Behind the Blog

As a part of our volunteer crew working to bring the Shaare Torah CSA to you this summer, one of our CSA members, Chef Mike, is donating to us his professional knowledge and great interest in enhancing our CSA experience. He will be helping to fill this blog with recipes for those ‘new to you’ items each week, information to demystify some of those items, and techniques to conquer common cooking challenges.

A Word from Chef Mike:
For the past few weeks, I have been preparing myself for what I could and should offer to maximize this CSA experience. For you first timers, a CSA is transformative - you will never look at produce in just the same way. Your taste buds and senses will rejoice in the diverse and exciting range of tastes you will experience. In culinary school, we were always reminded that you eat with all your senses and well before the food ever gets into your mouth.

The CSA bounty should be celebrated and enjoyed as more than just sustenance. Once you taste the snap of a real fresh pea, the intensity of fresh beets, the sweetness of fresh peppers and the pleasure of discovering a new vegetable you would not normally purchase, you will never quite see produce in the grocery store in the same way again! There is grocery store produce, and there is CSA PRODUCE!!!

So, my aim for this CSA season is to offer recipes, suggestions and information to help you maximize your CSA share. But beyond the basics, I would like to offer more than just recipes. It is my mission to share with you the critical culinary information that will enhance your knowledge of food preparation and begin to take you down the path of better understanding how to cook without a recipe.

Learn the techniques, food characteristics and ratios... and you too can be cooking without a recipe or at the minimum not be a slave to the recipe because you better understand the information and technique behind the meal.

Please never hesitate to "ask the chef" or "suggest to chef" ideas for future posts. Also, please share your CSA successes and challenges with us.
With that... LET'S EAT!!!