Grooming the produce

Treats from the CSA are beginning to pick up steam. It's still early in the season here (hard to believe when I'm wilting from the heat) but about to be midseason, hooray! Soon, soon there will be local tomatoes and all sorts of wonderful things. In the meantime, I'm finding that it's actually pretty nice to be able to ramp up to full capacity. Farm-fresh produce is incomparably delicious, but it takes a lot of grooming. I'm discovering that I need to schedule an hour or so for food-grooming on Thursday evenings.

I hadn't expected that, but in fact it's a nice, relaxing activity, as long as the kitchen is clean when I start. And then everything is in nice clean working order when I go to cook, which is a definite good. Grocery store produce may look a lot more groomed than this stuff, but it still needs attention before you can cook with it -- there's just a lot less motivation to do it as soon as it comes in the door, because it looks fit for storage. It's also a lot more efficient to take care of it all at once, as you'll see:

Fortunately, I'd been reading Paula Wolfert on the subject of greens and the like, and so have a good idea of how to deal with the different sorts of food. She recommends filling a tub with very cold water and soaking delicate greens, like salad greens, for fifteen minutes to half an hour to both clean and refresh it. The dirt falls to the bottom of the tub and the greens perk up. Then spin them dry, spread them on a clean kitchen towel, roll it up, and put this in an airtight container or plastic bag. There will be enough spare dampness in the bundle to keep them crisp, but not enough to promote rotting.

Sturdier greens get trimmed and washed thoroughly, then parboiled. Drain and squeeze out excess moisture, pack into a ball or stack, and store in an airtight container or plastic bag. I never would have done all this to my greens under ordinary circumstances, but when you have a whole bunch of different greens to process, the time overhead per green is a lot less, and this really does make them keep better, taste better, store more compactly, and then, of course, it's much easier to cook with them when the moment comes.

Other produce that stands up to washing (shallots, potatoes, etc) gets washed and set out to dry very very thoroughly, then stored as appropriate; other produce is wiped clean with a damp towel. This week we got:

chard
cauliflower greens (!)
lovely mixed salad greens
baby onions
shallots
zucchini
cucumber
fresh (i.e. not dried, storage) garlic
eggs

Comments

[Robert]

I have never heard that before about greens. That's really neat. You mentioned Paula Wolfert as the source for that technique, do you have any other recommendations for similar "grooming" of vegetables?

[teep]

I got the first zukes and yellow crooknecks out of my garden yesterday. They were utterly delightful, buttery and tender. The garden has also been producing spearmint (for mint iced tea, the summer beverage at my house) and Bristol black raspberries.

I'm glad the CSA thing is working out well -- and look at the variety of things you are getting that you might not otherwise have ever wound up cooking with...

[greg walker]

I'm interested in this parboiling of greens ahead of time. How long will they last afer that -- 3 days? Does this make more sense than to wash as you would the tender greens, dry thoroghly, then store in an airtight bag?

[redfox]

Excellent question! Here's the story with the parboiled greens -- I find that they keep about five days prepared that way. The major advantages of the parboiling are:

* ensures that the greens don't get bruised or crushed;
* gives you an opportunity to expell extra water before you make your final dish, avoiding the spinach-water effect;
* smoothes out the flavor a bit;
* allows them to take up MUCH less room in the fridge (a major benefit in my book);
* makes it quicker and easier to cook them on a busy weeknight, and makes it easier to cook a mixture of greens together without worrying whether one will cook more rapidly than another.

If you want to keep them longer, or to use them to wrap a filling, the method I use for the tender greens works beautifully.