CSA Inspiration

It’s always fun to get inspiration from something in the CSA delivery and make it a highlight of a meal. This week the inspiration so far is from the citrus. I love really fresh citrus. This week we got oranges and ruby red grapefruit. We scarfed down a grapefruit while I was attempting to segment one of them. It never made it to the salad bowl. Eventually one grapefruit and two oranges, supremed, became the base for this salad.

Well, let’s say most of the fruit made it into the bowl. When I didn’t cut it well, I ate it. What can I say? I really do love fresh juicy sweet citrus, and these do not disappoint.

The recipe:
two or three citrus fruits, navel oranges, juice oranges, sweet red grapefruit, what you have
about two or three ounces of fennel, pulled from the bulb
an ounce or so of red onion
salt, pepper
really good olive oil

Supreme the citrus, by cuting off the peel, save it, cut out wedges avoiding the pith and membrane. You will use the peel to make the vinaigrette. Julienne the fennel and the red onion. I make both really thin and usually an inch to two inches long. Mix it all together. Just before serving, drizzle extra virgin olive oil and squeeze as much juice as you can from the fruit left attached to the peels you reserved. I also squeeze all the juice out of that center of the fruit after you have cut out the wedges. Salt and pepper to taste. Refreshing and for us, the way to end the meal.

If we have a rich dish for dinner, this citrus salad really is a light finish to the meal.

The rest of our mostly local meal last night was a simple pasta with pesto, and steamed Brussels sprouts with butter. The pesto is my garlic scape pesto defrosted from the freezer.

The recipe for the pesto is here. What is really funny about looking for that post, I saw I made strawberry cubes. They must be in the very bottom of the freezer, so I need to go “freezer diving” and find them.

I boiled up some egg noodles, picked up at the market a while back. You can find these many places. Egg noodles with pesto.

Served with a 2007 Linden Hardscrabble Chardonnay. Big, rich, buttery. Cuts through the richness of the pesto. I took this picture while I was cooling it in the freezer. I didn’t have any chardonnay in the back fridge, so pulled this one up from the cellar.

Before this light dinner, we shared some spring rolls picked up at Roots, alongside one of our favorites, that Meyer lemon basil fizz, made with Aranciata, also from Roots. Lovely evening, sitting on the porch and watching the sunset before dinner.

Today I considered grilling something, but had nothing defrosted and a crock pot full of tomato, basil and Boarman’s sausage sauce. Tonight there will be pasta with sauce, some bread and greens with goat cheese. I made that sauce to serve a few times this week, once it will be served over steamed kale from the CSA. Looking forward to what we will get Wednesday, and eating mostly locally sourced items. Loving the coming of spring. In other words, running out of garlic scapes and wanting to make more pesto.

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