Fruits

Autumn in a jar

| Green Card Gardener

One of my favorite things in October are the crabapple trees on a sunny day like yesterday. With their branches bare of leaves, the tiny vibrant apples stand out even more against the blue sky. I wanted to spend more time taking in that stunning view. And since I had set my mind on trying out crabapple butter this year, what better way to spend time near the crabapples than picking!

Usually by mid-October we have already harvested a bucket of crabapples for jelly (what is left on the trees is eaten by the wild turkeys), only this this year we haven’t gotten around to it yet. Picking crabapples is a two-person operation – to reach the branches we have to drive the truck underneath each tree.

Yesterday I was home alone, and without the truck. I fetched a stepladder, fully aware of what I was doing was pretty risky business on that steep hill. I certainly did not want to get stranded with a twisted ankle or worse for a basket of crabapples so I was very careful and restrained myself from any climbing maneuvers. And I left alone the clusters of beautiful crabapples that beckoned to be picked but I could not safely reach.

I neither had the time nor wanted to spend hours standing by the stove stirring, therefore I cooked the crabapple butter in a cast-iron Dutch oven in the oven. In the summer I made plum butter that way and it turned out great. It was late when I finished so I did not can the jars until this morning. That was not a problem, I simply slowly reheated the crabapple butter, stirring constantly until the surface, which had dried out a bit overnight, became smooth again.

To prevent the surface from drying out in the jars, I added a tablespoon of juice to each jar on top of the crabapple butter. I happened to have some quince juice on hand so I used that but I think that apple cider or apple juice would be ideal, and orange juice would work just as well.

Crabapple Butter

4 pounds crabapples, stems removed and picked over

1 teaspoon cinnamon chips

2 cloves

4 cardamom pods

1 star anise

1 teaspoon dried ginger chips (or 1 thumbnail size-piece of peeled fresh ginger)

2 cups sugar

Juice to pour on top (apple cider, orange or apple juice)

1. Wash the crabapples several times in cold water. Put them in a large heavy pot and cover with water. Bring to a boil, then cook over medium heat for 30 to 45 minutes, until the apples are soft and can easily be crushed with a wooden spoon.

2. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F. Tie the spices in a piece of cheesecloth.

3. Pass the cooked crabapples through the fine sieve of a food mill. You should have about 4 cups of pulp. Return it to the rinsed pot and add the sugar. Cook over low heat and stir until the sugar dissolves.

4. Pour the pulp in a medium-size Dutch oven, or another ovenproof dish with a tight-fitting lid. The dish should not be too large, otherwise the butter will scorch. Add the mix from the pot and bury the spice bag in it.

5. Cover the pot and place it in the middle rack of the preheated oven. Set the timer for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes, stir well and scrape down the sides and over the bottom of the dish. Repeat this every 30 minutes for about 3 hours, until the butter is so thick that a spoon leaves a trace.

6. Remove the spice bag. Fill the hot crabapple butter in sterilized canning jars and push it down with a knife to remove any air pockets. Pour 1 tablespoon juice on top of the butter in each jar. Process the jars in a boiling water bath for 10 minutes.

Makes 4 to 5 8-ounce jars

Another sweet reason to garden

| Green Card Gardener

In August friends from Germany were visiting. They duly admired the huge red and orange bell peppers in my garden but what they marveled about most were the sweet juicy cantaloupes. In Germany, summers are often so chilly and sun-less that not even the tomatoes turn fully red, let alone crops like melons can be successfully grown.

After many years in the United Stated I had almost forgotten how astounded I was myself seeing a fig tree in the middle of New York City, and realizing that melons that taste and smell like melons are grown locally. Through my friends I appreciated anew our consistently warm to hot summers. Sure, as gardeners we battle against pests, droughts, floods and winter damage, and the recent change of the USDA hardiness zones due to global warming is worrisome. Yet this is a great climate for gardening, and I wish more people would do it.

Yesterday I harvested my one and only watermelon. It owes its existence entirely to a feeling of frustration. In early June, I picked up a couple of plants on my third trip to the nursery to replace the cantaloupe seedlings that had been devoured by the striped cucumber beetle.

Small as it is, the watermelon still makes me gleeful.  It is too special for eating the whole thing so I set aside some to make watermelon vodka for the first time. It will be the perfect drink for toasting the garden long after I will have put it to rest for winter.

Concord grape solution

| Green Card Gardener

Although I have been terribly neglecting my two Concord grape plants (note to myself: read up on grape pruning this winter), they are quite plentiful. Now I am facing the same question as last year – what should I do with them? The truth is, I don’t care much for raw Concord grapes, nor for grape jelly. I planted the grapes for our daughter who has since flown the nest.

