Last Chance Zucchini

The zucchini vines have been moldering on the compost pile for some time now. It seemed early to pull them out but they looked so sad I had to put them out of their misery. Nonetheless, the zucchini season lingers on. Last weekend, I was surprised to find a few actual zucchini tucked away in the back of the refrigerator. They looked fine and I felt gleeful: here was a last chance opportunity for Zucchini Flatbread  which we haven't made since the summer of 2011.

We got the recipe from Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day (pages 208 and 209) and follow it more or less as given except that I don't really measure the zucchini, parsley, and scallions very closely. Our final batch of zukes, coarsely grated, came to four cups and I used all of it, plus a big handful of backyard parsley, finely chopped, and several scallions sliced thin. And, although the official recipe doesn't call for garlic, I don't feel capable of heating olive oil in a pan without adding several cloves of smashed garlic and swirling them around to infuse the oil with that indispensable earthy essence before putting in the main ingredients.

When the mixture gets soft and the zucchini juices have mostly cooked off (too much juice makes for soggy bread), it's time to throw in a couple of big handfuls of finely grated Parmesan cheese and let it melt gently into the mix.

On impulse I took a look at the website that goes with the book to see if there were any updates, tips, or video instructions for that particular recipe. The most recent post, just the day before, presented a new take on Zucchini Flatbread, jazzed up with roasted cherry tomatoes. Serendipity! And the whole recipe was explained in detail with plenty of big, clear photos. No excuses for messing this up.

It was a simple matter to gather some cherry tomatoes from the yard and put them under the broiler for a few minutes until they started to collapse in on themselves and change color.

Meanwhile, B. was working on the bread part of the recipe. He uses the "five-minutes-a-day" system, and unlike me, follows the instructions carefully. Since he already had a container of dough in the fridge for the next batch of regular bread, all he had to do was pull off a grapefruit-sized lump and squeeze it and shape it into a smooth ball.

Everything came together once he had the dough rolled out and fitted onto our handy oven peel. All I had to do was spread the zucchini-cheese mixture evenly over the surface, sprinkle on some pine nuts (thank you, CostCo!) and dot the roasted tomatoes here and there -- forgetting that you are supposed to hold them back and add them after the flatbread comes out of the oven. Oh, well.

B had preheated the oven to 450 F in plenty of time to warm up the baking stone, about thirty minutes ahead. Then, with an experienced deftness, he slid the decorated flatbread smoothly off the oven peel and onto the heated stone. The long handle on the peel makes this maneuver easy to do despite a really hot oven, although it takes some practice to learn just how much uncooked dry polenta to sprinkle on the peel under the pizza so it will slide off, and just when to give the peel a sharp jerk to start the slide.

The final result was just as delicious as we remembered from the first time. And all the tampering with the recipe -- too much zucchini, added garlic, cooking the tomatoes twice -- turned out just fine.

Do I Dare to Eat a Pear?

It's a sparse year for pears -- the entire reachable crop is ripening on the dining room table. There are still a few unpicked beauties clustered at the very top of the tree, but for general purposes, what's available this season is in hand now.

Though lacking in numbers they make up for it in size and in perfection of color and shape. A single blushing pear in a blue bowl is almost too beautiful to eat.

But eventually flavor wins out over beauty. When they are at the peak of ripeness, I've never tasted such delicious pears. Last year, at the Heirloom Exposition in Santa Rosa, I studied the array of varieties laid out on long tables in the vast exposition hall, trying to figure out what is growing in our backyard. Our pears do resemble the Barletts; some of those on display had a reddish blush. But that's just a guess.

Fortunately, not knowing the variety doesn't impair the taste.

The best way to eat these pears is the simplest: cored and sliced into a bowl so there's nothing between you and the sweet juice and slightly grainy texture.

They are also delicious with a simple garnish of yogurt and walnuts: my current favorite afternoon snack.

And we don't like to let the summer pass without at least one Tarte Tatin made with our own pears. It has become one of our ritual recipes.

This year I tried making some pear sauce as well. Not too bad, though not as good as homemade applesauce. It would be an OK way to preserve the crop if there's too much to eat fresh.

