Tuesday, December 4, 2007

Winter prep

This Saturday was a beautiful sunny day, though below freezing. The weather called for a snow storm that night. So, Rick and I finally did the last clean up in the yard before everything got coated in white. The leaves this year had stuck on the trees very late, so there were still a lot of them to rake up and compost. I cut the raspberry canes down to a foot height. I'm always nervous about doing this as it seems extreme, but whenever I look it up I am assured that this is the right thing to do. And besides, I know from experiences, it's pretty much impossible to kill a raspberry patch. Try as you might to the contrary, they will always grow back.
Finally, I decided to trim all the collards since they were flopping over and were partially frozen. There were at least 8 full sized plants - that's a lot of collards. So I cut the stalks and discarded the tough and discoloured leaves. Then carried arm-loads of collards up to the kitchen. I cut each leaf off the stem, filling the sink and two soup pots up with the leaves! After washing each leaf, I cut out the stems. Then I divided the lot into thirds, two thirds to be blanched and frozen and one third I made into Collard pesto, which I adapted from a recipe I got off the internet that was surprisingly good.

Freezing Collards (or any other greens)
Blanching method
-Cut out stems and trim off any discoloured or whithered bits
-Boil a large pot of salted water
-Have a pot of ice-cold water ready on the counter
-In small batches, bath the collards in the boiling water for about 1-2 minutes (the tougher the greens, the longer they should be blanched), they should turn a vivid green
-Scoop out the greens and immediately dunk into the ice water to stop them cooking
-Drain and let drip dry in a colander
-Chop into bit-sized pieces and pack into freezer bags in appropriate serving sizes.
-Put in freezer

I'm looking forward to using them in soups, stews, stir-fries or just as steamed greens on those days cold winter days when I am in need of some GREEN. Collards are extremely healthy being high in Vitamin A, iron and calcium.

Collard Pesto
-collards
-10 black olives (without pits)
-2-6 cloves of garlic (depending on how much your household loves garlic)
-olive oil
-chili pepper
-Parmesan cheese
-10 almonds or pine nuts
-salt and pepper

Boil the de-stemmed collards in a big pot of salt water for about 8 minutes. Drain and let cool for a few minutes.
Meanwhile, in a blender, grind the olives, garlic and almonds until almost a coarse paste. Add the collards and chili pepper. Blend until smooth, adding olive oil to taste and to get the right consistency. Grate in good quality parmesan cheese and add the salt and pepper.

This creates an amazingly emerald coloured pesto, a much brighter green than the traditional basil. Works just as well on pasta or bread as the regular stuff.

Friday, September 28, 2007

No more garden but still good food

We're in Berlin right now so we're missing out on the final harvest of the garden. However, we are still enjoying cooking here, though our the kitchen of our sublet is rather tiny. There really is only room for one to be working at a time, the other has to sit at the table or stay clear of the kuche altogether. Yesterday, we bought some popular local mushroom called pfefferlings. They resemble oyster mushrooms is shape but are a mustardy-yellow colour and are smaller. I combined the pfefferlings and some shitake mushrooms into a beautifully simply soup for lunch yesterday. Just the thing for a raining day. (It was actually the first lousy weather we've had since being here. It's been remarkably sunny and warm).

Pfefferlingcremesoupen

-3 medium kartoffel, chopped
-1 zweibel, chopped
- 2 cups of wasser
-1 cup of pfefferlings and shitakes, chopped finely
-1 tbsp butter
-2 knaublauch
-fresh basillica
-salz und pfeffer
-1 cup of milch

Put the kartoffel and zweibel into a pot with wasser. Bring to a boil, reduce and let simmer for 1/2 hour. Once the kartoffel is soft, mash them up a bit so that the stock is thick. In a separate skillet briefly sauté the mushrooms in butter and garlic. Add them to the soup. Simmer for a few minutes. Add the basillica, salz und pfeffer. Reduce heat to minimum. Add the milch.

Serve with good german brot und kaiser.
Prost!

