30 Oct 2011
Cookery • Garden • locavore log

October 29 And It’s Snowing

October 29 and it is snowing – wet heavy snow. Plenty of leaves yet on many trees — although the birches are denuded by now. Still, some under story trees or ornamental ones like crape myrtle sport lots of green. It’s an unusual sight, snow on leafy trees. Will winter be short? Or will it be a long one?

The next few days promise to be mild, and with ground still warm from summer, there will be no lasting accumulation; yet, the falling snow and the frost predicted for tomorrow morning are firmly ending the summer garden. I hurried on Thursday and Friday to pick up all of the remaining peppers and green beans, cut up big bunches of basil and chayote squash vine, and dug up the last few sweet potatoes that I had planted in my tropical bed. Also dug up, potted and dragged those same perennial tropicals or Mediterranean plants to the greenhouse. Barely in time. But in time. They will survive winter – just, sometimes – in the minimally heated greenhouse to be planted out again next spring. What can I say? I love ferns, lantanas, daturas, citruses, jasmines, geraniums, agapanthus, gingers and bananas. I do! Read more

sylvie | 8 comments | Tags: , , , ,
25 Oct 2011
locavore log

Chestnut Memories

Chestnuts are special.  They are here when the year is falling – promise of sustenance for the months to come.  They are beautiful – and so is the tree they grow on. They were a staples for centuries – millenia? – allowing people to survive winter.

I was almost 15 when I first encountered a chestnut tree, fallen fruit littering the ground all around it. Which is about the same time I saw my first snow, frozen, in a few compacted drifts, high up on Mont Lozère, in the southern Massif Central of France. Read more

sylvie | 3 comments | Tags: , ,
20 Oct 2011
fruit • Harvest • Wild Food

Post Card from the Hedgerow

Trifoliate orange (hardy citrus) grows like an evergreen weed around here. The harvest is ending… What should I make with them this year? (last year I made liqueur)

trifoliate orange

sylvie | 2 comments | Tags: ,
27 Sep 2011
Desserts • fruit • Fruit recipe • Wild Food

More on Pawpaws

This post first appeared – with minor modifications and without pictures – as an article “In season now: our fascinating native pawpaw” in the September 22, 2011 issue of the Rappahannock News.

Pawpaw puree

My favorite banana custard involves no cooking whatsoever. No, it doesn’t involve opening a package of store-bought “custard” either. In fact, it requires a stroll along the creek with my nose up in late summer: I am looking for native wild pawpaws (Asimina triloba) that are ripening now and in early fall, sometimes as late as October – depending on the tree and its location. They aren’t showy, but they are easy to recognize: small understory trees with large vaguely-tropical-looking drooping leaves that turn a bright pure yellow in mid-fall. They grow mostly along bottomland creeks, forming ever expanding thickets, often at the edge of the woods. Read more

sylvie | 5 comments | Tags: ,
09 Sep 2011
fruit • Kitchen Garden • locavore log

I Do Give A Fig!

This post first appeared – with minor modifications and without pictures – as an article “A Fig Tree In Virginia” in the September 8, 2011 issue of the Rappahannock News. It’s a tad late (I know!) since we are at the end of fig season here in the Northern Virginia Piedmont. I originally wrote the article in mid-August but it had to be bumped a few times… Still, there are figs to be harvested at the moment, although the recent massive rains have not done them any good…

Everyone should have a grapevine and a fig tree, said one of my favorite writers, Henry Mitchell. I – and a long list of people, some quite famous – thoroughly agree.  In fact, Mitchell was only repeating a biblical phrase, long used to mean peace and prosperity:  ”each man under his own vine and fig tree” (1 Kings 4:25).

Figs have a longer history in Virginia than you might have thought. They actually go back, quite a bit in human history – and prehistory: figs may well have been the first cultivated plant. Read more

sylvie | 4 comments | Tags:
07 Sep 2011
fruit • locavore log • Wild Food

Post Card From The Woods

In season now: pawpaws – ripening along the creeks

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

a creamy luscious fruit redolent of mango, guava and banana…

sylvie | 7 comments | Tags: ,
31 Aug 2011
Desserts • Fruit recipe • locavore log • Recipes

End of Summer Cake

Nectarine & Almond Cake cooling on the window sill

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You only need to know a few cake formulas to be able to look smart in the kitchen. Because once you understand the recipe, you can tweak it ad infinitum to vary the result: change the fruit, change the flour, change the flavoring or spice, change the filling, change the icing, change the pan shape… and suddenly the three or four basic cake recipes that you can do (almost) in your sleep become 40 different desserts. That’s why I call them “formulas”.

