Two anniversaries

| Green Card Gardener

After I moved from New York City to this lovely hilltop in Pennsylvania where my husband lived with his two young children, it took me a few years to get the gardening bug. I was just too busy learning to become a parent, although I felt from the beginning that with all that space around us (the storage room being as big as my bedroom was in the city), not growing your own food would be a shame.

The first summer, I did put in a couple of basil plants. I remember taking large bunches of it to the office, the scent filling the room, and my coworkers marveling about it (thankfully, the days of commuting are long over).

I started the garden in 2004, a year when our family was facing a serious health issue. That first-year garden, as tentative and modest as it may seem to me from today’s perspective, helped me keep my sanity. Gardening, whether for food or for beauty, has been my outlet ever since.

To celebrate my 9th gardening season, as well as our wedding anniversary today, I cannot think of a more befitting food than homegrown strawberries. Do I need to say that the critters seem to leave most of the strawberries alone now? They do!

Mini Strawberry Vacherins

I have made Vacherin quite a few times before but usually as one large cake. Even though it vanishes quickly so appearance really does not matter that much, after cutting the meringue does not look half as pretty. This time, I made four small Vacherins.

The meringue can be made one day ahead and stored in a dry place.

Meringue:

¼ cup ground hazelnuts

¼ cup ground walnuts

6 large egg whites

½ teaspoon cream of tartar

½ cup superfine sugar

1 cup confectioners’ sugar

Topping:

1 cup heavy cream

2 tablespoons vanilla sugar, or 2 tablespoons sugar + 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Sliced strawberries

1. Lightly toast the hazelnuts and the walnuts in a non-greased pan. Make sure there are no larger pieces in the mix, as they will clog the pastry tip (speaking from experience here). Set aside to cool.

2. Line two large baking sheets with parchment paper. Using a food-grade pencil, draw 12 circles with a 3.5-inch diameter, leaving at least ½ inch between them.

3. Beat the egg whites and the cream of tartar in a large bowl at medium speed until foamy. Increase the speed and gradually add the superfine sugar, then the confectioners’ sugar. Continue beating until the mixture is stiff and glossy. Fold in the nuts.

4. Place a pastry bag with a plain tip in a large tall glass. Fill the bag with the batter in three batches in order not to overfill. Pipe thick circles onto the prepared baking sheets, starting on the outside and working your way inside in a spiral until the circle is filled. Even out the surface with a knife if necessary.

5. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees F. Place the baking sheet on the 2nd and 4th shelf of the oven and bake for 3 hours, or until the meringue is totally dry to the touch and crisp but not colored. Leave the baking sheets in the oven with the doors closed until it has completely cooled down.

6. Take the baking sheets out of the oven. Gently remove the meringue circles from the parchment. Place on a cake rack.

7. Whip the heavy cream with the vanilla sugar. Spread half of it on four meringue circles and arrange sliced strawberries on top. Place a second meringue circle on each and repeat with the remaining cream and strawberries. Place the last meringue circles on top. Serve right away, or refrigerate for a few hours but serve the same day.

Makes 4 to 6 servings

Strawberry suspense

| Green Card Gardener

Our first strawberry harvest, and we would have a bumper crop if some animal, or animals, was not taking a bite from almost every ripe strawberry. I am in the middle of a critter war – again.

Every time I try a new deterrent, checking out the strawberries the next day is more suspenseful than watching a thriller. I warily walk down to the strawberry patch, bracing myself for what I am about to find. First I stand there for a few seconds with my eyes closed, then I slowly open my eyes and start looking around.

The amount of Epsom salt I spread around the perimeter of the patch this morning should make the strawberry thieves sneeze so hard we should hear it by the house. But again, if the critters are as keen on the strawberries as I am they might just pinch their noses and continue nibbling.

One way of distracting myself from garden woes is to make something quick and easy from a hassle-free crop. Harvesting those beautiful radishes made me think back to the time when the rabbits could squeeze through the fence and devoured the radish greens down to the ground. So it is again just a question of notching up the defense; maybe it’s time to reconsider a fence around the strawberry patch. Meanwhile I will listen out for the sound of sneezing tonight.

