Green Bean & Cauliflower Salad in Gremolata-Tahini Dressing

Without the garlic, lemon zest. and tahini, this is a dressing I have been making a lot this summer. It works well with low-fat (half the calories) mayonnaise, and I can put it on a chicken and vegetable salad and have a lunch that comes in around 350 calories.

Even eating it twice a week, I'm not tired of it and so I decided to use regular mayonnaise and gussy it up a bit, and have it again. We were very happy with the results. The tahini and garlic make it even livelier, and the parsley, beans, and cauliflower were a very good combination.

4 servings
30 minutes prep time

Prepare the Salad:
2 cups trimmed, chopped green beans
3 cups cauliflower in small florets
1 cup finely chopped parsley

Put a pot of water on to boil the vegetables. Wash, trim, and chop the beans into bite-sized pieces. Wash the cauliflower and break it into small florets.

Add the beans to the water and set the timer for 6 minutes. Stir them well. After one minute, add the cauliflower. When they are cooked, rinse them in cold water until cool then drain them well. Put them in a salad bowl.

Wash and dry the parsley, removing any tough stems or damaged leaves. Chop it finely and add it to the salad.

Make the Dressing:
1 clove of garlic
the finely grated zest of 1/2 of a large lemon
2 tablespoons tahini
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1/4 teaspoon salt
freshly ground black pepper to taste
3 tablespoons mayonnaise, light is fine
the juice of 1/2 of a large lemon

Peel and finely mince the garlic. Put it in a small bowl. Add the lemon zest, tahini, mustard, salt, and pepper. Mix until well blended and lump-free.

Add the mayonnaise and work it in until the mixture is smooth. Add the lemon juice, a spoonful at a time, working the mixture well between each addition to keep it smooth. Once the dressing is liquid enough, the rest of the lemon juice can be added at once and stirred in.

Toss the salad in the dressing and serve.

Spaghetti Nerano

I serve pasta with zucchini all the time, but only recently did I start looking to see if there are any traditional Italian takes on the concept. You would think so. And what do you know! Here's one.

I found this tasty, but a little greasy. I say "but", but it isn't as if those two concepts are in any way contradictory. Still, next time I would blot that fried zucchini a little better and really wipe out the pan before I put in the butter. 

2 to 3 servings
30 minutes prep time

1/2 cup loosely packed basil leaves
125 grams (1/4 pound) provolone cheese, grated
60 grams (2 ounces) Parmesan cheese, grated
500 grams (1 pound; 2 or 3 medium) zucchini
mild vegetable oil to fry the zucchini
225 grams (1/2 pound) spaghetti or other pasta
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
salt & freshly ground black pepper to taste
another 2 tablespoons shredded basil leaves

Wash and pick over the basil leaves, and cut them in shreds - don't forget to set aside a bit to garnish. Grate the cheeses. Set these all aside until needed.

Wash, trim, and slice the zucchini a little less than 1/4" thick. Put on a large pot of salted water to boil to cook the pasta.

Heat enough oil to coat the bottom generously in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add zucchini slices in a single layer and cook them until lightly browned on each side. Remove them to a plate lined with paper towel as they are done, adding more slices to the pan to cook as you go. When the zucchini is all done, remove the pan from the heat. Wipe or drain out any excess oil from the pan. Blot the cooked zucchini fairly well. Add the butter to the pan and let it melt, but don't return it to the heat yet.

Meanwhile, when the water boils cook the pasta for the time listed on the package. Just before draining it, ladle out about 1/2 cup to use as part of the sauce and retain it. Add the drained pasta to the large skillet and return it to a burner over medium heat. Stir it well into the butter, along with the reserved pasta cooking water. Sprinkle the cheeses over and mix them in well. Add the fried zucchini and season with salt and pepper to taste. Mix in the shredded basil last, until it is just wilted.

Serve the pasta at once with the last bit of shredded basil leaves sprinkled over it.

Blueberry Cucumber Salad with Feta

Well, it's a salad. Made with stuff that was around. Because, you know, it's in season. I can't say I have very much to say about it, beyond the usual cries of "Tasty!" I like cheese and fruit in salads; it is known. 

