voltaire's garden

Using Root-cellar Cabbage

2012-02-06T09:34:00.000-08:00

Cabbage has been a consistent theme here, both because it is such a satisfying crop to grow, and because it has so many uses. In The Cabbage in Winter, I commented on some recipes for using cabbage, and in Cabbage is King discussed cabbage's importance as the food of the poor.

One of the most important reasons to celebrate cabbage is its role as a storage vegetable. Whether in fermented form (sauerkraut) or simply stored in a cold place like a root cellar, cabbage can serve as a nutritious vegetable through most of the winter at a time when fresh vegetables are (traditionally) unavailable. More attention is being given to root cellaring these days (here's a summary from a local workshop) as a way to preserve homegrown (or purchased) produce that is not canning, freezing, dehydrating, or pickling. After all, even excellent pickles have their limits as vegetable sides. Cabbage is a good root cellar subject if the right varieties are used.

That choice of variety is crucial, as I've learned from hard experience. Cabbages (we're talking the head-forming type, not Chinese cabbage or any of the numerous leafy members of the clan) can be of many colors (though the basics are red and green), shapes and sizes. But a crucial difference is whether they are summer cabbages intended for early harvest or fall cabbages. Early (summer) cabbages are tender, fresh and sweet, and lovely for slaw or other salad use. My beloved Tendersweet (see Mon Petit Chou) is wonderful for this. But as I described in Cabbage for Sauerkraut, early cabbages can split, as early as the first week in August. For either sauerkraut or for cold storage, you want the ones that grow fat and happy well into the fall. This head was photographed on November 16, just before harvesting. It is a variety from Johnny's Seeds, appropriately named "Storage".

The next problem is finding a good storage place. Refrigerators will work. But the idea is to find a "root cellar" space, one that stays cool but doesn't freeze. For most people who don't have a root cellar, this requires some ingenuity. (Note that a basement does not make a good root cellar. It is usually too warm and is also frequently too wet.) I found that an old kitchen cabinet in my unheated garage stayed above freezing. (The thermometer is a min/max.) This picture was taken on December 26.

The cabbage will dry on the outer leaves and should be watched for rot (do not use plastic bags!). It can be withdrawn for use as needed. This cabbage was removed from the garage on February 12. Note that the internal leaves are white and dense.

The stored cabbage can be used for fresh use, like coleslaw, but the result is only acceptable.

It is excellent for cooking, however, though not for cabbage rolls (the leaves are too tightly packed). For example, thinly sliced cabbage can be added to a gratin. An important key to cooking cabbage is that it should always be simmered, sautéed or braised gently, so the sulfurous compounds that give boiled cabbage a bad name are not released.

Here is an old favorite from my childhood that makes good use of the freshness of the stored cabbage. This soup is excellent with homemade cornbread. It is satisfying without being heavy and will keep for several days in the refrigerator.

Mother's Hamburger Cabbage Soup

1 pound or less lean ground beef
1 medium onion, chopped
1/2 head cabbage, cut into thin shreds
1 stalk celery, chopped
Canned tomatoes (home-canned or 14-16 oz can) with juice
Black pepper
Dried sweet basil
to taste: salt, hot pepper sauce (note: canned tomatoes are salty already)

Cook the ground beef in a minimum of oil until the meat is no longer raw, but do not brown. Add the onion, tomatoes, and water to cover and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and add cabbage and celery. Cover and simmer for about half an hour, keeping water level well above the vegetables and stirring occasionally. Add seasonings and simmer for a few more minutes. Cabbage should be tender before serving.

In A Pickle

2010-09-26T13:13:00.000-07:00

So why haven't I posted on my garden and food blog for a full year? Because I've been too busy gardening and preserving. We expanded our vegetable garden last year (to about 2,000 SF) and it has now become a major time hog. With weeding, soil preparation, planting (amid the weather mishaps of the early part of the year) and then staking, spraying (although I limit that to what is absolutely necessary) and compost mulching, the garden can soak up days at a time.

But then the hardest part of all - the harvesting. Surely this ought to be the payoff and time for celebration. But it can lead to a sort of exhaustion, as piles of what a fellow gardener and blogger calls "obligatory vegetables" take over the kitchen and demand to be processed.

Thus it was in July when I came to resent my cucumbers for being so relentlessly productive. I had a disappointing crop in 2009 (an all-around poor summer for gardening) and was unable to make our favorite bread-and-butter pickles. So this year I planted 4 hills of pickling cucumbers, including two of Ferry-Morse's "Sumter". The other two hills were from old seed, including "Homemade Pickles" from Cook's. ("Amour", last year's choice from Johnny's, was discarded - it has awful prickly spines.) The two from old seed had a modest production, but Sumter exploded.

So of course I made a big batch of the bread-and-butter pickles, but Sumter wasn't done with me. Despair set in as I went out to the garden every other day to find another full flush of fruit ready to pick.

Fortunately I had collected several books on pickling, including the excellent The Joy of Pickling by Linda Ziedrich. Although I had never made dill pickles before, I tried her Short-brined Dill Pickles. Like most pickles, they had to cure on the shelf for a while. But I might have made a second batch if I had tasted them right away. They are wonderful - spicy (contain garlic, hot pepper and peppercorns in addition to dill) and not flabby, though I didn't include grape or cherry leaves. We'll have no trouble eating them up this winter.

Then it seemed that my moment had arrived to try traditional fermented dill pickles (called "half-sours" by Ziedrich). I didn't use her recipe but rather one from Ohio State extension. Those did turn a bit flabby and though they are tasty enough, I won't try that again. They filled up my Gartopf fermenting crock and left an odor that was difficult to clean off.

Since I had already made another pickle (a family favorite, green tomato relish), it was time to stop. Fortunately pickling cucumbers are fine in salad, cold cucumber soup, etc. And less than a month after they began to fruit, I pulled the vines out. They were being afflicted by bacterial wilt disease.

Here is our own recipe for bread-and-butter pickles. Quantities of vegetables are approximate depending on what is available.

Bread and Butter Pickles

1 gallon (10 lbs) pickling cucumbers
5 medium onions
2 red bell peppers

Slice (a food processor works well for this) and layer in a 3-gallon pickling crock with 1 cup total of pickling salt. Cover with a weighted plate for about an hour till brine forms (a quart jar filled with water will work). Refrigerate for about 6 hours.

Drain and rinse the vegetables and place into a large pot that contains this pickling mixture:

6 cups (1 quart plus 1 pint) apple cider vinegar
6 cups white sugar
2 whole cloves
1 1/2 t ground turmeric
1/4 c mustard seed
1 T celery seed
(spices may be placed loose into the mixture)
Heat briefly to mix before adding vegetables.

Note: if the vegetables are not rinsed, the pickles will be salty. A couple of washes is enough. Use a colander.

Heat the mixture (but do not boil) until the vegetables turn translucent. Pack into pint jars and process in a boiling water bath for 15 minutes. Allow the pickles to cure for a month before using. This recipe makes approximately 16 pints.

An Early Frost

2009-10-19T08:05:00.000-07:00

Fall is a bit of a melancholy time in the garden, especially after the first frost when it is time to take out dead plants. I don't know what our "standard" first frost date is around here but to my memory we have usually had a couple more weeks before it got to be a real problem. This year it was before mid-October.

Of course, there is frost and then there is frost. I have found that there are approximately three types of response of plants to dropping temperatures. First are the ones that turn up their toes and die the first time the thermometer gets to 32° F. These include squash, tomatoes, and nasturtiums. Then some others can take a brief dip to around 32°. These include peppers and eggplants, and probably beans. Others do just fine, thank you, with repeated low-thirties temperatures. The cabbage family and many herbs (but not basil!) are in this class. According to my plant physiology studies, the magic temperature for failure of many of the protections that these plants have against frost damage is 28° F. So these days I'm keeping a wary eye on the weather forecasts. Meanwhile, my remaining cabbage, some late-planted lettuce and self-sown dill and cilantro are fine, as are the scallions. I just had to pull out frost-damaged green beans, with pods still on them (I wasn't fast enough), and most of the peppers and eggplant are gone now too after we hit around 30°. I've constructed a tent around the remaining green peppers in hopes of letting some of them ripen.

Meanwhile, there is the garlic to get planted. It is going into the new bed so I'm off to dig in compost.

The Terror of Tomatoes: So Much of a Good Thing

2009-09-21T07:01:00.000-07:00

It's fortunate that we choose not to remember unpleasant things and that we compartmentalize memories. Otherwise, we might never order so many garden seeds. We'd look at those lovely pictures and think, "Oh, no - the harvest!!".

Now is the season of desperate processing. Even with the depredations of a late-season tomato late blight infection, the tomatoes have advanced from one kitchen counter, to a second, to a table in the basement. I've pulled out the last of the vines but I'll have tomatoes ripening and asking to be processed for another week or two.

I grew three varieties this year. My old reliable for fresh eating and casual cooking is Carmello, which I've been buying from Renée's Garden. It is a tender-skinned variety bred for flavor that grows medium-sized red round tomatoes. This gets made into tabbouleh, gazpacho, fresh salsa, broiled tomatoes, and of course eaten as luxurious big fat red tomato slices.

I've usually grown an Italian plum-type tomato too, and lately it has been Pompeii, also from Reneé's Garden. They produced very well this year and made large long fruits.

This year I added Amish Paste from Cook's Garden. These are described as "acorn-shaped" and that works pretty well. They are supposed to be meaty and good for sauces. Some of these fruits were huge.

I can't compare flavor for these last two, because I combined them. I usually think of plum-type tomatoes as "paste" tomatoes. So I just quartered them and cooked them together in a couple of slow cookers, a.k.a. crock pots. I cover the pot until the tomatoes juice up and begin to cook, then remove the cover and let them cook down all day. Then I run them through a food mill to remove skins and seeds, and the result is a moderately thick purée which I freeze in jars.

What I do with the Carmello when it exceeds fresh eating requirements? I skin them (by placing briefly in a pan of boiling water and then pulling the skins off) cut them up, and cook them down. This goes into various dishes for freezing, like cabbage rolls and a huge batch of spaghetti sauce. But I also make a simple basil-tomato sauce for freezing. It can be used as is or as the base of other sauces and it is a good way to use the basil I grow every year.

Basil Tomato Sauce

For each large pot (about 6 quarts) of cooked tomatoes, cut up 1 medium onion and 6 garlic cloves. Cook them in about 1/4 cup of olive oil until translucent (don't let the garlic brown) and add the tomatoes and a plentiful quantity of fresh torn (not chopped) basil leaves. Simmer with stirring until thickened, 1-2 hours. Add ground black pepper and salt to taste (I often omit salt since tomatoes are fairly salty in themselves).

I've often used this from the freezer to make a more complex meaty spaghetti sauce. It can also be used to make a sauce with roasted red peppers.

Roasted Red Pepper Sauce

For each quart of Basil Tomato Sauce, roast and peel 1 ripe red bell pepper (or more). Put the pepper and the sauce into a blender and purée till smooth. Season with black pepper and 1/4 t each salt and sugar (or to taste).

I serve this with Eggplant Parmigiana. Both the prepared eggplant and the sauce freeze nicely for midwinter meals.

The Basil Tomato Sauce is just fine as is for dishes like traditional lasagna.

