Kitchen Garden Journal

The days are growing shorter. Frosts linger into the morning, covering the crops with an icy sheen that says: “don’t touch me.” We must delay our harvests until the sun frees them from the frozen dew.

One by one the beds are picked over for the last time, plowed under and sown with a cover of rye. Irrigation pipes and sprinklers, useless of late, are shedded until next season. The year’s tasks tick themselves off.

We are putting in far fewer hours at the farm than we did a few months ago.  I’ve been looking forward to this.

But we are racing forward to the time of year that is for thinking. Decisions need to be made. Will we build the greenhouses this fall? How many? One? Two? Three? Will they be heated? Will they be movable? Can we get the grant funding before the ground freezes?

Of course, to get the grant funding, we need to revise our business plan, write a budget and formulate projections of added crop yields and revenues.

There still seems to be a deficit of hours in the day even just to have the conversations we need to have to make these decisions. And it’s not just this one project, either.

It seems that every year as we transition into winter, everything about our business is on the table. Should we add a new market? Should we buy a new tractor? What should we give up trying to grow? Analysis, soul-searching, decisions.

And, after this season especially, what do we have to do to make July and August more sane? Anybody got any ideas?

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Since the hurricane blew over there has been a sharp chill in the air and it’s got us thinking about soup. And eating a lot of it, too.

There are so many wonderful soups that one can create so simply from the colorful palette of autumn vegetables.  We love soups with beans. They are incredibly easy, and there are few better ways to enjoy the coarser greens like kale and escarole than tossing them into a rich bean soup. Just throw some onion and garlic in a pan, sauté for a bit and add some tomato puree and the soaked beans. Cover with water, bring to a boil, and away you go. No need to use stock because the beans make their own broth. Add the greens in the last 20 minutes so they don’t overcook.

Recently we’ve “discovered” a whole class of pureed soups that are based on water, sautéed onion, and potato. Add any vegetable you like to these three ingredients and you’ve got a simple soup that brings out its very essence. All you need is a few ingredients and an immersion blender and you can whip up an incredible variety of these soups in about a half an hour.

Perhaps the simplest of these is potato-leek soup. Just sauté the onion and leeks together, add cubes of peeled potato and water to cover, simmer until cooked, blend and finish with cream. Sprinkle a little chives or parsley and voila! Done.

Take this soup and substitute carrots for the leeks. Add a few slices of ginger if you like. Cauliflower makes the silkiest cream soup of them all. So easy. What about broccoli? Throw in some grated cheddar cheese after pureeing for the best cheddar-broccoli soup ever. Spinach? You bet. Go out and grab the last of the season’s sweet corn and use that, too. You can add some bacon at the beginning and leave it chunky if you like for delicious corn chowder.

Once you get the basic concept, it’s like a whole world is open to you.

It reminds me a lot of the recent Häagen-Dazs ice cream ad campaign. They have this new product line called “5” of ice creams made with just 5 ingredient s: milk, cream, sugar, eggs and fill in the blank. It’s a great concept. Less is more. Purity, simplicity, and variety.

For those of you who prefer written out recipes to descriptive ones, here’s a link to a classic Moosewood carrot soup with lots of variations.

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• 2 tbsp. butter
• 1 tbsp. cooking oil
• 2 lbs. lean lamb shoulder (cut in 2-3 inch pieces, dusted with flour)
• 1 tbsp. sugar
• 1 large onion, peeled and chopped
• 3 cloves garlic, peeled and finely chopped
• 2 tbsp. flour
• 1 cup dry white wine
• 4 tomatoes, peeled and chopped
• 2 tbsp. tomato paste
• 2 cups chicken broth
• salt and pepper, to taste
• bouquet garni (2 sprigs thyme, 3 sprigs parsley, and 1 bay leaf—tied together)
• 8 small new potatoes, peeled
• 8 baby carrots, peeled
• 8 small turnips, peeled and halved
• 8 cipollini onions (peeled) and cut into bite-sized pieces
• 2 cups frozen peas

Preheat the oven to 350F. Heat oil and butter in a skillet over medium-high heat and brown the lamb. Sprinkle with the sugar on both sides and let brown for 2 minutes longer (that will give a nice caramelized touch). Transfer the lamb to a large oven-proof casserole dish. Reduce the heat to low and add the chopped onion and garlic and cook gently for about 8 minutes. Stir in the flour and cook until lightly colored (stir constantly). Add the wine and tomatoes. Cook for a few minutes, stirring constantly). Add the chicken broth and stir in the tomato purée. Season with salt and pepper. Bring to a boil and then pour over the meat in the casserole. Add the bouquet garni.

Cover with aluminum foil and bake for 45 minutes. Remove from the oven and add the all the vegetables except the peas. Cover and return to oven and bake for 30 minutes. Add the peas and cook for an additional 15 minutes. Discard the bouquet garni and serve straight from the casserole with a loaf of crusty French bread.

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The recent break from the never-ending heat wave of 2010 (is it really finally over?) has us thinking about winter. Summer is barely over and yet all our thoughts are trained on that cold horizon: how much time do we have left before the end? Time is marching quickly toward vegetative slowdown and dormancy, so we have to make sure we can get the most out of the rest of the growing season.

We’ve pulled out the tomatoes, ripped up the mulch and drip lines, and tilled in a covering of rye. There’s really no rush for rye yet, though. You can plant it until the middle of October, but it does more of its good work (stabilizing the soil, absorbing nutrients and creating organic matter) the earlier you get it sown.

This week the last of the quick-maturing salad crops will be seeded in the field, but the greenhouses are empty. Our summer crop of cucumbers is long finished and our seedlings have vacated, so we can think about planting some extra late crops indoors for November harvests.  (Both of the Farmers Markets we attend have extended their season until just before Thanksgiving this year.) The warmth and shelter from wind created by the plastic covering gives us about one extra month of prime growing weather.

