Grow – Cook – Make

Winter Squash is quite an agreeable vegetable, if you ask me. Easy, easy, easy: to grow, to store and to cook.

I prefer butternut over other varieties. It is not bothered by much, except the occasional rodent or bout of powdery mildew (which doesn’t seem to harm it as much as it harms melons). In the absence of fall frost, the plants keep active and productive until I decide I have enough squash to last me until spring. Then it is a matter of pulling out the plant, curing the butternuts for a while where the sun can reach them, and storing them in an unheated room.

So far, so good, and it can be this good until the last squash is eaten in May. However, it is not always so. Some times–it just happened–I find out the hard way that I picked some of them too early, or maybe I didn’t cure them properly… or whatever, something went wrong. Today I found some of my butternuts shriveling, starting to shrink.

Oh no, I have to make soup now! I better cook them before they hopelessly rot away. I did end up having to send a couple to the compost pile, but I manage to salvage the rest of the shrinking squash and make a delicious soup in the process. Easy soup, just like the butternuts. Throw in it whatever you’ve got around in whatever proportion suits your mood, boil it for a while, blend it, serve it hot. Add a simple salad, dinner is on the table. OK, a slice of bread too, and some mandarins for dessert, of course, I’m not forgetting those.

I was lucky today, I had good stuff around. I made this butternut squash soup.

• Squash
• Onion, sliced
• Ginger, finely chopped
• Broth: poultry, vegetable, or water
• Milk (or cream)
• Lime

Take as much of these ingredients as you have at hand or as suits your taste. Substitute if needed, for instance, instead of ginger you can use chile, instead of lime, lemon or orange.

• Preheat over to 375°
• Cut the squash in half length-wise, rub the cut side with olive oil, place cut side down on roasting pan or cookie sheet and put it in the oven until it is soft to the touch (some 30 to 45 minutes). Line the pan with parchment paper if you don’t like scrubbing.
• Pour a bit of oil in a pot or pan and cook the onion until it is soft and has acquired some color (I did it in large pan because that’s what I reached for, and fortunately it all fit)
• Add the ginger, cook some more. You can caramelize the onion, but your soup will be very sweet. I didn’t do it, but if you’d like to accentuate and deepen the squash’s sweetness, it might be just right for you.
• Scrape the squash from it’s peel into the onion-ginger mixture. Stir.
• Add some broth or water, mix well. I had some duck broth in the fridge today, yay! Duck broth makes everything so much more delicious.
• Blend until smooth and silky. Use a food-processor, a blender, or, if you don’t want to transfer the soup into a machine and back, use a hand blender.
• Add some milk or cream, add water, whatever you need in order to get the consistency you like in a pureed vegetable soup.
• Season with salt, pepper and lime juice to taste.
• Serve very hot in unheated plates. The hot soup will cool down to perfect eating temperature upon coming in contact with the coldish plates.
• Enjoy!

Remember that little plant, just bursting through the chaparral floor a few weeks ago? Look what it has grown into! A whole cluster of vibrant magenta flowers and ferny leaves. And there are more coming, it seems.

Those Indian Warriors were a big surprise the first time I saw them pop up, here and there all over land where the chaparral had been thinned or cleared for fire safety. The chaparral around the house was thick and old. The area last burned in 1954. Stepping inside the solid canopy revealed a dense maze of bare limbs and dead wood with just the barest layer of green leaves at the very top. Dark, hard to traverse and devoid of undergrowth. Cutting down some shrubs and limbing others allowed sunlight to hit the ground. Seeds laying dormant for decades woke up, among them the Indian Warriors. They come back every year after the first good rain. Every year I make sure to spend time with them. I like to lay in the ground so I have the flowers just at my eye height and look at them for a long time. Aren’t they gorgeous? How I love those little plants!

After the rain, puddles. Ten inches of rain and puddles everywhere.

Large sculptural clouds move along, coming from the north until they get to just this precise point, right above the neighbor’s barn, were they dissipate. Large, great clouds from the north always dissipate at this very point. Is it were the cold air-mass from the Pacific meets the warmer air from the Channel? I don’t know, but it happens after every storm.

