Braciole for the New Year: Fancy Peasant Food

 My favorite Christmas gift this year was the book Frankies Spuntino: Kitchen Companion & Cooking Manual, a cookbook that is more a "how to make your own fine Italian restaurant" by Peter Meehan and the two Frankies (Frank Falcinelli and Frank Castronovo) behind Frankies Spuntino restaurants in New York. It was a gift from Steve's daughter Catherine and her boyfriend Homer, who enjoy my cooking and garden. Homer's mother, a native New Yorker now living in Brooklyn, is famous for her Saturday market routine, which involves rising very early to get to the farmers' market by 6 a.m. and then traveling all over the city for various goods. I'm not an early riser, but I'd like to think that the next time I'm in New York, if things align, I could accompany her.

My own two years in Brooklyn (1989-91) were very important to me in terms of my food experience. I was in my mid-twenties, in graduate school, living in Park Slope above a video store on 7th Avenue. I'd walk to 4th Avenue to the first real fish market I ever encountered (as a Midwesterner, not surprising). It had a screen door that slammed shut behind customers with a slap like a summer cabin in the Catskil
ls.

I tried to recreate dishes I had at the local restaurants, including the pasta primavera with seafood at an Italian restaurant down the street. My friends Frances Storey and Jim Mindnich introduced me to more good food and some tucked away places that were cheap, ethnic and delicious. They lived in Carroll Gardens, and I could ride my bike to their loft, where we often had Sunday dinner and a movie. I particularly loved riding my bike home afterward through the quiet but still active neighborhood streets.

Shortly after I began reading the book, I became fixated on one particular dish: the braciole (pronounced bra-JOEL, with joel pronounced like a French name with a soft 'j'). It's peasant food, a cheap cut of pork tenderly prepared and cooked in simmering tomato sauce for three hours. It's the Italian brisket, that other great peasant food, that makes a masterpiece out of a fatty piece of gristly meat. I couldn't wait to try it, and set my sights on New Year's Eve.

I loved everything about making this meal, including gathering the ingredients. I went to our local fine grocery, Byerly's, for the white pepper and the Italian tomatoes. I used two cans of LaValle tomatoes, which at $2.59 a can were a luxury-- and were the most luxurious, sensuous canned tomatoes I've ever had the pleasure of crushing between my fingers. I added two jars of my own canned tomatoes, draining off a bit of the water. The tomato sauce consists of olive oil, 18 cloves of garlic (13 but I used 5 more), salt and the tomatoes. I started it cooking at 2:30, thinking I needed four hours, but really I should have started even earlier. As soon as I finished the chocolate tart at noon I should have started it simmering, but I'll know better next time.

I bought the pork roast, a boneless butt, a while ago from Newmans farm, a couple who sell their meat at our farmer's market. Not sure it was the same as "boneless pork shoulder," I stopped by the meat market and asked for just that. They said, "Oh, you'd want a boneless butt roast," looking kind of dubious about it. I told them that I had one of those, bought some local Gruyere (the recipe called for aged provolone, but I just love this Gruyere, and it is locally made), and left. I realized the butcher's puzzled look when I cut into the roast. It's a cheap cut of meat, quite fatty. The Newmans sold it to me along with a finer cut of pork, suggesting I roast them together. The fat from one would help keep them both moist. I'm glad I found a better method of cooking it than throwing it in a pot with some liquid and hoping for the best.

You cut the roast in 6 filets, butterfly them and stuff them with cheese, parsley, salt, pepper and garlic, then roll and tie them with kitchen twine. After the tomato sauce has simmered an hour or two (in my case, 45 minutes) you "tuck them into the sauce" and simmer for three more hours. You skim the grease off the top (a combination of pork fat and the olive oil) and let the meat sit a half hour before putting it over pasta, slathering it with sauce, and serving it.

The only question-- the big question-- is, will it be worth it? For me, it was a lovely afternoon. I proofed the galleys of the book while making trips to stir the sauce, breaks to prepare the shaved raw Brussels sprouts  and dressing, have a little wine, stir the sauce again, have a glass of Pellegrino, etc.

Tim and Annie came for dinner, and I have to say, yes, it was worth it. I will make this again, definitely. As peasant food goes, it's the fanciest, and it was tender, flavorful, and really not difficult at all. Fun, even. With some dinner rolls, the Brussels sprouts and chocolate tart, it was a wonderful meal, and we all left the table stuffed and satisfied. My brother had provided the wine from Portugal, a 2008 Quinta de Infantado, full-bodied and smooth.

For me, this meal was the perfect end to 2011. It captured so much of what I've tried to incorporate into my life this year: my garden tomatoes, organic Brussels sprouts from the Minnesota Market Co-op in St. Joseph, local meat and cheese from the meat market and farmers' market. It was slow-cooked with love and delight and served to family in my warm and festive kitchen, preceded by some homemade cheese and crackers.

My goal for 2012 is to visit the actual Frankies Spuntino in Carroll Gardens and check out the braciole in person. They say the biggest compliment they get from Italian Americans is "it tastes like mine," which means it is as good as mama made it back in the day. Perfection would be to have Frances and Jim come with me, but that is mostly a New Year's wish, with thoughts of old friends and good times in places far away. 

Happy New Year, everyone. May it be a good one for us all.

Garden to Bed



4 new beds make a total of 12, and the dock for my pump out of the water




The newly landscaped garden includes a long
plowed bed  for potatoes, beans and onions.

