There are few plants I love more than the common maypop, Passiflora incarnata. There are also few plants that I have failed with as consistently since moving to the Southwest. I think it might be our alkaline soil and water that they dislike. This spring, in what has become a yearly ritual, I ordered a plant. I tried amending the soil in that area with acidic cottonseed meal and gypsum. Then I walked away and, beyond regular watering, did nothing more, which made it all the more marvelous when I spotted the first flower.
The passionflower produces a tropical-tasting fruit in cold winter areas. Quite possibly the single best seafood dish I ever made in my life involved seared scallops on a plate coated with a slightly sweet sauce of coconut milk flavored with shallots, a little lemongrass and ginger, and passion fruit juice. The flowers are lovely. A tea made from the leaves is an excellent home remedy for insomnia, and I have read that the shoot tips can be cooked as a vegetable, although I’ve never tried it and don’t vouch for that use.
Mostly, the Maypop gladdens my heart just by existing. But if I ever get any fruit, I do plan to recreate that sauce.
Archive for the ‘herbs’ Category
6 Jul
A Passion for Passiflora
29 Jun
Integrating Your Weeds II: Amaranth
Amaranth is the second of my Holy Trinity of super-nutritious edible weeds. It is a creature of hot weather, and in my garden it’s appearing everywhere right now. Like lambs-quarters it will get huge if allowed to, and unless you have limitless room, your job is not to allow it to.
Consult any good wild-foods guide to identify it, and then assess how much of it you have. If your response is “OMG, it’s everywhere!” then don’t worry about propagating it. Your soil has plenty of seeds. If there are only one or two plants, proceed as for lambs-quarters the first season, and you will have amaranth in perpetuity. I have two varieties, one with smooth stems and one that forms small but unpleasant spines at the leaf joints, and I try to keep the spiny kind from ever going to seed.
Pick them when they’re about a foot high and have a nice large umbrella of leaves on top. I have no interest in eating stems, and I pull off the topmost part with all the largest leaves and add the rest of the plant to the mulch, taking care that it’s completely uprooted.
The greens are fairly mild but have a slight touch of the earthy flavor that’s so pronounced in beet greens. When grown in prime soil the flavor verges on meatiness in a delicious way, and my favorite way of cooking the greens adds other meaty umami flavors.
Wash a mixing bowl full of loosely packed leaves well and wilt them in a small amount of water, stirring frequently over fairly high heat until the leaves all look “cooked.” Drain them, saving all the cooking liquid. Return the cooking liquid to the pot and boil hard to concentrate it to a very small amount, maybe a couple of tablespoons (don’t turn your back on the pot or it will scorch.) Pour into a little bowl and save.
Chop 6 big green onions. Make a basic separation between white and green parts, but don’t get obsessive about it. Separately chop 6 big cloves of garlic. Heat about a quarter cup of olive oil in your largest skillet and cook the white parts over medium-high heat, stirring frequently. When they begin to look a little translucent and “cooked,” add the green parts, cook another couple of minutes, add the garlic, lower the heat to medium, and cook a few minutes more. Meanwhile, put the lump of blanched greens on a cutting board and chop fairly finely in both directions.
When the garlic looks cooked but has not colored at all, add a handful of pitted chopped oil-cured olives to the sautéed mixture and cook another minute.
Add the cooked chopped greens, the tiny amount of cooking liquid, a teaspoon of Spanish smoked paprika or, if you like heat, the same amount of ground chipotle chile. Add a small handful each of chopped parsley and chopped fennel fronds. If not cooking for vegetarians or vegans, add a smashed anchovy fillet or a dash of fish sauce. Cook the mixture over medium-low heat for at least 20 minutes, periodically turning it to get it all completely cooked (a spatula works well.) Taste it, salt to taste, and cook a few more minutes to let the salt blend in. Serve drizzled with good olive oil as a side dish, or fill an omelette with it and add some feta cheese, or bake in phyllo to make a hortapita or little spanakopitas, or do whatever else you fancy with it. Back when I ate bread, I used to love to smear this stuff on slices of grilled baguette and put some grated Parmesan and pine nuts on top. I can remember once baking it in thin bread dough with a raw egg on top, so that when baked in a hot oven the egg came out cooked. You can add cooked chickpeas and bits of cooked meat for a real peasant dinner. It freezes well in vacuum-sealed bags to keep you healthy all winter. When served next to beef or pork, I top each serving with a bit of butter to add to the general animalic savor. I like to have it in the refrigerator for a super-healthy lunch, and it seems to taste best at room temperature.
