CSA Newsletter 09.23.11

Welcome to the busiest weekend in Unity, Maine! The annual Common Ground Country Fair is happening and last year forty two thousand people came through our town. It’s a ‘celebration of rural living’, with farmers markets, livestock, organic food vendors, and so much more. If you have never been, it might be worth the trip for you some year. Our son, Maceo, loves to see the oxen and chickens and the demonstrations are great. This week we will start pulling the winter squash out of the fields and it’s a beautiful thing to see all that squash windrowed. This week’s box feels like the end of summer, enjoy!

In your box:

Full Shares:
Radishes
Potatoes
Summer Squash
Cucumbers
Pears
Greens
Tomatoes

Half Shares:
Greens
Radishes
Potatoes
Summer Squash
Cucumbers
Tomatoes
Pears

This is such a fun recipe, especially if you have children who are fans of the movie  Also a tasty farewell to fresh summer produce items.

Ratatouille’s Ratatouille
As envisioned by Smitten Kitchen
1/2 onion, finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, very thinly sliced
1 cup tomato puree (such as Pomi)
2 tablespoons olive oil, divided
1 small eggplant
1 smallish zucchini
1 smallish yellow squash
1 longish red bell pepper
Few sprigs fresh thyme
Salt and pepper
Few tablespoons soft goat cheese, for serving

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Pour tomato puree into bottom of an oval baking dish, approximately 10 inches across the long way. Drop the sliced garlic cloves and chopped onion into the sauce, stir in one tablespoon of the olive oil and season the sauce generously with salt and pepper. Trim the ends off the eggplant, zucchini and yellow squash. As carefully as you can, trim the ends off the red pepper and remove the core, leaving the edges intact, like a tube. On a mandoline, adjustable-blade slicer or with a very sharp knife, cut the eggplant, zucchini, yellow squash and red pepper into very thin slices, approximately 1/16-inch thick.Atop the tomato sauce, arrange slices of prepared vegetables concentrically from the outer edge to the inside of the baking dish, overlapping so just a smidgen of each flat surface is visible, alternating vegetables. You may have a handful leftover that do not fit. Drizzle the remaining tablespoon olive oil over the vegetables and season them generously with salt and pepper. Remove the leaves from the thyme sprigs with your fingertips, running them down the stem. Sprinkle the fresh thyme over the dish.Cover dish with a piece of parchment paper cut to fit inside. (Tricky, I know, but the hardest thing about this.) Bake for approximately 45 to 55 minutes, until vegetables have released their liquid and are clearly cooked, but with some structure left so they are not totally limp. They should not be brown at the edges, and you should see that the tomato sauce is bubbling up around them. Serve with a dab of soft goat cheese on top, alone, or with some crusty French bread, atop polenta, couscous, or your choice of grain.

~Matt and Heather and the Sparrow Arc Crew