $135), we picked up:

• 2 lbs of potatoes
• 1/2 gallon of milk
• 1 dozen eggs
• 1/2 a chicken
• 2.5 lbs of carrots
• 1/4 lb of mixed greens (some really crazy stuff in there!)
• 1 pint of butter
• 1.5 lbs of onions
• 2 lbs of turnips

...and this was one of the skimpy weeks!

With farm fresh chicken, carrots, onions, greens, some garlic and defrosted ground beef from last month's pick-up, and some uncooked gnocchi and a few spoonfuls of truffle vinaigrette leftover from the big truffle meal (posting about that tomorrow), all I knew for certain was that K and I had a big meal ahead of us.

Gnocchi with Beef Ragu
Brown 1/2 lb ground beef in a little bit of oil. Season it. Remove it from pan and drain it a bit. Saute garlic, onions, carrots, celery, and red pepper flakes until they just start to caramelize. Add a can of organic fire-roasted crushed tomatoes. Stir. Throw in some salt, pepper, sugar, and dried Italian herbs. Let the sauce thicken up and then add the beef back in, simmering to let the flavors marry. Stir in some basil chiffonades and serve over gnocchi with heaps of Parmesano Reggiano on top.

Orange Braised Chicken
I just adapted this recipe from cdkitchen.com for chicken halves instead of chicken breast halves, removed the leeks, and switched out the breadcrumbs for flour. Given the size upgrade, I had to braise the demi-birds for about an hour. I also wanted even more orange flavor, so I squeezed in the juice of half the orange that I skinned alive for its zest. I was going to snap a picture and experiment with my ability to shoot hi-quality food porn, but my camera/phone/palm/mp3 player device's battery was too low to open the camera program. Alas.

Here's the original recipe:

1 cup chicken broth, fat-free, less-sodium
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1 1/2 teaspoon grated orange rind
1 teaspoon sugar
3/4 teaspoon dried basil
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
4 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves
1 1/2 tablespoon Italian-seasoned breadcrumbs
1 tablespoon olive oil Cooking spray
1 cup matchstick-cut carrots
1 cup leeks, thinly sliced
1/2 cup celery, chopped
2 tablespoons dry vermouth or vodka

Directions:

Combine first 7 ingredients in a bowl; stir with a whisk. Set aside.

Coat chicken with breadcrumbs.

Heat oil in a large nonstick skillet coated with cooking spray over medium-high heat. Add chicken; cook 5 minutes on each side or until golden brown. Remove chicken.

Add carrot, leeks, celery, and vermouth to pan. Saute 3 minutes or until leeks are soft. Return chicken to pan. Pour broth mixture over chicken; cover, reduce heat, and simmer 15 minutes or until chicken is done.

Dinner was altogether quite tasty, nice contrast of flavors and textures in the pasta course and finger-licking good super-tender chicken with a sauce that I literally had to pull K away from. Oh, and I just tossed the greens with what was left of the truffle vinaigrette. The meal's only real frustration was that 1/2 of chicken only means 1 drumstick...and, um, the obscene mess I made in the kitchen. Sadly, tonight I'm on dish duty since K is putting in some late-night work on some financial statements for our non-profit.

Off to clean...