Most of the corn has been pulled up that is. A few stalks (left center) were tied together to make an impromptu trellis for a volunteer currant tomato. You use what you have…

Maybe it was because I did not think anybody would be interested. I am relieved to say that was not at all the case. In fact, I was asked to please make more of them in the future. I don’t know why I am surprised. Reunion food IS good.

Maybe it was because I felt I would have to get all those exotic ingredients , and that felt wrong. As it turns out, a lot of things grow or can grow in Virginia, but yes, I had to get some things grown far away - It was special, I got over the reluctance.

Maybe it was because I was not sure I could cook it right.  Get the right cut of meat. Or be able to use a specific technique successfully. In fact, by carefully selecting the menu, one can make a fairly authentic Reunionese meal in Virginia.

Or maybe it’s just that as one gets older, one goes back to one roots.

The cuisine of Reunion Island is fascinating - a mix of French, Indian, Vietnamese, Chinese and African, along with numerous plants from South & Central Americas that have found a home there.

A dot on the map - albeit a steep one - in the Indian Ocean, pretty much at  the Southern Tropic, a 1,000 miles east from South Africa, Reunion Island is to France was Hawaii is to the United States. Far away from the mainland (a 10 hour non-stop flight from Paris), but fully French - a “département” in fact since 1946; a colony before that. When the French took possession of the uninhabited island in the mid-seventeen century, they named in Bourbon Island (after the then reigning family of France), turned it into a freshwater and fresh-food refill stop for the ships on the way to the Far East. This was more than two centuries before the Suez Canal, when it took half a year to sail from Europe to Indochina. The ship followed the trade winds, going to South America first - generally Brazil -  and then sailing around the Cape of Good Hope, crossing the Indian Ocean to Java, Sumatra, India, or other spice-rich countries. It was a long haul from Cape Town to South East Asia, so a re-provisioning stop was most convenient.

The French settled the island, and, as with all European colonies of that time, slaves were imported from Africa, indentured servants from India after the abolition of slavery. Immigrants came from Indochina in the early 2oth century. Not only did the island get fruit and vegetables, spices and herbs, trees and flowers from all over the world due to its position on the trade wind routes, but each people brought their own style of cooking and favorite dishes. From that history, grew a melting pot cuisine, with French, Indian, African, Comoran, Madagascan, and Chinese roots.

The plate pictured in the photo is quite representative. Rice - the grain of Asia - at the center  is the starch of choice; in the past, maize, bread fruit or manioc was just as - if not more -  likely to be there. Beans/pulses and several vegetables complete the meal. Meat (most often a fowl or pork) or fish is optional but most common today in all but the very poorest households. Ingredients from all over the world are part of the meal (but as they are grown or raised locally and are part of the everyday diet, nobody think of them as exotic) and the use of spices is liberal but judicious.

At 1 o’clock is a Civet de Cerf , Venison Creole Wine Stew. First the venison: game is a luxury item on Reunion. A few heads of deer ( Java deer, originally imported from Java) hide in the highlands. I used our venison, that Keith hunted last fall from the hills around us. A different species of deer, altogether, but it worked anyway.  While the dish is called “civet”, it certainly is not a  mainland French civet (where the blood of the animal is used to thicken the sauce and lots of wine is used). It does use a little  wine, but also tomatoes, as well as ginger, four-spice leaves and cloves along with garlic and thyme - all slowly simmered for hours until the sauce is very thick and unctuous. Finely chopped parsley finishes the dish just before it goes to the table.

At 3 o’clock, a spicy peanut side dish, a “rougail de pistaches grillées”. It contains garlic, ginger, salt, chillies - all pounded together in a stone mortar, along with grilled peanuts, chopped shallots and tomatoes. A dish of African and Asian origins.

At 6 o’clock, Achards de Legumes. I have a hard time translating this Indian influenced dish. Achaar means pickling in India - pickling using lots of spices, lemon and oil to seal the vegetables in - not the type of pickling done in the US. A side dish (also served as an appetizer or a sandwich filling), achards are eaten typically at room temperature on Reunion. They consist of evenly julienned cabbage, carrots, cauliflower & green beans, cooked briefly (and separately) until they are limp and generously seasoned with ginger, garlic, salt & peppercorns all pounded together in a paste, and doused with lemon juice or red wine vinegar. They are better prepared in advance so the flavors have a chance to meld.

