Beets, Carrots, Turnips: One Last Supper

Last harvest from Garden 2011

When I heard the temperature was going to drop into the low 20s just after New Year’s, I took a bucket to our vegetable garden and pulled the last of our late-season root crops: a half dozen or so Cylindra beets, three Short ‘n Sweet carrots, and a dozen Golden Globe turnips.  On one of those April-like days last week, I washed the veggies and that evening we savored roasted vegetables—one last supper from Veggie Garden 2011.

As I washed and pared them, the two-thirds bucket of roots, to which we added some garlic, two large onions, and five potatoes, tossed with some olive oil and sprinkled with some crushed rosemary, slimmed down considerably to two cookie sheets of chopped veggies ready for a 425°F oven for about an hour.

Last supper from Garden 2011

Ah, what a dish—so simple to put together that I can name and pronounce all the ingredients—so fragrant while the veggies are roasting—so mouth watering with earthy chunks of beets, sweet carrots, and tongue-assaulting turnips.  What a soul-satisfying dish to set before a veggie gardener. 
Even the potatoes that had nestled with beets blushed a bit in delight.

This feast reminded me that many root vegetables store well in place in the garden until the temperature sinks into the teens and the soil freezes deep enough to freeze the veggies.  It also reminded me that I should plant more rutabagas next summer and forget about the strong-flavored turnips that are prone to slug damage, though I did get three solid turnips out of two short rows.

The only edibles left in our garden now are the three Red Sails lettuce plants in my experimental mini-greenhouse, and they may be damaged tonight (Jan. 15) if the forecast of “temperatures in the teens” is accurate.

If you missed my posting about slugs damaging my turnips, CLICK HERE.

Tomato Patch: Ginny's Thick & Quick Tomato Sauce

Ready to make sauce

My tomato sauces for years were, well, unremarkable.  To be honest, sometimes I thought they were more like tomato juice than sauce.  I read magazine and newspaper articles and answers to Frequently Asked Questions in my quest for recipes and how-to-do-it tips that would give me a reasonable amount of thick sauce in a reasonable amount of time.

I blanched and peeled and cooked.  I put raw tomatoes in the blender and then tried to separate thick from thin.  I cooked tomatoes and put them through our food mill and then cooked them some more.  The result usually was a sauce so thin that it barely stained the pasta through which it ran to the plate.  Saucy friends winked and told us how to resolve this dilemma: add a can of store-bought tomato paste to thicken the thin when we used it.

This year, I vowed to “get it right.”  I cooked, milled, cooked, and simmered two batches for more than three hours last month.  One batch yielded three cups and the other four of thin sauce.  I shook my head and said to myself, “They’re still too juicy.  I should have simmered them another hour or two.”

Prepared tomato pieces ready to start simmering

Enough of this culinary futility, I thought.  Five hours of work that yields four cups of thin sauce isn’t reasonable.   The greater bargains in time, effort, and thickness seemed to sit in bottles on shelves of the pasta aisle of our local Giant Food store.

So I surrendered, and when friends visited last weekend, I gave a whole bucket plus a plastic grocery-store bag of paste tomatoes to Ginny B., who said she wanted to make sauce.  A day or so later she called to thank me for the tomatoes.

“How many cups did you get?”  I asked, thinking she might have gotten ten or twelve.

“Twenty-nine,” she replied, “and they’re all in the freezer.”

“Twenty-nine?” I couldn’t believe it.  “Were they juicy like the sauce I make?”

“No, it was thick.”

“What’s your secret?”

This made the difference

Ginny told me how she makes her thick and quick tomato sauce, and I’ve now made three batches.  I have to admit that I’m back in the tomato sauce business again.  I worked on the third batch on Labor Day morning.  Here’s how I did it:

I started with about a half bucket of large paste tomatoes—Big Mamas and Super Marzanos—and a quarter colander of Juliets, a small paste- or Roma-type tomato usually used for snacking.  I washed them, cored them, gouged out the gel and seeds with my thumb, cut off any damaged or otherwise objectionable parts, cut the good stuff into chunks, and filled a six-quart pan nearly to the top.  I brought the tomatoes to slow boil and then simmered them for about 50 minutes.  Then I used a measuring cup to put two-cup batches into our blender and pressed “blend” to break down all the remaining tomato parts.  The measuring cup helped keep things fairly neat and gave me an idea of how much sauce I’d made.

