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.

 

fastest pickle in the west

I once had a boyfriend who was so desperate for pickles, he’d even drink a jar of pickle juice.  I still haven’t quite forgiven him for scarfing down my expensive, hand-crafted practically Kobe-beef-fussiness-quality Japanese pickles that were carefully stowed away in my tiny apartment refrigerator in Tokyo.  Bonzai, cried he, and shinkansened out of town before I could beat him with a keisaku.  Thanks to his quick escape, we are still friends today, and I feed him pickles when I can.

So this post is for him.

It’s also for anyone who likes new dill pickles, the ones you get for free in New York delis, the half-sour ones.  Sometimes called refrigerator pickles, mine are much better (she said, humbly) because they have the spirit of half-sours but take less than half the time of than regular refrigerator pickles.  I developed the recipe while making real new dill pickles, a dubious wild fermentation preparation of whey, brine, and sitting on a counter for a couple days.  (The Master Food Preserver in me says no, the mouth is saying let’s go.)  When they work, they’re wonderful, slightly fermented, bright lime green, crisp, lovely.  When they don’t, well, you could die of botulism.

But the pickles I’m touting here are absolutely safe, and while not as good as real, fermented new dills, they are an excellent substitution and they only take a few hours to make.  Having a BBQ this weekend?  Try making these in the morning and serving them with your ribs in the evening.  The pickles last about a day, but the quality starts to deteriorate after that, so plan accordingly.

The preparation is inspired by Japanese cucumber salad, and also by my great-grandmother’s recipe for sweet and sour vinegar cucumber salad.  In both of these salads, the cucumbers are sliced, salted, and left to sit in a seasoned vinegar and water solution.  The Japanese sometimes add seaweed or sesame seeds; my great-grandma added thinly sliced white onion.  I was making my regular new dill pickles, as I mentioned, and I ran out of the requisite whey before I ran out of anything else, so I was inspired to turn a long wait into something fresh and salad-like, but with dill flavor.  I thought it might be an amenable idea to add pickling spices, garlic, and a couple heads of fresh dill to a brine and serve the cucumber “pickles” that night as a salad.  And sure enough, it worked.

Can you tell I’m super pleased by this one?  I am.  I have pickle addicts to feed.

Fastest Pickle in the West

• 4 cups sliced pickling cucumbers (1/2-inch slices)
• 3 cups cold water
• 1 T. sea salt
• 1 t. white vinegar
• 1 T. pickling spices
• 1 t. brown mustard seeds
• 3-4 garlic cloves, crushed
• 2 fresh dill heads, or substitute 2 t. dill seeds (not weed)

Wash pickling cucumbers well and slice.  Make brine of water, salt and vinegar.  Mix well, then pour over cucumbers in bowl or plastic container for marinating.  Add pickling spices, mustard seeds, garlic and dill.  Cover container and refrigerate at least 4 and up to 12 hours.  Does not keep for longer than a day or two.

 

farm day at sweetwater farm!

Before I left for the weekend trip, I had the great pleasure to visit my CSA farm, Sweetwater Farm east of Creswell.  Creswell is a short drive south of Eugene, a small town and rural community nestled in its own little valley.  Farmer John and Lynn welcomed us with home brew of the regular and root beer varieties, a potluck, pizzas made in their brick oven (which sadly, I missed due to tardiness), and an herbalist table with minted elixirs of red clover and nettles. Lynn and I took the Master Food Preserver training program together, and I’m volunteering to help the CSA folks out with questions about how to cook with the vegetables in the shares.

The big joy of the 20-acre farm, of course, was the tour provided by Farmer John.  As I said, I was late, so I was fortunate that he was willing to do one last tour, and I happily tagged along, listening to an articulate, passionate disquisition on soil additives, crop rotation, experimentation with chicken feed and greenhouse rows, and all manner of things.  He showed us the bakery in progress, the lumber kiln, and the dank and mysterious mushroom hut, where shiitakes and oyster mushrooms bloom like pale, fleshy flowers.

The fields, immaculately maintained, are grouped by plant type.  The brassicas have their own area, the twenty-odd types of potatoes (some of which are pictured above) grow in neat mounded rows next to a field bursting with hard red wheat (pictured with daisy).  But where were the Yukon Gold potatoes?  Why, in the shares, of course!

Rows of Asian greens fill out another field, and garlic has its own real estate.  Tomatoes and peppers and herbs — really most of the hot weather crops — grow carefully in greenhouses dotted around the property.  Cardoons — cardoons!! — line the long driveway up to the farmhouse.  They are pictured here, the things that look like artichokes.  I had never seen a growing cardoon.  Farmer John said that in Italy, they bend the stalks and cover them with soil to get the blanched white color.  There were strawberries, some small fig trees and the beginnings of a plum orchard, and god knows what else.  The man even has an entire row of wormwood (Artemesia absinthia) and has faced — it was rumored — the green fairy.

