Dark Days Challenge Meal #2

Posted on December 15, 2011 by Dave


The Dark Days Challenge has 120+ participants from all over the U.S. doing the best we can to eat local during the winter months. Our challenge is to prepare at least one meal a week using only Sustainable, Organic, Local and Ethical (SOLE) ingredients, and then blog about it. Weekly recaps of the participant’s meals will be hosted by the fine folks at Not Dabbling In Normal every Sunday.

This meal was a variation of a theme I use a lot for our dinners: a local meat, with a couple of simply prepared vegetables from our garden. In this case the meat was some pork tenderloin from Fischer Farms, flattened out into a scallopini (or scallopine) and then sauteed until just cooked. Tenderloin is always a delicacy, since there are only two of them per animal. We don’t eat a lot of pork, but I like tenderloin because it’s lean and a little meat can go a long way in soups and stir fries. I also like to marinate it and grill it, but in this case with rain forecast I decided to stay indoors and opted for the scallopini treatment.

pork scallopini (click on any image to enlarge)

For many of our meals the real stars are the vegetables, and for this one I used the humble turnip along with some Lacinato Italian heirloom kale. This lovely kale (also called black cabbage, Cavolo Nero, Dinosaur Kale or Tuscan kale) used to be somewhat hard to find here in the U.S. but now almost every grocery store and seed catalog has it. It’s an easy to grow member of the cabbage family that doesn’t usually survive the winter here, but as of mid-December ours is still going strong in the garden. I grow kale as a fall crop here, because the taste is much sweeter when grown in cold weather, especially when it’s been frosted on and frozen like it has by now.

Kale and turnips

For this dish I shredded the kale into thin ribbons before cooking. I fried a couple of slices of Stonewall Farms bacon in a deep pot, then removed the bacon and reserved about a tablespoon of the bacon grease for seasoning the kale (saving the rest for another day). I briefly sauteed a few cloves of our own sliced garlic in the grease, then added the finely shredded kale to the pot with just enough water to steam cook the kale. When it was tender (about 10 minutes), I removed it from the heat and added the crumbled fried bacon and a little salt.

shredded kale

That’s not exactly an Italian treatment, but we’re not in Rome, we’re in southern Indiana! Actually if you used pancetta instead of bacon it might be right at home in a little Tuscan trattoria. At any rate, it made for a great dish that pretty well stole the show.

I fixed the turnips even more simply. I melted a pat of butter in a saucepan, then added the peeled and sliced turnips. I covered the pan, turned the heat down low, and in about 5 minutes the turnips had cooked in their own juices and were fork tender. This was the way my mother usually cooked turnips, and it was likely the first way I ever tasted them. With a dash of salt and pepper, they were ready to eat. Their mild, sweet flavor nicely complimented the full-flavored kale.

These turnips weren’t the purple top turnips of my youth, but rather the all white Japanese types I tend to favor these days. These particular ones were a mix of Tokyo Cross and Oasis varieties, both hybrids which stay tender and mild even when they get quite large.

kale, turnips and pork scallopini

It all made for an enjoyable meal, and except for the salt and pepper, and the pat of butter, it was all SOLE food, as well as soul-satisfying. I hope you enjoyed reading about it as much as my wife and I enjoyed eating it!

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December Harvests

Posted on December 12, 2011 by Dave

December has brought our first really cold weather of the season (for us), but the garden keeps on giving. The cold frames and greenhouse are protecting many of the plants, but others are doing well unprotected despite the cold.

komatsuna leaves (click on any image to enlarge)

This week we enjoyed some komatsuna I harvested from the greenhouse. I stir-fried it briefly, and it made a nice green side dish for baked chicken, along with some sweet potatoes that I roasted. This meal was for our Dark Days Challenge, and was made from all local ingredients except for the oil and salt. The chicken came from Stonewall Farms and the sweet potatoes, komatsuna, rosemary and garlic came from HA. I like simple meals that highlight the quality ingredients!

Baked chicken, sweet potatoes and komatsuna

We still enjoy salads this time of year, though some days I want something warmer to eat. One day at lunch I plucked some arugula leaves from a mini salad box and spinach from the cold frame, added some Red Sails lettuce from the greenhouse and it made for a nice salad. That big red and white thing in the photo below is a China Rose radish.

salad and ingredients

I also harvested most of our fall/winter radishes, which have been growing since late August in one of the beds outside the greenhouse.. We have really been enjoying the China Rose radishes. Though they are getting huge now (the four in the photo below weighed almost five pounds total), they are still mild and tasty. I’ve never grown ‘winter’ radishes before, so I have been pleasantly surprised. We’re storing some of these in the refrigerator and the rest in buckets of damp sand in the cellar.