On the rice, a fat dollop of fresh green chilies (pounded with a little garlic, ginger, salt in bit of oil). Reunion cooking is spicy and spicy hot, but chilies are generally served on the side so each guest can season his or he plate to her taste.

At 9 o’clock, Daube de Chouchoux, braised chayotes. Originally from Central America, chayote is a very common vegetable on Reunion: the young leaves and shoots, the fruit and tubers are all  eaten. While I can grow the greens in my Piedmont Virginia garden, my growing season is not long enough for the vine to produce fruit. So I buy my chayotes at the Hispanic market. They are boiled, sliced, and added to onions that have been sautéed with pounded garlic, ginger, peppercorn and thyme, and then braised until tender, but not falling apart.

At 11 o’clock are lentils. Very special lentils. Lentilles de Cilaos to be accurate - they are brown, very small and high-yielding when cooked. The bit of research I have done suggests that they descend from the  green lentils from Le Puy in the mountainous central area of France of  Auvergne - an area of very old volcanoes.  Farmers on Reunion bred the lentils, making them particularly well adapted to the high-mountain climate, the steep slopes and the volcanic soil of Cilaos - a cirque in the middle of the island. Lentils grow on small terraces all over this the collapsed (and spectacular) caldera of  the  ancient volcano that still peaks (no longer active, though) at over 10,000 feet. Lentils are cooked in a soffrito-like base of onions, ginger & garlic, with a little water and thyme.

The funny thing, is that only by thinking about this menu, did I realize that my Reunion roots pervade my style of cooking, the food I cook every day for just us at home. The four main seasoning ingredients of Reunion are curcuma (turmeric), ginger, garlic and thyme - a mix of French and Indian cuisines indeed. The classic Reunion thyme is close to the Provencal thyme which I grow here, small leaved and very fragrant, and ginger which I love I grow … some years. Curcuma is called “safran” (saffron) on Reunion and has been making headlines in the last few years because of its anti-cancer and its the metabolism-straightening properties. I like it because it taste good, because it’s a spice of my childhood.

Thyme, ginger, garlic and curcuma: those are my spices of predilection, the ones for which I reach without even thinking. They are part of me.

Roots, indeed…

]]> http://www.laughingduckgardens.com/ldblog.php/2010/08/12/on-roots/feed/ http://www.laughingduckgardens.com/ldblog.php/2010/08/04/on-tomatoes-finally/ http://www.laughingduckgardens.com/ldblog.php/2010/08/04/on-tomatoes-finally/#comments Wed, 04 Aug 2010 16:33:41 +0000 sylvie http://www.laughingduckgardens.com/ldblog.php/?p=2240 I’ve been waiting for them not- so-patiently. It’s probably been the hardest year in the garden since we moved here - at least when comparing input to output. It’s been a rough year weather- wise, following several years of rough-weather.

This year we had no spring; summer and drought arrived in April; we broiled in July which tormented us with several days over 100F (38 C). The tomatoes did not like it - especially considering that they were planted a little late - but sustained with copious watering, they shouldered through. Now we are harvesting for real.

A lot of things  are not doing so well. The early summer squash plantings have vanquished under the onslaught of the squash bugs; the beans produced for a couple of weeks before being turned into lace by the Mexican bean beetles (the lima beans went straight into lace, no crop); it’s been too hot for dill and for peppers to set flowers (let alone fruit); and … the blister beetles have bee devouring the Swiss chard. I have never had any problem growing Swiss chard before and blister beetles are a painful experience that I confronted this year for the first time.

On the bright side, we continue to have a reasonable harvest from the asparagus beans (a crop new to me); the summer cabbage has been doing well (2 more heads to harvest); the basil is exploding; the butternut squash looks good; the peppers have lots of flowers (and with cooler temperature should set fruit … cross fingers…); the ground cherries are prolific. I  have hopes for the late planting of summer squash… the cucumbers are swelling… and the much awaiting tomatoes are finally ripening.