4 servings
20 minutes prep time

Make the Dressing:
2 teaspoons honey
the juice of 1/2 medium lime
1 tablespoon sunflower or nut oil
salt & freshly ground black pepper to taste

Mix the honey and lime juice in a small serving bowl. It may be helpful to warm the honey first; the microwave is the easiest way, for just a few seconds until liquid. Mix in the oil, and salt and pepper to taste. 

Make the Salad:
1 medium cucumber
1 cup blueberries
2 tablespoons small mint leaves
1/4 cup finely chopped parsley
90 to 125 grams ( 3 to 4 ounces) feta cheese

Wash, trim, and peel - if you like - the cucumber, and cut it into bite-sized chunks.  Add it to the bowl with the blueberries, washed and drained well. Wash, dry and finely mince the herbs, and add them. Cube or crumble the feta cheese and add, then toss the salad and serve.




Last year at this time I made Zucchini, Beans & Onion Japanese Style.

Tart Mixed Berry Cheesecake Crumble

It looks like crumbles are the ideal dessert for someone who really should be keeping the sugar down.  After some internal debate, I am listing the amount of sugar I actually used. This is not a very sweet dessert, though, and you could use more sugar if you wanted. I would think up to 50% more would not be unreasonable. However, I found the level of sugar to be fine - you do adjust.

This was our entire harvest of currants and gooseberries for the year, augmented with a few black-caps and red raspberries. The old bushes are slowly being smothered out and the new bushes have not really taken off yet.

I would make this in the spring, with rhubarb or with haskaps, as being fruit (or "fruit") of a similar level of tartness. 

6 to 8 servings
1 hour 30 minutes - 45 minutes prep time

Prepare Berries: 
3 cups mixed tart berries

Pick over the berries, removing any leaves, stems, etc. Rinse and drain well.

Make Crumb Topping:
1 1/2 cups rolled oats
1 1/2 cups whole spelt flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup Sucanat OR dark brown sugar
2/3 cup cold unsalted butter
1/4 cup buttermilk

Mix the oats, spelt flour, salt, and Sucanat in a large mixing bowl. Grate in the butter and rub it in until distributed throughout. Dribble the buttermilk over it and work it in until the mixture forms coarse, damp crumbs.

Preheat the oven to 375°F.

Make Cheese Filling:
250 grams (1 cup) soft cream cheese
1/4 cup sugar
2 large eggs
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup buttermilk

Cream the cream cheese in a mixing bowl with the sugar, then beat in the eggs and salt. Beat in the buttermilk.

Put about 60% of the crumbs into an 8" x 10" baking (lasagne) pan and press them loosely into an even layer. Pour the cream cheese filling over them. Sprinkle the berries evenly over the filling. Sprinkle the remaining filling evenly over the top.

Bake the crumble for 40 to 45 minutes, until lightly browned and firm when pressed gently. Serve warm or cool.




Last year at this time I made Tsukune (Chicken Patties) with Yakitori Sauce.

Purslane with Yogurt & Garlic (Yoğurtlu Semizotu)

You know the routine by now - it's the usual salted and garlicked Turkish yogurt and vegetable meze dish, this time with purslane. Our garden is churning out the purslane, if nothing else, so here it is. We also just pulled the garlic so the garlic is fresh and lively. 

2 to 4 servings
you'd better allow at least an hour for all the messing around;
about 10 or 15 minutes actual prep time

1 cup purslane leaves
1 cup thick yogurt
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 small clove of garlic
2 teaspoons olive oil
pita or baguette

Collect the purslane. It should be soaked in cold salt water for 15 minutes, then remove and keep all the tender leaves in good condition, as well as the tender tips of the stems. Discard the roots, tough stems, and any damaged leaves. In my experience, this means I need to start with about 4 cups of purslane plants to get 1 cup of usable leaves. Drain very well.

Strain the yogurt for half an hour, discarding any liquid extracted. The best way to do this is in a sieve lined with a couple of coffee filters.