China Rose radishes

I also grew daikon and beauty heart radishes this fall. With temperatures below 20F forecasted, I decided to pull most of them from the ground. The daikons (Minowase Summer Cross) got huge. Now I am looking for recipe ideas. Any suggestions anyone? I’ve got over seven pounds of them! I am thinking of trying some radish chips, but I know they are good pickled too.

Minowase Summer Cross radishes

I harvested some Lacinato and Rainbow Lacinato kale this week for kale chips. So far all the kales are standing up well to the weather.

Rainbow Lacinato (L) and Lacinato (R) kales

We also enjoyed turnips and turnip greens this week one night for dinner. I am really loving the white ‘salad’ turnips, even though they are pretty big at this point. This year I planted Tokyo Cross, Oasis and Hakurei and they have all done well.

I hope you have enjoyed seeing what we’ve been harvesting here in early December. Thanks to the hefty radishes and turnips we hauled in over 24 pounds from the garden this week. For more gardeners and their December harvests, visit Daphne’s Dandelions.

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Dark Days Challenge

Posted on December 11, 2011 by Dave

In an effort to increase our awareness of where our food comes from, and to find more local sources for our food, my wife and I are joining the Dark Days Challenge this winter. In a nutshell, the Challenge is to cook one meal each week featuring SOLE (sustainable, organic, local, ethical) ingredients, and then write about it on your blog.

Mind you, we do a lot of that already. Over 90% of the meat we eat comes from one of two local sources: Stonewall Farms, or Fischer Farms. And over 90% of the vegetables and about 50% of the fruit we eat is organically grown right in our own backyard. So we are certainly off to a good start with eating SOLE food all the time, not just in the dark days of winter, when it can certainly be more challenging to find local goodies.

Sourcing for the rest of the food we eat is a little trickier though. We don’t have a good source for local fish, for instance. And we can get some locally grown organic grains, but our choices are limited. Since we really don’t have the room to grow our own grains, we do the best we can to get quality grains. The same goes for seeds and beans. By next year we should be getting honey from our own bees, but until then we enjoy honey from Kentucky Honey Farms, just across the Ohio River from us about 20 miles or so (as the bee flies). I will talk more about ingredients as I post about our meals.

For the purposes of this challenge, we will consider ‘local’ to be anything coming from within a 150 mile radius of here. We will allow ourselves a few ‘exceptions’ to the local rule for things like oils, vinegars and spices. And it is possible we will have to use other ingredients occasionally. When we do, it will be noted. But for one meal a week, we will do our best.

roast chicken (click on any image to enlarge)

For our first challenge meal, I tried to make it easy – at least for us! We had a lovely baked chicken from Stonewall Farms, tasty enough all by itself without any added ingredients other than a bit of salt at the table. That chicken actually was enough for a couple of meals, plus we made stock from the bones and froze it along with a little leftover meat. That will resurface later on as the basis for some sort of soup, which are a winter staple here for sure.

roasted sweet potatoes with rosemary

For side dishes, I roasted some of our Hernandez sweet potatoes, tossed with a little olive oil and some fresh rosemary from the garden. And I stir-fried some Komatsuna greens that were growing in the greenhouse, seasoned with some of our own sliced garlic. It made for a simple and tasty meal, and other than the oils and salt, all of the ingredients came from within 25 miles away. The veggies and herbs came from mere feet away!

Baked chicken, sweet potatoes and komatsuna

The Challenge runs until next March. At the very least, I want to try and make better and more informed choices about the foods I eat. And I hope you will enjoy reading about our efforts during the weeks and months to come.

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A Year of Soap, For A Few Hours Of Effort

Posted on December 7, 2011 by Dave

In February last year we began making cold process soap for our own use and to give away to friends and family. We started out with easy to make soaps, then as we gained confidence and experience we started making more complicated creations. We actually wound up making enough soap that it lasted us until late this year. Making soap is a great fall and winter activity for us, when the pace of life is a bit slower. And of course there’s nothing like using something when you know exactly what’s in it – and also what’s not.

mixing the soap with immersion blender

When things slowed down here a bit in late August, we started making soap again. On our first soaping day this year we made a banana scented goats milk olive oil soap, plus we made an improved version of our Lavender Goats Milk soap using 100% goats milk (instead of half goats milk and half water) and more lavender essential oil. Deciding how much fragrance to use in soaps is about as much art as science, and we have been adjusting the scent levels to suit our own preferences as we go along. My wife has recipes for most of our soaps at Bloom, Bake & Create and I will put links to them at the end of this post.

