On one hand, it’s been a wonderfully summer, temperature wise. We’ve been enjoying many days in the 80s F (27 to 32 C) which is right balmy for normally muggy Virginia when August days are often in the 90s F (33 to 37 F) – even reaching into the 100s last year (40 C). Even better, the nights have been pleasantly cool – the type of cool we often don’t see until late September, with temperatures in the 55-60 range (13 to 16 C). We have hardly turned the air-conditioner on. The peppers are loving it: it’s cool enough that they keep producing blooms and set fruit – yet warm enough that the fruit ripen. All we need is some rain now. We have not seen any on several weeks. Can a gardener ever be satisfied with the weather?

On the other hand, the melons are taking it a little too easy. I suppose they would have been a little more along if I had planted them earlier – under glass, I suppose, since spring was also on the cool side – and melons and watermelons like it hot.

This year, I decided I was going to get some watermelons – but not just any watermelon: I don’t want them too big (not 30 pounder please!), I want a story going with the melon, I want good disease resistance, and above all, I want flavor. So I ordered them – along with many other seeds – from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds who is known to carry many many kind of heirloom melons. Their 2008 catalog featured 45 American melons, 18 Asian & Eastern melons & 17 European melons – many French, including true Charentais melon - as well as 54 watermelons. Each description is of more enticing than the prior ones, which makes you buy many more seed packets than (1) you need, and (2) you have room to plant.

Read more »

Now is when you should start your fall and winter Kitchen Garden.

Truly, there are some things that should be planted in May or June for fall harvesting because those crops take a long time to mature (like celeriac, parsnip, the perennial sunchokes, winter cabbages, winter leeks, Brussels sprouts and a few other things). But they are so many vegetables that can be planted now (and over the next few weeks) for wonderful fresh eating in the fall & winter.

Yes, I know: it’s hot (although not so much here this year, we have not had 100 ° F weather like last year); the gnats are terrible; it’s dry and, yes, it IS (some) work. But what are you going to do in mid-October after you’ve been scrounging around for your last green tomatoes before frost spoils them, wondering if you’ll manage to ripen them inside (don’t you want to eat something else, by then, anyway?) and getting in the winter squashes (you planted winter squash – right?)… With the rapidly declining day length, the sharpening of the air that’s telling you that winter is coming, the birds going south and the cry of the geese overhead, with the nights in the low 40’s, the smell of smoke from the woodstove hanging in the moist air, everything green and fresh is going to be precious, whether a delicate lettuce for a quick salad lunch, or the more robust Lacinata kale - that darling of Tuscan white bean, sausage and kale soup - , or a young, fresh, crisp radish with a little salt & butter. Or a sweet baby carrot, or a bunch of little white turnips to sautée with some whole cumin seeds, or a bouquet of frost-sweetened arugula for the grilled pizza, or some young leeks for braising or… or.. or… you get the idea, I hope (I, on the other hand, am getting hungry - again.) Read more »

It’s been dry here for the least few weeks so I have had to water the garden a little bit, something which I try to avoid. But with no noticeable rain for three of four weeks, I have to water especially those more sensitive plants (like melons or Swiss chard) – or frankly anything that started to droop – like the peppers. Most of the times, I have been able to use the water from our rain-catching “system” which has the capacity to capture and store 350 gallons of rain water. But yesterday, I had to use the well water - because our barrels were all empty..

Nonetheless, the tomatoes are coming – I am, at time, literally, with my elbows in tomatoes. Many end up in sauce, added to the pan that’s almost constantly simmering on the stove, cooled, pureed and refrigerated until the following Monday a.k.a. “canning day”.