Mon Petit Chou

2009-08-12T19:14:00.000-07:00

Not for nothing do the French use cabbage as a term of endearment. Cabbage is an enormously solid and reassuring vegetable that has provided good nutrition for the humanity of the world. It is productive, high in nutritional value, and best of all, stores well. I've written previously about its role as a storage vegetable and of course about its evocation as sauerkraut. I'm enormously vainglorious and possessive of my cabbages and delight in their translation from little plants in late April to amazingly huge heads by August.

This year I planted three varieties. Ruby Perfection (red cabbage), just a few. It stores well, we like the German red cabbage (Rötkohl), and I'm trying to learn other ways to use it. This year, a new variety planted specifically for sauerkraut. Kaitlin, a new F1 from Johnny's Selected Seeds, is supposed to be a late-season, good storage cabbage ideal for kraut. I'm hoping it will solve my problem with early splitting. So far it is not very big (I planted it last so maybe it got a slow start) but looks very healthy. But this post is devoted to Tendersweet, my darling little cabbage (mon petit chou).

Tendersweet (again, from Johnny's) was an experiment last year. I found that it was not ideal for kraut but was wonderful for fresh eating and cooking. As the name implies, it is a delicate, thin-leafed cabbage. The head is endearingly flat and the soft leaves peel away easily, which makes it perfect for cabbage rolls. (See the recipe in last year's post.) Last year I froze a number of these in meal-sized portions and we mournfully pulled the last from the freezer around January. More this year.

Because it is so mild and delicate, it doesn't need any of the fussing around that you sometimes read about with salting or brining. I just cut thin slivers across the head with my sharp knife and it can be used for slaw or even served with a simple vinaigrette. Even the midveins are not harsh and coarse as some cabbages can be.

It began splitting last week after a lot of rain, so I harvested a number of the larger heads for a small batch of sauerkraut, and stored some others for near-term eating. Happily there are still a few smaller heads out there waiting for later use.

A Bad Year for Garlic

2009-07-27T13:21:00.000-07:00

Last year's harvest of garlic, my first, was very successful. We ate our homegrown garlic all winter, right up to mid-June, when I reluctantly bought one head of store-bought to see us through to harvest again. I was so pleased that I have ordered more than twice as much seed garlic to plant this fall.

But this year's crop seemed ill-fated. First, when I received the seed garlic from Johnny's, there was a note that they had detected some fungal infection on the New York White and let them know if any problems developed. Yet it was the German Extra-Hardy that had penicillium mold on them. I violated the first rule of gardening, which is Never plant bad seed. It was so late and the fall weather was so capricious (we did have a very early winter, with snow the week before Thanksgiving), that I just put everything into the ground, including some of my stored garlic.

Not everything came up in the spring. Further, when I first ventured out to the garden after the thaw, quite a few cloves had heaved out of the soil. I pushed them back in, but I don't think it worked. Probably mulching would have helped. Once the plants did come up, many of them were very small. Then we had unusually cool wet weather all June and into July. I harvested the garlic earlier than I wanted to, about mid-July, because the plants were flopping over and I didn't want the bulbs to rot in the ground. The harvested bulbs sat in my garden shed to cure for a couple of weeks before I sorted and cleaned them.

The yield was just under 9 pounds. I estimate that my home-grown garlic cost about $2.50 a pound (seed garlic is expensive). But worse, I saw symptoms of disease on them. I identified the likely cause as a Fusarium immediately because of the pinkish color. Sure enough, Fusarium rot is a known problem on garlic.

I think that most of affected bulbs were the softneck type, New York White. Luckily I didn't order that again this year. I noticed that even after a couple of weeks curing in the shed, the cut stem of the garlic was still moist, a bad idea.

According to an excellent source on garlic cultivation that I just found, stiffneck garlic is most successful in Northern home gardens. Apparently the softneck type (which I have never cared to braid) is easier for market gardeners to plant, but the stiffneck type is hardier.

A difference between stiffneck and softneck is that stiffneck must be pruned of its flower scape in June. Not a problem for me. These yield a delicious bonus - they are good in stir-fries and especially good in scrambled eggs.

The three varieties I've ordered for planting this fall, German Extra-Hardy, Russian Red, and Music, are all (by chance) stiff-neck. I've also found a new source that I might explore.

Meanwhile, I've cleaned the garlic from this year and put it into the driest spot I can find. I hope to beat the fungus to eating it.

Kohlrabi Final - Slaw Food

2009-07-15T06:23:00.000-07:00

With maybe 15 pounds of kohlrabi still occupying my refrigerator, I did some browsing and found that a local food blogger (Shana of Gastronomical Three) had pulled together all the wisdom on using it for slaw and related recipes. One thing I didn't like about so many of the recipes was that they required the use of several different vegetables/fruits in addition to the kohlrabi, especially apples. While I like combined vegetable dishes, I also like to be able to make a simple dish for tonight's supper without assembling a long list of characters. So as a first pass, I simplified to this:

2 small kohlrabi, peeled and grated (used a food processor)
1 carrot, grated
About 3 tablespoons finely shredded sweet onion
About 2 tablespoons chopped parsley
2 mint leaves, chopped
Japanese seasoned rice vinegar
1 teaspoon sugar
ground black pepper

The mint was Shana's idea but I didn't want it to dominate the salad, so used a very sparing amount. First I marinated the onion in the rice vinegar, then added the other ingredients. It was good, light and refreshing, lasted a couple of days in the refrigerator, and served well as an ad hoc addition to a sandwich (salami on marble bagel, if you must know). Notice, no added fat!

Pickled Kohlrabi Chinese Style

2009-06-28T15:43:00.000-07:00

In my continuing quest for uses for kohlrabi, I tried the recipe for pickled kohlrabi in my Chinese cookbook. It worked.

First, a story. The first time I ever saw an actual living kohlrabi was when I visited the home of some colleagues, one of whom was Chinese. We were all young instructors at a small college in the Midwest, and Gene liked to cook. We were fortunate because he and his wife invited us over for some homemade Chinese food. (This is how I learned to stir-fry.)

They had recently bought their first house, a new house in a subdivision. They had a very small garden in the back. The only thing growing in it was kohlrabi. He didn't prepare it for us but I wondered for many years why, of all the possible vegetables, that was the one they grew. I am now convinced that it was so they could make this pickle.

Actually, it is not quite a pickle but the product of short fermentation, like sauerkraut but for a shorter period. The result is a pleasantly tangy product that is somewhat radish-like and somewhat reminiscent of kimchi. I think that it might be something one would serve alongside many dishes, and like kimchi, it could become a regular part of daily meals.

Kohlrabi Pickles (Pow Tsai: Szechuan)
slightly modified from
"An Encyclopedia of Chinese Food and Cooking"
by Chang, Chang, Kutscher and Kutscher,
Crown Publishers

For a 1 quart Mason-type canning jar, prepare a solution of 2 cups boiling water and 1 Tablespoon salt (not iodized). Allow to cool.

Peel 3-4 kohlrabi, depending on size (recipe says 1 pound) and cut into slivers.
Cut fresh ginger into slices. Use 4.
Peel 2 cloves garlic, slice.
Place all these vegetables into the jar.
Optional: also 1 "red-hot pepper", seeded and sliced.

Pour cooled salt solution over vegetables. Add one tablespoon wine (I used a dry white wine.) and screw down cap. Place on counter. After three days, refrigerate.

Notes: Carbon dioxide bubbles form by the next morning. It appears to be a classic lactic acid fermentation. Best not to screw down lid too tightly, since some pressure might build up.

I substituted a tablespoon of Sambal Oelek for the hot pepper. A little too hot for my taste. One could use a red dry "Japanese" pepper instead.

First Fruits

2009-06-12T05:31:00.000-07:00

We've been eating lettuce for many weeks and finished off the first crop of spinach and arugula some time ago. But for some reason, it feels more real when you start to get the big substantial vegetables. It seems only yesterday that I put the kohlrabi into the ground, and suddenly it is huge. Time to start picking it before it gets too big and fibrous.

Kohlrabi is the version of the cabbage family that produces thickened stems as its major food offering. (The fresh leaves are also edible, like kale or collards.) I love to plant the purple variety Kolibri (Johnny's Select Seeds) because it is fun. It looks like an alien from outer space. It also seems to have a fine quality. In kohlrabi, that means a mild, slightly nutty taste and fibrous material limited to a little near the base.

As I reported before, seeds were started March 20, and the seedlings placed in the cold frame April 12. I was too busy to record the day they were planted into the row but I would guess it was the first week of May. Now suddenly they are huge! It is so satisfying to harvest the fruit of my efforts. Now to find good ways to use it.

Conventional recipes based on Anglo/American tradition are not very inspiring. They begin with cream sauce and end there. Here's what James Beard (American Cookery) had to say about it: "This is rather a bastard vegetable...to me it is a mystery why people really care for it...Mrs. Rorer felt that kohlrabi was more nutritious than turnips and that it was pleasant served with Hollandaise sauce." He mentions cream sauce "gauge one per person" and also serving it with melted butter. For an updated version, see this from the New York Times.

The way I have usually begun serving it is peeled, sliced, cooked until tender in minimal water, then with butter, salt and pepper. We consumed three for two people without any effort last night. It is mild but has a pleasant distinct nutty flavor. I expect that I will use it in a gratin before the season is over, probably with onions and some of my frozen roasted red pepper.

But where it really comes into its own is with pickling. I found a recipe that apparently originated with Shepherd's Garden Seeds that worked very well a couple of years ago. It makes a fresh delicious pickle that can be served as a side dish. This year I'm also going to try the Chinese version in which kohlrabi is subjected to a short-term fermentation and seasoned with ginger, garlic, and hot pepper.

Pickled Kohlrabi (Shepherd's, 1994)

Peel and slice 3 kohlrabi, 1/4 inch thick. Peel one carrot and slice into thin sticks. (I think I sliced the kohlrabi into equivalent sticks last time.) Parboil the carrot briefly (should yield to a fork but not be soft). Place raw kohlrabi, carrot, 2 crushed garlic cloves, 1 bay leaf, and a sprig of fresh dill into a quart canning jar. Heat pickling mixture to boiling and pour over the vegetable mixture in the jar, filling the jar completely. Let cool, then refrigerate for 3-4 days before use. Will keep for several weeks in the refrigerator.

Pickling Mixture

3/4 c white vinegar
1 1/4 c water
3 Tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon dill seed
1 teaspoon mustard seed
1/4 teaspoon red chili flakes

Note: the original version of this recipe called for two carrots. I found that this made it into carrot and kohlrabi pickles instead of the other way around, so reduced to one carrot. The carrot itself is very good in this treatment and provides color, but to me the point is the kohlrabi.

My Grandmother's Kitchen

2009-05-31T16:06:00.000-07:00

My friend Kim recently had a post titled "Grow Some of Your Own Food" that asks questions beyond just food to general self-sufficiency. It echoes to some extent the principles of the Transition movement that encourages a focus on community resiliency, partly based on supplying needs at the community level. All this started me thinking about how just a couple of generations ago, this would have been taken for granted. It made me think of my paternal grandmother and her life.

The generations ran long in my family. My father was born 13 years after my grandmother, Alice Victoria Young Nix, was married, and he was in his mid-30s before I was born. So I have some memories of a woman, born in 1879, who was married before the turn of the 20th century (1897) and how she organized her kitchen and garden.