Friday, August 24, 2007

Soup for a tight budget














One of my favourite recipes when there's not a lot in the cupboard or in my wallet is Lentil Soup with Couscous and Kale. I invented it one cold night when we had some left-over couscous and not much else in the house. I always love to make soups and this is one of my best. It's satisfying, healthy, colourful, easy and above all dirt cheap. Lentils are the perfect budget food since they very inexpensive when you buy them dry, which is actually the best way to buy them anyway. Canned lentils aren't very good. Plus unlike dried beans, they don't have to be soaked overnight and cook up quickly so you don't even have to be good at planning dinners ahead. This recipe has come in handy numerous times when we've been tight for cash, which sadly happens more often than not as a couple of artists. But you never feel poor when you've got this in your belly.

I made this last week because we have a lot of kale on our hands from the garden and we're saving up for a trip to Berlin, so I'm trying to be ever so frugal.

Lentil Soup with Couscous and Kale

the soup:
- one onion
- several garlic cloves depending on how much you love garlic and how fresh it is
- a red or green pepper (optional, raises the price)
- a carrot or two
- a medium fresh tomato or about 1/3 cup of canned or strained tomatoes
-1/2 tsp coriander seeds
-1/2 tsp onion seeds or mustard seeds (optional, not everyone likes these)
-1/4 tsp cumin seeds
-1 tsp curry powder
-1/4 tsp garam masala
-small hot pepper
-1 tbsp cooking oil
-1 cup orange lentils (the really little ones)
- 2-3 cups of water or stock
-Salt and pepper to taste

Garnish:
-steamed kale
-cooked couscous

Instructions:
Toast the seeds in hot oil, add onion and simmer until the onion softens. Add chopped peppers and carrots. Add the chopped tomato and the curry powder and garam masala, finely diced hot pepper and garlic to make a rue of spices. This should not be an overpoweringly hot soup, just a little piquant, so be cautious with quantities of spices. Wash lentils then add to pot, stir for a minute then add the water or stock. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to simmer for 15-20minutes.

Meanwhile, if you don't have already cooked kale and couscous, you can now prepare these.
Serve in a large bowl, pouring soup in first, then spoonfuls of the couscous on top like a crouton in french onion soup and the bright green kale over-top of that.

A Veggie Feast

I'm getting very behind with posting because I'm getting so busy at work and getting ready to go to Berlin in September and October. As a result of our trip, we won't be able to do a fall harvest in the garden. But things have been very dry and a lot of plants have withered so there may not be much to harvest come October anyway.
In effect, we had our harvest feast early. Last weekend I picked the few decent beets and carrots, the last of the green beans and a few of the heritage tomatoes. Since the beets were very small, it didn't make sense to boil them. Instead I shredded the beets and carrots into a small salad dressed with sesame seeds, lemon and a little olive oil.
The tomatoes just got the basil and salt and pepper treatment, while the beans and beet greens were steamed. Rick did a masterful job of transforming left-over rice into a beautiful spicy biryani and created his own home-made falafel balls, which included home-grown coriander seeds. We topped the falafels with plain yogurt.
It was a very colourful and delicious feast. I'm going to miss the garden.

Tuesday, August 14, 2007

Focaccia

There are some kitchen gadgets that seem to be just a big fat waste of counter space and money, but then there are others that I wouldn't do without. One of those is our bread machine. It really is super easy and useful. You just measure out the ingredients, select which type of bread and hit the start button. Three or four hours later you have fresh baked bread. Or, you can put the ingredients in the evening, set the time and in the morning you wake to the incredible aroma of baking bread. That will get anyone out of bed!
This weekend, I tried making focaccia for the first time. I've made numerous pizzas (someday I will show this in the blog) with the "dough setting" but never tried focaccia. With so many ripe cherry tomatoes to use up each day I thought I'd give it a whirl. I added fresh sage, rosemary and oregano to the basic focaccia recipe. When it was finished rising, I removed the dough from the machine and spread it out in two corn-meal dusted pans. After brushing lightly with olive oil I then dimpled the top with cherry tomatoes and scattered some sea salt on top. It baked up beautifully in the oven in about 25 minutes.
Voila. Lovely for breakfast, lunch or dinner.

Friday, August 3, 2007

You say toe-mat-toes and I say toe-may-toes...















