Tag: sweet bell peppers

Wellness Blast Thai-ish Soup Recipe

Being a season of viruses, we’ve definitely been cooking up some antiviral recipes lately that can be prepared with or without meat. Late spring is sort of the beginning of the winding down of our veggie season at ARTfarm, but ingredients can be sourced from other local farms or your own backyard Victory Garden. The recipe ingredients list seems long here, but in these days of social distancing we thought it best to give people lots of options and substitutions. It’s mostly a lot of chopping and preps quickly.

Our ginger and turmeric have such tender skins they don’t need peeling. Just wash, chop and go!

We will be presenting a series of articles on starting a small home garden for those of you who have been asking us what to plant and when. Stay tuned on our website, we’ll be offering some information and also soon put up a signup sheet if you’d like to attend a Zoom videoconference class with local experts from UVI’s Cooperative Extension Service to answer more of your questions on starting a home garden.

Tom Khing Michi-Gai Phak*

(Ginger Not-Chicken Coconut Soup)

Feeds about 3 hungry people who really love soup. We usually double it.
10 minutes prep time, 40 minutes cook/simmer time.

This is a garden veggie heavy/homemade sort of homage to one of ARTfarm family’s all time favorite Asian soups: Galangal Chef Kenneth Biggs’ Tom Kha Gai soup. We are substituting ginger and turmeric for Chef’s galangal root and adding more veggies.

The coconut is nourishing and anti-viral, the turmeric color is cheerful, the gingery warmth of the rich smooth broth and onions and chili peppers (if desired) help open the sinuses without acidity, the customizable, whatever-you’ve-got-available veggies make it hearty; it’s just soothing and lovely. The citrus tang and floating cherry tomatoes added at the end offer little pops of sweet vitamin blasts and the cilantro is cleansing to the body.

This recipe is verrry adjustable. You can make it with some, or all, or substitutions for, the various chopped vegetables and herbs in this recipe. Tiny white Japanese enoki or bonapi mushrooms are a fun texture in this if you can get them, but any (or no) mushrooms will do. (Mushrooms may have anti-viral qualities!) This is traditionally a chicken recipe and we’ve suggested tofu or a light milder fish like mahi or wahoo to substitute, but you can make it without – it still has such a rich broth and holds up well if you add other veg.

Ingredients

2 stalks fresh lemongrass, tough outer layers removed
1 one inch piece (a man thumb) baby ARTfarm ginger, grated, no peeling necessary
1 one inch piece (a man thumb) baby ARTfarm turmeric, grated, no peeling necessary
3 large kaffir lime leaves
1 – 2 sprigs Thai basil
1 sour orange or other large citrus: all the juice and a tiny bit of the skin oil or zest
6 cups broth – veggie or whatever you’ve got
1 lb. your favorite protein: a pack of firm tofu, cut into 1” or smaller pieces
– or – chicken (boneless breast or thigh), sliced into thin strips
– or – mahi or wahoo, cubed
1 large onion, sliced thin into crescent moons
8 oz. mushrooms (Japanese or whatever you’ve got)
1 13.5-oz. can coconut milk well shaken**
– or – make fresh coconut milk!!! (Crucian Contessa’s recipe)
2 Tbsp. fish sauce (such as nam pla or nuoc nam)
– or – a slurry of 2 Tbspn. miso paste dissolved in some of the broth
– or – 2 Tbsp. Bragg’s Aminos to taste

1/2 pint cherry tomatoes
1-4 finely chopped Thai chili peppers to taste
1/4 cup fresh chopped cilantro leaves with tender stems
a few sour orange or lime wedges (for garnish, if you’re feeling fancy)

——–optional add-ins (we do all of them!!)——-
* 1 cup pumpkin, sliced thin then cubed into chunks
* 1/2  bunch cooking greens (radish tops, kale, chicory etc.), remove hard center ribs, cut leaves into 1″ pieces or julienned
* 4-5 seasoning peppers, seeded and sliced
* 1 bunch radishes or turnips, washed, root sliced into coins, use the tops as greens
* 2 medium bell peppers, seeded and thinly sliced

How to make it

  1. Using the back of a knife, lightly smash lemongrass; fold and bundle it up to about 4-5″ long, to fit in a large sauce pan. Add the broth and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer until flavors are melded, 8–10 minutes. Pull out the lemongrass with tongs and discard, and add microplaned/grated ginger and turmeric to the hot broth.
  2. Add tofu and your big pile of chopped onions, pumpkin, greens, (and seasoning pepper if desired), and return to a boil. Reduce heat, add mushrooms and citrus juice, and simmer, skimming occasionally, until cooked through and onions and pumpkin are soft, 20–25 minutes.
  3. For the last five minutes, turn the heat to low and add radish coins, bell peppers, (chicken/fish if applicable). Simmer until the protein is cooked through, about 3-5 minutes. Ladle some of the hot broth into a teacup and add your miso, stirring until liquified.
  4. Mix in coconut milk, your brown flavor sauce option (fish sauce/miso slurry/aminos), tiny leaves of Thai basil, and kaffir lime leaves. Heat through.
  5. Divide soup among bowls. Serve with garnishes: cherry tomatoes, thinly sliced pieces of thai chili peppers, cilantro, and citrus wedges. OMG it’s so good. If you have any hint of a cold this nutritious soup will blast it out of you!!

 

*thanks Google Translate. Apologies to Thai people. Hopefully we haven’t said something rude.

** Chef Ken’s coconut tip: if you purchase canned coconut milk, check the fat content (in grams per can, not the percentage). Look for something in the 10+ grams range. Less than that, it can come out too thin – and sometimes canned coconut milk contains emulsifiers that can give it a weird mouth feel.

