In this week’s box you had a beautiful assortment of vegetables that are both born of Spring & Summer. All of those vegetables and the inadvertant subconscious digestion of a book: United States of Arugula: the Sun-Dried, Cold-Pressed, Dark-Roasted, Extra Virgin Story of the American Food Revolution’s 3 pages on the history of, well, all foodstuffs but particularly on, Pasta Primavera. For some reason it struck a chord.
Pasta Primavera is an Italian-American creation whose popluarity can be attributed to Le Cirque restaurant in New York opened by Sirio Maccioni & original Chef Jean Vergnes in 1974. Maccioni had traveled to Tuscany and brought back with him fresh cold-pressed olive oil. The olive oil spoke to him because of the simplicity of all the small plates or tapas that he sampled and in nearly every experience the olive oil made its appearance.
Primavera means ‘springtime’ and is a strictly seasonal dish including only a medley of vegetables during that time of year. There isn’t necessarily a set group of vegetables that would be commonly found in the dish, it varies restaurant to restaurant, region to region, of this country. The beautiful thing is that such strong contrasts of Primavera from region to region, restaurant to restaurant, family to family is that it leaves room to experiment, to be simple or complex; rich or light, even a chance to start your own family tradition. While we are fully aware that this is the humid city, and it is officially no longer spring and it may be 100 degrees outside, this is an insanely easy way to use all of those squash, peppers, tomatoes, and eggplant that have made an appearance repeatedly in 
your veggie box.
We are your unofficial test kitchen, we strive to create simple recipes without a lot of added junk. This recipe may sound a little like work, but it is a one pot wonder (just gotta chop — a lot) which is surprisingly light, tastes of freshness, and is perfect on pasta, rice, or on an omlette (tested that too!). Just as the recipe itself changes so do the options that go along with it. We hope you enjoy this as much we did.
Recipe: Summervera
Week 37 Farms: farmer map
That’s right folks– just like the tomatoes, bananas, chili peppers, and avocados they are all berries and therefore fruits! What classifies all of them as berries? A berry can be defined as type of fruit that develops from the ovary wall of a plant flower. Pretty amazing, huh?
One such popular dish is Imam Bayeldi or stuffed eggplant and is found in Arabic, Armenian, and Mediterranean cultures in which the recipe varies slightly according to region. The name “Imam Bayeldi” means the imam fainted. An Imam is an Islamic leader of a mosque and its community. According to history or lore the Imam fainted after tasting such a rich dish of eggplant and olive oil. There is debate over whether the “richness” was because the superior & costly olive oil or the wonderfully flavorful dish itself. Often eggplant can tend to have bitterness which can be alleviated in a method known as ‘degorging’ where one slices the eggplant, salts the slices, and then rinses them. This ‘degorging’ method allows the eggplant to neither dry out or absorb too much oil which is often a matter of taste and/or texture preference.
