Garden On, Vashon

   

Yuli's Green Onion Pancakes—recipe below

 

 First, the news:

IF YOU’RE THINKING OF CANNING:  I ran into Cathy Fulton at the True Value; she was looking over cookware for her upcoming “Food Preservation Fair” on Saturday, August 14 from 10—2. She’ll give a PREVIEW this Wednesday afternoon (that’s today) from 2–5pm at the VIGA market in downtown Vashon. Topics will include hot-bath canning, steam juicing, pressure canning, drying, fermentation, freezing, dry-pack canning, and the new EQUIPMENT LENDING PROGRAM. 

FOOD BANK FARM sent its first harvest to an off-Island food bank this week: White Center was the lucky recipient. Sharing with other food banks is part of this year’s mission. Congrats to Jenn and her volunteer growers!

WINTER GARDENING is starting in our local small farms. Chandler Briggs of Island Meadow Farm has been transplanting fall brassica starts, put brussel sprouts in the ground last week, cabbages, leeks, and purple sprouting broccoli in the coming weeks. Jenn Coe of the Food Bank Garden is planting cabbage, broccoli, collards, kale, carrots—”everything there is still time to plant!” And yes, for some long-growing plants like cauliflower, the winter window is already closed! She recommends Territorial Seed Company’s Fall Planting chart, while Rob Peterson of Plum Forest Farm touts the Maritime Northwest Gardening Guide. If you’d like to read more on this subject, here’s a link to my article printed last year in the Beachcomber: “Make Way for Winter.”

FLOR-IFFIC!  I spotted this van parked in front of the VIGA stand this Tuesday. It’s the rig of IslandGirl Ride Service (463-4602). So if you need somebody else to drive you, here’s her offer: “Chill. You Sit. I’ll Drive.” 

If you grow food, wouldn’t you want to COOK food?

I’m grateful for my garden for many reasons, including its demand that I learn to cook. When you plant a big veggie garden (and I planted TWO), it would truly be a Lost Opportunity not to learn how to use all that green stuff. And here we are at the height of the growing season: chards, lettuces, beets, peas, kales, parsley, carrots, potatoes…it’s all bursting out of its beds, a constant parade of green through your kitchen door.

How to make use of it all?  Here are some tips—

GET SOME VEGIE-CENTRIC COOKBOOKS:  Through winter and early spring, I got myself a few cookbooks aimed squarely at handling garden produce. One of the best is actually a pair of books, both by Sylvia Thompson: The Kitchen Garden, which tells you how to grow, and The Kitchen Garden Cookbook, which shares many tricks of food prep and preservation both in a conversational narrative and in recipes.

Also in my constantly-on-the-counter stack: Andrea Chesman’s “The Garden-Fresh Vegetable Cookbook, Janet Ballantyne’s Joy of Gardening Cookbook, Marcella Hazan’s Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking, and a magazine from Vegatarian Times called Farmers’ Market Cookbook.

MAKE VEGGIES THE MAIN INGREDIENT: We’re supposed to eat less meat anyway. A good inspiration can be Asian cookbooks: they seem to have more recipes where the veg, not the meat, is the featured eatable. Vietnamese cooking in particular emphasizes fresh vegetables: think of their rice-paper salad rolls wrapped in lettuce leaves, or a bowl of pho with its companion plate of herbs & sprouts.

Vietnamese Cabbage Salad: For lunch today, I shredded white cabbage as fine as possible, added a handful of minced basil, mint, and cilantro, dressed it with vinaigrette of 2 T fish sauce and 2 T lime juice, sweetened the dressing with Splenda, and topped this salad with chopped peanuts. VERY refreshing on a warm day.

TALK TO YOUR FOOD-SAVVY FRIENDS: I get great ideas from fellow gardeners and foodies. For instance, my food bank buddy Mary Margaret told me to boil turnip greens in some broth spiked with cider vinegar. After my co-gardener Bill told me he’d enjoyed new potatoes and peas in a cream sauce, I tried something similar using milk, in a white bechamel sauce, instead. 

Green Onion Pancakes (or Turnovers): Ny friend Yuli, who grew up in Taiwan, showed me this recipe that her mother used to make. If you ever have a great abundance of green onions, chives, or garlic greens, THIS is the recipe for you! Every “pancake” is actually a pouch of white bread dough, rolled out into 6-8″ tortillas (my pasta roller worked great for this) and then stuffed with at least a half-cup of minced green onion heavily moistened with peanut oil + S & P. After you cover the center with onion, wrap the edges up and to the center, pinch together into a pouch, then press it flat between your palms  to 1/2″ thick; alternatively, you can fold the pancake over into a turnover form. Put about 3-4 in a big skillet with a little peanut oil, heated, and cook each each side until golden (about ten minutes total). If you google this recipe, you’ll find most recipes use less green onion and a more elaborate, “snail-shell” construction, but Yuli’s method is simpler AND uses much more onion.

MAKE YOUR OWN READY-TO-EAT FOODS—My mother gave me an ancient “Seal-A-Meal” contraption, which is proving QUITE HANDY for processing many greens. It’s easy to get tired of sauteed leaves, so I’ve been looking for ways to dress up and store (read hide away for later?) the chard-choy-kale-spinach-cabbage abundance.

Because we enjoy spinach quiche, I’ve braised and “seal-a-mealed” plenty of 1-cup and 2-cup packets of spinach and chard. I could also use this spinach in soups, as a base for sole florentine, or with ricotta or potatoes to make spinach gnocchi, ravioli, or a lasagne.

To add special treats to a noodle soup, we make wontons filled with white cabbage, chard, broccoli or broccoli raab, plus a little pork and/or shrimp. Store in a freezer bag, and just drop a few into chicken broth and simmer for 3-4 minutes.

Tortelli di Erbette, or Swiss Chard Ravioli—(above) My summer’s big success story is ravioli with chard, a Florentine feast-dish for St. Giovanni’s Day, June 24th. Because there’s a lot of steps to this (making pasta, rolling it out, steaming the chard, making the filling, and FINALLY filling the raviolis), I like to spread the project over two days.

First, make a batch of fresh pasta: 1 cup flour to 2 eggs, mixed, kneaded until smooth, let rest for at least an hour. Take 10-20 swiss chard leaves, remove stems, rinse the leaves and braise them in a large skillet in their drip-water until wilted. Drain, chop finely, and when cool squeeze out as much water as you can (a rolling pin works well). To this mound of green add a not-quite-equal quantity of ricotta cheese, half again as much grated parmesan, an egg, a pinch nutmeg and 1/2 teas. salt.

Both pasta dough and filling can then rest in the frig until you’ve got an hour to make the ravioli. When ready, divide the dough into approx. 1/4 cup chunks. Squeeze one through your pasta machine to thickness 5 (the next-to-last setting). Lay this long rectangle of dough on a floured table; down its lower length place a rounded tablespoon of chard filling every 2-3 inches—usually 4-6 per rectangle. Fold the upper half of the pasta to cover the chard mounds, press down between each mound and cut between, then seal the cut edges with a fork. Place on a floured baking sheet: you can then stick this in the freezer to freeze individual raviolis to pop into a freezer bag, or go ahead and boil water to cook the raviolis for 5-8 minutes.  10-12 raviolis will fill your plate. It’s delicious in a cream sauce, a red sauce, or just in a garlic olive oil sauce with scraped fresh parmesan.

And if you want a thematic dinner to serve before the Vashon FUR BALL, google “Merde di can,” a similar concoction that turns beet greens into a brownish, tapered gnocchi. I daren’t translate it for you here—this is a FAMILY newspaper, you know.