Archive for March 30, 2009

30 Mar 2009
Cookery • Dairy recipe • Desserts • Fruit recipe • locavore log

Petits Pots Of Yogurt And Strawberry Compote

Yogurt is for dessert too.

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After a 15+ year hiatus, I am again making yogurt. Easy, tasty, low-tech. Did I say easy? Since I much prefer eating yogurt to drinking milk, I have been making at least two quarts of yogurt a week. Love it! As was explained here: heat the milk (if the milk is pasteurized, I only heat up to 120 F; but I do heat up to 180F when using raw milk). Add milk to a large mason jar with a couple of tablespoons of plain yogurt, shake the jar. Put it in a small cooler overnight with a mason jar full of very hot water. Go to bed. Voila: yogurt for breakfast. I love it.

You can make it in big jars, in small jars, in tiny jars… For all of us who are compulsive jar saver, now there IS an excuse to save to save more jars…

I even bought some “Swiss-style” yogurt. It listed 4 kinds of active cultures (Streptococcus thermophilus, Lactobacillus acidophilus, and L. bifidus and I can’t remember the 4th – how geeky, is that?). It turned out to be less tart than the other yogurt I was getting. I am now keeping an eye out for Bulgur-style yogurt, which I remember as really really creamy and which I think contains – what else? - L. bulcaricus. I tried to add a little cream or half and half to my yogurt, and while it made it richer it still was not that wonderful Bulgarian yogurt (maybe it exists only in my memory?). I guess next time I am at a WholeFood or Natural Store, I’ll have to investigate the yogurt case. So here I am: collecting pretty china tea cups, AND yogurt cultures … See what life in the country can do to a (fairly) level-headed girl?

But then it hit me – I mean about getting creamy yogurt: strain it! It’ll give me a Greek-style yogurt. It worked! Delicious indeed (although not Bulgarian).

More importanly it was a pretty good success at a recent picnic I put together. I used Tristar strawberries, picked in the garden last summer and frozen, with a little sugar and vanilla bean to make my fruit base, combine it with yogurt in small canning jars. And man, I thought I made good ice-cream, but based on the reactions, I obviously need to be making even more yogurt. So any way, here is the recipe for Greek-Style Yogurt with Vanilla Bean & ‘Tristar’ Strawberry Compote – as much as this is a recipe! Read more

sylvie | 18 comments | Tags: , ,
29 Mar 2009
Cookery

The Art of Picnicing

Serve good food. Serve fresh food.

Use real silverware and a real cloth napkin. Make it pretty.

Be imaginative in your use of containers – avoid plastic.

Print a menu and tuck it in the box.

Have fun.

sylvie | 7 comments | Tags:
27 Mar 2009
herb • Kitchen Garden • Seed Starting

Volunteer Seedlings

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Among the pleasure of the early spring garden is the hunt for the wanted volunteers: dill pokes its elongated slim first leaves among the sowed arugula while cilantro is coming up now in the pea bed – both bright green, brightly flavored, their unmistakable pungency released when you crush or brush them. Both are volunteers that I strongly encourage by scattering the ripe seeds in the fall: I find the plants are much stronger when they come up when they want and not when I want.

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And if you think dill and cilantro look similar now, you are right, and they should: they both belong to the carrot (Umbelliferae) family. And if there is a question of what they are, touching them and then smelling my fingers would, without a doubt, tell me. Or I can wait and, then, the true leaves would announce their name as true dill leaves and cilantro leaves look not at all the same… except for dill-leafed cilantro that looks like dill and tastes like cilantro (yep there is such a beast ! – you know there must be an exception that confirms the rule…)

Do you encourage volunteers in your kitchen garden?

Note: the photos were taken mid-march, 10 days ago. True leaves are now showing.

sylvie | 2 comments | Tags: , , , , ,
26 Mar 2009
Fruit recipe • Garden • Garden Technique • Kitchen Garden • locavore log • Recipes • Seed Starting • vegetable

Hardening Off

It’s time to start hardening off the babies. At least, for those of us in the Northern Piedmont (and in the mid-Atlantic area). Yep, time to start hardening off the hardy annual vegetables that were lovingly started indoors. That include you people who took one of my “Starting The Veggy Garden from Seeds” workshops a few weeks ago.

Everything but parsley – maybe lavender and pepper (they all can take several looong weeks to germinate) – should be up now.

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Continue to give basil, tomatoes, pepper, marigolds and any other warm lovers like eggplants plenty of light and warmth. Take them outside on sunny days only when the temperature is above 50F/10C (mmm… maybe even 60F/16C for eggplants). Place them in a sheltered spot, just an hour or two the first time, then more and more progressively over the course of a few days until they can be left out the entire day when it’s mild. It’s not time to plant them out yet – by a long shot – but fresh air and sunshine will do them good. Read more

sylvie | 2 comments | Tags: , , , , , ,
25 Mar 2009
Kitchen Garden • vegetable

Planting Onions

Transplants: 350! (more or less); about 200 planted on Monday and 150 planted ten days ago. I have never been successful with the sets (mini-bulbs) planted in the spring: they hardly grew bigger than they start at! So, this year, I bought (more expensive) transplants: 2 bunches from our local farm store (1 red, 1 white – unnamed) and 3 more expensive kinds via mail order at Johnny’s Seeds: Walla-Walla, Mars, and Copra. It’ll be interesting to compare how they perform. The CFC transplants were available earlier, so I could plant them earlier (always a good thing in my book), but the ones from Johnny’s had better roots, and the bundles were bigger. We’ll see (I hope!)