My attempt to make fruit leather last year yielded a sticky mess so I had to come up with a new idea. Schiacciata, the stuffed Italian flatbread is made only during grape harvest, sounded good yet it seemed to be rather sweet. I envisioned something more savory. Also, Concords are so juicy that I was afraid they would make the flatbread soggy.

It came out just the way I hoped and I know I will want to eat this again when grape season is over. So now I will freeze the grapes in customized portions. Getting stuck with a bunch of concord grapes isn’t so bad after all.

Stuffed Flatbread with Concord Grapes, Red Onion and Rosemary

I use a round cast-iron pizza pan as a baking stone. Since I don’t have a pizza peel, and I don’t master the art of swiftly transferring a large piece of floppy dough onto the hot stone, I placed it on a large piece of parchment.

When I first made this, I seeded the grapes – a painstaking task. Pushing them through the food mill is much quicker and easier.

 2 teaspoons dry yeast

½ teaspoon sugar

2 cups all-purpose white flour

1 cup white whole-wheat flour

1 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for brushing

1½ cups Concord grapes

1 large red onion

1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh rosemary

Kosher salt

1. Mix the yeast with the sugar and ¼ cup warm water and stir to dissolve. Set aside for 10 minutes until it foams.

2. Put the flours, 1 cup warm water, the salt, olive oil and yeast mixture in the kitchen machine with a dough hook (if kneading by hand, mix in a bowl, then knead the dough on a clean work surface). Knead at low speed until the dough is smooth and elastic and detaches from the bowl. If too dry, add a bit more water; if too sticky, add more flour by the tablespoon.

3. Take the dough out of the bowl and oil the bowl. Put the dough back in the bowl, turn it once to coat evenly with oil, and cover the bowl with a kitchen towel, or cover it loosely with a lid. Let rise for 1 hour.

4. In the meantime, preheat the oven to 425 degrees F. Oil a gratin dish. Cut a large piece of parchment paper, slightly larger than the size of your baking stone.

5. Wash the grapes and slip off their skins. Place grapes into a bowl and place a food mill on top. Push the grapes through the food mill and extract as much of the pulp as possible without crushing the seeds.

6. Slice the onion thinly and mix them with grape pulp and skins. Roast in the preheated oven for 30 minutes, turning them a couple of times until they are soft and start to brown at the edges. Remove from the oven and cool. Turn off the oven but leave the oven door closed and place the baking stone on the middle rack of the oven (this will already preheat the stone for later).

7. On a lightly floured work surface roll out the dough about ¼ inch thick and to about double the size of your baking stone. Spread the onion grape mixture over half of the dough. Sprinkle with rosemary and salt. Fold the empty part of the dough over the stuffing, flatten it gently, and pinch all around to seal the edges.

8. Transfer the flatbread onto the prepared parchment paper. Diagonally slash the top every inch or so with a sharp knife. Brush with olive oil and let rise for 30 minutes.

9. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. When the dough is ready to bake, remove the baking stone from the oven. Transfer the parchment paper with the flatbread onto the stone. If you have a lot of excess parchment, carefully cut it off with scissors. Put the baking stone in the middle rack of the oven. Spray the flatbread with cold water and bake for 30 minutes until lightly browned. Remove the baking stone from the oven and slide the flatbread off the stone onto a cake rack to cool.

Bark bag

| Green Card Gardener

As much as I like my vegetable garden to be neat and tidy, and as fiercely as I fight unwanted visitors there, I can also let things go and tremendously enjoy the areas where nature takes its course: the meadows where turkeys like to nest, white from Queen Anne’s lace right now, a hillside filled with Staghorn sumac and pokeweed for bird food, and, of course, patches of milkweed for monarchs.

We gave up on growing fruit trees a long time ago because deer were running them over or devouring them. The only survivors are two pear trees. In the last few years, some animal, most likely a groundhog, was faster than us and picked the loaded trees clean just when the pears were starting to ripen. This year we decided to take action and try to keep the critters away with Epsom salt and Plantskydd, a deterrent that has worked well so far.

On my pear protection mission today I found a bunch of pears on the ground that the wind must have knocked down. Before I could lose myself in fantasies about what to make with them, I had to find a way to bring them back to the house. It was sweltering hot and I had no intention to walk up to the house to get a basket or a bag. For a brief moment I considered taking off my T-shirt to carry the pears but the idea of bugs eating me alive made me discard that idea quickly. When I looked around at the edge of the woods for some suitable receptacle such as giant leaves, I found a large piece of bark – perfect for the purpose.

The pears will go into my favorite Spiced Chocolate Pear Cake.