The spinach was not planted in the hoophouse but outside. Last spring we simply did not have enough spinach, not having planted any the prior fall. So this past fall, I did 2 separate sowings, a small one in September to give us some fall spinach, and three long rows in November. We covered the bed with wire hoops, and Reemay. The bed was buried under snow for several weeks, the hoops crushing in the process - they’ll have to be reshaped. Yes, the larger leaves of the spinach are somewhat tattered (but fine enough for the chicken who are happy enough for anything green), but the 2nd planting - much smaller plants - did very well and is starting to grow again. Happily so, too. With enough water, that should provide us with spinach through May. Maybe I’ll even have enough to freeze some later this spring.

Fall planted spinach - even in late fall - will overwinter and start to grow strongly again in early March; a feat that late winter planting can never emulate. Time and time again, I have started spinach in March, and hardly get a crop worth my time, and the real estate it occupies.

Fall planted spinach gives! and gives… and gives! I am starting to harvest in earnest now, after desultory pickings throughout the winter. Well, I am actually thinning the bed now, cutting every other plant at soil level. That’s baby spinach for you. I will continue to do that regularly, giving remaining plants more room to grow so that by the end of the season, I’ve got big leaves of spinach.

‘Monstrueux de Viroflay’ is the variety planted… we’ll see how monstrous the leaves really get. It’s planted in good soil, but it’ll need water. Rain is supposed to be on the way, so hopefully that should take care of that for the next few days (yes, it’s dry again, and we could use a little rain for the garden).

What to do with all that spinach?

Salads! with poached eggs or fried eggs; with bacon and diced potatoes; with crumbled blue cheese and thinly sliced shallots; with sautéed onions and steak slices; with red onions and grapefruit; with duck and potatoes fried in duck fat… lots and lots of way to eat spinach in salad.

As a vegetable, quickly sautéed with finely chopped garlic; in stir-fry with other veggies or to finish a stew (as in my Red Cooked Beef With Sweet Potatoes Stew).

In soup: spinach and mushroom soup with garlic bread is one of my favorite soup.

If you have not planted spinach last fall, make a note to have a bed ready for October spinach planting. Spring-planted spinach is disappointing, fall-planted spinach feels like a miracle on March 10.

Except of course, they are not yet tomato plants, just 144 seeded cells with the promise of 144 seedlings. Seeded on Februray 22 (although the labels read 2/21 because I meant to do it on the 21st but did not get to them until the 22nd, and then was too lazy to change the labels). Hard to look at that one flat and think that’s a potential of 144 tomato plants. Hard not to go and seed an other gross… it seems such a long time away until we can pick tomatoes. Especially when the wind is howling outside.

But let i howl, let it howl, let it howl… just don’t blow away the chicken coop. or the hoophouse…

It dawned on me - finally! - how beautiful and appetizing a platter of sliced colorful tomatoes drizzled with a simple herb vinaigrette and the shredded leaves of basil is. How long did it take me to acknowledge that truth? Way too long, obviously, but I am making amends. So … I started more non-red slicing tomatoes than usual this year:

• Marglobe - 2010 indeterminate. New to me
• Maremmano - 2010 determinate. New to me
• White Wonder - 2010 indeterminate. New to me.
• Cherokee purple - 2009. A taste winner last year! moderately productive but a very dark red large tomato with green shoulders
• German Tree - 2008 indeterminate. A super large pinkish tomato.
• Green Zebra - 2010 indeterminate. New to me
• Flame aka Hillbilly - 2008 indeterminate. A fat beautiful orange-y tomatoes infused with strikes of red.
• Fantastic- 2006 indeterminate
• Celebrity - 2005 determinate
• Floramerica - 2005
• Early Girl - 2005 indeterminate

Although looking at the list, looks like I could add a brighter yellow in the mix. White Wonder is supposedly a pale yellow.Recommendations, any one?

More cherry tomatoes - and more colors too.

• White Cherry
• Black Cherry
• Sungold
• and Red Cherry started in January (OK, that’s going over a gross!)

I might still start some Red Currant cherry later, but those should give me lots of cherry tomatoes for drying. And some extra to sell. There seem to be a nice little demand for cherry tomatoes. They are just irresistible, nestled in a little basket, their bright little cheeks enticing you “eat me, eat me”.

Paste tomatoes for sauce, soup, tomato confit & tomato paste. I mostly planted indeterminate to spread the harvest. Roma should come handy when I am teaching my canning tomato workshops in mid-summer.

