Posts Tagged ‘alliums’

23 Mar

A Variation on Hortapita

Posted by wooddogs3 in cooking, edible landscaping, front yard gardening, greens, herbs, home food production, Perennial edibles, Uncategorized, urban homesteading, Vegetable dinners, vegetable gardening. Tagged: , , , , , , .

In my last post I wrote about horta made entirely from green alliums, the first greens of spring. Horta is very good all by itself, but it can also be fun to elaborate, and I have written before about hortapitas, the many types of greens pies that are filled with horta. They can be large or individual in size, the crust can be phyllo or bread dough or pie crust or no crust, and the filling can be horta alone or include cheese or meat or eggs or egg mixtures like the one show here. The horta can be based on one green or on as many edible greens as you can gather. Herbs can be subtle or dominate the filling. They are all delicious.
In this case, I had almost two cups of green allium horta to use, and fresh eggs were on the counter waiting to be used. I decided on a quick and easy phyllo crust and an eggy cheesy filling. A package of phyllo pastry from the freezer was set out to thaw. I wanted to maintain a fresh springlike quality in the filling, so I made a run to the perennial paddock to grab a small handful of green garlic and garlic chives.

I made a tangy cheese custard for the filling using three egg yolks and one whole egg beaten together. These went in the food processor with half a cup each of fromage blanc and Greek yogurt. I used fromage blanc because I had it around, but another half cup of Greek yogurt or crème fraiche would have worked fine. This mixture was processed until smooth and turned out into a mixing bowl. To this basic filling I stirred in the fresh alliums chopped finely, the allium horta, about 4 ounces of crumbled feta, and about 2 teaspoons of fresh thyme leaves. I also added half a teaspoon of salt, which along with the feta makes this filling come out just a touch on the salty side, which I think suits it.

Next came the crust. If you’re used to working with phyllo, this takes less than 5 minutes. Unroll the pastry, brush one sheet at a time with olive oil using a pastry brush, and align them in the baking pan the way you want them. I used am 8×12” pan, but you could also use a square pan or round pan. The filling will be thicker in the smaller pans but the flavor will be the same. Don’t get hung up on details like exact pan size. If you haven’t worked with phyllo before, there is a great tutorial on the wondrous Food 52 site. Just have ready a damp but not wet towel, about half a cup of good olive oil , and a pastry brush. I used about half a package of phyllo.

Once the crust is ready, pour the filling into it and roll up another few sheets of oil-brushed phyllo and put them around the edges, messing them a bit with your fingers. Now bake at 350° until the filling is set and the phyllo is golden-brown and crisp. Let sit out of the oven for 10 minutes and serve, or serve later at room temperature. Simple, delicious, quick, and very good for you.

22 Mar

Greens: Early Spring Horta

Posted by wooddogs3 in cooking, edible landscaping, front yard gardening, greens, herbs, home food production, Perennial edibles, Uncategorized, urban homesteading, Vegetable dinners, vegetable gardening. Tagged: , , , , , .


For gardeners, early spring is a time of great anticipation. This is the season when the growing season to come glows with perfection in your mind, completely removed from hard weather, pests, and general exhaustion. But it is also the time of the very first harvest, if you grow some perennial plants. At about the time that the crocuses bloom, the perennial green onions are forming a thick forest about 8 inches high. The garlic in my semi-permaculture garlic patch is about the same height and is tender and sweet. It’s time to start eating from my home ground.

I have written roughly a million times about the Greek mixture called horta, a mass of assorted greens cooked and seasoned together. This time of year the perennial greens are sprouting but are too small to bother picking, but a horta based on alliums is a very delicious thing. When I make horta  with summer greens later in the season it is more elaborately flavored, but these first hortas  are simple and sweet.

Gather a large bunch of green garlic and green onions. I use about half each, but use what you have.

Chop them in cross sections of about 1/4 inch.  Heat a skillet over a medium flame with about a quarter cup of good olive oil. Put the white half of the chopped greens in the skillet, add a generous pinch of salt, and sauté for a couple of minutes. Naturally the division into white parts and green parts is going to be very inexact, and this doesn’t matter. Just try to get most of the white end of your cut greens into the skillet. After a couple of minutes, add the green parts and another bit of salt. You can add a teaspoon of fresh thyme leaves at this point if you like, and I usually do. Now turn the heat down and sauté over low heat for about 15 minutes. Alliums contain a fair amount of sugar and sugar can easily burn, so do not walk away and leave them to tend themselves. After 15 minutes, taste. If they are soft and chewable and tasty, they are done. Otherwise, keep sautéing for another few minutes. Taste, add salt as needed, and you’re done. It really was that easy.

