Recipe: Winter Radish Salad

Strikingly beautiful black radishes are larger and spicier than your usual May radish, but the long, cool nights of fall give them a sweetness and soft texture. They get milder tasting when cooked and are pretty intense raw, however rubbing slices with salt and letting them sweat for 10 minutes or so takes some of the heat off. Grating or cutting into thin slices or matchsticks is the best way to prepare raw winter radishes, and they go fantastically well with salads of all sorts. A simple vinaigrette is the finishing touch.

Ingredients:
Salad:
- 3 medium size black radishes
- 1 large or 2 small carrots
- 4-5 stems of parsley
- ½ tsp salt
- 1 tsp sesame seeds
Dressing:
- 2 tbsp lemon juice
- 3 tbsp olive oil
- ½ tsp maple syrup
- ½ tsp minced ginger
- 1 garlic clove, minced

Steps:
1) Grate radishes with largest size grater and place in a small bowl. Add salt and mix well. Leave to soften while you prep the other ingredients.

2) Grate carrots with largest size grater. Finely chop parsley and combine with carrots.

3) Mix dressing ingredients.

4) Squeeze excess water out of radishes and move to a colander. Rinse well and add to salad bowl with carrots and parsley.

5) Add sesame seeds and dressing and mix well. Let rest for 5 minutes to allow flavours to mix and then serve.

This is our final recipe of the 2015 season. We will start up again with weekly recipes featuring the seasonal bounty of the farm in June 2016. Until then, we'll be blogging about life on the farm in the off season - the work never ends!

Thanks to all our CSA members for supporting the farm this year!

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Recipe: Carrot Apple Slaw

Colourful carrots make for a vibrant salad, and this time of year we have carrots in spades and are looking for ways to use them. Visit an apple orchard and pick some red apples to toss in for even more colour. A bright, citrusy vinaigrette and some toasted nuts tie all the flavours together as well as keep the apples from turning brown. I made this recipe for our big Thanksgiving feast, so it'll serve at least 4 adults. Cut the amounts in half for a smaller, more mundane occasion, like Tuesday night.

Ingredients:
Slaw:
- 3-4 carrots (ideally in a mix of colours)
- 1 large or 2 small apples
- ½ cup pine nuts or walnuts
- 1 tbsp butter
- ½ cup chopped parsley
Dressing:
- 4 tbsp olive oil
- juice and zest of 1 lime
- 1 tbsp honey
- 1 tsp salt

Steps:
1) Peel and cut carrots into thin, matchstick-sized strips with either a knife, mandolin or grater.

2) Cut apples into similarly sized thin strips or matchsticks (I leave the apple peel on).

3) Melt butter on medium heat and toast pine nuts until lightly browned, about 5 minutes.

4) Finely chop parsley.

5) Combine carrots, apples, parsley and pine nuts (when cooled).

6) Combine dressing ingredients and pour over slaw. Mix well and serve.

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Recipe: Lettuce and Pea Soup

It may seem strange to cook lettuce and make soup out of it, but chilled soups for hot weather tend to follow different rules than the heavy soups of winter. Here wilted lettuce with sweet shelled peas makes for a light and fresh-tasting lunch on a sweltering July day. If you've grown a bit tired of salads through the leafy spring this cold soup is a refreshing change as we await the meatier (so to speak) veggies of mid-summer.

Ingredients:
- 1/2 head of lettuce, chopped
- 1/2 pint of peas, shelled
- 4 garlic scapes, chopped coarsely
- 1 tbsp. butter
- 1 cup vegetable or chicken stock
- 1 cup milk
- salt to taste
- a handful of parsley, chopped
- (optional) a handful of mint, chopped

Steps:

1) Heat pan on medium-low and melt butter. Add garlic scapes and lettuce and sauté until leaves are wilted, about 1-2 minutes.