Garlicky Greens and Painted Ponies

May 15th, 2008

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(Vegetarian, vegan option, gluten-free)

Things are going to get good around here.

Things are going to get intoxicatingly, vibrantly, slap-happily, lick-smackingly, take-the-top-of-your-head-off-ily (to borrow Dickinson’s qualifier) good.

This past weekend marked the coming-out-of-hibernation of our local farmer’s markets. With the launch of the Tower Grove Farmer’s Market, St. Louis’s local produce season is once again in motion. After the long, wet, cold then warm then cold again, unusually winter-like winter we’ve had, it was with great celebration and fanfare that we greeted the clanging of the market bell. Happy, happy sound!

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The mood was jubilant and energetic, and the conversation warm as farmers and marketers were reunited after the seasonal separation. There wasn’t a lot on offer just yet, but what was there was just gorgeous. We escaped with a mound of kale, handfuls of spinach, two pounds of asparagus, a bunch of tarragon, sunflower sprouts, a Swiss chard plant for the garden, a tub of salted bleu cheese, 8 ounces of the elusive morel mushrooms, and two dollars left over. Forgive me if there’s a bit of swagger in my voice.

And I haven’t even yet mentioned the dinner that Simon and I shared after our market exploits:

Broiled salmon with asparagus and morels in tarragon sauce. Fresh garden greens (my greenhouse lettuce mixed with market spinach) with sunflower sprouts, sprinkled with almond slivers. Fresh strawberries with Goatsbeard Farm bleu cheese, drizzled with balsamic reduction and honey (a recipe adapted from Shauna James Ahern’s Gluten Free-Girl) for dessert. Oh my! The food was so alive it fairly levitated from our plates.

Last night, we finally got around to the kale. I made my favorite comfort food – garlicky greens with (heirloom) beans.

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On BeansAndGreens
Beans and Greens should be one word, an it rather than a they. IT is one of those dishes that I could – and sometimes do — live on. There’s something about the combination of wilted greens and meaty beans, the intense garlic, all rounded out by ground pepper and salt. So familiar, yet so full of possibility. Anything can happen…

BeansAndGreens is like jazz. Improvisation is encouraged. Get a little nutty, a little risqué even. Make your audience say “yee-aaah”, a guttural noise that emerges with a surprised breath, eyes closed.

Though I stuck to the basics in this recipe, there are so many ways to shape the profile of greens on a plate. Where might imagination and palate take us? Here are some variations on a theme:

1) Throw in some rosemary, for a Northern Italian (and potentially cancer fighting) dish. Top it off with toasted pine nuts.
2) Mix it up. Use Swiss chard, beet greens, or even Asian greens
3) Wake the flavors up with a splash of vinegar at the end of the cooking
4) Highlight the roots: add beets, carrots and young onions
5) Omit the garlic, and instead stir in a touch of nutmeg and a bit of half and half or cream just before removing from the heat.

Oh, but this list could go on (couldn’t it?). This spring and summer staple will be featured here again and again in the next months. How do you mix it up and dress it up? What do you do with greens in the privacy of your own kitchens?

The recipe(s)
This version of BeansAndGreens might be traditional, but I got a little jazzy with the accompaniment. I’ve been waiting for the perfect reason (as if there need be a reason) to try yet another of Crescent Dragonwagon’s cornbread recipes. After much deliberation, I went with her Sonoran Skillet Cornbread with Mesquite Meal.

In the photo, it looks less like cornbread than it does like pumpkin pie. That’s the mesquite, a rich, sweet, pinkish flour made by grinding the pods (note – not the bark! That’s for fire pits) of the mesquite seed.

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Prized for its high protein and fiber, low fat and low glycemic index content, mesquite used to be a staple in the diets of the Sonoran desert people. Also high in magnesium calcium, potassium, zinc and iron, it’s sold by Native Seeds Search and is featured in many of their recipes. I’ve made cookies and muffins with mesquite flour before, and though it’s fairly pricey ($7 for less than a pound) you only use a bit in each recipe, and oh my goodness, it’s so worth the cost. The indescribable flavor lingers long after the meal is finished.