And so it is time to preserve tomatoes. Time for canning, saucing, pasting,  drying (especially cherry tomatoes!), oven preserving (delicious on sandwiches and Tomato Tatin) and… can you guess?… sorbeting! At last, we can have some fun

Picture below is Yellow Tomato Sorbet (I used heirloom Valencia, meaty and sweet). Surprisingly creamy and… really yummy.

]]> http://www.laughingduckgardens.com/ldblog.php/2010/08/04/on-tomatoes-finally/feed/ http://www.laughingduckgardens.com/ldblog.php/2010/07/13/more-on-tomatoes/ http://www.laughingduckgardens.com/ldblog.php/2010/07/13/more-on-tomatoes/#comments Tue, 13 Jul 2010 22:03:16 +0000 sylvie http://www.laughingduckgardens.com/ldblog.php/?p=2224 Early Girl is blushing!

The rest of them Amish Paste, Green Zebra, Cherokee Purple, San Marzano,White Wonder et all are actually looking pretty good.

Just not ripening yet!

Today is July 12; have I harvested a tomato yet? No. Emphatically and sadly no. I mean a “real” tomato,  a handful of cherry tomatoes absolutely do not count. This is what happens when you are unable to up-pot the seedlings as they grow, and grow, and grow.

I have however harvested a pumpkin. Yes, a pumpkin.

To add insult to injury from a volunteer pumpkin (the ones I planted are not as far advanced - by far!  a reminder , if any, to plant seeds next year in April not in May)

The pumpkin was not fully ripe, but as the vine was dying off, I had to pick it. Because it is immature, it will not keep long. So I cut it up and baked it to pre-cook it (it is still firm, although cooked). An immature pumpkin is perfectly edible, the taste and texture a little closer to summer squash that winter squash. There’ll be lots of summery preparation for it - for it is, after all, just a squash…

I’ll saute chunks with shredded sage & butter; I’ll slice it thickly and grill the slices; I’ll slice it thinly and toss the slivers with a spicy dressing and lots of cilantro; cubes may even be sauteed in butter, finished with maple syrup and served with vanilla ice-cream. Who says pumpkin is for winter only? They are eaten all over the tropics and it’s hot there, you know….

This morning, as I was working in the lower garden, I noticed however that one Early Girl was definitively blushing. Maybe a tomato on July 15 after all? Or maybe we’ll have corn before tomatoes this year, the silk are turning brown…

Sigh…..

How did I know it? No, not because the temperature was - again! - over 90 (over 32 C) in the shade; 116 (47 C!!!) in the sun insisted the thermometer (wish I misread that). Not because the creek is drying up - although it is and we need rain badly. Not because it’s muggy, because it surely is and it has been feeling like August for too many days (somebody actually installed a small fan in the new chicklets’ pen - that’s how hot and stifling it is).

No, it’s  because the day before yesterday the first empty cicada shell was spotted, still hanging onto the smoke tree trunk, split open in the back -  the cicada who lived in it for many years under the earth now gone to live in the sun for a few months, singing. Yesterday I heard the first cicada sing. The sure sign of summer. Cicadas do not make mistakes.

Yesterday morning I also picked blueberries at a small pick-your-own bramble farm, a few miles from me. I suppose that’s another sign of summer. Despite the sweltering heat, I picked precisely 11.52 pounds of sun-gorged blueberries - about  9 1/4 quarts.  6.5 pounds went into the freezer; quite a few just disappeared seemingly in thin air…; more were made into a fresh blueberry and blueberry jam tart (really yummy and so much easier to eat than cream tart in this hot weather); some were turned into sauce; and more are awaiting their fate: what will it be be? blueberry pancakes? blueberry buttermilk sherbet? blueberry cake? blueberry jam? blueberry syrup? more blueberry tarts (I’ve got tart shells in the freezer after all).