• San Marzano Redorta - 2008 inderminate
• Long Tom - 2008 inderminate
• Amish Paste - 2009 indeterminate
• Roma - 2009 determinate

Who germinated first?…. yes, we have a winner: WHITE WONDER tied with MAREMMANO! One of each is just pushing its delicate tender little neck through the grit. Always.such.an.exciting.moment. Well, yes, I live in the country. Germinating tomato IS an exciting moment.

Sigh…

In late January (1/25), I started a few Red Cherry tomatoes, as well as 2 flats of peppers. Four weeks later, Wetsel Red Cherry (2009) has had excellent germination. With true leaves showing, most of the seedlings have been transplanted and moved to the greenhouse 10 days ago. I purposefully did not transplant a few seedlings because I need them to demonstrate transplanting techniques in my upcoming Seed Starting Workshop on Saturday Feb 27. Cherry tomatoes are the easiest thing to eat, freeze and dry. They are simply wonderful in winter green salads. Can’t have too many of them. Every year I start a few plants extra early so we can start eating garden-grown tomatoes in June.

Not surprisingly, the fresher pepper seeds are doing a lot better than the old ones:

Pepper Seedlings Under Light

The spicy hot peppers have had good germination. They are about to be moved to the greenhouse for transplanting in individual cells:

• Fish peppers, hot (2009)
• Jalapeno M, hot (2007)
• Serrano, hot (2010)
• Ancho Pablano, categorized as hot, but really there are very mild (2010)

Peppers, sparse germination:

• Sweet Round of Hungary (2008 seeds)
• Jimmy Nardello’s Italian (2008 seeds)

Peppers, no germination - yet:

• Aconcagua, bell (2007)
• Quadrato D’Asti Rosso, bell (2007)
• Keystone Giant, bell (2005)
• Pizza (2006)
• Sweet Italian (2007)
• Goccia d’Oro, bell (2008). Delicately poking around, I can’t find the seeds: they rotted. Very disappointing since they weren’t that old

I know: the seeds which did not germinate are probably way too old, but I hate to just throw them. In the past I have found that the older seeds take a lot longer to germinate, so I have not given up on them yet. I may yet get one or two plants out of each batch. And since I am not a professional grower, that’s OK with me.

Friday and yesterday, I have started more peppers, under light and over the heat mat in the house.

• Ashe County Pimento (2010)
• Tequila Sunrise, frying (2010)
• Sweet Banana, frying (2009)
• Aji Amarillo, spice (2010)
• Frigitello, frying (2010)
• Sweet Chocolate, bell (2010)
• Dulce Italiano (2010)
• Carmagnola Rosso, bell (2010)
• Giallo di Cuneo, bell(2010)
• Lombardo, frying (2010)

Why so many peppers? Well, first pepper plants are not as productive as tomatoes, so you need more plants if you like them as much as tomatoes. We do eat them raw, fried, roasted, sauteed etc in season. They also preserve well pickled; roasted, packed in wide-mouth jars, and frozen; chopped and frozen. In winter the chopped and frozen peppers are used for stews, soups, chilies, pasta sauce. The roasted and frozen ones are great for lasagna, pasta, on pizza, in sandwiches or just as a side. Some peppers also dry very well, but I am still learning there: the mugginess of our Virginia summers offers some challenges to successful pepper drying.

Also started this weekend, were onions & leeks (I really should have started the onions 3 weeks ago, but…). Unlike other seeds of which it makes sense to buy more than you need for one year (and keep them in the proper conditions for the next few years), you must have fresh seeds for the onions family (onions, shallots, leeks), as the seeds remain good for only a year. So you must buy new seeds or save your own every year. Started:

• Musselbrugh Giant leek
• Lincoln leek
• Guardman, bunching onions
• Bianca di Maggio, mini-white onion
• Rossa Lunga de Firenze, Cippola - to be started.

Those are in the green house, under screen to protect them from mice. They’ll be Ok with the cooler temperatures there.

Also started this past week-end, and on the heat mat in the house:

• Parsley, Gigante di Napoli (2010)
• Radicchio,Chioggia Red Preco (2010). I keep trying radicchio for spring planting, different sowing dates and different cultivars. They are somewhat iffy here in the Northern Piedmont, our summer are hotter than they like, our springs erratic, and our winter colder than they want. They’ll be a good candidate for hoop house growing this fall & winter.
• Potato, Zolushka hybrid ($2.95 cents for 40 seeds). Every year I try something funky. This is one of the funky items this year.
• Brussel Sprouts, Long Island (2002). I don’t have much hope for those seeds. Although brassica seeds keep a long time, I suspect those were stored too warm. But they were offered to me along with a bunch of other old seeds, and I don’t refuse seeds. We’ll see. I planted them VERY thick.