For beans, I went with the Painted Pony from the selection sent to me by SSE’s Diane Ott Whealy. This North American bean was a fitting choice, since the recipes in this post are built around foods of American origin. The Painted Pony is a relative of the Appaloosa (an heirloom that I’ll be posting on soon). Though I find it to have a rich, nutty flavor, Simon thinks the bean is like a tiny potato – starchy, fluffy, with a skin that holds its color after cooked but wants to slide right off. See what you think.

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Garlicky Greens with Painted Pony Beans

2 tablespoons olive oil
4 garlic cloves, minced
2 cups cooked Painted Pony beans
9 ounces fresh kale, sliced into strips
Salt and pepper, to taste
Parmesan for garnish (optional)
In a 10-inch skillet, heat one tablespoon of the olive oil till warm but not smoking. Add the minced garlic and sauté till translucent, about five minutes. Add the beans and stir until warm. Add the remaining tablespoon of oil, heat through, and then stir in the kale. It will mound over the skillet and threaten to fall out onto the stove, but hang on; in about 6 seconds it will start to wilt and cook down. When this happens, stir gently to heat all of the kale and coat it with oil. You want the kale to keep some of its crunch, so don’t overcook Two to three minutes should be plenty to warm it through. Turn off heat, add salt and pepper. Stir some more, then grate Parmesan over the top for garnish (or don’t, if you want to stay vegan).

Sonoran Skillet Cornbread with Mesquite Meal

1 TBSP butter
2 eggs
2 cups buttermilk
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 ¼ cups stone ground yellow cornmeal
½ cup mesquite flour
3 tablespoons unbleached white flour
Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Place 10-inch cast iron skillet in the oven.

In a small bowl, combine the eggs, and buttermilk. In a larger bowl, stir together the sugar, salt, baking soda and powder, cornmeal, mesquite flour, and white flour. Add wet ingredients to dry, being careful not to over-mix.

Take skillet from the oven and place the tablespoon of butter in the center. Let melt, and then brush to coat the surface, including the sides. Pour batter into the skillet, sprinkle with a dusting of mesquite flour, and bake for about 25 minutes.

 

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Book Review: The Garden Primer, Completely Revised

May 9th, 2008

The Garden Primer: The Completely Revised Gardener’s Bible, by Barbara Damrosch (Workman Publishing, 2008)
ISBN: 978-0894803161
Price: $18.95 (U.S.)

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Ordinarily, having to ‘fess up to the fact that I’ve faithfully used — since its original publication — a book that just enjoyed a 20th anniversary reprinting would make me feel old. But admitting that I’ve been dog-earing and mud-smearing Barbara Damrosch’s Garden Primer since 1998 makes me feel visionary.

Back in those days, a solid, sustainability-minded how-to guide for gardening was hard to come by. Back then, my book collection consisted of Ortho’s Guide to Herbicide (because it had full color photos and great info on plant cultivation) and DuPont’s Pest Control (for the great bug photos – this was before Internet, you have to remember). I just skipped over the paragraphs that advocated Diazinon applications (seriously!). I cobbled together what information there was and did the best I could.

Then came the day when I stumbled onto Barbara Damrosch (and her husband, Eliot Coleman). Both of their invaluable books were uncovered used, in a dusty pile in a Portland indy book cellar. All at once, my gardening paradigm lifted off the ground, and likewise, my garden. This was what I had been trying to do all along, only without the formal help. The Garden Primer became my blueprint, my reference, my diagnostic tool and my savior. The 2nd Edition, published just this February (2008), is still all this and then some.

As in that original version, the 2nd Edition provides gardeners at all levels of expertise with all the information that matters. It’s the sort of book that can prop you up while you get started or can point out subtle details that you might be overlooking amidst all your thriving foliage. This book first sets you up to “think like a plant”, then lays the foundation for a garden plan, gives you instructions for maximizing your space, elucidates readers on the various tools for the job, and gives plant by plant descriptions and growing tips.

What has changed in 20 years?
 »Read full review here

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Minted Pea Soup with Sutton’s Harbinger Peas

May 6th, 2008

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(Vegetarian, gluten-free)

Please forgive my silence. Much that is not blog-appropriate has been afoot in my world, but it has not been my intent to neglect the bean project. Nor have I – I just haven’t written about it.

So here I am catching up, with a pithy post that is almost all recipe, plus a promise to bring you a book review later in the week, one that the new gardeners out there will want to watch for.