We got to see an old Ponderosa Pine in a lovely wooded meadow, a relic, said Farmer John, of what the whole valley used to look like centuries ago.  Hundreds of chickens wander around several large fenced areas, and you can see how happy they are by the size and quality of their eggs.

Sweetwater Farm has been in operation for 20 years, and doing natural or organic farming the entire time.  They used to supply produce to high-end restaurants, but now they just grow for the market and the CSA shares, to maximize freshness and variety.  The vegetables are beautiful, and the breadth of what’s available there is really unusual for a small farm in the Willamette Valley.  I was glad I had the opportunity to visit; thanks John and Lynn!

And one last shot:  I love living in Oregon. Yes, this would be purple mountains’ majesty above the fruited plain…of amber waves of grain.  You know you want it.

 

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.

 

little green potstickers

One of my very first good friends in college was a Japanese guy, an exchange student who met with me for conversation practice.  I was seventeen, fresh from the suburbs, in a new town, and experiencing life on my own for the first time.  He was a bit older than me, but in certain ways in the same situation as I was.  He treated me at first strangely, based on Japanese custom for dealing with someone who is at once a beloved little sister and an esteemed teacher (so yes, it didn’t really work).  But over the months, as he became more and more Americanized and we got to know each other better, our relationship evolved into something really special.  He had a similar sense of humor as me (poor guy), and also a streak of melancholy and sensitivity that all truly funny people share. We kept in touch for many years, helping each other out in our native lands and through several moves and new careers, until one day he finally he vanished into the ether of Japanese corporate society.

But I still think of him every time I make potstickers.  I learned many of my homestyle Japanese dishes from him.  In fact, for a long time, I knew how to make more Japanese dishes than anything else.  I was a vegetarian for several years in college, and he gladly showed me how to cook Japanese vegetables and modified recipes, like the one for the very popular pork dumplings that we call potstickers and the Japanese call gyoza.

I’ve never measured this recipe, and I would never serve it to guests.  This is messy, slightly greasy, casual family eating with humble ingredients.  It also has a distinct disadvantage of being a pain to make.  But potstickers are delicious, and worth the trouble.

If you’ve had potstickers at Chinese restaurants, understand that these are significantly smaller, with a very light “skin,” not the heavy, doughy wrapping you’ll find there.  This is because you will be cheating and buying store-made skins, not making your own.  This does save a bit of time, especially since the skins can be kept in the freezer.

The other day, faced with (1) some thawing skins I was going to use for cheater pirogies with my homemade sauerkraut, and (2) an ever-growing vegetable bin full of local chard and kale, I was inspired to dude up my potsticker recipe.  My potstickers are usually filled with a cabbage, tofu, green onion, garlic and ginger mixture.  I thought it might be nice (and even remotely healthy) to swap out the cabbage for better greens.  And sure enough, it worked!

This filling is vegan.  You can include an egg, if you want, to help bind the filling, but I’ve never had any real problems with unbound filling, so I don’t bother.

As a warning, you’re going to need a largish non-stick skillet with a lid that fits over it tightly.  If you’re doubling the recipe, you should keep in mind you’ll need to cook the potstickers in two batches.

Little Green Potstickers

For the Filling:

1/2 cake regular (firm) tofu, drained well of water
3-4 green onions, chopped
2-inch long piece ginger, grated finely
2 cloves garlic, chopped finely
2 big handfuls of mixed greens (or a quarter of a small cabbage)
1 t. sesame oil
1 t. sesame seeds
1/2 t. salt
1 T. corn starch

For the Dipping Sauce:

1 part Japanese soy sauce: 2-3 parts rice vinegar
a float of chili oil (la-yu) is optional

For Cooking:

1/4 cup vegetable or peanut oil
1/2 package potsticker “skins,” sold at Asian markets and at some large supermarkets

The first step is to prepare the filling.

To drain the tofu, remove it from the package, squeeze it a little bit, and place it in a colander.  On top of the tofu, place a small plate and then weigh down the plate with something heavy (a small pot or a gallon-sized Ziploc bag filled with water will do).  Let sit for 15 minutes, pressing down on the weight every so often, to drain as much water out as possible.  Pat dry before using.  Crumble and place into a large bowl.

To prepare the greens (this step is unnecessary if you are using cabbage), blanch them in a pot of boiling water for a few seconds, then immediately plunge them into a bowl full of ice water. This will fix the color and make the filling cook more evenly.  Remove greens from ice water, squeeze them very well to remove most of the water, then chop finely and add to bowl with tofu.

After preparing the tofu and greens, add the rest of the ingredients to the bowl and mix thoroughly.