I was too young to notice much about how things were done when my grandparents lived on a little farm near Comanche, Oklahoma. I remember that they had a cow and chickens. I think the farm was only for their own subsistence; my grandfather ran a furniture store in town. By the time I spent a couple of summers in Comanche, my grandmother was widowed. They had moved into town, where she had a fairly small plot of land (using my memory and my mature estimation, I'd say about 3/4 acre or less).

Grandmother had worked much of her life outside the home as well as in it. My grandparents were married in Texas and moved into Indian Territory before Oklahoma statehood; she once told me that they drove a covered wagon in the move. She mentioned to me that she had worked in the post office, and also that she and my grandfather had been the distributors for government commodities. I would guess that that was during the New Deal. My grandfather always seemed to have operated small businesses like furniture stores or general stores. But I think that their livelihood was relatively precarious and that what food they could grow for themselves was important.

The house I visited in the town sat roughly in the center of its lot. On one side (just outside the kitchen door) was a chicken yard and coop. The chickens roamed around that part of the yard, scratching and pecking, and were fed cracked corn (I enjoyed throwing it on the ground for them). There was a rooster. Grandmother collected a lot of eggs and may have sold a few of them; from my memory, I'd estimate she had a couple dozen chickens. The chickens were also for eating. When my grandfather was still alive, he cut one's head off, using a hatchet and a wood block. I remember seeing the decapitated chicken running around frantically (that metaphor has always had real meaning for me). Then she plucked and cleaned it. It was probably fried chicken, since that was a specialty of hers.

On the other side of the house, there was a substantial vegetable garden. What I remember most about that was the two rows of strawberries, which I found to be messy, with runners everywhere and needing weeding. She had a few flowers near the house, like four-o'clocks and hollyhocks, and some lilac bushes, but most of the property was given over to food production.

I was too young to take in much of the operation of the kitchen. But I remember that they had a real icebox. Once a week someone delivered a block of ice from the icehouse, and there was a little tube near the bottom where melted water had to be captured. I think the stove was some kind of gas, certainly not wood-burning. To the end of her life (when she had a kitchen of her own), Grandmother kept a flour drawer. Instead of keeping flour in a canister, it was in a drawer of the kitchen cabinet. She didn't have one of those fancy Hoosier cabinets, but you get the idea.

I'm sure that one reason for the drawer was that baking was an important part of daily routine. She made mostly short breads (namely, biscuits and cornbread). When she spoke of yeast-risen bread, it was as "light bread", with the emphasis on "light": LIGHT-bread. It wasn't so usual on the menu. She bought white flour in large sacks (25 lbs or more). The sacks were made of a flowered calico fabric which was then recycled into aprons, tea towels, and even quilts.

When they had their own cow, they made butter, but there was a local creamery and I think she bought her dairy goods there once they moved into town. She rendered her own lard, though, producing wonderful pork cracklin's from the skin. I'm pretty sure that was used for the biscuits.

She moved into a small apartment of my parents' house in her 80s and cooked rarely after that, except some things for herself (I was horrified by her love for brains and eggs). I didn't learn many recipes from her. But her special cornbread dressing (lots of sage) lives on in our own Thanksgiving tradition. Another thing she made for every Thanksgiving was "ambrosia". I recall that as thinly sliced oranges layered with lots of sugar and coconut. We didn't make it after she stopped cooking altogether. I did love her sugar cookies. They were light and pillowy, not heavy and fatty. When I was a teenager I once asked her for the recipe and she took me into her kitchen and "commenced" (as she would have said) to pull fistfulls of flour out of the drawer, and measured sugar by handfulls and salt by pinches. I quit in disgust. Wish I could tell that impatient teenager to go back and try to measure those amounts, because I've never been able to find an equivalent recipe.

I don't think my grandmother thought of herself as a special cook, or of her garden and chickens as a special hobby or avocation. She simply made her own domestic food industry that supplied a high percentage of their needs. It was modest, ordinary, and taken for granted as the way one lived.

Southern-style Cornbread Dressing

1 recipe cornbread (NOT corn muffins!) - extra credit for using bacon fat or lard to make it
1 cup stale light bread, cubed and dried
1 medium onion
1-2 stalks celery
2 eggs
turkey drippings and broth from boiling the neck
Dried sage, rubbed just before use
salt, pepper

With hands, reduce the cornbread to crumbs and mix in the dried light bread, also reducing that to crumbs. Chop onion and celery and add, along with sage, salt, and pepper. Mix in the two eggs. Stir in as much turkey drippings as you can spare and the broth from the neck. Add more boiling water if the mixture seems too dry.

This may be used to stuff the turkey but we always baked it in a greased pan on a rack under the bird. It should cook for at least an hour (contains raw eggs).

Extreme Planting

2009-05-25T01:11:00.000-07:00

Late May is the moment of truth in the vegetable garden. All those appealing pictures in the catalog, those seedlings lovingly raised for transplant, those visions of harvest and culinary preparation of new varieties, are for naught if they are not planted. We are between the threats of frost of early May and the likely heat waves and thunderstorms of mid-June. Now is the time.

So I find that I am doing as farmers have done forever - planting and working the soil from dawn to dusk, or as nearly as I can. No problem getting to sleep at night - I fall into the bed and turn out the light without ceremony, only to wake with the birds thinking of what to plant where and the other tasks that must precede that. Last winter my (non-gardening) husband announced that he would help me to expand the vegetable garden by removing the turf from more of the back lawn (it is composted and the topsoil used in future years). This had several consequences. I expanded my reach by ordering more varieties and twice as much garlic. Then I decided to plant things I had not tried before (the potatoes are looking fine, not sure if I should have gotten those onion sets), and of course it seemed reasonable to plant more of everything. Now the original garden is nearly full, but with several rows of direct seeded vegetables to go, plus the squash and cucumbers. Meanwhile, my husband sprained a muscle so now I am removing the turf myself from the area where all the tomatoes, peppers and eggplants (plenty of each), currently waiting in the cold frame, are to go.

But the kohlrabi was planted and the stems are starting to swell already.

And we are eating lots of salads from the lettuce, arugula and spinach planted back in March.

The Transplant Conundrum

2009-04-13T09:37:00.000-07:00

The gardener's holy grail, right up against yield and taste or quality, is getting the maximum out of the growing season. Season extenders like row covers, plastic mini-greenhouses, and even hoophouses have become popular. So it seems natural to get a jump on the season by starting plants indoors and transplanting seedlings once the weather is more favorable. Another garden blogger in my area reported planting her kohlrabi by direct seeding and I proposed a race. We planted at about the same time - my germination log says I planted Kolibri (Johnny's Select Seeds) on March 20 and her blog report is dated March 22.

The seedlings (now about 3 weeks old) were pricked out some time ago and yesterday I put them into the cold frame for hardening up. They mostly have two true leaves by now. I'll probably plant them into the row in about another two weeks, depending on how the weather goes. My cold frame has an automatic opener so that when the internal temperature gets too warm, it opens to vent. Meanwhile the seedlings are being treated to fluctuations in temperature (but not below freezing) and real sunshine. I know from past experience that they will really take off once into the row.

But as simple and elegant as this process (which I use for all my brassicas, or cole crops) is, I was startled to find that it is controversial.

Recently I purchased a book, "Gardening When It Counts", subtitled "Growing Food in Hard Times". Its stated purpose is to explain subsistence gardening, that is, growing vegetables out of necessity rather than fashion. The main point - and a valuable one - is to use plant spacing rather than intensive gardening, to reduce necessary inputs of fertilizer and water. Unfortunately the book also contains a number of diatribes. One of them is against the use of transplants. The author, Steve Solomon (who founded Territorial Seed Company and now lives in Tasmania, apparently for the fine gardening to be done there), has nothing good to say about use of transplants for any but the most frost-sensitive plants (tomatoes, peppers, eggplants). I was particularly dismayed to see his criticism of growing brassicas from transplants. He claims that the harvest is not much advanced and complains that everything becomes mature at once. He hit home with his mention of cabbages splitting, since I've had that problem. But his advice to plant just a few seeds every week for a while sounds burdensome.

I first saw the practice of growing cabbage from transplants in visiting fields in Wisconsin where cabbage was grown for commercial kraut production. They planted transplants as early as possible, using a mechanical planter. I've always done it and been happy with the result. So I'll probably continue, but I'm going to be more observant. In particular, I'll be interested to know how my gardening acquaintance's kohlrabi advances. I'm guessing that right now her kohlrabi looks a lot like the lettuce I planted on March 18 and grew under row cover. The little seedlings are just now beginning to put out a true leaf.

Pollan's Progress

2009-03-28T18:28:00.000-07:00

Michael Pollan is the prophet for the local food/real food movement, to the extent that there was a serious effort to have him named as Secretary of Agriculture in the Obama administration. He is probably the person most single-handedly responsible for shifting the perspective of a significant proportion of our nation regarding food and how it should be produced. If he did not coin it, he has clarified and explained the concept of "industrial agriculture". Reading his book, "The Omnivore's Dilemma" (2006), has been what many have described as the signal moment when they realized that they had to redefine their relationship to food, and how it is produced. He has certainly had a profound influence on my thinking.

I've become more and more interested with his progression to where he has arrived. I was intrigued by his statement on a recent TV interview that he had reached this place because of his experience as a gardener. If I recall correctly, he said that gardening had made him think about food and how it was produced. I've been reviewing his books and his personal evolution, as reflected through them. The books are remarkable in that they are both intimate and lofty. While he poses big, universal questions, he then muses aloud, relating his own personal experience (with sometimes embarrassingly self-revelatory snips, like reading The Selfish Gene while stoned on pot), and yet manages to place the subject within an extensively researched and broad historical context (most of his books have a comprehensive bibliography) .

Pollan is a journalist who wrote extensively for the New York Times Magazine before beginning with books. But he bought a piece of an old farm in Connecticut in 1983, began to garden, and then to write about it. This eventually led to his first book, "Second Nature", first published in 1992. The book made quite an impression on me when I read it shortly after its publication. It is a personal exploration of his own evolution as a gardener, with chapters on miscellaneous subjects like choosing a tree to plant (alas, it was a Norway maple), the politics of garden catalogs, his grandfather's garden and what he learned from it, lawns, weeds, and rose gardens. There are some amusing stories, some that are touching. But Pollan gives away his real identity as a seriously serious writer in the Introduction: "...I soon came to the realization that I would not learn to garden very well before I'd also learned about a few other things: about my proper place in nature...about the somewhat peculiar attitudes toward the land that an American is born with...about the troubled borders between nature and culture; and about the experience of place, (and) the moral implications of landscape design..." He then somewhat bashfully admits, "It may be my nature to complicate matters...to search for large meanings in small things...". Yup.

Probably the most significant chapter in the book is "The Idea of a Garden", in which he explores most of those questions from the Introduction. He tells a sad story of old-growth trees in a Nature Conservancy tract that were felled by a tornado. What to do? Remove the trees, which would make the forest pretty again, and less likely to be a fire hazard? Or let "nature" take its course by leaving them in place? The final decision in such cases is destined to meet some human desire (whether for a pretty scene or a sense of untouched wilderness). This leads to a musing on what the real "nature" of such a place really is, and what is the meaning of wilderness in the presence of humans. The overall conclusion is that we treat all of nature as a garden, even when we are trying to "preserve" or to "restore" it.

His next book (if we skip over a book about building a house) was The Botany of Desire (2002). Here again is the theme of the interaction of humans and nature. But a new insight is expressed here - that we are interacting with plants, influencing their evolution while they influence us. Pollan chooses just four plants to discuss, the tulip (a discussion of tulipomania and our fascination with flowers), the apple (Johnny Appleseed, wild and heritage apples), marijuana (humanity's need for intoxication), and the potato.