You’re also getting a bit of a photographic expedition. But I should put that in quotes – “photographic” . Though surely you’ve noticed, I’ll say it on record that I’ve been taking my own shots lately instead of forcing my photographer brother (and that should go all in caps, and maybe italics too: PHOTOGRAPHER) to set up props and shoot broccoli and beans saying cheese every other week. Yes, this is the totality of what two multi-session photography classes have granted me. We all have different gifts…

This week’s recipe is for Minted Pea Soup. I served it at a dinner party last weekend. When it came out of the kitchen, my guests were blunt. Half admitted they didn’t like peas, the other part of the room declared that mint belongs in chewing gum. Save for one, who took issue with leeks.

And then they all went back for seconds.

Apparently you can dislike the parts, but sum them and stir in a bit of cream and you’ve got a wholly embraceable beast in the bowl.

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Early in the winter, I provided a colleague with the seeds for the peas that were used in this recipe (a remake, not the dinner party version). My colleague is known for adventurous endeavors and not for adventurous eating, but she’d wanted to try growing a cool-season crop in a cold frame. I volunteered Sutton’s Harbinger Pea, a sugar snap from the stash of seeds that I’d ordered from Seed Saver’s Exchange. When, last week, she gleefully brought me some of the harvest, I snapped, er, happily accepted them.

Sutton’s Harbinger Pea is one of the earliest varieties, producing peas in as little as 52 days (though they took 58 days here in St. Louis). Those of you who didn’t get around to it yet can still plant peas in the fall for a winter harvest.

SSE hails this as a heavy producer with relatively short vines – these grew to 2 feet, and they’re still producing nicely, though the cold frame has since been removed. This pea has British origins. Introduced in England in 1898, in 1901 it earned the Royal Horticultural Society’s Award of Merit. It made it to the States in 1903.

The Recipe

The fresh pea is very sweet and the pods are crisp and firm. I’ll be honest here — next time I’ll eat them un-pureed so that I can absorb their full personality. I’ll also probably never make soup with fresh, unshelled peas again, because it’s quite tedious removing all those pods. But once you’ve got your peas ready to go, this is one of the simplest soups ever. And it was superb — serving it cold allowed the full green flavor to shine through.

The mint came from our garden. Really the mint bed is more Simon’s than mine – he just finished putting out six or seven varieties, including several citrus mints, a chocolate mint, candy mint, ginger mint, and who-knows-what-else-mint.

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In the recipe I went with common spearmint (Mentha spicata), which is the bane of Simon’s existence at the moment since it’s an enthusiastic and rapacious spreader. Tune in later in the summer – surely I’ll be finding complimentary beans for some of the more quixotic members of the Mentha genus.

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Minted Pea Soup
1 small leek
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 pounds peas (yes, frozen is fine)
8 cups vegetable stock
2 cups packed fresh mint leaves
1/2 cup heavy cream
½ cup plain yogurt
¼ cup whole milk

Using just the tender white-green part of the leek, peel away the outer layer and thoroughly clean the remaining core. Finely chop it.

In a 6-quart heavy saucepan cook the leek in the butter, adding a dash of salt to taste. When leek is softened, add peas and 4 cups of the stock. Simmer until peas are tender, about 6 minutes. Stir in mint leaves (no need to chop it) and remaining 2 cups stock. When warmed, in about 1-2 minutes remove pan from heat.

In a blender, purée soup in batches until very smooth. If you prefer a thin, smooth soup, force each batch through a sieve into a large bowl. I didn’t mind having a creamier texture with occasional pea pieces, so I didn’t do this. Whisk in cream, yogurt and milk and then add salt and pepper to taste. If you serve it hot, don’t let it boil once the cream is added. You may also serve it cold. Either way, garnish with fresh mint sprigs.

And, here are a few more photos. A shot of my fledgling peas at their current size in my own garden. And also, one of my favorite flowers. An onion really, but inedible, its botanical name is Allium christophii (pronounced kris-to-fee-i). I fell in love with the name long before I ever saw the flower, and bought some bulbs. I fell in love all over again when the bulb burst into bloom in early summer. Now it comes up and blooms in spring in my yard.

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Pink Lentil Curry Soup

April 27th, 2008

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(Vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free)

The box was unexpectedly heavy.

It was sitting there, on my front porch, too big to cram into the oversized mailbox so accustomed to accepting bulky shipments of books and eccentric culinary products. I hadn’t ordered anything lately. What could it be?