 

Seedy Farmstand! 10am – 12 noon ARTfarm Saturday 

Come try out one of our new heirloom variety watermelons! You can even prepare and eat the seeds! It’s the year of experimentation!
Since the beginning of May, we’ve received over six inches of rain on the South Shore. Yeah, we’re kind of psyched about that.

Farmer Luca has been growing trials of many different kinds of watermelons and other melons this spring at ARTfarm. Today we will have four types for you to try! (Limited quantities, so arrive early if you possibly can.) Frankly, we love them all, but please give us your feedback on what are your favorites so Luca can plan to grow more of the best ones. They taste sweetest when chilled, if you can wait long enough!

The heirloom watermelon varieties we are growing tend to have many prominent seeds (compared to a commercial supermarket type watermelon). While everyone knows that the modern advent of the seedless watermelon has saved humankind countless tedious hours of spitting, our robust and weighty old fashioned seeds can be useful as more than mere projectiles at an outdoor children’s gathering. Of course they can be saved and planted, but they can also be prepared and eaten: The seeds can be juiced; or sprouted, then ground into a sprouted grain flour and used in gluten-free baking; perhaps a more accessible use for the lay watermelon-seed-eater would be to rinse and dry them, then prepare them much like salty roasted pumpkin or sunflower seeds. Here’s a recipe we found online!

Come to the South Shore this morning and hook up your week with organically produced fresh fruits and veggies, herbs and other treats: Sweet salad mix, teen spicy salad mix, bunched arugula, a few bunches of kale and Kan Kong (Asian water spinach) and of sweet potato greens, loads of bell peppers, all three of our hot/seasoning types of peppers, the end of the tomatoes for this season, Italian basil, parsley, recao (culantro), rosemary, lemongrass, garlic chives, a few bunches of onions, radishes, a couple of shaddock (giant grapefruit-like citrus), lots of passionfruit, pumpkin, various types of watermelons – whole and cut, beautiful papayas, fresh ginger root, and loads of amazing zinnia flowers.

Everything we grow is free of synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides. We are not a certified organic farm, but we grow everything as though we were – meeting or exceeding national organic production standards set by the USDA and keeping careful records – because we want to. Healthier for us, healthier for you, healthier for the soil, healthier for the planet. We are health nuts and we want to improve our soil with every crop and we are obsessive about it. Don’t get us started unless you’ve really got some time on your hands! 🙂

We have fresh local goat cheese  from Fiddlewood Farms! Freak out! It’s so good!!!


Resolve To Eat Local Veggies! 10am-12 noon!

Happy 2015 everyone! Harvested for you, for Saturday morning: sweet salad mix, teen spicy mix, baby spicy salad mix, teen arugula, baby arugula, microgreens, sweet corn, loads of cucumbers, loads of cherry tomatoes, slicing and heirloom tomatoes, radishes, beets, kale, sweet potatoes, sweet bell peppers, escarole, romaine and other assorted lettuce heads, cilantro, parsley, dill, Italian basil, holy basil, Thai basil, lemon basil, recao, chives, lemongrass, chili peppers, ginger root, passionfruit, and various vegetables starts including lettuce and cherry tomato plants and a few herb starts!

And from a friend with a giving tree, we have some very nice avocados!

Here’s to a sustainable, environmentally just, critically informed and reasoned spin around the sun for all beings. Spread love!

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TOMATO CRISIS CONTINUES at ARTfarm; Wednesday 3-5:30pm

A big basket full of orange sungold cherry tomatoes and purple ball cherry tomatoes at ARTfarm
Purple ball cherry tomatoes mix with orange sungold tomatoes at ARTfarm. Great eaten out of hand, or added to a salad for a burst of color and sweetness. All sweet, sunripened and juicy!
Freshly picked, ripe orange and yellow cherry and dark purple plum tomatoes in a large tub.
ARTfarm's cherry tomatoes are left to ripen on the vine and then picked at the peak of sweetness. Our black plum tomatoes are rich in flavor and are great in sauces, salsas, and just as a snack.
A huge pile of harvested plum and slicer tomatoes at ARTfarm.
Our plums and smaller slicers are ideal tomatoes for cooking, canning, or eating fresh on a sandwich or sliced as a tomato salad.
A pile of tomatoes ranging from red to orange to purple and green shouldered, at ARTfarm
Heirloom tomatoes are the most delicate and densely flavored of the tomatoes we grow at ARTfarm. They range in color from red to orange to purple and green shouldered. They vary in shape and size - some of the larger varieties can weigh over a pound for each fruit!

Some of you may have read in the St. Croix Avis about the tomato crisis at ARTfarm. We have more tomatoes than we can eat. Please, come and buy some of our delicious field and vine-ripened organically grown tomatoes. They come in all different sizes, shapes and colors, and each of the varieties has its own special flavor and nutrient mix, so why not try a few of everything and see what you like best?

If you refrain from eating your ARTfarm tomatoes right in the parking lot, we have salad mixes to go with your tomatoes, or you can pick up some herbs and make a tomato salad, salsa or tomato sauce, or cook them up in a creole to go over rice or fish!

For Wednesday we’ll have: heirloom tomatoes, slicer tomatoes, plum tomatoes, three kinds of cherry tomatoes, spicy salad mix, sweet salad mix, microgreens, arugula, cucumbers, sweet bell peppers, papayas, basils (lemon, thai, italian and holy), cilantro, dill, parsley, sage, lemongrass, garlic chives, scallions, chili peppers, broccoli greens, kale, escarole. All healthy for you and full of micronutrients and minerals from the soil!