In Praise of Roots

Thinning carrots can be a delicious task.

I try not to play favorites in my garden, but I am growing increasingly enamored of my root vegetables.  They are easy to grow, have long windows for harvest, and the thinnings can usually be eaten.  The carrots, for instance, have defied their prima donna reputation and been extremely low maintenance.  Plus there’s the bonus of getting to eat the little carrots I pull out to make room for all the others to grow big.

Beets have been even easier and more versatile.  I thinned out the earliest growth and got delicious beet greens for salads, and now I can thin out the baby beets for fancy appetizers.  Onions, too, can be thinned and used as scallions, and garlic scapes have been all the rage on the blogs lately.  Potatoes are one of the least fussy vegetables I can think of.

I’m not saying I’m about to rip the tomato plants out of my garden and plant turnips instead, but I think next year I will plant more of these low investment, high return root veggies.  On the other hand… is it too late to sow parsnips?

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Sauteed Fava Beans with Squash Blossoms

I am not exactly a morning person, so I don’t usually make it to the Sunday market at the 9am opening bell. But this Sunday I needed to do my market run early before heading out for a day of tubing on the Shenandoah. This meant I had my pick of all the exciting new things that would get sold out by 9:30. And when I saw a few market-goers furiously picking at a rapidly dwindling pile of fava beans, I seized the opportunity and joined the fray.

But then I realized I didn’t know the first thing about choosing fava beans, having never bought them before. So I asked the man picking out beans next to me for advice, and that man just so happend to be cooking instructor and personal chef Oliver Friendly of Eat and Smile Foods. He told me that you have to squeeze the bumps on the pods to make sure there’s actually a bean underneath, because sometimes the bump can be hollow. He also said that even a chock-full pod will lose about 60% of its weight after the pod and seed coats get discarded. So favas are not exactly a cheap veggie, but people seem to go nuts over them.

Last night I shelled the beans, blanched them for a couple minutes, then shocked them in cold water and removed the seed coats. They went from this volume:

To this volume:

Still, it was enough for a nice little meal when I sauteed the beans with some other veggies. I chopped up some red spring onions and caramelized them in some bacon fat (I was all out of butter and olive oil). I deglazed with a good amount of wine, tossed in the beans, then added basil and chopped squash blossoms from my garden. Salt, pepper, and lemon juice rounded out the sauce.

The beans were buttery and sweet and mild. I’m not sure I get why people are so inordianately wild about them, but they certainly were tasty, and it was fun to try something new. I wonder if they’d be easy to grow in my garden next year…

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Summer Arrives at the Market

In the spring the farmers market would have perhaps one or two new vegetables each week, in addition to all the old stand-bys like potatoes and storage onions and overwintering kale. The start of asparagus season was a Very Big Deal. Then the next week ramps would be the hot new thing. But now it is officially summer, and the market has so many new items each week it’s hard to keep up. Fava beans! Fennel! Sweet cherries! Tomatillos! Squash blossoms! And although hothouse eggplants and tomatoes have been available for at least a month, now the outdoor varieties are showing up as well. It’s enough to make a locavore forget all about the meager offerings of a few scant months ago.

Yellow and purple cauliflower, stacked beautifully

Tomatillos, peppers, and yellow tomatoes

Eggplants and tomatoes

Sweet cherries and strawberries

Squash, and blossoms

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Sunday Photos: Tomatoes, Mutant and Otherwise

I’ve come to the conclusion that I need to get a real digital camera.  The camera on my iPhone has served me amazingly well, given all the features it lacks, but I need something that can work for a greater range of distances and light levels.

But the important thing about today’s photos is not the quality, but the content: tomatoes!  I savored my garden’s first tomatoes yesterday, right off the vine and still warm from the sun.  True, I bought this Sun Gold orange cherry tomato plant at Whole Foods and did not start it myself from seed.  But it was still a delicious triumph.

Of the tomatoes I did start from seed, the Dr. Carolyn and the Brandywine are the furthest along.  The Brandywine had what looked to be a big clump of green tomatoes all bunched together and crowding each other out.  But on closer inspection, I realized that it was actually all one giant mess of a single tomato.  Each lobe of this mutant tomato just happened to look like an individual fruit, but they were all fused together at the base so I have to believe it all came from one flower.

To anyone out there who has grown Brandywines before, please tell me: is this normal, or do I have true oddity on my hands?

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Podcasts for your Garden or Kitchen

I have the luxury of being able to walk to work, and on my daily commute I usually listen to podcasts on my iPhone.  Just as there are blogs to suit every taste, there are podcasts in every theme imaginable – including cooking and gardening.  I subscribe through iTunes, but the podcasts are available direct on the web as well.  Some of my favorite are:

• Greendays Gardening Panel: This is a weekly feature of KUOW radio in Seattle, in which gardening experts discuss some topic and also take questions from listeners.  My grandmother has called into this program on a few occasions in years past!  The program is accessible, but not too basic, and the call-in portion offers a glimpse into the woes and successes of other people’s gardens.
• GardeNerd Tip of the Week: An enthusiastic, compact little podcast, clocking in at no more than two minutes per episode, the straightforward suggestions are helpful for beginners and good reminders even for those with gardening experience.
• Ken Druse – Real Dirt: Sage advice from a nationally known garden expert.  Thanks to Susan Harris for publicizing (and appearing on) this podcast.
• Good Food with Evan Kleiman: Another NPR show available in podcast form, I love this show’s discussions about food, wine, trends, and politics.
• Dinner Party Download: This awesome podcast was highlighted on The Kitchn recently.  It’s only partially about food; the show also functions as a weekly news summary and history lesson.  The conceit is that each segment is akin to a phase of a dinner party, starting with an ice breaker, moving on through cocktails and small talk and a guest of honor, and ending with a foodie main course.

Does anyone have other suggestions for podcasts about food, gardening, or sustainability?

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A Cocktail for All Seasons

Earlier this year I wrote about a cocktail I invented, which I called the Winter in Dupont Circle.  Home-made ginger-infused vodka paired with lemon juice and pear cider, it was a fun drink to make during cider season.  So imagine my delight when last Sunday one of the vendors at the Dupont farmers market once again had pear cider.  Apparently they froze half-gallon jugs of it and just now pulled them out of cold storage.  So I mixed up a batch of ginger-infused vodka and tweaked the recipe just slightly to make a more punch-like summer version of the drink.

Summer in Dupont Circle

1 part ginger-infused vodka
2 parts fresh pear cider
1/4 part lemon juice
Lemon peel for garnish

Fill a small or medium mason jar halfway with ice and add all ingredients, making sure to flex the lemon peel so that some of the essential oils get into the drink.  Stir and serve.

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