 

I am officially a garden addict, something I never thought would happen to me. On Saturday afternoon while Steve bought some useful stuff at Menards for building his furniture shop, I found myself wandering the aisles of the empty garden center and bought three bags of cedar mulch. I ran into a friend who was buying Christmas lights, which in that moment seemed more rational (though much too early!). In my defense, I was going to put the mulch over the newly transplanted perennials, but when I gave it further consideration, it does seem obvious that leaf mulch is about as heavy as I should apply this late in the fall. All those wood chips will only make it more difficult to plant things in spring if I spread it now.



Just like this time last year, I'm really ready to begin again, to the point where I'm thinking-- If only I lived in a warmer climate, like Southern California. Yeah, if only I had a few acres in Southern California, I could just plant more seeds now! Then I realize that I have what I have because it is where it is, and that I'm glad about that.

garlic bed covered in grass

I spent my "extra hour" from falling back to daylight savings time on Sunday out in the garden, turning over the last of the weeds, cutting back the asparagus and trying to get the weeds out from around their stalks, and heaping on the last of the cut grass over them. I also heaped more grass onto the garlic beds, where the late freeze has meant the bulbs are sending up shoots through the 4-5 inches I already put down. "Go to bed!" I feel like yelling at them. "You aren't supposed to come up until April!" It's good for them to get going a little bit, so they can develop a root system under the snow during the winter. Or so I understand from Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, which is still my favorite bedtime reading.



I can't wait to receive my first "yearbook" as a member of Seed Savers. This is the master book for ordering from individual farmers who save heirloom seeds. I am very happy with the Seed Savers stock I bought, as well as the seeds I bought locally at Woods Farm and Nursery, but I can't help but want to buy a few seeds from the big book o' seeds! Mostly, I just need more reading material.



All this reminds me of the movie Into the Great Silence about a Cistercian community in France. One ancient monk walks around in the middle of winter looking at his raised beds covered with snow, then stands in a shed looking through seed packets. He seems quite out of his mind. The poignancy, of course, is wondering if he will live to see another planting season, and the nonverbal way he demonstrates he is thinking about spring, new life, there in the winter. But for me, that's where I turned off the movie. I was starting to doze already, but the crazy old seed monk just seemed like kind of an indictment of a life of total silence, although that's not what was meant at all. I found myself wondering, "Is anyone watching out for this old guy?"

So I will have to find other things to occupy my mind. The forecast is for snow tonight in some areas of the state, although not here until maybe the 18th. But once we hit Thanksgiving, there's no turning back. And certainly the beds are done until after the snows. Then again, maybe tomorrow I'll drive out for a few more bags of mushroom compost and dig them into the beds...



Five Months of Fresh Produce

Last year was my first real attempt at growing food. This year, with more garden space and an obsession with Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver, I set out to eat from the garden longer and preserve more for the winter.

We began eating produce from the garden June 1, with the first regular harvests of lettuce and radishes. And here it is November 1 and I have this lovely salad for lunch! the lettuce is "Tennis Ball Lettuce," a variety grown by Thomas Jefferson at Monticello. The idea of seeds passed on and saved for 300 years makes me very happy. It's mixed here with radish greens, radishes and carrots, and topped with an egg from the farm.

I continue to have kale and spinach in the garden. For at least one more week of fresh greens. Having somewhat made my peace with butternut squash (thank you Vidalia Chop Wizard for making dicing so much fun!), I have a good supply of soups in our future. And I've been spending Sundays the past few weeks chopping vegetables and doing a big 2-pan roasting. During the week we scoop out the roasted veggies and add to whole wheat pasta and parmesan for a tasty dinner. Which is to say, November finds us still well within the fresh veggie zone.

To prepare for next year, Steve did some real landscaping of the garden area, including isntalling FOUR MORE raised beds (I now have a dozen) and plowing up a bed for onions, potatoes and beans. Grass was planted in the rest of the area to help control the weeds. Everything looks much more defined and ready to go! Now I just wait for the seed catalogues to arrive, as we eat down our store of food.

Watermelon and Paul's Letters

I've spent the last ten days, and really the ten before it, being mostly overwhelmed. Starting a new job, making food, finishing up a large volunteer project -- but most of my energy has gone into working through the New Testament letters as part of the Art of The Saint John's Bible, volume 3 project. Coming face to face with passages in Paul's letters has thrown me for a real loop, and I can't even really explain it now, though every day I understand it a bit more.

My evangelical history with these passages, my graduate work on Paul where I was encouraged to radically re-envision Paul's role and words, and my ongoing attempts to really embrace and incorporate Catholic theology, all collided and have left me feeling somewhat disoriented. I've always found Paul daunting but a bit thrilling, too. However, I've felt free to think and reflect on Paul myself, with no real consequences. Writing for a general audience about the letters is something else again. My daily task is to go page by page, letter by letter, and write something that gives context to the highlighted passages. But I also need to consider the whole of what has been emphasized in the text treatments and, in some ways, try to figure out the intention, not so much of Paul as of the Committee on Illumination and Text that put together the plan for The Saint John's Bible.

I'm almost there, and after more erasing and restarting than in any other part of this project, I will have a draft of Letters today and can move on to, gulp, Revelation! In many ways, however, Revelation is easier. There are several full-page illuminations with lots to discuss, and the overall message is fairly simple and clear!

I have been wanting to share one more garden delight. When harvesting before the early frost, I came across this one, perfect, beautiful watermelon! I planted just as many watermelon plants as pumpkins, but after early vining, I couldn't find them in the mass of squash plants. So I was thrilled to pull this guy out of the field.

