Cooking with Dill

Lifting my box off the shelf at the pickup spot today, I could tell it was packed with vegetables. When I looked inside I saw everything I was promised. When I took out the lettuce and swapped it for a good-sized zucchini in the take-one-leave-one box, I noticed the delicate sprig of dill for the first time.

In years past I have made the mistake of forgoing the herbs on delivery day, with the idea of doing something grand with them another day, only to find them wilted by morning. Luckily after three years, I’m starting to learn, and this week I was ready to cook with dill tonight.

My first recipe was Persian cucumber yogurt dip, which make use of not only the cucumbers and dill, but also two of the green onions left from last week. I already have homemade Turkish pide bread, which I made over the weekend to eat with it. I also made a frozen walnut burger from the Trempealeau Hotel, which went well with both the bread and the dip.

After the dip I still had dill left, so I set my sights on green beans in dill and walnut sauce, a recipe I found in a Bon Appétit Vegetables cookbook I bought over the weekend at Barnes & Noble. It was only $1, so I figured I had to buy it. It is sorted by vegetable and may turn out to be my go-to for recipes this CSA season.

After blanching the beans, they are tossed with the dill and walnut sauce, which has to be the best sauce I’ve tasted. The recipe calls for green onions (which I just happened to have), walnut oil, fresh dill, parsley, cider vinegar, and walnuts. To be fair, I made a few substitutions, using olive oil for walnut oil and almonds for the walnuts.

I also cut back on amount of oil and vinegar, which made the sauce less of a dressing and more of a coating, but it still tasted wonderful on the beans. I saved some of the sauce and am planning to use it on fish next, although I’m thinking it might taste good on the carrots, which will need to be eaten in the next few days.

After that, I’m looking forward to the zucchini and the many cucumbers I have left, as well as the kohlrabi, and even the beets. So another two weeks begins …