Spatula Diaries: What to do with a CSA box of home-delivered produce

After years of reporting on Baton Rouge’s flirtation with Community Supported Agriculture memberships, or CSAs, I bit the bullet and became a member myself last week, taking advantage of Inglewood Farm’s new relationship with the home delivery service, Indie Plate. Lazy me. I was finally enticed because someone was going to bring the weekly allotment straight to my door.

CSAs are interesting animals. In their purest sense, they provide farmers with revenue on the front end of a growing season through dues paid by members. Those members, in turn, receive a weekly share of the harvest—a box of seasonal produce with which to get creative. It’s a concept straight out of the ’60s, but one that has new resonance in our current eat-local era. (For more, read our story about how local projects like CSAs spread sustainable food trends in Baton Rouge.) The rub about CSAs is that they can freak out consumers used to more control, or that they’re wildly monotonous and force you to eat your weight in kale. As long as they’re appropriately diverse, I like the idea. Let the box show up and get to work.

This past Saturday afternoon, my first box—actually a brown grocery bag of produce—arrived from the Alexandria-based Inglewood via Indie Plate. Along with the organic produce were several original recipes for inspiration.

Here’s what was inside:
• Cold-pressed pecan oil made from Inglewood certified organic pecans
• Sugar cane
• Serrano peppers
• Purple okra
• Japanese Harukei turnips
• Radicchio
• Curly mustard greens
• Daikon radishes
• Rapini (broccoli rabe)
• Bonus from Indie Plate of satsumas and Meyer lemons

Interesting, right? The portions, as seen in the picture, weren’t so overwhelming that I was going to be chained to my kitchen for the next several days. It was definitely a manageable amount that would not go to waste.

I cooked the mustard greens in typical Southern fashion with onions, bacon and lots of salt and pepper. The Harukei turnips and okra (along with fresh corn, Romano green beans, more turnips, fresh red beans and other vegetables) made it into a pot of vegetable soup with homemade beef stock. I used the rapini in one of my favorite fall pasta dishes: orecchiette with rapini, sweet fennel sausage, red pepper flakes and breadcrumbs. The radishes were quick-pickled for use as a garnish on lunch-box sandwiches and an easy homemade dinnertime Vietnamese noodle salad. The pecan oil I’m saving for a really nice vinaigrette, and if I follow the recipe included in the bag from Nino’s Chef Elton Hyndman, I’ll combine it with juice from the Meyer lemon, and syrup extracted from the sugar cane (provided I can pull that off).

That just leaves radicchio and Serrano peppers, which will likely make it into some sort of taco—fish, probably—by the time the next box arrives later this week.

So far, so good.

Maggie Heyn Richardson is a regular 225 contributor. Reach her through hungryforlouisiana.com.