By Peter, on May 9th, 2013
By the end of the last post, I had figured out that one of the prominent flavor notes in lovage is quite similar to fenugreek. If you cut some, or, better, tear it, your hands will become insistently perfumed with the persistent aroma of the plant. When people dismiss it with variations of the “it’s like celery” line, that’s a cop-out on par with the “tastes like chicken” descriptor so loosely applied to things as different as mushrooms and alligator. Lovage doesn’t taste like celery, though it approximates it visually, up to a point. It’s much closer to fenugreek, with a whiff of caraway and a citrusy tang.
Keep reading A Zoo In My Lovage…
By Peter, on April 30th, 2013
This is a shot of my little ramp patch. (Likers of the blog on Facebook already knew that; just saying). I planted these about four years ago, near the stream, under some trees. They have taken hold quite well, and are beginning to spread. It’s hard to resist pulling them up, but I do, so they will continue to multiply. What I do instead is to cut one leaf off, leaving the rest. Thus do I get to have my ramps and eat them too.
*Edit* It’s worth mentioning that they like to be under deciduous trees, not conifers, and thus be mulched naturally with leaves. Full sun is not advised. They evolved to thrive on forest floors, near water, so do your best to provide them with that sort of environment. The North side of your house, mulched with whatever you rake off your lawn, can work. I tried a few spots and this was the clear winner.
While the rest of the world goes bananas for them, remember that growing your own is the only sure way to protect wild populations from the depredations of both amateur and professional foragers. Ramps spread slowly, and can take years to recover from overeager harvesting. If everyone eats wild ramps, they’ll disappear. Cultivating your own patch(es) is the way to go. They transplant well, especially earlier in the season, so when I do forage them I always set aside a meaningful percentage to stick in the ground. Over time this should wean me off . . . → Read More: It Takes A Pillage
By Peter, on April 26th, 2013
There are plenty of arguments in favor of gardening, and they’re all important. Exercise, connecting with nature, saving money, controlling your food supply, eating food at the pinnacle of freshness, learning to ferment to handle the surplus, and so on. It’s not like I need to make the argument. But for me there is one overarching reason that trumps all the others combined: inspiration.
Keep reading IT’S ALIVE…
By Peter, on April 24th, 2013
I’m still not done with charred scallions; a fat and unruly bunch still remains from my spring cleaning of the garden prior to the new load of compost being spread around for this year’s planting. I’m going to plant twice as many this fall, and leave them unprotected and neglected all winter just so I can have even more next spring to char and chew and enjoy while I mutter insults about all the wimpy vegetables that can’t endure the intemperate hardships of our climate and still make for such sweet eating come the thaw.
Keep reading Green Onions…
By Peter, on April 11th, 2013
I’ve written before about leeks in vinaigrette being one of my all-time favorite appetizers. Leeks have a particularly savory completeness to their flavor, an almost meaty umami element that’s extremely compelling and addictive. They take well to all forms of cooking, and their silky texture when perfectly done—slick layers sliding apart under the fork—is hard to beat for sensual pleasure in the vegetable kingdom.
Keep reading Know’st Thou Fluellen?…
By Peter, on March 1st, 2013
Espelette peppers, named for the town in Basque France that made them famous, are a unique food. Dried and ground, they have a particular aromatic quality: earthy and yet bright at the same time, with a fairly gentle but insistent heat that represents (in general, based on my own anecdotal experience) the upper limit of most French palates’ tolerance for spiciness. The great hams of Bayonne are cured with copious pepper, and it gives them a gorgeous flavor and tint. It’s not really a cooking spice, but rather a finishing one, especially given how much money a small jar commands. A pinch sprinkled on top of fish, chicken, or potatoes (or a hundred other things) adds an irresistible trebly zing and a not insignificant coloristic bump.
Keep reading Bust A Capsicum…
By Peter, on January 1st, 2013
For January’s Chronogram, I visited the Hudson Valley Seed Library to talk about their rapid growth and plans for the coming year. If you live in the area, they offer a full range of seeds that are bred and selected to perform well in this climate. Even if you don’t, theirs is an important story if you prefer to have your food dollars support local small businesses rather than huge multinational corporations.
Photo by . . . → Read More: Seminal Effort
By Peter, on October 16th, 2012
One of the things the garden forcefully teaches is the vivd difference in flavor between things we grow ourselves and even those things we pay the full yuppie markup for at the local health/organic emporium. For years I bought the herbes de Provence blend at the local Health Mart™ and used it, often liberally, in many dishes. The blend of thyme, rosemary, oregano (and/or marjoram) and lavender (and sometimes fennel, and more) is pretty much Mediterranean in a jar when it comes to giving your meats and sauces that certain fragrant, resinous quality that’s instantly recognizable. Add a few fat pinches to a pan of tomato purée, and it’s pizza sauce. Like that. Keep reading Cut And Dried…
By Peter, on September 24th, 2012
This time every year I order lots of Blue Beech tomatoes for making purée and sauce to get us through until the beginning of the next tomato season. Blue Beech are a variety of paste tomato that can be cooked with skins and seeds and still remain wonderfully sweet, so processing them is dead easy: I trim the stem end, halve them , and throw them in the pot to cook down and disintegrate. Then I stick-blend the whole thing and run it in batches through the food mill to catch the skin fragments and seeds. It saves a lot of time, especially when dealing with a hundred pounds of them at a time as I did recently.
Keep reading Seeing Red…
By Peter, on September 19th, 2012
One of the things I love about sorrel, apart from the fact that it’s a low-maintenance perennial, is that it grows twice each season: once in the spring and again in the fall. Its gently lemony tang and big green leaves are welcome in salads and other applications, especially when the fall lettuces haven’t come in yet. In this case, along with the shiso—which had a banner year—they made superb rolling papers for bulgogi ssam. Sorrel and shiso are a combination for the ages, especially when paired with richly seasoned beef, pickled radishes, and Thai chilis.
Keep reading Sweet Leaf…
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Yours Truly 
I'm a painter who happens to also spend a lot of time growing, making, and writing about food. I'm particularly interested in the intersection of frugal peasant cooking techniques and haute improvisation. And I have a really great personality. |
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