26 May 2011
beverage • Fruit recipe • locavore log • Recipes

Strawberry Liqueur

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Time to make more strawberry liqueur! The 2009 batch is almost all gone – the liqueur gets a little darker as it ages.but retained its fragrance. It’s a nice drink to sip by the wood stove in winter or – slightly chilled – on the porch in summer, watching the fireflies.

The original entry was made in May 2009, the recipe is just repeated below

Homemade Lemon-Verbena Strawberry Liqueur.

  • 4 cups, washed, hulled and quartered strawberries, any bad spot removed
  • 3 cups vodka *
  • a 1/2 cup of fresh lemon verbena leaves, loosely packed
  • 1 heaping cup sugar

In a large lidded glass jar, combine all 4 ingredients. Stir well. Cap. Stir daily for 2 weeks until the sugar is fully dissolved. Then place in a cool dark place for 6 weeks and let age. Strain strawberries through a clean butter muslin cloth. Let drip for several hours. Discard solids. Repeat straining to have liquid as limpid as possible. Bottle. The cloudy part of the liqueur may settle. Decant into new containers. The cloudy part is fine to cook or drink – it’s just not as pretty.

* Note: in those states that allow the sale of pure grain alcohol (180 – or so – proof), you may replace the 3 cups of vodka with 1.5 cup of grain alcohol. After aging and straining the liquid, add 1.5 cup distilled or unchlorinated well water.

sylvie | No comments | Tags: ,
24 May 2011
beverage • locavore log • Recipes

The Year of Rhubarb

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Or maybe it’ll be “A Year In Rhubarb”, given the voracity with which I am acquiring stalks for the kitchen. I can’t help it: there are so many plump juicy stems for sale… I have to make up for years of deprivation, you know: there was no rhubarb growing on the tropical island where I spent my childhood.

I am hearing from growers that this year’s wet cool spring has done wonder for rhubarb. Unfortunately, the cool spring is ending this week as we not-so-gently steam and wilt with the thermometer reaching 90 degrees  ( 32 C). The wet part is still on though with copious rain showers every day – rather tropical, really. What that will do for rhubarb is anybody’s guess, but I am furiously buying rhubarb. Close to 30 pounds to date, and few weeks to go still…

It’s been fun. I’ve made ice-cream (several batches and settled on proportions I like), sorbet, syrup, cordial, compote, tartelettes, fresh strawberry & ginger rhubarb tart, jam (some with elder blossom cordial, some with vanilla bean and some with fresh ginger root), rhubarb strudel (or was that baklava?) as well as fresh rhubarb chutney (delicious with a rack of lamb). And frozen a bunch, should I suddenly have a craving for rhubarb. It could happen.

It’s about time I share some recipes… so… on today’s episode we’ll learn to cook rhubarb once and make no less than 4 dishes! We’ll delve into the secret lives of rhubarb (oh… wait… we did that already!). Oh, well, then we’ll … learn how to coax the juice  from those stalks without turning them into mush and we’ll make first a  happy rosy syrup, and then a sweet and even happier little cordial. Read more

sylvie | One comment | Tags: , , ,
11 May 2011
Farms • fruit • locavore log • vegetable

On Growing Rhubarb

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Until recently I thought tender all-summer long rhubarb was available only in place like England, the Pacific Northwest or Maine. Places with cool and moist summers. Places like Vachon Island where my blog pal Tom of Tall Clover Farm harvest armfuls upon armfuls of crimson stemmed monsters. Makes me turn green with envy…

I was convinced that rhubarb in Virginia was a fleeting all-too brief treasure, the plants sending flowers forth as soon as it got too hot and then considerably slowing down for the summer. Because this denizen of the mountains of Central Asia likes it cool. And since we rarely have a real long cool even-temperatured spring here (let alone a mild summer!), I thought: in Virginia you got rhubarb in May and that was it.

