CSA Week 6 - Canistel Flan

The more I did my homework on the canistels that came with the Week 6 CSA drop-off,^[*] the more convinced I became that a flan was the direction to go. The fruit is also known as the egg fruit because when ripe it has a vivid yellow-orange color, and the flesh is supposed to have a texture similar to hard-boiled egg yolk. It is of the same family as the mamey sapote and bears similarities both in shape and in flavor. When I tasted a bit, I picked up some of the "egg-y" flavor (reminiscent of a Chinese custard bun), plus sweet potato or pumpkin and almond notes similar to those in mamey.

Like the black sapotes we've gotten in other weeks, canistels must go very soft to be fully ripe, and the fruit bowl of late has been looking like something out of a Peter Greenaway movie (I should have taken a picture). Of course, they rarely cooperate by ripening simultaneously, so I harvested the flesh of these as they ripened and froze it until they were all ready. Fortunately, Little Miss F liked the flavor of the canistel much moreso than the black sapotes (she's a big fan of mamey) so I had a willing assistant in preparing this.

I looked mostly at pumpkin flan (a/k/a flan de calabaza) recipes for inspiration, and after considering several variations went with the following (look, an actual recipe!):

• Flesh of 3 canistels (~1 cup)
• 4 eggs + 1 egg yolk
• 1 12-oz. can evaporated milk
• 1 14-oz. can sweetened condensed milk
• 2 tsp. vanilla extract
• 1 tsp. ground cinnamon
• 1 tsp. nutmeg (freshly grated)
• 3/4 cup sugar

Preheat your oven to 350F. Defrost the canistel flesh if it's been frozen. Add the four eggs and one yolk to the canistel in a large bowl and mix. Add the evaporated milk, sweetened condensed milk, vanilla, cinnamon and nutmeg and mix until well-incorporated. I used an immersion blender to break up the lumpy bits of canistel. The condensed milk is already plenty sweet, plus we're making a caramel, so it won't need any more sugar. You should end up with something like this:

Note that the color is almost entirely from the canistels, not the eggs. Then, make Thomas Keller proud - pour it through a strainer:

Next, the caramel. Put the 3/4 cup sugar into a saucepan over medium heat. Some recipes I read said stir constantly. Others said leave it alone until it starts to melt, then stir only occasionally. I eventually learned the latter instructions were the right ones. Just leave it be until the sugar starts to melt, then stir occasionally with a fork to incorporate the rest of the unmelted sugar. I stirred too early and ended up with big lumps that took longer to dissolve. After about ten minutes, you should have liquid (molten! be careful) golden-brown caramel.

CSA Week 7 - Sardine & Avocado Sandwich

I've made clear before my unkind feelings about Florida avocados. Another arrived with the Week 7 CSA delivery, and when it ripened this weekend, I decided to pair it with something that many other people have equally strong feelings about: sardines. The inspiration was Alton Brown's sardine and avocado sandwich recipe featured on a recent episode of "Good Eats" (though on the Food Network website it goes by the more demure "Sherried Sardine Toasts"), which you can see more of here. Of course, I actually have Oswald Cobblepot 's fondness for silvery fish, so I had no particular aversion to the sardines, though I've always eaten them fresh rather than the ones from the tin.

The mise en place: brisling sardines packed in olive oil; a couple slices of good bread; one Florida avocado (a "Brooks Late Avocado," per the newsletter), some dill (substituting for the parsley called for in the recipe), and a lemon; off stage are sherry vinegar, pepper and coarse sea salt. I halved the recipe on the Food Network site since nobody else in the house wanted to share with me.

Here's a closeup of the little buggers. You begin to understand the expression.

You pour off the oil from the can into a mixing bowl, and add a little sherry vinegar, some chopped dill, lemon zest, and black pepper. Then toss the fish in the dressing you just made. The recipe says to let it sit and mingle for up to an hour. I had no time for that (c'mon, who thinks of making a sandwich an hour in advance?)

Halve an avocado and then mash the flesh right in its shell (a good idea from Mr. Brown); meanwhile, toast some bread, and pour some of the fish marinade over it (recipe says to do this in the converse order, which might well be a good idea). Then spread the mashed avocado across the toast, top with the fish, drizzle any remaining marinade over the top, sprinkle with coarse sea salt and a squeeze of lemon. Voila:

I'm dubious that you could lose fifty pounds by eating this, as Alton Brown says he did (in fairness, there was a good bit more to his agenda) - unless of course you hate sardines and won't eat them - but I thought it was a genuinely delicious use of both sardines and (the dreaded) Florida avocado. This particular avocado was less watery and insipid than other Florida avocados I've had. I'm still not sure whether it would stand up to being the star attraction in a dish, but as a complementary note to another strongly flavored item (i.e. the sardines) it worked well. I'm not sure whether this will make a convert of any sardine-loathers out there, but it's worth a try. And for those who need no such conversion, it's a good quick snack to add to the repertoire.

CSA Week 8

What do we have here? Working clockwise from top left, a bunch of cilantro, celery, a bunch of white chard, a few more canistels, a couple tomatoes, some oyster mushrooms, and in the middle, a green pepper and some mizuna. While the pickings may be a little slim as the farms recover from the freeze, the quality actually looks quite good. The greens in particular are looking very happy. On a related note, now that I have started immediately putting my greens and the like in plastic bags, I've found the shelf life has improved dramatically, and most things are remaining hearty and hale for most of a week, sometimes more if they stick around that long, before getting droopy. Coming next: a positive Florida avocado experience, and an eminently successful canistel experiment with the Week 6 fruit.