Particularly in this last chapter, we see the present Pollan emerging. He discusses the spread of the potato across Europe and the effects of the late blight epiphytotic in Ireland in the 1840s, while also traveling to Monsanto in St. Louis to learn about genetic engineering. Talk about going into the belly of the beast - just as he would later buy a steer and follow it all the way to the slaughterhouse, he obtains potatoes that contain the gene for Bt resistance and plants them in his own garden (he would later discard them rather than serve them to the unsuspecting). He later visits a potato farmer in Idaho, where he sees the many baths of pesticides that potatoes grown conventionally must be treated to. (A moment of hilarity ensues when he is served a potato salad made of freshly dug potatoes that include the genetically engineered variety as well as some presumably pesticide-treated ones.) Afterwards, he visits an organic potato farmer, whose complex adaptive strategies are described at length. And then for the first time, he uses the phrase "industrial agriculture", as he discusses the efficiencies of monoculture and the problems it creates. (Of which the Irish potato famine is again presented as a prime example.) After musing on our collective responsibility for demanding perfect McDonalds' french fries and thus perfectly industrially produced potatoes ("the problem of monoculture may be as much a problem of culture as it is of agriculture"), he goes home to harvest his own (untreated) Kennebecs.

So - the perfect circle, from the gardener to the front lines of the food system, and back to the garden again, where it all begins.

Green Mystery

2009-03-17T17:49:00.000-07:00

Ah, spring, thou art come at last. I am in my garden, and the students are drinking green beer. Both of these are related to the celebration today of St. Patrick's Day. Who or what St. Patrick was is scarcely relevant to the fact that it gives us all a chance to wear or consume green. But it is also the day on which I aspire to be planting my first crop of the year. I didn't quite make it today because my vegetable garden is still a little too "mudlucious" (apologies to e.e. cummings). Since it was in the mid-60s today, I'll see tomorrow whether I can cultivate a row of soil and sow some lettuce seeds. Some years I have been able to do this on St. Paddy's day. I cover them with row cover and after the obligatory late March snow storm, I find little lettuce seedlings smiling up at me. It means we can enjoy early salads.

I think every human being must notice and rejoice in spring. But to a gardener it is truly like a universal rebirth. There is nothing to make the heart rejoice like the first flowers. I found snowdrops and winter aconites blooming under the shrubs on our east border just a few days ago. But what is even more notable is that our plants are preparing to do their work again to make possible human life and all animal life on this planet for another season. Pretty generous of them, all considered. Although I am thoroughly enchanted by the flowers, another important discovery was that the garlic I planted late last fall is sending up sprouts. The garden has begun.

As a botanist, I've studied details of the miracle of photosynthesis, by which plants convert the energy of sunlight into carbohydrate and thus food. Think about it— our entire global economy is based on it. It is the basis of our "growth strategy"—without a continual energy input, nothing we recognize would exist. And though this process varies in some qualities within organisms that practice it, it always requires chlorophyll, where the actual energy capture occurs. And that is green.

It is surely not an accident that many ancient religions made spring into a special event. And many of them celebrated the green. Most notable of these were perhaps the Druids. From my extensive reading of the literature— er, that's the English mystery novel literature—I know that the Green Man is still regarded as a mythical figure in some English recreations of rituals.

The "mystery religions", secret societies that celebrated the renewal of life, often through the rebirth of a dead god or emissary, have often been cited as the precursors of Christianity. Of course this has been controversial but many Christians, including Martin Luther King, have taken the trouble to rebut this concept. As one of these explained, "The annual vegetation cycle was often at the center of these cults. Deep significance was given to the concepts of growth, death, decay and rebirth." It might be noted that we of the Christian tradition celebrate Easter in the spring, with eggs a symbol of new life. Zorastrianism, another religion sometimes credited as a predecessor of Christianity, made the first day of spring as the beginning of the New Year. Persians (Iranians) still celebrate this festival, called Nowruz . Though they are mostly Moslem now, this ancient Zorastrian holiday (at the spring equinox) is very important in Iran, and is celebrated among other things by having a bowl of wheat, lentil or barley sprouts on the table, as well as an egg for everyone.

My own belief is that all of these rituals and celebrations indicate a deep understanding that those first green sprouts of spring mean that the universe will continue, the plants will bring it to life around us, and we will also persevere, by grace of the green. Lift a mug to it, if you will.

Hunger and Appetite

2009-03-03T12:25:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking about hunger recently. Our local food pantry has been participating in a survey of "Hunger in America", which is directed at people who utilize food pantries, soup kitchens, and other food distribution programs. I volunteered to help administer the survey, which required asking some perfect strangers rather intimate questions. "In the last 12 months, were you ever hungry but didn't eat because you couldn't afford enough food?...was your child ever hungry but you just couldn't afford more food?...did you or other adults in your household ever not eat for a whole day because there wasn't enough money for food?" (Emphasis mine.) I'm happy to say that no one so far answered "yes" to that one but they did say they had been required to choose between food and paying for utilities or rent - and answered "yes" to the first two.

It is hard to think of people being actually, physically hungry in our overfed and obese nation. But it is happening. Our local pantry is trying to meet the needs of more and more people. One of the other volunteers, who also works at a soup kitchen, said that they have had to cut back on second helpings so there is enough to go around at lunch, causing some tension.

The economic problems in our country are causing other people to cut back on eating out and learn to cook at home. I was reading Jane Brody's suggestions for eating on a reduced budget and found that I am already doing most of the basic, simple things she offers. These amount to using relatively unprocessed food (or what a recently discovered blogger calls first-order food) and cooking them at home. But it occurred to me in reading it that part of the problem for most of us is not hunger, it is finding the appetite to eat these sensible food choices. Doesn't this make your mouth water? "Cabbage...more than your money's worth of nutrients...at only 17 calories a cup eaten shredded and raw." (from the article) I thought of this with my new acquaintances at the food bank, too. They are being given fairly basic foods that will keep them from being hungry, and should be nutritious. (Although there are more canned goods and boxed cereals than I like.) But what does this do when what they are really hungry for a pizza or Chinese take-out?

We know the reasons to eat mostly unprocessed food, especially local produce or that you have grown yourself. It is more nutritious, more healthful (NOT "healthy", please!) better for the environment, and sometimes less expensive (at least, it costs less than buying prepared food or going to restaurants). Michael Pollan, in his book In Defense of Food has pretty much laid it out for us. But his conclusion is pretty depressing: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." Where's the fun in that???

What it means is that we are all in for some serious attitude adjustment. We have to relearn our food instincts, unlearn the first preference for sugary fatty easily assimilated foods, half of which are pizza. Fortunately, there is an army of food bloggers out there with ideas. I even know one that is all about cooking and eating kale. We can use spices, seasonings, oils and vinegars to make our basic foods more palatable. But elaborate preparations with exotic ingredients may require more time and money than are practical on a day-by-day basis.

There will always be holidays and feasts, and everyone deserves a treat now and then. But I think that the most essential step in coming to grips with "the food problem" is learning to appreciate the very nature of the food and then simple ways to prepare it. It requires rethinking your expectations and retraining your appetite. It probably helps, too, if you are just a little hungry.

Simple Vegetables

Here are a couple of easy everyday ideas for vegetables. Disclosure: I grew up in the South so don't work well with raw or lightly steamed unadorned vegetables.

Carrot and Raisin Salad

Raw carrots, grated (large size holes) example: 2 large
Black raisins example: 1/4 cup
Commercial mayonnaise just to moisten example: 1 teaspoon
Salt
Pepper

Mix and serve immediately, or will keep for a couple of days in the refrigerator. Amazingly sweet.

Roasted Vegetables

This is so well-known and obvious that I hate to mention it, but just in case...

Any fleshy dense vegetable - carrots, yams good example
Scant olive oil
Dried herb like oregano or basil
Salt, pepper

Peel, cut into roughly equivalent sticks, put on baking sheet, cover with a film of olive oil, bake at 400°. They become incredibly sweet and soft inside. Potatoes (cut in discs) like this too, and I've also done brussels sprouts though they get crunchy on the outside. I was shocked that I liked beets roasted with peel on, then sliced and a little vinegar added. On the Splendid Table, the first recommendation is often "turn on the oven to 400°". And have you tried asparagus cooked this way?

This Garden Earth

2009-02-21T08:01:00.000-08:00

Thomas Princen's book, The Logic of Sufficiency, is not an easy read but contains plenty of food for thought about the socioeconomic principles by which we live and their effect on our planet and ourselves. (Yes, I'll get back to the garden at the end.) He points to the ascendance through the last century of the concept of "efficiency", which is used here as a catchall phrase for many terms and practices that characterize the "market" approach (my summary, not his).

He contrasts this with what he calls "sufficiency"; "the sense that, as one does more and more of an activity, there can be enough and there can be too much." I love the illustration on the cover - the glass not half full or half empty, but full. And yet it is not running over.

The point is that "efficiency" is aimed at increasing yield or wealth for individuals or groups, which leads to more and more exploitation of resources, whether they are soil, water, trees, human effort, or the ability of the planet to absorb insults like pollution and global warming. But our planet is near its "biophysical" limits (see also "Spaceship Earth") and we need to adopt approaches that are sustainable on a system-wide level.

This is beginning to sound like an environmental text, but it is not, though he does refer to environmental concerns and endorses "ecological rationality". It is really more of an essay on economics and how assumptions and beliefs about economic mechanics have brought us to where we are, at the brink of a catastrophic tumble (again, my words, not his). One of the frustrating things about reading the book is that he teaches by long example, such as the story of Pacific Lumber (long-term management of old-growth redwoods) and a lobster fishery (deliberate restraints on fishing to maintain stocks). There is no list of bullet points for a quick take-home message; it requires really studying all the examples and what they mean about behavior that incorporates frugality, moderation, a sense of limits, and allowing respite (his term) for people, animals, and natural systems. (Note that "resources" is actually an efficiency-type term.) A great windup is where he shows that "efficiency" is to blame for mad-cow disease. He also mentions (in a book published in 2005) that we have been turned into "consumers" and driven into debt in order to support a society built on efficiency.

Since Princen doesn't supply sound-bites for his thesis, I won't try to either. It does have strong echoes of Garrett Hardin's Tragedy of the Commons. I heard Hardin speak in the 1970s and his favorite story was about the common pasture where 10 cattle could graze without harming the capacity of the pasture to renew itself. If 10 farmers graze 10 cattle, all goes well. But one of them decides that he wants more, so puts an additional animal onto the commons. It suffers just a little but then the others see that someone is getting more than they are, so they put additional cattle on too. Soon the pasture system collapses and can't maintain any cattle at all. That is where the market ideology (aka efficiency) has nearly brought us today.

Yes, I'm postulating that our entire planet is like that pasture - or like a garden. If we can learn to take only from it what is sufficient, while we continually build up the soil and understand the complexity of the plants, animals, and physical environment that make it up, our garden can support us for a long time. We should cultivate it wisely.