Filling and Folding the Potstickers:

The basic technique is to place a teaspoon full of filling on a “skin,” gently dampen one edge of the circle with water, then crimp or fold the edges to seal the dumpling.  A good seal ensures that when you cook it, it won’t burst the seams and ooze filling out all over the place.  The crimping process is difficult to describe in words, so I’ll give you a few options.  One, check out a video on how to do it.  Two, look at my pictures, and see how I fold while pressing the filling down with a finger inside the potsticker.  Three, just forget the whole thing and seal each potsticker by crimping the edges with a fork, just as you would a pie crust.

For the first option, check out this video I found on youtube, and watch her fingers.  She is using thicker “skins” that might be homemade, rather than store-bought.  You’ll want to use less filling than she does, but the video provides a good tutorial on folding:

Some tips:  more hands makes for faster eatin’ — see if you can enlist others to help you.  Some people get so good at the process they can work at the speed of light.  I’m not that talented, as you can see from my messy folding, but still rarely have a potsticker disaster.

Don’t use any more than one teaspoon of filling for each potsticker.  Less is better than more.

Don’t let the filled, uncooked potstickers sit too long on a plate, or they may start to stick and rip when you remove them.  You may want to prepare some, then cook them, then prepare some more.  Retrogrouch and I do this, often eating potstickers straight from the stove, as we’re folding more.

Cooking the Potstickers:

Once you run out of filling, you are done, and you can cook the potstickers!  Cooking is a two-step process: first browning the bottoms in some oil, then steaming the potstickers until the skin becomes translucent.

You don’t want to use too much oil.  Just coat the bottom of the non-stick pan with oil (I confess I use a regular pan and more oil, but they are much more prone to sticking and ripping that way).  Place each potsticker into the hot oil.  To discourage sticking, I do this in a quick one-two motion, dipping it in the hot oil down on the pan, then immediately lifting it up again, then putting it down.  It’s ok to crowd the pan, but move quickly, watching the earliest potstickers so they don’t get burnt on the bottom.

Once all the potstickers are browned on the bottom, add about a 1/3 cup of water.  Again moving quickly, pour all the water in the pan at once, then immediately put the lid on the pan so you’ll get the full rush of steam.  N.b., if you don’t move fast, all the oil and water will spray all over your stove.  See the video for a good example of this process:

When the skins are translucent, and you can see the filling inside, remove the potstickers carefully. (See the picture above for what they should look like when steamed — can you see the green?)  You can use a nylon spatula and loosen the bottoms, then flip them onto a plate.  Expect to lose a couple.  The losers should be devoured by the cook before anyone can see your lack of professionalism.

To Serve:

Serve with rice and a dipping sauce made of one part Japanese soy sauce and two or three parts rice vinegar.  It can be doctored with a float of chili oil (la-yu), and some chopped scallions or sesame seeds or even chopped garlic, if you’re fancy.

Enjoy — and feel good that you’re using up some of those delicious local greens!

 

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.

 

lupine spring salad

His eyes still sparkle in a narr’wer space:
His jaws retain the grin, and violence of his face

- Ovid, Metamorphosis, Book 1

Eating new vegetables always seemed slightly inhumane to me; something like facing spring alone or long in the tooth or with one’s eyes more dull than wolfish. It’s like cutting fecundity down at the knees: eating what we grow too young. Each year I smell the feral mud and think the same thing and have as long as I can remember, and again, it is May, and I catch it in the air: that something horrible awakening when the year is new.

Then I think: they’re radishes, for god’s sake. Eat them.

And I try not to think at all about the eggs.

Hence, a salad with no more exegesis than a reference to what inspired me, Adam Roberts’ “killer salad,” a lettuce-free mix of spring vegetables in risk-aware consensual raw eggyolk dressing. I used multicolored “Easter Egg” radishes and new carrots from Hey Bayles farm via the Saturday Market, peas from my garden, some leftover grape tomatoes and avocado from god knows where, and a liberal sprinkling of chive flowers, also local beauties. You should use what your conscience dictates.

Risk-Aware Consensual Raw Eggyolk Dressing

Dresses one big bowl of no-lettuce salad. Use less for lettuce, and use promptly, discarding leftovers.

1/2 lemon, juiced (or 2 T. of your lovely lemon-chive blossom vinegar that you made three weeks ago)

1 t. dijon mustard with tarragon

1/2 t. fresh chopped chives, if you haven’t used chive blossoms in the salad

salt and pepper to taste

1 perfectly fresh-from-the-farm egg yolk

1/8 - 1/4 cup olive oil

Whisk together all ingredients but the olive oil. In a slow, thin stream, add the olive oil while whisking to make a thick, emulsified dressing. You may choose not to use the full 1/4 cup, depending on your taste. When emulsified and seasoned to taste, quickly blend with the waiting salad, and serve immediately.

 

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. :)