Lancaster Farm Fresh #3

Friday, May 23, 2008

May 19 CSA share:

1 head buttercrunch or green butterhead lettuce
grown by Goshen View Organics

½ lb salad mix grown by Farmdale Organics

2 heads Romaine lettuce grown by Riverview Organics

1 bunch radishes grown by Farmdale Organics

1 pkg white mushrooms grown by Mother Earth Organics

1 pkg shitake mushrooms grown by Mother Earth Organics

1 pint strawberries
grown by Green Valley or Pleasant View Organics

1 lb rhubarb grown by a neighboring farm to Riverview Organics

Unfortunately, I don’t have a picture of the full share because, well… because we ate it.  Sorry about that!  However, I wanted to include this picture of the very local ingredients we had for Hot & Sour Soup.  From the share we used the shiitake and button mushrooms and the scallions.  That’s local tofu and local bean sprouts, too. 

Hot & Sour Soup
from the original Moosewood Cookbook (adjustments by M and me in parentheses)

1 oz dried black mushrooms (obviously, we had fresh shiitakes and buttons)
8 cups water (local!!!!)
3 Tbs Chinese rice wine or dry sherry (for this we used some of the refrigerated white wine we’ve been storing our ginger in--YUM!)
1/2 cup plus 1 TB cidar vinegar
2 TBs tamari
1 3/4 tsp salt
1 cake (1/4 lb) firm tofu in thin strips
2 TBs cornstarch
2 beaten eggs (local happy eggs)
6 minced scallions (local...not sure how many we put in, but I think it was more than that--I do love my scallions)
1/4 - 1/2 tsp finely ground white pepper (we have black, so that’s what we used)

Chinese sesame oil
extra tamari to taste

(we added:
one pint contanier of mung bean sprouts ((local))
hot sesame oil, at the end, in each bowl)

For the directions, we skipped the first two, because they were for dried mushrooms.  You use two cups of the water to soak the ‘shrooms, but then you add the soaking liquid, so it all evens out.  I’ll just write out what we did:

1. Boil the water with the diced shiitake stems in it (softens them up and flavors the water).
2. Add the thinly sliced mushrooms, the wine/sherry, vinegar, tamari, salt, and tofu strips.  Lower the heat and let simmer for 10 minutes.
3. Mix the corn starch in a bowl with 3/4 cup of the hot soup until smooth, then add to soup.
4. As the soup gently boils, drizzle in the beaten eggs.  (M. and I have found that it’s really important that the soup is boiling when you do this.)
5. Add scallions, bean sprouts, and pepper.  Cook only a few minutes more.
6. Top each serving with a drizzle of sesame oil and a drop or two of hot sesame oil.

You can keep yo’ mama’s chicken soup--this is my cozy-make-everything-all-better-happiness hot soup.  Hmmmmm…

p.s. next week, I’ll try to snap a photo of the farm share before the wild animals devour it!