Archive for May, 2009

Tossing the arugula into a salad

Sunday, May 31st, 2009

The leaves are deep green. My arugula is threatening to go to seed.

arugula31

I have picked the best of the crop–shearing it off with a scissor in my hurry to be quick and make the most of it. Now that I’ve got it in the kitchen–washed and rewashed and spun dry–it’s going into the salad pot. It will be the base for a salad based on an Alice Waters recipe that is easy and failure proof.

What’s in it: arugula, fennel [a bulb of it shaved as thin as you can manage], mushrooms sliced thin [preferably shitake but any mushroom will do], a hunk of parmesan cheese shaved thin. The dressing is olive oil and lemon juice, salt and pepper. Meyer lemons make this salad especially delicious but regular lemons will have to do at this time of year.

All you have to do is assemble the salad: argula topped with fennel and mushrooms. Dress with oil and lemon juice [lemon to taste], salt and pepper, and then top with the parmesan.

I told you it was easy. And it’s such a simple variation on a tossed salad that it can be an everyday treat.

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Leeks are ready for the pot

Monday, May 25th, 2009

Les Jardins went out into her jardin and found leeks ready for the pulling. She brought them in, put them in her sink, and slit them open to let water sluice over them. Leeks need really really thorough washing.

three-leeks-small_200526653-001Once they were clean, she got ready to make a risotto. She had on hand: 2 leeks, 1 clove of garlic, olive oil and 1/2 cup of arborio rice, splash of dry vermouth, 2 cups  hot chicken stock, and a few large handfuls of parmesan cheese.

Leeks and garlic were chopped and sauteed in olive oil until they were soft. The rice went in and when the kernels turned a chalky white, she added a splash of vermouth, which she let bubble away. Then comes the tedious part. She started adding the hot chicken stock–a little at a time, about a ladle’s worth,  stirring and adding more as each addition disappears into the rice. She doesn’t always use all the stock–usually just about 1 1/2 cups  for 1/2 cup rice– but likes having two cups on hand just in case.

She then takes the rice off fire, tosses in great big handfuls of grated parmesan–or less, if that’s your taste. She serves it right away. A big bowl of it can be a main course, but she usually serves as a side dish with sauteed scallops, fish, chicken or pork. It’s a bit heavy as a side with beef.

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Lettuces are in the ground or going to pot

Sunday, May 24th, 2009

My arugula, planted in April, is a harvest that keeps giving. I will have to keep picking quickly since the days are growing warm and arugula doesn’t care for that. Not many lettuces do.

LesJardins waited until May to put oak leaf, Cos and other lettuces in the ground and, yes, in pots.  She bought a mixed six-pack of seedlings. Her pot is 12 inches across and she has put a few seedlings in there.  Some of the space for her grounded lettuce is where her chard that over-wintered was growing. She ate the last of it last week. Her onions are in the ground and her peas, she says, are taking their sweet time. They are about 6 inches tall.

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Return of the Onion Patch

Friday, May 22nd, 2009

Les Jardin reports that last year’s onion crop–she grew them from a set of 50–was meager at best.  She hadn’t pulled all of them and sort of forgot about them. Now, here they are in all their post-winter growth. She’s cut off their scapes (shoots). “I don’t know if that’s the right thing to do,” she says. “But I did it on the general principle that you want the plant to put its energy into the bulb. Now I’m waiting for the green leaves to fall over and when they do, I’ll pull the onions out of the ground and see what I’ve got.”

bunch-spring-oignons_103717

Stay tuned.  There’s likely an onion panade in our future.

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Cooking the Chard Harvest

Thursday, May 14th, 2009

Les Jardin continues to harvest her over-wintered chard. Quite a bountiful crop. This time she used it to make a chard panade . This is her recipe, for one person, adapted from the Zuni Cafe cookbook.

Have on hand: one cup of shredded Gruyere, half a red onion sliced, a few cloves of garlic, a TB or two of olive oil, a cup of chicken stock, a cup of bread cubes [a hearty French type of bread], a cup or so of leftover cooked chard [see recipe in previous post] and a casserole to bake it in.
cookec-hard Put the bread cubes in a bowl and pour about 1/3 of the stock onto the cubed bread and let it soak.
Saute the red onion and garlic in olive oil.
Put a layer of the onion mixture in the bottom of the casserole, top it with a layer of bread cubes, a layer of cooked chard and a layer of cheese; repeat as often as the ingredients last. Carefully pour the remaining stock around the edge of the casserole, a little at a time.

Put a lid on the casserole and place the casserole on a sheet of tin foil. Put the whole thing in a preheated 375 degree over. Bake for 45 minutes. Uncover and bake an additional 20 minutes or so until the top is brown and bubbly.

Let it cool down, then eat it for dinner. It makes enough for a hearty meal for one or a side dish for two. To make enough for a main course for two, double the ingredients. You can also substitute spinach or other hearty greens for the chard.

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Bunnies in the Garden

Saturday, May 9th, 2009

Les Jardin has seen BunBun in her backyard. The rabbit is munching the clover in her lawn. “He can eat all he wants,” she says. What he is not eating is her snap peas. Once her peas got too big for remay–the point at which they wanted to climb–she took the remay away and replaced it with a circular enclosure of chicken wire. The chicken wire is two feet tall. “I can reach into the garden,” Les says. “The bunny can’t.”
She doesn’t have a deer problem. If she did, she’d be building an outpost like mine.

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Chard is first in the pot this spring

Friday, May 1st, 2009

chard

chard

Last year’s chard in Les Jardin’s jardin over-wintered. That is, Les J went out to her cold frame–the cold frame she hadn’t paid any attention to all winter–and found that a few warm days (precious few this Spring) had produced a bountiful crop of chard from seedlings planted in late summer. Too much chard. She pulled out everything that was going to seed but still had so big a harvest that she had to give some of her bounty to a neighbor.

She had a massive portion of her chard for dinner the other night. Here’s what she did with it:

Took the leaves off the stems/ribs and chopped the ribs, reserving the leaves, which she also chopped.

Put a tablespoon or so of olive oil in a large pan and threw in 2 smashed garlic cloves to brown them, sprinkled on a few hot pepper flakes and added the chopped ribs, stirring occasionally till they softened.

Then she added the leaves, still wet from their washing, a touch of salt and 2 tablespoons or so of water.

Put a lid on it and cooked it several minutes over a lowered heat.

The cooked chard goes well with anything–chicken, meat, fish or even just a baked potato stuffed with cottage cheese and cheddar or any variation on a cheesey combination.

(And leftovers were great in a potato and chard frittata. –LJ)

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