Memories of times past

2009-02-04T15:50:00.000-08:00

I'm not Proust, but I had one of those experiences just now. I was cooking a recipe gleaned from a local blogger (Maan's Beans) and looking into the pot with tomato, onions, garlic and green beans and I was suddenly transported back to a Safeway in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, where I was buying my very first zucchini. Where I grew up, we didn't have zucchini. We had summer squash, mostly pattipan. We cooked this by cutting it up and boiling it with butter and salt and pepper and probably some sugar. But I was a curious child and would browse the supermarket shelves for hints of new and better things. (Frozen vegetables were still not common.) So I found the Del Monte Italian Zucchini, and took my prize home to try it. It was boiled in a tomato sauce, probably with some onion and Italian seasonings. As I recall, it was pretty bland, but I was enchanted with this wholly new foodstuff. What kinds of people might eat this every day? Where did it come from and where was it going? Romance is half the battle with food, anyway.

Later, I grew (and ate) plenty of zucchini, mostly sauteéd in butter or made into ratatouille or a sort of squash-egg-brown rice material that helped get us through graduate school (this was my Diet for A Small Planet phase). I got thoroughly tired of it and there was definitely no more romance.

Lately, I've been experimenting with all types of summer squash, planting different types with a premium on flavor. So in filling out my seed order, I naturally gravitated to Costata Romanesco, said to be the most delicious zucchini. Of course, with my disillusionment with zucchini, that wouldn't take much. Still, something about it made me put it into my cart.

Only later did I wonder what I had done. Why did I buy this weird ribbed zucchini? So to Google, of course. I have now concluded that this may be the original Italian zucchini, before the hybridizers got to it. It is reputed to have a really excellent flavor. But there's more! It is also what the English call "vegetable marrow".

VEGETABLE MARROW! I've been trying to figure out what this is for years. It seems that C. R. ages very well and when it gets to be big (submarine), it retains an excellent, non-pithy structure and is very fine for stuffing. Expatriate English are reputed to pine for this vegetable, which as I understand is served with a white sauce. According to a farm blog I found on Google, the farmer was able to sell his big submarines at market to these starved refugees, though his CSA customers scorned them. But there's more!

When Hercule Poirot tried to retire from detecting at an estimated age of 101, for a time he retreated to the English countryside and grew vegetable marrows. One of Agatha Christie's latter mysteries began with him throwing these (presumably still edible) vegetables over the fence and disturbing some spinsters. I've always wondered what those were.

So the Romance of zucchini still lives. I just hope it really does taste good.

Garlic in Winter

2009-01-28T15:27:00.000-08:00

I don't recall much fresh garlic being used in our house when I was growing up; I think it was limited to a clove here and there and maybe almost exclusively garlic salt in a few recipes. Most of my early cooking used garlic salt, until I realized that I was adding a lot of salt to get that garlic flavor. I started to use fresh garlic and then a lot of it. I was struck with Alice's rule early on. You know, Alice from Arlo Guthrie's song "Alice's Restaurant", that started "You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant". Actually this song (1965) was mostly about the Vietnam War, but it briefly made Alice Brock a star, and she published a cookbook. Here's what she said:

"Tomatoes and oregano make it Italian; wine and tarragon make it French. Sour cream makes it Russian; lemon and cinnamon make it Greek. Soy sauce makes it Chinese; garlic makes it good."

Did you get that last part? I seem to have, because I use copious amounts of garlic in every dish where it seems reasonable.

Starting around 2007 there were a lot of reports that most of our store-bought garlic was coming from China. This was a comedown for our famous garlic capital, Gilroy, California. Part of it was a disease that devastated the crop, and partly because of cheap labor in China. As one industry source explains, Chinese garlic has been found to be contaminated with arsenic, and its quality is also not as good. But China has often been the only source of fresh garlic readily found in winter. I was dismayed to see a big case of it in the back room of a grocery I patronize especially for their local produce.

I planted my first crop of garlic in the fall of 2007 and harvested it in late July, 2008. Since then I've been storing and using it. Some home truths I have discovered are that yes, there really are substantial differences in quality among varieties; and storage really is an issue. The cloves start to sprout. After dithering about where to store them, they ended up in my pantry closet. The garlic to the left is German Extra Hardy. It doesn't seem to sprout as readily (I pulled the clove shown off precisely because it was sprouting). This is a stiff-neck variety with very large cloves, and not many per bulb or head. The cloves and bulb to the right are New York White, a soft-neck variety that can be braided - but I didn't. Now as January draws to a close, I have almost used up the New York White, skating ahead of the sprouts. I hope that the German Extra Hardy lasts into the next harvest, but I doubt it. We eat a lot of garlic.

In spite of the facts that GEH lasted better and is easier to cook with because of those huge cloves, I'm planting less of it in 2009 in comparison to other varieties. The reason is that the flavor seems to be harsher than the NYW. Yet I'm not ordering NYW at all, because the heads are so small and it sprouts so early. But I'm expanding my planting and have ordered more of two new varieties, Music and Russian Red. It's a little strange - I have now ordered garlic to be planted in October-November of this year (2009) and harvested in 2010. Meanwhile under the snow this last year's plantings are waiting for spring.

I'm looking forward to trying a recipe another blogger listed. It uses a lot of garlic and looks like a good reason to get plenty of green beans planted next year.

Contrariwise

2009-01-27T09:39:00.000-08:00

Since I've been predicting disaster for years, I particularly enjoyed an article in the January 26, 2009 New Yorker discussing "The Dystopians". It describes the people who have made it their career or at least their avocation to tell the rest of us about how bad things are going to get. An outstanding example is the author James Howard Kunstler, who has written such books as The Long Emergency. I only discovered him with this article. Another author mentioned is Nassim Nicholas Taleb, who wrote The Black Swan. That one I read last winter, before our economic system collapsed enough that everyone noticed. As the author of the article (Ben McGrath) notes, these days are great for celebration of "triumphant pessimism".

Now Taleb is getting a major following from newly converted financial professionals. His writing is very hard to follow; he alludes to chaos theory and various statistical models without really explaining any of them. The basic idea is that we fall in love with the current trend and situation and expect that things will go on forever as they are, only maybe getting better and better. His clearest exposition of this is with the story of the turkey who enjoys day after day of plentiful food, water, and sunshine. The turkey confidently predicts that this will go on forever, and his predictions are good - until Thanksgiving Day. This was exactly like our county's budget director who every year presented a budget with ever-increasing totals and the comment, "The best prediction of the future is the past." Now the county has a $10 million deficit and is closing entire departments. Unfortunately, my protests at the time had little effect, and someone once informed me that I was a "contrarian". "I told you so" after the fact is pointless and unsatisfying.

McGrath reveals a taxonomy of sorts of pessimists - "peak oilers", "back-to-the-land types", and generalized Cassandras, "doomers". My husband has been a "peak oiler" for decades and the Hubbert Peak was one of the themes of our household discussions. More recently we've both read lots of Jared Diamond. His book, "Collapse" gives a detailed backward look at how many societies have failed, and there are many uncomfortable parallels to be found with our own. There seems to be a fatal human tendency to ignore the long-term consequences of our actions. Since I see the universe in terms of thermodynamics, I have always had trouble with people who persist in believing in the free lunch.

My particular place in the taxonomy of "doomers" is the back-to-the-land type. I've been looking with horror for some years at our drawn-out food chain - how can we possibly be expecting a stable food supply from a distance of thousands of miles? Just as Voltaire cultivated his garden during the dying decades of the French monarchy, I am seeking to find a self-sustaining life to the extent possible. Thus the support for local enterprise, local farming, and thus I grow and preserve as much of our own food as I can. Food security is the most basic human need and it is not a given. We should be worried. I am. More on that later.

Part of being self-sustaining is learning a new way of eating and cooking. I've been learning new ways to use my bountiful sauerkraut production. Here is a new recipe I just discovered. It is modified from one I found among my mother's files.

Winter Slaw with Apples and Sauerkraut

1 quart sauerkraut, preferably raw (drain, place on a board, and cut up into smaller pieces)
1 apple, peeled and chopped
2 celery stalks, chopped
1 small or 1/2 large sweet onion (Walla Walla type), chopped
1/2 sweet red pepper, chopped (I used frozen, roasted and peeled red pepper)
1 T seasoned Japanese rice vinegar (contains sugar and salt)
1 t sugar

Marinate the onion briefly in the vinegar, then add the other chopped ingredients, then the sauerkraut. Mix and chill for a little while before serving.

Note: no salt needed - the kraut is slightly salty, as is the vinegar.
Adjust sugar and vinegar to taste.

This has a nice fresh flavor and is a very light dish.

Red Peppers in Winter

2009-01-10T12:30:00.000-08:00

As I related last fall, red peppers have become a major crop around here. We have a couple of days in the fall of broiling and peeling, then I have a wealth of little quarter-pound packages in the freezer where that sunshine is available all winter long. So what do we use them for? They are wonderful, just thawed, on egg salad sandwiches (and probably on any sandwich). Perfect on pizza. I sometimes make a roasted red pepper sauce out of all the little pieces (hate to use up the nice big slices in the blender). Of course, any mixed vegetable dish benefits from a dash of color and flavor.

But putting them into meat loaf is one of my all-time success stories. They add a richness and subtlety when chopped and mixed with ground meat.

Here is a meatloaf that is neither dull nor intrusively spiced up. I make it as a full loaf pan recipe and freeze slices for future use. It could also be made into smaller loaves.

Meatloaf with Roasted Red Peppers

1 pound bulk pork breakfast sausage, raw
1 1/2 - 2 pounds of lean ground beef, raw
1 medium onion, minced
1 1/2 t sugar
1 1/2 t salt
dash each garlic and celery salt
2 c breadcrumbs*
2 eggs
1 c milk
2T ketchup
2T pickle relish**
1 T horseradish
2 T hot paprika
2 T mixed chili powder***
1/4 pound roasted and peeled red pepper, chopped

Mix all together. Best to mix the meat with dry ingredients first (takes a lot of hand mixing), then the wet ones, finishing with the milk and eggs at the last. Don't be afraid of overworking the meat - makes for finer texture. Place in a greased loaf pan (will be very full) and bake at 375° for 1 1/2 hours.

*Use packaged bread crumbs if you must, but I dry heels and odd bits in the oven and grind them with my blender. They'll keep a long time dry on the shelf.
** Actually I use my green tomato relish, which has spices in it. Ordinary pickle relish should come close, or you could try a chunky salsa.
*** This is the kind of chili powder that has spices like cumin and oregano mixed in. I use Pendary's Original.

Cabbage for Sauerkraut

2008-12-23T13:00:00.000-08:00

Not only do I like to eat cabbages, I like to look at them. I've always thought that there is nothing prettier in the garden than cabbages glowing against the earth. What a pleasure to find that others share this affection. On a page devoted to cabbage cultivation, the author states "There is no more regal a vegetable than a well-grown cabbage, three feet across, its giant silvery green or dusty purple leaves shining with health." Amen to that, brother.

When I began growing cabbage in my garden for the purpose of making sauerkraut, I was quite ignorant of cabbage varieties. I knew the difference between red and green cabbage, and that savoy and Chinese cabbage were different types, but otherwise green cabbage was cabbage. This was partly because green cabbage bought in the store is fairly nondescript and probably one of just a few varieties. For a while I grew "Stonehead", a nice compact cabbage that I now understand is an early cabbage. Then two years ago, a spectacularly bad decision: I planted "Gonzales". Rereading the catalog from Johnny's Selected Seeds, I have no idea why I selected that one. It is an early cabbage meant to be harvested young and small. When I held the plants into the early fall for the purpose of making sauerkraut, I lost a third of them to splitting.

