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Roasted Fall Vegetable Bisque

This recipe is one of our favorite ways to utilize squash. The ingredients are simple, the method is easy to adapt to your tastes and creativity, and once you get a feel for how we bring this whole thing together, a world of possibilities opens up. Plus it’s a great excuse to make grilled cheese sandwiches. It’s easy to make vegetarian, vegan, and gluten free. One pot, one baking tray, and ~15 minutes of active cooking time. 

So here’s the plan, and it’s very simple: basically, well-caramelized onion forms the foundation, then we’re going to take a bunch of veggies, roast them in the oven, blend them with some stock in a pot, and add a splash of cream. The depth of flavor comes with trusting the ever-increasing deliciousness of browning roasted veggies.

Recipe: Roasted Fall Vegetable Bisque

Ingredients:

• 1 Onion (sliced, for caramelizing)

• 2T+ Butter for caramelizing said onions

• A bunch of your favorite woody herbs - rosemary and thyme are great, as is sage

• 4 to 5 Pounds of squash, any winter squash will do, and in Version 2, you’ll see any root veg like beets, carrots, parsnips work great too! In the recipe pictured, we used:

• 4 Acorn squashes (we used 2 acorn and 2 carnival) and ½ pound peeled and cubed butternut squash**

• 4-5 Unpeeled garlic cloves

• 6-8 Cups vegetable stock (your favorite stock will work great)

• Olive oil for coating the roasting veg

• Salt and pepper to taste

• Splash of cream to taste

Special equipment - immersion blender (recommended, but not required, read through directions below)

**Virtually any roast-able fall veggie works: parsnips, carrots, turnips, beets, squashes, pumpkin, potatoes, sweet potatoes, you get the idea.

Directions

Getting the method down is the key to opening up all the possibilities of this recipe. If you’re using acorn squash, slice into even wedges, peel on (it comes off easily after roasting). If it’s butternut squash, peel and cube it. Root veg needs to be cubed or chunked, we want everything to be roughly the same size so it cooks in the same amount of time. Take all that veg and your garlic cloves, and toss in oil, salt, and pepper. Spread everything out on a roasting tray. Single layer only to make sure they brown. Roast at 375, after 30 minutes shake them around and check to make sure nothing’s sticking. They’ll need another 15-30 minutes, and the browner they get, the sweeter and more flavorful the final product will be. Keep an eye on the garlic, it should get soft and spreadable but don’t let it burn.

This is the halfway point after our first flip. Remember, COLOR = FLAVOR!

While that’s in the oven it’s time to get those onions caramelizing. Set your stove to medium-low, and get your soup/stock pot on there. Slice the onion, add it to the pot with the woody herbs (we prefer thyme), a knob of butter, and a pinch of salt. Lid on until they’re softened and translucent. I don’t know why recipes say to caramelize onions for 5-10 minutes. It’s a lie, It can’t be done. It takes at least 30 minutes. But it’s not hard and it’s not work, and the veggies have to roast anyway. Once the onions have softened, keep the lid off and the stove on medium-low. Every 10 or so minutes after they’ve gone translucent, check back in on them and stir them around to make sure they’re not scorching or burning. If they’re looking too dry and (sticking to the bottom) before about the 20 - 30 minute mark, your stove is too hot. Lower it, add another knob of butter or splash of water to loosen them, and keep going. The longer you can take them, the sweeter, richer, and rounder the flavor will be. If they’re starting to disintegrate into something like a caramel-colored paste, you’re doing it right.

Patience is key to caramelizing. These look good, but they’re only halfway there! Keep going!

Again, the longer and deeper you let the roasting veg and caramelizing onions go, the better the final product will be. It’ll be difficult, because they’ll just smell so good. But your patience will be rewarded! When the onions are finished caramelizing (around the time the veggies are done roasting) add your stock to the pot unless you don’t have an immersion blender, blender, or food processor. Instead add all the roasted veg into the pot first, and go at it with a potato masher until it’s smooth, while off the heat. Then add your stock. Veggie stock to keep it vegetarian/vegan, but any stock works. We used good gelatinous homemade chicken stock. Start with 4-6 cups of stock, make sure to scrape around the bottom to get any bits of onion off the bottom and into that liquid. Turn the heat up to medium and bring to a simmer. Add the roasted veg to the pot - if you used acorn/carnival squash like we did, just mush the flesh off the skin right into the pot, or scrape it off with a spoon if you’re not a savage. You should be able to just squeeze the garlic cloves right out of their skins now. Into the pot.

