One Local Summer: Week #13

I decided on a real local feast for the grand finale. Early in the season I had purchased a leg of lamb from Mermaid Farm about a half mile away. Alan and Caitlin's sheep graze in various sites in my neighborhood in the spring so I feel like I really know this flock. I boned the lamb, trimmed it of fat and marinated it in some olive oil garlic and rosemary. As I was working with the meat, I thought about how much fuel it takes to move most of the lamb I eat from New Zealand to here, and I was left with the question of WHY a leg of lamb from a half mile away costs twice as much as one from New Zealand. I know some of the answers ... economy of scale, etc. but I decided that the more we invest in these local producers and give them a market they can rely on, the closer they will come to being able to pass savings back to us. Despite these misgivings, I have to say this was one FABULOUS tasting leg of lamb. Must be terroir. TO this I added my own additions. Each August I make a sage potato dish that is just great. I have a little Creuset terrine that is just big enought to make a scant portion ofr two, but any cast iron casserole with a top will do. I drizzle some olive oil on the bottom, sprinkle some sea salt and then press fresh sage leaves into the salt and oil mixture to cover the bottom of the pan. I cut the potatoes in half and press them into the sage and salt and cook at 400 for maybe 35 minutes. Soooooo good.

To the roasted potatoes I added some green beans and grilled zucchini. And VOILA, Week #13.Many thanks to Kim who has been there every week encouraging us along with her wonderful reports of our attempts. I feel like I know more "fellow travelers" here in New England and have a new set of wonderful blogs to follow both nearby and around the country.

The Fair Results

Well the Agricultural Fair was last week, and with it comes both the pinnacle of a season's work and the realization that it is time to start planning for next year. This garden brought home five (count them 5!) blue ribbons. The two of which I am most proud are the ones in garlic, I entered two heads of Montana Giant, and in biggest tomato. At 1 pound 10.3 ounces, Big Zac came through again as the winner.

On the third day of the Fair I went to check on Zac and he was GONE!!! Apparently he had started to pass from ripening to the next stage, and when I inquired as to his whereabouts, I was told he had been fed to the pigs. It somehow seems like just the right thing to have done. And the fate of Big Zac reinforced my decision to slice and enjoy my ripe Cavillion melons rather than enter them in the Fair. The melons have been breakfast fare all week. A sweet reward.

OLS Week#12 - A Vegetable Soup with a Touch of Provence

This week I made a vegetable soup. the leeks and carrots were from Morning Glory Farm and the rest was from my own garden. I have put an asterisk next to the non local ingredients in case you want to add them. It is an adaptation of a recipe in Martha Rose Schulman's Provencal Light.

Vegetable Soup with Pistou

2 cups of greens beans broken into 1 inch pieces
2 medium sized zucchini diced
1 large onion chopped
6 large cloves of garlic minced
2 large carrots chopped
*1 celery ribs chopped
2 leeks, white part only, washed and sliced
*2 medium sized turnips peeled and diced
1 pound (450 gr) medium sized new potatoes diced
1 pound tomatoes ( 450 gr) skinned seeded and chopped
3 quarts (3 liters) water
A bouquet garni of thyme, parsley, bay leaf and a parmesean rind*
Salt and pepper to taste.

¼ pound ( 115 gr) macaroni, fusilli, vermicelli or broken spaghetti*

1 recipe low fat pistou (recipe follows)

Set aside ½ of the green beans and ½ of the zucchini. Combine all the ingredients (except the pistou) in a soup pot, bring to a boil and simmer covered for 1 ½ hours. Taste and adjust salt and pepper.

Add the reserved green beans and zucchini and the pasta. Cook 10 minutes more or until pasta is al dente.

Serve in wide soup bowls and top each with a serving of the pistou to be stirred into the soup.

You CAN make the soup in advance up to adding the beans, zucchini and pasta.

Low Fat Pistou

2 cups freshly packed basil leaves (75 gr)
¼ tsp salt
2 large garlic cloves
1 medium tomato peeled and seeded
*1 Tbsp olive oil
1 oz (30 gr) grated Parmesan

Place the basil and salt in the bowl of a food processor fixed with the steel blade and turn it on. Drop in garlic cloves and run until all is finely chopped.

Turn off the machine and scrape the leaves down the sides of the bowl. Turn on again and add the tomato and the oil. Puree until smooth. Removes and stir in Parmesan. Transfer to a covered jar and refrigerate until serving.

The Ag Fair

The Class of 2008

In the end I entered ten different items in the Fair this morning. Now it is in the hands of the judges

All the

a slice of honey

Of all of my achievements in the garden this summer, I am most proud of these two melons. I brought the seed back from a melon I had in Paris two summers ago called "tranche de miel." Yesterday I picked the two largest and have been agonizing over whether to enter them in the Fair or just eat them. They smelled perfectly ripe, and I was afraid that 5 days in the exhibit hall and I would have 2 over ripe melons. So I opted for flavor instead of glory and had half of the smaller one for breakfast this morningOMG !!!!!!!