I now understand that the reason cabbage splits in our climate is that it has had enough cool weather followed by hot weather to make it flower. In other words, splitting is the cabbage equivalent of bolting. The head splits and a flower stalk grows out of it. Since both Stonehead and Gonzales were early cabbages, they started to split in mid-August. Once the head splits, it is prone to bacterial rot and isn't very nice anyway.

Both of these cabbages also produced rather small heads, between 1-2.5 pounds with biggest exterior leaves removed. They were somewhat difficult to shred, since they didn't fit the large holder on the krauthobel very well. There was a lot of wastage after I cleaned off the exterior dirty and green leaves and cored them.

When I visited cabbage fields in Wisconsin where cabbage for kraut was grown, I was amazed at the large heads, the size of a beach ball. The interior was very firm and white. Finally I did some research and now understand that this was probably a variety of late cabbage especially good to use for kraut. The most popular among home kraut makers seems to be an old variety called Late Flat Dutch. It is so old-fashioned that most modern seed catalogs don't carry it, but I found it in R.H. Shumway. "Heads average 10-12 inches across, often weighing 15 to 20 pounds." Now, consider that a 3-gallon crock only holds about 15 pounds of shredded cabbage. These are clearly cabbages for the serious. Next year I'll grow these and also some other late cabbages. Early cabbages are supposed to be mature in 60 days. I was holding them past their prime. Late cabbages are about 110 days to harvest, so I'll plant early for a fall sauerkraut production run. These late dense heads are also the favored cabbages for winter storage. And I think they'll be fun to look at. (Edited for clarity)

The Cabbage in Winter

2008-12-11T09:25:00.000-08:00

Now that the garden is buried in snow, we are eating through our harvest. Most of it is preserved in some way, but there are still some roots in the produce crisper, and red cabbage in the basement refrigerator. Ruby Perfection makes heads rather late and they are very frost-tolerant. I brought them in just before the winter weather really hit. Now we are tired of rotkohl (German red cabbage), so it's time to try something else.

I wrote earlier about the lack of respect cabbage gets and its importance as a nutritious vegetable, especially to the world's poor. Now the New York Times has not only reinforced that point but includes some excellent-sounding recipes that are nicely frugal as well as nutritious. I like these recipes better than some of those in the links at the bottom of the article. As one of the authors notes, the answer to the blandness of cabbage and some of its less attractive flavor notes has been to smother it with pork, cream, cheese and such, thus to turn its nutritious, economical nature on its head (so to speak). Some of the recipes do that, and really I think using shrimp in stuffed cabbage is an aberration, especially since it is likely to be farmed shrimp. This Greek cabbage and feta pie sounds good, though.

Still, one of the articles reminded me that caraway seeds, a traditional flavoring for cabbage, also was used in medieval times as a digestive, thus offsetting some of the tendency for cabbage to cause bloating or other problems. It also reminded me of a recipe I think I'll use tonight.

Hot Cabbage Slaw

Core and shred a small head of cabbage, or 1/2 head green and 1/2 red cabbage. Toss it with 3 teaspoons of salt and allow to sit in a bowl for 30 minutes. Rinse and drain.

Cook 2 slices of bacon until crisp; set aside. Remove all but 1 tablespoon of the fat from the skillet.

Add the drained cabbage to the fat and cook until hot and wilted, about 5 minutes. Remove from heat and stir in 1/2 teaspoon caraway seeds, 2 teaspoons sugar, and 1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar. Place on serving dish or individual plates and crumble bacon over the top.

Note: I have adjusted the seasoning from the original recipe, which called for adding 2 teaspoons of salt at the end, plus 2 teaspoons of caraway seeds. I also reduced the vinegar; add more to taste. Depending on how much cabbage you use, you may also want to use slightly more of the bacon fat. I found that 1/2 small head of cabbage was about right for 2 people, so reduced almost everything.

The Ethics of Eating (a fish tale)

2008-11-19T05:50:00.000-08:00

One pleasure of having a vegetable garden is that it embodies sustainability. It is sad that this good word is overused today, but it still speaks to a good concept and ethos. The classic expression was voiced by the UN Brundtland Commission , defining sustainable development that "meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs". It implies good resource management and renewal. With a vegetable garden, nothing is wasted; you draw vegetables and life from the good earth, and every stem, stalk, leaf and giant squash that isn’t used goes back to compost to begin again the next year. This has the satisfaction of an ethical act.

The ethics of sustainability are more difficult to achieve with purchased food. If you are a conscientious person, eating most foods requires a considerable amount of selective forgetting. Every bite completes a long chain of events, many of them with ethical coloration. Since it is unpleasant to ingest sins and indiscretions with one’s food, the natural thing is to overlook them. But when we see ourselves as part of the greater scheme of things, it is possible and good to stop sometimes and look that forkful in the eye (or whatever part has been impaled). Here are some ethical questions to consider over dinner.

1. Has the food required the sacrifice of another animal’s life?
2. Was the individual food animal treated humanely before death and was it killed humanely?
3. If the food required restraint of an animal (as, for example, with eggs and milk), was that humanely managed?
4. If harvesting a wild animal was involved, did the process endanger the survival of the species? Were only the animals to be eaten killed?
5. Were whole ecosystems damaged in order to grow a particular food crop?
6. Were people enslaved, maltreated, deprived of their own food choices, or subjected to bad governance in order to grow or process the crop?
7. Is the crop practice appropriate to the whole ecosystem, or does it cause erosion, overfertilization of water sources, greenhouse gas emission, accumulation of toxic chemicals in wildlife and humans, loss of gene plasm diversity in the crop species, air or water pollution?
8. Is the energy cost of processing and transporting the food excessive for the little food value contained in it?

We who seek sustainability are making more and more ethical choices about food. It may restrict the variety of things we can eat or be more expensive but at some point the food looks back at you from the fork and you have to make that next step. We gave up veal a couple of decades ago and never even consider fois gras. Lately we’ve been seeking out meat from grass-fed animals and buying “Amish” poultry because they are reputed to be better treated. We try to buy as much food that is produced locally as is feasible (if it is organic, even better) and look carefully at the selection of fair trade coffee and chocolate. In the process, we change our taste for food so that the unethical choices don’t even look appealing any more.

Michael Pollan certainly laid out a lot of this for us in The Omnivore's Dilemma. Reading that was a life-changing experience for many. Now Mark Bittman, writing in the New York Times, hits us with the bad news about fish.

Here is the short version: Worldwide, we have almost depleted the populations of the most desirable wild fish. In 2003, 32% of populations had crashed, 39% were overfished, and the remaining 29% were "fully exploited", at the limits of sustainability. Even more troubling, industrial fish farming is threatening the stocks of the smaller fish that are the food of the larger ones like salmon and tuna. Huge quantities are being ground up to feed to farmed salmon. Salmon and shrimp farms cause immense water pollution (a farm of 200,000 salmon produces as much fecal matter as 60,000 humans) and despite heavy use of antibiotics, pose a disease threat to wild populations. Bittman proposes that we should avoid farmed fish (though tilapia can be farmed sustainably, he dismisses it as tasteless, which has been my experience) and eat the smaller ones, like sardines and anchovy.

I've been eating more canned sardines and use canned wild salmon, but what about fresh fish? One option is to eat more locally - freshwater fish native to this continent. I love walleye though it is expensive and somewhat seasonal. But in following Bittman's "small fish" lead, I remembered smelt.

The Rainbow Smelt (Osmerus mordax) is not native, but has been established in the upper Midwest freshwater lakes, originally seeded as food for salmon. They are still caught by locals during "smelt runs", typically in March-April. But they are available and cheap (the pound I bought cost $3.49) in the freezer as headless and dressed individually frozen fish.

These little babies are eaten whole and can be panfried or baked. But deep-fried smelt are popular in many Asian cuisines and lakeside fish restaurants. And the bones are good for you. As you crunch, think sustainability. Have your friends over - one pound will feed 4, or 6 with the fried vegetable sides and a salad. There are many possibilities for the breading (including the classic flour-egg/milk-bread crumbs or cornmeal), but I think a very light tempura batter is nicer.

Deep-fried Smelt

Tempura batter: combine 1 egg yolk with 2 cups of ice-cold water and 1/4 t baking soda. Stir in 1 2/3 cups of flour. This should produce a thin batter that is a little frothy.

Drop dressed, thawed and drained smelt into flour (may be seasoned) on a plate, shake off the excess, then quickly drop one at a time into the batter, retrieve with tongs (edit: on trying this again, I found that using one's hands are the easiest and most effective way to take the fish from the batter, though messy), then drop into hot oil. Oil should be deep enough to submerge the fish completely. Do not try to cook more than 3 or 4 (edit: or about 6) at once. Remove with a slotted ladle or frying strainer or tongs after each is light brown (2-4 minutes). Place in pan in a 200° oven while finishing the batch. Serve immediately with any preferred sauce, from mayonnaise-based tartar sauce to Asian soy sauce-based, or just offer lemons to squeeze. Note that this recipe has not included salt unless it was added with the flour. (Edit: a tomatillo/green chile/cilantro salsa or Indian chile/cilantro green sauce are excellent with this and the vegetables. Think pakora.)

Great additions: sweet potato rounds, half mushrooms, cauliflower buds, onion rings, or any vegetable that is not too wet and can stand up to this treatment. Or - make potato (French) fries - the batter makes them wonderful. Dip them in the batter without the preliminary flouring and fry separately from the fish. Remember not to crowd - if the temperature of the oil drops, they'll be oily.

Notes on deep-frying: the secret of delicious fried food, crisp on the outside, moist inside and not oily, lies in using the correct oil temperature. This is usually stated as 325-375° but keeping to the higher temperature is better. Use a kitchen thermometer. You should use only oils that can stand up to the heat. This is dependent on their smoke points - no oil with a smoke point under 400° should be used. I prefer peanut oil because it has a neutral flavor; I find that canola oil develops an unpleasant odor when heated to a high temperature.

There is real danger in heating oil on the stove - you can be severely burned from splashes and it should never be left unattended or allowed to heat to the oil's smoke point. One way to avoid trouble is to use a cast-iron Dutch oven for deep-frying. The steep sides prevent splashing. Don't fill any fuller than necessary. I usually use about a quart of oil in my 7 qt pan. Oil can be reused once if filtered and stored in the refrigerator.

May You Live in Interesting Times

2008-11-04T07:27:00.000-08:00

We have certainly arrived in that moment. Although today is a day of hope for new beginnings, it is also surely not the end of a run of really bad news and there is a mountain of uncertainty ahead. Humanity has just about succeeded in ruining the planetary weather systems, kills off an increasing number of other species every year, and it seems that every other week natural disasters like tsunamis and earthquakes claim more human lives. In addition, new plagues (whether AIDS, avian flu, or foodborne toxic E. coli) continue to pose a threat, civil wars in many parts of the globe seem to trend toward genocide in their cruelty and viciousness, food scarcity is increasing, and government regulation has proved ineffective against adulteration of imported foods and drugs. In this country as well as others, civil liberty and freedom of thought have been damaged with the apparent complicity of a good half of the population. On top of all that, the world economic system has been destabilized. What to do? Voltaire had the answer. "Il faut cultiver notre jardin." Or, as usually translated, "We must cultivate our garden."