While I was blending the tomatoes, I sautéed an onion and four or five garlic cloves in olive oil in another large pan.  As I finished blending each small batch of tomatoes, I added them to the simmering onion-garlic mix.  When I had all the tomatoes in the second pot, I added some salt and simmered the sauce for another 20 minutes.  Just three or four minutes from the end of the cooking time, I added a handful of thinly sliced basil from our garden.

Beautiful, thick, delicious

The sauce was beautiful, thick, and delicious.  It filled three three-cup freezer containers.  I spent about an hour preparing the tomatoes and another hour for the cooking.  Bottom line: I had doubled the amount of thick sauce in less than half the time. 

All things considered, I think I’ll call this sauce recipe “Ginny’s Thick & Quick Tomato Sauce.”  Thank you, Ginny.  I’ve adapted the procedure from Ginny’s explanation, and if you try to make sauce this way, adapt my outline to your taste and the way you think you want your sauce to taste.

Ginny, for example, doesn’t remove all the seeds from the tomatoes.  She sautés onion and garlic at the beginning and then adds the fresh tomatoes for cooking.  She adds leaves from a couple of sprigs of thyme for additional herbal kick.  She adds fresh basil at the very end, just as she removes turns off the heat.

What tips do you suggest to make this thick-and-quick tomato sauce even better?

Grow It.  Eat It.

Tomato Patch: A dozen recipes

And the winner is: Tomato Kimchi-Chi!

Today’s Food Section of the Washington Post is its annual “tomato special” and contains a dozen recipes selected as “winningly diverse” entries in its recipe contest, “Top Tomato 2011.”

I may smile and skip most of the recipes—such as Vermillion Red Beer and GreenTomato Mint Sorbet—but I just may try the Summer Spaghetti and the Cardamon-Stewed Tomatoes with Bread Bits and Cheese.

Name your poison—oops, sorry, choose a recipe. To go to the listing, CLICK HERE.

Especially for Okra Lovers

Chef Michael Kiss, the cooking coach at Whole Foods in Rockville, Md., claims “Stewed Okra” made him an okra lover. He serves it as a side dish or over rice.

The ingredients are simple: fresh okra and cherry tomatoes. Extra jazz comes from onion and herbs—rosemary and thyme. The online photo almost makes my mouth water—almost.

Don’t think “stirring and stirring over a simmering pot” when you see the word “stewed.” This stew is slowly simmered in your oven.

To check this Washington Post recipe's potential to begin your love affair with okra, CLICK HERE.

From Garden Plot to Pizza Pan

Susan cuts a garlic scape

If you had asked me 10 years ago what a “scape” was, I probably would have ventured a guess that it was some geological feature—perhaps something like land-scape.

Wrong.

Gardening friends in recent years have clued me in. A scape is a flowering stem, usually leafless, of a plant. Veggie gardeners for years have been enjoying scapes that super-market buyers probably haven’t encountered—garlic scapes.

Susan Levi-Goerlich invited me to her plot at Westside Community Gardens, a part of Columbia Gardeners, Inc., to inspect the rapidly growing scapes on the hardneck garlic she planted last October.

As she cut a handful of scapes with her Swiss army knife, I asked whether the garlic flower would be lavender, like the chives flower.

“I don’t know,” Susan said. “I cut all the scapes so that the plant's energy goes to filling out the bulb, so I’ve never seen a bloom.”

These scapes will get a 3-mile bicycle ride
in 95-degree weather to Susan's refrigerator

With her knife she sliced through the wider part of the scape near the tip, which would have become the flower. It was whitish, but obviously far from flower stage.

“What does it taste like?”

“Garlicky.” She handed me the scape she had just cut and I bit off a piece.

“Wow!” I said. “Yes, garlicky, really strong.” My sinuses instantly were the clearest they have been in years.

“Our family loves potato and scape pizzas,” Susan said. “I’ll send you the recipe for both the topping and dough I use.”

I searched for information about scapes on the internet and discovered that they’ve become available at some farmers’ markets in recent years, and lots of garlic scape recipes are available online. I’ll add a typical link below, after Susan’s recipes.

Susan's Garlic Scape & Potato Pizza
Photo by Susan Levi-Goerlich

Garlic Scape and Potato Pizza
Adapted from recipe by Janet Fletcher, San Francisco Chronicle

1/3 pound Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled and sliced 1/8 inch thick
2 tablespoons olive oil, plus extra for brushing dough
Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
Garlic scapes (about 8, cut into ½” lengths)
Coarse cornmeal (polenta), for dusting baking sheet
8 ounces whole-milk mozzarella, coarsely grated
3 ounces goat cheese, crumbled
2 teaspoons minced fresh thyme or rosemary

Pizza dough for one pizza

To make the topping, preheat oven to 400 degrees. Brush sliced potatoes with 1/2 tablespoon of the olive oil, and then season with salt and pepper. Arrange on a baking sheet in a single layer. Bake until the potatoes are done but not brown, about 10 minutes. Watch carefully as they burn easily. Use a spatula to transfer them to a plate.

