Cooking With This Week’s Box Recipe Links
Wild Ramps:
Italian Nettle & Ramp Soup (See Below)
18 Delicious Recipes for Ramps
30 Best Ramp Recipes to Celebrate Spring
Nettles:
Visit our previous blog post from 2018 for best practices for handling Nettles
Italian Nettle & Ramp Soup (See Below)
Scandinavian Nettle Soup with White Fish
Forager Chef’s Nettle Recipe Collection
Watercress:
Rustic Watercress Soup with Carrots and Ramp Leaves
Vietnamese Meatball & Watercress Soup
Asparagus and Watercress Pizza
Overwintered Spinach:
Creamy Spinach Chicken Casserole
Overwintered Parsnips:
Savory Bread Pudding with Parsnips
Hearty One-Bowl Parsnip Muffins
Overwintered Sunchokes (aka Jerusalem Artichokes):
Smashed Sunchokes with Thyme Butter
Chives:
Parmesan and Chive French Toast
Spring Salad with Barley and Lemon-Chive Vinaigrette
Spring Onion and Chive Pizza with Genius Cream Sauce
Cooking With This Week’s Box Notes
Welcome to the 2023 “Cooking With the Box!” My name is Andrea and I am a trained professional chef and have 16 years of experience in seasonal cooking and eating! While I enjoy an afternoon of leisurely cooking, I also understand the need at times to be able to put a healthy, vegetable-centric meal on the table with limited time. So I try to keep the “chef-y,” complicated recipes to a minimum and focus more on recipes of easy to moderate skill and time investment that incorporate multiple vegetables from your CSA box. Each week I will share a recipe or two that incorporates our featured vegetable(s) for the week along with this collection of “Cooking With the Box” recipes. The purpose of this article is to give you a starting point for planning how you are going to use every single item in your CSA box. Some weeks you may find a recipe you want to make, while in other weeks you may find inspiration that will lead you to your own recipe idea or an adaptation. Either way, I hope this is helpful and I hope you have fun creating some delicious food this year! If you are not already a member of our private Facebook Group, I encourage you to join. It’s another great resource for sharing recipes & ideas as well as asking questions.
Ok, with that introduction laid out, lets get into this week’s Cooking With the Box! First of all, I’d like to share this week’s featured recipe for Italian Nettle & Ramp Soup (See Below). Feel free to adapt this recipe to your liking. Leave out the beans and add some pork sausage for one variation, or make a batch of ramp pesto and use it to garnish the soup. While this recipe incorporates both of this week’s featured vegetables, I also gave you a list of other recipes using these ingredients. Additionally, I provided links to several really good recipe collections where you’ll find many different ideas for how to use both ramps and nettles.
Overwintered parsnips are naturally sweet, so I often like to incorporate them into baked goods where I can take advantage of their sweetness as an opportunity to reduce the amount of sugar in the recipe! This week you’ll find a recipe for Parsnip & Orange Spiced Cake and Hearty One-Bowl Parsnip Muffins. As for overwintered sunchokes, consider Heidi Swanson’s recipe for Sunchoke and Cashew Stir-Fry or try these Smashed Sunchokes with Thyme Butter.
Overwintered spinach leaves are generally more thick, yet tender and flavorful. Use it to incorporate some greens into your dinner plan for the family with either of these main dish recipes for Creamy Spinach Chicken Casserole and Mushroom and Spinach Lasagna. Pizza is one of those concepts that you can bend and adapt however you want to in any season of the year! If you’re up for a piece of the pie, consider making this Asparagus and Watercress Pizza or this Spring Onion and Chive Pizza with Genius Cream Sauce!
I hope you have a great week and enjoy cooking with fresh, green vegetables again! Hopefully, we’ll have some asparagus to share with you next week. Green garlic and red radishes will be here soon along with sorrel! Start gathering your recipes, it’s going to be a fun ride!