Yes, they are here. The great red globes, the tiny scarlet pearls, the pointy ones and the giants. We've got tomatoes!
It's always such a thrill to have the first cherry tomato right off the vine. This actually happened more than two weeks ago, but I've been very busy and haven't been keeping up with posts. But the first full sized tomatoes ripened last weekend. We had two tomatoes from the store in our fruit bowl, so we did a "blind" taste test. (Blind is in quote because we put the slices on the plate, looked at them and then decided to close our eyes). Hands down, there really isn't any competition even if it wasn't a very fair test. Indeed, the judges were rather biased from the start, but nonetheless... The garden tomato wins for flavour, texture, colour and smell. Oh, that smell. How I love it.














In this photo, left to right: Early girl, Nebraska Wedding, Cherokee.

Friday, July 20, 2007

Great Garlic




























Rick pulled the first garlic the other day. The leaves are starting to wither so we can probably pull all of them this weekend. I want to see if I can braid them to hang them to dry. This first bulb was used in a simple pasta with herbs and olive oil. We were blown away by the favour and fragrance. Just amazing. For our first experience with it, garlic has been a resounding success. Aesthetically too, they've been a real treat. The scapes earlier in the season were beautiful curls and now the bulbs are a pleasing pink. Considering that Rick and I basically don't make a dinner without garlic these are definitely plants worth growing again.

Mammoth Collards















The thing that grew the most when we were away were the collards. They are ENORMOUS. I haven't ever grown them so big. So the first day back, I picked about 30 leaves and made a big batch of "cabbage" rolls. I actually find collards are much easier to work with than cabbage leaves for rolls. You don't have to try to peal them off the cabbage head - I always tear half of them when I try to do this. All you have to do with collards is cut the stalk off and blanch them. The picture above is right after the collards have been blanched. They turn such a rich green and are very malleable for rolling. I fill my "cabbage" rolls with a mix of kasha, rice, onions, raisins, garlic, hot pepper, parsley, oregano and almonds. I find the dark nuttiness of the kasha is a great combination with the collards.
I made enough to fill one large and one small pan of rolls. We had the small that night with a tomato sauce and the large pan went into the freezer for another time.

After



So, this is what the garden looks like after two weeks away. I was actually a bit surprised it wasn't bigger. But apparently the weather in Toronto hadn't been all that hot (unlike where we were!) and it had rained a lot. Plus Alex had done some weeding in the lettuce area to keep things under control.
The nasturtiums have really burst into bloom. You can see them in the lower left corner of the right photo. Though in the front yard, they are still quite small with only a few blooms. I guess they are not getting enough sun there. The leeks are also all in bloom, which the bees love. They are such beautiful mauve globes and make great cut flowers.
Nonetheless, there is definitely noticeable growth. The collards and kale in particular were surprisingly huge and the garlic is just about ready to harvest. The yellow zuchini has wound its way around the gargage wall and there have been a couple edible cucumbers (the first ever not lost to squirrels!) I've spotted two or three ripening cherry tomatoes, but they haven't really started yet.

Friday, June 29, 2007

Before



Well, we're going away on vacation to Banff for two weeks. So this is what the garden looks like the day before we leave. I can only imagine what it's going to look like when we come back! It's probably going to be a jungle of weeds. I'll post a comparison.
I'm going to miss having fresh salads right out of the garden each day, but then, I guess I can't complain since I'll be in the mountains. I expect that the lettuce will have gone to seed once we're back. If we're lucky, there will still be some yellow beans. We had the first ones for dinner yesterday, stir-fried with some peas and kale. Perhaps also the cherry tomatoes will be ripening and the cucumbers. I'm also going to miss inspecting the garden each morning and being amazed by how much it has grown in just one day. Seeing it two weeks later will be such a big jump.

Thursday, June 21, 2007

scapes, not snakes

So you learn something every day, especially these days when you have the internet. The thing I learned yesterday is that the curly tops of garlic plants are called "scapes" and they are edible. In fact, I already suspected they were edible since I've seen bunches of these curlicues in Chinatown. I just didn't know what they were since we've never grown garlic before.
About a week or so ago we started to notice that our garlic plants were starting to send up central stalks from the leaves. They shot up pretty quickly then started to curl around on themselves. From the internet research, I learnt that to encourage the plants to put all their energies into bulb development, farmers cut these tops off when they have done two full curls. This is done before the plant blooms. Then mostly farmers just compost these. What a waste!
The scapes can be used to make a mild pesto or they can be added to stirfries. So yesterday, we clipped the most curly examples (about 6) and added them to a stir-fry cut up in inch-long pieces. Wow. The texture was a great addition - much like a green bean - and the flavour was a wonderful surprise. Milder than garlic cloves but distinctively garlicky. Plus, the scapes look so lovely. They are my new favourites!

Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Sad Beets

For the past couple years, the beet crop has gotten more and more disappointing. The rows come up very sporadic and they don't grow to a very large size. Last year I thought it was caused by poor seeds, but this year we tried several different varieties and brands and yet they are still a poor showing. All the leafy greens are going really well but both the radishes, carrots and beets, all root-forming, are doing terrible. So Alex and I have concluded that we must be missing something in the soil that encourages root development, but we have yet to determine what that is. Nitrogen is good for leaf production, so we must have lots of that, as can be seen in the previous two postings.
Alex and I will have to research whether we need to add more phosphorus or potassium and how to go about doing it naturally.

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Bok Choi


Last year we tried bok choi for the first time, with only two plants and were surprisingly pleased. I'd always found bok choi to just be bland and watery any time I've bought it in the store. But boy does it ever taste good fresh from the garden. It's crisp and sweet. The stalks taste a bit like celery but without that bitterness that can sometimes make celery unpleasant. I like to even eat it raw.
So this year we decided to grow a whole row of bok choi. It grows very quickly, but unfortunately something was eating it almost as quickly. I would find little holes in the leaves, which started to become very big holes. I sprayed the bok choi with a garlic-pepper spray, which I made from a "You Grow Girl" recipe. It didn't seem to be having much effect. I though perhaps it was slugs or snails (I've seen a lot of the latter this year) so I was going to put beer out.
Then last Thursday I went to the farmer's market. One of the farmers was selling nice bunches of bok choi. While they also had some holes, there were far fewer than on ours. So I asked him what were the culprits. He said that these type of greens get eaten by a small black beetle that comes out during the heat of mid-day. All he does is cover the bok chois with a white cloth similar to cheesecloth, which keeps out these beetles. So I did some research and discovered that you can get this cloth - called floating row cover - at Lee Valley Tools. Conveniently, I can walk to Lee Valley's downtown store from work so I got a 50' roll of floating row cover on Friday. After only a couple days of the bok choi (as well as the kale, collards and swiss chard) being covered, we've seen a marked difference in the amount of holes in the leaves. The floating row cover lets the sunshine and rain through, but is very finely woven so insects can't get through. We've secured it to the ground by using chopsticks as tent-pegs.
Last night we had our first meal made with bok choi. I made a stir-fry with bok choi, carrots, tofu, thai basil, coriander and peanuts. Yum.

Thursday, June 7, 2007

Super Salads

We're starting to get a few good sized salad greens. These are the greens I picked for last night's dinner.
The purple ones are the red giant mustards and the spiky ones are the Mizuna mustards. The speckled ones - though a little hard to see in the photo - are the forellenschluss, which have an delicate buttery taste contrasting nicely with the sharper mustards.

Since this isn't really enough for a full salad for two, I filled it out with some beautiful leaf lettuce from our local organic farmer's market. The giant verdurous head made me somewhat jealous - you could say I was green with envy! haha - but I must remember that the farmers have green houses and I don't.
I topped the salad with some spicy radish and mustard green sprouts and some local hothouse tomatoes that actually had some flavour. For sprouts, I just thin the radishes and mustards to prevent overcrowding and throw them into the mix. When tiny the sprouts are quite hot, more so than when full grown.

To go with the salad I made my famous (in our house) tuna melts, also with a few elements from the garden.














Here's the recipe:
-finely chopped onion
-finely chopped celery if you have (didn't this time)
-finely chopped radishes
-chives - from the garden
-dill, fennel and caraway fronds also from the garden
-a big spoonful of plain yogurt
-a little spoonful of dijon mustard
-fresh pepper
-sea salt
-can of tuna packed in water

Mix these all together than spread onto fresh bread. This time we had rosemary bread from the farmer's market, but usually I have homemade whole wheat or oatmeal. Bake at 375F for about 8 minutes.
Than put the slices of old cheddar cheese onto the open-face sandwiches. Bake for a couple more minutes, than turn the oven to grill and watch them carefully (500F) to really get the cheese nice and crispy but not burnt. Go turn off the fire alarm because about this point it always goes off needlessly.
Enjoy!

