This here salad is made entirely from things that survived the winter and are now roaring back. Some stuff–I’m talking to you, Asian cabbage–is just bolting and bitter, but the mizuna, pan di zucchero, and radicchio are lovely. There’s a bit of chervil, too, and parsley, and I cut all the tatsoi too since it was thinking about flowering. Now I love a good bowl of greens; there’s nothing quite so soul-polishing as a perfect…
Category: Gardening
Lately I’ve been commiserating with other gardeners about the crap “summer” we had this year, and about how various species underperformed or didn’t at all, and about how hard it is to be us. And I’ve been grouchy and glum about how little I canned or pickled. We’ve begun buying some vegetables much earlier than in previous years, which I take personally as a sign of failure. The last few days have been wonderfully mild,…
I’ve been lax about blogging, obviously, but not about cooking; I just can’t find time to do any writing. I even busted out a pretty nice 6-course dinner for a couple of friends up from the city last Friday, but the only picture I took was a repeat of the gravlax with corn-avocado ice cream and pickle sauce. Other courses were grilled chicken-miso soup, a sort of frisée aux lardons- curly endive tossed with a…
I always try to let the circumstances of a day inform the dinner that I make, incorporating as much foresight as I can in the from of procuring certain ingredients in sufficient quantity to feed whoever will be around. Then there’s the amount of time I have to actually cook, and whatever the season offers in the way of things that are fresh and perfect from the garden. In the case of today, Milo’s Grandmother…
Every Wednesday we have the Farmers’ Market in town, and it’s one of the best things to happen here in a while (this is the second year). There’s music, and a flea market in the adjacent field, and prepared food as well as the usual produce, cheese, bread, meat, and wine. There are cooking classes for kids, and the weather has actually been pretty good on most of the recent days. It’s always fun to…
Tasting, that is, though not something we do very often. Plus, it’s annoying to clean up after. But the ingredients spoke, and would not be denied. I made another batch of pimentón mayonnaise and used it as a binder for the leftover halibut which I had flaked apart with forks. I used my brand new hexagonal cookie cutters to shape them, then dipped them in curry-seasoned panko and browned ’em up. While that was happening,…
The near-constant rain is impeding the growth of the heat-loving plants, and if it keeps up it’s a safe bet that most of our tomatoes and peppers won’t ripen and our cucurbits will succumb quickly to a plague of powdery mildew. And the slugs are as big as schnausers. But the greener things are thriving- roots are getting fat, and our salad isn’t bolting like it normally does. This month will tell whether we are…
No time for a real post right now, but here’s a shot of the herb and fruit garden that’s just about done. It looks a little corporate right now, but as things fill in the mulch to green ratio should reverse. The post title courtesy of Milo, who just started saying it for some reason.
With the thaw comes the discovery of various forgotten or hidden treasures in the garden that have made it through the winter unscathed. A week ago, on the first nice Saturday of the year, I was out there turning compost into beds and unearthing a remarkable variety of things- not all of which were expected. We leave parsnips until March so there’s something to enjoy before the first greens come up, and there were some…