Meanwhile, while we ponder the possibilities, there is always reliable ice-cream. Those who’ve been reading this blog for a while know I love to make ice-creams and sorbets (see here, here, here and here for a few favorites). Blueberry Ice-Cream is simple to make, and the pectin in the blueberry reacts with the cream to create a very dense texture - gelato-like with, of course, a delightful color. The sweetened blueberry purée - left to its own device in the fridge - will actually gel, turning into a pudding-like blobby thingy.

You make the blueberry purée, measure and everything else is proportional to 1 cup of purée. If you have extra purée, add sugar to taste: you then have a great sauce for ice-creams (yep, more ice-cream) or yogurt,  in fools, parfaits and other layered desserts, as the base for a mousse, to make jelly etc etc. You get the drift.

Blueberry Ice Cream

• Blueberries (about 1 heaping pint)
  
• water
• sugar (about 3/4 cup)
  
• lemon juice (about 1 Tablespoon)
  
• heavy cream (about 2 cups)
  

1. In a non-reactive sauce pan, heat blueberries with a little water (just enough to prevent the berries from sticking) and cook until they start to release their juice and are soft - about 10 minutes. Puree in the blender.
2. Measure the purée.
3. To each cup of warm blueberry purée, add 3/4 cup sugar and 1 Tablespoon lemon juice, and stir until sugar is melted. (or whirl in the blender)
4. Add 2 cups heavy cream, mix well. Chill.
5. Process in ice-cream maker.

Update:

It’s way too hot to bake anything! and I felt too lazy to make jam. So Blueberry Sherbet it was. Using buttermilk which I had on hand. Surprisingly good - closer in texture to ice-cream than to frozen yogurt - a very good mouth feel indeed, due I suppose to all that pectin! SO for those of you wtaching their fat intake, or for those who want a lighter dessert try the Blueberry Sherbet.

Blueberry Sherbet

• Blueberries (about 1 heaping pint)
  
• water
• sugar (about 3/4 cup)
  
• lemon juice (about 1 Tablespoon)
  
• buttermilk (about 2 cups)
  

1. In a non-reactive sauce pan, heat blueberries with a little water (just enough to prevent the berries from sticking) and cook until they start to release their juice and are soft - about 10 minutes. Purée in the blender.
2. Measure the purée.
3. To each cup of warm blueberry purée, add 3/4 cup sugar and 1 Tablespoon lemon juice, and stir until sugar is melted. (or whirl in the blender)
4. Chill thoroughly. Do not add the buttermilk to the warm blueberries as this may curdle the buttermilk. Not pretty. We are trying to make sherbet here, not blueberry cheese!!!
5. Once the puree is cold, it will gel. Put back in blender, add 2 cups buttermilk, whirl until thoroughly mixed.
6. Process in ice-cream maker.

Locavore Log: Blueberry from Road’s End Bramble Farm, cream and buttermilk from Trickling Spring Creamery.

But you can make ice-cream without an ice-cream maker -  and pretty decent ones at that. Oh, sure, it won’t be as smooth as ice-cream churned in an ice-cream maker; yet you can do pretty well if you select assertive sweet-tart fruit at their peak of ripeness, so that flavor - not texture - is what every body notices. And the texture is not bad, just a little rougher than my other ice-creams - and far smoother than granita or shaved ice.  But you do need electricity.

With my recent sour cherry bonanza, I really had a chance to play around a little. Sour cherries are fairly fragile, oxidizing fast when destemmed or pitted. As I picked, I pitted (and pitted, and pitted … I said that already, didn’t I?). What did not get eaten fresh, jammed, syruped or baked right away went into the freezer in one-cup bags. The idea was to use them in winter - mostly for baking.

The reality is that it’s been unusually hot, I mean it’s been hot early and continuously. So we’ve been hankering for coolness on the plate, and with the summer berries barely starting and the stone fruit weeks away, frozen sour cherries were too tantalizing for us to wait 6 months before eating them.

You see where that’s going, don’t you? Frozen fruits, cream and sweetener. A blender. The freezer.

Although I have not yet tried it (not the season yet), I expect this recipe would work equally well with raspberries, blackberries, wineberries - any fruit with a tart undertone and a beautiful color. For blueberries or sweet cherries it may be necessary to add some lemon juice to reach a pleasant tartness. Use a complementary syrup, or ahead of time warm up some of the cream with 3/4 cup sugar stirring until sugar is fully diluted. Let cool before using.