Radish Salmon Spread

8 ounces low-fat cream cheese, softened

1 tablespoon milk

3 ounces smoked salmon, finely chopped

1 bunch radishes, finely chopped (about ¾ cup)

1 teaspoon finely chopped fresh dill

Freshly ground black pepper

1. Stir the cream cheese and the milk until smooth. Add the radishes and fold in with a spatula, then fold in the salmon and dill. Season with pepper to taste.

2. Refrigerate. Take out of the fridge 15 minutes before serving.

Mystery peonies

| Green Card Gardener

 

In the fall of 2008 my husband cleared our woods along the road, cutting out dead trees and brambles. The next spring, I spotted little shoots that looked like peonies. As they grew taller, I was sure they were peonies, though rather spindly and thin but oodles of them, at least a couple of hundreds, and in an almost straight line. That could not be possible! This has always been farmland, the area along the road had never been cultivated. Besides, peonies are imports from Asia, and they don’t just spread massively through seeds.

I contacted Doris Cross, a peony expert who is active in the Heritage Peony Garden and annual Peony Fest at the Museum at the Shacksboro Schoolhouse in Baldwinsville, New York. She suggested I look for an old foundation, saying that she dug peonies from underneath trees that had grown up around them for 60 years, and that peonies easily grow for a hundred years in one spot without a problem, “so think long range.” I did not poke around for a foundation because my husband was absolutely sure that there had ever been a dwelling. However I started digging out the peonies before they were overgrown again. First I tried with a few to see how they would do up on the windy hill by our house. I took a chance transplanting them in the spring instead of the fall and they made it.

 

After the trial transplants were established and one of them bloomed last spring – a beautiful, faint rose-color with a creamy yellow center and pink accents – I felt emboldened to undertake a large-scale rescue mission and dug out as many peonies as I could. Again I defied the rules of gardening. I did not have time the previous fall but I also did not want to delay the move any longer. It was tough work getting the peonies out of the ground, the soil being the texture of a thickly woven fabric, and I had to cut through surface tree roots. I planted as many peonies as I could around the house and gave several buckets full to friends.

The answer to the peony mystery came by chance through an aerial photo that my husband and I bought at the door (first time I ever did something like this, I still find it a bit embarrassing to admit but it is a nice shot). When we hung it up next to the old aerial picture from almost 30 years ago, I had a closer look. The area where I found the peonies was the only stretch free of any trees in the otherwise wooded area along the road.

Then the pieces of the puzzle started to come together. The area across the street from us, a few hundred yards away from the old Pennsylvania Dutch homestead, used to be a picnic area, long before the road was carved and paved. The peonies were planted so that the families had a nice view up the hill during their Sunday gatherings after church. Whoever did this must have had a real passion for gardening. Just as Doris Cross had written to me, peonies “were the house wife’s garden along the road”. Yet this was peonies en masse, maybe acquired by channeling away some of the household money over time, or cheaply bought wholesale, or bartered.

The peonies by the house are thriving and I am thrilled to see many of them blooming for the first time. There are a few more peonies to be rescued in the woods, to which I will get this fall.

Meanwhile I found out that peony flowers are edible. Of course I had to find a way to celebrate those resurfaced treasures by incorporating them into our Sunday cake.

 

Yogurt Mousse Cake

Sponge base:

2 large eggs, separated

2 tablespoons warm water

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

¾ cup cake flour

Pinch of salt

Filling:

2 cups heavy cream

1/3 cup cold water

2 scant tablespoons unflavored gelatin

2 cups Greek yogurt (0%)

1/4 cup lemon juice

1 cup sugar

1. For the sponge base, preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Place a large piece of parchment paper over the bottom of a 9-inch springform pan. Make sure it is taught, then clip on the rim and cut off the excess parchment paper. Grease the sides.

2. Beat the egg yolks with the warm water and the sugar until light colored and creamy. Add the vanilla extract.

3. Sift the cake flour over the mixture and fold in thoroughly until no lumps remain.

4. Beat the egg whites with a pinch of salt until they stand in stiff peaks. Fold into the dough. Pour into the prepared pan and even the dough out with a spatula or a large knife. Bake in the preheated oven for 15 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean. Let cool for a few minutes, then take the sponge cake out of the pan and carefully peel off parchment. Let cool on a cake rack.