I have to admit, when the box’s folds lifted, to shrieking like a girl who’d just been asked to prom by the hot guy with the motorcycle.

It was a box brimming with beautiful beans. Overflowing with them. Tiger Eye beans, Christmas Limas, Jacob’s Cattle Gasless, Calypso. One gorgeous bag of every eating bean available from Seed Saver’s Exchange.

I mentioned a few weeks ago that I had met Diane Whealy, the organization’s co-founder. She was in St. Louis to give a presentation on the genetic heritage in our food supply, and she’d brought seeds, slides, and so much information and passion that being in her presence was truly inspiring. I’d had the chance to talk with her, and when she got back to Decorah she spent some time on this site, and sent me the beans in response.

It was the greatest mail day I‘ve had in a long time. Thank you, Diane. Recipe possibilities are tumbling around in my head, and this inspiration will spill over into these pages over the next many weeks. (Not to mention that the SSE bean seeds I’ve planted will be bearing fruit in a few months). Those beans will be well used.

Now, that said, I had earnest intentions to cheat this week. Though the days have seemed long the week itself has flown by, and without me doing much of anything in the kitchen (truth is, I’ve spent every minute possible in the garden, in the hopes of spending the autumn in the kitchen). So I was panicked to suddenly find that the week was ending, my cupboard was overflowing with a fresh supply of heirloom beans, and I hadn’t thought much at all about a recipe.

Happily, my friend Amy unwittingly saved the day. She forwarded me a recipe from Dr. Weil. Go ahead, say what you will about his supplement habit — his advice is often sound and his recipes are good! I thought I’d recycle this recipe whole-sale for my blog this week. I knew Amy would approve – she’s the voice behind Resourceful Living, after all. In the end though, I used Weil’s recipe as a launch pad.

His recipe was for a pink lentil curry. The lentils came from my local international foods store. I have read that the less common lentils – that is, the non-brown ones – generally have not been cross bred, at least not recently. Because there isn’t a lot of demand for these unusual varieties, they have pretty well been left as they were found.

The pink lentils appealed to me – I’ve already used red ones for this project, and I’m a big fan of how quickly they cook into a protein-rich meal. So I started out on a pink lentil curry trajectory, tweaking Weil’s recipe here and there, turning up the dial on the spices just a tad.

But I was in need of comfort today. I was in need of soup.

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I don’t think I’ve ever had curry soup. Does curry soup show up on menus? The idea seemed novel to me. Surely it’s a common dish? But when I searched for existing recipes, I didn’t find a lot.

Left to my own devices, and, as aforementioned, in pursuit of some easy comfort food, I went as simple as possible. Whatever veggies I had on hand, (plus I convinced Simon to make a broccoli run, as I’ve had an insatiable appetite for all things crunchy and cruciferous lately), the lentils, and some curry paste. A dash of coriander. Pestle-ground Chinese peppercorns. Salt. Some warmed pita bread for dipping. Yum.

In slow motion this time:

The recipe

Pink Lentil Curry Soup

Ingredients:
1-2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
5 cloves garlic
1 small yellow onion
Sprinkle of soy sauce
3 cups chopped vegetables – I used broccoli, mushrooms, shelled sugar snap peas, and a potato for good measure
6 cups vegetable stock (you can also use water)
2 cups uncooked pink lentils
1 tablespoon curry paste – I used Patak’s Garam Masala, which is mildly spicy
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1 knuckle of fresh ginger, grated
½ teaspoon sea salt
Freshly ground pepper – I used Chinese Szechuan peppercorns from Penzey’s, but black will do

Heat olive oil in a stock pot, then add chopped onion and garlic. Saute till translucent, about 5 minutes. Add the veggies, douse with soy sauce, and stir until heated through. Add vegetable stock and turn up heat to medium high.

Place lentils in a colander and rinse well. Add them to the soup. When stock reaches a boil, turn down the heat to medium low and let simmer until lentils are soft, 15-20 minutes. Add ginger, coriander, curry paste, salt and pepper, and let simmer another few minutes. Serve with warmed pita or na’an bread.

Thanks, Amy, for the link that inspired a recipe! (And coming up: I’ve been challenged to incorporate heirloom beans and Marshmallow Peeps into the same recipe. Can I do it? Tune in and see…)

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