In Season & Fresh from the Garden, the Fields, the Orchards & the Woods
The kitchen garden is really coming into its own now. We are eating lots of salad greens and cooked greens (kale, mustard, Swiss chard, escarole); peas (both mange-tout/sugar snap and shelling peas) have just started and should go through the end of the month. Still …
Or is it for Swiss chard? because my chard is doing quite well, thank you very much. I am now harvesting two big bunches a week, and with all that rain, and that nice temperature, it’s growing and growing and growing – as you can …
Today is Memorial Day in the United States.
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
[…] — Lt.-Col. John McCrae (1872 – 1918)
There is somebody in the house who’s not so fond of radishes, especially radish leaf soup or stir-fried radish pods, but I’ve just hit the jackpot! I made something with radishes where the reaction was: “I can eat radish like that all day long!” I …
I treasure local seasonal produce, local farms, local farmers, local chefs and dinner parties that get us around the table for food, friends, conversation and laughter. You know that. So it should come as no surprise to anybody that I am helping to put together a fabulous dinner party for 150. It is to take place Saturday June 20, 2009 on the grounds of Mount Vernon Farm in Sperryville, VA.
Guess who’s cooking? Chef Cathal Armstrong of Restaurant Eve in Old Town Alexandria – no less!
Although I provide cookery services for a fee through my business Laughing Duck Gardens & Cookery, Rappahannock Summer Solstice Farm Dinner is something I am doing pro bono, along with my friend Barbara Adolfi who runs The House on Water Street – a delightful vacation house in the village of Sperryville – and with Laura Overstreet, who heads the newly created Office of Tourism in Rappahannock County. We all believe in showcasing our local farm-fresh bounty and protecting our rural heritage! Last year we organized a tapa-style wine and food tasting event featuring our local restaurants and wineries; this year, we are taking another road, showcasing a few farms and wineries.
You can bet this Summer Solstice Farm Dinner is going to provide an extraordinary experience:
– extraordinary chef/ extraordinary food. Cathal Armstrong is an incredibly talented chef who does not need any accolade from me. Who does, indeed, when Tom Sietsema gives you 4 stars out of 4, Food & Wine designates you as one of the Hall of Fame 50 best new chefs, the James Beard Foundation names you one of the 4 best mid-Atlantic Chefs, and Marion Burros puts you up there with The Inn at Little Washington as one of the only few Washington DC area restaurants that can compete with New York’s finest? So, yeah, he does not need any praise from me for his cooking skills… but we are incredibly grateful that is coming to Rappahannock to create this feast in the field, using fresh local seasonal ingredients, quite a few sourced from Rappahannock farmers (Waterpenny, Sunnyside, Cherries-on-Top and Mount Vernon Farm). And, note that in addition to Restaurant Eve, Cathal, wife Meshelle and mixologist Todd Trasher (or – at they call themselves – Fry Cook, Boss Lady and Alchemist) have opened several other establishments in Old Town – Eaomonn’s, The Majestic and PX Lounge – all as classy as Eve in their own way, certainly as impeccably delicious and as fun! In addition to the field-fresh food, dinner will feature wines from Rappahannock county wineries, selected by Todd to enhance the meal. (oh! and whiskey too – from our own Copper Fox Distillery, the roof of which you can see from the dinner site)
First Shirley poppy (Papaver rhoeas), one of my favorite flowers that I let seed all over the garden. They come on the heel of the orange-y wispy field poppies, and they come in shade of pinks and reds, from the clearest vermilion to dark wine; …
My frugal peasant instincts won’t let me throw out (OK, compost) perfectly good to eat radish leaves. Of course, there is somebody in the house (who shall rename nameless) who does not think that radish leaves are perfectly good to eat. I still, sometime, manage …
or sparrow grass or sparr grass. But an asparagus by any other name is still an asparagus.
I learned my lesson from last year: pick every single spear, the huge fat ones (some are larger than my thumb) as well as the skinny ones during asparagus picking season (from 2 to 8 weeks depending on the vigor and the age of your plants). Any asparagus left to grow will turn into fern: not only will the crown stop sending more desirable shoots, the ferns provide habitat for the cursed asparagus beetles. The beetle damages the tips (both nibbling them and forcing them to grow crooked), lay their unsightly eggs on the tips and eat the foliage which adversely affect the following year’s crop. So pick often (as much as twice a day in the hot weather) and pick all!
So we have a bit of asparagus at the moment, but nobody complains since they go exceedingly well with just about any food (or with no other food): munched on the way out of the garden au naturel (the asparagus! not me…); raw and sliced thinly in green salads; sautéed with morels and finished with a little cream; briefly roasted with a little sesame; or as a side dish snapped in large pieces, stir fried with spring onions and served along side a nice little pork chop.
What do you do with asparagus?
I am told that open-face radish sandwiches are an acquired taste. I am told – very firmly – that cream of radish-leaf soup is undoubtedly an acquired taste. Nobody’s perfect! I still plant radishes. Those ‘Radis de 18 Jours’ are young, crisp, mildly spicy and …
