Recipe – Fisher Hill Farm

July 10, 2021July 11, 2021

Use Rainbow Chard Stems to make Salsa

What to make with Chard Stems - Fisher Hill Farm

It’s a common question. Rainbow Chard is a popular farmers market item but tossing those stems seems like a waste. People often ask what we do with them.

There’s a few things you can do. You can sautee them in a pan separate from the leaf and then add it together, or make a separate dish with them altogether with a little garlic. You can add them into a hash or into a quiche. But one of the most fun things to do is make salsa.

Chard salsa is super easy to make, is very sweet, can easily be made spicy, and goes really great with our eggs and chicken. You more than likely have everything you need in your kitchen to make it already, but we have a version straight from the farmers market that will kick your afternoon snack into high gear.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED:

One market bunch of Rainbow Chard stems (leaves removed)

3 or 4 Scapes

1 Spring onion

1 fresh lemon

Salt and pepper

(hot pepper optional)

WHAT YOU’LL DO:

Fine chop the Chard, Onion, and Scapes. Squeeze the fresh lemon over it. Add the salt and pepper (add a hot pepper to your liking or hot sauce). Mix well. Cover. Put it in the fridge for at least 2 hours. That’s it.

The lemon juice will break down the chard stem just enough to make it easier to eat. This might be done just as well with a lime. But lemon goes well with the flavor the chard stem gives and also helps keep everything from getting brown.

Here’s a super quick video that shows the process:

It’s so simple! Just make sure to cut everything pretty small so it has more surface area to react with the lemon and is easy to chew.

We have used this for a quick dip, to top our tacos, or to throw over some eggs. It tastes even better after a day in the fridge but isn’t necessary.

If you’ve been throwing your chard stems away, this is a quick way to make something new with what you didn’t use before. We want you to come away from the market with as much food to stock up your house as possible.

If you decide to try this recipe, we’d love to hear from you. If you know of another way to use chard stems or any of our other products, we’d love to hear from you! We’ve learned more from our customers over the years than we could ever learn in a lifetime on how our products are best used.

We don’t like to see waste! Compost what you don’t use or check out ways to use every last drop of what the earth gives us. If we share these recipes and ideas we can reduce waste and get some really cool recipes and ideas out there.

Thanks everyone. We can’t wait to see you at the next market.

June 28, 2021

What Else Can I Make with Turnips?

Turnip cakes have a fresh and spicy taste and goes well with everything.

Some of our customers have been asking about turnips lately. We have some fresh turnips that we have been bringing with us to the market and there’s a number of people who have never had them before. The easiest thing to do with them is cut them up and eat them with a pinch of salt!

They can be roasted, sautéed, or steamed just as easily too. But in the past, we have made turnip cakes with them, or maybe one giant turnip pancake and split it up with a pizza cutter. It’s not too much work and can be a side, a main dish, or an appetizer.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED:

A bunch of turnips (its usually between 3 and 6 depending on size)

Couple cloves of garlic

2 Eggs

1/2 cup of flour (maybe a little more)

Salt and pepper to your liking

WHAT YOU’LL DO:

Shred the turnips. We used a Cuisinart but you can do it by hand with a grater. After you’ve got them shredded up, squeeze out as much water as you can. Just using your hands should be good enough. Chop the garlic and throw it in there along with the shredded turnips. Add the 2 eggs and mix well with salt and pepper. Then add the flour (depending on how much water you were able to squeeze out you may need more) and mix well.

It shouldn’t stick together in a tight ball, but add just enough flour for the mixutre to stay together without completely coming apart. Grease a pan and flatten it into a pancake. We have a big non stick frying pan so we could fit all of ours in one pan to make one giant pancake. You can easily cook them in batches. Or really however you like. The thickness of a regular pancake you’d get at the diner is perfect.

Once they’re browned on both sides, they’re done, about 6 minutes on each side with medium high heat. You can serve them up immediately hot. We had ours with a bit of arugula, some sour cream, and some radish relish. But they’re really good cold too, dipped in a little ranch dressing!

Turnips are versatile veggies that don’t get enough attention. As great as this recipe is and as awesome as so many recipes can be, we still think that a fresh turnip with a pinch of salt is still the best way to eat them!

June 13, 2021

What to do with a lot of Fresh Strawberries

Fisher Hill Farm Fresh Local Strawberry Rochester New York

When strawberries are in season it’s time to think long term.

It’s a short burst of a season marking the true beginning of summer. When school is about to let out the fields are bursting with green and bright red. The aggregate fruit, that it technically not a berry, is one of the most popular crops we offer and usually has the most buzz about it. The season is here now and they are abundant. So how can we make the season last?

Can I freeze fresh strawberries?

Absolutely. You can slice them, crush them, liquefy them or keep them whole. They freeze well. If you do keep them whole, when they thaw they more than likely not act like a strawberry out of the field, but that doesn’t mean they don’t retain the fresh flavor of summer. Freeze them first individually on a sheet pan before transferring to a freezer bag (make sure they are actually freezer bags and not just plastic bags.) Once they are in the plastic bag, close the zip on the bag except for one tiny corner. Insert a straw and suck all the air out that you can before pulling the straw out and closing the bag. This will keep the freezer burn away.

How do you dehydrate a Strawberry?