Stock is in! You can see all the caramelized bits of squash and onion, and thyme too. We prefer our soup on the thicker side, but how much you add will also depend on the residual water content of the veggies you choose to roast up. And although it’s thick, the cream you may or may not (may) add at the end will adjust the consistency.

The home stretch! Once it comes back up to a simmer, blend it all nice and smooth with an immersion blender like we did, or ladle it into a blender or food processor if that’s what you got. Add more stock to thin it to your preferred consistency. Add a splash of cream, check for salt and pepper (if you’ve been seasoning as you go it should be pretty close), and you’re done!

Quick pass with the immersion blender - ours isn’t even a fancy one - and you’re left with silky smooth bisque! Although there’s one thing missing…

Cream! You know, I guess it’s technically optional, but who are we kidding, really?

Serving and Options

This is my favorite part. I think of the method as more of a vegetable soup platform that you can take in all kinds of directions. First, let’s keep it vegan.

Vegetable or coconut oil for frying, coconut cream to finish. Those coconut additions make me think of curries, Thai or Indian. Maybe add a teaspoon of curry powder, or cumin and turmeric to the veg before roasting while you’re tossing them in oil. And a sprinkle of mustard seeds and a curry leaf while you’re caramelizing the onions instead of thyme. Top with some crispy fried shallots.

Toss the veg with some chili powder before roasting, crisp up some chorizo for topping, and add a dollop of black beans, sour cream, chives or green onions, cotija, shredded jack, and break out the tortilla chips.

Crisp up something to sprinkle on top. Sausage bits, pancetta, bacon, croutons, onions, pine nuts, frico - any textural counterpoint that packs a punch of flavor.

What if those onions are caramelized with some schmaltz? Or leftover bacon grease? Or the veg tossed in those before roasting?

Serving with great toast points is an option too. But we definitely think this bisque calls for grilled cheese. The bisque has some big, round, roasty-sweet flavors. To me, a great foil would be the tartness or nuttiness of something like swiss or gruyere, or emmentaler. We had a bag of shredded gruyere/swiss blend, so I made a sourdough grilled cheese with that. I like slicing the grilled cheese into fingers for improved dunkability.

I went with a shredded swiss/gruyere frico in a mug for easy grilled cheese finger dipping. Plus, gratuitous stretchy cheese shot.

Where Are Our Seeds?

Well there’s a short answer covering the problem. And a much longer answer describing why it’s such a problem, and what we have to do to fix and avoid it again in the future. The short answer: panic buying of seeds from fear of food scarcity, and national food chain supply shortages due to our current epidemic. If you know me, you know I mean it when I say that I genuinely hope this leads to a new golden age of farming and backyard gardening where equity of food access dominates our new national agrarian-strengthened prosperity boom.

To that point, if you reach out to me in this time for support with your new home garden, know that providing you with useful guidance and any tips would bring me ultimate joy and satisfaction. For those of you that do not yet know, consider me a resource - I am at your disposal. Under non-pandemic circumstances, our farm is completely open to visitors - and we are all absolutely happy to show how the sausage is made. 

The following is likely to be much more than the average person wants to know about seeds and what we’ve been dealing with. We know transparency is critical to trust, and so here goes. You’ve been warned! 

Where should we start with how that seed problem gets resolved? Seeds are a complex world, and it can be intimidating to the uninitiated. I’ve been dealing closely with seed farms and seed distributors for the past 5 years, so I can at least speak to our experience and make some very reasonable educated guesses. Here are the basic problems that have arisen surrounding seed scarcity, in no particular order:

1. Why can’t we just get more seeds? 

2. Why can’t we just get seeds from some other place? 

3. Why can’t we just get some packets from BigBoxStore?

4. What’s causing the delays?

5. What will we do to avoid this in the future?

6. What’s going to happen with the Farm?  

1. Why can’t we just get more seeds?

Seed purchasing is a multi-faceted part of the business. And the cost of mistakes early multiply out dramatically (though not particularly severely) over time. We happen to understand logarithmic growth in our current climate more now than we used to. This behavior kind of describes what can happen when missed opportunities happen with seeding. Particularly with longstanding (multi-harvest or “cut-and-come-again” veggies like kales and collards). 