Some tomatoes have been bred to process better: less seeds, meatier, hold their shape well. They are variously called “canning”, “processing” “Italian”, “paste” or “plum”. This year, I planted 2 kinds of canning tomatoes: Viva Italia and San Marzano sel. Redorta. I got the seeds for the San Marzano sel. Redorta from Seeds from Italy, a small company in New England, which I used the first time this year and that I am really liking. They are large plum tomatoes, that are vaguely pear-shape – definitively bigger tham the plum tomatoes I have grown so far. Yes, they are good for sauce but they are excellent in my Savory Oven Tomato Preserve (note for next year’s garden: more plum tomatoes!). The recipe is inspired by French “Confit”, a technique used to preserve meat (think Confit de Canard/ Duck Confit) using salt and fat (olive oil in Provence, goose or duck fat in Perigord and the French Southwest). Here the tomatoes are salted/sugared, drizzled with oil and baked for several hours in a very low oven. The roasting helps to dry the tomatoes – yet they don’t dry out because of the oil – and concentrates the flavors: the end product is like essence of tomatoes. Read more »

(no picture of the salsa…. I know, I know…)

Tomatoes however are really wonderful this year. And so are peaches (albeit I don’t grow peaches, several orchards in Rappahannock County have been keeping me happy: I have bought 2 ½ bushels to date).

So as I am cooking for others (well, for me too, of course!), I try to emphasize the bounty and freshness of our wonderful local produce. For example, on Saturday, we cooked for a lovely little party (21 people + 6 kids) where the hostess was very happy that we incorporated many fresh local vegetables and fruit in the menu. She wanted something simple but elegant to celebrate the wedding of one of her children: since the family loves peaches and peaches are so good this year, I made several dishes incorporating peaches: a fresh peach ice-cream with peach sauce, a lovely peach and blackberry salad macerated with lemon-verbena syrup. And then I made a side dish that had both peach and tomato (the other garden winner for me): a peach salsa served with Lamb Kebabs that had been marinated with olive oil and spices and herbs of the Mediterranean basin (cumin, coriander, thyme etc). Read more »

Canning season is officially upon us as the garden is now in full production gear – too much for just eating fresh - so I am freezing, drying, canning & pickling for use in the colder months. Although we grow some hardy greens in the garden in winter, we do not have yet an area big enough to put a lot of root crops that would feed us throughout the cold months. So between now and frost is the time to process all those summer crops for later – as an alternative to winter greens, carrots, pumpkins & winter squashes (and apples): peaches, nectarines, plums & berries; tomatoes, peppers, tomatoes, hot peppers, zucchinis, tomatoes…

Monday morning is now officially designed as “weekly canning morning”. Since I do not have a pressure cooker, I only can high acidity fruit (including tomatoes); other excess crops are frozen or pickled (and then canned): cucumbers, okra, beans, peppers. No sweet corn yet… but soooon…. real sooooon…. (that is if various critters don’t get to it before me!). Yesterday was the first tomato canning of the season, with 5 quarts and 7 pints of sauce made.

The hot pepper crop is also particularly abundant this year. Of course it helps that I planted 2 dozen hot pepper plants (DON’T ASK!). Well, to be fair, there are some anchos in there, and, really, I would hardly call those “hot” – but that’s how the seeds are classified. Nonetheless there is a fair amount of jalapenos and cayennes. Nothing too exotic or super hot: I did not plant scotch bonnets or habaneros … this year.

So what to do with all those hot peppers? Full of vitamins by the way. If you don’t believe me, check here for nutrition information. According to elook, 100g of raw Jalapeno peppers provides a lot more of several major vitamins than 100 g of Florida oranges: 73% of the average daily requirements for vitamin C (77% for orange), 25% of vitamin B6 (2% for orange), 16% vitamin K (0 %) and15% of vitamin A (4%). Of course, 100 g is about 3 ounces, so it’ll take a serious appreciation of all things spicy hot to eat that much in one seating!!!