Increase the oven temperature to 475 degrees and preheat a baking stone for at least 20 minutes.

Heat 1½ tablespoons olive oil in a skillet over moderately low heat. Add the garlic scapes. Season with salt and pepper and sauté until softened, 5 to 8 minutes. Let cool.

Dust a rimless baking sheet with cornmeal. Punch down pizza dough. On a lightly floured surface, roll the dough into a 13- to 14-inch round. Transfer to the baking sheet.

Working quickly so the dough doesn't stick, top first with mozzarella, then with sliced potatoes, garlic scapes, crumbled goat cheese, thyme (or rosemary).

Carefully slide the pizza onto the hot baking stone.  Bake until the crust is browned and the topping is bubbling, about 8 minutes.

Pizza Dough

Mix together and knead:
1 cup water
3 tablespoons olive oil
3 cups flour
1 ½ teaspoons salt
1 ½ tablespoons sugar
2 teaspoons yeast

If using a stand mixer to knead, knead about 4 minutes. If kneading by hand, knead about 10 minutes or until smooth and elastic.

After kneading, set aside in an oiled bowl in a warm place to rise until doubled (about an hour). After it’s risen, gently stretch and flatten by hand on round pizza pan sprinkled with corn meal. If the dough is sticking to your hands, oil your hands lightly with olive oil.

Top with desired sauce and toppings and cheese and bake 8-10 minutes in a 450 degree oven.

Additional recipes: To link to a website, 2 Sisters Garlic, featuring scape recipes, CLICK HERE.

After the Feasts, a Simple Meal

Oh, the holidays feasts!  I love them—two plus a brunch this year.  Should I count “my” calories?  No, no, that’d be too depressing. 

I still see my favorites, and I still see them piled high on my plate.  Mashed potatoes with cream, butter, and parmesan and asiago cheese.  Roasted Brussels sprouts, cranberry-apple chutney, roast beast, veggie meatballs, Jersey lima beans and corn, and pies—apple, cherry and pecan and brownies with vanilla ice cream—and pumpkin pie with whipped cream.  Yes, yes, holiday food.  And bad Bob ate much too much.

Mouth-watering—pound-adding—eat what is set before you, the good book says.  I’ll ignore any reference to gluttony.

But today’s the day after—reality.  It’s 25.2° F. outside our front door according to our digital thermometer.  Wind from the north swirls light snow that nearly covers our driveway.  And now the question, What shall we have for our Sunday meal?

Soup and bread: antidote for holiday bingeing.  Repent, repent!  A simple meal by a simple cook—simple Bob.

I add a cup of split peas to a 3-quart pot, then about 2 quarts of water.  (This cook is no slave to measuring cups and spoons.)  I add a small onion, finely chopped and bring the mix to a boil.  While I wait for the soup to boil, I chop five or six baby carrots into fairly large chunks and then peel and chop a medium white potato into medium chunks—and add them to the mix, with a teaspoon or so of salt and a tablespoon or two of olive oil, both measured by my eye.

So simple.  I can read the list of ingredients without consulting an alchemist’s dictionary.  When the pot boils, I turn it down to a simmer.  I check it from time to time and give it a stir.  Somewhere in the stirring I check for salt and add a little more.

Fifty minutes later the soup is done, the peas beginning to disintegrate, the potato chunks losing their edges, the carrots just a bit firm to the bite.  If I had cooked it another 10 or 15 minutes, of course, the ingredients would have broken down just a bit more and the soup would have been just a bit smoother.

Add a dash of cream or sour cream?  No, thank you.  I’ve had enough of those yummy things the last two days.

But dish it up I do—and serve it with slices of our favorite soup-bread, the store-baked Seven-Grain Bread that comes in brown paper wrapper at the local Giant Food store.  It has a great texture, a great feel, a great taste.  It doesn’t squeeze and collapse like Wonder Bread.  If you try, it fights back.  Of course, the best bread at the store costs the most.  Cheap soup, expensive bread—about the right mix for a snowy day.

Welcome back to everyday life, Bob.  Holiday meals were fantastic.  But now, a simple meal is what we want.

“Great meal,” Ellen said.  "Thank you."

“Yes, sometimes a simple meal is a great meal.  You're welcome.”