There are many dimensions to seed quality, and the following is a selection. Are the seeds organic? Are the seeds biodynamic? Where are they from? Do they have a story? Are they GMO? Who grew them, and are they treated well and paid fairly for their labor? What is the company selling these seeds like, what do they stand for? Do these seeds tell a story? How fresh are they? How are they handled when packaged and shipped? Are they sensitive seeds (or plant starts like potatoes and sweet potatoes which ship as live plants) that will no longer arrive in a viable condition? Will they arrive in time to make it worth planting now (crops that thrive in cold weather now that spring is in full swing and temps are warming - like lettuce)? Can I acquire them in a fiscally responsible manner for the health of our business, in sufficient quantities to get the best to our customers? There’s at least a 10 page paper behind each of these questions. Dissertations are written about these many facets. 

Seeds with a story. They’re certified organically grown, by Adaptive Seeds, a company focused on restoring biodiversity. That’s our Thai Basil for this year. When I saw the description, I knew there was no other choice I could make! The shipping delay popup is also visible. Click the image to head to their site for more info.

Clearly some of these questions may seem like they have… less than critical impacts on the finished crops. I can understand why many would come to that conclusion. But they are all critical to me, and they are part of what I think is important about how we do things differently. As our customer it’s one of the seemingly intangible but important things you’re paying for. If I have difficulty finding satisfactory answers to these questions, the number of seed options I consider “viable” dramatically decreases - especially after so many choices are wiped out from panic buying.

Furthermore, the seed market is incredibly stable over time. It is not designed to handle surges in demand like this, and it comes down largely to the biology of the plants, their growth habits, and the nature of farming. Carrots, for example (and many other vegetables), are biennial. This means they grow for a calendar year, and seed production occurs in their second year - after which they fade. While seeds may form on carrot umbels in their first season, their low germination rate makes them a poor choice for commercial use. In other words, it takes two years to make carrot seeds. Many, many other crops need to go through a seasonal cycle (or their seeds do, at least - “stratifying”) of high temps and frosts to properly produce viable germinating seeds. Seeds are just not something that can be rushed. The freshest seeds from this year were grown at least last year, if not the year before - 2020 carrot seeds come from 2018 carrot plants. And when you complicate this with the fact that some seeds stay viable for years, but some for less than one (pumpkin seeds vs onion seeds, for example)... things become that much more complicated. 

2. Why can’t we just get seeds from some other place? 

There is a limited number of seed distributors that meet our high requirements for seed acquisition. Many of our criteria are mentioned above. The last of those criteria on the list is fiscal. It’s obviously last intentionally, but it’s still there and I know that you understand it should be. Finding seeds from some other place in the quantities we need, while still fitting the criteria we set out for ourselves, is a challenge outside a pandemic. There may be other responsible places for us to purchase from, but an advantage of these trusted sellers is consistency. 

When initially charged with finding a solution to this impending problem, my first thought was to look for home gardeners that are seed savers. They often come with incredible stories, and it’s a person taking care to provide something they truly love and enjoy. We’ve purchased nearly 3,000 seeds from small producers this year and many of them are working beautifully for us - I cannot wait to tell you about our Thai Basil! Others, not so much. A main complicating factor here is: when do we know the seed is no longer viable? Let’s talk about spinach, it’s a favorite crop to grow, and it’s a customer favorite, too. I acquired two ounces of spinach seeds from a backyard seed saver (about 4,000 seeds), for a favorite bulletproof heirloom variety: “Bloomsdale Longstanding.” I followed our normal routine. I sowed 400 starts. Spinach can take up to 14 days to germinate. Usually it’s faster for me because I pre-soak overnight - shortening our average spinach germination time to about 3-4 days. Day 16 I saw my first of a total of 20-ish sprouts. 18 Days to find out the seeds were not viable. As you would expect, we have little use for spinach seeds with a 5% germination rate. 

Here’s a 200 cell tray, planted with two varieties of lettuce. The seeds in the left 100 are an heirloom variety from a backyard gardener. The seeds on the right are also heirloom, but are 2 years old and from Johnny’s, an industry leading seed supplier.

And worse yet, because of current shipping conditions, it took 8 days to arrive, instead of the usual 2 or 3. Add 18 days to find out the seed lot was a dud, some quick math will show we have nearly 4 weeks lost with no spinach to show for it. The same went for beans, peas, lettuces, and a number of herbs.