My Dad always loved hot chili peppers, fresh, dried, pickled, cooked. And I mean hot. He was famous for it: for loving them and for making quantities of hot sauce. When I was in college and back home for the summer, my friend Marie-Laure would always ask for one of his hot sauce jars to take back to school. It was THAT good. (she always also begged my mom to make her octopus wine stew - but that’ll be a story for another day - maybe). Dad was enthralled when he came to visit us here in Virginia to find hot pepper jelly in the store – and now I am tasked to bring some each time we go visit him (that, and Jack Daniel!)

A couple of years ago, I finally asked Dad for his “recipe”. He uses oil, so it should be refrigerated. Use whatever hot peppers you have or like; you can mix them, just make sure they are all of the same color, or the sauce will look “muddy”. I also make a very similar one but uses vinegar – your choice - and add some garlic, which results in a taste close to the Vietnamese –style hot sauce that you buy in the grocery store.

On to Gusto’s Hot Pepper Sauce (Sauce de Piment Confits de Gusto) Read more »

A few weeks ago, I blogged about picking up berries in the hedge rows – free wild food… well.. free as in “spend no cash”, but after several hours in the delightful mugginess and bugginess characteristic of a Virginia summer, the numerous scratches that you have collected – not matter how careful or layered you were – and the (relatively) meager harvest, you understand why berries seem so expensive when you buy them. And those are the cultivated ones that grow meekly and obediently in rows and trellises. Wild berries are … well… wild in how they grow – and you do have to keep an eye out for snakes and bears. It’s always amazing the things some people will do for wild berries!

So I froze berries by the bag full and jubilantly made wild blackberry sorbet & wineberry sorbet.

Then I read about Sugar High Friday on FoodBlogga where bloggers and non-bloggers alike are invited to make a dessert featuring berries and send it to the organizer. The round-up is the brain child of Jennifer at the Domestic Goddess. I am very new to the blogosphere - having had high speed internet only very recently and just discovering all those neat food blogs out there. I am still struggling with a lot of the technical blog stuff, but I can cook (or so I’d like to think). While dessert is not necessarily my forte, I’ve got berries: besides the aforementioned wild blackberries and wineberries, the garden is currently producing a few late blueberries, day-neutral strawberries, the odd raspberries and alpine strawberries (neither of which by the way is a berry, botanically speaking; but that will be a post for another time). Mmm… I hope Jennifer meant “Berries” as cooks and gardeners would mean it – not as botanists…

[Update August 4, 2008: Stop by FoodBlogga where Susan posted today pictures and links to 82 desserts all featuring berries, some very simple and some quite elaborate - but all looking simply delicious.]

Anyway, why not try to make a dessert, a COOL dessert - as it’s way too hot to do any real baking around here - that I could send in? A dessert good enough for a festive occasion but simple enough to assemble on any week night – as all the components – except for the fresh berries – can be made days (or even weeks) in advance. It’ll give me a topic for a post and will make my friend Margaret happy since she asked me to post a sorbet recipe using berries. Voila! I love it when I can accomplish several things at once! (Margaret: do note, you are getting TWO new sorbet recipes, two herbal syrup recipes that may be used in ice-teas and cocktails AND the dessert is fat free if you omit the toasted almonds and the whipped cream)

And so Peachy-Wild Berries Jubilee was born.(It did not stay alive very long: hands kept trying to grab it as as was trying to take “one more picture”… and if you can pronounce the name 3 times very fast, you get to eat the jubilee). Read more »

Yesterday’s tomato harvest from the lower garden was rather healthy – with the biggest tomato weighing in at more than a pound (from one of the “German Tree” plants grown from seeds purchased from Bakers Creek Heirloom Seeds). So from now on – for the rest of the summer until the fall - there probably will be (I hope!) a pot of tomatoes simmering on the stove almost constantly. Whatever tomatoes I have harvested that day goes into the pot: German Tree, Flame, Roma, San Marzano, Super Sweet 100, Early Girl, Big Beef, German, Celebrity … in the pot. Right NOW. I know, I know some cultivars were bred specifically for sauce or canning (the Roma types), being more meaty and less seedy. But I just use whatever I harvest: I have over 70 plants and the tomatoes are coming fast, so they need to processed fast.

