A Cooperative Learning Project
The last of the Scallions, Leeks, Collard Greens and Tatsoi were harvested this week. (Sadly, the Leeks never fully matured.) We’re still picking small Broccoli florets (amazingly, from the seedlings we planted in April) and some of the sweetest Kale I’ve ever tasted. The Arugula and Broccoli Rabe also continue to produce. A few tiny Lettuce and Spinach seedlings remain, along with our marginal late-season Cabbages.
After Saturday’s work session, the garden was neat and clean and green. The following day, it was white! The fluke October snow was perfectly timed to weigh down the fresh compost of basil, bean, eggplant, okra, pepper, tomato and tomatillo plants.
The cabbage was snug in its white blanket, awaiting more warm weather and the Brussels sprouts were standing tall.
Late September marks a transition to Autumn in the garden. We’ve recently planted several plots in cover crops: Beets, Soy Beans, Onions, Potatoes and the Three Sisters (Corn, early Pole Beans & Pumpkins).
Some crops are showing signs of slowing down: Bush Beans, Broccoli, Cucumbers, Eggplants, Peppers, Summer and Winter Squashes, Tomatoes and Watermelons.
Other crops are still at peak: Pole Beans, many of the Greens, Okra & Tomatillos. And a few crops will be peaking later this Fall: Brussels Sprouts, late-season Cabbage, Carrots, Kale, Leeks, late-season Lettuce, Parsnips, Radishes & Spinach.
Today my colleagues at the Garden were kind enough to let me take home one of the two kabocha squash that we harvested. I regret that I didn't photograph it, but my colleague Elisabeth provided this photo of another of our beautiful kabochas (surrounded by tomatillos). Wikepedia informed me, with its usual degree of authority, that Kabocha squash is also called "Japanese pumpkin". Indeed, as you see, it is very pumpkin-like. We also harvested two sugar pumpkins from our "Three Sisters" plot today, and our kabocha looked like they could easily have been their unripe cousins.
Elisabeth reminded me about an amazing soup that uses kabocha, along with tomatillos. I recalled the recipe, too, the minute she mentioned it yet, inexplicably, it's been over 10 years since I last prepared it. It's "Tomatillo and Squash Soup" from Anna Thomas' "The New Vegetarian Epicure". It is probably the best soup I've ever made, or eaten. How on earth have I lived without it, let alone forgotten about it, for all these years?! I'm quite sure that the last time I made it was in the late 90's. Kabocha squash and tomatillos were relatively hard to come by back then. As we reminisced in the Garden today, you had to search for tomatillos at "Bread and Checkbook", and they cost a lot, and even the 12 required by the recipe were not necessarily in stock when you needed them. Kabocha squash, with its firm very deep orange flesh and unique flavor (and tough constitution…you'd better have a good knife!), was not particularly easy to find either.
In our Garden, a tomatillo shortage is NOT an issue. Our two tomatillo plants are thriving, and we have more tomatillos than we know what to do with! (Until today, I've just been skewering and grilling them…delicious, yes, but so is anything that's skewered and grilled, no?).
