The "Challenge" of Fresh Produce

I picked up my first bag of fresh produce from my farm share today.  It's early in the season, and judging by my own garden, I was expecting neither an abundance nor a lot of variety.  That is the way of in season and local produce.

Available today were green beans, radishes (the spiciest I've ever had!), spring onions, sage, mint, garlic, a few small serrano peppers and eggs.

The challenge now lies in using all this wonderful goodness every week.

I will make a salad tonight that has fresh greens from my own garden, augmented with some from the store, I must admit.  I don't have enough yet and awesome gardener lady down the road says hers are too sad to share.  Bridget picked and washed the greens, then  I taught her how to par-boil and slice the greenbeans, and how to make the perfect hard-cooked eggs.  Of course the radishes will be sliced (thin!) for the salad as well.

The sage has been hung in my pantry to dry.  The garlic needs to cure another few weeks.  The mint awaits this evening's mojito.

I took a bunch of the onions.  Onions are usually treated as a background ingredient, starting a dish as the mire poix.  I just love onions and often grill, sautee, or roast them as a side dish.  Today I made an onion tart.

I blind baked a sheet of puff pastry.  Chopped and sauteed most of the onions (and snuck those shy serrano peppers in there as well) in butter, oil and sherry. 

I saved some of the onions to braise (in butter and sherry) to top the tart with.

Once the tart filling was cool, I mixed in some grated manchego.  Goat cheese would have been a good complement to the onions as well, but manchego was what I had.

Spread it on the tart shell, top with the braised onions and back into the oven.  It'll make a nice appetizer to bring to the neighbor's BBQ tonight.

I can't wait to pick up next week's bag!