A flat of mixed viola & pansies was sowed, careful to only surface-sow the seeds as they need light to germinate. The flat is in a cold frame, as violas also need some cold to germinate. Once germination has started, I’ll move the flat back to the greenhouse for faster growing and back out again in early April. It would have been better to start those last fall to have rally robust plants, but I did not. I love violas and pansies - especially the smaller violas - in the garden with their little thoughtful faces. The flowers are edible, even if fairly tasteless - very pretty in salad or in dessert decorations.

Also a few rows of frisee endive ‘Rhodos’ started in a cold frame.

I also prepared flats for tomato planting, letting my soil mix absorb water overnight in the greenhouse. I’ll be sowing them later today, and move them the house, on the heat mat. Because of mice in the greenhouse, I start most of my seeds in the house (except those direct seeded, of course, or those that need stratification, like the violas or the primroses). It’s frustrating to come in one day and see the tiny digging that the mice neatly do, and the seed eaten, shell discarded. Only the outside is left as they chew the inside dormant germ. Cats and traps help only so much. Better to start the seeds inside the house, and move them to the greenhouse once germinated. The mice leave them alone then.

So.. seed starting madness has started here. What about you?

I do like to pick my first tomatoes in June, so I plant a few seedling in late January. They germinate in early February, and I keep up-potting them into bigger pots until it is time to plant them out. I will put a couple in a cold frame come April, and I may this year - space allowing - plant some in the hoophouse.

What are those super early babies? Wetsel Red Cherry. I love cherry tomatoes for salad, fresh salsa (especially mixed with other veggies or fruit like this Grilled Peach Salsa) and for drying. Dry cherry tomatoes are simply wonderful tossed in a green winter salad - a burst of sweet-acid tomato taste. Of course, it’s also easy to freeze bagfuls of fresh cherry tomatoes.

Cherry tomato start to produce earlier than the big ones, and by starting them in January, and keeping them happy (that’s the key), I will have tomato in June. My earliest is June 14, and that was prior to the hoophouse. Can I beat that?

So can’t say I am “dreaming” of tomatoes - after all I am consuming plenty in the form of soup, sauce, paste, confit etc from last summer canning. But I am certainly planning my tomato crop. This year I am getting more of the non-red tomatoes, and I am planting more of the canning tomatoes too. That is, those tomatoes that were bred for little pulp so that they would not give off too much liquid. They are also called paste tomatoes, processing tomatoes or sometime Italian tomatoes.

Last year I had three different paste cultivars: Amish Paste (at noon in the picture - new to me then), Roma (at 4:00) & San Marzano Sel el Redorte (at 8:00). Amish Paste is very meaty and some were longer than my hand (it was a dry summer and I don’t water that much so the specimens below were not that large). Great for sauce and paste. Roma, which I decided to try again - was fine for crushed tomatoes. San Marzano was good also for sauce and paste, to can whole and to make tomato confit - and Tomato Tatin.

Those, as well as the slicing tomatoes and more cherry, I will be starting from late February through mid-March. Trying to time the determinate paste tomato harvest for September, you know… so the ambient temperature is a little more conducive to canning.

What are your tomato plans this year? Any you can’t do without? and why?

PS: the first pepper seedlings have been emerging over the last few days. Hot pepperts up first, followed by Round of Hungary. Still waiting for the bell and Italian…

… or 1/4 mile up an unplowed dirt road and then 1/4 up the hill - plowing as you go, and don’t forget the gates - to bring hay to the cattle?

Makes you appreciate all the hard physical labor, planning, resourcefulness & ingenuity it takes to be successful farmer.

Also makes one appreciate much better why so many of the old farm houses are pretty close to the road (not 1/2 mile over a remote hill) and the tightness and efficiency of how the buildings were grouped.

More snow is falling sow, fat flakes falling straight. We certainly have had precipitations this winter - the winter I decide to leave the dahlias undug outside. Let’s hope for an abundant morel season come April (will be somewhat of a consolation from having to buy so many new dahlia tubers…)

After a hard day of trampling paths up & down the hill or shoveling the 22″ of snow that have graced us since Friday (or plowing snow for Keith, including the road and the driveway of several neighbors), we have worked quite an appetite. Tonight dinner is homemade pizza (the dough was rising while I was - of course! - shoveling snow; canned tomato sauce from last summer) and a big mix green salad of lettuces, arugula, mache, parcel, frisee endive - freshly harvested at 4:00 pm today. Dessert? Quince fool (canned quince from last fall). We may even try the quince liqueur. That’s probably still too rough though, so we may have to settle for strawberry liqueur instead… sigh…

Like El at FastGrowTheWeeds, I see my pantry as the traditional dry pantry, the freezer and the fresh outdoor pantry that the hoophouse is. Not only do we eat fresh, but the chicken get to have something green too. Rather precious at the moment. And you know, chickweed grow really well in there, really really well…

It’s a good thing we build the with metal arches - PVC would have collapsed - and we put the arches closer than suggested…

I trudged up through the snow to clean it off the hoophouse before the thaw and freeze cycle started. I mostly had to clear by hand. For sure I got exercise today! The garden was blanketed by 20″+ of snow, but inside the hoophouse, it was as beautiful as ever… and smelling so good…

She went.