I put them in a big pot with just a little water, bring it to boil and then simmer. After a while – which depends on what else I am doing - I will process them through the manual food mill to separate the seed and skin from the pulp. I decide then if I have time to make sauce by simmering a few hours longer with a chopped onions, some minced garlic and herbs, or if puree is good enough. And then they are canned. They’ll be used in the colder months to make the slow-cooking dishes of winter: lasagna, spaghetti a la Bolognese, puttanesca sauce, meat balls in red sauce & sunny stews. And simple red pizzas – albeit not slow-cooked, a good pizza from scratch is a dish worth opening a good bottle for.

Freezing works too, except the freezer is getting rather full already.

As far as eating them now: tomato sandwiches, gazpacho, tomato salad in its many many many incarnations are now a staple at the table.

And still, once in while, I’ll make a pot of Fresh Simmered Tomato Sauce that will not be frozen. The sauce will keep for a week or so in the fridge and can be used for pasta and pizza (grilled if you please, I am not using the oven in this heat!). Easy to prepare, it’s a nice sauce to make on a day you are home – maybe coming back from the farmers’ market with a load of tomatoes. While it takes a several hours to make the sauce, the active time is not that great. You can start the sauce and the onions in the morning after picking your tomatoes and let it cook for several hours. If you are not around, turn the heat off, and when you are back, turn the heat back on. The only special utensil you need is a food mill to remove the seeds and the skins. Read more »

As laughter and murmurs of animated conversation drifted from the terrace with view of the Blue Ridge Mountains into the kitchen (where I, the chef, was putting finishing touches on the dessert plates) and as guests raised their glass for a toast shortly after sunset, I knew that dinner was a success. One can never be sure.

What makes a great dinner is always an interesting study. Everything must come together and there is not necessarily one formula by which to abide. Many different people in very many different circumstances have pulled together very successful affairs, having contrived to get that “magic” to work. On Sunday, the hostess certainly did that: she put together an interesting and varied guest list; she set a beautiful table in a very enticing setting; she provided great food (if I may say so, since my partner and I were cooking), and most importantly she made all her guests – not just the guest of honor - feel wanted, welcome and special.

First, she set up a 30-ft long table on the terrace (there were after all 32 guests), dressed it with vintage cotton linens, assorted china and pottery, and fresh flowers that she had just picked. It looks at once refined and casual – perfect for a country diner. She and I (the hired chef) cooperated on a menu with a Mediterranean feel but firmly rooted in the Northern Piedmont: many of our ingredients were sourced in Rappahannock County. The “pièce de resistance” was a lamb mechoui (a lamb, stuffed with herbs, and slowly spit-roasted on an outdoor fire) that my partner cooked for most of the afternoon. It was brought from the fire pit onto a side table and carved in front of the dinners. That little drama added to the sense of expectation that had build up during the cocktail hour when guests were able to go and watch the lamb being cooked over the newly dug pit, while sipping on Spirited Lemonade and munching on freshly baked pissaladière (a Provençal onion, anchovies & olive tart), stuffed grape leaves and tapenade.

The buffet, set up inside in the great room that opens onto the terrace, used colorful platters and bowls containing ratatouille (the real one, made traditionally by cooking each vegetable separately before gently folding them together for a long slow cooking in the oven, melding all the vegetable and herb flavors together sumptuously); couscous salad with dry cranberries, cucumber & mint; a fennel, watercress and cherry tomato salad; roasted rosemary lemon chicken (in case some guests did not eat lamb); and bread, freshly baked in the outdoor fire pit using Dutch ovens. The lamb came from Touchstone Farm, in Amissville; the chicken were from Belle Meade in Sperryville. The vegetables and herbs were from Sunnyside Farms, in Washington, VA, Waterpenny in Sperryville and Laughing Duck Gardens kitchen gardens as well as from the hostess small but productive vegetable garden. For dessert, I made fresh peach ice-cream served with prettily arranged lemon verbena poached peaches and cookies. The peaches were from Roy’s Orchard in Sperryville and Williams Orchard in Flint Hill.

