In this episode, we talk about recipe ideas for our 5th CSA vegetable share of the season with Camilla Mann, along with wine pairing ideas. Camilla talks about how she encourages people to use the local ingredients they have along with how she developed an interest in wine pairing. She also shares about the upcoming Wine Pairing Weekend event.
In this episode we cover:
- How Camilla got interested in cooking while living in Rome.
- Her focus on teaching processes that enable one to easily adapt recipes.
- Ideas for wine pairings with fresh vegetables.
- Some local wineries near Monterey, California.
- Information about tomatillos and how to prepare them.
- An idea for a recipe with whole fish and tomatillo sauce.
- Details on the upcoming “CSA challenge” wine pairing weekend event.
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Table of contents
Today’s Guest – Camilla Mann
Camilla Mann is a home cook with a passion for local foods, products, and their stories. She loves and teaches culinary processes – think adaptable recipes! – that encourage people to get into their kitchens, use the ingredients they have, and embrace delicious imperfection. She blogs at Culinary Adventures with Camilla.
Here are links to some of the recipes, articles and resources referenced on today’s show about wine with CSA veggies:
- Whole Roasted Rockfish with Tomatillo Sauce – note: on the show Camilla mention ½ pound of pickles, that should be ½ cup, as indicated in the recipe.
- How to make homemade salad dressings (video)
- Roasted Tomatoes
- Introduction to Wine Pairing Weekend CSA Challenge event
- Preview of Wine Pairing Weekend event
- Seabold Cellars is a winery near Camilla that makes the Aligote white wine she mention for the roasted fish
How to prepare tomatillos and other tips
Camilla had some great tips for picking, preparing and storing tomatillos! Listen to the episode for the full details, but here are a few tips about tomatillos:
- To find ripe tomatillos at the market or store, look for ones where the husks have started to crack open.
- To prepare tomatillos, remove the husk, then give the tomatillos a good rinse in warm water to remove the sticky film.
- Tomatillos are often roasted, but Camilla encouraged using them fresh to enjoy their bright, vibrant flavors. A good tip we followed!
- Store tomatillos in the refrigerator for up to two weeks in a brown paper bag that is open a little bit.
You might think tomatillos and tomatoes are related, based on how they look and their name. But Camilla let us know that tomatillos are actually related to the gooseberry, not tomatoes!
What we made – CSA Vegetable Pickup #5
We picked up the vegetables shown above in advance of hosting a family gathering for our son’s birthday. So many of them got put to use as part of our party menu! It was busy getting all the food together, so these may not be my prettiest pictures, but I still wanted to share what we came up with for this CSA vegetable share!
A good amount of my cooking with CSA vegetables does not involve recipes, but rather, putting together combinations that make use of what is fresh. If you see something you’d like to try to make without a recipe link, let me know! I can get you some more info on it and prioritize posting a recipe.
Tomatillos
Tomatillos, a small green plant with a papery thin husk, was one of the vegetables I discussed with Camilla. She encouraged me to think about using it fresh rather than cooked. So I made this Fresh Tomatillo Salsa recipe from Feasting at Home.
Fresh Salsas (using tomatoes and tomatillos)
We had a couple of big, ripe tomatoes, too. Plus some peppers from by brother in-laws garden. So I made a fresh tomato salsa – pico de gallo would be the proper term I guess. That got served along with the tomatillo salsa for snacks, with more salsa available for our make your own taco bar later.
Green Beans
I was excited to try this Smothered Green Beans recipe after Marwin described it on Episode 6.
The smothered beans recipe gets flavor from Haitian Epis seasoning and a bit of Andouille sausage. Glad I made it – yum!
Cherry tomatoes
It is clearly tomato season here! Seeing as we got cherry tomatoes as well as full sized tomatoes.
I made a simple cherry tomato caprese salad, with basil, mozzarella and some good extra virgin olive oil. This was a great dish to serve on a steam hot day!
If you like the Caprese flavor combinations, we’ve got a couple recipes for you to try — this Kale Caprese Salad and this Tomato Caprese Salad with Pesto.
Summer Squash
With our yellow summer squash, we made a simple sauté along with some of the tomatoes we had on hand and some Beyond Meat vegetarian sausage for protein.
We used some garlic olive oil to add some easy flavor for this simple weeknight meal.
CAMILLA M MANN
What fun! Thanks for having me on the show. I hope we inspire people to start a relationship with a local farm, join a CSA, and cook some seasonal veggies.