She is - after all - partly Turkish Van.

What’s not to like about oxtail?

It’s traditional farm fare, a simple country dish with robust complex favors - many parts of the world have perfectly succulent ways to use oxtail as a matter of fact. It’s a slow simmered dish, perfect for cold days. It’s a dish that can be made in advance and in quantity. Reheating it makes it even better.

Never had oxtail? If you like osso bocco, you are simply going to love oxtail. It might take a little looking to find them, although they are becoming more popular. It used to be a throwaway part of the animal - and used to be very inexpensive. But chefs in search of robust flavors obtained from slow traditional methods and the new-again emphasis on eating from nose-to-tail, is making oxtail almost trendy. So more expensive. It is one of the few cuts that I buy retail: there is after all only one tail in cattle, so when I buy a split beef half, I get - at most , if I am lucky - one tail. Hardly enough. The farmer I buy it from sells it for less than burger meat, typically the cheapest cut. So, still a pretty good deal.

Maybe oxtail is intimidating because people think of it as offal and are grossed out. Technically it is offal, but it is not an organ. Not that that would stop me from eating it if it were. Or maybe people are intimidated because they do not know how to cook it. It’s simple really, it should be cook slow. Very slow. A day in advance if possible so it has a chance to sit and mellow even more.

Oxtail is a well worked muscle, full of connective tissue, and collagen. Therefore, it cannot be cooked like a steak. But it lends itself incrediby well to preparations such as beef bourguignon, pot-au-feu, hochepot - slowly simmered dishes with a few aromatics to yield a rich dish of complex flavors and incredible unctuosity. In other words, gentle heat for a looong time will just metamorphose that tough meat into something incredibly tender with a depth of flavor and a richness that no filet mignon can provide. Even if coated in sauce béarnaise. The collagen helps to give body to the stock, making it gel when it’s cold - and providing that unique mouth-coating richness.

So yes, oxtail takes some time to cook. But Oxtail Soup is not difficult, or does not have to be. No tricky technique, does not require many ingredients nor exotic ones (unless you consider juniper berries or ginger exotic!). And, most of the time involved is, in fact, spent waiting around.

Sure you can add lots of vegetables to it - or lots of spice, as many cuisines around the world make good use of oxtail (see below for links to other recipes), but this is such a flavorful cut when done properly, that you don’t need much. Sure go ahead, make something more complicated, but do not let the fact that you don’t have some of ingredients called for in a recipe stop you. Surely you have onions? carrots? celery? some herbs? so, there, you are ready to start. If you don’t have juniper berries, than substitute some peppercorns, or some whole coriander seeds. Even omit. Ditto for ginger. It’ll still be incredibly good. And one of the richest dishes you ever had - which is why I like to add some chopped ginger and a touch of vinegar. A little balance, you know.

Make ahead, it will get better sitting in the broth and then reheated (gently, please, not in the microwave!). Eat as a soup or serve the meat and the veggies as one course and the broth as another. Strain and reduce some of the broth to get a demi-glace like sauce.

I made it this week-end, I have had it 4 times already, and there should be two more servings. The first night I ate it as is; the second day with a big helping of homemade sauerkraut (lunch, on a day working at home!); the third time with sautéed garlicky sunchokes with the broth served separately; and lastly with cubed cooked celeriac.

Some recipes call for getting the meat off the bones before serving. I think it’s a waste, half the fun is gnawing the gelatinous parts and sucking all the juice and the marrow out of the bones. Not using your fingers is not an option. As I said earlier: a dish you eat with those you love. But only if they love you and oxtail too.

Some recipes also instruct you to remove the fat. While I pay attention to my fat intake, I pay more attention to the kind of fat we eat. Fat from a grass fed pastured steer has a pretty good profile and tastes good. And fat contributes to the winning richness of the dish. But you do what yo have to do, and omit pouring the fat from the broiled meat into the pot if you must. You can also refrigerate the soup, and remove the fat that solidifies on top.