Meanwhile, peel and mince the garlic and mix it with the salt in a small bowl. Add the strained yogurt and the dried purslane. Add a teaspoon of olive oil and mix well. Transfer to a serving dish and drizzle the final teaspoon of olive oil over the yogurt. Serve with bread.

This is probably better for being made an hour or two in advance; keep it cool until needed but it should not be chilled when served.




Last year at this time I made Mid to Late Summer Hodge-Podge.

Raspberry-Mint-Tea Slushie

Hot and muggy, isn't it!? Slushies to the rescue. I put in the lower quantity of honey, and the result was tart, astringent, and very refreshing. I wouldn't have complained about a bit more sweetness, though, and you should sweeten it to your taste.

You will need a good sturdy blender to crush the ice. Don't over-load the poor beast, and if you must, transfer the ground ice to a bowl and keep it in the freezer as you crush more, then add it back in once the extract goes in.

4 to 6 servings
15 minutes to make extract
10 minutes to make slushies

2 cups water
1 to 3 tablespoons honey, to taste
2 cups raspberries
1 orange pekoe tea-bag
1/3 cup washed mint leaves, stripped from the stems
OR 1 teaspoon orange pekoe tea, in a tea-ball
about 3 trays of ice cubes
mint sprigs to garnish

Put the water, honey, and raspberries in a pot and bring to a simmer. Simmer until all the raspberries have broken down, about 5 minutes. Turn off the heat and add the tea-bag and the mint leaves. Cover and let steep for 4 minutes, then strain through a sieve, pressing to extract all the liquid and discarding the solids. You can keep this extract in the fridge until ready to proceed. Don't forget to check that your ice-cube trays are full!

To make the slushies, put 1/3 to 1/2 of an ice-cube tray worth of ice-cubes into a sturdy blender and run until it is fairly fine crushed ice. Add 1/2 the extract and blend again. Shake or stir the extract before adding it. Once smooth, add more ice cubes and process until you have the texture and strength that you would like. I found 1 1/2 smallish ice-cube trays worth of ice made 2 reasonably large slushies.

Garnish the slushies with a sprig of mint and serve with a straw.





Last year at this time I made Summer Fish Cakes.

An EFAO Workshop on No-Till Growing at Persephone Market Garden

Wednesday afternoon saw us out, standing in a field, as we were given a tour of Persephone Market Garden by farmer Kristine, for members of the EFAO. This was a workshop on how they are transitioning to no-till market gardening. Our garden isn't a market garden, but it's big and unwieldy, and no-till definitely interests us.

What you see in the photo above is literally the foundation of this technique - a big pile of composted sheep manure. Kristine and Thorsten keep a small herd of sheep mostly for this manure, although they also provide some meat and wool.

Once we were past the manure we walked up a slight slope to the upper garden. There are at present four quadrants of about 1/4 acre each to the garden, with the potential of up to six sections. Tomatoes are a major crop for Persephone, and Kristin plants a 100' row of tomatoes, then a row of something else, then another row of tomatoes in this section. Here you see watermelons (Crimson Sweet) in between the tomatoes. Other rows were of onions, carrots, salad green, etc. They are all heavily mulched in chopped straw.

Kristine plants varieties in multiple locations throughout the garden, so that localized problems don't necessarily mean the loss of the entire crop. 

One of Kristine's garden helpers checks for ripeness. This section is mostly peppers, with hoops in place to cover them when the weather requires it in the fall. Persephone Market Garden is in between Owen Sound and Sauble Beach, on the Bruce Peninsula, and frost comes in September.

You can see that the rows between the vegetables are covered in landscape fabric, weighted with old tires. The first step towards no-till is to remove as much of the existing weeds as possible, usually by smothering/heating them under a barrier cloth or plastic. You can see an open field beyond the planted section, where Kristine is, in fact, still tilling the ground to eliminate as many weeds as possible, especially persistent running grasses. Once a no-till situation has been established, maintaining it is quite do-able; the hard part is getting there. I know from our own garden that twitch grass just regards a plastic ground cover as a kind of blanket, and gets cosy.

There was a very good turn-out for this workshop. People came from as far away as (nearly) North Bay, from as far south as near Lake Erie. Most of them are also market gardeners. 

