Archive for July, 2009

13 Jul

The Joys of Summer: Simple Lunches

Posted by wooddogs3 in cooking, edible landscaping, front yard gardening, herbs, recipe, sustainable, Uncategorized, urban homesteading, Vegetable dinners, vegetable gardening. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , .

july 2009 011
There are few things I love more than leisurely weekend lunches eaten on our back patio, with good food and sweet surroundings. I don’t like to fuss in the kitchen for these meals, though, and in this season there’s no reason to. With tomatoes and basil in the yard or at the farmers market, a bottle of olive oil, and a good loaf of sourdough bread, you’re set.

First, catch your tomatoes. Meaty beefsteak types are delicious here, but you can use any really flavorful tomato, including ripe sweet Sungold or Green Grape cherry tomatoes. If you have bland and blah tomatoes, do something else with them; this demands great tomato flavor. If you don’t bake your own bread, get a good loaf of crusty sourdough or a crusty baguette; in our area the baguettes from Sage Bakehouse are hard to beat. Make your basil into pesto according to your favorite recipe or use my own favorite below. During the summer, I usually have some pesto handy, and it will keep a day or two without much loss of flavor, making this truly fast food. It’s also good for a mixed group of omnivores, vegetarians, and vegans.

You’ll need (at a minimum) half a big beefsteak tomato or one regular tomato or at least a dozen cherry tomatoes per person. When you’re ready to eat, slice the tomatoes and spread them out on a plate. A lot of juice will probably run out on the cutting board. Make sure to pour it onto the plate. Juice is half the point here. Drizzle with pesto and sprinkle with coarse sea salt. Drizzle on a little of your best olive oil. Slice the bread and toast or grill it. Bring the tomatoes and bread to the table on two separate plates, with a small plate for each person. The lucky eaters will need a spoon to scoop tomatoes and juice onto their crusty bread. They will also need to be sufficiently at ease to shamelessly rub their bread into the delicious juices on the tomato plate. Have plenty of napkins handy.
For more on pesto, click here! Continue reading →

12 Jul

Fava Beans, and Oyster Mushrooms

Posted by wooddogs3 in cooking, edible landscaping, front yard gardening, home food production, mushrooms, recipe, salads, sustainable, urban homesteading, vegetable gardening. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , .

june 2009 017
Fava beans are a chic ingredient these days, but they’re more versatile than people realize. I learned this when I came across the leaves being sold at the beautiful farmer’s market in San Francisco as a salad green. I bought some and loved them, so this year I set out to grow my own.

In February I planted eight seeds of Broad Windsor fava beans in one of my large containers, about six inches apart. All of them sprouted, and I let them grow unchecked until they were nearly a foot high. At that point, I cut two of the plants and used all their leaves for an early salad, along with some romaine lettuce. The leaves are very mild in flavor and have an appealing tender texture. They marry well with a wide variety of other salad ingredients, including the delicate ones like butter lettuce, mache, and pansy leaves. Vinaigrettes that aren’t too strong and contain a little nut oil or a light, flowery Provencal olive oil work well.

I let the remaining plants grow until they had bloomed and set small pods. At that point, I cut off 6-8 inches of the tops of those plants, above the pods, and used the leaves in salads, which did no discernible harm to the maturing pods. As soon as the pods were filled out and I could feel beans inside about half to three quarters of an inch across, I picked the pods. A traditional Italian way to eat them is by themselves, raw on the plate, with thin slivers of young pecorino. It’s very good, but I thought they were great in this mushroom pasta. It’s vegetarian but has a substantial, meaty quality, and the slight delicious bitterness of the raw young fava beans is just what’s needed to give dimension to the flavor.

During the winter I grew my own oyster mushrooms but while the farmers markets are open I get them from Exotic Edibles of Edgewood, which is a good deal easier. You can find Scott and Gail, our local mushroom mavens, at the Downtown growers’ market on Saturday mornings.
Click here for the recipe! Continue reading →

6 Jul

The First Tomatoes

Posted by wooddogs3 in cooking, edible landscaping, front yard gardening, fruit, herbs, home food production, recipe, sustainable, urban homesteading, vegetable gardening. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , .

july 2009 009
A grill offers wonderful vegetable cooking options. It’s a pity that most people only cook meat on their grills, because grilled vegetables make wonderful and satisfying summer meals. If you are a grilling enthusiast, or would like to become one, I highly recommend the elegant cookbook by Francis Mallmann Seven Fires: Grilling the Argentine Way. My husband, the family grill-wallah, was intrigued by the directions for Burnt Tomatoes, and set out to make a great tomato sandwich. All the hot work stays outside, and your kitchen is spared. Of course you can buy tomatoes at the Farmers Market if you don’t grow them yourself, but if you plant a few around your house, you’re likely to realize why they were grown as an ornamental even back when they were thought to be poisonous.
july 2009 004
Click here for the recipe! Continue reading →

4 Jul

The Joys of Summer: dinner on the grill

Posted by wooddogs3 in cooking, edible landscaping, fish and seafood, front yard gardening, home food production, preserving, recipe, sustainable, urban homesteading, vegetable gardening. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , .

june 2009 033

When it’s too damn hot to heat up the kitchen, the pleasures of summer dinners are just getting started. My garden is producing huge beautiful heads of broccoli right now, and the blossoms have died off the potatoes, indicating that I can start digging new potatoes. You can go to the Los Ranchos or Corrales farmers markets and find the Fishhuggers, Kenny and Brenna, who will sell you a splendid King Salmon “breakfast” steak from a fish personally caught by Kenny. They do beautifully on the grill. Add one large sweet potato and you’re all set. The small amount of prep work can be done in the morning, before the heat starts, and then the entire meal is finished on the grill.  If you read my earlier post (“The First Garlic,” three posts ago)and made garlic confit, you have a head start on the prep work. 

King salmon is loaded with omega 3 fatty acids, and personally I would rather eat delicious food than take pills, so for me the choice to eat Kenny’s wild-caught sustainable Alaskan fish whenever I can afford it is an easy one.

This meal is especially nice if you need to feed vegans and vegetarians as well as fish-eaters, because the vegetables are so satisfying by themselves.

Clich here for the recipe! Continue reading →

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »