greens | My urban homestead

Posts Tagged ‘greens’

7 Mar

Early Harvest: Green Garlic

Posted by wooddogs3 in Cook's treat, cooking, edible landscaping, farmers market, front yard gardening, greens, herbs, Nose-to-tail vegetables, Uncategorized, urban homesteading, vegetable gardening. Tagged: allacin, antioxidants, First spring vegetable, garlic, garlic leaves, green garlic, greens, vegetable dish. 2 comments

Other than herbs and alfalfa tips for my chickens, green garlic is always the first thing that I harvest from the garden. In my climate, which is more or less USDA zone seven, I plant in October and nearly always harvest green garlic the first week of March. The part of the garlic patch that I plan to harvest green is planted very closely, about 2 inches apart each way, which is plenty of room for this purpose. Every year I plant more. It is really good stuff. For a long time I thought that it might not really be worth the trouble, because I was harvesting and eating only the white stem and incipient bulb and composting the greens. Duh. The greens are the best part, as well as being full of allacin and other antioxidants, and any part that is bright green rather than yellow or brown can be used. You can grow a useful amount in a few square feet if your soil is rich, and it is harvested and out of the way in time to plant something else for the summer.

In the picture above you see a stalk of green elephant garlic, which is really a leek relative rather than a true garlic. It is typically a foot or more tall and an inch or so in diameter at the green stage. It has a slightly different flavor from true green garlic but is equally delicious. I once bought green garlic at a farmer’s market that was bitter, but I have never tasted any other that was bitter. It may have had to do with growing conditions or variety. I have heard of people chopping garlic leaves into salads as a seasoning, but personally I don’t care for the taste raw and only use them cooked.

With all green garlic, I trim the roots and leaf tips and wash, then line them up and cut them in cross-section into slices about a quarter inch thick. I sauté in either butter or olive oil, whichever will suit the rest of the meal, slowly until the greens are tender. A little salt is thrown in along the way. They become soft and sweet and delicious, and I enjoy eating them as a vegetable on their own. They also go very nicely into all kinds of other vegetable dishes. If you are a carb eater, they would be delicious with fresh handmade egg pasta, butter, and a discreet amount of Parmesan, or tossed with new potatoes and butter. I love them in mixtures of cooked greens, too, and they are a lovely complement for fried eggs. I plan to make a cream of green garlic soup at some point this spring. A few stalks sautéed in your smallest skillet while you are cooking other things also make a very nice cook’s treat to eat standing in the kitchen, as a sort of tapa for one. After all, the laborer is worthy of her hire.

Like all the rest of us, green garlic will lose its youthful bloom sooner rather than later. When the bulb is swelling and the leaf tips are turning progressively more yellow, it is past the point of being worthwhile to eat green. In its brief season I harvest 10 or 12 stalks whenever I have some free time, clean and sauté them, and have them waiting in the refrigerator. If I haven’t use them within a day or two, I vacuum seal them into neat little packets and keep them in the freezer to go in summer dishes.

15 Jan

Kitchen staples: the pantry (and freezer) of the low-carb home

Posted by wooddogs3 in cooking, farmers market, home food production, kitchen staples, mushrooms, Uncategorized, urban homesteading. Tagged: Alaskan salmon, fish, frozen vegetables, greens, ketogenic, leafy greens, low carbohydrate diet, Low-carb, nuts, olive oil, pantry, staples. 9 comments

There are ingredients and seasonings that I have to have on hand at all times or I get nervous. With them, I’m ready to make a meal out of whatever foodstuff comes to hand. All such lists are intensely personal and idiosyncratic and I make no claims for universality, just usefulness. Due to my very low-carb eating, staples like pasta and flour aren’t on the list for me.

1. Really good fresh olive oil. Olive oil oxidizes fairly rapidly and, in my opinion, should not ever be used if more than a year old. Rather than take chances on freshness, I belong to the Fresh Pressed Olive Oil club; every three months they ship you three (or more if you choose) bottles of olive oil guaranteed to have been harvested and produced within the last 3 months; sourcing from the Southern Hemisphere as well as more traditional source areas makes this possible. I have belonged for years and hope they go on as long as I live and cook. A wide range of olive varieties and oil styles is represented. Pour it over cooked vegetables, dress salads, drizzle it on meat dishes, use as a base for a sauté of veggies. The Cretans and Ikarians thrive on it and so can we. I also keep oil-cured olives around at all times for their meaty umami belt in mixed greens.
2. Red Boat fish sauce. This is not only the best fish sauce available for Asian cooking, but pinch-hits very nicely for Italian colatura (garum.) A dash in vinaigrette gives a wonderful savor.
3. Dried mushrooms. I keep dried shitake, maitake, and porcini on hand at all times, and others at times as the mood takes me. With them, I am always prepared to add texture and flavor to cooked veggies, give a fitting garnish to a good piece of meat by soaking and sautéing them, or make a really good soup on short notice. I am ketogenic and don’t use flour, bread crumbs, or any other starch product, so I intend to try grinding them to powder and using them to “bread” and fry chicken, but that’s still on my to-do list.
4. Eggs. The best eggs I can get. Most of the time I have eggs from my own chickens, and in midwinter when my hens take a rest, I buy from a local co-op. Beyond the obvious omelet, frittata, and scramble, a fried egg is a wonderful way to make vegetables into a complete meal, and egg yolks are a wonderful velvety thickener for sauces.
5. Grass-fed butter. Grass-fed because it’s better for the cows and the planet as well as for me. Butter because there is nothing like it for improving flavor.
6. Coconut milk, which in my book is a joint pantry item with Hand brand Thai curry pastes. On days when I am short of time, energy, and verve, I can pick up some fresh fish or thaw a couple of pastured chicken thighs, soak and slice a few shiitakes, and pull together a healthy meal in under twenty minutes.
7. Freezer item: Wild-caught Alaskan salmon. I pay whatever I have to pay to get good fish, and I always buy Alaskan because their fisheries are well managed. The fillets are thin and thaw rapidly when I haven’t thought ahead about dinner. After a workday that ran later and harder than I expected, I’ve been known to take a frozen fillet still in its vacuum seal into the hot tub with me. Fifteen minutes later, I feel rejuvenated and the salmon is ready to cook.
8. Freezer item: homemade broth from grassfed beef and pastured chickens. I have written at length elsewhere about homemade broth. I really feel that nothing else will do as much to instill food thriftiness and improve your soups and sauces.
9. Nuts of various kinds. Almonds and Macadamias always, others here and there. Because they taste good and you can run for hours on a handful of them if you need to and they add flavor and crunch and specialness to all kinds of dishes.

10. Freezer item: blanched and chopped greens. Mine are a mixture of whatever was fresh and vibrant in the garden and field on any given day. If I had no garden and didn’t forage, I would use mixtures of spinach, chard, and Tuscan kale, and blanch and chop them and vacuum-seal before freezing. I find that I eat a lot more greens if I have them available in a handy form, and can make horta or whatever in a matter of ten minutes rather than having a more prolonged process to go through.

11. Good red wine. Because life contains joy and is worth celebrating.

12. Very dark chocolate. Because see #11.

3 Nov

The Greens of Fall: Nasturtiums II

Posted by wooddogs3 in Cook's treat, cooking, edible landscaping, front yard gardening, greens, herbs, Ketogenic diet, Nose-to-tail vegetables, urban homesteading, vegetable gardening. Tagged: cook's treat, decorative vegetables, edible landscaping, greens, greens for cold weather, Nasturtium, Nose-to-tail vegetables, quick pickle, Tropaeolum majus. 2 comments

After several light frosts and a couple of hard frosts, the nasturtiums in my front yard are still holding their leaves in good condition, and still blooming a bit. They won’t last much longer though, so this is the time to take advantage of them. They are always good in salads or used to make hand rolls as suggested in my last post, because they combine a snappy watercress peppery flavor with a tender texture. Cooked, they lose a lot of their sharpness but remain delicious.