Last week when Steve and I were both home for lunch, I cut it open. Watermelon! Pink-fleshed and incredibly juicy, it was slightly sweet but not too sweet, and had seeds just like in the old days before genetic modification bred them out. The knife slicing through flesh and rind is always so satisfying in watermelon.

It made me very happy to eat the little guy.  

Early Frost

squash patch as far as the eye can see

It is tempting soemtimes in the garden to pretend that I'm on the PBS reality show Frontier House. On the show, two families and a young couple build their log cabins and spend the rest of the time chopping wood and storing up food in the hopes of living through the winter.

Oh, and fighting amongst themselves (it is a reality show) operating their still, selling baked goods to people in the 20th century, etc. It's really great. In the end, it is determined that only the young couple would have had enough food and wood to last the winter. (The kids are not much help and require food and warmth.)

Steve and I would not make it through the first snowstorm, of course (and not just because we don't have a fireplace). Still, when one is out picking cartloads of heavy squash, it is fun to imagine that one is actually providing all the food necessary. This winter, I do believe, we could live on pumpkin alone. It wouldn't be tasty or fun and might cause other digestive issues, but we might live to see the first greens of spring.

Yesterday I lugged these six mammoth pumpkins from the squash patch. I could not even pull the cart until I'd unloaded the butternut and spaghetti squash into a wheelbarrow and taken them down separately. What is more extraordinary is that, from three plants, there are another 13(!) large, green pumpkins out there still. Unfortunately, tonight they're predicting a frost/freeze, and though I am up for covering up the basil in the beds, I don't have enough blankets or even tarps to cover up the rangy pumpkins and other squash. Which is good. Because even if I give away three of these, I'll have more pumpkin than I can manage (though my friend Deb has a great recipe for pumpkin cookies). In fact, I'm a little sad that they're SO huge, because I was hoping to make the soup from Animal, Vegetable, Miracle where she cooks the pumpkin in the oven and scrapes down the sides and adds cream to make soup. But none of these suckers will fit in my oven.

I'm planning on putting the new machete we bought at Wal-Mart to good use cutting them open, however!

Because of the frost, I'll be out picking as many cherry tomatoes as I can, and trying to identify a few more ripe squash. The frost is three weeks early, but I will only lose the tomato plants, zucchini and struggling beans. (I will be sad if I lose the large ancho pepper plants.) I'm ready to bid the summer plants farewell, as they have all been good to us this season.

Enjoy this day of fall-- not the last, as after the freeze it should go back to normal for some time. I'm ready to turn to the root vegetables and fall greens.

Zucchini Rice Mexican Style

I get weary of eating zucchini just about the time it starts getting desperate to leave offspring and putting out tons of fruit. But last week I figured out something great to do with it that is easy, delicious and also makes use of the season's peppers and tomatoes. I made it the first time because I had an avocado and leftover green rice, but I've since made it with regular rice.

Zucchini and Rice, Mexican Style

1-2 zucchini grated

1-2 cups cooked rice (Green rice is best, but any rice will do.)

sunflower oil

1 Tbs cilantro or cilantro chutney

1 small hot pepper, seeded and diced (jalapeno or serrano)

1 sliced avocado

2 tomatoes cut into chunks

sour cream

In a skillet, sautee the zucchini in sunflower oil or other vegetable oil (you could also add onion and garlic, of course) until soft and some liquid has evaporated, about 8 minutes. Add rice and diced pepper and heat through. Stir in cilantro chutney. Serve in a bowl topped with avocado, tomatoes and a dollop of sour cream.

Can Do!

I've been off the blog for a week, but I haven't been slacking! In that time I finished up my job at the monastery and have had two days of training and some other work for the book on The Saint John's Bible. But most of all, I've been trying to preserve as much of the harvest as possible!

A friend said she remembered rushes on canning jars in Decatur, Illinois, when she was younger. I thought in this age of big box shopping that wouldn't be possible-- Fleet Farm has jars stacked a mile high and a mile wide. But last night I went to exchange the jelly jars my husband brought home for pint jars I actually needed, and lo and behold, the only ones left had wide-mouth lids. I then passed a woman in the store guarding her cart. It was not a shopping cart but a hand cart they use in Home Depot for heavy supplies. She had it loaded up with more than 12 dozen pint jars. She's cleaned them out and then some!I thought of begging her to trade me one dozen for the wide-mouth jars, but recovered my dignity and moved on. I had already gone out in my rush to get there before the store closed in my Bret Favre Vikings t-shirt I wear when gardening and was feeling vulnerable.

The photo above was taken on Tuesday of the canning I did over the weekend. It includes tomatoes, red salsa, yellow salsa, tomatillo sauce (an experiment), frozen corn (thanks Deb for the sealing system), peach preserves and sweet relish. I'm especially excited about the sweet relish, although it was the most labor intensive.  Since this shot was taken, I've done more salsa, trying to keep up with the cherry tomatoes. I have a whole counter of tomatoes that (Inshallah) will get canned tomorrow, and way too many cucumbers that will hopefully make for a simpler relish and maybe some hamburger/sliced dills (they're too big for straight up dills). For relish, I'm thinking of making sweet pickles and then when it's time just pulsing them in the food processor to make relish. We do eat much more relish (in egg salad, tuna salad, etc) than pickles.

 

Only got about 4 purple cherokee tomatoes, but look at 'em!



