A Floral Treat

Posted on July 8, 2016 by myediblebackyard

Midsummer is bright with day lilies blooming along roadsides and in gardens.

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So pretty to look at and so delicious to eat!

Just about all parts of the day lily are edible, but I’m partial to the delicately flavored buds.

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I steam them for about 5 minutes and eat them with butter and salt.

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Eating day lily buds has been described as similar to eating green beans or asparagus. Texture-wise, I’m in the asparagus camp, but flavor-wise they are nothing like asparagus, having a delicate flavor all their own. Try them, but be sure to leave some behind so you can enjoy the bright flowers when they bloom.

 

 

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Bok Choy – A Vegetable I Have to Learn to Love

Posted on May 25, 2016 by myediblebackyard

Bok Choy has little to recommend it as far as I can see. Its stems are watery, its leaves wimpy, and it cooks down to an almost flavorless almost nothing.

And yet it keeps appearing in my CSA basket.

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During CSA season, I plan meals around the contents of the weekly basket. I have no problem whipping up a dinner with asparagus as the main event, or radishes, or even a mixed greens salad. But bok choy just doesn’t seem to have the personality to hold its own as the main feature of a meal.

But it’s in the basket, so I have to use it. So here are some ways I’ve some up with.

  • Salads – The chopped raw stems add a crispy texture to a rice salad or tossed green salad, and the leaves can be added to salad greens
  • Stir fry – Maybe this is how this vegetable is most commonly used. I used it in a radish sauté last week. It added some bulk to the dish, but not much else.
  • Snacks – If you’re a little thirsty or just want to feel something crispy in your mouth, you can munch on some raw bok choy.
  • Beans – Add some to the pot when you’re cooking beans. I admit I haven’t tried this yet, but it’s on this week’s agenda.

If anyone else who’s had a happier experience with this vegetable has some other suggestions, please share.

 

 

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Ingredients for a Spring Salad

Posted on May 8, 2016 by myediblebackyard

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  • freshly-picked wild violet leaves
  • freshly-picked wild mustard flowers and buds
  • carrots (last fall’s harvest) and spinach from local farms
  • home-sprouted sprouts
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Nettle Quiche

Posted on May 1, 2016 by myediblebackyard

Stinging nettles need no dressing up. A plate of them steamed and eaten with just a dollop of butter and a dash of salt is an exquisite dish indeed. But sometimes I like to get fancy. We brought home a bucket load of stinging nettles yesterday, so I decided to try my hand at making a nettle quiche.

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I followed my basic quiche recipe. I started with a loosely-packed colander full of nettles, which I steamed for five minutes. It cooked down to a handful, just the right amount for a quiche. Meanwhile, I sautéed a minced garlic clove and a chopped medium onion. I added a dash of salt and 1/8 teaspoon of nutmeg to the eggs and milk, then put everything together in the piecrust with a handful of cheese.

While the quiche was baking, we sipped on nettle tea — the water that the nettles had been steamed in. Really, that is my favorite part of cooking with nettles. The tea/cooking water is so packed with deliciousness.

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The quiche was very delicious, too. I will definitely make it again. And I can! We picked so many nettles yesterday that we had plenty left over to freeze for future quiches.

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Local analysis:

Local — nettles, eggs, milk, cheese, butter (in the crust)

Non-local — salt, nutmeg, olive oil, flour (in the crust)

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My Salad Garden

Posted on April 30, 2016 by myediblebackyard

This is my salad garden.

Mother Nature planted it for me right behind my house. All I have to do is step out my backdoor and harvest.

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Yum!

 

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Something You Don’t Need to Try

Posted on April 21, 2016 by myediblebackyard

After an initial experiment baking with dandelion flowers – I made dandelion biscuits – I decided to drop the idea of dandelion baked goods because the flowers didn’t seem to add anything to the final product – no taste, no texture. But this week the dandelions are blooming again, looking so bright and inviting and delicious that I thought, why not give baking one more try?

I decided on cookies this time. It’s easy to find recipes for dandelion cookies online, but they usually call for just 1/2 cup of dandelions. I wanted to make my cookies as dandelion-y as possible, so I ended adapting a carrot cookie recipe that called for a full cup of carrots. I just used dandelions instead.

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I ate a few flowers straight. They were sweet but had no particular flavor.

The cookies came out OK, tasting of vanilla and brown sugar, but with no hint of dandelion at all.

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If you want to try this, you’ll have no trouble finding a dandelion cookie or carrot cookie recipe online. But I think I’ll stick to enjoying dandelions in my salad.