Voltaire's garden has virtually become a kōan for Western writers. Everyone has an interpretation of what Voltaire meant by this innocent-sounding conclusion to Candide. Surely one of the most leaden ones is that of a recent translator, Burton Raffel. In a rejoinder to a review of his translation, he asserts that "Candide is a novel, not a philosophical tract" and vigorously defends his translation of the phrase as "we need to work our fields", arguing that the verb cultiver meant in Voltaire's time "to bestow labor upon land in order to raise crops".

But as Adam Gopnik argues in a beautiful review of the book Voltaire in Exile, "By 'garden' Voltaire meant a garden, not a field—not the land and task to which we are chained by nature but the better place we build by love. The force of that last great injunction,'We must cultivate our garden', is that our responsibility is local, and concentrated on immediate action." Gopnik also notes that though the conclusion of Candide "seems to retreat from a confrontation with human cruelty to an enclosed garden, its publication marked Voltaire’s... moral development ... toward a faith in liberal meliorism."

Voltaire lived through "interesting times" too. He was born François-Marie Arouet in 1694 in a France where the excesses of the aristocracy and monarchy were already laying the foundation for the French revolution that began nearly a century later (1789). He made his way into the outer circles of high society as a poet and playwright (and assumed the name of Voltaire), was exiled to England for a time because of his impertinence, made money by what appears to be a bit of a scam involving a public lottery, wrote a number of very serious treatises, some of which were iconoclastic, was eventually exiled from France and settled near Geneva. He was appalled by the suffering caused by the Lisbon earthquake of 1755, by the cruelty of the Spanish inquisition, by the destruction caused by the Seven Years' War, by the pitiful condition of the peasants. His disgust at the torture and capital punishment used in France and elsewhere (in which living bodies were rended asunder), especially on religious grounds, led to his campaign against l'infâme.

So what did he do? He made a garden. In exile near Geneva, he developed estates, first at the leased villa Les Délices, then at one he purchased at Ferney. He really did garden, writing the friend who owned Les Délices, "Many thanks for the lavender; I promise to have it planted in all the borders of your kitchen garden...at this moment I am sowing your Egyptian onions...Please send me everything you can in the way of flowers and vegetables."

But Voltaire's garden wasn't just about producing food or having pretty views, though it certainly did that. He created a productive enterprise to benefit his little corner of the world. When he first took possession at Ferney, he wrote to a friend that the landed estate was depopulated and miserable, without industry or resources. "My land is excellent, and yet I have found (50 hectares) belonging to my inhabitants which remain uncultivated...it is seven years since the curé celebrated any marriages, and no children have been born...poor people who have scarcely even any black bread to eat, are arrested every day, stripped, and imprisoned, for having put on this bread a bit of salt which they have bought (without paying taxes)...One's heart is torn when one witnesses so much misery. I only bought the Ferney estate in order to do a bit of good." He immediately put workers to cleaning and widening ditches, plowing fields, and planting vines. He visited his cowsheds: "I love my bulls...I stroke them and they make eyes at me". He bought and bragged about new farm implements. Over time he brought in more people and became the patriarch of a little community. He even initiated an industry to support his people, a watch factory which, with his astuteness in merchandising, became a successful business. (Quotes and information from Voltaire In Exile, by Ian Davidson.)

So, the point - the meaning of Voltaire's garden is not a retreat but an engagement. In times like these, we must make our little corner of the world into a generative force. This includes the support for local farming operations, community gardens, the ability to keep chickens, local commercial enterprises, growing and preparing our own food and in general the betterment of our small community to enhance our sufficiency. This is where reality truly lies and where goodness begins. Now I must go cultivate my garden.

Roots

2008-10-21T13:16:00.000-07:00

We have had several frost scares, though no hard frosts yet. The appetite turns to warm baked dishes with apples and orange-fleshed winter squash. But there are also root vegetables that come into their own now and continue to thrive during these cooling days.

The red root on the left is Scarlet Queen turnip. This can be larger than the specimen shown and it has continued to grow and thrive through the cooler weather. It has a much finer texture than the common purple-top turnip and gets large without being either woody or pithy. It is from Johnny's Select Seeds. On the right is President celery root (celeriac). Its green leaves are still perfect and the roots are just now beginning to fill out. I started the seeds, from Cook's, very early but waited to put the plants out until it became warm, on the advice that the plants might otherwise bolt in warm weather.

I was introduced to these last year by a local organic grower, Tantré, and because I had both of them in my refrigerator I made a serendipitous discovery that they make a lovely salad in combination with each other. Scarlet Queen can also be cooked any way you cook turnips and celeriac is used in cooked dishes or made into a purée. But the fine firm texture of the two roots combines into a light fresh salad that can be kept for days in the refrigerator.

Julienne of Fall Root Vegetables

Peel Scarlet Queen turnip roots and celery roots in equal numbers and cut off any discoloration. Cut each into long narrow strips and combine with a vinaigrette (3 T olive oil to 1 T good vinegar, salt and pepper), a scallion cut into disks, and a smattering of dried basil or other herb. Marinate in the dressing a few minutes and serve.

Frontiers of fermentation

2008-10-19T19:08:00.000-07:00

I've been fascinated for some time with the practice of fermenting foods for preservation and have spent some years perfecting the production of sauerkraut from cabbage. Last year my husband gave me a Christmas present of a fancy crock from Germany (Harsch) that adds some low-tech ease to the process. While I have learned to use a standard crock with a wooden cover for the kraut, a weight (quart jars filled with water), and covered with a tea towel, then a bath towel, this crock takes care of a number of those requirements. The essential requirements are that the vegetable needs to be pressed firmly to make "juice" (after being salted at 3 Tablespoons pickling salt to 5 lbs cabbage), pressed down with a weight and covered with brine, then protected from molds and yeasts and allowed to ferment to an anaerobic condition. For a pictorial account of this method, see Kim's account.

The fancy German crock has its own ceramic weights that substitute for finding a plate to fit or buying a wooden cover, and the rock or jars used to weight it down. They are two semicircles that drop in elegantly. Then a water seal consisting of a grove in the top of the crock plus the lid prevents any contaminants from getting in and helps promote the anaerobic progress of the fermentation.

I used the crock this year for my second batch of sauerkraut. Since I had already made a batch using my standard recipe, I became a little more experimental. Both the recipes that came with the crock and those in a book on preserving food (Preserving Food Without Freezing or Canning,Chelsea Green Publishing Co.) had made me aware that some European traditions do a lot more with sauerkraut, adding different vegetables and some spices to the mix. Apparently one can make turnips into shreds for this process, and carrots are another popular addition, but there are many variations. I chose a very conservative combination of several recipes. I added one onion, shredded very fine, and 3 bay leaves, 3 sage leaves, 3 whole cloves, and 6 juniper berries to my 10 pounds of cabbage, layering as I went. After 4 weeks of fermentation, the kraut was flawless and my husband says it tastes "spicier". The taste of the added spices is barely detectable, very subtle, and probably would not be detected if cooked.

This year I abandoned the practice of canning my kraut and have preserved all of it in quart canning jars in the refrigerator. It is delicious but this method results in some bad moments when trying to find places for other things around all the kraut jars. The kraut is very good as is but also serves as a salad with a simple vinaigrette (3 T oil to 1 T vinegar, pepper, no salt) and a chopped scallion. Cooked with sausages and a few caraway seeds, it is just as tasty in a different way.

I grew two varieties of cabbage for use in kraut this year. The one I have grown for several years, "Stonehead" from Jung, began to crack in mid-August. Kim and I made it into kraut that was decanted mid-September. The other variety, "Tendersweet" from Johnny's Select Seeds, I used for the second batch in mid-September, decanted in mid-October. Tendersweet has odd flattened heads and very thin leaves. I thought it would be superior for kraut because it made very fine strands. However, the resulting product is not as crisp and clings together when served rather than standing out a bit. I probably won't use it again for that, but it is a superior eating cabbage.

Timing of kraut production has been related to head splitting, which ruins the cabbage for making kraut and invites bacterial soft rot. Tendersweet appears to be somewhat more resistant to early splitting. I've discovered that the splitting of the head is preparatory to blooming. Cabbage is a biennial but apparently our climate has enough cold shocks to induce flowering. Perhaps I should investigate to see what varieties the kraut packers in Wisconsin use. I recall that they had huge basketball-size heads and might be resistant to splitting.

A Bounty of Peppers

2008-09-30T12:36:00.000-07:00

For several years now, red bell peppers have been an important crop for my garden. There has been a vogue for purple, yellow, and even "chocolate" peppers, but to me, a ripe pepper can be any color as long as it is red. We eat them fresh, but I've learned to roast and peel them for freezing or pickling, so I've dedicated a noticeable fraction of the garden to them.

This has also entailed a search for the best variety. This year I tried three. From left to right: Crispy (Burpee), Maxibelle (Burpee), and Karma (Park). Note that "Crispy" and "Maxibelle" are both the yield on one day from one row of 5 plants; "Karma" is the yield from two rows. I keep on growing Karma because the fruits are big, blocky, and thick-walled. But they take a long time to grow and ripen. I've noticed in the past that I was picking red fruit from Crispy before any coloring on Karma at all. This year I tried for a third choice with Maxibelle. But contrary to the name, the fruit is no bigger than Crispy's, and the yield appears inferior. (Since these were photographed, the plants have now borne a new crop of red fruit ready to pick.) So the answer to the Desert Island question is apparently Crispy. Still, I'll probably continue to plant Karma. The fruit really is more impressive than this photograph shows.

Then the real punishment: an afternoon and early evening spent cutting, roasting (broiling) till the skin blisters, and peeling. The resulting slabs of pepper essence can be used in salads or cooking and I'll now be freezing them in small portions to use all winter. From the fruit shown above, I prepared 3 1/2 pounds of finished peppers.

Steakplant

2008-09-23T10:46:00.000-07:00

The late Clifford Simak wrote many science fiction novels in which the protagonist lived a quiet life in the rural backwater of some distant future world, often sitting on his porch, fishing, and of course tending his garden. One of the concepts I thought particularly intriguing was that one such garden included a "steak plant" right next to the potatoes and carrots - a plant that produced little steaks hanging from its branches instead of fruit. Obviously genetic engineering was well developed by that time. How nice not to be involved with caging and butchering animals, but simply to go out into the garden and pick a nice steak to go with your vegetables of an evening. (Simak used folksy phrases like "of an evening" a lot.)

Well, we are almost there. Eggplant satisfies a lot of that part of our appetites that yearns for solid meat-type food along with all the greens and starches. It is a staple of many vegetarian dishes and extends others that contain meat. I've been planting the variety "Neon", from Cook's Garden, for several years, after experimenting with other varieties. It has a firm nonbitter flesh and remains at a high quality in the garden for a long time (when it becomes seedy, it obligingly turns a lighter, duller color). While most recipes for eggplant call for salting and pressing to rid it of a bitter flavor, this is never necessary for Neon. I find that my husband, who usually expects meat as a part of dinner, will tolerate the occasional meatless dinner made with eggplant.

We used to visit an Italian restaurant in San Diego (Capriccio) where the Eggplant Parmigiana was so good that we skipped the similar Veal Parmigiana. Unlike most recipes for this dish, the poor eggplant was not breaded, fried, and baked with layers of sauce and cheese, but rather served up straight with the sauce on the side. The result was remarkably meatlike.