Sour Cherry Ice-Cream Without An Ice-Cream Maker

• 2 cups sour cherries
• 2 cups heavy cream
• 1 cup sour cherry syrup (homemade or purchased - a good quality one)
• 1/2 inch of fresh ginger root, minced

1. Four hours or more before you want to eat the ice-cream (well, yes, there is a catch, if you don’t have an ice-cream maker, you need to be a little patient), process all ingredients in the blender until smooth (but not too much - you still want to see the flecks of the cherry skins). This will have the consistency of a smoothie.
2. Pour into a shallow container - metal preferably - and put in the freezer. Once an hour or so, stir the concoction with a fork.
3. Serve when sufficiently hardened (about 4 hours) or transfer to a storage container with a lid. We are still eating from a batch made a week ago, and the texture is fine!

Lets see… We have harvesting mustard greens (still. again!), strawberries, Swiss chard, beets, zucchini & summer squash, all kinds of herbs, and green beans. We are seeing the last of the kale (there was not much to start with anyway). We just finished harvesting  the last of the shelling peas and, all the currants. And I have picked the last of the asparagus for this year ( I am now letting the fern grow).

The picture above shows one of the weekly subscription garden baskets this past week. The basket does reflect what the garden is currently producing. It also reflects what it should be producing and is not: cherry tomatoes (I got a case of tomato hubris this past winter and it really bit hard. Yep, due to lack of time in transplanting in a timely manner, the harvest should start in mid-to-late July… not in mid-June as I was boasting).  I should also be harvesting garlic (crop failure),  kolhrabi (were never transplanted), broccoli (were transplanted way too late - not sure if they’ll head or not at this point) and carrots (never sowed them). On the other hands, the raspberry batch looks incredibly promising (I have already eaten a few), cabbages are coming (oh the fun of handpicking cabbage-eating caterpillars!), and the early peppers are swelling. Corn isn’t looking bad either… So, there… every year some tings are really good, and every year some things fail - sometimes it’s the gardeners’ fault, sometimes it’s not. Well, not really.

But am I discouraged? no… as a matter of fact, I am supposed to be planting more.  Such as? such as  cucumber, the last of the winter squash, a zucchini or two (for the late harvest), a short row or two of beans, lettuce, okra, carrots & beets. What I have actually sown in the last few days are lettuce (to be harvested as baby lettuce - they don’t grow well since  it’s so hot now, but with some shade they still provide some salad greens), cucumber ( 4 kinds of cucumbers were seeded on the trellis where the shelling peas used to grow), and winter squash (fairly quick growing butternut - one that’s also fairly small and therefore good for the garden basket.

We continue to transplant peppers and basil.

I won’t mention weeding. I’ve done my best to eat my weeds, purslane and pigweed among them, but some are just not edible. And they are growing like out-of-control monsters - which is really what they are. Sigh… It’s so much more pleasant to be tying the tomatoes to the trellis or watch the new chicklets!

Or make currant jelly.

Aren’t red currants absolutely gorgeous?With the wet snow-laden winter (which they loved) and the hot spring (which neither them - I think - nor I liked), they ripened earlier than usual this year - and the already short season lasted even less than in prior years. I picked all the currants by the summer solstice this year. Some years, I can stretch the harvest until the last day of June, so I can serve fresh currants in red-white-and blue dessert for July 4th. Not this year… still, a goodly amount  jelly was made.

Next: blackberries and red raspberries (black caps are currently fruiting)!

Yep, the June garden can be almost overwhelming!

When sour cherries are in season, one rushes to pick, pick, pick and then pit, pit, pit and process. Because the season is very brief: on Memorial day they are blushing, on June 15, they are over!

So what to do with sour cherries:

- pit them, toss them with sugar, other berries and enjoy as a sweet-tart refreshing dessert

- pit and freeze for later use

- sour cherry preserves

- sour cherry smoothie

- sour cherry syrup

- sour cherry jam

- rustic sour cherry cake (freezes very well and is great for breakfast)

- sour cherry ice-cream - a favorite especially when served with rustic sour cherry cake.