Colorado peaches being prepared for peach preserves








peach preserves in the steam canner-- LOVE the steam canner



Summer Harvest

My grocery list these days looks something like this:

red wine vinegar
olive oil
parmesan cheese
pine nuts
sour cream
yogurt
white onions (alas, onions)
jug of vinegar
lemons
limes
avocado

rice

Of course, it also includes cases of PowerAid, chips, lunchmeat and bread for Steve's landscaping lunches, but mostly what I'm buying are things to dress and preserve vegetables. And what a lovely bunch of vegetables they are!

The big season has finally arrived, and I'm harvesting in a bucket instead of a little plastic ice cream pail. Today I went out for cherry tomatoes and came back with a bucket full of cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, 2 zucchini, a ripe, red pepper, and yes, even a handful of beans! And when I went back to get the ancho/poblano peppers for dinner, I found two more good-sized cukes that needed to be picked and could have filled the bucket again with tomatoes, yellow and red and cherry... Tomorrow at the Farmer's Market I'll be buying corn to freeze and hopefully tomatilloes so I can turn these yellow tomatoes into salsa.

Oh, I'm feeling like a gardener now! Tonight, I found two beautiful avocadoes at the market (on special for members, yea!) and was completely inspired. Last night I had made green rice and wanted to do something with shrimp and avocadoes. I searched epicurious.com for "poblanos and shrimp and avocado." I found some suggestions that I expanded on and laid out an amazing table. What you see is green rice (made with poblanos, garlic and garden onion); cherry tomato/chipotle salsa and chips; shrimp marinated in poblano chili sauce of my own adaptation/invention; grilled zucchini and tomatoes; avocado; yellow and red tomatoes dressed with lime juice, olive oil and oregano; sour cream and tortillas. It made very scrumptuous wraps.

Here are the recipes for the green rice and my poblano chili sauce:


Susan's Poblano Chili Sauce

3-4 medium poblano chilis, roasted on the grill until the skins blister, seeded and roughly chopped
1 tsp adobo sauce from a can of chipotle chilis (or more if you want it hot)
3 Tbs lime juice
1 Tbs brown sugar
1 Tbs oregano
1 t rosemary
1 Tbs cumin
2 Tbs olive oil
2 cloves of garlic

Put it all in a food process and puree. It probably made a little over a cup. I used half to marinate shrimp before putting it on the grill and served the other half with the food. It was delicious plain and I wish I had made more!


The green rice recipe made with poblano peppers by Rick Bayless can be found here: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Green-Poblano-Rice-Arroz-Verde-al-Poblano-15367

It is delicious with anything, but I've eaten it a few times with grilled zucchini.




I will also be canning most of these suckers... We eat the round ones and save the long ones!

Behold the Jimmy Nardello!

The Jimmy Nardello is a sweet pepper that is long and red. It is gorgeous, and I worked hard to grow these suckers-- starting with a heating pad under the little seed trays in the spring after the first set of seeds didn't germinate. Both these and the Ancho Giganticas are not failing me, as the plants are about five feet tall and the flowers are actually bearing fruit! There is really nothing like the shiny, plastic beauty of a pepper on a healthy green plant.

My plants are full, but until two days ago, the peppers just hung there greenly. Then they started to turn. These are the first two, and although they could have ripened further, I just couldn't wait!  My yellow tomatoes have been bearing a lot of fruit as well, and this weekend I'll be making yellow salsa with shallots, yellow tomatoes, tomatillos and these kings of the sweet pepper, the Jimmy Nardellos!!

A Nice Nicoise

I've been whining so heartily about the garden recently that I'm embarrassed when we sit down to a lovely and delicious meal from its harvest each night. As a reality check, here is a photo of the Salade Nicoise we had on Thursday night.

According to epicurious.com, Nicoise refers to cooking "in the style of Nice," and includes as key ingredients olives, garlic, tomatoes and anchovies. A Salad Nicoise, they inform us, also includes hard-boiled eggs, tuna, green beans, onions and herbs. Patricia Wells, in her great cookbook Salad as a Meal, lists as her key ingredients: fresh tuna, green beans, steamed potatoes, tomatoes, greens and "a soft touch of anchovy." She also dresses it with a light dressing of lemon juice, olive oil, salt and chives.

I had been looking for something to make with the can of smoked salmon I brought back from our vacation in Seattle. Also, I wanted a way to unveil the fingerling potatoes I just dug up. So I decided to put the salmon with the other fresh, farm veggies in a version of this salad. Above is a view of a perfect summer dinner: steamed potatoes, green beans from the Farmer's Market, cherry tomatoes, canned smoked salmon, a little steamed chard (no salad greens at this time of year), fresh eggs from our farm, dressed in lemon juice and olive oil with fresh thyme and chives.

The potatoes are one of the great triumphs of this summer, along with beets and radishes. While my traditional crops are refusing to yield, the first-time crops did great. I was a little chagrined about how much money I spent on the seed potatoes from Seed Savers for these fingerlings-- $14.00 plus s/h for potatoes?? But who could resist the description on the card for "La Ratte" potatoes. A beautiful, firm-fleshed fingerling sought after by chefs and prized for their flavor.  I planted two rows, one in the ground and one in a raised bed, and sprayed them only twice to get rid of the Colorado Potato Beetle. I've now dug up the first half of the crop, and they are as promised, delicious and beautiful. And Steve is happy you don't have to peel them!

