The importance of CSA

CSA – Community Supported Agriculture is an initiative beneficial for the whole community. It brings the farmers and the consumers closer in a tighter partnership. It allows the farmer to pre-book a harvest allowing to focus on the crop during the peak and also generating early investment. The consumers are rewarded with fresh seasonal produce, many times in a variety which given a choice or even a desire they might not actually be able to buy. Secondly it forces you to cook seasonally using local ingredients. This is of-course a good thing! Many times it will challenge you with new ingredients, or challenge you to make new ways of using the familiar ingredients when they are bountiful in their season.

From Asparagus to Zucchini

FairShare Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) Coalition was formerly known as the Madison Area CSA Coalition, MACSAC. They are a non-profit organization matching consumers and farmers in the madison area. To promote local and seasonal community driven cooking it has published a couple of books which help with learning to cook with a bounty of myriad ingredients a season would throw up. The books also are a great source for ideas since recipe is many times a guideline or an invitation to make it your own. They graciously gifted us their book “From Asparagus to Zucchini” which literally is an A-Z of vegetable focussed cooking covering every seasons treasures.

A Risotto for the winters

As we were flipping through the book a risotto recipe caught our eye. Squashes were still in season and we always have saffron and parmesan on hand in our house. Instead of arborio rice we decided to make it heartier and feeling adventurous we substituted the rice with wheat berries.

Wheat berries is essentially wheat grains. We soaked them for 30 minutes and then cooked them covered in salted water for about a hour till tender.

On the side we chopped the leeks and boiled the winter squash and made a bright orange puree. We crushed the saffron with some salt in a mortar and pestle. We added some warm chicken stock to this and infused the saffron for a very aromatic and sweet smelling stock.

We then sautéed the leeks and added the wheat berries sautéing them a bit as well. Then we cooked them stirring continuously adding little bit of the chicken stock till the leeks and the wheat berries were cooked to tenderness with a bite.

We then stirred in the squash puree and cooked on low heat finishing with a dab of butter to swirl through.

We were recently gifted a beautiful cheese grater by our friends Gregor and Susi. Its a beautifully crafted grater they sourced on one of their trips to italy and we really love using it. Promptly we grated some good parmesan over our risotto and wasted no further time to stick our forks in. So next time squashes and leeks turn up in your csa box you know what to try!