The taller plants in the garden got a beating from the wind, but overall, the garden looks greener and refreshed. It even seems that the plants grew significantly this week. I can now harvest the collard greens that I planted a little while back, remember? They are now ready for dinner.

I spent some time thinning carrots and turnips, but didn’t do much else. The soil is soaked, more rain is coming soon. Not a good time to dig holes, to plant. Nah… I’ll wait a bit. No sense in being impatient. I’ll wait.

My sweet tooth seems to be on the mend from the holiday overdose. Blustery winds and constant rain will do this. I’m sitting by the wood-stove with a cup of tea not quite contented, though. Something seems missing. What? What is it? Um… I want dessert.

Time to reach for my basketful of citrus and make something no too sweet, rich and easy. Maybe a mousse will be just what I’m looking for. Yes, clementine mousse. Never tried a clementine flavored mousse. Garden bounty plus a little kitchen adventure will brighten this rainy day. I’ll make a small amount, just enough for two. No left-overs, if it keeps on raining I want to make new desserts.

To make clementine mousse for two you’ll need:

• 4 clementines, well washed.
• 1 egg
• 1/2 teaspoon unflavored gelatin
• 1 tablespoon cold water
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 1/3 cup whipping cream

Make the mousse a few hours to one day before you plan to eat it. It needs to be chilled for a while.

• Dissolve the gelatin into the cold water in your smallest saucepan
• Finely grate the peel of the clementines. Make sure to avoid the white pithy part or you’ll get a bitter after-taste in your mousse.
• Juice the clementines and combine the juice with the grated peel.
• Beat the eggs together with the sugar at high speed until the mixture is thick and holds soft peaks when you lift the beater from the bowl.
• Whip the cream until soft peaks form.
• Warm the gelatin over low heat until it melts and add the juice with the grated peel stirring constantly.
• Fold the whipped cream into the egg mixture. This means that you will not simply stir the cream into the eggs. You will softly add the cream on top of the eggs, and then place a rubber spatula between the bottom of the bowl and the beaten eggs and with a flip of your wrist turn eggs and cream, carefully and repeatedly, until all is mixed together. You are trying to avoid deflating the eggs.
• Pour the juice and gelatin mixture into the cream and eggs bowl, quickly whisking it as you pour so that the gelatin doesn’t start jelling until it is well mixed.
• Chill in the refrigerator for several hours. During the first hour lightly whisk it a few times to make sure it doesn’t separate.

To serve the mousse spoon it carefully into a pretty dish, a glass or a delicate bowl. You can offer your favorite crisp cookie with it, for a contrast in texture and a little bit of something to bite into. I didn’t feel like cookies. The mousse was all I needed.

The same technique works with all sorts of citrus. However, you need to vary the proportions of juice and sugar. For instance, if you use Meyer lemons, you’ll need less juice and almost double the sugar, for limes you can keep the same amount of sugar but you’ll need a bit less juice. If you have really sweet Valencia oranges you can keep the same proportions or maybe just lower the sugar a bit.

This recipe has been inspired by the tangerine mousse found in my favorite dessert cookbook, Chez Panisse Desserts by Lindsey Remolif Shere. Every single recipe I’ve cooked from this book during the last fifteen plus years has turned out divine without an inordinate amount of effort. As I say, my favorite dessert cookbook still after all those years.

Ay-ay-ay-ay-ay… 40 mph winds and my favas are all knocked down to the ground. I don’t think they’ll stand back up on their own. We are still expecting two more days of strong winds. I’ll leave them as they are, the plants underneath may be actually be quite protected for now. I’ll prop them back up when it calms down around here.

Look what the wind does to the leaves.

The surface is all scraped and pitted. Ay-ay-ay!

Well, they’ll recover. They are so full of blooms! I am so looking forward to fresh favas!

I am actually not sure that they would have been better off had I given them more supports. I don’t know… the wind was pretty strong so they could have ended up with a lot of bent stems.

If they don’t recover, I have a second batch of younger plants protected — I hope — under a row cover. And in any case I’ll be planting some more as soon as the soil dries out a bit. I’ll get my bowl of favas with mint and garlic and olive oil. Oh yes, I will.