No-till gardening requires the tolerance of a certain level of weeds. The idea is to keep the ground covered, with mulch or landscape cloth if necessary, but preferably with plants. Once the ground is clear enough, a layer of compost (that sheep manure, augmented with horse manure from another local farm) is placed, and seedlings transplanted into it. Mulch is added, and as plants are harvested the process is repeated.

Kristine has adopted the no-till system used by Singing Frogs Farm, in California, who were pioneers in the technique. The goal is improved soil health, including a complex of beneficial microrrhizal interactions, and the retention of organic matter and, crucially, water. I noted that in spite of a very hot, dry summer (at least this latter half of it) plants looked green and healthy.

Actually, the farm struggles with some water issues generally. They are located on the lower slope of a drumlin, and water from the near-by road which is not plowed in winter settles  onto the upper part of the garden where it is held in place by the clay sub-soil. To alleviate this situation, drainage ditches have been dug between the lower edge of the field and the driveway. Future plans involve installing a water-collection pond near where the compost pile in the first photo sits, which would direct water from the upper fields, keep it for irrigation and possibly even moderate early frost effects on the garden.

The plants that end up in the fields start here, for the most part. Only a couple of crops, such as carrots, are direct seeded. This is a new greenhouse installed in the last year, dug into the ground for temperature moderation in both hot and cold seasons, and with large water tanks under shelves of plants also for temperature moderation.

In the summer, the greenhouse is covered with shade cloth to keep it from getting too hot. Beyond it you can see a field of asparagus. I was surprised and intrigued to see that the flock of sheep was in that field - I presume they eat everything but the asparagus. How convenient!

Here is a better view of the greenhouse layout. We hear that in the spring it has the bonus of being canoe-able...

The building to which the greenhouse is attached is where vegetables are sorted and packed. There is an out-door wash area, roofed but otherwise open, with steel sinks, spray faucets, and a mesh table for drying off the washed veggies. Then they come in to this roller-topped table set up where orders are packed in tubs.

Finally - well, not actually finally, but finally for the tour - we had a look at the tools used to form the soil blocks in which vegetables are started, in a mixture of seed-starting mix and compost. After that, the real final part of the tour was a lovely pot-luck dinner, of which I took no photos because I was too busy eating and chatting. A good time and good food was had by all, until dusk, mosquitos and long drives home required us to leave. Many thanks to Kristine and Thorsten for this tour. I hope Mr. Ferdzy and I will be able to incorporate some of the ideas into our garden. 

Addendum: Thorsten sent a photo of the attendees gathered for the pot-luck!

Stir-Fried Beef with Yellow Beans & Garlic Scapes

The flavours of this pared-down stir-fry were simple but so was the technique - no marinating, minimal chopping - and simple flavours don't mean that they didn't pull together like a champion team. This was the last of our garlic scapes - they may be a little hard to find now, but I hope they are still out there - and the first of the beans. I've always thought garlic scapes look like little beans and it isn't just the colours, flavours, and textures that work well here; the shapes were also made to go together.

You could put hot pepper flakes into this instead of black pepper, but I liked the pepper fine. I used lots, and ground it coarsely. We had it with steamed rice, as seems right and proper.

2 to 4 servings
30 minutes prep time

250 grams (1/2 pound) yellow wax beans
250 grams (1/2 pound) garlic scapes
375 grams (3/4 pound) round or other steak
2 tablespoons mild vegetable oil
2 tablespoons soy sauce
2 teaspoons toasted sesame oil
freshly ground black pepper, generously (but to taste)

Wash, trim, and cut the yellow wax beans in half. Wash and trim the garlic scapes, keeping only the tender stems. Cut them in pieces of about the same size as the beans. Leave them in a colander and scald them by pouring a little boiling water over them. Drain well.

Cut the beef into thin, bite-sized pieces.

Heat the oil in a wok or large, heavy skillet over high heat. Add the steak and stir until just seared. Add the beans and the garlic scapes. Stir fry until the meat is cooked and the vegetables are also cooked and starting to brown in spots. When just a minute or so prior to being done to your liking, add the soy sauce, sesame oil, and pepper, and mix in well. Serve as soon as the soy sauce has been absorbed.