Thursday, May 31, 2007

2007 List of Herbs

So on the may long weekend we also re-dug the herb garden and added new soil. It's in a particularly gravelly spot, with lots of shards of broken pottery in the soil. The previous owners for some reason thought broken pottery would keep weeds down or something like that. (?!?)
We dug out any of the perennials and replanted them in the new soil, rearranging a bit because some of them weren't in ideal spots. Then we picked out the annual herbs and added them to the garden.
Herbs for 2007:

Flat-leaf parsley - biennial from last year, and seeding itself.
lemon thyme - perennial, but regular thyme didn't come back
Sage -perennial
garlic chives - perennial
chives - perennial
French tarragon - perennial
Rosemary - annual
Black opal basil - annual
Thai basil - annual
Dill - annual
Fennel - annual (first time I'm trying this)
Caraway - biennial (also first time on this)
Lemon balm - perennial
Spearmint - perennial (added new this year)
Greek oregano - perennial (also added new this year)
Vietnamese coriander - annual (I've never seen this before and was intrigued)
Coriander - annual seeding itself like crazy in our next door neighbour's yard, he's given us some. This is put in the vegetable garden instead of the herb garden since it does so well beside the tomatoes.
Genovese Basil - annual. Also in the vegetable garden between tomatoes.

While that sounds like a lot, it actually doesn't take up too much room. I'm looking forward to experimenting with the caraway, which looks a lot like dill, but gets much taller. I've never even seen fresh caraway in the grocery store. I expect it can be used much like fennel or dill. The Vietnamese coriander is the type that goes into the salad rolls, which are my favourite at Vietnamese restaurants. I'll have to learn how to make them.

Wednesday, May 30, 2007

2007 list of plants

The May 24 weekend is supposedly the biggest gardening weekend of the year in Canada, as it is finally safe to put any frost-sensitive plants in the grown. This spring has been particularly cool so we really did have to wait for the holiday for the tomatoes, etc. I got a few things in prior to then, mostly peas and radishes.
So here is the final list of what are this year's plants in the vegetable patch:

Tomatoes
4 - Early Girls (actually 3 now since one was killed by squirrels)
2 - Beef stake
2 - Brandywine
4 - Sweet Millions
1 - Cherokee Purple Heritage
1 - Nebraska Wedding Orange Heritage

Peppers
Jalapeño
Thai
Super Chili

Beans
Blue Lake pole beans around a wicker pyramid
Yellow Snap bush beans

Peas
Sugar Snap peas
Snow peas
Little Marvels

Roots
Cylindra beets
detroit dark red beets
Chantenay Red Carrot
French breakfast radish
Cherry belle radish
Champion radish
Burbank potatoes - more about this later!

Salad greens
Brun D'Hiver
Bronze Arrow
Forellenschluss
Romaine
arugula
Red Giant Mustard
Tatsoi (very few have sprouted, I feel it's a bust)
Mizuna Mustard

Other Greens
bokchoy
scotch kale
collards
red swiss chard

Vines
pickling cucumbers
Italian yellow zucchini
Green zucchini

Onion family
Garlic - planted in December
Leeks - planted last year, just maturing now

Edible Flowers / anti-aphid flowers
Nasturtiums
Marigolds

Whew! I think that's everything. If it all goes well, we're going to have one heck of a harvest. I actually picked the first radish yesterday and ate it. It was still a little small but I couldn't resist. By the weekend, we should be able to pick more.

Friday, May 11, 2007

Death to Squirrels

Our street is plagued with vicious mutant black squirrels that no one else is subjected to. They chomp off the tops of tulips, they dig up new seedlings, they take bites out of eggplants then throw them on the ground as though deciding they don't like them... yet they then try another one. Two summers ago they were even ripping through window screens in our house and three other neighbours to break inside. One day a squirrel stole a bag of fresh market bagels off our kitchen table. I'm not joking.
It's really alarming how much devastation they cause and there seems to be no cure. Yet I see beautiful tulips on other streets, I talk to other gardeners about it and they express shock at our problems. Even the other side of the street seems safer.
My neighbour to north side is in complete sympathy. He shoots them with a Super Soaker and shakes his fists at them. It's a good stress relief but is not very effective in keeping them away. The biggest problem is that there are no predators in the city to keep their numbers in check.
We tried building a chicken-wire cage around the plants that they like the most, which was somewhat effective; however, the cage didn't get enough sunlight so the plants didn't do too well. I would happily applaud a city plan to cull the little buggers.
When I express my blood-lust to gentle hearted friends they say "have you tried cayenne pepper." Ha! The squirrels seems to like my garden spicy, maybe they are Mexican. Is there any more effective method that won't hurt the neighbourhood cats? I just want to spend one growing season where I'm not constantly trying to out-wit squirrels. I don't think it's possible. You've got to respect their intelligence. Loath them, but respect them.