Lavender Goats Milk (left) and Clary Sage Lavender (right) soaps

After those two soaps, we made even more about a month later. We took the improved Lavender Goats Milk recipe and made it again using a mix of Clary Sage and Lavender essential oils with ground up sage leaves instead of the lavender buds. That one was just for me. I love the aroma of clary sage, but my wife is less enamored with it. So that soap is all mine! And we remade our Chocolate Goats Milk soap using a Mokalata fragrance (think chocolate and coffee, two of my favorite things). The dark brown color of the Mokalata soap is a result of the fragrance oil, not anything else we might have added.

Mokalata Goats Milk soap

Next we remade our two hand soaps. We loved the original Citrus Coffee hand soap, but it had too many coffee grounds for my taste, and the citrus scent was overpowered by the coffee aroma. So we made this batch with weaker brewed coffee, less coffee grounds, and more orange and tangerine essential oils. I think the new version is a definite improvement over the original, and now the citrus and coffee scents are more in balance. Both coffee and citrus work great in the kitchen to remove strong odors, while the coffee grounds give the soap scrubbing power for dirty hands.

Citrus Coffee hand soaps - new (top) and old (bottom)

For the Spearmint hand soap we used less pumice, more spearmint essential oil, and we added some dried ground spearmint from our garden. The dried mint turned the soap a lovely shade of green. Like the Citrus Coffee hand soap, this one has lanolin in the recipe for its emollient and skin softening properties.

Spearmint hand soap

We also remade our Peppermint Honey Oatmeal soap. Last year we used one tablespoon of honey, added early in the process, and the soap was a light tan color. This time we used two tablespoons, and added the honey at the end of the process (light trace), and the soap turned a caramel brown color! This soap also has additional peppermint essential oil in it, and it should make for an exhilarating soap in the shower.

Peppermint Oatmeal Honey soap - new (top) and old (bottom)

I also found time this fall to get out in the shop and make us a couple of additional wooden soap molds. They have hinged sides which open up to make it easier to remove the soap for cutting. And I was able to make the molds with materials I had on hand, which means they cost nothing to make. Which makes them crafty AND frugal – two of my favorite things!

homemade wooden soap molds

Lately I have become more involved in the planning process of our soap making. Much like it is with gardening, I enjoy the process of making our own soap, as well as the end result. It really reminds me of high school chemistry lab. We mix caustic lye crystals with a liquid (water or milk), then mix that with various oils, and voilà – we get soap! And of course I love to experiment.

Later this week we are making two of my soap concoctions: Patchouli Lime Hemp, and Lemongrass Avocado. The Patchouli Lime Hemp is a little different recipe than we have made before, with olive, coconut, palm, rice bran, castor and hemp oils for the base. It has patchouli, lime and tea tree essential oils, and some ground dried parsley from the garden for color. I am hoping it will dye the soap a nice green color. We will see!

The Lemongrass Avocado soap has olive, coconut, palm, castor and avocado oils for the base, plus kokum butter. And it has lemongrass, orange and rosemary essential oils, with some dried ground lemongrass for color. This one uses frozen goat’s milk instead of water. I am anxious to see how they turn out, and you can bet I’ll report on the results!

LINKS TO SOAP RECIPES:

  1. Peppermint Oatmeal Honey Soap
  2. Citrus Coffee Hand Soap
  3. Lavender Goats Milk Soap
  4. Chocolate Goats Milk Soap
  5. Banana-licious Olive Oil Soap

 

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Growing Asian Vegetables: Komatsuna

Posted on December 5, 2011 by Dave

This is the third installment in a series about my experiences growing Asian vegetables.

In her book “Oriental Vegetables: The Complete Guide for the Gardening Cook”, Joy Larkcom says she is tempted to give komatsuna the ‘most underrated vegetable award’. I couldn’t agree more. This leafy, tasty relative of the turnip has quickly become one of my favorite greens.  But up until a couple of years ago, I had never even heard of it.