Shared Misfortune

The movement toward eating local and growing food is never more apparant than in the amount of press coverage it gets around here. Although large vegetable gardens have always been the norm around here, I think the entrance into gardening by younger, college-educated folks and, basically, the people who write for the local papers, has given it a different profile. Thanks to books by Kingsolver and Pollan and the large number of documentaries available about the evils of our industrial food system, large numbers of people have discovered home growing. Michelle Obama's kitchen garden is just a sign of the movement, not necessarily a cause. This morning the headline in the St. Cloud Times was about struggling farmers waiting for produce. To read the article, click here.

I feel sorry for anyone who began their first year of vegetable gardening this summer in Minnesota. Although I don't need anything from the Farmer's Market this year, I've still been going most Fridays, picking up some extras or things I didn't grow and want to try. It is there that I also see that I am not alone in my small yields, late harvests and short seasons. According to the article in the St. Cloud Times, the strawberry season this year lasted a week and a half, instead of its usual three to five weeks. That is a real trial for the truck farmers who depend on a robust "you-pick" business. Only one vendor had raspberries last week.

And now we're all fretting over our tomatoes. Some growers won't have them at all, and others say they'll have enough to eat but not enough for the market. My visions of large, heirloom plants loaded down with Purple Cherokees and ribbed red Rosso Sicilians, have completely evaporated. I have one small purple tomato on my counter now, and nothing that looks like the Sicilians on the vine...

Of course, it's watching the green tomatoes hanging on the brown, nearly leafless vines, that makes me fret most. What is taking so long? This is when I comfort myself at the farmer's market, where it's still "not yet" on tomatoes for the most part. The line in front of the one place that had tiny ears of sweet corn was as long as the line for the artisan baker last week, as we all wait anxiously for harvest.

And there's always the fact that we can turn our eyes to what lies ahead. The fingerling potatoes are almost ready, and a walk through the vine plants yesterday showed two bulging pumpkins and several gigantic spaghetti squash.

And I know in February the visions will return with the seed catalogues. Next year will be better!

Abundance and Scarcity

Last Sunday's Gospel reading was on the miracle of the loaves and fishes. I attended the local Mass at Mary Magdalen the First Apostle, a congregation of women and men who meet once a month for Mass presided over by a Roman Catholic Woman Priest. We have our Eucharistic celebration at a local Episcopal church. The homily was given by two women who spoke about seeing things from the point of view of scarcity and abundance.

They used the miracle to demonstrate how acting from a mindset of scarcity, like the apostles in the story, leads one to be less generous, to send people away to find their own food, to hoard what we have. Jesus, however, acted from a perception of abundance, offered the food they had, five loaves and two fish, and with that 5,000 families were fed.

The modern interpretation of this miracle, which strips it of any miraculous qualities, is to say that when the baskets were passed, people in the crowd brought out their own stores of food and offered them to their neighbors. Thus, the food was all there from the beginning, but hidden and protected by people who feared there would not be enough. Although I miss the mirace sense of it, this interpretation is a helpful way to see the story.

This is always a good sermon for me to hear. Especially now, as I'm preparing to go from a full-time job to a part-time job and leave the security of benefits and a salary that is truly more than I need. I feel myself pulling in, even to the point of decreasing some of my charitable giving. You can hide behind the title "simple living," but I did buy more canning jars today (more than I need, in hopes of hoarding more tomatoes) and could certainly keep up my monthly gift to the food shelf.

I also find myself facing my garden this way. It is time to hoard, to put away food for winter, and it is clear that I don't have nearly enough. No green beans! Not enough raspberries for jam! Ruined onions (and by ruined, I just mean I have to actually eat them now). The stingiest zucchini vines on the planet! The drenched and blighted tomatoes are holding on, and I'm willing them to ripen despite two days of terrible storms.

And mostly, I have to tell myself to cut it out. Stop! Because this is actually the time of abundance. I have big bowls of sliced cucumber salad and potato salad in the fridge, a couple huge cabbages, and I've set up my little basket of extra beets,onions and carrots to go into my sister-in-law's cellar storage room. Every few days I go pick two cups of basil and make another small batch of pesto for the freezer-- I want more, am sure someone else nearby has a LOT more than I do and wonder how can I get my hands on some of it-- but really, I need to stop. We are eating glorious food every day, here in August.

The world around us is overgrown and lovely. The monarch butterflies are in constant ecstacy, hanging and dancing in fused pairs over the prairie. After the last storm, and with the arrival of August, the swimming pond is clearing up and soon we'll have the best swimming of summer. With dragonflies and swallows as companions.

It's a time of abundance. In fact, it is the extra, what we can't possible eat now and what can't be given away, that goes into storage for winter. And yes, the farmers are growing even more than me, will have even more extra, and I can buy it from them at the co-op or the winter market, when it will be so nice to see them. So I have to remind myself to see the abundance, to give instead of hoard, even though it should be the easiest and most obvious thing in the world.

You can bet this cateripiller on my volunteer dill plant knows it is the season of abundance!

Havest Mistake

Two weeks ago, I made a significant harvest mistake. I haven't wanted to admit it on the blog, but hey, I am a new gardener. As Steve said, "You won't do this next year!" I just can't understand why I did it. It's because I'm still kind of removed from my food.

I harvested most of my onions and then sat on the stoop and cut off the greens. I rinsed them and clipped the shaggy bottoms, so they looked like beautiful, well-rounded yellow onions. I proudly dropped them in three small paper bags. But about 2/3 of the way through, it occurred to me that I was doing the absolute wrong thing. When you get onions from the grocery store, they are covered in brown, papery skins, like the ones I was washing and rubbing off, and they have dried, curled tops that probably used to be greens. Mine basically now had open wounds on the top.