Incidentally, the main reason for a poor result is not cooking it long enough. If it tastes grassy, keep going until it tastes good. Undersalting is another problem. Add salt cautiously because of the salty olives, but add enough.
If you don’t have a wild good guide that you like, get John Kallas’s “Edible Wild Plants: Wild Food From Dirt to Plate” and you will be glad you did.
22 Jun
Fennel in the Garden and Kitchen; a Nose-to-Tail Herb
Fennel carries the true taste of summer. I love fennel and always have it around, and my favorite form, the only variety that I keep these days, is the subtly metallic bronze fennel. If you want fennel bulbs you will have to grow a bulbing type, but my interest is in other parts of the plant so the bronze suits all my purposes.
The first pleasure it offers is aesthetic: this is a lovely plant to have around. The color isn’t really bronze but a soft coppery-purple, and when hung with drops from a summer rain it is nothing short of breathtaking, in a quiet way. When dry, it is furry like a cat until the stalks form, and a little later the umbels of tiny yellow-green blooms look surprisingly pretty against the darker background. It would pass muster as a front yard edible in the most exacting neighborhood.
Second, it is beautifully aromatic. I brush my hand down a frond every time I pass it to inhale the anise-y scent.
Third, it’s delicious. I can’t understand why so few people eat their bronze fennel. I admit that my main use of it is to chew up a frond while weeding or doing other garden tasks. The resiny rush is succeeded by a taste of intense sweetness and herbal licorice. I realized years ago, when going through a Greek cookbook binge, that fennel and not dill is a primary seasoning herb for horta, the greens mixture that forms a part of so many Cretan meals and snacks. A generous handful of chopped fennel fronds, sautéed with other aromatics, gives the right flavor to a batch of greens mixture. Chopped fronds are also an essential part of fish marinades and rubs, in my view, and can be delicious on chicken. A little dab of herb salad, made from chopped bronze fennel and chives or garlic chives and dressed with a very good vinaigrette, is good as a seasoning garnish alongside fish or chicken. Chopped fennel fronds are lovely in mayonnaise to sit atop grilled salmon, or yo dress cold fish salad. When grilling fish, consider putting the larger stems of fennel across the grill to make aromatic smoke. I love a small handful of chopped fronds in salads. This is a nose-to-tail herb, since besides using the leaves and stalks you can collect the pollen if you have enough plants (fennel pollen is a common aromatic seasoning in Tuscany,) and the seeds can also be collected for culinary use. One cookbook writer said that she made an anise-flavored pesto from blanched bronze fennel fronds, and that sounds delicious too, although I haven’t tried it yet. On days when I’ve worked late in the garden and the late sunset finds me hot and dirty and with a poor appetite from the heat, I can throw together smoked salmon crostinis with fennel:
Cut a few diagonal slices off a good baguette or, if you are ketogenic, cut a few thin slices of ketogenic coconut bread. Toast them, spread with green mayo Or your own favorite tarragon-seasoned mayonnaise, put on one thick or two thin slices of smoked wild-caught sockeye salmon, smear with some mascarpone or creme fraiche, and top each with a couple of generous pinches of chopped fennel. It takes five minutes, it’s cool and soothing, and yum.
Incidentally, I remember reading somewhere long ago that fennel stalks coated with tallow were burned to summon good witches, and mullein stalks were used the same way to summon bad witches, unless maybe it was the other way around. So if you want to try it, you’ll need to get straight which is which. But I can say from experience that a couple of dried fennel stalks tossed on a dying fire in the fall give a lovely aromatic end to the evening that doesn’t summon anything but contentment and sleep.