The flavor simply explodes inside your mouth. It is almost like drinking a fine wine at the peak of its storage. There is subtlety and after taste and resolved and unresolved sugars. It is pure ambrosia.

Meanwhile, Big Zac continues to ripen on the vine. The countdown to glory continues.

Tomato Bliss - The Italian Sweet

The Italian Sweet is a bear to grow, but the reward in flavor is indescribable. They are prone to blossom end rot. I have probably heaved 8 of them into the compost pile already. So when I found a ripe one this morning, I could not resist eating it for breakfast. OMG !!! How do I describe the flavor ? "What a tomato ought to taste like?"

OLS Week #11

While I probably ate more local food for the week as a total last week, I never did get around to posting a fully local meal. THIS week I am relying on a Greek dish made with zucchini, local eggs and onions from the garden. We are all looking for good zucchini solutions this time of year. In addition to this weeks Greek offering and the ones I have listed from past years, here is a new recipe that I served last week that was well received as a backyard appetizer when sliced into bite size pieces.

Zucchini Appetizer

4 C grated zucchini

1 C Bisquick

4 eggs

1/2 C parmesan ( or more)

1/4 C oil

*1/2 t oregano or Italian seasoning

Salt and Pepper

1-2 cloves garlic, minced

1/2 C finely chopped onion

2 T parsley

Mix all the ingredients EXCEPT the zucchini and parsley. Add at the end mixing thoroughly.

Bake at 375 for 25 minutes minimum in a 9x12 lasagna pan.

Establishing territory

I need to be away from the garden this weekend, and the tomatoes are of course FINALLY ripening. So I decided I could not leave my garden unprotected. Two years ago Kate and Jonah helped me make a scarecrow, and I still have the parts we used. All it takes is a little straw and duct tape, and soon you have a scarecrow.

Be sure to put the shirt on the cross piece BEFORE you tape the crosspiece together

When to pick

Yesterday I picked one of my "tranche de miel" Charentais melons. It was too soon. The advice I have been picking up is to wait for a bit of a golden hue to the skin ... or to wait for the leaf next to the melon to turn yellow. I did neither of these. But I have four left on the vine and I shall wait patiently.

Taylor-Bray Farm

I took a delightful side trip on my excursion to Cape Cod this weekend for a wedding. I visited the Taylor-Bray Farm in Yarmouth Port. It sits on the edge of a salt marsh and dates back to 1639. There are community vegetable gardens on the property, and I couldn't keep from taking some pictures.

Big Zac

OK with three weeks left until the Fair, I have a VERY special tomato in the wings for biggest tomato competition this year. I added the lens cap for comparison.

OLS Week #9

THIS week's meal is special. First everything but the protein came from my garden. Second, and more importantly, the local chicken I cooked is the result of many eat local initiatives here on the island. Until the Farm Institute came along, an island chicken was hard to come by. The Farm Institute birds were succulent and delicious and word spread fast. Local restaurants wanted to feature them and LOTS of people made the pilgrimage to Edgartown on Tuesdays hoping to pick up one after "processing." But the Farm Institute could not handle the demand, nor was it sure that processing chickens for increased demand WAS their mission. They are first and foremost an educational institution.

Meanwhile, Island Grown Initiative sponsored a Pastured Poultry Program, and secured a Mobile Poultry Processing Unit. (For those of you into acronyms that would be an (IGIMPPU). And one of the farms to take advantage of it is Flat Point Farm here in town. I love the enthusiasm of these guys and you will get bitten too when you check in to FPP for a look see.

It is all about re-creating infrastructure that will allow young farmers to provide for us locally. Right now, unless you are willing to slaughter them yourself for family use only, all livestock, with the exception of poultry, has to get on a ferry boat before it can go to "freezer camp." (I thank Lisa at Mack Hill Farm for that LOL euphemism).

So enough already ... what about this MEAL? Well I picked up my freshly "processed" chicken at the farm on Saturday and let it "rest" for a few days in the fridge before cooking it Tuesday night. I used a winner Ruth Reichel recipe from Garlic and Sapphires. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Put a film of olive oil in the bottom of a roasting pan. Quarter four Yukon Gold potatoes, add an onion that has been cut in eighths, 6-8 whole unpeeled cloves of garlic and toss in the oil. Wash the bird and drain. remove some of the excess fat from around the neck and slide it in between the skin and the breast at the top of the bird. Put a lemon that has been pierced several times with a fork and some fresh rosemary into the cavity of the bird. Sprinkle every thing in the pan with salt and pepper and cook for one hour. OMG !!! Sublime flavor. All the veggies were from my garden. Only the lemon and olive oil are not local.