Last year at this time I made Turkish Style Stuffed Zucchini.

Pasta with Swiss Chard & Feta Cheese

This is a kind of hybrid dish, with the flavour profile of spanakopita, but more or less the method of spaghetti carbonara. We enjoyed it very much, especially since I have decided that pasta is now only an occasional treat. As such, it's a little fussier then most of the pasta recipes I make, but only in that the herbs and vegetables take a certain amount of time to chop. I decided to get the herbs dealt with before I even turned on the stove, and I think that was a good plan.

I used capellini which meant that I put the Swiss chard stems and leaves into the boiling water before I added the capellini, as it cooks in only 2 minutes. Most types of pasta will take longer though, and should go in first.

2 or 3 servings
30 minutes prep time

Prepare the Vegetables:
2 tablespoons finely minced fresh dill
2 tablespoons finely minced fresh mint
1/4 cup finely chopped fresh parsley
3 or 4 green onions or 1/3 cup finely chopped chives
225 grams (1/2 pound) Swiss chard

Wash, trim, and mince the herbs and set them aside together in a small bowl.

Put a large pot of salted water on to boil for the pasta.

Wash, trim and shred the Swiss chard finely, setting the stems and leaves aside in separate piles.

Prepare & Finish the Pasta:
2 large eggs
1 tablespoon mild vegetable oil
generous quantities of freshly ground black pepper
225 grams (1/2 pound) spaghetti
2/3 cup finely crumbled feta cheese
1/3 cup finely grated Parmesan cheese

Whisk the eggs with the oil and pepper in a slightly generously sized bowl and keep to one side.

When the water boils, cook the pasta until tender according to package instructions plus one minute. About 4 minutes before the pasta is done, add the chopped Swiss chard stems to the pot. About 2 minutes before it is done, add the Swiss chard leaves. Stir in well after each addition.

When the pasta is cooked, remove 1/2 cup of the cooking water to the eggs and whisk it into them. Drain the pasta well and return to the pot, over medium heat. Mix in the herbs at once, followed by the whisked eggs etc. Stir until the eggs cook enough to form a creamy sauce. Mix in the two cheeses and serve at once. You could keep some of the Parmesan out and sprinkle it over the top, if you like.




Last year at this time I made Apricot Panna Cotta.

Hot, Dry, Grumpy, & Behind - A Midsummer Garden Update

It's evening in the garden. A few light chores to be done, and then we will pack it in until tomorrow. Here, we have just transplanted a few cabbages and planted some cabbage seedlings started in pots and Mr. Ferdzy is watering them in. We should have large, developing cabbage plants at this point, and there are a few. But they have been devastated by some kind of bug - quite possibly cut-worms, although we couldn't find any - and at least half of them are barely sprouts or missing entirely.

Those big plants in the foreground are volunteer potatoes. Now that I shouldn't eat potatoes very often, I am finding their tendency to pop up anywhere they were planted in the last 5 years as volunteers really annoying. We are about to go away for the weekend, but those ones are getting pulled as soon as we come back. However, so far the potato volunteers seem to be much the healthiest potatoes in the garden.

Tomatoes are looking... okay. It isn't going to be an early or a bumper year, I would say. Still, they are doing. There are a reasonable number of green tomatoes forming and plenty of blossoms at the moment.

Zucchini went in late and are late, but they are about to roar into action. There are lots of blossoms and a few small squash to be seen. Yay, something!

Carrots are a disaster. They are always fraught, but this year they just won't germinate. Actually, I suspect they are germinating adequately well, but are being eaten by something just as fast. We have made our third and final attempt for the year - we are rapidly running out of seed, if nothing else - and will keep our fingers crossed. Normally we cover them to keep them damp as they germinate but we are leaving the cover off and watering 3 times a day in the hope that this will discourage whatever pest is eating them. (May just be slugs - I think the long damp spring really coddled them ).