What a way to start the week: cooking for this 32-people mechoui sunset feast, using beautiful local ingredients from small farms and orchard around us.

I will say nothing of the cleaning up afterwards…

I promised more peach recipes. If “recipe” is the word to use. You got to do a lot of things - fast - when you got a bushel (close to 60 pounds!) of peaches.

Perfectly ripe fruit call for a very simple treatment. Why mess up with pure goodness? Some nice dough, a sprinkling of sugar, a dash of spices. Voila!

This “recipe”for rustic summer fruit tart works with peaches, nectarines, apricots and plums. Picture #1 shows 3 unbaked Rustic Tart, 2 plums & 1 peach; picture # 2 shows baked Rustic Peach Tarts.

Ingredients

• frozen puff pastry (Or fresh, if you make it. I have not quite been successful at puff pastry and will admit to buy it - unbaked and frozen). Frozen puff is what I’ve got on the freezer right now, so that’s what I use.
• ripe peaches, pitted and sliced (I don’t bother to peel - although I do wash - but go ahead and peel if you must)
• sugar
• vanilla powder
  

Thaw puff pastry. Roll out thinly on a floured surface.

Cut each sheet in rectangle - any size, does not matter. In the picture, I cut up a 3-fold pastry sheet rectangle in 3, giving me 3 small-ish rectangular tarts.

Put dough on parchment paper on cookie sheet. The parchment paper - while optional - prevents sticking and makes it easier to remove the baked tart without tearing the bottom.

Arrange sliced fruit on top, leaving enough edge to fold the pastry on the fruit. See first picture. Crimp, pinch etc as necessary to ensure the pastry wraps well up the fruit to hold the filling in place during cooking. You can see on the 2nd picture, in the middle tart the dough was not wrapping the fruit well enough so some juice escaped during baking

Sprinkle one or two tablespoons of sugar and a dash of vanilla powder on fruit.

Bake in a preheated 400 F oven. 20 minutes or until done (i.e until the pastry is puffed up and golden, with slightly browned edges)

That’s it! Pretty, tasty, easy. Fast enough to make just about any week night…

It rained all through last night and today – something we haven’t had in a long time. The creek which had become so low I could not hear it from the house (but unlike last year, it has not dried out completely - at least not yet) is singing again. So of course, I did not weed the upper vegetable garden which already was a jungle (I know that when I am able to get to it, I will need a machete). Instead of weeding, I did paperwork and admin stuff and data entry and writing and all those other things that kept me indoor. Still I was keeping out an appreciative ear for the rain on the metal roof. Such a nice rain too, slow with an occasional shower and no wind. Oh how is the garden liking this! (me too, at least right then, no need to water). All of that to say that by mid-afternoon I was getting pretty restless. Yeah, I know all that other stuff needs to be done, especially when one is running a small business and trying to keep things under control. Nonetheless, I was getting restless. So when the weather let up for a while, I went wild berry picking. Since I was going to freeze them and cook them right away, it did not matter that they were wet from the rain.

Wild berry picking is a little expedition. First you get the berry baskets: they are not too big (about a quart) because you don’t want the bottom berries to get all squashed and 4 of them fit within a much bigger basket with a large comfortable handle. Then you get the picking basket, which has no “proper” handle but two ear-like small handles that you use to loop the basket on your belt, leaving both your hands free. Even better, if you put your belt on loose enough, the basket nestles against your tummy giving you extra protection from thorny branches in front as you push – or attempt to push – your way through the brambles, and does not spill out even as you bend down. Trust me, it’s pretty bad to spill your basket of berries after you spent a sweaty and thorny hour picking it.

And you want to dress appropriately. Read more »