Archive for fruit

25 Jul 2009
fruit • locavore log • Recipes

The Breads of Summer

I do love crusty toothsome baguettes, perfect for a spot of rillettes, mopping the dressing after a steak salad, or in the morning with a slather of good butter and fruity jam – or a good country loaf for sandwiches. But baking those breads heat up the kitchen – desirable in winter but not in summer.

But when there is will, there is a mean.

We don’t have a bread oven, but we do have a pizza stone and a gas grill. So my husband the baker developed a recipe – based on his no-knead winter bread recipe – that takes 10 to 15 minutes to bake outside on the grill depending what on the bread (flat or buns). Make 2 batches, and total is 20 to 25 minutes of baking – outdoors, not in the kitchen! Add to that 10 minutes of active time to prepare the dough, 10 minutes to shape it, and so about 30 minutes of active time produce a dozen flat breads or 8 to 10 buns which are prefect for sandwiches, burgers, the aforementioned rillettes and of course jam & butter.

summer-bread-buns-003

Before you say anything: yes, he prefers to weight his ingredients when baking, but for this bread, weighing is not really necessary because there is plenty room for a little more or less of this or that. And frankly, sometime we are not cooking in our kitchen and we have no scale. So a recipe based on volume can be eminently practical. For those of you not familiar with the US cup system, 1 cup = 240 ml, or roughly 2.5 dl

Buy flour by the 50 lb sack and store the bag in a large metal can (a new trash can for example), therefore making this homemade bread really economical. And enssuring that you almost always have flour on hand. Because beware… it is really good.

and – yoohoo! – he is still tinkering with the dough to see how versatile it is. He has made wonderful flat breads and tonight he is going to make hot-dog rolls. We, after all, need bread worthy of Harmany’s hot dogs. Yoohoo!!!

Keith’s Summer Sandwich Buns Read more

sylvie | 4 comments | Tags: , ,
31 May 2009
beverage • fruit • Kitchen Garden • locavore log • Recipes • vegetable

S Is For Strawberries

Or is it for Swiss chard?

because my chard is doing quite well, thank you very much. I am now harvesting two big bunches a week, and with all that rain, and that nice temperature, it’s growing and growing and growing – as you can see from the photo taken just after a harvest, a couple of days ago, of ‘Lucullus’, a chard with a white respectable-sized stem and pale green leaves. It has grown remarkably well in the 7 weeks since I transplanted it out.

swiss-chard-lucullus-2009-05-124

I also have planted perpetual Swiss Chard, ‘Golden’ Swiss chard (with, you guessed it, has yellow stems), ‘Rhubard’ Swiss chard (with red stem) and another one with dark green leaves and white stem which label has been lost. And the one self seeding from last year. Those are not as far along as ‘Lucullus’, because I started them later.

Yes, I like Swiss chard.

I like strawberries too. And Tristar, is, again, not disappointing: small, abundant and bursting with flavor.

strawberry-tristar-2009-05-032

So, of course, I am making sorbet. I am also making strawberry jam Read more

sylvie | 11 comments | Tags: , , , ,
16 Apr 2009
Bees • fruit • Kitchen Garden

Blooming Currants

Did you know red currants bloom as the same time as the cherries?

They do.

But unlike the billowy dreamy snowy cherry blossoms, the flowers of red currant are rather inconspicuous. One hardly notices them – especially with the explosion of greens and colors in the garden around the shrubs.

currant-in-bloom-2009-04-2821

Still. As insignificant, small and greenish as they are, the bees and wasps notice them, and make a refueling stop.

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I know of the brilliant bounty the red currants will yield come June – following the sour cherries and at the same time as the sweet cherries.

sylvie | 2 comments | Tags: ,
14 Jan 2009
Cookery • Desserts • fruit • Fruit recipe • locavore log • Recipes • Vegetable recipe

Really Cute Teeny Jam Tarts

Who does not like dessert? A little something sweet at the end of the meal? Especially a special meal? Yeah even the people who say they don’t really like sweets love a little dessert.

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While I like to think myself fairly conversant in making pretty no-bake sweet endings like sorbets, ice-creams, mousses and cold confections that use them to build more elaborate desserts such as Sundaes and Jubilees, dessert baking is not my forte. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I have a number of baked desserts in my repertoire (Tarte Tatin & Upside Down Cakes come to mind), but those are – shall we say – on the rustic, if delicious, side…. While a good tarte tatin is a thing to eat with gratitude, sophisticated it is not! However, many guests do remember the meal finale, not only how it tastes, but also how it looks: so grand it should be, or at least cute. A plate of fruit, no matter how fresh and how artistically presented, most often won’t do.

So… in my quest to prepare cute small desserts that I can conjure blindfolded, that can be prepared in advance if needed, that are not too heavy, and inspired by blogs such as Tartelette and Cannelle & Vanille, I am practicing small portion desserts.