The potatoes look pretty good from a distance; up close you can see that about half of them have some sort of virus in the leaves. Half the potatoes are named varieties, and half are ones we grew from seed and are growing on for further assessment. The virus appears to be throughout the entire bed, with equal numbers of named varieties/seedlings affected. One of the most prolific seedlings seems quite affected, but another one of the most prolific seedlings seems pretty immune. A little research shows this is probably potato virus Y, which is a virulent form of mosaic virus that has been causing a lot of havoc for potato growers in the last few years. One of the insidious things about this virus is the leaves may not look very affected but the potatoes can be really rotten so the ones I think are doing well may not be. FUN. Looks like when we return from our week-end away we'll be pulling out a lot of potatoes.

Watermelons! I had to discard (well I have them, but I'm not growing them) last years' seeds because an orange melon got in with the golden-rind project. The 2 year old seed had some trouble germinating - it was not great last year either, but once things got going it was fine. This year I am going into the season with even fewer plants and more of them than I like from the melon that volunteered and was almost-but-not-quite golden rinded. Well, we'll see. They are also all so late that I am hoping more for viable seed than good melons this year.

We are only growing the golden-rind melons this year as watermelon is not something I should be eating very much of these days. At least that assures that there will be no cross-contamination in this batch.

Another view of the potatoes, with the very very last of the peonies off to one side. This is the first peony I ever got and I wish I knew the name... it's very common in Ontario gardens and while it is generally late, it is unusual for it to be the last one blooming. If anyone has an idea, I'd love to know it. It forms seeds but never has a speck of pollen, and I believe it was a bit darker pink in my previous garden.

On the other side of the potatoes, the onions are doing well apart from the fact that I mixed my leek and Rose de Roscoff seed together by accident and now have much fewer of each than I wanted, if you don't count the large number of substitute leeks I planted when I couldn't find the seed I wanted. GRRR. Garlic beyond them, doing okay and tomatoes in the background.

Early peas (Knight and Norli) are going to seed and may in fact be pulled out by the time I hit "publish", apart from 2 sections left for seed. We missed most of the Norli peas when we went to Toronto for a family Bat Mitzvah, and got a lot of rather starchy peas from the Knight for the same reason. Really, a July week-end should have been safe to leave the peas, which should have been mostly over! Oh well. We will be getting more seed than usual which will hopefully be a good thing next year.

Lima beans are slow, slow, slow, although now that it is finally hot it looks like they will take a great leap forward. Beans otherwise are looking very good, apart from the fact that it looks like bean mosaic virus is starting up. We've had it before, it's not the worst thing, although what it will do in combination with the anthracnose remains to be seen. We are doing a big grow-out of several crosses including a Blue Lake - Cherokee Trail of Tears cross which I hope will give us a Blue Lake type bean with better anthracnose resistance. The Amish Snap and other pole peas in the next bed over are doing well, but they are going to ripen in extremely hot weather, so we will see how well they do... this may be a big "seed" year for them too, sigh.

And to end on a more cheerful note, we have a lot of this lettuce volunteering all over. Which is good, because it is the ONLY lettuce that has stayed edible in the heat and dry weather we have been having! It came into the garden in a packet of "Morton's Mix" seeds from vegetable breeder Frank Morton in 2011. I always assumed it was a variety he bred but when I check his site, the only lettuce it resembles is "Waldmann's Dark Green" (I've been referring to it as "Dark Green Frilly" for the last 8 years). It is an old variety that he carries because it is one of the most popular commercial varieties. Well, sometimes things are the standard for a reason. I've been very thankful to have *some* edible lettuce this summer - most of it really isn't now that the weather is hot - and the lettuce has gotten big enough to eat. Yes, even my attempt to end on a cheery note reminds me that is ONE OF THOSE YEARS.  It is. One of those years.

Eggs with Purslane & Garlic Scapes

And cheese. Don't forget the cheese.

This made a nice change from our usual, uh, egg cheese and bread breakfast. This is, oddly enough, a traditional Mexican dish although purslane is eaten enthusiastically all over the world and one of the first things it seems everyone does with it is cook it with eggs. I've made some changes. The Mexican version seems to involve onions and perhaps peppers, but neither of those are ready yet and meantime I have all these garlic scapes sitting in the fridge. If you don't have them, onion greens will do very well.

