garden yumyums

Just so you know (Mom) that I haven’t been inside staring at a computer screen ALL summer, I bring you some garden updates…both mine and one about a new Master Food Preserver class!

First, the important stuff.   The Master Food Preservers are holding a class called “Cooking and Preserving Green” to help raise funds for our survival.  It will take place on Saturday, August 23, from 9 am -3 pm at the Lane County Extension Building (next to the Fairgrounds).  Learn how to put up the fruits of your harvest — to pickle, can, freeze and dry green beans, zucchini, cukes and more!  There will be demonstrations, tastings, small workshops, recipes and delicious preserved food to take home.  It should be really fun and not at all intimidating for beginners, so help us out and learn ways to turn that zucchini into something other than bread!  I’ll be there on duty, so if you want to complain about the Serge Gainsbourg videos on my blog in person, please consider this an open invitation. Early registration is $40 a person, $75 for couples, and at-the-door is $50 a person.  Call 541-682-4246 to register.

And then, the garden updates!  My garden is growing along happily.  The imported dirt really made a difference, even with our crummy weather earlier in the season.  I lost one tomato, which was quickly replaced by a tomatillo plant, but that space seems to be doomed and I’m losing the blossoms as they set fruit.  The other seven tomatoes are doing well, and I have tons of cherry tomatoes, plums, and slicers just beginning to yellow.  My cucumbers and beans were planted late, but I already have some pole beans ready for eating.  Herbs and Hungarian paprika peppers are going like gangbusters.

Zucchini already producing more than I want, and I have tons of little gourds on the vine!  A volunteer something — either a melon or a pumpkin, sprung up in the good soil where my plum tree was, and it’s growing perfectly, like crazy.  I’ll plant more squash there next year.

The wormwood is taller than me; a volunteer sunflower sprung up next to the cucumber hill; my raspberries gave me a couple of handfuls of sweet, beautiful berries — next year’s the charm.  Transplanted bay bush doing ok, as is the little fig tree.  My elder trees don’t seem to be doing much of anything.

I left in my Russian kale to collect aphids, which it does beautifully.  My artichokes aren’t doing well for some reason, an infestation of earwigs, perhaps?  I’ve lost many of the beautiful leaves.  Lettuce patch planted for my cat has bolted and tastes bitter.  Fennel growing slowly, as is the sole Japanese eggplant.  Japanese kaiware radish sprouts come and go, producing flowers as pretty as Michaelangelo.

 

ab ovo — tonight we’re gonna party like it’s 400 AD

We’re still struggling through over temperatures well into the 90s, and the last thing I feel like doing is cooking; even starting up the grill is fatiguing.  So I’ve been thinking about summer appetizers, those light, fresh, simple nibbles that highlight one or two ingredients and delight the eye and tongue with something unusual, and thought I’d feature a few of these beauties in the upcoming weeks.

These recipes will contain some ingredients which aren’t available widely, but they are fun to play with if you can get your hands on them.  I’ll suggest substitutes when I can.  What’s most important is to experiment consciously and purposefully with just one or two flavor combinations.

The first in my series of summer appetizers is an adaptation from the Culinaria Italy cookbook. Inspired by the fabled gourmand of ancient Rome, Apicius, who was likely a composite figure who created the world’s first cookbook, this recipe takes what was originally a sauce for soft-boiled eggs and returns it to the egg — in a deviled-egg-type sweet and sour stuffing of pinenuts and lovage.  I love the idea of lounging about in white togas with broad purple edging, and eating beautifully prepared, local stuffed eggs, with, say, peacocks strutting to and fro and slaves to refresh your gin-n-tonics (which were not Roman, but the British have Roman blood, and well, it’s *my* fantasy, ok?).

The fish sauce might be the strangest item in this recipe, but it approximates the popular Roman fermented fish condiment, garum or liquimen.  If it wigs you out, just use salt, and in all cases, use it sparingly.

Lovage is one of those perennial herbs that takes a while to get started but then stubbornly persists on little water and filtered light, year after year.  It has the taste of strong, sweet, lemony celery. It can easily overwhelm a dish with its perfumey, vegetal bitterness.  In short, we don’t see it much in American recipes except for the occasional soup.  But as a main attraction in a simple small dish, it can be refreshing.  You might choose to substitute celery leaves, or even tarragon, which would work well but change the character of the dish.