The first step is to wash them up. Next you have to make sure the stem is removed completely. If you have a dehydrator you can cut them into strips and set it for 135 degrees for 10 hours. If you don’t have a dehydrator, no problem! Cut them into quarters and place them cut side up on a baking sheet. Put them in the oven on the lowest setting on the top shelf at 200 degrees. If the oven is running hot, crack the door open (but be careful!) This isn’t a perfect science so you may want to move the sheet around the oven a few times and watch how long they’ve been in.

Want to know if your strawberries have been completely dried? Place them in a glass jar about half full for a week, shaking the jar a couple times per day. If you notice condensation showing up the strawberries need a little more drying time.

Canning, Preserving, and Jellies

You can can strawberries but the water takes away from the flavor. There is a way to extract the juice from the strawberries to use as the preservation liquid, but we’ve never tried it and so can’t recommend that. Strawberry preserves and jam are great options and those can later be used in other dishes, like cookies! They keep well in the panty and make great gifts!

The season goes by quick. One of the best times of year is the first time you bite into a fresh local strawberry. The ones we get all winter at the grocery store can curb a craving, but there isn’t a substitute for a fresh local strawberry!

May 22, 2021

Smoke Box Chicken

One of the great things about the summer months is getting a good barbecue going. We wanted an easy way to get smokehouse chicken without worrying about burning our dinner.

There’s actually two ways you can use this Smoke Box. You can load it up and put it directly on your gas grill or you can get some hot coals and place it on them. We chose to try it that way because it was slightly more adventurous for a blog post! But putting the box on the grill makes it even easier and allows you to choose a temperature.

The first step is to prepare the raw chicken. We used a store bought barbecue dry rub for the legs. We coated them in the morning and put them in a plastic bag in the fridge. For the breast, we poured a little Italian dressing over it and put it in the fridge. Simple preparation is often times the best!

We got our fire going and let it die down to just some hot coals. If you choose to use your grill make sure you preheat it to the desired temp you want to smoke at.

To load the smoke box you soak the wood chips in water about 30 minutes before loading them in the box. Place the wood chips down and then the tray with the meat on it, then close the box up.

The meat goes on top of the wood chips on tray that inserts.

The legs are smaller so they were going to be done a lot sooner. Make sure you use a thermometer to get the cooking temp right. Chicken should be at 180. The legs did cook a bit quicker, but they only took about 45 minutes on the fire before they were done. You could actually smell that they were done and boy oh boy did it smell delicious!

We brushed on a little bit of barbecue sauce at the end and let it dry up a little on the leg before taking them off. They were incredible, soaking up a good amount of the smoke flavor without masking the dry rub. The sweet sauce was a nice little addition and added the right amount of sugar to it.

The breast took a bit longer. But we were really thinking that it was going to make excellent sandwiches after it was cold. We were right. It was. But we couldn’t help cutting into it when it was still hot.

Overall this was a tasty experiment. It might be easier to just put the box on the grill and smoke it that way, but it was fun to have a fire and make a bigger even out of it. The chicken was delicious.

We’ll have fresh chicken all summer long for all your grilling and smoking needs!

Come visit us at the market!

February 16, 2021

How to Make Duck Confit

Confit refers to a method of cooking something in grease or sugar at low temperatures. Duck Confit is usually made with the legs and is cooked in duck fat as the grease. It’s kind of like frying, except the temperatures are lower and it causes the meat to become very tender instead of crisp.

It feels as if it is a fancy dish and one that should be served with a white linen table cloth. But that’s not true! It’s a simple dish to make, keeps in the fridge for a long time and is delicious. The key is getting a locally grown duck (wink, wink).

What is nice about this recipe is that you can break off little bits of it at a time throughout the week so you never have to spend a whole day in the kitchen. Duck Leg Confit reheats in the oven and does not dry out so you can serve it as your main dish with little effort before the actual meal.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED:

One whole Fisher Hill Farm Duck

Fresh Thyme

Kosher salt

Vegetable oil (or other oil)

A sharp knife

WHAT YOU’LL DO:

The first thing you need to do is break down the whole duck into parts. It sounds difficult if you’ve never done it before, but it’s not. The legs come off very easily and that’s what you need to make this dish. Here’s a video on how to break down a whole duck.

What’s important about breaking this duck down is SAVING THE FAT. You will use that fat in to confit the duck legs. Save it to the side and cook it down. In the video below that part is covered. It can be done in advance and is very easy.

(*Pro tip. After the duck fat is rendered you’re left with crispy pieces of duck fat that make an excellent snack. Soak them in Frank’s Red Hot and bake them in a hot oven.)

Once the duck legs of off coat them liberally with the kosher salt and place them stack on top of each other with some fresh thyme. Put that in the refrigerator for a few days to let it cure. Once you’ve done that, the next step is rinsing them off really good and patting them dry.

Here’s the video that shows the rest of the process.

One of the best parts of Duck Confit is the wings! They are delicious. We also love to eat this dish cold, as a quick lunch out of the fridge.

If you follow this recipe, you’re going to be left with the duck breasts. Those can be cooked up crispy skin style very easily and takes almost no prep work.

In other news, our CSA is currently open. If you would like to learn more about it just go to:

https://fisherhillfarm.com/csa/