Cooking Frenzy

When I graduated from college the job market was tough, much like today. I worked in a video store for a few months, then lucked into a job as a cook at a busy, hip restaurant.  I worked as  a cook for the next ten years,  before moving on to horticulture.   That was a long time and two careers ago, but I still love to cook fast and furiously, making several dishes at the same time, just because I can!   And cooking food I've grown gives me a sense  (probably false, but comforting) of some control over my life. 

Here's what I made today. 

                                Baked Butternut squash casserole with my own squash and onions.

Yet more pickled peppers. No, I don't have a peck, but there are a lot.

Orchiette pasta with fresh lima beans, butter and parmesan and romano cheese.

Here's how I did it:

 First I put a pot of salted water on to heat.  I put bowls of  pasta and raw limas out nearby.

While the water boiled I cleaned the peppers, slit the sides a couple of times, and jammed them into Ball jars.
By then the pot was boiling, so I put the pasta in and set the timer to two minutes.

Next I filled the pepper jars with  cold water,  then poured it out into two measuring cups. There was  about three cups.

My timer went, and I added the limas to the pot of boiling water and put the timer on eight minutes.

I  replaced half the water from the peppers with white vinegar, and put the mixture in a pot on the stove. then I added  three coarsely chopped cloves of my own garlic, a teaspoon of whole cumin, three roughly broken bay leaves, three tablespoons each of sugar and kosher salt, and two tablespoons of  whole black peppercorns.  I turned the heat on medium.

When the pasta alarm rang I drained the lima bean and pasta mix, put it into a reusable plastic container and added a half tablespoon (ok, maybe a bit more...) of unsalted butter, two tablespoons of parm/romano mix, salt and pepper.  Lunch for tomorrow at work!

While my pasta cooled, I turned to the pickling mix. When it had simmered for about five minutes I turned off the burner, let it sit a couple more minutes, then ladled it over the peppers.  I put the lids on and moved the jars to the fridge to cool.

Then I turned the oven on to  400 degrees,  peeled and sliced my own butternut and onion, layered them in a casserole with salt, pepper, a pinch of nutmeg and some knobs of butter.  Once the oven dinged, I put the casserole on a middle rack to cook until tender (depending on the squash this can be anywhere from  30 to 60 minutes; some squash is drier and takes longer to cook).

While the squash baked I watched a DVD from the library-- a cosy British  detective series called 'Rosemary and Thyme' about a pair of gardening detectives.  I wish I got to take long lunches in the pub with a pint when I worked on other peoples gardens!

After a half hour the squash was tender, so I sprinkled some parm/romano mix on it, turned off the oven, and let it sit in the oven another ten minutes. It smelled so good I forgot to take the picture before I ate some!

Mark Bittman wrote a column recently about how easy it is to cook cheap good food at home.  I agree, but a few years of restaurant cooking sure help with the efficiency.  And I got some cool burn scars too.

October 12 harvest

I picked the last of my Hungarian wax peppers today.  Because of the spell of unseasonably hot weather last week (84! one day) they produced a bonus October crop of very hot peppers, some of which we'll use fresh, some of which I'll pickle. 

 Limas are still coming too, and I found some older pods that had dried on the vine that I will save for planting next season.  Some of the seeds dried, then sprouted in the pods (  thinking it was spring already, I guess) and others were clearly moldy, but a dozen of so look clean and healthy enough to save. 

I was lazy about thinning the 'Icicle' radishes, so many did not form good roots. Except for one, which was about eight inches long! The 'Bright Lights' chard is still going, and I'll be using it in a stir fry tonight.

 Sol waited for me to shell some Limas and feed them to him..... really, he's not spoiled.

 The kitchen garden this morning.

Road Trip to Stone Barns

I went to Tarrytown,  New York to celebrate my mother's birthday, and as always we went on several walks.  One was on around the farm at Stone Barns,  where we have visited many times before.  

I love observing the seasonal changes in their many gardens, comparing their success with crops to mine, and seeing crops I'm thinking of growing. Here's mom in the  'Dooryard Garden', their version of a kitchen garden.  We had many crops in common, including moonflowers, swiss chard, bush type butternut squash, and purple pole beans.  I was surprised there weren't more nasturtiums, which have been wonderful for me this year, especially 'Milkmaid'.  

 They also had several smaller mounded bed gardens, like this one full of bush beans (it looked like they were being left to dry for shell beans).

 In the larger fields I was envious of the amazing production they got from peppers, and noted that they used what looked like a biodegradable black plastic, which made a big difference in output. I will try that next year!  I also saw  row of  artichokes, and a few had been left to flower:

 Artichokes are beautiful plants, with striking silvery leaves, but looking at the remains of the crop  I felt they would not be worth starting from seed for my garden.  I might put in one or two plants if I can trade with someone in the area, just because they are so cool-looking, and because they remind me of travelling the artichoke fields of California with my father, and buying and cooking up bags of baby artichokes you could eat choke and all. A delicious memory.

Finally we visited the greenhouses. Wow, what  a lot of work.  It reminded me of my days in the perennial plant trade.  While I loved wandering the rows and seeing lots of interesting greens in person (so to speak) I never want to go back to gardening on this scale.  I talked to one of the staff hard at work weeding, and asked if I could take pics for my blog. He gave me permission, and introduced himself as Jason. Then he told about his blog- 'Have you ever picked a carrot?' I checked it out later and loved it--it is a mix of science and personal musings presented in a friendly but not cute voice.  Much better than a lot of the blogs I've seen. I'll be checking back regularly.

More Moonflowers

Eight Moonflowers last night! I stopped cutting the grass to take this picture.  Also a great third picking of  lima beans:

Moonflower Evening

It was unseasonably cool last week, with night temps dow  into the 40's, and I worried that my moonflowers would drop every bud and give up on 2011. But over the weekend the temps began to warm, and by Monday night the moonflowers were putting on a show.  

Each afternoon when I came home from work, I would visit the garden to count the buds that were  beginning their slow uncurling.  After dinner, as dusk descended, the flowers would flatten out and release their delicate, sweet perfume into the humid night air.  I always plan to watch them open, but somehow I get busy, and when I finally step out the slider to check on them, they are already open.  I sniff them and admire for a moment, then head back inside as darkness falls, and the moonflowers bloom for the night sky.

Moonflowers resemble their cousins the morning glories, but they are larger,  more elegant, and much more work to grow.  Because they are native to the tropics the seeds must be started indoors, and they must be soaked overnight or they may not germinate.  

I always plant my moonflower seedlings out into the garden too early, and as a result they sulk and refuse to grow for up to a month, or until it is hot both night and day.  The nights that moonflowers love are the ones so hot and streamy it's hard to sleep without air-conditioning.  

Wednesday night (when I took these pictures) still felt like summer,  but was made  more precious than an evening in July or August  by the knowledge that it was one of the few such nights left.  As I sat and smelled the moonflowers on the air, a pair of  monarchs landed on the Verbena Bonariensis for some last deep sips before migrating.  I caught Sol in mid stride in the third photo, between verbena and goldenrod, the purple and gold glory of  September.  Finally I picked up my bowl of peppers and went inside to make some more pickles, summer captured in a jar.

The answer...

The 'Dragon Tongue' mentioned at the end of the tour are beans, not peppers! Here is what I picked last night.  The Patty Pan squash have outlasted all the zucchini, and I found all the beans hiding under tired looking  (but apparently still productive) bean foliage.

September Garden Tour

Here is the garden tour for September.  There is one mistake in my variety descriptions- did you catch it?