You say Taboli, I say Tabbouleh

Parsley has a bad reputation as being hard to start from seed. From "Park's Success with Herbs": "Growing parsley is not for the impatient...the most recently tried method was placing seeds on wet paper...on a plastic meat tray...put atop the furnace...the sprouted seeds were then placed with tweezers..." - well, you get the idea. But in spite of this and although the seed packet was at least 5 years old, I just threw the seeds into one of my standard seed trays with germination medium, put it into a bread bag and onto my bottom heat shelf. I wasn't expecting much so was surprised to see germination in about 3 days. The result was a huge yield - about 24 plants - of curly parsley. I tried to give some away but finally ended up with most of the plants in my garden.

Now, when I was growing up, the main use for parsley was as a garnish (never eaten) on restaurant plates, or sometimes chopped over potatoes. But as I planted these, I thought, "finally, enough to make tabbouleh". Tabbouleh, as all right-thinking people should know, is basically parsley salad. My first taste of it was in about 1960 at Jamil's, the steakhouse in Tulsa that served tabbouleh, hummus and cabbage rolls as first courses before the steak arrived. It wasn't until I was in Madison for graduate school in the 1970s that I learned the name of the dish and how to make it. We did a lot of "gourmet" cooking and having fellow students over for dinner in those days. My officemate Hasib (a Druse Lebanese) returned the favor by inviting us over for a memorable meal prepared by his own bachelor hands. He explained that he was using his mother's recipes. He gave me this recipe for tabbouleh.

Hasib's Mother's Tabbouleh

3/4 cup bulgur wheat
2 chopped fresh tomatoes
2 finely chopped medium sweet onions
1 large bunch parsley, chopped fine
1/2 cup fresh mint (spearmint) leaves, or 1 T dried mint
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp black pepper
1/2 cup olive oil
1/3 cup lemon juice (about 2 lemons)

Soak the bulgur wheat in enough hot water to cover until soft - drain any excess. Mix with vegetables. Add seasonings, oil, and lemon.

This is a favorite of mine to make when we have fresh ripe tomatoes from the garden. I cheat on this recipe because I also add chopped cucumbers when I have them in my garden (Hasib told me this was ok) and I skimp a little on the mint. But I always balance this with plenty of parsley.

On trips home to Oklahoma with my newfound sophistication, I was interested to observe that suddenly bulgur wheat was being sold in the produce section in the tiny town of Tahlequah. I thought this to be very exotic. But it wasn't till I was served "taboli" by another former Oklahoman that I realized something had happened after I left home. She informed me that this was a native Oklahoman dish! But it was mostly the wheat and some vegetables. I asked her "where is the parsley?" and she informed me that she didn't like parsley in it. This is like serving pizza without a crust. I have since learned that a number of Lebanese Christians had settled in Oklahoma (Oklahoma City had a steakhouse similar to Jamil's) and the popularity of tabbouleh spread from there, especially after Bishop's (http://www.bishoptaboli.com/recipes.htm) began selling the bulgur wheat in the 1960s. Apparently now you can't go to a potluck in Oklahoma without being served tabbouleh - except that it may not contain parsley. If you refer to the Bishop's website, you will see what appears to be a bulgur wheat salad, garnished with a few vegetables. It is an interesting story in evolution of a dish - as this picture of my tabbouleh shows, the bulgur should only be stars in a parsley sky, not the main dish.

Cabbage is King

Cabbage as a culinary vegetable gets no respect in some quarters. Novels about the seamier side of life always cite the lingering odor of over-cooked cabbage in hallways of cheap apartment buildings as an instant scene-setter. You'll rarely find cabbage on the menus of exclusive restaurants as part of a delicate sauté, or pictured as the main subject of a coffee-table cookbook. Many of us eat it mostly as coleslaw in fast-food restaurants. Yet I will venture to say that if we could have only one green vegetable on that desert island, it should be cabbage.

For one thing, it is so productive and reliable. Today Kim and I made 20 lbs of sauerkraut from about 30 pounds of cabbage, or about 15 heads - one row. A lot of food that grew there on its own with very little intervention from me once I set the plants in the ground back in early April. Not even regular watering and just one application of Bt to keep down the cabbage loopers that those white cabbage butterflies gift me with. Like all members of its genus (Brassica), it produces both lots of Vitamin C and other good vitamins, and also the sulfurous compounds that give overcooked cabbage such a bad reputation. It is also relatively high in plant protein and keeps well, either as a storage vegetable or preserved by fermentation (sauerkraut). No wonder it is the food of the poor. I've read that prosperity is bringing an end to an old Chinese custom. Often people stored tens of heads of cabbage on their back porches to survive the winter - their only vegetable and almost only food. Now they can afford to buy fresh things from the market.