So, arriving home with my tomatillos (about twice as many as specified in the recipe; this is my standard practice…I double up on the components I love the most) and my kabocha (deceptively small in appearance, as it turns out..it weighed in at just about the 2 lbs suggested by the recipe), I dug out my copy of Anna Thomas' classic book and got to it. This soup is somewhat labor intensive, and heats up your kitchen, but it is so, so worth it! I roasted the tomatillos, along with our own Garden tomatoes and about a dozen garlic cloves* until lightly charred in the oven, cooled them a bit, and then blasted them in the food processor. Meanwhile, I simmered the peeled and diced squash to extreme tenderness in Trader Joe's organic vegetable broth, skipping the additional water the recipe suggests. Once these components were all cooked, I left them sitting and ran out to buy onions. (Unfortunately, onions from our Garden are not large enough; they're mainly bunching onions — yummy in their own right, but not for this recipe). I was able to find organic sweet onions at Trader Joes. I then carmelized the onions, along with one mashed garlic clove and a bit of salt, in EVOO. At this point, it was time to toast, according to the book, "2 dried red serrano or other hot peppers" on the stovetop, chop them, and add them to the soup. Instead of dried peppers, I first selected two fresh hot red peppers from the Garden. But, when I charred them and processed them (in my mini-food prep Cuisinart), they, despite my having removed the seeds, gave off such strong hot pepper fumes that, honestly, I was afraid to put them in the soup — in fact I could barely breathe without coughing (guys, what ARE those peppers we're growing??). I love this soup so much and, while I appreciate hot peppers, they can so easily overwhelm. So, I discarded most of the hot pepper into my compost pile (sorry!). I then went to the cupboard and selected a half dried Guajillo pepper from Penzey's, which describes it as as "not hot but rich, smoky and complex". If I'd planned enough in advance I would have soaked it a bit but, instead, I just ground it up in the mini-prep (along with a small bit of the juice and pulp from our Garden hot peppers). This is what went into the soup, along with some of our Garden cilantro and sea salt. That's all. Heated it through and, yes, it was still, after all these years, wonderful! Still is, in fact..we have enough for lunch tomorrow. Elisabeth, thank-you for reminding me about this soup that I used to love so much! It's extraordinary!
Along with our Tomatillo and Squash soup for dinner tonight, John and I had a little cole slaw that I made, also inspired by a suggestion of Elisabeth's. I prepared the cole slaw with a tiny little cabbage, the result of a Garden experiment (see Lisa's post "The Great Cabbage Experiment", 08/01/2011). I sliced it and combined it with one of our yellow carrots (coarse grated), our bunching onions (sliced thin) and a dressing of: mayonnaise (Trader Joe's organic), cider vinegar, sea salt, black pepper and celery salt. After mixing it all together, I decided to also add a bit of minced pineapple to temper the vinegar taste a bit. Came out pretty good, if I say so myself. Elisabeth, thanks for suggesting the cole slaw and, also, especially, for suggesting the original experiment that led to these sweet baby "2nd gen" cabbages!
Well that was our dinner tonight, along with some fresh, still sweet corn from Busa's, our beloved neighborhood farm. The ingredients were mostly from the Garden, with some help from Busa's and TJ's. Oh, yeah, and the perfect wine to accompany this feast was something crispy and cold from Enzed. We bought it from either: Menotomy Beer and Wine, TJs in Cambridge or Busa's Liquor..we don't quite recall where we got this one, but it was just right tonight.
* Garlic cloves are not yet available from the Garden, but stay tuned! Now that we have been granted permission to keep the garden open through the winter, we will be planting some. In the meantime, I used organic garlic from Trader Joe's.
I opened the garden this afternoon for about an hour.
First I gave a tour to my neighbor and her daughter, who were walking their large but sweet dog.
Then I went and invited the people at the playground to come see the garden. They didn’t come for a while so I sat and tried to draw the Thai Dragon peppers, but I need a color pencil to fill in! So many — perhaps we should give a few away!
Then all these families came, a number of grandmothers/mothers and children, and at one point there must have been 10 children and almost as many adults roaming the garden!
I carried on lots of conversations, telling the kids how flowers turned to fruits, etc. The eggplant! I explained the Three Sisters bed. I talked about the squash borers and the hornworms. I showed our new plantings — the spinach seedlings were showing just a little green! I untied the cauliflower to show them, and pointed out the mini cabbages.
One boy had a few cherry tomatoes. One little girl wanted a glass of water so I poured same with the hose, and then sprayed her and her brother and her mother and her grandmother, a retired California school principal in the very town my wife’s brother lives (Richmond)!
The little girl and the boy liked the spray, mother too (it was hot). OK, I didn’t really spray the grandmother.
One boy was quite impressed with all our basil.
Normally, when cabbage is ready to harvest we just pull the whole plant out of the ground and lop off the roots. However, we were told by someone that it is possible to have multiple crops of cabbages on the same plant if we don’t pull the entire plant. We are trying this experiment with several of our cabbage plants- both the plain green cabbage and the Savoy. This plant seems to have as many at 7 new cabbages growing from the original plant. Supposedly the cabbages will be quite a bit smaller, but hopefully they will taste as good.
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