The experimental pear leather was better than the pear sauce, but not nearly as good as the plum leather. Another fall back method for handling a large crop.

Another great year for pears is almost gone. Each year we get a little better at doing them justice.

Making Plum Leather

Plum trees grow like weeds in our town, often springing up unbidden. At peak season ripe plums drop onto sidewalks and you have to step around the sticky paste of crushed fruit. Maybe that's why we've never paid a lot of attention to the little copse of plum trees in our backyard once the burst of bloom in early spring wanes. For so many years we've let the fruit drop on the ground and rot away in the ivy.

This year there has been an abundance of especially delicious and juicy purple plums. The easiest way to enjoy them is to stand by the tree and eat the fattest, purplest, sun-warmed specimens within reach. A bowlful on the dining room table make a nice accent and an occasional snack.

But so much goes to waste. What to do with this bumper crop? Even though the season is pretty much over, it seems a shame to let it pass without making an effort to preserve some of the bounty. Make jam? It takes too much time, is really messy, and needs a lot of sugar. Hmmmmm . . . . . what about plum leather? It can't be that hard to make. The only ingredient is ripe fruit. There is a dehydrator gathering dust under the bed.

Step 1: Gather the best and ripest fruit you can find. Wash it thoroughly.

Step 2: Remove the pits by squeezing the fruit between your fingers and picking out the pits from the gooey pulp. Be sure to capture all the liquid.

Step 3: Puree the pit-free mass of pulp and skins in the blender.

Step 4: Push the blended pulp through a strainer to remove the skins. Possibly you could do this before blending, but letting some of the skins mix into the pulp adds color, and perhaps adds nutrients.

Step 5: Brush some olive oil onto the drying rack in the dehydrator -- not too much or the end product is too greasy. You need a special drying rack for making fruit leather.  

Step 6: Gently pour the strained puree onto the drying rack, using only enough to completely coat the surface of the rack. Store extra puree in the fridge for the next batch. Alternatively, invest in more drying racks because they stack and you can do several at once. (I haven't tried that.)

Step 7: Optional -- sprinkle on some grated coconut.

Step 8: Put the top on the dehydrator and set it on the highest temperature (155 degrees F). After a couple of hours, turn the temperature down to 135 degrees F and keep it going until the puree is thoroughly dried out. It helps to set things up in an out-of-the-way place like the garage, so the continuous noise doesn't drive you batty. The puree takes a long time to dry out. Turn the machine off at night, of course, if it takes longer than a day.

Step 9:  Periodically test the puree by touching it gently with your finger -- if it's the least bit sticky it's not done. When finally done (hooray!) lift the lovely, translucent wreath of plum leather out of the machine. Plums have lots of natural pectin so the final material is firm and stretchy.

Step 10: Cut the wreath into pieces and wrap the pieces in waxed paper.

Step 11: Roll up the covered pieces and secure them well.

Step 12: Store in a covered plastic container in the fridge. Eat some right away and marvel at the fresh, fruity taste -- a much more concentrated flavor than the fresh fruit itself. Essence of plums. Share some with friends to hear their delighted response.

Season of Plenty

The blooming of the pink lilies signals the season of plenty in our backyard. As the blossoms gradually opened this week, we brought in several harvest baskets of lush produce:

Dona tomatoes
Better Boy tomatoes
Sungold cherry tomatoes
Padron peppers
Fairy Tale eggplant
Prosperosa eggplant
Ronde de Nice zucchini
Emperor's Jade zucchini
Genovese basil (the best for pesto)
Summertime lettuce
Michelle lettuce
A few stray leaves of volunteer arugula
Assorted leaves of volunteer yard chard
Purple plums (last few of their waning season)
Yellow plums (more than we can deal with)
Pears!!!!!!! (See below).

And that's not even the full roster. Still to come are:

Roman Stripe paste tomatoes
Indigo Blue tomatoes
Sweet Million cherry tomatoes
Pimento peppers
Lemon cucumbers
Blue Lake beans
Fortex beans
Volunteer mystery squash most likely descended from the Trombetta di Albenga of previous summers (judging by the size of the vines).