But cooked properly, cabbage is also delicious and satisfying. And it does stretch the food budget. This year I tried a new variety, Tendersweet. It makes funny flat heads that are perfect for making cabbage rolls, because the leaves separate easily. I used it to make enough cabbage rolls for 3 meals out of one pound of ground beef. This recipe was inspired by the cabbage rolls served as a first course by a steak house in Tulsa. It was called "Jamil's" and was clearly Lebanese or Turkish in origin since they also served tabbouleh and hummus before the steak.

Cabbage Rolls inspired by Jamil's

Blanch a medium head of cabbage, by removing leaves and setting briefly over boiling water until flexible, then setting them aside.

Mix 1 lb raw ground beef, 1 cup uncooked rice, 1 chopped small onion, 1/2 cup chopped parsley, 1/4 cup pine nuts (optional), and 1/2 cup chopped tomato (use canned if that's all you have). Season with 1 t oregano, 1/2 t salt, a grind of black pepper, a pinch of thyme, a dash of allspice, 1/2 t cinnamon, and 1/2 t of Aleppo pepper or paprika.

Roll small sausage-shaped parts of the mixture in cabbage leaves, fold the leaves over them to make a bundle, and tuck them into a large flat casserole. If there are any leftover small cabbage leaves, they may be tucked into corners. Pour over this a tomato sauce, either of home-cooked tomatoes, or 2 (1 lb) cans, chopped, to which has been added a pinch of oregano and a dash of allspice. Add a little water if needed to cover the rolls. Bake covered for 1 hour at 350° F. These freeze well.

Salad Days

The meaning of the term "salad days" is in some dispute. A quick browse finds a number of opinions, with the predominant one that if you are in your salad days, you are "green" and therefore not quite with it yet.

Its origin is well known.

From Shakespeare's Anthony and Cleopatra, 1606:

CLEOPATRA: My salad days,
When I was green in judgment: cold in blood,
To say as I said then! But, come, away;

Note that she does say she was "green in judgment", supporting the naivete argument.

But my notion of what the phrase meant even for Shakespeare is that it is a reference to the wonderful time in early spring when one can first have fresh greens for a salad. It is a fleeting moment, heady and happy, when those tender delicate leaves reach their edible stage and before they begin to age to something still edible but no longer as incredibly sweet and delicious. We have gotten somewhat used to such tender greens now that they are grown commercially and cut, bagged, and readily available (though I no longer buy them). But consider that with the natural seasonal cycles in place, this lasts only six to eight weeks in the spring. It is a perfect metaphor for heedless, happy youth, a bloom that soon fades to the disillusion of experience.

Our salad days are not quite over though it is now late June (I began the post earlier). The "Merveille des Quatres Saisons" is gone, as are the arugula and spinach, but a fresh wave of "batavians" are almost ready to eat, and the "Reine des Glaces" is still green and crisp. Now I've planted my old reliable Black-seeded Simpson, a good hot weather survivor. Still, before long we'll be eating cooked greens, not that tender fleeting lettuce.

If I May

I went to school in a day when we still memorized poetry. One of my favorites was always James Russell Lowell's "And what is so rare as a day in June?/Then, if ever, come perfect days;/Then Heaven tries earth if it be in tune,/And over it softly her warm ear lays." Of course if I were writing that today, Earth, not heaven, would be the capitalized and feminine entity, but those were the old days. Still, the poem catches the rhapsodic feeling of these precious days. I believe that since Lowell was from New England, his "June" was equivalent to our May. Part of the poem references bird songs and nests, and that is certainly going on right now. I have to say that these are the most euphoric few weeks of the year.

Gardeners actually live most of the time in a sort of virtual reality of the imagination, all the while dealing literally with the solid ground. So most of the year I have to carry May in my mind and right now it is like entering into a dream. Most of my flower gardens this time of year are blue, white, and yellow, by preference. The main exception is my multiplicity of primroses in all sorts of colors. I'm especially fond of members of the borage family. These include the Virginia bluebells (pictured), forget-me-not, Brunnera, and comfrey. All of these are blooming in my garden right now and all are blue except for the comfrey, which is a cream color, and except for some white forget-me-nots. Most of them self-seed vigorously, which means forget-me-nots (true to their name) in almost any open soil, and gradually expanding islands of bluebells. These blend happily with the yellow Primula veris (cowslips) that have also self-seeded many places, and the other yellow, blue and white primroses, plus yellow wood poppies, white trillium, and the fresh young green of expanding fern fronds and hostas.