We are also doing some experimental plots of super late planted crops that will be wintered-over in the field. This has us thinking not just of the coming winter, but even to next spring. We’d like to have spinach, scallions, carrots and lettuce for the first market of next spring around May 1. So we’ll get the plants to about 4-6 weeks old and then cover them with fabric and sheets of plastic to hold them in suspended animation through the winter. They will begin growing again at the end of February, when the sun starts to shine again and well before we can think of tilling or planting anything new.  

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves here. It’s September right now and it’s beautiful: big skies, clean air, and the feeling of a fresh start. Let’s try to enjoy it, along with the last of summer’s bounty, while it lasts.

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Summer has burned itself out early. Whether or not the hot weather returns after this rainy spell, our summer crops are pretty well played out. It was a fantastic run, but its inevitable end is near and we’ll soon be left clinging to our sweet memories like so many green tomatoes on the vine.

Not to worry, though. There is much in the fields that will follow, carrying us into the cold season: the flavors less sweet, perhaps; the vegetables more demanding of our time and ingenuity. No more cucumber tomato salads that we can just throw in a bowl and serve.  But we can go back indoors, fire up the stove and roast, braise, and steam our way into fall’s culinary delights.

And, of course, take a little of the chill and damp out of the house before we break down and crank up the heat.

*On a side note, this week is the Loving Local Blogathon, celebrating the local flavors of Massachusetts. Visit In Our Grandmother's Kitchens to read what more than 70 other Mass-based bloggers are writing about local food to benefit Mass Farmers Markets, a non-profit charitable organization that helps farmers markets throughout the Commonwealth (you can make a donation here).

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The End of the Season

The end of the season is always a slightly melancholy time. Fields and beds are cleared out and there's no new planting to replace them. Plants that have yielded faithfully slow their pace. Gone is the time for lush, exuberant growth. There is a perceptible turning inward as the plants begin to horde their energy and attempt, foolishly, to wait it out, looking more ragged with each successive frost. One by one the last tasks of the season are completed: spent crops harrowed in, fields seeded to rye, irrigation put away, garlic divided into cloves and planted for the following year.   

Then there's the nagging dread of the end of the abundance and inevitable return to the supermarket. Nostalgia for summer sets in as you remember that you never got around to making that raspberry tart. July and August are such a whirlwind that it's simply impossible to take full advantage of the wealth around you. And then it's gone. 22 short weeks--the New England summer a blast of fecundity rivaled in its sweetness only by its brevity. Now we, too, must turn inward, and wait it out. 

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This recipe is adapted from Cooking by Hand by Paul Bertolli. We have a little Italian hand-crank mill or mulino we like to use to make flour from buckwheat groats. This recipe serves 8 so feel free to cut it in half.

• 2/3 cup buckwheat flour
• 1 1/2 cups extra-fancy semolina flour
• 2 eggs
• 5 teaspoons salt
• 2 large or three medium boiling potatoes, peeled and sliced 1/8 -inch thick
• 1/2 large head savoy cabbage, separated and torn into pieces
• 7 tablespoons butter
• 8 to 10 sage leaves
• 1 garlic clove, chopped fine
• 1 cup grated Fontina val d'Aosta cheese
• 1 cup grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese

1. Place the buckwheat flour and semolina in a large bowl and make a well in the center. Add the eggs and one-fourth cup plus 2 tablespoons water. Use a fork to stir the mixture together. When the dough begins to form a shaggy mass, alternately squeeze and press it with the palm of your hand. Press any loose bits of flour into the dough. If it is too dry, add water, 1 tablespoon at a time, until the dough comes together. When the dough feels tacky and the flour is fully incorporated, transfer it to a clean, lightly floured surface and knead for 4 tor 5 minutes, or until it loses its surface moisture, is a uniform color and springs back when pressed. Wrap the dough in plastic and allow it to rest at room temperature for at least 1 hour before rolling.

2. Roll out the dough on a lightly floured surface until it is 1/8-inch thick, then cut it into wide strips 6 inches long.

3. Heat the broiler.

4. Bring a large pot of water to a boil and add the salt. Add the potatoes to the boiling water, then after 2 minutes, add the cabbage. Boil the vegetables for about 5 minutes, or until the cabbage is tender but not soft. Remove to a plate with a slotted spoon and keep the water boiling.

5. Meanwhile, place a wide sauté pan over medium heat; add the butter, sage leaves and garlic. Lower the heat so the garlic does not brown, and swirl the pan a couple of times so the butter melts and the flavors merge. Remove from the heat and keep warm.

6. Cook the pasta in the same water as the vegetables to al dente, about 4 minutes; drain well and add to the sauté pan. Over low heat, stir to coat with the butter mixture. Remove from the heat.

7. Butter a 10-inch gratin or baking dish and assemble by layering one-third of the pasta, vegetables and cheeses. Repeat, until all the pasta, vegetables and cheeses are used. Place the gratin under the broiler for 2 to 4 minutes until the cheese is melted and slightly browned. Serve at once.

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Jack Frost may soon be nipping at our basil and peppers, but we say, "Bring it on." Fall is an amazingly abundant time of year, and we have no less variety in this season than we had at the height of summer. In the autumn, a whole new cast of characters take the stage. Leeks, celeriac, turnips and radishes, cauliflower and broccoli, cabbages, carrots and beets, sweet potatoes and squashes. There are so many things to cook that are inspiring us right now, most of which would be unpalatable during the warmer times just weeks ago. Soups, stews, roasts, gratins, purées.... Once you embrace the cool season, you don't even miss the tomatoes.

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