Grow – Cook – Make

Algerian clementine, my favorite mandarin for its rich and aromatic flavor.

We like them so much eaten fresh out of hand that I’ve never felt a need to preserve them until now. The tree has grown larger, it produces more fruit than we can easily eat, and it is raining. Now is a good time to make clementine marmalade. I love marmalade, let’s make some!

I gather enough fruit, go to get the sugar and… no, I really don’t feel like sugar today. After the holidays… no, please. No more sweets. Not even marmalade from my beloved clementines. Not even.

But a nice glass of fresh squeezed clementine juice?

Heaven!

I know, I know, winter in Southern California is supposed to be all about sunny beaches and flip-flops. Sure, often enough between winter solstice and spring equinox we have excellent beach weather, sure. That’s not it, that’s not winter really, that’s just calendar winter.

I mean winter winter. The pull on a sweater, get the woodstove going and curl up with a cup of hot tea kind of winter. We also get that here from time to time. And we are going to get plenty of it this week. Here in these mountains winter comes with the rain. Specially when it rains for a long time. Like this week.  20 inches are forecasted for favorable south facing mountain locations. This means here. Right here: 20 inches in one week, about two thirds of our annual average in one week! No work on the garden for a while. Until the soil is dry enough I’ll bring the garden indoors–in a basket.

Citrus, winter in  Southern California. A basket full of clementines, oranges, limes, lemons will keep me busy while it rains outside. Expect a steady flow of citrus related posts. For the moment all the gardening I can do is making marmalade and drinking fresh squeezed juice. I hope I can sneak in a little moment to order a few more seeds. But I won’t count on it, not  while there is a basket waiting for me to use and preserve my garden’s winter bounty.

What can I make with all this fruit, ideas?

A simple salad is the best kind of salad in my book. I do like ornate and composed salads from time to time, don’t get me wrong, but still… A handful of lettuce leaves with a drizzle of olive oil and a touch of balsamic vinegar, a little salt, no more, no less, can’t be beat.

I am in a special lettuce happiness mood these days because after a frustrating series of mostly failed (or half failed) lettuce plantings I finally got a colorful plant carpet for baby lettuce salad. I have been harvesting for a couple of weeks now. I am so, so happy!

For the whole summer and most of the fall it seemed that every time I tried to seed lettuce we would get a heat wave. Forget it then! No lettuce is going to germinate when the surface soil temperature is 100F — in the shade.

If I can figure out a cool enough place to do it out of the reach of critters, next summer I’ll be growing lettuce seedlings in pots before putting them in the ground. A major bother, given the amount of plants I will need to produce, but it beats repeated failed germination. If only I could find a cool safe place…

Now I need to hurry up and eat it all before the plants grow too much. If am I diligent in my harvesting — and subsequent eating — I can get three passes out of that bed of lettuce before it gets bitter. Provided that weather stays cool, of course. Heat is the bane of sweetness in lettuce!

It took me a few years to find a Meiwa Kumquat Tree. Nagami Kumquats? Everywhere. All local nurseries carry them. Meiwa… No, sorry, we cannot order them, would you like a Nagami instead?

Now, what’s the difference, you’ll ask? Why do you care? Kumquats are exotic enough, do you need to be that picky? Well, yes, I need to be that picky. Nagami is the well known kumquat with the oval-shaped fruit. The rind is sweet, the flesh is tart. I like them, they are great for marmalade and sauces. But you know, I had tasted better. There is this gigantic kumquat tree at the home of a local gardener bearing an abundance of round sweet fruit. Not as tart as a Nagami, since both the rind and the flesh are sweet. I like it much better to eat fresh out of hand. This is the kumquat tree I wanted, the Meiwa kumquat.

It turns out that availability was restricted due to rootstock incompatibilities that were causing Meiwa trees to die early. Apparently now the right rootstock is being used because the tree is back in the nurseries. I finally brought one home.

Kumquats are excellent container plants, with compact habit, small leaves, showy fruit, and often grafted onto dwarfing stock. They are the most cold hardy among the citrus, temperatures below 20F will do little damage to their foliage. Even a potted tree will produce enough fruit to enjoy fresh, to make a jar or two of marmalade and to slice on top of arugula for a colorful winter salad–add a few toasted pine-nuts and enjoy. Besides Meiwa and Nagami, another variety worth looking for is Fukushu, a dwarf tree with round, sweet and juicy fruit.

My dear Meiwa was not looking good, though. Leaves were too yellow for my taste. I fed it with a solution of fish emulsion and kelp, and it did look better for a while, but soon it was back to looking sick. Fertilizing was not enough. Recently I found a great idea from Diane and Todd of White on Rice Couple. They have a gorgeous lemon tree in a pot that they regularly mulch with leaves trimmings. That’s it! Mulch. Just like with trees in the ground. Thanks Diane and Todd for showing me the way! I have been religiously adding a layer of compost and mulch to my orchard trees and I didn’t think to extend the same courtesy to my little potted kumquat. It is still too early to see much of an effect but I am confident that this will do it. My kumquat tree will be happy with its blanket of leaves.

Fern Richardson is hosting a Container Gardening Blog Carnival on her blog Life on the Balcony. Would you like to grow food in your patio  or windowsill? You’d rather grow ornamentals in your pots? Either way, visit Fern’s blog, you’ll love it!

