Archive for Harvest

23 Jul 2009
Cookery • Harvest • locavore log

On Beeing A Cicada (or: Food Preservation)

La Cigale, ayant chanté
Tout l’été,
Se trouva fort dépourvue
Quand la bise fut venue. *

Jean de LA FONTAINE (La Cigale et La Fourmi)

While I don’t think you have to toil the entire summer to put some food by, this is certainly the time to practice food preservation.

Why? Self-sufficiency, thriftiness, budgetary contraints, desire to eat well, and convenience are all factors in my desire to do so. And yes, I do mean “convenience”. What’s more convenient than going to one’s pantry to pick up a jar of tomato juice, a pint jar of vanilla peaches, and a bag of dry zucchini chips and cherry tomatoes, open the freezer for some roasted peppers, and pesto cubes, and proceed to make a good soup full of summer flavors and a peach cobbler? It’s late and the closest country store is an 18 miles return trip (it’s closed at this hour anyway) and the closest grocery store is 60 miles away… so yes, it is convenient to have a pantry. Even if grocery stores are not that far, it still make sense to put food up now, when so many veggies are abundant, at peak flavors and with peak nutrients.

- Dry: herbs, tomatoes, zucchini, peaches, plums, blueberries etc

- Can: tomatoes, peaches, plums, nectarines, tomatilloes, etc

- Freeze: cherry tomatoes, strawberries, wineberries, blackberries, blueberries, raspberries, corn, green beans, swiss chard, pesto etc

- Jam: all the fruit you can think of

- Pickle: peppers, cucumbers, okra, beans, purslane (either can or make refrigerator pickle, or even lacto-ferment – the original pickling at which I am trying my hand this summer)

- Make liqueurs & syrups: herbs & fruit

yes, it does take some time, but it’s much easier to tackle if you just do a little every day. Then it won’t feel like this unsurmountable mountain. For example, after dinner, chop, bag & freeze 2 bagful of peppers, or cherry tomatoes, or slice enough zucchini for one dehydrator batch.That may take only 20 minutes – quite manageable. Then, maybe twice a month, set aside a morning to do some canning. And watch your pantry fill… just like the garden, start small, get used to the different techniques. And of course, only preserve things you will eat!!! (no need to make 10 quarts of Salsa if your family might only eat a pint or two the entire winter…)

* The Cicada, having spent the whole summer singing
Found itself rather without food
Once the winter winds started to blow

sylvie | 8 comments | Tags:
18 Jul 2009
Cookery • Harvest • herb • Kitchen Garden • locavore log

it’s summer, you eat … WHAT???!!!

Purslane: I call it a nutritious easy to grow crunchy little green (now officially renamed par moi a “super gourmet green” !). Add it to green salads, or – my favorite – to potato salad. Other people like it too: El - of course! (go to this post for a picture … if you need one) – and Chelsea whose post of Warm Potato & Purslane Salad inspired me to try purslane with potato salad. Nonetheless, he calls it a weed. He eats it, though – gingerly. Me? I am going to pickle it, having found a recipe in one of my French cookbooks.

radish-pods-004

Radish seed pods: I call them tasty little bits, great for salads and stir-fries. He just shrug them off and eats around them. But then he has no particular fondness for radishes, any of it (except the quick pickled ones). Make sure to pick only young and immature pods: they toughen as the seeds mature. There is actually a radish bred for its pods, with the evocative name of Rat’s Tail Radish or sometimes – less poetically – podding radish. I use my standard French breakfast style radish and let them go to seeds. Flowers are pretty, attract pollinators and beneficial insects … and are edible too.

green-coriander-004

We both agree though that green coriander seed is a short live treasure. Short lived in the garden, as you need to pick the young green immature seeds before they start to mature, and once picked must eat them within a few hours, before they start to dry. The taste is something between cilantro and coriander – which is no surprise since it is both – but without the toughness of the mature coriander shell. The younger the seed (smaller and more vibrant green, with no tinge of yellow), the brighter the taste. I use them in rillettes (just cooked for a few minutes), add to sautéed pork chops or chicken, salsa etc – again adding them just for the last couple of minutes of cooking. I like them so much that I am collecting some and freezing them for future use. The ones I don’t harvest green will become coriander: some will end up in the pantry, others will reseed themselves for a fall crop.

sylvie | 13 comments | Tags: , ,
07 Jun 2009
Harvest • Kitchen Garden • locavore log

One Local Summer

The kitchen garden is really coming into its own now.