I grow the trailing nasturtiums that wind so nicely among other things in the bed, and at this time of year I grab about the last foot of stem. I snap them off wherever the stem snaps cleanly, which is usually while they are still smaller than a pencil. I take everything above that into the kitchen for cleaning. I wash them and lay them out on the cutting board. The flowers are devoured on the spot as a cook’s treat, or can be saved for the top of a salad. What remains is cut crosswise into half-inch segments. It’s important to keep them out about this length, or the stems can seem fibrous.

Now stir the sections around a bit with your fingers, then lift off the leaves which are mostly on top and set them to one side, leaving most of the stem segments on the other. There will be a few of each item in the pile of the other, and it doesn’t matter. This step is so you can give the stems a bit more cooking than the leaves.

Now, cook them in any way that you would use other greens, cooking the stem sections for a couple of minutes longer than the leaves. I have two favorite ways. One is to sauté them fast in a tablespoon or so of hot flavorful olive oil, putting the stems in, sautéing for two minutes, then add in the leaves and sauté in for another minute. Serve with salt and freshly ground pepper. Simple and good.

My other favorite use for them is a quick sort of sweet and sour pickle, which I like with grilled meat or dishes in the Japanese fashion. For a heaping a handful of chopped nasturtium, eat half a cup of water in a small saucepan with 2 tablespoons of rice vinegar and 1 tablespoon of sugar or to taste, or you can use artificial sweetener if it is one that does well with cooking. And a scant teaspoon of salt and bring to a boil. When it is boiling, put in the stems, boil for about two minutes, and the leaves, and take off the heat immediately and let it sit in the “pickling liquid” until room temperature. serve immediately or keep in the refrigerator for a day or two.

For my taste the flavors in this quick “pickle” are too strong to use it as a side dish, but you could always use less vinegar and sweetening and salt, and use it as a side dish if you prefer that. When I was growing up in the south, collards were sometimes cooked this way, and I seem to remember that they were good.

Some people think highly of the nasturtium as a medicinal herb. If you wish to research this, please keep in mind that the nasturtium flower we are dealing with here is Tropaeolum majus, while Nasturtium officinale is actually watercress. This is why we use botanical names; in the long run, it avoids a lot of confusion. In my view, the fact that they are green and lovely in cold weather and taste good is reason enough to eat them.

19 Oct

The greens of fall: Nasturtium

Posted by wooddogs3 in cooking, edible landscaping, front yard gardening, greens, herbs, Ketogenic diet, Uncategorized, vegetable gardening. Tagged: greens, herbs, leafy hand rolls, Nasturtium. 3 comments

With the first frost behind us, there are parts of the garden that are just getting into full swing. This is the second great greens season. During the summer I enjoy the beauty of nasturtiums and put the flowers in salads frequently, as well as using the leaves here and there. After a frost, flower production slows way down but leaf production increases, and this is the time to use these wonderful tender leaves with the flavor of watercress. I use them fairly simply. The largest ones always become hand rolls, and my favorite things to put in them are cream cheese with capers and some of their own blossoms, slivered sushi salmon with pickled ginger and other accompaniments, and smoked salmon. I use two leaves stacked to make up each role so that you get a good watercressy flavor in each bite.

The smaller leaves go into quickly sautéed mixtures of greens and herbs that flavor omelettes. Green garlic is available again this time of year after the summer hiatus, and I like to chop up a small stalk of it leaves and all, chop up a packed pint of the smaller nasturtium leaves and a celery leaf or two chopped fine, and sauté them together quickly in butter and put them in an omelette of eggs from my own hens. Delicious. If you care to gild the lily by adding slivered smoked salmon and bits of cream cheese to the filling, it only gets better. If you can eat outside in the clear October sunlight, that’s best of all.