To make the perfect hardboiled eggs, follow my recipe below.  You won’t get the hard, dry yolks or the greenish cast that comes from overcooking the eggs.

Pinenut and Lovage-Stuffed Eggs

In ovis hapalis: piper, ligusticum, nucleos infusos. Suffundes mel, acetum, liquamine temperabis. (Original recipe in Latin)

12 hardboiled eggs

1/2 cup pine nuts, soaked in verjus, or a sweet wine such as Riesling, for 15-20 minutes

2 T. finely chopped lovage or celery leaves

1 T. honey

1/4 t. freshly ground pepper

2 t. vinegar

few dashes Thai fish sauce or salt to taste

Prepare hardboiled eggs by placing eggs in cold water and turn heat on medium high.  When water starts to boil vigorously, remove eggs from heat and place in bowl of cool water to stop cooking.  Cool eggs and peel.

Slice eggs in half lengthwise and carefully remove egg yolks to bowl, reserving egg whites for stuffing.  Combine pine nuts, lovage, honey and egg yolks.  Crush with wooden meat pestle or any heavy pounder until pine nuts are mostly smashed.  Add pepper, vinegar and fish sauce or salt, mix well, and stuff the eggs.  Garnish each egg with a lovage leaf or a few reserved pinenuts that you have roasted until light brown.  Refrigerate eggs until serving.

AND…for your picnicking pleasure…

Bonus Potato Salad with Eggs, Pinenuts and Lovage

This preparation also makes a great potato salad, according to Retrogrouch, who ate it all as I was cleaning up the kitchen.

Boil 2-3 medium waxy potatoes. Cool potatoes and slice or cube while still warm.   Combine potatoes with the crushed pinenut and herb preparation above, then add 3-4 chopped hardboiled eggs.  Add a handful of parsley and more lovage, if you have it.  Blend with 1/4 cup mayonnaise, or to taste, and salt and pepper.  Chill for a couple of hours before serving and keep cold in cooler if you plan to serve it outdoors or after a Roman orgy, since it is highly perishable.

 

goodbye kale and chard, hellllllllllo summer!

With this weekend’s heat (finally!), I knew I’d have to harvest the rest of my spring greens and snowpeas, plus with the Olympic Trials starting in Eugene with all its attendant crowds at local restaurants, it seemed the perfect time to stay at home. So we decided to host an impromptu barbecue!

Retrogrouch manned the meat station, and I played with vegetables. I’ll post about my new invention, Faster Than A Speeding Bullet New Dill Pickles, later. Suffice it to say I used a Japanese method and my great-grandma’s Polish cucumber salad to make a very serviceable new dill pickle slice in three hours flat. We ended up making a variety of grilled things based on what people brought, so it was a night of burgers, brats, salmon and steak (!), plus my black bean bulgar wheat salad and a mesclun salad with chive blossom vinegar as sides. Someone brought a lovely cool lime tart for dessert.

Another discovery was a very decent “spinach-artichoke” dip that I drummed up from our huge supply of greens. It was made from much healthier ingredients than your usual spinach dip. My recipe makes 3-4 cups of a relatively firm-textured dip that can’t be frozen, so you’ll either have to scale down or use it as a stuffing in cherry tomatoes, celery, peapods, etc., or as a pasta sauce. Or have a huge party! Or just leave it in the fridge and snack on it all weekend long during a heat wave…

The farmers markets are selling early, soft, large-leaved basil, so I used some for this recipe. It makes the dip taste less like “spinach-artichoke” and more like pesto, which is not necessarily a bad thing. The base is ricotta cheese instead of sour cream or mayo, which helps lend a lightness to the dip, as does the lack of oil. Add just a bit of lemon juice to keep the basil from discoloring. We used a budget Parmesano Reggiano, which was fine, and frozen artichoke bottoms, available at Middle Eastern grocery stores. You could also use artichoke bottoms (or hearts) canned in water.

Spring Greens Basil Artichoke Dip

Makes 3-4 cups.

