In Season & Fresh from the Garden, the Fields, the Orchards & the Woods
The lettuce beds are looking lush and fluff – if you lift the agricultural fabric swaddled over them, that is – providing huge bowls of greens, but, with the temperature regularly dropping below freezing (at night only for now, thankfully), I am hungering for soup. …
Cranberries are not a shrub, you say? You are right, but they can be turned into a shrub, the sweet-tart refreshing drink that was popular before colas. Today – if the word is recognized at all as a drink – shrub is often understood to …
Back in January when I was browsing seed catalogs for interesting fruit & vegetable seeds, I came across the description ‘Hickory King’ a pre-1875 dent corn cultivar (throughout this post – and throughout my blog – I am using corn in the American sense of the word, i.e., meaning “maize”, not the British meaning of “grains”). Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, a small seed house based in Mineral, VA, specializes in non-GMO open-pollinated kitchen garden seeds with many of its heirloom offerings adapted to Virginia. Here is what the 2008 catalog entry for ‘Hickory King’ reads: “HICKORY KING: 85/110 days. [Pre-1875.] In the hills and hollows of Virginia this corn is still appreciated as a roasting and hominy corn. It is considered the best variety for hominy because the skin of the kernel is easily removed by soaking. Also good for grits, corn meal, and flour. Makes a nice roasting corn (the old fashioned way of eating corn on the cob). […]. This variety grows extremely tall. Our stalks reach 12’. Some people use this variety for providing support for pole beans. Produces about 2 ears per stalk. Ears have very large flat white kernels. Husks are tighter than most varieties and give excellent protection from beetles and earworm. Has good tolerance to northern leaf blight (H. turicum) and southern leaf blight (H. maydis).”
12 feet tall? That must be quite a sight, thought I wonderingly, and would remind me of the sugar cane growing in fields next to my childhood home… I was also curious to experience what corn tasted like before sweet corn came along a 100 years ago or so. Temptation bit – it did not need to bite hard. ‘Hickory King’ was ordered. Continue reading Hickory King Corn and Nixtamalization
Friday night’s dinner often requires little thought as it often consists of homemade pizza – not much to think about: make the dough, let rise 45 minutes, flatten, spread some toppings (variations are endless). Bake for 15 minutes. Meanwhile mix a salad, set the table …
I think I love my kitchen garden more in the fall then in the spring: cooler temperatures are accompanied by a lot less bugs and the beds are brimming with salad greens (sorrel, lettuce, frisée, endive, mache, arugula), cooking greens (tatsoi, pakchoi and other mustard, …
You know there is a problem when the Virginia Department of Agriculture puts out a produce chart that shows that the only fresh produce available from Virginia in December and January are apples, herbs, greens/spinach (in December only says the chart), and sweet potatoes. Come ON! Granted, “Greens” cover a wide variety of vegetable, but even I grow more than this in my own plot. And can buy a lot more locally. And could buy even more if only more farmers were doing what Sunnyside Farms in Washington, VA does, with their winter growing in hoop houses. They sell at the FreshFarm Market at Dupont Circle in Washington, DC and offer local share of produce to local subscribers. Last year, around Christmas time, I was able to buy a few boxes of produce of achingly beautiful winter vegetable: I remember small brilliant carrots, petite Japanese white turnips with tasty edible green tops, deep pink radishes (also with edible tops), colorful lettuce, robust escarole, crisp spring onions…
One can eat well & fresh in the mid-Atlantic area even in winter. Many vegetable can be grown if given some cold protection. Think about it: here in Rappahnannock County we are roughly on the 40th parallel, i.e. roughly the same latitude as Southern Spain or Athens, Greece. We get the sun, we just need to protect the crops from the worse of the winter by using cold frames or unheated hoop greenhouses with a little thermal mass. Now it won’t be corn, tomatoes or eggplant… but we can grow a varied list of veggies which are perfect for the soups and braised dishes of winter cookery. Continue reading Eating Local in the Northern Piedmont in Winter
Note: Recipe has been updated on February 11, 2009 to clarify some instructions and correct a typo. When we moved to the country, we decided to join the local Volunteer Fire and Rescue Company. It took us a while to actually do it, but both …
Frost last night blackened part of the garden. Bad enough to burn the brillantsia, the sweet potato leaves, and a good part of the basil. Not hard enough for the tomatoes, peppers, dahlias nor strawberries for that matter. I spent most of yesterday’s afternoon picking …
I love a good baked custard – or flan as we call in France (which is not the same as a Spanish flan – maybe a post for another day). And although the last few days have been warm, the down spiraling leaves are letting us know – in no uncertain terms – that cooler times are coming. As a matter of fact, they are supposed to sweep through the area Saturday with near freezing temperature. The next two days are going to be spent in a frenzy of tasks that should have been accomplished weeks ago: digging up the banana trees, moving into the greenhouse all the tender plants I want to keep over the winter, pick up the last of the tomatoes (and up-root the now unsightly plants), harvest all the remaining basil and turn it into pesto… Fat chance of being able to even accomplish half of it!
But at least, on Saturday, as the evening gets really chilly, I can console myself with a nice little flan. Easy to make, it only requires a few ingredients, so it makes sense to get the best ingredients you can: whole local organic milk from pastured cows, fresh fat farm eggs from free-range chicken allowed to roam in the pasture to forage for at least part of their food – and real vanilla bean.
Do you know that this orchid (yes, vanilla beans are the fruit of an orchid) originates from Mexico? When it was exported to other countries in the hope of producing vanilla and break the Spanish monopoly – in the 18th century – growers were very disappointed that they could not get the orchid flower to fruit (it’s because the orchid needs a specialized pollinator endemic to Mexico). It was not until a slave figured how to manually fertilize vanilla in the early 19th century on French Bourbon Island in the Indian Ocean (now Reunion) that the culture of vanilla took off in so many different places around the world. Bourbon Vanilla now comes from Madagascar, Reunion, Mauritius and I believe some of the Comoros Islands. Growers on Reunion are trying to establish international recognition for their vanilla – for cultural, historical, agricultural and culinary reasons.
No matter the origin of your vanilla bean, ensure it’s plump for maximum flavor.
For my custard, especially at this time of the year, I like to add a touch of maple syrup (from not too far Pennsylvania), and so that gives us Maple Vanilla Bean Baked Custard.
Gala, Crispin (or Mutsu), Fuji, Honeycrisp, Rhode Island Greening, York, McIntosh, Jonathan & Jonagold, Stayman Winesap, even Golden Delicious (one of MY favorites), Red Delicious & Granny Smith: those are just a few of the cultivars of apples available for pick up at our local …