I immediately started obsessing about the recent advice I read or heard that you should never store cut onions in your fridge, because they absorb bacteria. I could feel my onions rotting in their bags already. I felt sick.

I mostly felt miserable because I planted these dang things months ago! I was so excited to have so many, and only lamented that I hadn't had enough garden space for more! How could I get through the winter with only 70 onions? But now I'd have only 20-25. Good thing I don't have to depend on what I grow for what I eat.

I put them in the fridge and told myself that the thing about cut onions was a crock. (I don't believe it, actually, as I've eaten cut onions for years, though I do often cut off the outer exposed layer because it seems to dry out.) I started putting onions in everything.

Then Deborah Madison's Local Flavors also helped me out! This surprised me, as the book, which I love the look of, has been so far not so helpful with recipes, since it seems to depend on access to a well-stocked Farmer's Market in California. But on page 74, it offered "Sweet and Sour Onions with Dried Pluots and Rosemary." I ddin't have dried pluots, of course, but apricots could be substituted, and I have lots of rosemary. The other ingredients are olive oil, butter, red wine vinegar (I used half white and half balsamic) and honey. So I set to work on a pan full of lovely yellow onions. I served it over the very last bed of kale to be had with rice and some rotisserie chicken on the side. (It just didn't seem right to serve my husband a whole plate of onions without a little meat.)

It is delicious, and we will be having it again soon!

Vacation and the Garden

I was on vacation for a week in Washington State, and while I was gone, it seems like all havoc broke loose in the garden. The first two days of my trip, it rained heavily here, and the last four days we had terrible heat. You have to ask yourself about global climate change when Moorhead, Minnesota, is the hottest place on the planet, with a heat index of 130 degrees between the temperature and humidity.

When we came back on Tuesday night I went out to the garden and felt filled with despair. It didn't help that it was 100 degrees, but how had this jungle grown up in my absence? There were a few rotten baby zucchinis on the vine and a few potato plants seem to have died, I think because the soil isn't draining and we've just had too much rain. Our local "truck farmer" Russ Willinbring in Cold Spring, where I pick my strawberries, said things just aren't growing in the waterlogged fields, and what is growing is late and stunted.

Now I have to admit that I asked my husband not to spray any weeds in the entire area surrounding my garden. So I should not have been surprised that the prairie has grown back around my raspberry bushes and apple trees. But I had kept on top of the weeding in my garden beds, and in my absence large amounts of grass have invaded.

The next day, things looked considerably more manageable. I easily pulled out many weeds and harvested the rest of the onions, which are drying on the porch. Blight has indeed begun on the tomato plants, but there are also lots of blossoms and green tomatoes, so now it's just a race for them to ripen before the blight kills the plant. There will be tomatoes. In fact, the cherry tomatoes, which were incredibly dissapointing last year and resulted in NO canned salsa, are flourishing and blight free, so there will also be salsa!

Here's another photo. I have a lot of these, but they all kind of look like this. Insane amounts of giant weeds as far as the eye can see.

One Night of Cauliflower

Remember when I bought four cauliflower plants back in May, thinking they were cabbage? Well, I can't remember a single time I have cooked cauliflower before tonight. I pulled out two of the four plants to make room for the cabbage seedlings I went back and bought, but tonight I harvested the compact but reasonably-sized cauliflower heads on the other two plants.

I turned to Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone for some advice, and found just what I was looking for-- an Indian dish that would also use the fresh cilantro that is ready (and when it's ready, you just have to go ahead and eat it) and the arugula greens. (This is why I bought this cookbook to begin with, because I am challenged when thinking up vegetarian dishes.)

Her recipe title is, like almost all of them in the book, purely descriptive: Cauliflower, Spinach, and Potato Stir-Fry with Coconut Milk.

OK!

I had picked up a jar of something called Coriander Chutney made by SWAD the last time I was at the Asian market, a wonderful mix of cilantro, serrano pepper, ginger, garlic (and other ingredients you don't want to know about). I also had some green curry paste in the freezer.

Of course, when finished this dish that was not just delicious but also the most nuclear color green imaginable. I'm choosing to believe it was the combination of cilantro and turmeric and not the FD&C Blue #1 and Yellow #5 in the chutney. I do indeed love India and Indian food!

And that's it. Cauliflower season, c'est finis!

Here it is, with my adaptations:

Cilantro, Cauliflower and Greens, Indian Style

1 small cauliflower, cut into florets
1/2 lb of red potatoes, sliced 1/3 inch thick
Salt
1 bunch scallions (or spring onions) with some greens
1/2 cup chopped cilantro (or 1/3 cup SWAD coriander chutney)
1/2 tsp turmeric
2 serrano chilis, minced (or 1 Tbs green chili paste)
4 Tbs vegetable oil
1 large bunch greens, such as spinach
1 15-oz can coconut milk

Boil the cauliflower and potatoes in water until tender, then drain.
Puree half the onions and most of the cilantro, turmeric, chiles and 1 Tbs oil-- if you have coriander chutney and chili paste, skip this step.

Heat a wok, add 2 tsp oil and, when hot, add the onions and stir fry for 1 minute. Add the greens and stir-fry until wilted and tender. Set aside.

Add another 2 tsp oil and fry the chili paste and chutney until fragrant. Add the cauliflower and potatoes, season with 1/2 tsp salt, and cook until heated through.

Pour in the coconut milk and add the spinach. Bring to a boil and simmer for 2 minutes. Garnish with cilantro and scallions and serve over brown basmati or jasmine rice. Serve to happy, freshly-showered with no 7 p.m. bid to run off to landscaping husband.

