If anyone walked by Starr Space this past Wednesday afternoon, they probably saw my friend Gwen standing out front surrounded by an amazing abundance of vegetables. Thanks to Garden of Eve Farm (as well as Gwen, fellow Bushwick Food Coop-ers, and of course everyone in the community who signed up), the Bushwick CSA is in full effect.
After stopping by and picking up my share, my bag was filled with red leaf lettuce, arugula, asparagus, radishes, leeks, dill, cilantro and pea shoots. The first salad from these veggies was absolutely incredible, I feel like I tasted flavors in lettuce I never even knew existed! However, for me, there’s only a certain number of just salad meals I can have a week (e.g. one or two) so I got to thinking about what else I could do with the rest of the veggies. There were still tons of pea shoots left over and after a little bit of searching for inspiration, I decided to turn them into a pesto.
Ingredients:
3 cups pea shoots
3/4 cup walnuts
1/2 cup cilantro
1/4 cup Parmesan
2 cloves garlic
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup olive oil
This couldn’t be simpler — add all of the ingredients except for the olive oil into a cuisinart or blender and pulse until finely ground, then stream in the olive oil while blending. That’s it!
To turn the pesto into a proper dinner, I mixed it with some rigatoni, grilled up some salmon (I bought it at the Food Bazaar on Wyckoff Ave. Seriously you have to check out their fish section if you live near-by — it’s incredible!), and finished it off with a little more pesto and a lemon slice on top.
To store the pesto, put it in a tupperware and pour a thin film of olive oil over the top before putting it in the fridge or freezer.
Diego June 12th, 2009 at 12:47 pm
wow – nice photo, check out those bowls!
Dan June 12th, 2009 at 2:53 pm
mmm, that looks fantastic, and other than just eating the flowers outta my bag of pea shoots, I hadn’t come up with anything else to do with em…this may be dinner tonight, thanks!
Donna June 15th, 2009 at 10:29 am
bushwick coop?? good to know about, thanks!
mopar June 18th, 2009 at 11:11 am
What a brilliant idea!
Funny, we belong to the Williamsburg/Greenpoint CSA and we got the same vegetables, minus the cilantro, plus strawberries and rhubarb for our fruit share. (There are actually two Bushwick coops, one is at Make the Road.)
On Sunday, we used up all the arugula and some of the radishes in salads and sandwiches. Monday, we made chicken with leeks, asparagus, saffron, parsley, and a touch of cream. Dessert was strawberry and rhubarb tart on filo dough. Tuesday, we turned the leftover chicken into a pasta dish with a side of stir-fried pea shoots and walnuts. I couldn’t think of what to do with the dill, so the appetizer was cheddar, dill, and anchovies on Triscuits. Try it, it’s really good. We’ll probably finish the red leaf lettuce tonight.
Nothing has gone bad and we are almost done using everything.
I am really happy with the type and number of vegetables we are getting. Last year’s Long Island CSA was a little random, one of everything, so you had to go shopping to make a meal and there was a lot of waste.
It’s funny to see local restaurants get the same thing. Two restaurants we went to this weekend had asparagus and rhubarb all over the menu. Last year, we had the same CSA as Northeast Kingdom so for a few weeks there we had ramps every way imaginable.