bok choy

This is part 8 of a summer long series about our CSA boxes and what we do with them. Recipes for Roasted Delicata Squash, Quick Stovetop Greens, Everything Radish Salad, and Sweet Roll Dough with Mashed Potatoes follow.

I’m going to be honest with you. I had a busy week and didn’t cook at home as much as I would have liked to.

Salt may be the ultimate flavor enhancer, but sugar is no slouch when it comes to balancing flavors in savory dishes, and one of the best ways to do so is by cooking with fruits.

Using fruit in savory dishes is not new fashion. In fact, it’s downright old hat - if we’re talking about botanically-correct fruits that are more commonly considered ‘vegetables’, such as tomatoes, cucumbers and eggplants, to name a few. As for the sweet varieties of produce that are not as ambiguous, they have also found their way into main courses. From succulent pork loin paired with spiced apples to roast turkey dressed with cranberry sauce, a bit of fruit can add another dimension to full-flavored recipes.

Perfect Pairings

Perusing the array of exotic vegetables available at farmers’ markets and Asian groceries is a bit like meeting distant relatives at a family gathering – they look vaguely familiar, but you don’t know their names and aren’t quite sure if you’ll get along. With proper introductions, however, you just might end up bringing them home for dinner.

While Asian products like oyster sauce and rice noodles have become as familiar to non-Asian shoppers as tomato sauce and pasta, others such as the vegetables in the produce section are still a mystery. Leafy greens, for instance, are common in Far Eastern cookery, but the typical varieties differ from those found in Western cuisines and leave even the most adventurous cooks occasionally wondering how they are used.  

If you’re left limp by iceberg lettuce but still baffled by bok choy, let this quick market guide help you get acquainted with some tasty Asian greens:

Has it already been a week? Can you tell from the bigger that the bounty is getting bigger? It's much harder to make our way through an entire box of local, sustainable, organic fresh produce - no matter how wonderful - when we spend part of the week out of town (as we did last week). Lucky for us there's always a line up of family, friends, and neighbors willing to take an extra bag of spinach, green garlic, or bok choy off our hands in a pinch. Why is it so hard to let these treasures go?

My friend Doug sent me a great article from Slate the other day, written by Catherine Price.