The lilies bloom in early August, announcing the all too short season of feasting on our summer specialties: Insanely Great Pasta Sauce and the inimitable Pear Tarte Tatin.

When the lilies bloom the pears are ready to drop. It's time to start watching the pear tree carefully because pears, counter-intuitively, should not be allowed to ripen on the tree. When the first one falls the whole harvest must be picked at once.

This year we got impatient and didn't wait for that first plopped pear before sending H. up on a ladder to gather in whatever he could reach -- everything but a few fat ones clinging to the topmost branches.

I think the blooming lilies are now so strongly associated in my mind with the season of plenty that, like Pavlov's dog, I start to salivate when I see them! Fill the harvest baskets; it's the time of fruiting and feasting!

Sungold!

These little beauties, the first of the season, added some sparkle to tonight's salad.

They are a feast for all the senses. Translucent orange eye candy, sweetly tangy on the taste buds, with a haunting fragrance that could be marketed as perfume (I always forget, year-to-year, how good they smell, until I find myself going out to the garden just to bury my nose in the fruiting plants again) -- they also feel nice to the touch, smooth and perfect like golden marbles. Do they sound good too? Well, to me, the evocative name falls poetically on the ear: Sungold!

For the record: This year's one Sungold plant was an organically grown, hybrid F1 seedling from Natural Gardening, set out on May 9 with marigold, basil, and parsley seedlings, plus a few nasturtium seeds poked in the ground here and there. The days-to-maturity was given as 57 days, which is a couple of weeks earlier than this plant's first fruits -- but the DTM is always an estimate.

So far, all the companion plants are doing well, too. The only problem to date is that the lower leaves on the tomato plant are showing the brown spots and progressive deadening that appears every year no matter what I do. But, right now, I don't feel like quibbling about the details. Let's just admire the results.

Zucchini Flatbread

We noted with pride the first zucchini blossom of the season, and the first harvest. Here's the first zucchini feast! A stunning Zucchini Flatbread, courtesy of Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day.






The process is even simpler than growing way too much zucchini. Place a baking stone in the bottom third of your oven (of course you have a baking stone) and preheat the oven to 450 degrees. The stone should heat up slowly along with the oven.

Pull out your favorite saute pan. Pictured above is a mixture of one Cocozelle zucchini grated up and simmered in olive oil and garlic with green onions sliced thin, plenty of chopped parsley, some cashew pieces (the called-for pine nuts are too pricey) and a couple of handfuls of freshly grated Parmesan cheese.






While the zucchini is softening and soaking up flavor, prepare the dough. If you are following the Five Minutes a Day system -- as we are -- this step consists of pulling the current container of dough out of the fridge, pinching off a grapefruit-sized piece, forming a ball, and rolling it out as evenly as possible to about 1/8 inch thickness. You can roll it out right on your oven peel (of course you have an oven peel) if you have enough counter space. If not, use your available rolling-out surface and then slide the round onto the peel.

Spread the warm zucchini mixture artistically over the top of the dough, carefully slide the dough and topping onto the heated up baking stone, and cook for 12 to 15 minutes before checking for doneness. If necessary, let it cook a little more until nicely browned.

We had this for dinner tonight with a garden salad. Outstanding.

Pea Harvest: Golden Sweet

There are now lots and lots of pale, lemony, flat-podded Golden Sweet peas hanging on the ample vines along the fence. Most of them have a cute little blue frill at the stem end, the remnants of the faded blossom. They are crunchy and sweet to the taste.






We tried them in a stir fry with great results.







Some of them are fattening up. By this stage they have lost the little blue neckerchief.






We tried shelling some and adding the shelled peas to a pesto dinner, with mediocre results. They were not bad-tasting but didn't add anything, pretty much starchy and tasteless. Lesson learned: use the Golden Sweet like snow peas, not like English peas.

There are plenty left on the vine so I think I will let them go full cycle and see if they work as dried peas.

Fava Bean Eco-System

The fava beans are reaching out for the sky with their graceful fans of leaves and elegant blossoms with black accents. Two adjacent beds of seedlings from Cottage Garden Nursery, which were planted out last fall on October 3, are now eight feet and over -- even subtracting the ten inch height of the beds.