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They are all outside, in a bed that had been “sweetened” in the winter with ashes from the wood stove, planted fairly closely as I want to use young onions for salad in late spring and throughout the summer. Whatever remains (if anything) will be used as storage onions. That’s the idea. In practice, we eat a lot of onions, so I am not even sure 350 will do!

I also have seedlings in the greenhouse planted in cell packs: a pack of bunching White Spears impulsively bought at a rack display (yes, my impulse purchases tend to be seeds!) & mini-white Bianca di Maggio. They were started later than they should have (in early March instead of Janauary) and will need to be up-potted soon. Most of the three-weeks old seedlings still have their seeds up in the air, at the tip of their first leaf. Makes them look like little people whispering oniony gossips…

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At the rate they are growing, I am guessing that I’ll set them out in late April.

Meanwhile, I’ve got lettuce, leaf broccoli & cutting celery to transplant out. Best to do it before the rain which we are suppose to get this afternoon & tomorrow.

sylvie | One comment | Tags: , , ,
24 Mar 2009
chicken

Breakfast For The Girls

We are calling them girls (Gael, Gladys, Gwen, Gali, Gudule etc etc). There might be a boy in there – won’t know for sure for a few weeks. He’ll be Gaston, or Gus, or Gaspard – haven’t quite decided yet.

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The girls are still in the brooder and not out yet (too cold – got down to 19F/ -7C last night) but I want them to be exposed to the outside and to eat fresh and varied (beside their chicken starter ration). Eating fresh and varied… sounds familiar? So? so, every morning, we dig fresh clumps of succulent greens for them, and put the clumps in a big flat pot or large clay saucer. We bring it to them (replacing the day-old saucer which they have battred down quite vigorously). On the menu this morning: chickweed, grass, mache, dandelion etc sprinklered with granite grit – which they need for their digestion. Gael et al are now at the stage where they actually eat the greens. And they are expecting it! Woe to me if I don’t bring it. Read more

sylvie | 4 comments | Tags: ,
22 Mar 2009
Bees • Garden • Nature

Blue And Red

Spring is blue and red: blue clear sky and red maple flowers.

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Indeed the maples are blooming now, the earliest single species source of nectar and pollen for our bees. Read more

sylvie | One comment | Tags: , , ,
19 Mar 2009
Garden • Garden Technique • Kitchen Garden

Green

Finally – rain. Gentle, slow, soft, over the course of a few days.

A the end, it did not add to that much altogether – maybe 1/2 inch (as measured by my hand thrust in a bucket that was left out). Nonetheless, it was rain in what has been a cold and dry winter with hardly any snow, hardly any rain, lots of drying wind and temperatures dipping below 0F ( -18C) at time. So, a few days of mild temperature and a gentle rain are making everything sprouts, buds, shoots, germinates, swells… springs!!! It makes one hunger for fresh vegetable.

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Among the vegetable that we can harvest now are the kales. Read more

sylvie | 3 comments | Tags: , , , ,
15 Mar 2009
Cookery • locavore log • Main Dish • Meat/poultry Recipe • Vegetable recipe

He Likes Duck Fat

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Potatoes fried in duck fat, with garlic & parsley, a very fresh green salad (with not a leaf of lettuce in sight) topped with a little bit of duck breast – a perfect lunch for this blessedly rainy Sunday.

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Obviously, he thought so too (and had an intense lemon tart with coffee for dessert).

This meal is characteristic of improvised cooking; you know, cooking without a recipe based on what you’ve got. We had a breast of duck left from a roast and duck fat just rendered from that same roast, and potatoes, of course. That calls for potatoes in duck fat, reminiscent of Pommes de Terre à la Sarladaise, a dish named after the town of Sarlat in Southwest France. While one variations on this homey dish includes truffles, the poor woman’s version (mine) makes do with garlic. Don’t knock it off until you’ve tried it: duck fat makes the best fried potatoes. As far as the green salad, it was a mix of mache, sorrel, baby red Russian kale & Tuscan kale, and frisée endive, fresh from the garden. Any good-quality store bought mesclun will do; make sure it’s on the robust side so it can take the hot dressing, and with a hint of bitterness or tartness to stand up to the richness of the potatoes.

End of Winter Salad with Duck Breast & Potatoes in Duck Fat Read more

sylvie | 15 comments | Tags: , , , , , ,
13 Mar 2009
chicken • Garden • Garden Technique • Nature • Seed Starting

The Ides Of March

Something softly went through the hollow last night, dropping huge handfuls of wet snow all over. The snow on the ground was gone by mid-morning, but wads of sticky whiteness remained in shrubs and dry grasses – looking like cotton candy.

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Meanwhile, inside under the shop lights, seeds planted earlier this month have germinated, true leaves starting to show.Soon to be moved to the greenhouse, thinned and even up-potted.seedling-2009-03-065

and then… peep peep… arrived today, brought by a big stork…peep peep

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sylvie | 5 comments | Tags: , , ,
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