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Disclaimer: you really should check Helen’s blog (Tartelette) and Aran’s blog (Cannelle & Vanille) if you are interested in gorgeous, inspiring, innovative sweets of all kinds. Both Helen and Aran are professional pastry chefs who are sharing their recipes with the rest of the world. While their creations look incredible (just the photos will startle your eyes wide open), they seem accessible; nonetheless, they require finesse and a sure yet delicate touch to produce such perfect-looking confections… I said I was inspired, I did not say I was there. Helen and Aran display a dedication to and an understanding of their craft that is admirable. Me? I just want to make pretty seasonal desserts that get all eaten with a sigh of satisfaction.

I have had request for snacks too lately. Something about brownies. But I though I’d get some practice with one of the basic dough, Sweet Short Crust Pastry, a very versatile dough great for making cookies, tarts, tartelettes, and one that can substitute for puff pastry in Tarte Tatin. It can also be made in advance and rolled and shaped shortly before baking. Unlike other crust, sweet short pastry does not need to be blind-baked: the egg in the dough prevents the pastry from becoming soggy when baked with its filling.

I’ve got jams, I’ve got canned pears that was put up in the fall and I’ve got frozen berries that I picked this summer. So I made a bunch of Pear and Quince Jam Tartelettes and some Wineberry and Raspberry Jam Tartelettes. (The snack eater appreciated them!). But really any fruit and jam that are complementary will work – as well as custard and pine nuts! Read more

sylvie | 4 comments | Tags: , , , , ,
06 Nov 2008
fruit • Kitchen Garden • locavore log • vegetable

Eating Local in the Northern Piedmont in Winter

You know there is a problem when the Virginia Department of Agriculture puts out a produce chart that shows that the only fresh produce available from Virginia in December and January are apples, herbs, greens/spinach (in December only says the chart), and sweet potatoes. Come ON! Granted, “Greens” cover a wide variety of vegetable, but even I grow more than this in my own plot. And can buy a lot more locally. And could buy even more if only more farmers were doing what Sunnyside Farms in Washington, VA does, with their winter growing in hoop houses. They sell at the FreshFarm Market at Dupont Circle in Washington, DC and offer local share of produce to local subscribers. Last year, around Christmas time, I was able to buy a few boxes of produce of achingly beautiful winter vegetable: I remember small brilliant carrots, petite Japanese white turnips with tasty edible green tops, deep pink radishes (also with edible tops), colorful lettuce, robust escarole, crisp spring onions…

KaleOne can eat well & fresh in the mid-Atlantic area even in winter. Many vegetable can be grown if given some cold protection. Think about it: here in Rappahnannock County we are roughly on the 40th parallel, i.e. roughly the same latitude as Southern Spain or Athens, Greece. We get the sun, we just need to protect the crops from the worse of the winter by using cold frames or unheated hoop greenhouses with a little thermal mass. Now it won’t be corn, tomatoes or eggplant… but we can grow a varied list of veggies which are perfect for the soups and braised dishes of winter cookery. Read more

sylvie | 4 comments | Tags: , , ,
09 Oct 2008
Appetizer • Cookery • fruit • Fruit recipe • Kitchen Garden • locavore log • Soups • Vegetable recipe

Of Apples and Apple Soup

Gala, Crispin (or Mutsu), Fuji, Honeycrisp, Rhode Island Greening, York, McIntosh, Jonathan & Jonagold, Stayman Winesap, even Golden Delicious (one of MY favorites), Red Delicious & Granny Smith: those are just a few of the cultivars of apples available for pick up at our local orchards. As the season continues, the late apples will come in, such as the Black Arkansas and the Lady apple, a small perfumed apple that will keep well into February.

Trio of applesThe names dance in a litany of languages – there are more than 7,500 cultivars of orchard apple, Malus domestica. Some were bred purposefully, such as Jonagold, a cross between Jonathan and Golden Delicious developed in 1943 in New York. Others were chance seedlings judged good enough to be propagated, such as Golden Delicious discovered on the farm of Anderson Mullins in Clay County, West Virginia in 1912, and the official apple of the State of West Virginia since 1955. The Rhode Island Greening is an old, historic American apple variety that originated in 1650 in Newport, Rhodes Island: it’s – surprise! – the official apple of Rhode Island. The Spitzenberg that originated in Esopus, New York, in the mid 18th century was a favorite of Thomas Jefferson: it’s still grown at Monticello, and is sometime available at farmstands in Virginia.