Monday, May 7, 2007

Lovely Leeks

Last fall the leeks weren't large enough to harvest so we left them in the ground to over-winter. It was really nice to go be able to pick a leek in the middle of winter. Now that it's spring, they are a decent size and are actually crowding each other out a bit. On Sunday night I pulled four good-sized leeks and used them in a curry. It's a nice change from onions as they are sweeter and retain their shape and colour a bit when cooked.

Thursday, May 3, 2007

Garden Planning


Every free moment that I have, I'm dreaming of what is going to go into my vegetable garden. So far, I've turned about 2/3 of the soil. It was literally back-breaking. I was pretty sore for a week so I haven't gotten to the rest yet. I also sprinkled the soil with "organic fertilizer" aka chicken poop.
I put in sweet peas, sugar snap peas and little marvel peas all in a row along the fence. An hour later, I was looking out the window and saw the squirrels already digging along the row! Curses. They really make my blood boil. I ran out an put chicken wire down over the area that I'd planted, but I think the size of the wire is too big and they can still scratch through. It's now been 10 days and I see ZERO sprouts. Either the seeds were too old or those squirrels have got them all. So I bought another package of sugar snap peas and sprouted them indoors between wet paper towel. They sprouted in 4 days.
I also put in radish seeds outside the same day as the peas in a small area. I "inter-cropped" them with the garlic, since that will take all season to mature. They have cheerfully burst through the soil. I can't wait until we need to thin them so I can have radish greens in a salad.

Friday, March 2, 2007

Coriander seeds

Well I said I'd say something more about our coriander seeds used in the last recipe, so here it is:
I planted cilantro in the herb garden last year, but something came along one night and ate it right down to the ground. I'm guessing that it was probably slugs. Luckily, some cilantro had seeded itself in the vegetable garden from the year's before crop. Actually a lot of cilantro had seeded itself. It was between tomatoes, beside the kale, behind the peppers. It was pretty much everywhere. By the time I noticed it had already grown to a healthy size.
We went away for three weeks last summer to the Maritimes, during the hottest time of the summer. When we got back a lot of plants had flowered and were starting to go to seed, including the cilantro. I guess this is the point we start to call it coriander since that refers to the seeds. Instead of pulling the plants out, I decided to let the coriander keep maturing. After a few weeks there were many bunches of beautiful green seeds on all the plants. At this mature stage, you can really see that cilantro, parsley and carrots are plants in the same family because the leaves, flowers and seeds are all similarly shaped.
When they were ready I put paper bags over the top of all the plants with rubber-bands around the base so that I could cut the plants without loosing any of the seeds. I dried the plants on newspaper for a week then hand-picked them off the twigs. It a truly intoxicating job. The fragrance of coriander was all over my skin. Every few minutes I would bring my hands up to my nose to get a deep breath of it and I would swoon from the hypnotic perfume. I sealed them in glass jar and planned an Indian meal to try them out.
Rick and I were blown away by the taste of these fresh seeds .Only a couple seeds were needed to give a strong coriander flavour to potatoes. It really goes to show that spices you buy at the store are pretty old and spent. Sadly, we're down to our last dozen or so seeds. We're been rationing them to be used in only really special meals. I can't wait to grow more this year.