For a light meal or substantial snack, I like eating them as is with some crumbled feta on top.
For a more substantial meal, a fried egg on top is delicious.

If you want to know a little more about polyphenolic compounds of interest in green garlic and green onions, you can read a past blog post here that has a few references. However, I have to point out that I am extremely dubious about taking any one polyphenol too seriously, especially when it comes to medical claims. In my opinion you are not medicating yourself, you are eating vegetables, and they are very delicious.

7 Mar

Perennial Saag Paneer

Posted by wooddogs3 in cooking, front yard gardening, greens, Ketogenic diet, recipe, urban farm animals, urban homesteading, vegetable gardening, wild food. Tagged: , , , , , , , .


Yesterday I wrote about making Paneer with my grass-fed goat milk. Today I’ll talk about making saag paneer, one of my favorite dishes, and for a permaculture twist I’ll make it with perennials as much as possible. If you don’t have a weed patch, you can use a bunch of spinach. You will also need fresh ginger, cumin seeds, garam masala, heavy cream, and butter.
Assuming that you have the paneer, the next step is to catch your greens and alliums. I used equal parts each of nettles and bladder campion, and 4 stalks each of green garlic and perennial Welsh onions. The nettles and bladder campion were blanched for about 90 seconds so that the nettles could be handled easily, then drained, pressed, and chopped. The alliums were cleaned, trimmed, and sliced in 1/4″ cross section.

When ready to cook, heat a nonstick skillet, cut the paneer in 1″ cubes and salt it, and fry in mild oil of your choice (I like Macadamia nut oil) until browned. Set aside.


Chop a piece of fresh ginger about an inch square finely, and have ready a teaspoon of whole cumin seed and a heaping teaspoon of garam masala.
Heat a saucepan, put in a couple of tablespoons of mild oil, and fry the cumin seeds briefly until they darken a couple of shades. Immediately add the chopped ginger, stirfry furiously until it is cooked but not browned, and add the chopped alliums and lower the heat to medium-low. Add a half teaspoon of salt and sauté the alliums until they are softened, lowering the heat if necessary to keep them from burning. Add the garam masala, cook another minute or two, and add the cream. Add the blanched chopped greens and cook over low heat until they are thoroughly cooked, probably about another 10 minutes. Put the paneer cubes on top, pushing them into the greens mixture a bit, and cook over low heat until they are heated through. Serve with rice or, if you are a low carb eater, gloriously naked on the plate. Drizzle some melted butter or ghee over the top.

I was taught to make this dish a few decades ago by an Indian woman in Manhattan, and I am pretty flexible about the greens used as long as they’re mild. No bitter green has a place in this dish. The green garlic and onions are great in season, but chopped garlic and onion are traditional.  I’m very rigid about the seasoning, though. Sometimes I add a chopped hot pepper but that’s my only variation. The whole cumin seeds fried quickly in hot oil are not negotiable, and burning or scorching any of the seasonings or alliums  means you need to start over, so work carefully.

29 May

More on Scapes: Scape Powder

Posted by wooddogs3 in cooking, edible landscaping, farmers market, front yard gardening, greens, herbs, Nose-to-tail vegetables, urban homesteading, vegetable gardening. Tagged: , , , , , , .

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Lately I’ve been experimenting with dehydration, and it occurred to me that I object to the mucousy quality of cooked onion scapes and dehydration often solves such problems. So I put a large bunch of scapes in my dehydrator to see what happened.
Lesson learned: they really are juicy inside, and in future I will split them in half lengthwise before dehydrating, because it took about twice as long as it should have to dry them thoroughly. The bulbous tops should also be cut off at the time of initial preparation.  But I did eventually achieve brittle-dry scapes that I could grind into a fragrant green powder.
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The powder is tasty and sweet, and I’m still considering how to use it. I started with the ultra-simple scramble above: four whole eggs and four yolks beaten with a couple of tablespoons of heavy cream and a dash of salt, then scrambled in butter with one large green onion leaf chopped and four ounces of smoked salmon chopped, finished with pepper and a lavish sprinkling of scape powder. Yum.
This is my favorite way so far to use onion and shallot scapes and the remaining ones will all become scape powder. I think it would be delicious if used to finish chicken, fish, and seafood, and might be good on a steak as well. I have heard of dehydrating garlic scapes, and I tried a couple but didn’t care for the result and will continue to gobble them up as a fresh vegetable.
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