Preservation of food security

One of the big problems of being a consumer primarily of local food is the "seasonality problem". We have gotten used to fresh vegetables all year long. That just isn't possible unless you live in California or other 12-month growing climates (and it isn't really even true there) or unless you import food. And as we know, importing food from hundreds of miles away is costly in fuel, greenhouse gases, and increasingly, in food dollars. If we are to have "food security", that is, assurance of a continued supply of healthful food, we need to learn how to eat from what we can grow ourselves or buy locally.

Actually, it has been wonderful, this transformation to year-round fresh food. When I was a young woman first cooking for my own household, the only fresh vegetables available in the winter were celery, hothouse tomatoes, iceberg lettuce, carrots, potatoes, onions. The celery and lettuce were probably from California, maybe the carrots too, the potatoes and onions stored. Everything else was canned or frozen. Now we expect to waltz into the supermarket and get everything needed for any possible dish, any month of the year. It is a great luxury.

But it is a block to eating locally produced food. Vegetable crops can be staggered for a longer harvest but they still are intensively seasonal in our climate, available perhaps for 2 months of the year in most cases. So it is feast or famine, unless you take steps to preserve them.

The feast part is great, of course. I remember growing up in the South when every meal had at least three vegetable courses in the summer. There were squash (pattypan - zucchini was an exotic), cooked in water with a little butter; mustard or turnip greens; butter beans or blackeyed peas (both fresh, not dried, and also "cowpeas"); coleslaw; ripe cantelope peeled and cut into thin crescents, salted and peppered and served as a salad; cucumber salad made with onions, vinegar, water, and a little sugar; fried okra of course, and eggplant dipped in flour and fried till delicate in the middle and crisp on the outside; new potatoes and peas cooked together with milk and butter; potato salad (homemade, with pickle relish and mayonnaise) for picnics and grated carrot with raisins. For those who like them, fresh sliced tomatoes. And of course, corn on or off the cob in season (maybe five weeks in midsummer) and fresh green beans. Later in the season, we could have Waldorf salad (apples, celery, walnuts).

But in winter, we ate canned green beans, lima beans, peas, or spinach; the dreaded iceberg lettuce wedges; canned pear halves with cream cheese; canned corn, either straight or cream-style; canned yams, sweetened with brown sugar for holiday fare; canned asparagus when we were being fancy; and, inevitably, Jello salads with canned mandarin orange slices, canned pineapple, or bananas.

If we are to live off the land locally, either from our own gardens or from local market growers, we'll have to recapture those days when one literally ate what was in season. (If not repeat the actual winter menu of those days.) This means relearning the arts of canning and preserving. Of course, the home freezer has made a big difference too. But that's why I am pickling, fermenting, and exploring other means of preservation of home-grown food.

Quantum Broccoflower

For some time now, I've been fascinated by the importance of fractals in nature. These are mathematical relationships that create a certain type of geometry best characterized as "self-similar". I'll let the mathematicians explain. See http://classes.yale.edu/Fractals/ . Fractals are closely related to the Fibonacci sequence, in which each number is the sum of the two preceding numbers, thus 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8 and so on. You are saying Why is this in a blog about gardening and food??. Because plants grow according to this mathematical sequence and are themselves fractal in form. The distances between nodes at the growth apex follow the Fibonacci sequence. As shown in this picture of Romanesco broccoflower (a cross between broccoli and cauliflower) , there is a lot of self-similarity to be seen.

But I was surprised to find this picture on the cover of Science illustrating a special issue on quantum matter. The explanation:

"Like a cauliflower, the quantum critical regime has the same appearance irrespective of viewing distance."

See, fractals really do describe the universe and everything.

Secrets of Sauerkraut

After about five years of trying, I've finally figured out how to make good sauerkraut reliably. I'm going to share the secrets. Some I got from the USDA Complete Guide to Home Canning online, no longer available, but see: http://foodsafety.psu.edu/canningguide.html. Some was from Ohio State Extension, http://ohioline.osu.edu/hyg-fact/5000/5342.html. Some is hard-earned experience from making mistakes or having a lucky inspiration.

