Sprout & Pea

After a win­ter of very heavy meals and far too much eat­ing out, I am look­ing for­ward to a cre­ative sum­mer in my kitchen. With the cool tem­per­a­tures drag­ging on, I’ve been in a bit of an inspi­ra­tion lull over the past few months, but that all changed last night when my first CSA deliv­ery from Lan­caster Farms arrived.  This is my first time join­ing a CSA. My reser­va­tions have always lied in the excess of food that would come along with a weekly deliv­ery that feeds a fam­ily of four. So, when two of my friends showed their inter­est in split­ting a half share and we cal­cu­lated the cost to work out to about $3 per week for each of us, all of my hes­i­ta­tion went out the win­dow and we signed up that day.

There’s some­thing about the tran­si­tion into sum­mer that makes me crave the season’s bounty and the season’s bounty I did received last night. Amongst a giant box of beau­ti­ful leafy greens and radishes were some gor­geous red scal­lions. I had never cooked with red scal­lions before and was uncer­tain if their fla­vor pro­file dif­fered from the com­mon green scal­lion that we’re all used to. While search­ing for more infor­ma­tion, I dis­cov­ered an inter­est­ing way to cook this slightly milder onion. Scal­lions with lime and thyme is some­thing that I would never have thought of, but I’m grate­ful to have stum­bled upon this recipe because the com­bi­na­tion is mouth­wa­ter­ing. I tossed the sautéed scal­lions on top of some ricotta on a lit­tle toasted bread and driz­zle some honey over it. My sweet and savory lov­ing palette was drolling over the com­bi­na­tion and my friend used her half of the share to make the very same snack. I think the text mes­sage I received from her after she took her first bite pretty much sums up this dish: “Holy crap, that was AWESOME!!!”. Here’s how to make this sim­ple but burst­ing with fla­vor bruschetta…

4 Pieces of sliced baguette toasted lightly with olive oil
1 cup fresh ricotta cheese
1 bunch red scal­lions
juice of one lime
2 tbs olive oil
2 tbs fresh thyme plus extra for gar­nish
Honey to driz­zle on top

Slice white and red parts of the scal­lions in half and pull apart cre­at­ing thin strips. In a medium pan, add olive oil, red scal­lions and thyme and sautee over medium-​​high heat for a few min­utes. Add the lime juice and saute over medium heat for another 5 min­utes or so or until the scal­lions are soft­ened. Mean­while, spread ricotta on toasted bread. When scal­lions are fin­ished, place on top of the ricotta and driz­zle with honey and sprin­kle with more fresh thyme.