3. Why can’t we just get some seeds from BigBoxStore?

Mostly because we know almost nothing about those seeds - if there’s any in stock. We have the company that made them, and the season they’re intended for. The selection is limited. We know the price, and it may seem low - $3 for 10 tomato seeds. This year, let’s say we needed 400 tomato plants. That means we needed to start ~480 seeds (at an industry standard minimum 80% germination rate). That’s $3 x 48. And that’s for seeds we know little about. Are there even enough packs in stock? Hopefully they’d have that 80% germination rate, but I’ve never seen it from a BigBoxStore seed packet. Reputable seed suppliers not only offer a better price point in bulk purchasing, they provide security through consistent product quality. I would say low quality seeds and their resulting low germination rates are one of the top discouraging factors for home gardeners, and it’s not a viable option for supplementing a farm at scale.

4. What’s causing the delays?

Well, to be honest, the delays are in part due to the shipping delays we’re all experiencing for pretty much everything right now. The rest of the delays are due to the fact that the companies we choose for our seed suppliers are being responsible and thoughtful in their handling of this pandemic. They are thinking about the safety of their employees and their communities, as they should. That’s slowing things down. I’ve grabbed a couple screenshots for you of various companies we typically rely on. IF we have at some point been able to order seeds - even in a normally timely fashion - we’ve waited weeks, and in some cases MONTHS to receive our orders. Our seed potatoes were a month and a half late, as an example. Some are in the image at the top of the post.

Another complicating factor is that some seed companies are making exceptions and either fast-tracking commercial farm orders, or limiting/not accepting new orders for smaller-scale or private/home gardeners altogether. What constitutes a “commercial” account for each supplier is at their discretion - sometimes we happen to fit their requirements, and sometimes we don’t - they are beholden to no one when they make that determination.   

5. What will we do to avoid this in the future? 

Should annual global pandemics be something we plan for? Who can say. What would we have to adjust in our business model to provide a plan against this in the future? Seeds need a cool, dark, airtight space for viable long term storage. We have just acquired new long-term storage containers for our seeds. Purchasing and storage of those seeds has already begun, as seed supply and logistics are beginning to catch up (in the limited ways they are able). We have also made increased investments in our propagation infrastructure, so that we can accommodate less-than-ideal germination rates in worst-case scenarios in the future; we now have increased capacity and can overseed at higher rates, with suitable outlets for donation of any “extras” afforded us through reasonable germination rates.

Seed saving is a massive undertaking, and a truly complex beast unto itself. It would require a dramatic re-imagining of our business plan and farm design for us to become completely self sufficient in our seed requirements. But any step we can take would potentially benefit us immeasurably. We formed and began working on a new seed saving project (with requisite infrastructure) at the beginning of April of this year. We’re keeping a close eye on sustainability and incorporation into our larger business model. So far it’s likely too soon to tell, but long term viability may be difficult. Although that could just be another opportunity for us to innovate; we look forward to such challenge,  

Things are back on track at the farm and we’re progressing swifty. There are a few cooler nights still coming on the calendar, so we’re not quite out of the woods yet. But this year we have a new suite of tools and infrastructure keeping us at the top of our game.

6. What’s going to happen to the farm?

We’re going to be just fine. We’re behind schedule and moving along as best we can. As you would expect, social distancing, gloves, and masks are slowing us down a bit. We’ve now got seeds for 95% of the things we wanted to grow this year, and we’re continuing to move forward. This season still promises to be our best season yet - with increased quality, selection, quantity, and value for our customers. It is unlikely that after the first few weeks of this season, there will be any difference on our farm beyond our many positive improvements over previous seasons.

I think about what it was like when I first started farming. I had this romanticized notion of what I thought farming was or “should” be, and in many ways I was surprised by what reality called for if we were to be successful. There’s no substitute for actually getting out into the dirt and putting seeds in the ground; if you’re open to it, you may discover a lot about what you truly feel is important. And not just about growing things. In this particular instance, the option is always there to buy some seed from somewhere. Some unknown place, with a long list of unknown variables behind it and for cheap, too. A simple question like “is it worth it?” changes in significance dramatically when your principles and your word are on the line. I focus on making the kinds of decisions I would hope someone would make for my family and I, and that’s what I do for our customers.

The opportunity to work the land at our latest expansion plot in Skimino has been an absolute joy. Some of those benefits - beyond amazing people, family, and the land - are the gorgeous sunsets we’ve been able to enjoy there.

Farmshare - 6/14/19

Farmshare delivery from 6/14/19. Top row, from left: green onions, collard greens, turnips. Middle center, from left: cucumbers, summer squash. Bottom row, from left: lettuce mix, radishes, spicy mix.