The towering stalks form a little forest eco-system all their own, with some volunteer chard sheltering on the shady forest floor layer, most of the blossoms and maturing beans in the understory, and the tenderest new leaves -- so good in salads -- forming the canopy.






Here are the understory beans, starting to size up.






The understory seems to be very popular with all manner of insects -- such as this Common Darter Dragonfly. (Nothing common about it; it's the only one I've ever seen in this garden, which is swarming with dragonflies. I had to do some Web sleuthing to find out what it's called.)







Another mystery insect I was not able to identify: these weird beetles with dramatic African-shield-like markings. Dozens of them can be found scurrying at eye level among the stalks and leaves in the morning sun.






And here's the first sighting of the hornet queen, from March 6. She too seems to favor the mid-level fava forest.






It was almost reassuring to find a common, everyday, garden-variety ladybug sunning herself on a leaf.






And a regular honeybee browsing the blossoms.

B. sometimes wonders why I grow favas at all, because we have only managed to make a meal of them once. I don't dig them under as a cover crop before they form beans, which is the most efficient use of favas as soil enrichment. I let them go full cycle with a fine full crop of fat pods but then get overwhelmed and can't follow through with the laborious processing required to extract the delicate gourmet beans. As I said, that happened once.

I guess I grow them just to watch the show. Well worth it.

Eat the Yard Update: A Touch of Rosemary

Our Eat the Yard Challenge began on New Year's, 2010: A resolve to eat something from the yard every day, even if only a sprig of parsley or a twig of thyme or rosemary. (Our little rosemary bush is shown above.)

I guess it has to be admitted that it's really my Challenge, since the participation of others who might be mentioned has consisted mostly of bemused tolerance. But never mind about that. At least the eating is shared, if not the fretting about what's ready to harvest and what could be part of a meal.

The Challenge was pretty successful -- in 2010 there were about ten days where the standard was not met. And it has continued successfully into 2011. So far there has been only one day when our garden did not contribute to our dinner. We got stuck in San Francisco during rush hour and had to eat out, a rare occurrence.

It's become a way of life to eat the good food of home, some of it grown by yours truly, most of it cooked by others who might be mentioned.






These roasted veggies were served March 3. Before roasting they were coated with olive oil and sprinkled with crushed rosemary leaves, gathered shortly before use. Bon appetit!

Give Peas a Chance

Here's the harvest from the experimental patch of Caseload Shelling Peas planted way back in mid-September, last fall. They have soldiered through wintry winds, pounding rains, and freezing nights, made the most of some unseasonable warmth lately, and bravely put forth these plump, albeit bedraggled pods.






According to The Natural Gardening Company, source of the seeds, these peas grow to two and a half feet in height and don't need staking. That has not been my experience! These babies are pushing five feet and the stakes are getting higher, so to speak.

The experiment last fall was to see whether my gathered seeds, more adapted to this yard, would perform better than the leftover seeds in the original packet from Natural Gardening. At first it looked like the gathered seeds were doing better; but now it's hard to see much difference between the two rows, and the small differences could be accounted for by more sunlight falling on the row in front. Nonetheless, I count the experiment a great success because it has resulted in a harvest.

My previous efforts to grow many different varieties of peas have been routinely unsuccessful. Mostly, they never came up at all or got chomped as soon as the first tender shoots appeared. I kept planting them anyway because it's so easy and fun to poke the pretty little green baubles into the ground and because they are a marvelous plant at all stages.

The small harvest of Caseload Shelling Peas last August was a breakthrough. And here we have a second one! So now I'm really hooked.






This January harvest yielded a scant half cup and some of the peas were scarred with traces of frost burn. But who's complaining? It was enough to build a dinner on.






Admittedly, the peas are mere tokens in this serving of Peas Alfredo, kind of like the stone in stone soup. But the meal was delicious. Maybe it's not the peas I'm so fond of but the noodles in cream sauce that the peas are an excuse for making! Anyway, it's time to start thinking about the next crop. Should it be this tried and true, field-tested variety or something new and different?