Category: Food

Winter greens

I wish I had started experimenting with winter greens in a cold frame a long time ago. This mustard was planted in early October and is now ready to start picking. I’ve decided to make a little ritual of it, though, and have the first winter mustard on Thanksgiving.

For comparison, I’ve also got some mustard growing outside the cold frame. The mustard inside the cold frame has grown almost twice as fast. Plus, the outside mustard has started to toughen a bit and looks a little shabby and weathered. Next year, I think I’ll expand the winter garden and see what I can do. One very agreeable difference, compared with summer gardening, is that there are no bugs, no briars, and no heat and humidity.

Fall sproutings

My attempts during the spring of this year to get an early garden going under a cold frame were pretty much a total failure. I’m not sure why. But my guess would be that the soil was just too cold for good germination, because spring was unusually cold and dry. Now I’m using the cold frame to try to get winter crop of greens under the cold frame. So far, so good.

Ken sowed the mustard while he was here, after he cleared the summer weeds out of the garden. There’s a bit of lettuce and even some celery seed mixed in. I have no idea how the celery will do, but we figured that it would be a nice experiment. Germination was excellent, and growth has been rapid. When hard freezes arrive, I’ll have to drain the drip irrigation system. But I’ll use the drip for as long as I can.

When the garden fades, sprouting season begins for indoor sprouts. I’m using the LED grow lights that I bought last winter for basil to give the sprouts some extra light.

Speaking of light, it’s a shame that our modern lives give us little reason to be outdoors under the night sky. And, even if we were, light pollution would ruin the effect. Thought it’s a poor substitute for the primeval night sky, my bedroom windows keep me aware of the night sky. Though the projector clock shows the time, I’ve learned to estimate the time by the position of the stars outside the window. In this photo, the bright light on the window frames is the full hunter moon on October 21. The moon is still in the east, left of the windows.

These are all iPhone 12 photos. Though my my big Nikon is a better camera for most purposes, the iPhone makes a very handy camera.


Click here for high resolution version.

Fall desserts


Poached pear. Click here for high-resolution version.

Though it’s mid-October, it was nice for Ken to be able to have some abbey-grown foods while he was here for a five-day visit — persimmon pudding from persimmons he picked from the wild persimmon trees that grow in the yard, a poached pear from the abbey’s orchard, pesto from basil still growing in the garden, and tomato soup and tomato sauce from tomatoes I grew and canned.

I wish I had known about poached pears a long time ago. I’ve been getting pears from the orchard for several years now, but they’re as hard as a rock. I’ve come to understand fairly late in life that pears as hard as rocks are normal, and that the fix is to poach them. I poached these pears in tawny port, with some spices. I had bought the tawny port by accident and didn’t know what to do with it, because I greatly prefer ruby port. Problem solved.


Persimmon pudding. Click here for high-resolution version.

Persimmon season

Persimmon season has started. Ken picked (and shook trees) for only a little while this morning and got more than enough for the first persimmon pudding of the year. This is only about a tenth, Ken said, of what we’ll get this year just from the persimmon trees in the yard. We’ll make a video next week on the process of harvesting them, pulping them, and making persimmon pudding.

Ken is on a college speaking tour, by the way, and is here at the abbey for a few days before he returns to Scotland.

Summer 2021: Some of us had it easy


Tomato bisque from tomatoes I grew and canned

Nature was not kind to everyone this summer. There were terrifying fires in California and Australia, and deadly floods in the United States, Europe, and Asia. But here in the foothills of the Appalachian mountains, it was like 1950 again. The temperature here in my woods never exceeded 94F. Heavy rain sometimes washed ruts in the road (which a neighbor quickly repairs with his tractor), but rainfall was good, though the spring was a bit dry and cold. It has been at least eight months since a power outage that lasted more than two seconds. With a little help from the irrigation system, the 2021 garden was great. Not every summer, I’m afraid, will be so nice.

The poplar tree that overhangs the deck seems to have had a growth spurt. All summer long, half the deck was in shade, with a deck umbrella no longer needed. I don’t think I’ve eaten indoors more than four times since early spring.

One of the many remarkable things about this planet is how the seasons change in the temperate zones. This means we get not only changes in the weather, but also changes in what we eat. After months of buying hardly any produce and relying on the garden, the perennial vegetables are back on the menu. By perennial, I mean winter vegetables and the things that can be profitably shipped from one climate zone to another. My twenty jars of canned tomatoes will extend the memory of the 2021 garden for most of the winter. Most of the tomatoes, I think, will go into soups.

Speaking of soups, I have found that the “warming zone” on my glasstop stove is a great place for simmering soups. With the warming zone set to high, my favorite copper pot will hold a soup at about 192F, a very good simmer temperature.

As for the weather, the Atlantic hurricane season is not over. So it’s not too late for nature to knock us around here, a couple of hundred miles from the Atlantic coast.

Deep frying with olive oil?


Rutabaga-Roquefort fried pie, deep fried in olive oil

We have learned in recent years that olive oil is more stable at high temperatures than we knew. Research has shown that the stability of vegetable oils when heated is more complicated than the temperature at which they begin to smoke.

In any case, I can testify that olive oil, when heated to 350 degrees (a good temperature for deep frying) does not smoke.

With all this in mind, I continue to believe that, the less vegetable oils are heated, the better. I don’t deep-fry very often. But when I do, I’d rather use a nice organic olive oil than, say, a peanut oil of doubtful origin.

The olive oil can be re-used if strained and stored nicely. I am strongly of the opinion that, because of the unknown food components that get into the oil during deep-frying, even olive oil should be stored in the refrigerator after it has been used for deep frying.