Wednesday, February 21, 2007

Green Tomato Chutney


I've been into sandwiches in the past couple weeks. Probably because Rick and I have been trying to make a concerted effort to bring our lunches to work to save some money. As vegetarians, the standard lunch-meat sandwiches are not on the menu. So I've been trying to spice up boring ol' cheese sandwiches a bit. Mainly, I've been doing this with the green tomato chutney I made last summer when we had a bumper crop of green zebra tomatoes. This is a heritage variety that doesn't actually turn red. At first it was a little hard to figure out when they are ripe. But eventually I concluded that they are ripe when the green starts to have a slight yellow tint and when you give the tomato a little squeeze it feels soft. They are quite tart tomatoes with beautiful white-ish vertical stripes. They're good in salad or maybe a salsa but we had lots of other tomatoes for that too.
Many years ago I remember helping my mother make green tomato chutney because an early frost had killed all our tomato plants with many unripened tomatoes still on the vines. We made a huge batch and preserved it in mason jars, which sat in the cupboard for years because no one in the family really liked the chutney or knew what to do with it. I obviously didn't want my tomatoes to languish on the shelf in the same way so I did a hunt for good recipes. I also decided to use a combo of rip green zebras and unripe green tomatoes in my chutney because I find that unripe green tomatoes are pretty tasteless and I wanted a nice juicy chutney. I found a good one with a lot of coriander seeds and mustard seeds that give the chutney a really nice spicy-aromatic touch. It also contains raisins and apple, so with the vinegar, it has a lovely sweet and sour contrast.
This chutney goes great with a sharp cheddar or a fried egg sandwich and its killer with a samosa. I gave a jar to my next door neighbour and she's still raving about it months later. She recently introduced me to someone by saying I make a mean chutney. I didn't think it was the top of my list of accomplishments, but I guess so.

Green Tomato Chutney
4 small apples or under-ripe pears, peeled and chopped
4 large under-ripe tomatoes and 4 large ripe green zebra tomatoes, chopped coarsely
2 large onions, chopped
1 cup raisins or currants
1/4 cup black mustard seeds
2 cups firmly packed brown sugar
2 teaspoons salt
1 tablesppon ground coriander (this was also from our garden, more about this another day)
1 tablespoon ground ginger
2 teaspoons ground cardamom

Combine all ingredients in a large pand, stir over heat, without boiling until sugar is dissolved. Simmer, uncovered about 1 hour or until thick, stirring occassionally. Spoon hot chutney into sterilised jars and seal immediately. Keeps for about 6 months unopened. Refrigerate after opening. Makes about 4 jars.

Wednesday, February 7, 2007

vine-leaf rolls from the garden in the dead of winter


This weekend it was definitely the first bitterly cold weather we've had this winter. Since I didn't want to leave the house, I decided it was a perfect occasion to get a little reminder of summer.
In early August I had preserved two jars-full of vine leaves from our concord grape vine in the backyard. I'd been thinking about what a shame it was that this beautiful vine didn't produce decent tasting grapes (they're all skin and pit and unbelievably sour). Suddenly, it struck me that it might be possible to use the leaves for vine-leaf rolls, aka dolmas, aka dolmatas. So I did some research on how to preserve the leaves in brine and spent a hot afternoon in my kitchen blanching the leaves, rolling them into tight little bundles and stuffing them into jars of salt water. About 3 hours worth of work added up to two jars full.
Rick and I used the first jar at the Cottage on the Labour Day weekend. We made about 36 dolmas as our contribution to the Saturday night feast. Just as Rick and I finished rolling up the last cute little packages, the power went out. There was quite a wind storm blowing and it was a surprisingly cool weekend for September. Fortunately, we'd had the woodstove on. So we put the big pot on the woodstove to slowly simmer. After a couple hours at this very low heat, we had some pretty wonderful dolmas. They were a hit, even with my vegetable-phobe uncle Bill.
So this weekend when it was super cold, I thought I'd use the second jar and repeat our success. Unfortunately, I couldn't find the original recipe and I tried to remember what I'd put it them. Then I drank quite a bit of wine while making them and got a little over-zealous in how much of the rice-mixture I put into each leaf. I failed to account for how much the partially-cooked rice would still expand inside the leaves when I simmered them. (A thing I should have remembered from my favourite Horatio Hornblower story where his ship sustains a cannon-ball hole below the water line. The cargo hold is full of rice, which starts to expand as it takes in water. Eventually the whole ship comes apart at the seams!)
As a result, the dolmas didn't turn out quite a beautifully as the original set. There was a few that had to be completely abandoned. The rest were edible only if you held them over a plate when you took a bite. All the stuffing would fall out instead of staying neatly packed in the leaves. They tasted pretty good, but were missing the fresh herbs that we had in the summer.
Still, it was a nice feeling to look out on the blowing snow in the backyard and taste a little bit of the summer garden.