• 1 very large bunch chard
• 1 very large bunch kale
• 1 big handful fresh basil
• 6-8 oz. frozen artichoke bottoms, thawed and chopped
• 1 lb. whole milk ricotta cheese
• 1/4 cup light cream cheese
• 1/4 cup parmesan cheese, grated
• 1-2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 T. lemon juice
• salt and freshly grated pepper

Clean greens and remove stems. Blanch the chard and kale in a large pot of boiling water by submerging the leaves in the water for only a couple of minutes max, until they are bright green and wilted. (I did it in two batches.) Then, remove the leaves and immediately plunge them in a large bowl of iced water to stop the cooking and set the color.

After letting the greens cool, remove from iced water and squeeze as much water from the ball of greens as you can (again, it’s better to do this in at least two batches).

When greens are prepared, add them and the rest of the ingredients to a food processor, and pulse until ingredients are well mixed but not pureed.

Add salt and freshly ground pepper to taste. Salt is crucial, since the ricotta and greens are mild.

Refrigerate for at least an hour. The ricotta cheese and small amount of lemon juice makes this dip not so great for keeping at room temperature for long periods.

Serve with wheat crackers or pita bread.

 

if you’re tired of greens

If you’re tired of greens and you know it, salad-spin, salad-spin!

If you’re tired of greens and you know it, salad-spin, salad-spin!

If you’re tired of greens and you know it and you’re trying to be a good little locavore and the whole damn state of Oregon is stuck in perpetual spring and it won’t get warm and your beans aren’t growing and your tomatoes are rotting on the vine and you’ve eaten more lettuce than an entire army of slugs and the greens still keep coming and coming, endlessly, leafily, inexorably, cruelly…

salad-spin, salad-spin!

I’ve grown so desperate, I even altered one of my oldest, dearest recipes to use up a braising mix of chard, kale, mustard greens and spinach. And the recipe? Green potstickers. Yes, potstickers. Who knew? I’ll post about it tomorrow when I have more time.

 

introducing the favalous fava bean!

Although the lingering chill has affected the hot weather crops, our cool weather ones are doing just fine! I continue on with sweet snowpeas, and the favas are happily ripening in other gardens.

Today, I am on assignment for my CSA, because their favas are finding their way into boxes for the next few weeks. Widely used in the Mediterranean and Middle East, favas are used in myriad ways both healthy and lovely. I’ve been looking at some beautiful recipes from Italy, Tunisia, Morocco and Japan. You can’t go wrong with preparing fresh beans and pureeing them with some olive oil and garlic for a wonderful dip, but there’s much, much more to try.

Fava beans, if they had an advertising campaign, would bill themselves as “Europe’s First Bean.” Thorngrove Table, an absolutely wonderful medieval food blog, featured their history in a post a few years ago. As with all ancient foodstuff, the fava bean is associated with otherworldly legends. Some cultures cast fava beans for divination (favomancy), and others plant them as magic beanstalks to reach up to a giant’s castle. Having planted mine as green manure in February, I missed the traditional day in Italy to plant them, November 2 (All Souls’ Day), which gave the title “beans of the dead” to the fava, and the other traditional day in Europe, Good Friday, seems a bit late. I also failed to plant them in the night, another superstition for good luck.

Favas were seen as both good and evil. On the dark side of the force, they were seen as the vessels that held the souls of the dead. Other mortal dangers include favism (a serious chemical intolerance of the bean that creates anemia in some people of Middle Eastern and Mediterranean descent) and, of course, the reputation they have as an accompaniment to human liver, with a nice Chianti. The pods are said to be toxic, and you should avoid eating the beans raw.

When the force is with them, favas have pretty little white and black flowers, and the young beans are tender and just as green as can be. The plants fix nitrogen in the garden via little nodules on the mature roots, so they’re not only pretty but great for your soil. You can eat the young plant tips sautéed with butter and garlic, the young beans as you would green beans, and the older beans shelled, which taste of the essence of spring.

Shelling fava beans involves a double commitment: first you need to remove them from their tough pods, then, after boiling the beans for 2-3 minutes, you need to remove the tender green innards from their waxy shell. But honestly, they’re worth it. And if you’d like to skip a step, you can buy the shelled beans frozen at Middle Eastern markets, but you’ll still need to remove the waxy shell after boiling them.