I always feel like this is a difficult time in the garden and this year is particularly bad. The lettuce is so done with us even though we would really like to continue the relationship, the first peas are finishing up and the next wave hasn't really gotten going, and I can see baby zucchini but they are still a few days away. Purslane to the rescue! It's not one of the early weeds go get going - it likes hot, dry weather - but once it starts it grows very rapidly. I used to grumble about it but now I have smartened up and am diverting it to the kitchen with a smile.

Purslane does take careful picking over. Those little leaves can hold some debris, and there is some kind of leaf miner that likes it very well. Also, stems can get tough. It took me about 4 cups of loosely packed plants to provide about 1 1/2 cups of cleaned leaves for our 4 duck egg breakfast.

Traditionally, this is served with tortillas and salsa. I had one last jar of green salsa in the cold room, but the bread was mini pitas. No hay problema - deliciosos. 

per serving
20 minutes prep time, mostly fiddling with the purslane

1/4 to 1/3 cup purslane leaves and stems, washed and picked over
1 garlic scape
1 large duck OR 2 large chicken eggs
salt & freshly ground black pepper to taste
1 to 2 tablespoons crumbled feta or cotija cheese
2 teaspoons mild vegetable  oil

Wash the puslane well, then pick them over, discarding any damaged leaves, tough stems, or roots. Drain well. Trim and mince the garlic scape.

Whisk the eggs with a spoonful of water per egg, and season with salt and pepper to taste - go lightly with the salt; the cheese will provide quite a lot. Crumble said cheese, and have it standing by.

Heat the oil in a skillet over medium heat; just enough to cook the vegetables and keep the eggs from sticking. Add the garlic scapes and cook for a minute or two, stirring occasionally. Add the well-drained purslance leaves and mix them in and cook until just wilted; another minute or two. Add the eggs. Sprinkle the cheese over them. Let cook for a minute to partially set, then gently stir them to break them up and allow raw egg to flow to the bottom of the pan. Continue cooking and gently mixing until the eggs are just set. Serve at once.




Last year at this time I made Zucchini & Ricotta Phyllo Roll. We are definitely one, if not two, weeks behind the expected schedule this year.

Sour Cherry Jam with Lime

Why yes, I am not feeling too inspired. All the veggies are quite behind, except for the weeds which are doing fine, thanks.  I do hope to post something I made this year, soon. Meanwhile, I made this last year...

Is this the best jam ever? I think it quite possibly is the best jam ever. I mean, sour cherries! Yet they seem to be harder and harder to find every year. Their season is so short that you can blink and miss it anyway. Perhaps that adds to the sense that this is a rare treasure. That, and the fact that 9 cups of painstakingly pitted cherries, not to mention the sugar, etc, cook down to 4 little pots of jam. This jam is for you, is what I am saying, and only the very dearest of your nearest. Hide it.

In the photo, the jam is served on my favourite Oatmeal Farls and butter.

4 - 250 ml jars

9 cups sour cherries
1/4 cup water
the zest and juice of 1 large lime
2 1/2 cups sugar

Wash and drain the cherries, and remove any debris from them. Put them in a jam kettle or other broad, heavy-bottomed pot with the water and bring to a boil. Simmer them until they begin to fall apart. Let them cool enough to handle, then remove the pits. You can put them through a food mill, but I find it easiest to do this by hand.

Put the jars into the canner with water to cover them by an inch. Bring them to a boil and boil for 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, bring the cherries back up to a boil as well, with the lime juice and zest added. Add the sugar and boil for about 20 minutes, until the mixture thickens and shows signs of setting (see notes on making jam here).

Put the lids and rings for the jars in a small pot of water and bring them to a boil; boil for 1 minute.

Ladle the jam into the prepared jars and seal them with the lids and rings. Return them to the canner and boil for 10 minutes. Allow them to cool, test seals, and label. They will keep for up to a year in a cool, dark spot, although good luck with that. 





Last year at this time I made Chinese Style Chicken Salad. Good idea! Looks like a stinker of a week coming up, heat-wise.