The First Morning Glory

and an artichoke ready for harvest !

quivering with excitement

TWO and 7/8 Inches of rain (74 mm) !!!! Just what the garden needed in those inches below the surface where it was getting as dry as dust. Meanwhile, the first tomato blush has appeared ... my tomato knife is quivering with excitement.Admirable harvest baskets are marching out of the garden each morning. And tonight I will harvest my first artichoke in two years.

OLS Week #8 - Slow Food Convivium

So what, you ask? A plate of garlic green beans? Hardly a meal. Actually this serving for six was my contribution to THIS groaning table of potluck goodies all made from local ingredients.Last night was the July meeting of our local Slow Food Convivium. When we arrived in the hall there was a live band playing. and the local aquaculture group was providing oysters at the far end of the hall. On our table was a plate of delicious goat cheese from Flat Point Farm and some roasted local veggies and dip. As we were waiting to take our turn at the buffet, a local farmer announced to the hall (I think there were 500 in attendance) , that he would be slaughtering chickens this weekend and you could come to table #10 to reserve a chicken for pick up on Saturday. Once all the tables had been called to the buffet and we had eaten our fill, we settled back to listen to the speaker for the evening, none other than MICHAEL POLLAN himself !!His latest book, In Defense of Food, was the subject of his talk. In a nutshell he said, stop thinking of food as nutrients ... the science of nutrition is NOT a science ... all we REALLY know is that the Western diet causes people to get sick ... eat food, but not too much of it and when you do, eat mostly plants ... the leafy parts.

And as a a send off he gave us 5 rules of thumb to use when making food choices.

#1 Don't eat anything your great grandmother wouldn't recognize as food.
#2 Avoid food products containing ingredients that are A.) unfamiliar B.) unpronounceable C.) more than five in number, or that include D.) high fructose corn syrup
#3 Avoid foods that make health claims
#4 Shop at the peripheries of the supermarket and stay out of the middle
$5 Get out of the supermarket whenever possible

OLS Week #7

Boy did I screw up! I thought for sure I had posted week #7 !! It was an absolutely delicious tender meal of lamb shanks form Mermaid Farm a half mile away that were seasoned with onions from Tiasquam Farm, herbs from my garden and some tomato sauce from last year's harvest. It was blistering hot, so I decided to pack the shanks into a little terrine maker I have and put it on the GRILL out doors at a very low temp for 3 hours, and kept the heat from making the house warmer. The meat slid off the bone and I served it with fresh beans from the garden. It was SUPERB!!!

and the latest panoramic

click to enlarge

Inside the Garden Gate

Some little treasures are emerging inside the garden this week.
first, after weeks of blossom drop I finally have a bell pepper
and, be still oh my heart, it is a little tiny artihhoke !!!! Hurray !!!
And in the category of Biggest Tomato, I have isolated 2 Big Zac plants this year. I had it down to two fruit per plant, and last night I made the final cuts. We have two Big Zacs throwing ALL their plant energy into beating last year's 1lb 10 oz entry ... stay tuned.
And last but not least, here is a little treasure of a melon. It is a French melon ... a Cavaillon melon. I have tried growing them from the seed packets sold here in the States, but they never lived up to what I had in France. And even in France, they would vary in flavor. Until one day, at the Aligre Market in Paris I came upon a tranche de miel. One slice and I knew I had hit the motherlode of flavor. The kind of flavor that would send my eyes rolling back in my head muttering le petit Jesus en culotte de velour.[loosely translated it means "it tastes like the baby Jesus in a pair of velvet trousers"]

So I pocketed some of the seeds from that Aligre Market tranche de miel and brought them home 2 summers ago. When I stumbled over them in my seed box, I had little hope that they would even germinate this spring, but they DID and now I am watching with delight as they ripen here in my garden.

From the Garden Gate: July 18, 2008

Succumbing to the "Queen of the Night"

I cast my lot with vegetables long ago. I leave flowers to others. HOWEVER, last night I was invited to a friend's house to see her night blooming Cereus and I have come away totally enchanted. I knew vaguely of them ... that they existed ... but I had no idea how exotic they are ... how they can fill an ordinary summer's night with romance and mystery ... how their single night of blooming can put you in the mood of all night reverie.
My friend's Cereus is so big it is belted to a chair near a skylight in their bedroom. They have to fight with it to get to their dresser drawers. I LIKE this kind of devotion to beauty, albeit a beauty that is restricted to a few glorious summer nights. But I realize that to accept a cutting of this plant is to accept a way of life (sort of like having a successful purple martin house in your yard). But accept it I didand lo and behold there on the cutting is a blossom ... YIKES. These blossom grow out of the leaf itself ... very scary stuff, if you ask me. Stay tuned.