View of kitchen garden

View of kitchen garden

We are eating lots of salad greens and cooked greens (kale, mustard, Swiss chard, escarole); peas (both mange-tout/sugar snap and shelling peas) have just started and should go through the end of the month. Still a few spears of asparagus, despite my resolve to let the bed go: since many of the spears are still as large as my thumbs… I am still picking. Spring Onions. A few Japanese turnips. Lots of herbs that I use by the handful: parsley, leaf celery (aka parcel), cilantro, dill, oregano, and sage (which I love, leaves fried in a tempura batter as an appetizer) and many others which I use with less abandon (mint, thyme, lemon verbena, anise hyssop etc). And the strawberries are lovely.

peas-2009-06-025

What’s next? Currants are just blushing and the early blueberries blu-ing. Read more

sylvie | 6 comments | Tags:
20 May 2009
Farms • Harvest • Kitchen Garden

May!!!

cherries-ont-top-green-cherry-early-may-09First a quick update from Cherries-on-Top: in April, Garrick reported a black bear visited, knocking down the two hives that were there for increased pollination.They now have lots of little green cherries on the trees – growing!!! (the photo was taken by Garrick in early May). Not all of the blooms have resulted in cherries – Garrick said lost about 40% of the crop compared to last year due to the frost damage in early April. I for one hope that our cool nights don’t do more damages! I am looking forward to be able to make clafoutis, jam, liqueur, ice-cream, sorbet, sauces and other cherry treats. They do have 11 cultivars including white (really yellow) cherries, so there is a cherry for everybody’s taste.

I meant to post this update 2 weeks ago, but it’s been a crazy last 2 weeks!

In the garden:

  • planted sweet potatoes, then had to rush to cover them with Reemay because the night temperatures dropped down to the 30s.
  • weeding Read more
sylvie | 4 comments
03 May 2009
Harvest • Kitchen Garden • locavore log • vegetable

Asparagus!

or sparrow grass or sparr grass. But an asparagus by any other name is still an asparagus.

asparagus-2009-04-006

I learned my lesson from last year: pick every single spear, the huge fat ones (some are larger than my thumb) as well as the skinny ones during asparagus picking season (from 2 to 8 weeks depending on the vigor and the age of your plants). Any asparagus left to grow will turn into fern: not only will the crown stop sending more desirable shoots, the ferns provide habitat for the cursed asparagus beetles. The beetle damages the tips (both nibbling them and forcing them to grow crooked), lay their unsightly eggs on the tips and eat the foliage which adversely affect the following year’s crop. So pick often (as much as twice a day in the hot weather) and pick all!

So we have a bit of asparagus at the moment, but nobody complains since they go exceedingly well with just about any food (or with no other food): munched on the way out of the garden au naturel (the asparagus! not me…); raw and sliced thinly in green salads; sautéed with morels and finished with a little cream; briefly roasted with a little sesame; or as a side dish snapped in large pieces, stir fried with spring onions and served along side a nice little pork chop.

asparagus-pork-chop-2009-04-001

What do you do with asparagus?

sylvie | 12 comments | Tags: ,
18 Apr 2009
Harvest • Kitchen Garden • locavore log • Vegetable recipe

Spring Luncheon

The secret is in the dressing.

Well, not really. The secret is a just-picked mix of lettuce and other greens such oak leaf-lettuce, Reine des Glaces, baby arugula, baby spinach, frisee, a few pea shoots, an asparagus or two (thinly sliced), sorrel, escarole, a smattering a baby mustard, flowering tips of kale and cabbage, a wee bit of anise hyssop & mint, and the very very last of the mache. To tell the truth, the baby arugula, baby spinach and baby mustard, are – truly! – thinnings: I sow the seeds too close, on purpose, knowing that I will harvest every other plant (several times) until the correct spacing is left for final crop to mature nicely. Meanwhile, the thinnings are big enough to make a real salad, and make a better use of preciopus real estate: no need to wait for that bed space to fill. Sow thickly & harvest with scissors.

salad-2009-04-003

But a good dressing matters: at the bottom of the salad bowl, whisk one part balsamic vinegar of Modena & 3 parts extra virgin olive oil. Add the salad. Toss. Scatter a handful of Johnny-Jump-up flowers (Viola tricolor) on top so they can make faces at you. Needless to say the flowers have not received a drop of pesticide or herbicide…. only use edible organic flowers (and greens too of course) – in other words don’t expect to pick up a flat of pansies at the garden center and pluck the flowers for your salad. They are likely to have ben sprayed with stuff you do not want next to you plate – let alone swallow. Or grow some: they are some accommodating, so cheery and so daintily robust!

Take your prettiest chipped plate. Add a dollop of pork rillettes (French-style potted meat from pastured pork), a chunk of crusty homemade baguette and a large serving of salad. Sit down. Tuck in. That’s lunch!

salad-2009-04-005

Note for locavore log: homemade bread, rillettes made with Rappahannock pork + garden herbs, all the greens and flowers from the garden.

sylvie | 9 comments | Tags: ,
11 Feb 2009
Harvest • Kitchen Garden • vegetable

Guess what..

Can you guess what this is (without hovering over it with your mouse)?

sunchokes-feb-021

Hint: it’s not ginger.

Answer – and recipe – in the next episode.

Oh, and if you are the first person to guess right, I am happy to send you some (US only, please… but not to AK; AZ; CA nor HI ). Then again… if you guess right, you may grow it and want no extras…???

sylvie | 13 comments | Tags: , ,
01 Aug 2008
Cookery • Harvest • locavore log • Side Dish • Vegetable recipe

Eating Red

Baskets of Tomatoes by S RowandYesterday’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

sylvie | 2 comments
23 Jul 2008
fruit • Harvest • locavore log • Wild Food

Food from the Hedgerow

Wineberries ripening

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

sylvie | 2 comments | Tags: , , , ,
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