Locavore

It's easy to be a locavore come July in Minnesota. Between the garden, the St. Joseph Farmer's Market and our new Minnesota Street Market Co-op that carries Forest mushrooms grown right up the road and local, organic milk, I'm even making local pizzas! Friday night's was made with homemade mozzarella that was so buttery yellow and had such a real mozzarella texture, it was a revelation. It was topped with Forest criminis sauteed with garden spinach and farmer's market onions. The dough was made with the whey from the cheese and local flour from Freeport, Minnesota. I did use garlic that was no doubt imported from China, but hey, it's small! (wait until next year...) And, since I'm confessing, Trader Joe's pizza sauce.

I also made a batch of what's called in Ricki "the Cheese Queen" Carroll's Home Cheese Making book, lactic cheese. It's a pretty bad name for a really excellent soft cheese that you can make in 24 hours if you have rennet, thermophilic starter and salt. I've been making it all year, and nothing is better on a Triscuit than this cheese with some herbs de Provence mixed in. Except, perhaps, the "rosey dill radish dip" I made this weekend.

The last of the garden radishes and first of the garden dill were amazing in this dip, which calls for cream cheese, but I would imagine that cream cheese is too sweet and thus not as good as with lactic cheese. Again, it uses an exotic garlic clove and lemon, but there's no need to go crazy with this locavore stuff. After all, we Minnesotans are a practical people. And the food system has not yet collapsed.

Here's the recipe, which comes from the Common Ground Garden CSA web site.

Rosey-dilled Radish Dip



8 oz. lactic or cream cheese, at room temperature (so you can mix it)
1 Tbs lemon juice
1 Tbs fresh chopped dill 
1 clove garlic, minced
1 cup finely chopped radishes


Combine all the ingredients well. Refrigerate at least 1 hour to incorporate the flavors before serving. Serve with crackers, chips or vegetable strips.

Fruit

In Barbara Kingsolver's book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, when the family contemplates what they will miss most during their year of eating locally and seasonally, her older daughter laments the loss of fresh fruit. With good planning, after a year one could have plenty of dried fruit and jam, but raisins and fruit leather is not really the same as a bowl of cherries.

I'm living in greater awareness of where my food comes from, but could not resist a carton of peaches from Trader Joe's last weekend. I also bought bananas yesterday, something we don't usually eat in the summer, because they were at the new food co-op in town (so many, so yellow, we'd better buy them and eat them!)

Then, yesterday, I also went strawberry picking at the Willenbring's Produce Acres in Cold Spring. Last year, when I went on my birthday on June 25, the berries were already past their prime. This year the berries were smaller and dark red, due to the cool, wet spring, not enough sun to plump them up. Still, they are very sweet, and quickly filled the kitchen with the smell of strawberries. They made beautiful, dark red strawberry-rhubarb jam. And the whole time I was making the jam, I was thinking of the popovers of winter, when the jam will be most welcome.

And now, suddenly, with peaches, bananas, strawberries and blueberries in the house, it is time for fruit salad! This holiday weekend, we will enjoy the real bounty of summer in its freshest, juiciest form!

Strawberry-Rhubarb Jam

makes 8 8-oz jars

(adapted from the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving)

3 cups chopped rhubarb

4+ cups hulled, crushed strawberries (I leave some smaller ones whole)

5 Tbsp lemon juice

2-3 Tbs regular powdered fruit pectin (or one package-- I've upped the fruit but it would still work)
4-5 cups sugar

1. In a deep pot, combine the berries, lemon juice and pectin, stirring until the pectin is dissolved. Bring to a boil, stirring frequently. Add sugar all at once and return to full rolling boil, stirring constantly. Boil hard, stirring, for 1 minute. Remove from heat. (Skim off foam if present, but I haven't had much foam with this fruit.)
2. Ladle hot jam into hot jars, leaving 1/4 inch headspace. Wipe rim and center lid on jar. Screw band down until resistance is met, then increase to fingertip-tight.
3. Place jars in boiling water canner, ensuring they are completely covered with water. Bring to a boil and process for 10 minutes. Let them sit in canner 5 minutes, then remove to counter to cool completely. Make sure the seals are firm before storing.

If, while making the jam, you have filled jars in the canner simmering, when you empty them you will have plenty of hot water for processing. It also keeps things moving along, while sterilizing the jars. I made two batches from start to finish in 2 1/2 hours.

Snow Pea Season

This week marked the beginning of snow pea season. Snow peas are the crop where I feel like I'm starting to get my money's worth from the garden. Snow peas are expensive, and there is nothing like them. My other success in the garden is the appearance of a large head of broccoli. It's the first time I've successfully grown a head of broccoli, either from seed or seedling (I started these in the basement on a whim). Of the two other plants that survived, small heads have emerged, with little to no sign they plan on enlarging. I'll cut them off in a day or two and have them with pasta.

Tonight we had a bounteous stir fry with the last of the spinach (a good-size bag that filled the wok), the broccoli, an early onion and the first of the snow peas. I like this variety, Sutton's Harbinger, which I see looking back at the catalog is not actually a snow pea. That explains why it starts swelling when the peas are not very long. I've been eating them at only about two inches long, when the pods are still tender. I would like to have regular peas, however, so in a week or two I'll let them fully develop.

I planted Green Arrow peas in what is now officially "the dead zone," a quarter of one bed where nothing will grow. I planted the peas twice, then tried edamame, and finally tried Hidatsa beans. Nothing sprouted there, despite a profusion of growth on the potato plants opposite and peas at the other end of the bed. I'm going to leave it for the summer, now.