- sour cherry pit liqueur! with all that pitting, I simply had to try to make a little bit of Liqueur de Noyau de Cerises for flavoring pastries.

Phew!!!… just writing down the list makes me tired. That was A LOT of cherries to pit.

We are almost cherried out! but not quite… I certainly would not mind if the season was a little longer. I know…  sweet cherry season just started. I’ll be brief too…

(and currants, did I say I am picking red currants? boy, am I picking red currants…)

]]> http://www.laughingduckgardens.com/ldblog.php/2010/06/16/le-temps-des-cerises/feed/ http://www.laughingduckgardens.com/ldblog.php/2010/06/07/in-strawberries-we-delight/ http://www.laughingduckgardens.com/ldblog.php/2010/06/07/in-strawberries-we-delight/#comments Tue, 08 Jun 2010 03:22:17 +0000 sylvie http://www.laughingduckgardens.com/ldblog.php/?p=2094 Picking up strawberries in the garden on a warm day is a true sensual experience.

Your eyes are caught by the bright vermilion peeking not-so-shyly from under dark green leaves; your fingers caress grainy plumpness; the warmth of the noon sun radiates on your back; the whole garden is humming around you; the heady perfume of strawberry hangs heavily in the air, and finally the taste of that warm ripe strawberry explodes in your mouth.

Yes indeed that dainty delicacy is full of pleasures. When picked ripe - at its peak.

One can't grow enough strawberries. From top left, scarlet Virginia strawberry, fragile Alpine strawberry, and water deprived (therefore small) garden strawberry 'Tristar'

The strawberry is a relatively new comer to our gardens - especially when compared to the apple or the quince. Probably not introduced in European gardens until the late Middle Ages, strawberry was thought as a delicacy from the fields and the woods. The garden strawberry as we know it today has a fascinating history. When the Europeans came to the Americas, they found strawberries - plenty of them but different species than the Alpine strawberry (Fragaria vesca) and the wood strawberry (F. moschata) they knew. On the North American Eastern Seabord, they found the Virginia strawberry (you guessed it… F. virginiana) which has a lovely clear red color, a firm texture, is very fragrant and very vigorous. On the West Coast and in South America, they found the Chilean strawberry (yep, that’s right… F.  chiloensis) remarkable mostly because of its very large fruit.  The two American strawberries met in a Dutch garden in the 18th century (that of George Clifford near Haarlem), and in a chance encounter the Fragaria ananassa, the ancestor of our garden strawberry was born. Ah… Les liaisons dangeureuses… the result? a fat juicy, vividly red and nicely perfumed berry on a vigorous plant combining the best of the North and South American strawberries.

In my garden, I grow Virginia Strawberry, Alpine Strawberry, and “Tristar” a day-neutral garden strawberry.  They each are appealing for different reasons.

The Alpine is incredibly fragrant but also incredibly fragile - so fragile that it melts when you wash it and does not keep very long (best to eat it straight from the garden); it produces throughout the summer - albeit not that much at any one time, does not run but clumps, and is also easy to propagate by seeds. And it’s not red throughout… look at the picture of the cut strawberries on a plate.

From top to bottom: 'Tristar' garden strawberry, Virginia strawberry and Alpine strawberry.

The Virginia strawberry is hardy and vigorous (yes, it does run - it seems to enjoy both marathon and sprinting - quite a feat). It produces one early abundant crop of delicious firm and small scarlet berries. One cultivar is still commercially cultivated, ‘Little Scarlet’ -  mostly for jam making.

Finally ‘Tristar’ produces a tasty crop throughout the entire growing season  from spring to frost, perfect for me who want a few quarts every weeks for many weeks - not two bushel over 4 weeks.

A ripe strawberry needs not much more than a willing eater. But if you have excess and need some ideas of things to with them, take a look at those other posts:

• Strawberry compote and homemade yogurt
• Smoothie
• Strawberry Sorbet
• Homemade Lemon-Verbena Strawberry Liqueur
• Berry & Peach Jubilee