First, grow your cabbage. Sauerkraut is best made from freshly harvested cabbage. USDA says "between 24 and 48 hours after harvest". I suspect this requirement is because the lactic acid bacteria (lactobacilli) population that is native to the leaf surfaces begins to die off in stored cabbage. I pick and partly clean the cabbage the day before processing, cutting off roots, discarding dirty outer leaves, and rinsing off any remaining dirt. Soaking would probably be a bad idea. Then I just leave the heads out on a clean work counter overnight.

The timing of harvest and the variety of cabbage are important. My early trials were poor because I kept thinking of sauerkraut as a fall harvest task and trying to do it in late September. This is wrong for two reasons. One is that a certain temperature is needed for fermentation. The other is that cabbage tends to split as it gets mature and if there are cool nights with good soil moisture. Last year I chose an early-maturing variety, "Gonzales", a real mistake; I lost 1/3 of my crop to split heads even though I harvested over Labor Day weekend. Gonzales is meant to make "miniheads" for fresh eating during the summer - I must not have had my reading glasses on when I chose it. Other years I have grown "Stonehead", with some splitting but perhaps not so early. This year I'm going to try a mix of Stonehead and "Tendersweet", a flatter head that is said to be resistant to splitting. For the last two years, I have harvested and made the kraut around Labor Day, with good results. Temperatures are warm but not too warm during fermentation.

For processing, the heads are cut into quarters, outer green leaves and cores removed, and then shredded. Unless you have amazing technique, shredding with a knife blade is too uneven as well as tiring, and a food processor makes shreds that are too coarse. In past years I used a mandoline, inefficient and time-consuming but with good results. Finally I broke down and bought a real kraut shredder, or as they are called, a krauthobel. I have concluded that all these come from the same factory in Slovenia. It is like a huge mandoline made of wood with multiple blades and a square box that rides over them. No pressure is required on the cabbage to make the cuts.

I trust stoneware crocks best for fermentation and pickling. Some people use plastic buckets but the references I consulted warn against using anything but food-grade plastic. The crocks are prettier anyhow. Old ones are fine if they are not cracked, but new ones are a good investment. A 3-gallon crock will make 15 lbs of sauerkraut, and a 5-gallon crock will make 25 lbs. Then a plate that just fits inside the crock is needed to press down the cabbage and help keep out molds.

The salt used should be pickling salt, or kosher salt would probably work. Pickling salt is of a high purity without iodine. In old recipes you will find different amounts of salt used, but I try to keep to a strict ratio of 3 tablespoons to 5 lbs of shredded cabbage. I shred cabbage and weigh it in a large bowl until I have 5 pounds, then mix it with the salt and put it into the crock, with pushing down to express juice. I finally bought a hand-crafted sauerkraut stomper from Lehman's (http://www.lehmans.com) ; it looks like a table leg but really works.

After the crock is filled to a few inches from the top, put a plate (best fit) over the cabbage and press down. Brine should come up over the plate. If it doesn't, the cabbage can be topped off with boiled and cooled brine ( 1 1/2 tablespoons pickling salt per quart of water). Weight the plate with a couple of clean quart jars filled with water. By now the crock should be resting where it is going to stay for 4-6 weeks, in a place with low traffic and relatively constant temperatures. Drape a clean tea towel over the jars and crock, then a heavy bath towel over that. Disturb as little as possible, but check after several days and then weekly to see if any molds or yeast scum need to be removed. Some foam formation at first is expected, since the bacteria are producing carbon dioxide. According to Ohio, when temperatures are between 55-65, fermentation will take place in 5-6 weeks. At 70-75, it is 3-4 weeks. Much cooler and it won't ferment. I had to throw out my entire batch one year because it never fermented, and other years when it was too cool, the brine turned a dark brown over an exceedingly long fermentation time. Ohio says that above 80 the cabbage may spoil. According to my max/min thermometer last year, temperatures through September were 64-76 and the kraut was perfectly fermented in 5 weeks. Small amounts can be taken out with a clean fork and tasted to see whether it is "done".

My friend Dan, who helped last year and carried away some of the cabbage to ferment on his own, refrigerated all of his and is still happily eating it out of his refrigerator. He believes that the lactobacilli are healthful. I canned most of mine in glass jars (hot water bath method) and this is perfectly satisfactory for most cooked dishes. However, with Dan's encouragement, I kept several quarts in my refrigerator and this made a lovely fresh kraut slaw with just a little vinaigrette.