Anyway, that is indeed what I thought until very very recently. Until last week as a matter of fact. Read more

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28 Apr 2011
locavore log

Post Card from The Orchard

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26 Apr 2011
locavore log • Vegetable recipe • Wild Food

A Good Year For Morels

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It’s been a good year for morels… they are even reported to be growing in people’s front yard or back yard or back door. Not mine though. Keith has to go hunt them in the woods. It’s such a good year in fact that our world famous restaurant The Inn at Little Washington is selling them at the Inn Shops. It is said that many morel hunters will show up at the Inn’s back door to sell their catch… it must be very many with lots of bags then…

But after a dry winter, we’ve had rain, lots of rain (some with flooding), extremely mild spring temperatures – we’ve only hit 85F (yesterday) and it’s cooling off again. Some years we have high temperatures much earlier in April. I think morels like a mild spring with some cool nights (but not frosty). In other words… they like my kind of spring weather. Read more

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18 Apr 2011
chicken

Postcard from the Meadow

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sylvie | 3 comments
14 Apr 2011
Desserts • locavore log

Honey Rhubarb Frozen Yogurt

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Since our most recent honey harvest yielded close to 15 quarts, I am experimenting with honey as a sweetener. We are so used to the taste of sugar that we don’t really taste it any more, we only taste the sweetness. Honey on the other hand has a depth of flavor that some palates find too potent. But pair it with a complementary yet assertive enough flavor, and you’ve got a winner. And in the spring we’ve got… rhubarb, beautiful, tart, versatile, perennial rhubarb!!!

I used not to care for rhubarb, having been subjected to too many over-sweet strawberry rhubarb pies with less than stellar crusts. So it took me quite a while to embrace its sourness, so welcomed after winter. In comparison with fresh tamarind, a fruit of my childhood, rhubarb’s sour bite is actually quite gentle. No wonder I don’t want its tartness to be disguised by too much sugar. Read more

sylvie | 2 comments | Tags: , , ,
07 Apr 2011
Kitchen Garden • locavore log • Nature

Postcard From The Hollow

Elle est belle ma campagne… She’s is greening, pastures growing for cattle and sheep…

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In the garden, things are also fattening (lettuce & mustard greens) and  pushing up: fava beans up (yeah!!!!), peas 2 inches tall, potatoes, and first asparagus tip showing its purple nose yesterday.

Of course, that tip was just the vanguard. Every year, a few show up in early April, push the soil apart to see the sun, check out the weather and then just wait until they decide the conditions are just right to grow more – several looong weeks later. They also send word down to their brethren that there is no rush since it’s just the few of them (and yes, it is mostly their “brethren” since most of my plants are male).

It’s going to be a good year in the garden. Of course. Every year in the garden is a good year. Promises, broken promises, failures, joys… life.

Are you taking the slow road with me?

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sylvie | One comment | Tags: ,
31 Mar 2011
Appetizer • locavore log • Main Dish • Recipes

Spring Salads

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Every spring , without fail, I become almost tear-eyed that we are eating great bowls of arugula, spinach, mache, sorrel, chicories and the very first of the lettuces – all planted last fall, all growing again with the milder temperatures… and the rain.Brave greens braving the still chilly weather, they show us winter’s over.

Greens make wonderful companions to fried eggs, poached eggs, omelet, lard-fried croutons, bacon, lardons, duck-fat fried potatoes, duck breasts, thinly cut steaks, any meat really… any thing really. Early spring greens are just glorious, so alive. And I am glad I have them, because, I have to wait at least 30 days before I’ll be able to harvest from the just planted seeds. And with spending so much time out, we definitively need a lot of those quick lunches.

One of my favorite quick meals is a green salad topped with warm breaded goat cheese on a croute (a croute is a French crostini – or vice-versa). I like to marinate the goat cheese ahead of time for added flavor – and I’ll often marinate a lot more than what’s immediately needed – they’ll keep well in the fridge for a few weeks. In a pinch,  if you did not marinate the cheese but want that salad right now, just brush the freshly cut rounds with oil before breading them. Read more

sylvie | No comments
21 Mar 2011
Kitchen Garden • locavore log

Spring Garden Rituals

She is here, you know.

The blooming maples are splashing the hills red, the garden’s awashed in the yellows of daffodils and forsythias. Snow drops, winter aconites and reticulate iris seem a distant memory already: our hearts rejoiced in the brave little show they put up when all was dreary, but now we are dazzled by colors and fattening buds everywhere. The skunk cabbage is unfurling its acid green leaves in the marshy areas of the woods and the peepers have been singing full-throated for a few weeks. In sheltered spots, the hepaticas, our earliest woodland ephemeral, are opening their tiny face to the sun.

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Mild sunny days following some much needed rain early in the month, and yes, it’s spring indeed. Read more

sylvie | 4 comments
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