Week 11: Planning Ahead

You really have to plan ahead on a vegetable farm.

If you want winter radishes you have to plant them in the
 first week of august.

So we did. And now we have a bumper crop of shinden risoh, misato rose, and green meat radishes coming along. We also have a rather bolty crop of black spanish radishes.

At the same time we planted the winter radishes, we put in some french breakfast radishes (which you may remember from last week's share), some hakurei, and some gold ball turnips. 

I love gold ball turnips. SO MUCH. Click here if you, like me, enjoy reading about how wonderful the world's greatest turnips are as you anticipate how awesome it will be to eat them. Because it will be awesome to eat the turnips, though it isn't quite time to do that yet. 

It is time to thin the turnips (another one of those planning ahead things that you need to do on a vegetable farm), which means that this week we get to eat the awesome turnip greens.

Along with turnip greens, this week's share will include: Onions, Carrots or Beets, Radishes or Hakurei, Cucumbers, Rutabaga, Chard or Kale, Basil, Parsley or Sorrel, and Tomatoes etc.

What should you do with your awesome turnip greens? Cook them with an awesome steak, of course. If you are not a meat eater, you can do almost exactly the same thing, just skip the part in the recipe where you put the steak in the pan. The greens will still be good, just not nearly as meaty.

Meaty Greens

The steak I cooked for this recipe was from Kolpack Family Farm. They are just down the road from us and have wonderful meat. I honestly cannot recomend them enough. Also, I threw some sliced radishes in with my greens. I know that I was talking to someone about cooked radishes (they weren't a raw radish fan) the other day. Cooking radishes really mellows their flavor. This is how you do it :)

• One small Onion, sliced thinly
• 1/2 Tbs Olive Oil
• 1 bunch Turnip Greens, roughly chopped
• 1 Sirloin Steak, approximately a pound of meat
• Salt and pepper to taste
• Optional: Half a bunch of radishes, sliced in 1/4-1/2 inch pieces

Heat the olive oil over medium heat in a large frying pan. Add the onion, and a pinch of salt and pepper. Cook, stirring frequently, until the onion is just beginning to soften. 

Add the steak to the pan, salt and pepper each side to taste. Brown on both sides. 

Turn the heat to low and continue to cook until the meat has reached your desired degree of doneness, flipping every five minutes or so. The cooking time will vary based on how thick your steak is and how you like your meat. Mine took about a total of ten minutes per side after browning.

Once the meat is done to your liking, remove it from the pan. Keep it warm.

Turn the heat up to medium/low. If you are including radishes, add them to the pan and saute them for about two minutes before adding the chopped turnip greens. Stir the greens in with the pan juices from the steak. Cook, stirring frequently, until all the greens have wilted and turned a more vibrant green color. 

Pile the greens onto the serving platter with the steak.

Once the sun sets, my food pictures tend to get kind of ugly. Sorry about that.
I promise it tastes good.