 

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Local Cake #2

Posted on February 14, 2016 by myediblebackyard

When I woke up this morning, the outside temperature was several degrees below zero. So I decided to stay in and bake a cake. I chose this recipe for “harvest cake,” a layer cake based on grated vegetables – carrots, beets, and zucchini. Seeing as it’s the dead of winter, I don’t happen to have any zucchini on hand, so I ended up using extra carrots and beets to make up for it. I made only two other tiny adjustments to the recipe – I substituted melted butter for half the oil and added a teaspoon of vanilla to the batter. I also decided to forego the recommended goat cheese frosting (not a big fan of goat cheese) and opted for vanilla buttercream (my favorite) instead. Cream cheese frosting would probably go well with this cake, too.

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The cake turned out moist, fruity, and slightly spicy, very similar to carrot cake, which it almost is. I look forward to trying the recipe again in summer when zucchini is available.

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This cake earned the Parrot Seal of Approval.

Local Analysis

Cake

Local: butter, eggs, beets, carrots, maple syrup

Non-local: flour, baking powder and soda, cinnamon, vanilla, salt, oil, walnuts, raisins

Frosting

Local: butter, milk

Non-local: sugar, vanilla

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Salads in Winter

Posted on February 9, 2016 by myediblebackyard

Yes, you can enjoy crispy, delicious, locally-sourced salads all winter long. The secret is grated root vegetables.

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Celeriac, the fat, hairy root of the celery plant, is no beauty to look at, but its mild celery flavor is delicious when peeled, grated, and combined with grated carrot to make a slaw.

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Beets and carrots also make great slaw-type salads, either alone or combined with each other. Dress with your favorite dressing, or simply add a splash of balsamic vinegar, lemon juice, or orange juice, and salt and pepper to taste. A small handful of sprouts adds an earthy flavor. A few chopped walnuts are good in a beet salad. You could try adding sunflower seeds, raisins, or anything else you have on hand.

 

 

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Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies

Posted on December 21, 2015 by myediblebackyard

An abundance of winter squash in my CSA basket and an invitation to a cookie swap inspired me to try this pumpkin chocolate chip cookie recipe from King Arthur Flour.

Wow. What a great recipe. The result is a rich, pumpkiny-spicy-chocolatey cookie with a cake-like texture. So delicious.

As usual, I tweaked the recipe to suit my tastes, substituting whole wheat flour for half the all-purpose flour and using freshly-baked pureed squash instead of (horrors!) canned pumpkin. I used kabocha squash because that’s what was in the CSA basket this week, but I’m sure any winter squash would do. Or fresh, local pumpkin, of course.

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After (should’ve done this before – oh well) I finished baking, I read some of the comments on the recipe page. It turns out that if you use whole wheat flour, KAF recommends flattening the cookies before baking since they won’t spread as much as all white flour cookies will. So you may want to try that. However I think my non-flattened whole wheat cookies still came out pretty good.

KAF advertises this as a Halloween cookie but, hey, I like baking with squash any time of year. Whole squash stores well and baked squash freezes well so there’s no need to confine enjoyment of this versatile vegetable to autumn.

I hope they don’t mind that I’m taking these to a Christmas cookie swap!

Here’s the local analysis:

Local — squash, butter, eggs

Non-local — flour, baking powder and soda, sugar, spices, salt, walnuts, chocolate chips

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Local Cake

Posted on December 6, 2015 by myediblebackyard

Local eating isn’t only about fresh fruits and vegetables. Cakes can use local ingredients too!

Encouraged by a cake baking class I took recently, I decided to try my hand at making a sacher torte. This rich, chocolatey cake traditionally has a filling of apricot jam. I’m pretty sure apricots don’t grow anywhere in northern New England, but raspberries certainly do. Seeing as I have plenty of homemade raspberry jam on hand, I decided to use that for the filling.

Here’s the cake before I sliced it into two layers:

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Here’s the bottom layer with the raspberry filling:

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Ready for eating:

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I used the recipe in my 1976 edition of the Joy of Cooking. The result wasn’t as dense and rich as I remember sacher torte being, but was still quite good and, most important of all, very chocolatey. I look forward to more baking practice as I hone my cake-making skills. Watch this space!

Local analysis:

local–eggs, butter

semi-local–jam (local – raspberries, nonlocal – sugar)

nonlocal–sugar, flour, chocolate, coffee (in the frosting)

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