—Chef Andrea
Vegetable Feature: Nettles & Ramps
by Andrea Yoder
This week we’re featuring two of our favorite wild-harvested spring vegetables. The first is Stinging Nettles, which we both wild harvest and plant in the field. They need to be handled carefully, especially before they are washed and cooked. They have little fibers on the stems that contain several compounds including formic acid, which will give you a “stinging” sensation if you touch them with your bare skin. “Why are you giving me a vegetable that will sting me?! Are you trying to kill me?!” No, quite the contrary!
Nettles are very nutrient dense and help our bodies wake up after a long winter through their ability to purify blood and cleanse our bodies. They have anti-inflammatory and antihistamine properties. They are high in protein, carotenoids, chlorophyll, iron, calcium, magnesium, zinc, potassium, selenium and vitamins B, C, D and K. Wow—that’s a lot of nutritional goodness! Nettles give us that jump start we need in the spring and, they also taste great! Cooking destroys the stingers so you can safely handle them with bare hands. They have a rich flavor similar to spinach, but even better!
As for handling nettles, many of the stingers are removed with vigorous washing, which we’ve already done for you. Even though we’ve washed them, I would still recommend you handle them carefully and avoid touching them with bare hands prior to cooking. Some people are more sensitive to their sting than others, which is why we put them in a plastic bag to make it easier to get them home without touching them. You can use the bag as your “glove” to hold the bottom of the bunch while you remove the twist tie prior to washing them in a sink of water. While you are washing them, bring a pot of water to a boil. Transfer the nettles from the sink to boiling water using a pair of tongs. Boil for 2-3 minutes, then transfer to a bowl of ice water to cool them. Now you can handle them with your bare hands.
The lower portion of the stems may be tough, so only use the leaves and tender upper stem portions. You can pluck or cut these off the main stem after they are cooked. Alternatively, you can hold each stem (with your gloved/bagged hand) and use a pair of scissors to snip the tender leaves off the main stem before you cook them. Check out this blog post we did on May 10, 2018, which demonstrates these processes and includes pictures.
Nettle leaves are perishable, so it is best to cook them shortly after you receive them. The cooking water makes a beautiful tea, so don’t discard it. You can drink the tea either hot or cold and mixed with honey and lemon. The water can also be used to cook pasta, rice, etc. Nettles grow in other areas of the world with similar climates to ours, such as areas of Scandinavia, the United Kingdom, Italy, and other parts of Europe as well as Turkey, Russia, and parts of Asia. Thus, you will find nettles incorporated into a wide variety of preparations from different cultures. Nettle soup is a widely popular way to use nettles, as well as dishes that incorporate eggs, grains and pasta. They pair well with eggs, dairy, mushrooms, beans, asparagus, and other spring greens.
The second part of our feature is Wild Ramps! We forage for ramps in wooded areas where they grow on north-facing hillsides. They have a very short season lasting, at most, 3-4 weeks. Their flavor is kind of oniony-garlicky, but honestly the best way to describe it is simply rampy. They resemble a green onion, except they have tender, delicate lily-like leaves. Ramps grow in the woods and, while they can be replanted to establish new patches, it takes a long time for them to multiply. Many, us included, are concerned about the sustainability of ramps. Thus, it’s important to be mindful when harvesting them. Ramps grow in clumps and we’re careful to only take about half the clump while leaving the other half undisturbed. We also replant thousands of bulbs every year in an effort to ensure healthy ramp populations for many years to come! If you’d like to learn more about our harvest practices, please read our blog post from April 20, 2017.
Ramps may be eaten raw or cooked and both the leaves and lower bulb are edible. Eaten raw they can be quite pungent, but the flavor mellows with cooking. Ramps are often used in pasta and egg dishes, but can also be made into pesto, ramp butter and even added to baked goods. Ramps pair well with cream, cheese, bacon, and other spring vegetables including mushrooms, asparagus, nettles, and spinach. The leaves are the most perishable part and should be used within a few days. To store ramps, wrap the bunch in a damp paper or linen towel and keep them in the refrigerator.
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