One day I got stuck in a traffic jam next to a feedlot. For about an hour. Somewhere along I-5 in the San Joaquin valley. Was there a broken traffic light, or one of those four way stop signs where traffic just piles up? I don’t know… I just know the stench of that place. The bizarre sight of crowded cows standing on brown piles… of what? Not a blade of grass in sight, just a stinky mess.

I inquired around and learned that the steak on my plate came from such a place. I had no idea. I was born and raised in a city. I just did not know.

Now I know, now I buy grass finished beef from Joe Morris of San Juan Bautista, CA. It has totally changed purveying and cooking habits at my home. My husband and I got ourselves a freezer, ordered a split-half from Morris, and started a most fun journey in search of delicious ways to cooking obscure beef cuts. We added pastured lamb, pork and poultry to our adventures, and we are totally loving it. Really, so much fun!

The best of all? I’ve fallen head over heels in love with stews. Specially now, in the middle of winter –although I’ve been known to crave stew on a hot summer day. And particularly oxtail stew. Oxtails  simmering for a long afternoon in red wine… nothing better in the way of beef stews… well… short ribs maybe… yes, short ribs are excellent too. They both get cooked the same way so,  ok, you can like short ribs better, I love oxtail stew. This is how I do it.

First off, I’ve known for a long time that it is quite alright to be a messy cook when it comes to stews. Just be yourself in the kitchen, no need for exact anything, for organized this or that, nope. You just need time and patience. Preparing this post I discovered that furthermore, it is even alright to be a messy cook with a camera, if you don’t get a good picture, you will still get a good stew.

Ingredients for 6 to 8 servings:

• 2 oxtails
• 1medium onion
• 1 carrot
• a couple celery stalks
• 1 cup chopped tomato, canned or fresh
• 6 cloves of garlic
• 2 cups red wine
• 2 cups beef stock, or chicken stock. If you don’t have good stock, better use water.
• some herbs: parsley, thyme, bay leave…

24 to 48 hours ahead: Cut and salt the oxtails. Refrigerate.

• Try to cut even pieces, I mean, relatively even: oxtails are much wider at one end than at the other.
• Use 1/2 to 3/4 tsp. of salt per pound of meat

About 5 or 6 hours before you want to eat it, at a minimum. Sometimes it is better to cook it the day before you want to eat it.

• Preheat oven to 300°.
• Brown the oxtail chunks. Swirl a little oil into a heavy covered casserole or Dutch oven on a medium to medium high fire. Place them in the pan so it is not too crowded (if needed, do several batches) and turn them so all sides gain a medium brown color. Do not let them get dark brown or black! Take them out of the pan and set aside.

• While the oxtails are browning, wash, peel and roughly chop the carrot, celery, onion, and tomatoes. Wash herbs. Peel garlic and leave the cloves whole or roughly chop them.
• Deglaze the pan with the wine and reduce it by half. Pour wine into the pan and with a spatula help dissolve all caramelized bits from browning the meat and then boil off the wine until it is half its original volume.
• Return the oxtails to the pan and place the vegetables and herbs around the meat pieces.
• Pour stock into pan. Do not submerge the contents, keep the liquid lower than the top of the meat.

• Bring to a simmer on the stove top.
• Cover the pot with a layer of parchment paper and the pot’s lid.
• Place covered pot in preheated oven and wait. Wait for a long time: 3 to 4 hours.

The oxtail stew will be done when the meat is really tender. It is possible to overcook it so start start checking for doneness after 2 1/2 hours. Check again every 30 minutes. When the meat is tender but not collapsing take it out of the oven, it will continue cooking from residual heat. Incline the pot slightly so the liquid all pools to one end and after it has cooled down a bit skim off the fat that raises to the top. Taste the liquid and adjust the seasoning.

Serve this oxtail stew over rice, polenta, noodles or any favorite starch that will soak the juices nicely.

NOTES:

• For an excellent discussion on salting meat in advance see Judy Rodgers’ The Zuni Cafe Book. While she recommends a ratio of 3/4 tsp salt per pound of meat I actually find it a bit too much for some things so now I use a more flexible 1/2 to 3/4 tsp salt per pound of meat. For instance, if I am planning to use water instead of stock, I’ll salt the meat a little heavier.
• Oven temperature. You need whatever temperature will keep your pot stable at a  low simmer. In my oven this turns out to be 275°. Start by having the oven at 300°, check after 10 minutes and adjust the temperature up or down as needed in 25 degrees increments.
• Browning the meat. If your meat releases a lot of water it won’t brown until it is all evaporated, so wait or increase the fire to medium high.
• You can brown the aromatic vegetables after browning the meat, before deglazing. I don’t find it worth it, but try it out and see what you think.
• Layered pot covering. Adding a layer of parchment paper between the pot lid and the stew keeps the contents of the pot moister, thus allowing to basically ignore the pot while in the oven. I didn’t use to do this and I would find myself adding water to the stew at regular intervals else it would dry out. Too much bother, use the paper layer.
• This is a nice dish to make in excess and keep for subsequent meals. Reheat the stew in a sauce pan on the stove for about 10 minutes. Add some water or stock if needed, taste and adjust seasonings.