The French paradox


Roquefort

Several news outlets carried stories yesterday about a Swedish study which found that full-fat dairy products not only may not be harmful to heart health but actually may be beneficial. For example, there was this story in the Guardian: “Research suggests a diet rich in dairy fat may lower the risk of heart disease.”

I’ll try to consider the case still open, because this was only one study (though a good study that went on for 16.6 years). Still, I have never worried a great deal about modest amounts of butter and cheese, partly because those of us with pastoral ancestors have had thousands of years to adapt to, and even thrive on, dairy foods.

Nor do I feel any pressure to give up my practice of using full cream in my coffee. I moved on from mere half and half years ago. The study involved people in Sweden, who, my guess would be, don’t follow the most Mediterranean of all possible diets. My guess would be that dairy fat would be even more forgiveable when blended with a Mediterranean diet with olive oil, rather than butter or lard, as the main dietary fat. And surely we should stick to the rule that no amount of hydrogenated fat is safe, and that newfangled oils such as corn oil should be avoided.

Roastnears

When I was a young’un growing up in North Carolina’s Yadkin Valley, corn of the type one wants for corn on the cob was called roastnears. I learned in school, around the fifth grade, that roastnears means roasting ears. Back then, I thought of that as just the way people talked. Now I would see it as a bit of the Southern Appalachian dialect.

I don’t try to grow corn here. It takes up too much room in the garden, and the raccoons pull it down and steal it. This summer, neighbors have given me corn. But there is no shortage of it. All through late summer, grocery stores sell it in large quantities, very fresh, for 20 cents to 50 cents an ear.

I would never boil it, not least because who wants all that heat in the kitchen in high summer. Roasting it in foil on an outdoor grill is easiest. But it’s more fun to roast it in the shucks. Peel the shucks back on the raw ear of corn, remove the silks, apply some olive oil, and fold the shucks back over the corn. About 22 minutes in a hot covered grill should do it. Apply as much butter and salt as your conscience will permit.

Country-style seitan


Country-style steak made from seitan

I have bought seitan in the past (it’s very expensive), and I didn’t really like it. Homemade seitan is a whole ′nother thing. The key ingredient is gluten flour. Gluten alone would be impossibly rubbery, so a certain amount of ground legumes (I used garbanzo beans in the seitan in the photo) is needed to optimize the “bite” of the seitan. And because gluten and legumes alone wouldn’t have much flavor, sauce and seasoning are very important.

I feel sorry for those who can’t tolerate gluten (most people can) or who avoid gluten for some reason. My suspicion is that gluten takes the rap for the downsides of white flour. And, in my view, even white flour has its essential uses, in moderation. Personally, I love gluten, and I have no reason to suspect that gluten has done me or my digestive system any harm. Quite the opposite, I would testify. Gluten is a good source of vegetarian protein.

Anyway, here is a good basic recipe for seitan. That recipe uses 3 parts gluten to 2 parts legume. That’s too much gluten, in my opinion. Even 1 to 1 seems a little high on gluten, so you should experiment with the proportions. The recipe in the link uses lentils. I usually use cooked chickpeas. But any legume would work. Varying the type of legume would vary the spin of the seitan. If you want something more chickeny, use chickpeas. For something more beefy, use blackbeans. Recipes differ on how to cook the seitan. I shape the dough and simmer the seitan in stock. That seems simplest, plus the seitan absorbs flavor from the stock.

I welcome the trend toward fake meats. However, after my initial enthusiasm, I find that I’m not all that interested in fake meats. For one, they’re just too meaty. I prefer vegetarian alternatives that are high in protein but that don’t pretend to be anything other than what they are. Though, according to Wikipedia, the word “seitan” is new, wheat gluten has been eaten in Asia for hundreds of years. The Chinese word translates to “dough tendon,” which is a fine description of the texture of gluten unless you cut the gluten with something that isn’t so rubbery.

Is gluten a processed food? I would argue that it is not. Even old water-powered mills could produce flour from the germ of the wheat. They called it “shorts” flour and sold it as food for pigs. Separating the germ from the bran from the white endosperm after milling was just a matter of sifting, as far as I know.

Seitan is very absorbent, so it loves sauces and gravies. For Asian dishes, I’d suggest cutting it into thin strips (and giving the seitan a quick stir-fry) as though you were making beef and broccoli. Seitan steaks, with dark gravy, naturally, lie at the Western end of the seitan spectrum. I rolled the seitan steak in seasoned flour and lightly fried it, the better to simulate country-style steak.

Seitan is high in protein and low in carbs. It’s also low in fiber, so I think it’s a good idea to serve it with high-fiber foods. I kneaded grated carrots and chopped onions into the seitan in the photo, not only to increase the fiber but also to improve the bite.

Tomato day

Canning is serious work. But it’s very satisfying to put up vegetables for the cold winter that you yourself grew during the hot summer. I canned tomatoes today. I have so many tomatoes that I probably will need to do it again.

I worked on the deck to the keep the heat out of the house, using a gas cooker fired with propane. But it was remarkably cool this morning — 64F when I started working about 7:30 a.m., and 75F when I finished about 11. A cool breeze was blowing out of the woods. A hummingbird hovered for a while to watch what I was doing. She must have been attracted by all the red.

For what it’s worth, my pressure canner is an All American model 915. It holds seven quart jars. Normally I am pretty good at estimating quantities. But I had no idea how many quarts my pile of tomatoes would make. I ended up with a lot of tomatoes left over. From those I will make sauce, and put it up in pint jars, if I can find some pint jars. This is not the best time of year to buy canning supplies, because some places are running out. If you have space to store things for the future, a good supply of canning jars and lids would be good stuff to stock.


Boiling water for blanching the skins off the tomatoes


Ready to pack the jars


I allowed almost three hours for the pressure cooker to cool.


Finally done