5. For the filling, whip the cream until stiff. Refrigerate.

6. Put the water in a small heatproof bowl and sprinkle the gelatin over it. Set aside.

7. With an electric mixer beat the yogurt with the lemon juice and sugar until the sugar is fully dissolved.

8. Bring water to a bowl in small saucepan. Lower the bowl with the gelatin into the water, making sure no boiling water spills into it. Stir until the gelatin is liquid and fully dissolved. Remove the bowl with the gelatin with kitchen tongs.

9. Immediately add 1 tablespoon of the yogurt mix and stir until completely incorporated. Add 4 to 5 more tablespoons the same way until the gelatin mix is cooled. It should be smooth and not contain any lumps. Dump the gelatin into the yogurt mix and beat with an electric mixer until well blended.

10. Fold the whipped cream into the yogurt mix until well blended. You may also give it a quick whisk with an electric mixer to blend the two, as long as you don’t overmix.

11. Place the sponge cake back into the springform pan and grease the sides. If the sponge has shrunk during baking, push it down gently so it completely fills the pan. Pour the filling into the pan and even it out with a knife or a spatula. Cover with a cake dome (no plastic wrap, it will cling and mess up the surface) and refrigerate until set, at least 4 yours. Run a large knife dipped in cold water all around the filling to loosen, then carefully remove the rim. Decorate with edible flowers or fresh fruit.

Elderflower feast

| Green Card Gardener

 

When we drove up north to the Hudson Valley yesterday, the edge of the woods along the highway was lined with shrubs that looked like elderberries in full bloom. I could barely sit still in my seat. Last spring was the first time I took a few handfuls of elderflowers from my plants to make elderflower jelly. It is delicious but I am not sure I will dare to do that again, as the yield of those shrubs is so modest to begin with.

Here were enough elderflowers to try all the elderflower recipes in the world, and then some! Once we reached our destination, I quickly excused myself and, equipped with a plastic bag and a knife, strolled into the meadows behind the house. I did not have to walk far before I found a big elderberry bush in full bloom.

On the way home, I started to wonder. The leaves looked slightly different from the cultivated elderberries I have in the garden… I’d better do some research before processing my botanical booty.

Of all the areas of gardening, I find plant identification with plant identification keys the hardest, and I usually take the easiest way out by just comparing photos. Yet this time I had to dig a bit deeper. I was glad I brought home a twig with a full set of leaves, in addition to the flowers.

I needed to make sure it was American Elderberry (Sambucus canadensis) and not Red Elderberry (Sambucus racemosa), which is unfit for consumption and whose berries are toxic. The flowers and fully ripened berries of the American Elderberry are edible (its other parts are indeed poisonous). From the USDA database and other reliable sources I learned that the smell of crushed red elderberry leaves is strong and unpleasant, the twigs are pithy with raised pores, and the flowers are conical, pyramidal clusters. What I had picked was American Elderberry. Also, it reassured me that on local Hudson Valley websites and blogs people were raving about the abundance of wild American Elderberry in the area.

So I was safe and happily went to work, making a large batch of elderberry syrup and elderberry vinegar. The rest of the elderflowers are drying on a tray lined with paper towels to make herbal tea against cold and fever.

 

Elderflower Vinegar

Some recipes require soaking the flowers in salt water, I suppose to get rid of any insects. Although this removes some of the pollen, for vinegar this makes sense to me because unlike syrup and jelly, it is not boiled afterwards.

1 tablespoon salt

1½ cups packed elderflower blossoms, all stems and leaves removed

3 cups (750 ml) white vinegar

¼ cup plus 2 tablespoons (75 g) sugar

¾ cup (190 ml) white wine

1. Fill a large bowl with cold tap water. Holding each umbel by the stem, gently move it around in the water. Exchange the water as necessary.

2. When the water is clear, add the salt to the water and stir to dilute. The blossoms should be fully immersed. Set aside.

3. Bring the vinegar, sugar and wine to a boil and stir until the sugar is fully dissolved.

4. Drain the elderflowers and pat dry with paper towels. Place in a 1-quart sterilized jar with a lid and pour the hot vinegar mix over it. Cover and let sit in a dark place at moderate room temperature for 2 weeks. Strain twice through a sieve lined with several layers of cheesecloth. Fill in sterilized bottles.

Makes 1 quart/1 liter

 

Photo by Ted Rosen