Try This Yummy Holiday Slaw

Looking for a delightful slaw—slightly different—for a holiday potluck or feast?

Look no farther!  The Food section of the Washington Post recently included a yummy recipe for what I’ll call “Holiday Slaw.”  Unlike most slaws, this one is served at room temperature or even warm.  But it’s “holiday” because it contains chopped dried cranberries and crystallized ginger.

Is your mouth watering yet?

I have a reason for calling this yummy dish “Holiday Slaw” and not the name printed in the Post.  The reason is that the basic ingredient is Brussels sprouts, a veggie many people love to hate.

On Saturday we visited Bill & Noelene, friends who also had seen the Post recipe and asked us to contribute this dish to their dinner: “Shredded Brussels Sprouts with Cranberries and Ginger.”  The dish was a hit.  We’ll be making it again.  It replaces roasted Brussels sprouts as our favorite sprouts recipe.

I salivate as I recommend it to you for holiday feasting—while fresh sprouts are available in the stores.

I found it more economical to buy the sprouts by the stalk—with the spouts on the stalk equaling about four and a half 10-ounce tubs of sprouts—and in far better condition.  We’ll make two dishes out of sprouts from one stalk.

If this recipe has a downside, it’s that it’s labor intensive—shredding those small sprouts.  I do it manually, which takes a half hour or so, but perhaps you have some new-fangled machine that would reduce that job to a minute or two.

When I took the label from the stalk, the brand name caught my attention: “Queen Victoria.”

That gave me an idea for a more inviting name for this recipe:  “Victoria’s Secret Slaw.”

Isn’t that a winner?

To go to the Post recipe, CLICK HERE.

Holiday Treats: Mud Pies & Meatballs

As a kid, I liked to play “cook”—you know, making mud pies. I once stuffed dried grass into a little cast-iron stove and lit it with a match I had borrowed from my dad—without his knowledge. My mother was not amused in the slightest at that culinary experiment, and apparently she communicated clearly because I never started a fire in the little stove again.

I still have no urge to stuff dried grass into our kitchen stove, but, quite frankly I still don’t mind getting my hands messy in the kitchen, so when it comes to making holiday treats that require special handling, I volunteer.

This year Ellen and I agreed we’d make baked veggie meatballs and cranberry-apple chutney for the holiday luncheon of her quilt guild and for my Master Gardener holiday celebration. Of course I volunteered to make the meatballs because I like to scoop the meatball mix with a teaspoon in my right hand and dump it into my left hand, where I then squish it around—no, no, where I gently roll it into a ball. You get the idea—just like when I was a kid, but now the mud pies are edible.

The recipe we use was given to us 30 years ago or so by Lola Benson, a great New Jersey cook, who’s now 89 years old. Thank you, Lola. It’s an unusual meatball recipe in that you bake the meatballs rather than frying them in fat of some sort.

Last year we glazed the meatballs with a sweet-and-sour sauce, but this year we’re taking a bowl of chutney to accompany the meatballs as a traditional holiday relish. To link to the chutney recipe, CLICK HERE.

Lola’s recipe makes friends wherever we take it, so, before you ask, here’s the recipe:

Lola Benson’s Baked Vegetarian Meatballs

4 eggs

1 cup chopped nuts

1 teaspoon chopped or minced garlic

1 teaspoon Italian seasoning

1 small onion, chopped

1 cup shredded cheese

1 cup Italian bread crumbs

1 package onion soup mix

Mix all ingredients, adding water a tablespoon at a time as needed until ingredients stick together when you form the balls. Bake on cookie sheets until lightly browned, 15 to 20 minutes, at 350° F.

Bob’s notes: I make 48 to 55 small meatballs from the recipe, but you may want to make them larger. That is no problem, but check while they’re in the oven to prevent overbaking. Both pecans and walnuts work well. I put a sheet of parchment paper on the cookie sheet for easy cleanup. I take the meatballs from oven when they’re golden, not dark, brown. They freeze well, so I often make a double recipe and then freeze half. Then I pull out six or so when we make spaghetti and add them to the bubbling sauce long enough to warm thoroughly.

I made 109 meatballs from a double recipe this time. Ellen put 40 in a covered bowl that she warmed in the microwave and took to her guild this week. I put 65 in another bowl and then into the freezer. I’ll thaw and reheat them for luncheon next week.

Now let’s check those figures: 40 + 65 = 105.

What happened to the other four?

Ho, ho, ho.

I’ll never tell.

Holiday Treat: Cranberry-Apple Chutney

I’ve always been on the lookout for special side dishes to add to our traditional holiday celebrations. I’ve loved them all—but, I must admit, most guests passed them by.