But while we think of apples as “American”, the fruit was brought to the new world by settling Europeans whose ancestors had received it hundreds or thousands of years before. Apples originated in the central mountainous provinces of Eurasia (where they still grow wild in an incredible array of shapes, forms, colors and tastes) and were spread over 10,000 years ago, by nomadic population of hunters/gatherers who “settled down” as they started to cultivate crops. The apple made its way to China, India, the Middle-East and Europe thousands of years ago. Remains of apples were found in excavation of Jericho and dated to about 6,500 BC. Dried apples sliced were placed in royal tombs of modern Southern Iraq around 2500 BC to be found by modern archeologists. Homer mentions apples in the Odyssey. The Romans cultivated apples extensively (the Lady apple is thought to come straight from that ancient time when it was known as Api apple – it’s still called Api in French today, the “pomme d’Api”). The Romans disseminated the apples to the far corners of their empire including the British isles where only crab apples (different species altogether) where known until then. And the British brought it to their American colonies.

When one picks up an apple, one picks up more than just a fruit: one picks up a piece of our human story that dates back to before records were written and a piece of our common heritage.

Now you want a recipe? Oh… Ok, but there is no picture – yet.

How about apple & carrot soup, linking two important fresh produce of fall? It’s one of the recipes I taught on my recent “Cooking with Apples” workshop. Read more

sylvie | 3 comments | Tags: , , , ,
06 Sep 2008
fruit • locavore log • Wild Food

Pawpaws Are Our Bananas

Pawpaws

Should you go walking along a bottomland stream in Rappahannock County, you are likely to encounter pawpaws (or paw-paws or paw paws). You may not notice them though – unless you paid attention – because they are small under story trees that grow in clumps. Nothing majestic about a pawpaw tree! Blooming in April or early May, the pawpaw hangs its maroon bell-shaped flowers on bare branches. Its fairly large drooping leaves are vaguely tropical looking. Its fruit is decidedly exotic looking – a reminder that the pawpaws’ cousins are tropical denizens (think Custard Apples or Cherimoya). However, the plant (Asimina triloba) is firmly native to our area, the Northern Piedmont and, more broadly to eastern North America; it is the only larval host of the Zebra Swallowtail Butterfly – another sign, if you see lots of Zebra swallowtails in summer , to look for trees in the vicinity. The fruit ripen in September – and you do have to look for them! The wild trees are typically shy fruiters (its flowers fertilized by carrion flies). The fruit hang down toward the branch tips, singly or in small clusters, looking like small, vaguely kidney-shape, mangoes – somewhat difficult to spot.

Asimina triloba or pawpaw flower

We just went checking on the ones I had noticed earlier in the summer. Still there – for now. I picked a few that seemed softer than most, but after tasting one, I’ll wait to pick more. The flesh is creamy, and when ripe, reminiscent of bananas, mangoes, guava – or cherimoya. No surprise that some of its common names are Hoosier banana, prairie banana, Kentucky bananas, Ozark banana etc. I’ll wait until there is more black showing and the fruit is softer before picking more (if raccoons or other creatures don’t beat me to it): just like real banana, I like my Hoosier banana ripe! The ones I picked will continue to ripen inside – again just like bananas.

How do you eat them? With a spoon…

sylvie | 2 comments | Tags: , , , ,
28 Aug 2008
fruit • Kitchen Garden • locavore log • vegetable

Garden of the Americas

The Day\'s HarvestIn several of the old European traditions, August was the first month of autumn, the harvest season. And this year, with the especially cool summer weather, it certainly feels like it’s fall already. And harvesting, we are. Some crops have been incredibly successful, some less so and some were total failures. It makes me reflect upon the times before refrigeration when a family needed to produce enough in a few months and preserve the harvest to last for the other 8 months of the year.

Although we are trying to be produce a lot of our food at Laughing Duck Gardens – we certainly don’t produce it all – and should a harvest fail, we know we can fall back on buying from a neighbor, farm stands, farmers’ markets, country stores and even the supermarket.

In the spring, when we decided we need more growing space, I decided to make the newer garden “The Garden of the Americas”. Every plant in there originates in the Americas: North, Central or South. All those plants where unknown in Europe before the 16th century. Read more

sylvie | One comment | Tags: ,
20 Aug 2008
fruit • Kitchen Garden

Where are the Melons? part 2

Blacktail Watermelon cut-up

Verdict on my first Blacktail Mountain picked last night?

No maiden swooned.

No that there are many maidens around here…

It was good but not great. It could have used a few extra days of ripening: it was still growing (weighting at 5 pound 14 oz on the vine, 5 lb 15 oz off the vine), and the closest tendril really was not dried out.

Blacktail Watermelon

Patience is sometime not my forte…

As there are several other fruits out there, there is hope that I will pick one that is a “quintessential watermelon” and that I will learn when to pick them.

sylvie | No comments | Tags: , ,
19 Aug 2008
fruit • Kitchen Garden

Where Are The Melons?

Blacktail Mountain Watermelon growing in early AugustOn 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

sylvie | 2 comments
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