recipes

The eternally dirty knees of a gardener

| Green Card Gardener

No matter how hard I try to stay clean, I always get dirty in the garden. I mean really dirty, to the point where need to take off my gardening clothes in the garage. The worst are my knees. Even after thorough scrubbing in the shower, rubbing them with alcohol or hydrogen peroxide, my knees still look dirty. This is a mystery to me because I always wear trousers in the garden – hand-me-downs from my mother who is trying to rid her house of decades of accumulated clothing, including old jeans of mine when I was in my twenties (surprisingly, they still fit me, gardening must indeed do something for the waistline).

My best guess is that my knees are not actually dirty but it’s more pressure points from being on my knees a lot, just like our dog has calluses on his elbows from frequent floor contact.

How could I possibly not be on my knees? Seeding minuscule seeds, thinning out tiny seedlings, and harvesting, especially digging out root vegetables, is practically impossible without crouching on the ground, unless you do raised-bed gardening. Today I dug out some lonely beets that I had overlooked all summer, and seeded another fall crop. The arugula needed thinning so I took some for this salad tonight. Of course, I did all of this… on my knees.

When the time comes where I cannot be on my knees any more, I shall move to raised beds. Until then, I will just have to accept dirty knees as the signs of a true gardener.

Beet Salad with Arugula and Feta

1.5 pounds beets

¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil

2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar

Salt

Freshly ground black pepper

1 small bunch baby arugula

5 ounces crumbled feta

3 tablespoons chopped fresh mint

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.

2. Wash the beets and put them unpeeled in a Dutch oven or cast-iron casserole with a tight-fitting lid. Pour in about ¼ inch water. Cook the beets in the preheated oven for about 40 minutes, depending on size, until they are easily pierced with a knife. If the beets are different in size, check them individually and take them out as they become tender.

3. Slip the skins off the beets and cut into 1-inch cubes. Set aside to cool.

4. Whisk the oil with the vinegar, salt and pepper.

5. Wash and dry the arugula and tear into bite-size pieces.

6. In a large bowl, mix the cooled beets with the arugula, feta, mint and dressing. Serve as soon as possible, as the arugula wilts quickly.

Makes 4-6 servings

After-the-storm elderberry sauce

| Green Card Gardener

After a power outage for two and-a-half days due to hurricane Irene, and the emergency evacuation of our freezer chest, filled almost to the top with produce from the garden, to friends who did not lose power, I had only limited energy left for lengthy food rescue operations.

The storm had knocked down several handfuls of elderberry clusters. Elderberries ripen unevenly so I usually leave them on the plant until all the berries are black, hoping I am quicker than the birds. The elderberry clusters I collected still had some green berries on them but that’s all right.

I have never made anything else than elderberry soup or jelly from elderberries. There were not enough storm berries for any of those but I know from Elderberry Soup that elderberries and apples are a good combination. So I made this easy after-the-storm elderberry sauce with apples. I had it with Greek yogurt but I can imagine it also delicious on cottage cheese, rice pudding, with waffles or pancakes.

Let’s hope we won’t have another storm like this in a long time but if we ever do, I will try the sauce with pears, which also complement elderberries very well.

Elderberry Sauce with Apples 

2 Gala apples

2.5 cups stemmed and washed elderberries

1 cinnamon stick

1 strip of organic lemon peel

½ cup sugar, to taste

1 tablespoon cornstarch

1. Peel and quarter the apples. Remove the core and cut the apples into ½-inch dice. Put them in a heavy saucepan with the elderberries, the cinnamon, lemon peel and sugar. Add 2 to 3 tablespoons water to prevent burning before the elderberries release their juice.

2. Bring to a boil and cook, covered, 15 minutes, until the apples are very tender and the berries are easily crushed with a spoon. Stir occasionally during cooking.

3. Cool slightly and remove the lemon peel and cinnamon stick. Pass through the finest plate of the food processor. Scrape the underside of the plate – a lot of the thick pulp gets stuck there.

4. Return the sauce to the pot. Dissolve the cornstarch in 2 tablespoons cold water and add it to sauce. Stirring constantly, bring the sauce to the boil and cook for another 2 to 3 minutes, until it thickens and looks no longer starchy. Taste for sugar. Let cool and refrigerate.

Makes about 1 cup

Lydia’s way

| Green Card Gardener

 

My late German grandmother would nod in approval if she saw me making this. Although she never said it openly, wasting food was taboo with a capital T for her. Having lived through World War II, her definition of “wasting” was certainly more extreme than my mother’s; and I am yet another generation removed from her parsimony. Still, not using the many egg whites that I have left over from making custards, puddings, crème caramel and the like would never occur to me.

Since I cannot foresee when I will use them, I always freeze the egg whites in small containers. Mostly I use them for meringue cookies with chocolate or coffee flavor, a recipe adapted from The Joy of Cooking.

In July, when I was in charge of bringing ice-cream topping to a meeting of my Master Gardener group, I turned my usual meringue cookies into a crushed version.  I have had several requests for the recipe so here it is:

Crushed Meringue for Ice-cream Topping

3 egg whites

1 cup (200 g) sugar

2 to 3 tablespoons instant espresso or unsweetened cocoa, to taste

Canola oil or another neutral-tasting oil for spraying

Pinch of salt

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1. If using frozen egg whites, thaw them in the refrigerator.

2. Mix the sugar with the instant espresso.

3. Preheat the oven to 250 degrees F. Line a jelly roll pan with aluminum foil sprayed with oil.

4. Beat the egg whites with a pinch of salt until they are very stiff, gradually adding the sugar and the vanilla.

5. Spread the batter evenly onto the aluminum foil and bake for 60 minutes, until dry to the touch. Remove the pan from the oven but leave the oven on.

6. Transfer the meringue onto a large cutting board and peel off the aluminum foil. It’s OK if it breaks into many pieces, as it will be crushed anyway.

7. Coarsely chop the meringue with a large knife and spread it out on the aluminum foil. Bake for another 30 minutes, until the meringue has barely any moist spots left. Turn off the oven but leave the meringue in with the door closed, which will dry it further.

8. After the meringue is cooled completely, store in tin cans. It keeps for several weeks.

The best thyme I ever had

| Green Card Gardener

After years of meager woodsy thyme plants, this summer a thyme plant from last year popped up again and supplied me with the largest amount of thyme I had since I started gardening.

Now I finally have enough thyme from my garden to make my own herbes de Provence, a mix of dried herbs. I only use herbs I have in the garden but in addition to the herbs listed below, the mix can also contain equal amounts of fennel seeds, marjoram, oregano, and a small amount of crushed dried lavender blossoms. Herbes de Provence are wonderful with roasted meat, chicken, oven-roasted vegetables or potatoes, and even in tomato sauce for pasta.

Herbes de Provence

Dried rosemary, chopped finely

Dried basil leaves, crumbled

Dried sage leaves, crumbled

Dried summer savory, crumbled

Dried thyme, crumbled

Mix the herbs and store in a tin can or a glass jar away from the light. Herbes de Provence are best used within a few months; as all dried herbs, they loose their flavor over time.