Some delicious ideas for the beans:

• Lamb stew with favas and green almonds, eaten by Moroccan Jews in the spring - apparently the Israelites ate favas when they were slaves in Egypt, so they are a symbolic food at Passover;
• Italians eat young favas with watercress and pecorino in a salad, or creamed with melted pecorino and cream (see recipe for the latter in The Silver Spoon Italian cookbook);
• Japanese vegetarians puree the beans and serve them with thin slices of fried eggplant seasoned with soy;
• Alice Waters has a quick, simple recipe for fried artichoke bottoms topped with freshly boiled, warm fava beans in Chez Panisse Vegetables;
• Another recipe from The Silver Spoon is a lovely variation of fava puree - boil the shelled beans with small cubes of raw potato in vegetable stock, then mash together and serve with some olive oil.

But the most unusual and lovely one, in my view, is the most seasonal, too. Until sundown tonight, many Jews all over the world are celebrating Shavuot, a holiday that honors the Torah. It also coincides with the grain harvest in Israel, so it makes sense that North African Jews would celebrate with a traditional dish of buttered couscous topped with fava beans and sautéed onions. Claudia Roden has a great description of the classic recipe in her The Book of Jewish Food: An Odyssey from Samarkand to New York. The classic often includes powdered sugar or cinnamon and raisins, plus dairy drinks on the side, to symbolize “the land of milk and honey.” I decided to add a non-traditional ingredient to the dish, local fennel from our weekly market, to change and layer the flavors in a different way. It’s a delicious and beautiful side, perfect for everything from a vegetarian meal to fish to chicken.

Couscous Topped with Favas and Caramelized Fennel and Onion

Serves 2 as a main dish, 4 as a side

1 cup quick-cooking couscous
5 T. salted butter, separated
1/2 t. cinnamon
1 bulb fennel, sliced thinly and chopped
fronds from the fennel, rinsed and chopped
1/2 cup chopped sweet white onion or spring onions
at least 1 cup prepared fava beans (shelled twice)
salt and pepper

Shell and cook the fava beans: Remove the beans from the pod, then boil them for three minutes. Shock in cold water, then slip off the white, leathery skins. Set prepared beans aside in a bowl.

Prepare couscous according to the directions on the package, using 1 T. butter instead of olive oil. Keep covered and warm as you make the topping.

Fry the onions in 2 T. butter over medium heat until they are beginning to caramelize (color dark golden). Add fennel bulb (save fronds for serving) and continue to sautée until the fennel and onions have some dark brown caramelization. Add salt and pepper to taste, then fold in the prepared fava beans.

Just before serving, season the couscous with 2T. butter, cinnamon, and fennel fronds. Mound couscous into cone shape with flattened top on a platter, and crown the top with favas and fennel mixture. Serve warm.

 

may in the willamette valley

…was rough. After the brief heat spell, we dipped back down to just-under-normal temperatures, and it has been grey and kinda chilly for the past couple of weeks. My peas are happy, but the hot weather plants — peppers and tomatoes, in particular — are growing slowly. Still, signs of life and a fruitful future emerge and give us hope. June is nothing short of wondrous.

I love watching the garden this time of year, and I always take a bunch of pictures of nothing particularly interesting but the miracle of life. So I thusly bring you the new leaves on my little fig plant, a peapod, tiny black raspberries, a white strawberry shielded by an umbrella, baby Concord grape clusters and Supersweet 100 tomato flowers.

The farmers at Saturday Market are much further along than I am, as can be expected. I bought my first Seascape strawberries this weekend, watched a veritable carrot feeding frenzy, admired the shiny new garlic and acres of gorgeous lettuces, and succumbed to the charms of a small fennel bulb and a pound of fava beans for future experimentation.

Retrogrouch was swayed by the rhetorical strength of an argument made by a 1# bag of Hentze’s hazelnuts and the compelling claims of a potato donut from Hideaway Bakery. The Hideaway Bakery’s wood fire oven convinced me, too, to buy a dark loaf of old skool rye, as heavy and dense as a Russian brick. And, as assurance against a vampyre infestation, I forked over less than a handful of dollars for some (already?) late garlic scapes to pickle. Disaster preparedness: let me show you it.

 

in which she flowers and tarts it up

It’s flowering flowery flower time in the Willamette Valley. The rhododendrons in Eugene are always spectacular, but this year, with the weird cold/hot weather pattern, they are extraordinary. We have four mature rhodies, none of which I would have planted myself, but even I, begrudgingly, will say they look fabulous.