14 Jun
Perennial Arugula, With Notes on Montpellier Butter
I have written frequently about annual arugula and how delicious, versatile, and easy it is. A few years ago I bought a packet of seed for perennial arugula, Diplotaxis tenuifolia. I planted them in a likely spot and then, as so often happens at my place, I was overcome by the sight of bare earth, forgot I had sown seeds already, and planted something large and rambunctious there. At the end of the gardening year I cleared the debris away and found tiny wispy plants that I recognized as the perennial arugula. They survived the winter, resprouted tentatively in the spring, and then all of a sudden they were a mass. A thuggish mass, ready to overpower anything in the way of their gangland fervor for territory. And they were, literally, hot. The initial flavor when I chewed on a leaf was pleasantly mustardy, developing gradually to a burn in the back of the throat as I swallowed that wasn’t painful, but certainly wasn’t pleasant either. While I puzzled over how to use them, they bloomed, and the delicately pretty sulfur-yellow blossoms drew bees from miles around. So, needless to say, they were kept.
Sometimes it takes me a while to find the best use for a perennial. So far, my favorite use for this sturdy perennial is to blanch the leaves briefly in boiling water and use them more as a seasoning than a bulk ingredient. Used as a small part of a cooked greens mixture, they add interest. I like a small buttered pile of them as a sort of “cooked herb salad” alongside meats or salmon. I intend to try pounding them with a mortar and pestle as a wasabi-like seasoning. And they are superb in Montpellier Butter. I learned about this lovely seasoning in one of Elizabeth David’s books, I forget which one. But the greatest recipe of them all is the one published by Jeremiah Tower, and it goes like this:
Jeremiah Tower’s Montpelier Butter (this is as he published it. My own tweaks are below.)
Coarse salt
6 spinach leaves, washed
2 shallots, finely chopped
1/2 bunch watercress leaves (I use 15 good-sized nasturtium leaves)
2 tablespoons fresh flat-leaf parsley leaves
2 tablespoons fresh chervil leaves
2 tablespoons chopped fresh chives
1 tablespoon fresh tarragon leaves
2 cornichons, rinsed and chopped
4 salted anchovy fillets, rinsed, soaked in water for 10 minutes and dried with a paper towel
2 tablespoons salted capers, rinsed, soaked, and drained
1 small garlic clove
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
Freshly ground black pepper
3 hard-cooked large egg yolks
2 large raw egg yolks
1/2 cup (one quarter pound) good grassfed butter, room temperature
1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1 teaspoon white-wine vinegar
Bring a large saucepan of water to a boil; add salt. Combine spinach, shallots, watercress, parsley, chervil, chives, and tarragon in a fine sieve. Carefully place sieve in boiling water until greens are wilted, about 30 seconds. Remove, and place in ice-water bath to cool, or hold under very cold running water for several seconds until cool. Remove, and squeeze dry. Transfer to the food processor. Add cornichons, anchovies, capers, garlic, and cayenne pepper. Season with salt and black pepper. Process to a smooth paste. Add cooked and raw yolks, and butter. Process until thoroughly combined. Transfer to a medium bowl and slowly whisk in olive oil. Add vinegar, and whisk to combine. Adjust seasoning, if necessary.
This will keep a day or two in the refrigerator, and two months in the freezer.
My tweaks: I leave out the spinach leaves, watercress or nasturtium leaves, and chervil, and use about 25 perennial arugula leaves instead, blanched with the other seasonings as described above. I increase the tarragon to a quarter cup of whole leaves, and I also use a few large cloves of confited garlic rather than one raw clove. I use five hard-cooked egg yolks so that I don’t have to worry about harming an immunocompromised guest. And sorry, Jeremiah, but I do the whole thing in the processor and don’t whisk by hand at the end. I keep the butter in roughly formed little bars in the freezer, tightly wrapped, so that I can cut off large (LARGE) pats with a heated knife and plop them on steaks or grilled salmon and heat briefly under the broiler just before serving to soften and partially melt the butter, or on steamed vegetables, or on nearly anything. I don’t eat the carb-y stuff anymore, but if you do, it is wonderful on chunks of grilled baguette and transcendent on handmade egg linguine with grated Parmesan. If you try this with frozen Montpellier butter and don’t want to take time to thaw it, try grating it on a coarse grater before tossing with the linguine, piling on the salmon, or adding generously to the cooked greens.
My urban homestead 