Witness this recipe for Italian plum cake.

In the spring, use cherries or apricots. In summer, replace the plums with slices of yellow peaches or nectarine. Or slices of sauteed apples or roasted quince or pears in early fall. Or a mixture of fruit. In winter, use rehydrated dry fruit or halved bananas. I more and more use less refined flours like whole wheat or spelt – they accentuate the rustic aspect of the cake. I bet any flour would work! When using stone fruit like peach, I also like to add a little cornmeal (or corn flour) as well as a few nuts. Almonds are great but so are pine nuts if you have them or chopped pecans. Or whatever you’ve got! (or none if you don’t have any).

It’s not a sophisticated looking cake, like, oh say, a Reine de Saba, but is a satisfying not-too-filling dessert, moist, with a little crunch and lots of fruit – great for breakfast too. Best of all,  it’s an easy recipe to memorize, and by playing with it, it will look like you know 10 different recipes!

End of Summer Cake (with nectarine & almonds) Read more

sylvie | 2 comments | Tags: , ,
23 Aug 2011
Kitchen Garden • Pests • Rant

On Discontent

The August garden is again this year most unsatisfactory. An almost total absence of rain, high temperatures and high humidity make for a discontented gardener and a stressed garden. Read more

sylvie | 3 comments
15 Aug 2011
locavore log • Vegetable recipe

On Making Tomato Paste

10 pounds of tomatoes = 12 fl oz of tomato paste.

Or conserva as the Italians call it.

Three years ago, I was using  Saveur Magazine’s recipe and Italian-type tomatoes to make tomato paste.  I have since learned to use any tomatoes to make tomato paste, not the just the processing type (although they are unquestionably preferable), because you know, I do plant a lot of tomatoes (big, small & medium, and giant) and in good years, we have lots of fruit.  Since the beefsteak tomatoes have a lot more juice, the trick is to get the water out of them. I steam them: I know, it sound contradictory, but it works. I also found that I’d rather use a lower temperature and more time, to avoid burning the paste – which is extremely easy to do toward the end.

The paste does not take a lot of active time (except for the food-mill part) but requires you to be around so you can stir it every hour at the beginning of the oven time, more often as the puree changes to past.

And of course, you could spread the work over a few days: Steam to tomatoes on Day 1 (refrigerate), pass through the food mill on Day 2 (refrigerate) and bake on Day 3.

Read more

sylvie | 4 comments | Tags: ,
11 Aug 2011
Fruit recipe • locavore log

Peach Chutney

If you need one reason to can, peaches is it. Perfectly ripe and luscious peaches are as much a treat now as they are when I open a homemade can of peaches in the dark months (or next spring before the first seasonal fruit, strawberries, ripen in May).

They are not quite as perfect  as a fresh juicy fragrant peach now… but not far. Not far.  They will certainly taste better then almost any fruit you can buy in winter.  Canned peaches are in effect poached peaches and if you can them au naturel like I do, you can use them for all kinds of preparations: naked, with yogurt, in smoothies, tarts, on top of your morning pancakes or waffles, mashed for a quick chunky sauce, mixed with other canned or dry fruit for a winter fruit salad, or puree as a base for ice-cream or sorbet.

Nonetheless, we do have – ahem! – quite a few jars of peaches canned already. And faced with the end of a bushel of ripe peaches I did not really feel like  more “canning”. Call me lazy!  Pickles, jams and chutneys only require 10 minutes in a boiling water-bath, in my smaller canner too since I use 8-oz smaller jars. Why not another condiment? This seems to be the year when I am experimenting with sweet/sour as I have made fennel agrodolce, tomates aigres douces, peach mostarda, peach barbecue sauce, pickled peaches and peach chutney using a recipe from Christine Ferber in Leçons de Confitures. Christine’s Summer Chutney uses peaches, dry apricots and poppy seeds. It was very pleasant and encouraged me to play some more and try my hands at making chutney with what I had available at the moment in the house.

Read more

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