CSA Week 11

It’s a short post this week, because we got the crate a day before we left for Las Vegas for a week (oh yes, there will be posts about that). So I only had one day to make, eat, and store what I could. That is also the reason that we will skip from week 11 to week 13 – I had a friend take our share while we were out of town.

In the crate this week:
Watermelon
Korean Melons
Peaches
Plums
Large and small tomatoes
Corn
Green Beans
Bell Peppers

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I had never tried Chinese or Korean melons, so I was curious as to what they would taste like.

When I cut them open, they had a lot of seeds in the middle (like a cantaloupe), so I scooped those out, cut off the rind, and chopped the flesh.

It turns out that they taste a lot like any other melon – kind of a combination of cantaloupe, honeydew, and cucumber. They were very refreshing and sweet. We just snacked on them plain while watching TV – much better than popcorn!

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I used the peaches, plums, and the white cherries that I had frozen from week 7 to make a refrigerator jam (meaning, you don’t have to seal it in jars because it is going straight to the fridge) – I thought it would be nice because they are all stone fruits, and all the same color. I added a little bit of fresh ginger and ground cardamom to make it more interesting and little exotic.

I didn’t really use a recipe, so I will give you an approximation:

1 pint yellow plums

4 medium peaches

1 pint white cherries

1 tsp grated, fresh ginger

3 cups sugar (plus more to taste)

1 lemon, juiced, small section of peel cut off

1 tsp ground cardamom

Cut the plums away from their pits and into chunks. Pit and peel the peaches and cut into chunks. With the cherries, you should have about six cups of fruit. Add fruit and the rest of the ingredients to a large sauce pan. The lemon peel provides your pectin. This amount of sugar will make for a not-too-sweet jam, adjust the level to your liking.

Heat the mixture over medium-high heat until it comes to a boil. Continue to boil, stirring constantly, mashing the fruit into small pieces as it softens and cooks. Cook until a candy thermometer reaches 220 degrees, about 20 to 25 minutes. That should let it set to the right consistency, if you can’t get it to that point it’s fine. Remove from heat, cool, and store in an airtight container in the refrigerator.

A softer consistency is just fine and delicious with yogurt (shown here) or warm over ice cream, just don’t overcook it or you will have a stiff candy-like substance.

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I had some left over hoisin grilled steak and baby spinach from the flank steak blog. As I said there, the most common way to use flank steak is stir fry; so that’s exactly what I did with the leftovers, using up some bell peppers and zucchini while I was at it. This is a fantastic way to use up leftovers and produce at the end of the week – you can really use anything you like.

I threw the steak into a large saute pan over medium-high heat and browned it. Then I set the meat aside as I sauteed the peppers and zucchini with some onion. I put the spinach on top to wilt, then added the steak back in to reheat, finished everything off with some soy sauce and hoisin, and served it over rice.