This unassuming green is sometimes called Mustard Spinach, and the Japanese have likely grown it since ancient times. Modern taxonomists usually call it either Brassica rapa var. perviridis or B.r. var. komatsuna. It is considered a biennial, though first year plants can bloom if stressed.

harvested komatsuna plants (click on any image to enlarge)

It’s hardy enough to survive our zone 6b winters protected by a cold frame, usually without the slightest bit of damage. The freezing temps only seem to make it taste sweeter. And speaking of taste, komatsuna has a mild flavor somewhere between mustard and cabbage, not as strong tasting as its earthier turnip green cousins.

komatsuna protected by cold frame

Seed can be sown in place where plants are to be grown, or started indoors like I usually do to get a jump on growing. Most varieties will get pretty big, from 12-18 inches tall, but growth is mostly upright so plants can be grown fairly close together if space is limited. The spacing will depend on how large you want the plants to grow. Sow or plant thickly for small plants (2-4” apart) or farther apart (6-12”) if you plan on letting the plants get larger. A 6” spacing works well for me, with plants getting about a foot tall and almost as wide. The fast-growing plants appreciate a fertile soil and plenty of moisture.

komatsuna seedlings

Flea beetles can be a problem, and sometimes caterpillars will munch on the leaves too. Floating row cover will keep both of those pests away, while Bt will also control the caterpillars. Iron phosphate pellets (like Sluggo) can be used to control slugs and snails.

There are several hybrid varieties of komatsuna available, including Summer Fest and Torasan, as well as open-pollinated selections. There is also a red leafed hybrid available that was developed primarily for baby greens and salad mixes.  Though Summer Fest may be preferred for warm season plantings, it has also proven to be quite winter hardy here as well, so don’t let the name fool you.

harvested komatsuna leaves

Komatsuna has also been crossed with other brassicas to produce some unique varieties. Green Boy hybrid has long slender leaf stalks and is reported to be a cross between komatsuna and a green stem pak choi. Misome hybrids were created by crossing komatsuna with tatsoi. And Senposai hybrids are the result of a komatsuna cross with regular heading cabbage.

Komatsuna 'Green Boy'

Like many other Asian greens, komatsuna can be used at any stage, from baby leaves on up to mature leaves that can be a foot or more long. Leaves can be harvested individually as needed, or the whole plant can be cut. The leaves will resprout from the roots after cutting, and usually at least two cuttings can be made before rejuvenating the soil and replanting is necessary.

komatsuna plants after harvesting outer leaves

The leaves can be cooked by all the methods usually used for Asian greens: steaming, stir-frying, boiling in a small amount of water, or added to soups. In Japan, leaves are also pickled. And the baby leaves can be eaten raw in salads.

stir-fried komatsuna and mushrooms

If you are looking for an all-season green that is easy to grow, tasty, and nutritious, you might want to give komatsuna a try. Who knows, it may wind up being one of your favorite greens too. I’ll be back soon with the next installment highlighting another Asian vegetable. Until then, happy growing!

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Stars of the Garden in 2011

Posted on December 2, 2011 by Dave

Even though the gardening year is not quite over yet, I want to take the time to spotlight a few of our star performers in the 2011 garden. This is not an all-inclusive list, and it isn’t limited to new varieties in the garden, though many of the stars are new to us.

Cherokee Purple is our new favorite slicing tomato, and it was the star of many BLT sandwiches this year. It had a flush of tomatoes come on early and mid-season, then it took a break when the heat of summer got here. But it came back and produced a few more tomatoes for fall. All in all, I got a little over 10 pounds of fruit from the two plants in one cage, which makes it one of the better producing large heirloom tomatoes I have ever grown. Next year I will devote at least two or three cages to it. I saved seed from a couple of nice ones for planting next year.

sliced Cherokee Purple and Eva Purple Ball tomatoes

Eva Purple Ball tomato was a great producer for us. The plants were loaded with medium large fruits. While it wasn’t our favorite tasting tomato (see Cherokee Purple above), the vines had tomatoes on them all season long. I got the seeds from fellow MG Debbie J, who had good luck this year with Neves Azoreon Red, Kosovo and Wes tomatoes. I am going to see if I can swap some Happy Yummy pepper seed for some more of her favorite heirloom tomato seeds. It makes sense to me to try tomatoes that are proven to produce here in our hot, humid Ohio Valley summers. I saved seed from Eva as well for next year.

Eva Purple Ball

Another tomato winner this year was Jetsetter hybrid. The two plants growing in one cage produced over 30 pounds of tomatoes, fully 10% of our total tomato harvest! The large slicers have a great balanced taste, like others in the Jetstar line. I also grew Jetsonic, but it was planted later and never produced nearly as well as Jetsetter, which definitely earns more than one cage next year also.

