In Season & Fresh from the Garden, the Fields, the Orchards & the Woods
End of summer: say good-bye to fresh juicy sweet fat peaches until next year. Welcome Italian plums, those tasty versatile little morsels. Because they are cling-free, they lend themselves easily to all kinds of preparations: jam & preserves, liqueurs, chutney, sautéing and grilling, compote and …
For the last few weeks, I have been making lots of Savory Oven Tomato Preserve (or is that Savory Oven-preserved Tomatoes?). After cooking for several hours in a very slow oven, the tomatoes acquire a very intense flavor that’s quite addictive. We’ve been eating them …
In several of the old European traditions, August was the first month of autumn, the harvest season. And this year, with the especially cool summer weather, it certainly feels like it’s fall already. And harvesting, we are. Some crops have been incredibly successful, some less so and some were total failures. It makes me reflect upon the times before refrigeration when a family needed to produce enough in a few months and preserve the harvest to last for the other 8 months of the year.
Although we are trying to be produce a lot of our food at Laughing Duck Gardens – we certainly don’t produce it all – and should a harvest fail, we know we can fall back on buying from a neighbor, farm stands, farmers’ markets, country stores and even the supermarket.
In the spring, when we decided we need more growing space, I decided to make the newer garden “The Garden of the Americas”. Every plant in there originates in the Americas: North, Central or South. All those plants where unknown in Europe before the 16th century. Continue reading Garden of the Americas
Back in April March (issue #110), Saveur Magazine had a recipe on Homemade Tomato Paste. In the last few issues, Saveur has nicely covered a number of basic kitchen skills, such as making butter, making cheese, canning tuna etc – the types of things I …
Verdict on my first Blacktail Mountain picked last night? No maiden swooned. No that there are many maidens around here… It was good but not great. It could have used a few extra days of ripening: it was still growing (weighting at 5 pound 14 …
On one hand, it’s been a wonderfully summer, temperature wise. We’ve been enjoying many days in the 80s F (27 to 32 C) which is right balmy for normally muggy Virginia when August days are often in the 90s F (33 to 37 F) – even reaching into the 100s last year (40 C). Even better, the nights have been pleasantly cool – the type of cool we often don’t see until late September, with temperatures in the 55-60 range (13 to 16 C). We have hardly turned the air-conditioner on. The peppers are loving it: it’s cool enough that they keep producing blooms and set fruit – yet warm enough that the fruit ripen. All we need is some rain now. We have not seen any on several weeks. Can a gardener ever be satisfied with the weather?
On the other hand, the melons are taking it a little too easy. I suppose they would have been a little more along if I had planted them earlier – under glass, I suppose, since spring was also on the cool side – and melons and watermelons like it hot.
This year, I decided I was going to get some watermelons – but not just any watermelon: I don’t want them too big (not 30 pounder please!), I want a story going with the melon, I want good disease resistance, and above all, I want flavor. So I ordered them – along with many other seeds – from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds who is known to carry many many kind of heirloom melons. Their 2008 catalog featured 45 American melons, 18 Asian & Eastern melons & 17 European melons – many French, including true Charentais melon – as well as 54 watermelons. Each description is of more enticing than the prior ones, which makes you buy many more seed packets than (1) you need, and (2) you have room to plant.
Now is when you should start your fall and winter Kitchen Garden. Truly, there are some things that should be planted in May or June for fall harvesting because those crops take a long time to mature (like celeriac, parsnip, the perennial sunchokes, winter cabbages, …
It’s been dry here for the least few weeks so I have had to water the garden a little bit, something which I try to avoid. But with no noticeable rain for three of four weeks, I have to water especially those more sensitive plants …
(no picture of the salsa…. I know, I know…)
Tomatoes however are really wonderful this year. And so are peaches (albeit I don’t grow peaches, several orchards in Rappahannock County have been keeping me happy: I have bought 2 ½ bushels to date).
So as I am cooking for others (well, for me too, of course!), I try to emphasize the bounty and freshness of our wonderful local produce. For example, on Saturday, we cooked for a lovely little party (21 people + 6 kids) where the hostess was very happy that we incorporated many fresh local vegetables and fruit in the menu. She wanted something simple but elegant to celebrate the wedding of one of her children: since the family loves peaches and peaches are so good this year, I made several dishes incorporating peaches: a fresh peach ice-cream with peach sauce, a lovely peach and blackberry salad macerated with lemon-verbena syrup. And then I made a side dish that had both peach and tomato (the other garden winner for me): a peach salsa served with Lamb Kebabs that had been marinated with olive oil and spices and herbs of the Mediterranean basin (cumin, coriander, thyme etc). Continue reading Peach Salsa
Canning season is officially upon us as the garden is now in full production gear – too much for just eating fresh – so I am freezing, drying, canning & pickling for use in the colder months. Although we grow some hardy greens in the …