The start of CSA season often coincides with the start of salads as meals.
Not the wimpy-greens-with-a-few-shredded-carrots-and-tomatoes-thrown-in salads of the 90s. I’m talking about the types of salads that are meant to be substantial. The kinds of salads that you eat for lunch and don’t need anything until dinner. The types of salads that make you realize just how many beautiful things we can grow in the ground.
Our first CSA delivery brought us perfect purple asparagus spears and green garlic. This week’s farmer’s market haul included radishes, snap peas, cucumbers. I had a serious salad in mind. But before we get to the salad, a story.
A couple weeks back, I got a bit of a taste of what it means to grow these beautiful things in your own soil. I’ve been a member of King’s Hill Farm for three years—last summer, I even got to tour their land and hear their story. But of course there are hundreds of wonderful farms in Wisconsin, and when my friend Lauren decided to host an event at her up-and-coming CSA farm, I slathered on the sunscreen and prepared to get muddy.
Lauren showed us around the farm, talking about how her and her husband Kyle came to be CSA farmers (read more of their adorable story on Lauren’s blog, The Leek and the Carrot). Then she put us to work—two hours (it was probably closer to one and a half) of transplanting corn in the fields.
As someone who considers herself generally in shape but who sits in front of a computer more often than not, it was quite eye opening to see what a toll on your body just this little amount of time takes. I stood, I kneeled, I shuffled over a couple of inches—then I did it again and again and again. I woke up the next morning with a stiff back and sore glutes and enough dirt under my nails to give me at least a little farm-cred.
With just that little experience in the back of my mind, I’m giving extra love to everything I get in my CSA box and from the market this year. Let not a single green wilt in my vegetable crisper.
This salad is a wonderful way to showcase some of that produce—crunchy asparagus, cucumbers, and radishes blend with sweet snap peas and creamy burrata. A spring and summer salad at it’s finest.
- ½ pound asparagus spears, shaved into thin strips
- 2 small Persian cucumbers, sliced thin on a mandolin
- 4 small radishes, sliced thin on a mandolin
- 1 green garlic, minced
- 10 snap peas, chopped on the diagonal
- ¼ cup olive oil
- 2 tablespoons lemon juice
- 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
- pinch of Kosher salt
- 8 ounces burrata, drained
- Freshly ground black pepper
- A note on shaving asparagus: while the other vegetables are best sliced thin on a mandolin, you'll have the most luck using a vegetable peeler to get thin asparagus strips. Instead of cutting off the woody ends, lay the asparagus spear down on a cutting board and hold on to the end. Starting about ½ an inch above your fingers, use the peeler to shave off a thin strip. Continue until you've gotten all the way to the bottom, then discard the woody end.
- In a large bowl, combine shaved asparagus, cucumbers, radishes, garlic, and snap peas.
- In a small bowl, whisk together olive oil, lemon juice, mustard, and salt. Pour over vegetables and toss to coat.
- Spread vegetables out onto serving platter, then top with burrata. Gently cut open burrata so the creamy cheese oozes out, sprinkle with freshly ground black pepper and serve.
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