Take Brussels sprouts, a dish that evolved in our kitchen over the years, from boiled sprouts with a tomato-cheese sauce, to a simpler boiled sprouts with stewed tomatoes, to the more recent roasted sprouts. Yes, they’re delicious, but … unappreciated.

Another addition was rutabaga, boiled and then mashed with either butter or cream. I salivate at the mere thought, though my cardiologist doubtless would give two-thumbs down. Again, most guests don’t reach for the serving spoon. Rutabagas don’t even get respect at our local supermarket. Last year, the checker asked me what it was. I answer, “Rutabaga.” With raised eyebrow she flipped through her code chart and then shook her head no. I suggested “Swede” as an antique possibility but got another no. Oh how embarrassing for the humble rutabaga when the clerk found it listed as “Yellow Turnip.”

This year’s newbie is Cranberry-Apple Chutney. I’ve already done a test-run and, shockingly, my fellow adults really like the stuff. It’s so good that those without diet discipline will sneak a treat between meals.

Chutney has been absent from our family table for a couple of generations. I have dim memories of saying “No thanks” to chutney when I was a child visiting elderly relatives for a traditional roast-goose Christmas dinner. The chutney appeared in a small cut-glass bowl and looked like lumpy axel grease and smelled like oniony vinegar. Yuck, I thought.

You probably smile in disbelief at that description from the 1940s if you’re familiar with colorful and tangy chutneys that are created in India and the Caribbean.

Cranberry-Apple Chutney is colorful—think cranberries. Tart Granny Smith apples, golden raisins, onion, and pecans add to the flavor and texture. And it’s tangy courtesy of such traditional chutney spices as ginger, cinnamon, allspice, and cloves.

Other than 5-star taste, another plus is that it refrigerates well so I’ll make it a day or two before Thanksgiving. It takes only about a half hour.

If you like a spicy food in the flavorful, not hot, sense, I recommend you try this holiday treat.

For an online recipe, CLICK HERE.

Two Tutus for Fall Broccoli

Did tutu fabric protect Howard County Master Gardener Susan Levi-Goerlich’s broccoli from cabbage butterflies this summer?

I checked with Susan last week at her plot at Westside Gardens, a part of Columbia Gardeners, Inc., to get a progress report.

“Yes, the tulle did its job. The larvae of cabbage butterflies weren’t a problem,” she said, as she pulled the fabric back to show me a broccoli head. “I’ve been cutting about two weeks now. The first head was pretty large. With the shorter days, the rest of the broccoli are growing more slowly now.”

The tutu worked to keep the butterflies from getting to the broccoli leaves to lay their eggs but didn’t solve a new problem—harlequin bugs.

“Harlequin bugs weren’t a problem before this year,” Susan explained. “The netting didn’t provide total protection against them. It kept them out of the centers of the plants, but then they just sat on the top of the tulle and sucked on the leaves through the fabric’s little holes.”

Solution?

“I added another layer of fabric,” explained Susan, who gardens organically. “The second layer was a little stiffer than the first and both layers together were enough to prevent the harlequin bugs from reaching the leaves.”

Any other problems?

“White flies. Tons of them materialized about a week ago. But so far they’re just a nuisance and haven’t damaged the plants.”

“The brown marmorated stink bugs weren’t a problem for the broccoli, although they decimated my pole beans. They didn’t damage my chard, lettuce, or root crops, such as potatoes, beets, and carrots.”

Susan’s thought of one possible way of thwarting the stink bugs.

“Pole beans grow over a long season, so it seemed that several generations of stink bugs were able to attack them. Next spring I’m going to try bush beans, which produce relatively quickly. If the stink bugs are a big problem then, I’ll just not plant a second or third crop.”

Susan shared her favorite broccoli recipe:

Pasta with Broccoli and Tomatoes

Briefly blanch or steam 1 head broccoli, cut into flowerets, until bright green.

Toss together in a bowl:

¼ cup olive oil
3 cloves garlic, chopped (sauté gently in the oil first for a less pungent garlic taste)
2 fresh tomatoes, chopped
The steamed broccoli
½ teaspoon red pepper flakes (optional)

Cook 1 pound ziti or penne until al dente.

Toss together pasta and veggies.

Top with ¼ cup grated Parmesan.

Serve hot or at room temperature. Serves 4.

Adapted from The Dinah Shore Cookbook.


If you want to read my August 7 "Grow It East It" blog about how Susan uses tutu fabric, CLICK HERE.