So, snowed in? I’ve got a remedy for you: a steaming bowl of oxtail soup with a fresh just-out-of-the-oven buttermilk biscuit; for dessert, peaches canned from this summer with a few tablespoons of (homemade) yogurt; followed by a good book, a glass of Wasmund’s (batch 30) and a small dark fudgie brownie. What the heck! May as well indulge thoroughly once in a while. After all fat snow flakes are dancing outside, already 2 inches on the ground; the chicken are in for the night; the greenhouse heat’s on. Relax!

Oxtail Soup

Yield: Serves 6 as a main dish

Ingredients

• 3 pound oxtail, already sliced
• 1 T olive oil
• 3 medium onions (leeks would be even better), thinly sliced
• 1 celery rib, thinly sliced
• 3 carrots, peeled and sliced
• 1 piece og ginger, about 1″, minced
• 1 quart chicken broth *
• 1 quart water (+/-)
• 4 few juniper berries
• a few sprigs of thyme, a small sprig or rosemay
• 3 bay leaves
• 2 sage leaves
• 3 garlic cloves, degermed and minced
• a dash of balsamic vinegar of Modena
• 1 bunch parsley

Directions:

1. Broil the oxtail on high about 5 minutes on each side until the fat start to brown.

2. Meanwhile sweat your onions (or your leeks) and the celery in the olive oil in a Dutch oven

3. Add the meat - and any accumulated fat and juice - to the pot, along with all other ingredients - except the parsley. Rinse the pan where you broiled the oxtail with warm water (about a cup), scrape to get as much as the attached meat as you can and dump in the pot.

4. Bring to boil. Lower heat and simmer 3 1/2 to 4 hours or until the meat is very tender and starts falling off the bones.

5. 10 minutes before the end, add the chopped parsley.

6. Serve hot with some good bread as a soup. Or take the meat (and bones, don;’t forget the bnes!) out and serve on top of mashed potatoes, or mashed celeriac or with roasted veggies and just a little off the broth as gravy. The broth can be served separately or strained and slowly reduced for a demi-glace like sauce.

Locavore log: oxtail from Harmany Highland cattle, carrots & herbs from the garden

* Note: you could use water instead of the broth. I just had some light chicken broth on hand made from the bones of a roasted chicken and I had to use it.

Other oxtail recipes on the web:

• Oxtail Stew from Elise at Simply Recipes
• Ed Bruske has 2 recipes to share at the Slow cook: here and here
• A Jamaican recipe
• A Vietnamese recipe via the New York Times, as well as a South African one
• Finally, two Korean recipes: here and here

]]> http://www.laughingduckgardens.com/ldblog.php/2010/02/03/oxtail-soup/feed/ http://www.laughingduckgardens.com/ldblog.php/2010/01/25/stuck/ http://www.laughingduckgardens.com/ldblog.php/2010/01/25/stuck/#comments Mon, 25 Jan 2010 16:58:55 +0000 sylvie http://www.laughingduckgardens.com/ldblog.php/?p=1777

Can you guess which one is the river and which one is the road (and that’s less water running through than early this morning)

No matter, we are stuck here! And the rain’s not over yet.

First order of the day was to move the chicken to higher - and drier - pasture, since the one where they were is under water.  While they did not like their coop moved (while they were inside), they certainly don’t seem the worse for it and are now joyfully attaching fresh grass. Lots of chicken butts to see.

And one of the big advantage of an electronet is that you can move it fast and easily. Also it catches leaves and straw debris from the running water. At least I get to keep some of my organic materials.

Although I am sure the water will leave debris behind too.

Isn’t that how the Nile Valley used to be fertilized?

If anybody ever doubted that chickens are not vegetarians, they should have been here a few morning ago, when I broke through the frozen top layer of the small compost pile housed in the current chicken area. It has been so cold that the compost pile surface has frozen. Inside was warm enough though… Of course, as always curious, they follow me to see what I am up to. Plus I had the fork, and they know it’s the tool I use to lift rocks or dig out perennial weeds (all of which bring up all kind of good food to the surface).

So, as soon as I started to turn the pile, the race was on! Get that worm, girl! and that one! here! another! quick!

Vigorous scratching that sends clumps 4 feet away, heated conversation (yes chicken do converse), diligent industrious pecking, excited chatting and calls about a tempting juicy plump cache of worms… that’s what happens. And worms and other bugs just get gobbled up, fast and methodically. I love watching the chicken being chicken and expressing their joie de vivre through being able to do what chicken evolved to do.

Bugs the hell out of me when I see “vegetarian feed only” on boxes of supermarket eggs.