I'm almost finished with the early garden. Next year I won't bother with arugula or fancy lettuces (my endive turned out more like romaine). My early garden will be lettuce, spinach, radishes and kale (which started nicely inside). I'll plant more onions so I can harvest some green, and garlic bulbs in the fall to have scapes and then bulbs.

In this middle season, I'd like to have planted more potatoes so I could be digging up baby reds along with the peas. I won't bother with beans other than green beans next year. It would be nice to have some Swiss chard coming in (I planted that later) with the potatoes and peas.

It seems like all summer, all we do is wait on tomatoes. They have their run of three full beds, and they're so unhappy with the wind and the rain. Still, they hang in there, although they sulk and whine and flop around, leaning on the cages.

The other wonderful thing I saw today was a real ladybug. Not the smelly orange ones that clog the windowsills and walls, but a bright red, black-spotted ladybug. I can't remember the last time I saw one, and there it was, sitting on a leaf of a pea plant. The Colorado beetles have disappeared after I sprayed some organic stuff on the plants, and now here is this beneficial insect. It's heartening!

The ads for strawberry picking have begun to appear in the paper. Friday I will go to Willenbring's in Cold Spring to pick a flat. It will be nice to have some local fruit with all this vegetable bounty. And then it will be the 4th of July, which means the parish festival and the Joe Burger stand. Which means, of course, summer is really here.

Flowers

As my vegetable gardening ramps up, I'm less and less interested in flower gardening. We have terraced beds along the side of the house and the first year I stuck in a bunch of oriental lily bulbs which have been dramatic every year. I fill in other spaces with annuals, the customary border of alyssum, and have gradually been adding other perennials like lilies. In the really shady space, since I don't like hostas, I put in some columbine this year, which will probably take over...

I did transplant some of my favorite flowers from my garden in Cold Spring when I moved, including my absolute favorites, the siberian irises. I am not in general an iris fan, since they seem more leaves than anything, and I find their "beards" somewhat lewd. But the elegance and vibrance of the siberian iris, even before it blooms, and its thin, spiky leaves, always make me happy.

This year, I also had these three giant dianthus plants come back. I still can't quite believe it, but there they are. Everything I've read says they're an annual, but as soon as the ground thawed, their green leaves were visible. They made it through a Minnesota winter! So I don't have to wait until August for them to be big and full of blooms. Next year I won't pull out any of my dianthus at the end of the season-- we'll see if they make another encore.

The Salad Days

tomato plants at Heritage Farm, Decorah, Iowa

I officially began eating garden salads on June 1, and that has been my dinner mainstay every day since. (I admit, I was gone three days to Iowa.) I find that not only does food taste better from the garden, but you're much more willing to put in the time washing and preparing it! I now get home just as tired as I always am, but for some reason what I most want to do is go out and pick lettuce, spinach, arugula and the occasional beet green and come in and wash and dry the stuff.

Looking for a way to supplement the lettuces, I cooked up a pot of lentils one day and made a jar of something called John's Oil and Vinegar Dressing (and which I am calling and labeling "Tahini Dressing" from the great cookbook From Asparagus to Zucchini: A Guide to Cooking Farm-Fresh Seasonal Produce put together by the Madison Area Community Supported Agriculture Coalition. I picked up the book on my trip to Heritage Farm/Seed Savers in Decorah, Iowa, last weekend. This cookbook has absolutely the best collection of simple, few-ingredient preparations for vegetables that grow in Midwestern gardens.

I've had salads topped with salmon with a sweet chili sauce dressing and with potatoes, lentils, artichoke hearts and the tahhini dressing. Radishes, of course. But by far the best meal was the first homemade pizza of the season. It only took slightly over an hour from start to finish and in that time I made the mozzarella, made the dough with the whey, picked and cleaned the spinach, sauteed the spinach, onion and a few leftover mushrooms, put the pizza together and baked it for 18 minutes. It made me very, very happy.

This week we had a 101 degree day (Tuesday) and today was in the low 60s. And the wind has been fierce, continuing to batter my peppers and tomatoes. I brought back two roma plants and an heirloom to replace some of my more wind-battered plants last week, only to submit them to this week's onslaught.

The real bad news in the garden this week is that both pear trees have died and tent worms/army worms have infested the apple trees. I killed them off yesterday, and bought a bottle of spinosad-- just in time because today, I can't believe it, but I discovered Colorado beetles on my potato plants! How can that be? I expected them to maybe show up late in the season, but no! I crushed every bug-- they're insanely defenseless because when you get close they just roll up and play dead. Tomorrow, everything will get a good spraying.

Tomorrow is the Farmer's Market, and I'm hoping there is still asparagus. I'll also pick up some green onions. Even without asparagus, I've got another week's worth of greens-- plus 2-3 meals of kale-- and then hopefully the snow peas that are blossoming now will be kicking in. I'm thrilled to see if I can keep this going...

John's Oil and Vinegar Dressing (a.k.a. Tahini Dressing)

1 cup red wine vinegar (I used white and a little balsamic to deepend the flavor)
1 cup olive or canola oil (I used local sunflower oil)
1 Tbs horseradish mustard
5 Tbs tahini
1 Tbs honey
1 pinch salt
1 pinch pepper

Mix ingredients in a container (I used an empty maple syrup bottle with a good pouring lid) and pour on greens. Also good on lentils and potatoes, beans, etc.