The problem is that someone who lived here really, really, really liked purple. I suspect it was the crazy lady with the dogs. Most of the mature blooming landscaping around my house is in the range of purple, fuschia and pink, and I’m more of a red-orange person. So I can’t help but be overwhelmed when a mushroom cloud of fuschia attacks me in my front yard.

I can’t offer any solution to those of you suffering fuschia attacks, but I can say that I’ve found a lovely use for one, tiny fuschia flower: the head of a flowering chive, now in bloom.

This week, in my Master Food Preserver class, we did flavored vinegars and jellies. In the top picture, you can see a rather beautiful and easy chive flower-lemon infused vinegar. Herb or flower-flavored vinegars are easy to make in small batches, and don’t need any processing because of the tartness of the vinegar, so anyone can make them. The only thing you really need to be aware of is that you don’t want to pack in too much dense, low-pH stuff (like jalapeños, for example), or you still can run the risk of botulism.

Making Herb or Flower Vinegar

In a clean jar, add enough flowers or fresh herbs to loosely pack the jar about a third full. Another option is a slice or two of lemon or lemon zest, or a few berries (frozen are best). Fill jar with white wine or plain white vinegar. Cover with a non-metal lid, and let mature for a few weeks, either in the refrigerator or in a dark, cool cupboard.

Other flowers can be used, too. Our MFP instructor makes nasturtium-garlic vinegar, and I made not only the chive blossom-lemon but also marionberry-Szechuan peppercorn, with those little lovely floral buds from China that are once again legal in the U.S. Next year, I’m going to try strawberry blossom vinegar with my first-bloom Seascape strawberry blossoms, which should be removed anyway to strengthen the plants. As you can see, I made my vinegars in baby food jars, but I’ve since moved them to containers without metal lids, because vinegar rusts metal over time.

The green jar, if you’re curious, is a welcome respite from all this purple. It’s a jalapeño jelly, made from cooked peppers that were clarified in a most curious manner. I’ll post about this at a later date. :)

 

who says southern californians are useless?

Sometimes you have to make due with what you’ve got. Yes, that is my beach umbrella and pool lounger protecting, respectively, peas and peppers, in today’s record-breaking heat. Go SoCal!

 

dirt

I had three cubic yards of dirt delivered on Monday, and I’ve been digging my way out of the pile ever since. I made faux raised beds, since we can’t afford the time or money for nice raised beds this year, and fortified all the beds. I enlarged the strawberry patch, put in a zucchini hill, planted a fig tree, and got in my starts.

Don’t you think it’s time for a massive heat wave?

We’ll be having one for the next few days. I’ll try to protect the little transplants as well as I can. Someone told me you can use mini laundry baskets they have at the dollar store, or cardboard boxes. Plenty of cool water is a must, too. Wish me luck.

 

tomato starts, 2008

Yup, I’m tilling the back 40 (yards, not acres). My dirt delivery from Lane Forest Products arrives today, and I’ve been mucking about in our native heavy clay, prepping my vegetable beds, and buying starts. I’ll write about my complete 2008 garden plans later, but here’s a taste of my tomatoes. Seven plants again this year.

- Siletz, an early ripening Czech slicer that does well here [ETA 6/1: Felled by blackspot, replaced quickly by tomatillo, on advice of OSU garden writer!];
- German Striped, heirloom slicer, red and yellow marbled;
- Yellow Pear cherries;
- Supersweet 100 cherries;
- Sungold cherries (the best cherry tomato ever);
- Willamette, a small slicer;
- Saucey (2), determinate plums for canning.

Saucey and Siletz came recommended by a woman who did a presentation in the MFP class last week. She also recommended Fourth of July, but I haven’t seen those at market or Down to Earth and I’m probably not going to trek down to Territorial this week. I might check out Gray’s, dunno. [Edited to Add: Looked at Gray's -- no dice. Their tomatoes were really picked over, as could be expected!]  Another strong recommendation was Black Krim, also M. I. A.

This year, I bought a couple of further-along quart-sized tomatoes from Fred Meyer’s, which sometimes has good plants indeed, and I’ll see if that’s a good plan or not.

PS. That’s my ‘Virginia Richards’ rhody, which I thought was a lost cause when we moved in and it didn’t bloom. You go, girl!