Jetsetter tomatoes

Apache Blackberries continue to be some of our top producers in the garden. The berries are large, sweet and juicy, and consistently produce well for us. They are doing so well I decided to rip up the Arapaho plants, and half of the Triple Crown plants. We replanted with Ouachita, Natchez and Loch Ness plants. We will see how the new ones perform. Even with less plants producing, we still hauled in about 7 gallons of them in 2011, most of which wound up in the freezer. That will keep us supplied with cobblers, blackberry juice and leather for quite a while!

Apache blackberries are big and sweet

Another star in the garden this year was the yardlong beans. I planted Red Noodle and Akasanjaku (seed from Kitazawa Seed), and they both held up well in the summer heat and kept on producing when the pole beans gave up. They are quite versatile in the kitchen as well, appearing in stir frys, soups, and in Green Papaya Salad. They’ve both earned a place in the 2012 garden for sure, and are worth considering in areas where summers are hot and other beans often struggle.

stir-fried yardlong beans

Always a star here is the Small Wonder spaghetti squash. We had some for dinner just the other night, baked in the oven then tossed with butter, ginger and honey. Two vines produced over 36 pounds of spaghetti squash this year. They keep well too, lasting all winter long and well into spring for us. The squashes themselves are smaller than many varieties, but still plenty big, averaging in the 1.5 pound range here, which is just right for smaller families.

Jimmy Nardello pepper

Two great newcomers here this year were the heirloom Jimmy Nardello pepper and the Dasher 2 hybrid slicer cucumber. These peppers were the sweetest in the garden this year, and prolific as well. I planted Dasher 2 in early May and it gave us cucumbers starting in early July and continuing for 5 weeks before I pulled the vines to make room for something else. Summer Dance did well as a late planted cucumber too, as did Tasty Green.

Dasher (L)( and Manny (R) cucumbers

One final star here this year was the Hernandez sweet potatoes. They outperformed my old standbys Beauregard and Centennial, giving us a big haul of great tasting sweet potatoes with a nice size and shape. Centennial did so poorly this year I won’t be growing it again. Hernandez was recommended by the folks at Robin’s Nest garden center in Boonville (where I got my slips), which goes to show that it pays to grow varieties that are suited for your unique growing conditions.

Hernandez (top) and Beauregard (bottom) sweet potatoes

That’s a look at some of the most notable garden superstars here in 2011. I hope you enjoyed reading about them, and I hope you find your own stars in 2012!

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Homemade: Mustard

Posted on December 1, 2011 by Dave

I must admit, I’ve made a lot of things in my time, but until a few weeks ago, mustard wasn’t one of them. To be honest, I had never even thought about making mustard until I read about fellow blogger Robin (aka The Gardener of Eden) making several different mustards last December. I was intrigued, and I decided to buy some mustard seeds and try my hand at making some myself. I bought both brown and yellow seeds, then I pretty much forgot all about making mustard with them!

I was reminded again a few weeks ago when Robin started making mustard again. This time I sprang into action, and made a batch of Spicy Brown Mustard that very day. The recipe from Leeners can be found here. I modified this recipe a bit, grinding the yellow and brown mustard from the whole seeds I had on hand. Then I put it in a glass jar and let it start aging. The recipe says to age it for at least two weeks in a cool dark place. The aging mellows the heat of the mustard powder.

ground yellow and brown mustard seeds (click on any image to enlarge)

After two weeks, the mustard has mellowed quite a bit though it still has a kick to it, and it has a great taste. It also has a slightly grainy consistency and a lovely rustic look. It will be great for sandwiches, especially slathered on some crusty homemade bread.

Spicy Brown Mustard

Encouraged by how well the Great Mustard Making Experiment was progressing, I decided to make another batch. After looking at a lot of recipes, I settled on this recipe for Dijon Mustard. The recipe calls for white wine as a liquid, and cooking the mustard until it thickens, which tames the heat somewhat. I used a modest Pinot Grigio for the wine. And I also ground the seeds instead of using dry mustard.

It has been in the refrigerator for about a week now. The taste is developing nicely, though I believe I would have been better off using a different wine, or a different recipe. It could be that the taste will continue to improve with time, so I will let it age another week or two before I pass the final judgment on it.

Dijon Mustard

All in all, I’m pleased with the results. I’ve got two pints of homemade mustard, and they were both pretty quick and fun to make. And now I can add mustard making to my resume! I plan on continuing to experiment, though I need to buy some more yellow mustard seed since I used up all that I bought. Who knew that making mustard was so easy?

To see what other cooks and gardeners are cooking and preserving, visit Robin’s Thursday’s Kitchen Cupboard.

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