CSAs & a Spicy Broccoli Rabe Baguette

Back in August I found this great website: Local Harvest. Local Harvest makes it super easy to find farmers' markets, family farms, and other sources of sustainable and locally grown food. All you have to do is enter your zip code and BOOM farms, farmers' markets everywhere near you! What's also great about this website is they also help get you in contact with CSAs. For those of you who have never heard of a CSA before it stands for Community Supported Agriculture. Basically you give a farmer money up front and they will provide you with a share of whatever they grow! So Local Harvest finds farms that participate in CSAs and make it super simple for you to contact them. I'd been interested in CSAs for awhile but never had figured out how to find one until Local Harvest came along. I searched and found Wellspring Farm in West Bend, Wisconsin approximately 32.5 miles from me (according to Google maps). Since summer was ending I had missed the opportunity of participating in a summer share where the produce would be extra bountiful. However, I found Wellspring also offers winter shares, which actually I thought would be better since I'm typically only cooking for one! It's also a little cheaper and you only pick up your share of produce every other week. I also was able to order a dozen eggs along with the produce! So I signed up and on October 25th I picked up my first share from Wellspring at Outpost on Capitol Drive. WOW was there a ton of vegetables! Leeks, onions, garlic, shallots, turnips, fennel, kohlrabi, carrots, beets, parsnips, spinach, kale, radicchio, cabbage, cilantro, parsley, butternut squash, acorn squash, and more! How was I going to eat all of this delicious food!? Some of it I had never even cooked with before! But that's exactly what I wanted, to be exposed to lots of new food and figure out how to make it and make it tasty!

So here is my first recipe from my CSA using Broccoli Rabe, a new ingredient to me, but one that I will definitely keep using! I really liked the nuttiness it had, plus I looked it up and it's also high in Vitamins A & C! And it's also called Rapini!

Spicy Broccoli Rabe Baguette
This recipe is adapted from The Art of Simple Food by Alice Waters.

Ingredients

• 1 bunch broccoli rabe, thick stems discarded
• 2 Tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 garlic clove, minced
• 1 teaspoon crushed red pepper
  
• Salt and freshly ground pepper
• whole grain or sprouted grain baguette
  
• sprinkle of Parmesan cheese
  

Directions:

• Bring a pot of salted water to a boil (you want just enough water to cover the broccoli rabe in order to preserve the Vitamin C!) Add the broccoli rabe and cook until just tender but still bright green, about 3 minutes.
  
• Either strain your broccoli with a colander or use a slotted spoon to pull it out if you want to reuse the water. You can use the water to cook pasta or rice or quinoa! It will be a slightly green color (that means there are nutrients in there!)
  
• Once the rabe is cooled you can squeeze some of the excess water out. You'll notice the huge amount of broccoli rabe you started with has shrunk significantly!
  

• In a large, deep skillet, heat the oil. Add the garlic and red pepper and cook over low heat until the garlic is golden, about 3 minutes.
  
• Carefully add the broccoli rabe (the water in it will make the oil jump!) and cook over moderately high heat, stirring, until hot, about 4 minutes. Season with salt and pepper. You can then just it as is, but I took it one step further to make a whole meal out of it. I grabbed Cybros' Sprouted 7 Grain baguette, cut in half. Toasted it for two minutes on it's own under the broiler. Then spread the broccoli rabe over it and toasted it again for another minute. Sprinkle some Parmesan cheese on top and Voila! Spicy Broccoli Rabe Baguette! Delicious!
  

Other ideas:

• Cut baguette into smaller pieces to make little Broccoli Rabe Crostinis!
  
• Cook quinoa in the leftover broccoli rabe boiling liquid and then mix the quinoa and broccoli rabe together! Could do the same thing with rice or pasta.
• Add the leftover broccoli rabe to your scrambled eggs in the morning or as a filler in an omelet. 

Let me know if you have any other ideas!
--Amy