Eggplant Parmigiana à la Capriccio

Slice a large fresh peeled eggplant into disks about 1/2 inch thick. If eggplant is not overmature, it should not require salting and pressing and doing so will ruin the character of the dish. Dip the freshly cut slices into flour (they will be very thinly coated), then into a mixture of egg and milk (about 3/4 c milk, beat the egg into it). Then press the eggplant slice into a seasoned bread crumb mixture (try oregano, dash of garlic salt, and paprika). Sauté in olive oil until browned on both sides. Place on cooking sheet and arrange a slice of mozzarella on top. Bake the slices briefly until the mozzarella is puffy. Serve with any good Italian sauce on the side, such as a marinara, basil-tomato-onion-garlic, or a roasted red pepper sauce as shown here.

Squashed

2008-09-17T05:44:00.000-07:00

Summer squash is a rewarding and easy vegetable to grow. The tiny tender fruit come along reliably once the plant reaches a decent size. Apart from a long-ago problem with borers and the occasional fruit rot in really moist conditions (Aspergillus, I think), I've experienced few pest problems. Those first succulent fruit are so tasty, just steamed or lightly sautéed. This year I grew two varieties, Magda, a kousa-type squash from Park Seed, and Supersett, a yellow crook-neck from Renee's Garden. (I consider zucchini to be bitter and overrated.) I was so late getting started that I just direct-seeded into warm garden soil rather than starting plants early in peat pots. Even so, the plants were generous. We had both squashes, sometimes one at a time and sometimes as a mixture. I like to cook slices with just a little butter and some fresh dill, and steam them in my grandmother's old chicken fryer. Magda has a subtle fresh flavor and Supersett is sweeter, with a bonus for cooking them till they are slightly caramelized but not scorched.

After a while we get a little more jaded and I start making squash gratin. This has various versions. I cut and steam the squash briefly before placing in a baking dish, usually with onions sautéed in butter, and perhaps some red or green pepper. Then either I make a white sauce (best with a little grind of nutmeg) or just drizzle some cream straight over the fruit after salting and peppering. Add a generous sprinkling of gruyère or Swiss cheese, and bake till bubbling and a light brown on top. I used to add buttered bread crumbs but this makes a heavy dish. If made with a large quantity of squash and a white sauce enriched with cream, the dish freezes well.

Eventually the squash stay in the produce drawer longer and longer as the season progresses and the generosity of the vines begins to overwhelm the menu. Even with various innovative ways to slip them into mixed vegetable dishes and soups, the delight of the early summer has become the albatross of the refrigerator.

Finally I go to the garden and find the dreaded Submarine. These are a known terror. Gardeners offer them to their friends and leave them on porches. Barbara Kingsolver (Animal, Vegetable, Mineral) admits to locking her door to keep from having them left in her kitchen. About this time of year (late August to September), newspaper food columns begin to feature recipes for zucchini bread and offer chirpy suggestions like "scoop out the seeds and stuff". But after years of guilty efforts to use this bounty, my advice is — Compost. The goodness of the earth will be enhanced next year and you will still have the courage to plant squash again in the spring.

By now the Squash Monster is in full cry, with a new Submarine, it seems, every time I go to the garden. At least this year I didn't grow Renee's "Trombetta di Albenga" squash - a horrifyingly prolific long-necked squash that is at least a foot long even in youth. I would advise growing this squash only if you have (a.) a family of 10 to feed; or (b.) a distant relative has come to stay, rent-free, for the duration. Squash soup, squash casserole, baked stuffed squash, squash bread and squash omelettes should take care of that problem.

You say Taboli, I say Tabbouleh

2008-08-20T09:20:00.000-07:00

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

2008-08-15T14:03:00.000-07:00

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

2008-06-05T15:40:00.000-07:00

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

2008-05-14T05:36:00.000-07:00

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

2008-04-28T19:25:00.000-07:00

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

2008-03-07T12:10:00.000-08:00

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

2008-02-28T15:36:00.000-08:00

After about five years of experimenting with making sauerkraut, I've finally figured out how to do it reliably. I'm going to share the secrets. Some I got from a version of the USDA Complete Guide to Home Canning that is no longer available online. Some was from Ohio State Extension. 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 ; 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.

Choucroute

2008-02-28T14:43:00.000-08:00

Most people in this country call it sauerkraut, but I thought that Voltaire would better recognize choucroute. Either way it is cabbage preserved by lactic acid fermentation. I've always loved it and I'm also fascinated with the fermentation process. Lactobacillus bacteria occur naturally on plant surfaces, especially cabbage. The cabbage is salted (to make the tissues weep and inhibit other microorganisms) and incubated for four to six weeks. The bacilli pull oxygen out of the liquid (they are facultatively anaerobic) and lower the pH by breaking down available sugars into lactic acid. This preserves the cabbage from molds and rotting and putrifying bacteria. A similar process is the secret of yogurt and other fermented milk products. Lactofermentation is a very old means of keeping vegetables out of season and whole cuisines are built around it. It probably prevented scurvy in most of Middle Europe for hundreds of years.

Last year we enjoyed an authentic course of choucroute à l'alsacienne prepared by our friend Francis, who is a chef. We contributed the sauerkraut and Francis added several cuts of pork (sausages, loin, among others), juniper berries, wine, and other mysterious things. I think some duck fat may have been implicated. This was served simply with boiled potatoes, followed by a green salad and then a cheese course. Wonderful.

Other people may simply think of sauerkraut as what you put on Reuben sandwiches or eat with sausages. I like that too, but my favorite meal for two is two pork chops placed on top of sauerkraut in a baking dish, some white wine poured over both, then the chops are anointed with a mixture of ketchup and Worchestershire. Bake uncovered at 275 for 2 1/2 hours. The chops are completely tender and falling apart, fat has disappeared into the kraut, and with that and a baked potato you have dinner.

Sauerkraut is good on pizza, too. Not too much, and it simply makes it moister and more flavorful. We learned this last year that it can be eaten as a salad, especially if it is fresh. Simply rinse and add a mayonnaise dressing or a simple vinaigrette (I like to add a chopped scallion too) and serve like a slaw. I've heard of it mixed with creamed noodles and here in Michigan there are rumors of something called sauerkraut balls. (I think they are fried fritters with sauerkraut in the batter.) Of course sauerkraut pirogies are the best.

Celery root

2008-02-18T08:15:00.000-08:00

I’ve never been tempted to grow celery in my vegetable garden. It is so readily available and relatively inexpensive, and I’ve never heard anyone brag about the just-picked flavor of their garden celery.

But last fall I bought some celeriac (celery root) from Tantré Farms and had a revelation. It can be grown here, and it makes a really good companion to other late root crops. I made a julienne of the celeriac and some turnips, also from Tantré, with a simple vinaigrette and a little dried basil. It was enthusiastically received here. I suspect that it is also good in any recipe that uses roasted root vegetables. The roots kept a long time in the vegetable crisper, and I believe that their flavor is more subtle than ordinary celery (the leaf petioles).

So – I bought seeds of the variety “President” from Cook’s Garden. The picture looked like the one from Tantré. Some celeriac is round and knobby; this was cylindrical and knobby. The seed packet said to start 8-12 weeks before last frost, which meant right away. So now I’m checking my seed tray on the heater every day.

For some years I have grown another close celery relative, lovage. This perennial herb is about 5 feet tall when it blooms. Blooms are like all those of the Umbelliferae (the carrot family) —they are like Queen Anne’s Lace but not as pretty. I use lovage sometimes when I’m out of most other leafy herbs— it is not too bad as a substitute for parsley but actually the leaves have a strong celery taste. Because of my experience with the lovage, I know I’m likely to have problems with Cercospora leaf spot on the celeriac too. Fortunately this disease is favored by hot weather so begins somewhat later in the season.

Buttercup

2008-02-17T17:31:00.000-08:00

Yes, I know it's not a buttercup (Family Ranunculaceae). If you don't get the joke, I'm not going to help you.

Roasted Red Peppers

2008-02-17T13:38:00.000-08:00

Last November ended as a snowy and icy mess, but first we had two weeks of fine warm weather, with frost scares at night. My two varieties of bell pepper, Crispy and Karma, continued to grow long after I had already removed most of the still-green peppers to give away to friends. They were even making new little peppers. I kept the partly red peppers on the plants and used a makeshift barrier of old row cover and burlap around the pepper patch to ward off frost.

The result was truly an embarrassment of riches. I even had to give red peppers away. But this was only after many, many batches of roasted red peppers were resting in my freezer. Next year maybe I'll try to use some of those special recipes I collected, like the Serbian red pepper and eggplant preparation. I only managed to roast, peel, and freeze the peppers under press of everything else.

Actually, though they are called "roasted", I think most people do as I do and broil them. I arrange cleaned seeded pieces as flatly as possible on a cookie sheet, and put them up under the broiler element until the outer skin turns black. Too long, and the flesh dries out. The really thick-walled peppers (Karma is very good) are best because the flesh stays moist and full even when the skin is fully blackened. Then the blackened skin is removed and crumbs brushed off. When the peppers sit in a pile on a plate during processing, a liquid collects that is saved to add to recipes, and also keeps the peppers moist while refrigerated. For freezing, I simply weighed out quarter-pound and half-pound portions and placed them into plastic containers or freezer bags. They are so delicious. I'm amazed at their quality after thawing. Especially because we had that little mishap with the freezer door being left open and then having to refreeze most of the peppers.

I've been finding lots of ways to use them. Of course, they are an essential element in my personal spaghetti sauce recipe and go right onto pizza. The larger portions are for making a roasted red pepper sauce with tomato, basil, onions, and garlic (the last two ingredients are sauteéd in olive oil, then all blended together). I chop the peppers and incorporate them into meatloaf. They also go into any kind of egg dish, can be added to gratins and scalloped potatoes, and today I just chopped some and threw them into a casserole of chili mac. Um!

Addresses and destinations

2008-02-17T07:10:00.000-08:00

When I set up Voltaire's Garden I tried to use the address voltairesgarden.blogspot.com, but found that title was taken. Hence the French version. Today it occurred to me to see what that other blog was about. It turned out to be something called "My Secret Garden", apparently a completely private diary written only for the writer. It seems to have been abandoned.

And now to the garden

2008-02-12T08:30:00.000-08:00

Probably Voltaire's best-known quote is from Candide where he concludes "we must cultivate our garden". You remember, Candide is an innocent who begins in a castle, where he studies under Professor Pangloss ("the best of all possible worlds") and falls in love with the beautiful Cunegonde, daughter of the baron. Through a series of misfortunes, he travels the world with Pangloss, (who becomes syphilitic and deformed), and recovers Cunegonde (who was raped and stabbed by invaders, enslaved, prostituted, and ultimately loses her beauty) ; meanwhile Candide is tortured, partially flayed, and almost eaten. Eventually he becomes rich (but loses most of it) and he, Pangloss and Cunegonde, together with a couple of companions, end up on a small farm in Turkey. Pangloss once again philosophizes that all has been for the best. Candide says "That's well said, but we must cultivate our garden". It should be noted that Cunegonde has in the meantime become an excellent pastry cook.

There has been much analysis of what Voltaire actually meant to say by the retreat to the garden. Some may be repeated here in subsequent posts. But for me it has meaning on both the real and metaphysical levels; gardening as a focus on the here and now, the garden as an escape from the cruelty of the world, but also the garden as a symbol of renewal and a metaphor of life. And it produces food, too.

So this blog will also celebrate a retreat to the garden, figuratively and literally. Here will be a record of my garden, musings about the universe — and food.