Archive for Kitchen Garden

03 Nov 2009
Harvest • Kitchen Garden • locavore log

Still Harvesting

Last evening I saw the man in the moon. In the incredible Hunter’s Moon that hanged, powerful and enormous, for a short while. As I was driving home, the sun sinking behind the mountains at my back , the majestic Moon was rising in the Eastern sky, capturing and reflecting the dying light from the sun. I was moon-struck. You don’t get to see such moons very often.

It’s the moon that give the hunters light to finish their task, even as the sun sinks down. It can also be used by the harvesters to finish gathering the crops (although they got their own harvest moon, 28 days ago).

In between those moons, we’ve been harvesting.

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Read more

sylvie | 8 comments | Tags:
29 Sep 2009
fruit • Harvest • Kitchen Garden • locavore log

On Ground Cherries

Shall we talk about ground cherries?

mmm… say you politely, really? Ground cherries?

You are not the only one to wonder… the year I gave ground cherry jam to friends for Christmas, I got some puzzled looks: this is cherry? you grind them? why? that’s an unusual color… and what about all the seeds?…

Yes, it needed a better name, and it actually goes by other names. But “ground cherry” is the name under which I initially encountered the fruit in English.

Curiously enough, it was in Quebec.

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Many stores were selling ground cherry jam. I tried it. Clearly not cherries (you know, Prunus cerasus). It did not take too long to find out this was the tiny fruit of my childhood, tomate poc-poc, Physalis peruviana. It’s also goes by the name of Cape Gooseberry. But it is no more a gooseberry than it is a cherry. A close cousin of tomatillo Physalis ixocarpa), it belongs it the nightshade family, along with tomatoes, potatoes, peppers and eggplants. Read more

sylvie | 2 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.

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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.

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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: , ,
29 Jun 2009
Kitchen Garden • vegetable

Peppers Before Tomatoes

peppers-2009-06-249

That’s really not the way it’s supposed to work, but that’s how it’s working this year.

Despite having started my tomato plants early in February, I did not plant most of them them until fairly late, and since they don’t hold as well in pots as peppers do, the peppers are harvestable – not yet the tomatoes. Yep, here it is, not quite July 1, and I am harvesting peppers. On the picture: Sweet Banana (which I love) , Jimmy Nardello – new to me this year, supposedly great for frying and drying – and probably (because I forgot to look at the tag and I am too lazy to go check it now) Acongagua.

The tomatoes? Well they are ripening, and I should be able to pick a few before July 4 (maybe!), but it’s nothing like last year, when I was harvesting cherry tomatoes from June 14 on, and big fat ones by late June. OK, I did pick 5 ripe cherry tomatoes (ah!) so far, and one green fat one to make a green tomato salsa. But it’s nothing like last year… Of course, i have also heard from others who were the recipients of some of my plants, that THEY are harvesting RIPE tomatoes. Sigh…

What else in late? Squash, winter squash and cucumbers. But that was on purpose. Last year squash bugs, cucumber beetles and stink bugs were just awful. So I decided to plant all those squashes late, with the hope that the first generation of bugs that emerge would find nothing to eat and nothing to host their eggs. While I have seen – and squashed – some bugs, at least for now, it’s nothing like last year (this is good)! So, unlike Ed of The Slow Cook who is making true pickles with his cucumbers at the moment, pickles are at least 3 to 4 weeks away for me (although I can see the first flowers on my young vines).

Okra? Beans? Corn? late too, but like tomatoes, that was due to short of time in May and June (as well as old seeds for beans that germinated very poorly. Lesson learned, I hope….). All should do OK provided we don’t get cold too early in the fall.

On the other hand, I am harvesting kohlrabi, cabbage and still lettuce, and enough basil to already make pesto.

So goes life!

sylvie | 7 comments
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.

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

sylvie | 6 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.

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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.

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

sylvie | 11 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
11 May 2009
Garden • Kitchen Garden • Nature

Firsts and Lasts

First Shirley poppy (Papaver rhoeas), one of my favorite flowers that I let seed all over the garden.

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They come on the heel of the orange-y wispy field poppies, and they come in shade of pinks and reds, from the clearest vermilion to dark wine; some have black crosses as their center, other white blotches. They are so graceful and so luminous in the morning light. Last year they were beautiful with the asparagus ferns, peaking in June.

Now is also the last of the dogwood blossoms, the petals falling off with the rain. It’s been a good year for dogwoods.

First Swiss chard of the season, chopped and sautéed with garlic and some of the last freezer cherry tomatoes.

Last of the spinach: it was a mistake not to plant spinach last fall; the seeds planted in late winter never made plants big enough before bolting. We had a few nice salads, but that’s it. This fall: no excuse, spinach must be sown in September!

First peas… soon. The peas are blooming now, pods won’t be long. Meanwhile, I pinch the shoots off to force the plant to branch, and they go into salad (pea shoots are edible, you know).

And finally: first black bear sighting of the season. This morning around 6:30 as I was on my way to let the chickens out of their coop. I first was not sure what that big black mass was – I did not have my glasses on, but it moved, slowly, so I knew it was not a pool of shadows. He (she?) was where I was expecting him (her?) to show up anytime now: in the skunk cabbage patch. I was expecting him. It does not mean I am happy to see him. I yelled, he raised his big head, look and me, and slowly, slowly, very slowly, turned his back, and walked up the hill.

He is not always that accommodating.

sylvie | 4 comments | Tags:
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.

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What do you do with asparagus?

sylvie | 12 comments | Tags: ,
02 May 2009
Kitchen Garden • locavore log • vegetable

First Radishes

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I am told that open-face radish sandwiches are an acquired taste.

I am told – very firmly – that cream of radish-leaf soup is undoubtedly an acquired taste.

Nobody’s perfect!

I still plant radishes. Those ‘Radis de 18 Jours’ are young, crisp, mildly spicy and pleasantly rosy. Still… not quite “18 day” radishes as the French name would have you believed. I sowed them on the last day of March and picked them on May 1, so they are 31-day radishes. Maybe in good French garden soil that’s been manured for 300 years they become edible in 18 days? not here, at least not this early in spring. I have just sowed some more, let’s see if they are of edible size on May 19… Because I don’t have 298 years!

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Note the tiny carrots seedlings in between the rows of radishes: they were sowed at the same time, but carrots take so darn long to come to any respectable size!

The best way to eat those just-pulled from the garden radishes is with a little salt and some really good butter.

The leaves are young enough that they just get shredded and tossed, at the last minutes, in whatever is cooking.

I won’t make radish-leaf soup for a few weeks yet.

But I will enjoy those petite blushy crunchy snacks!

(I also planted ‘Champion’)

sylvie | 8 comments | Tags: ,
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