Grow – Cook – Make

At long last the bees are visiting my melon patch! You’d think they’d like to visit such a welcoming yellow flower, offering its nectar without reservations? Nope, if they have a choice, they’ll stick to the mint family: lavender, sage, thyme, marjoram… By the time these plants go to seed the bees have moved to the eucalyptus and toyons scattered around the property. Then they move to the garden where they go straight for the tomatillos.

Only after they create a traffic jam around the tomatillos, some bees will visit the melons. This is a moment I celebrate. This is the moment when I stop rushing to the garden before breakfast to hand pollinate the melon flowers. Still half asleep, tweezers in hand, digging under the thick melon canopy in search of female flowers. Locating a few, peeling back petals and anthers to clear all obstacles around the pistil, peeling the petals of a male flower back, brushing it against the naked pistil. Then repeating the whole operation three or four times–trying to make sure that at least one of them takes. Finally going back up the hill to get breakfast. Every single day until the bees find the melon patch.

And what are the bees doing in the melon patch? I’m afraid they would disagree with me, but as far as I am concerned, this is it.

The bees have done their job. Now it is up to me to help the plant fence off the powdery mildew attacks that are sure to come. If all goes well, soon I’ll be rushing down to the garden, half asleep first thing in the morning, to pick a melon for breakfast.

This was the most exciting harvest this week: Rotunda Bianca (left) and Violetta di Firenze (right) eggplants. The Violetta specially. This is the sweetest globe eggplant I have ever tasted. I was looking for Rosa Bianca eggplants when I run into these two other varieties. Close enough, I thought, and decided to give them a try. So glad I did. So far they show no hint of bitterness, unlike the Rosa Bianca, which has a touch. So far, because if the weather goes back to normal some day, I might discover other flavors in them.

For the moment I am writing this sentence at 12:38 pm. and the outside temperature is 62 F, in late July. I still can’t believe it. I am rather enjoying it though, my tomatoes might not be ripening but I can go work in the garden any time of day. I don’t have to get up way too early and rush down to get my garden chores done quickly before it gets too “dehydratingly” hot for both plants and gardener. In any case, the garden continues to feed us. I’ve been picking lettuce, spicy greens, carrots, beets, kale, and nopales. Enough for every meal every day of the week and some extra to freeze. A few Sun Gold tomatoes brighten up the spring time menu.

And the eggplants, of course. Thick slices, a little bit of salt a good coating of olive oil and a hot grill. I leave them on the grill until they are tender throughout and eat them right away. These eggplants are sweet.

I am one of those unfortunate people with a high perception of bitterness. I don’t dislike all bitterness, I appreciate it in brassicas, and can tolerate it lettuce, but that oxalic night-shade bitterness is something else. I don’t want it in my food, can’t take it. For this reason I mostly grow Japanese and Chinese eggplants. Now I can add Rotunda Bianca and Violetta di Firenze to my list of delicious, to be planted every year, eggplant varieties.

For more delicious pictures and stories of harvests and to add your own, head on over to Daphne’s Dandelions, host of Harvest Monday, and take a look at what other gardeners have been up to this week.

I pulled some onions this morning. Mostly Valencia and some cipollini. I planted them back in the first week of November–time to plant onions from seed in Southern California. I had hope they would stay longer in the ground, fattening up.

Today I noticed the onions were ready.

Ready to bloom. You can see them here, the flower buds. Are these also called scapes, like those of garlic?

Bolting onions! I pulled them.

This year’s weather is driving my garden nuts. Now I have hollow onions instead of big, fat succulent onions. Oh, well. I actually planted another batch in February. They are now scallion size. I hope they’ll turn into real onions in a couple months. Keeping my fingers crossed…

They are here, the first tomatoes of the season.

It took a full ten weeks! Those are Sun Gold and Martina tomatoes, both early varieties, and it takes them as long as it would take a Brandywine to ripen fruit? My Brandywines are just starting to set fruit, though. Even the Early Girls still have nothing but green balls. It has been cold for a long time this spring and summer. Daytime temperatures below 60 and nighttime below 50 far more often than I care to count. Eventually summer arrived, for the last four days it has been hot, and today I got to pick the first tomatoes and make an insalata caprese for lunch. Finally!

Another first, eggplants. Those are Orient Express. The plants are rather spindly and so far they are mostly producing small fruit. Again, it could be that these past cold temperatures have weakened the plants or slowed their growth. Hopefully now that it is warmer they will grow fast and strong. We stir fried them Szechuan style for dinner on Saturday. I thoroughly enjoyed every bite of it after such a long wait.

On the flip side this cold weather has allowed us to enjoy peas, greens, carrots, lettuce for a lot longer than other years, so I’ve managed to keep the table well supplied with freshly picked vegetables all along. However, after months of greens and legumes, a little bowl of tomatoes and a platter of eggplants are such a treat.

I am so excited, summer is here and there are ripe tomatoes in the garden. Finally!

For more delicious pictures and stories of harvests and to add your own, head on over to Daphne’s Dandelions, host of Harvest Monday, and take a look at what other gardeners have been up to this week.

Apricots again? Have I lost my ability to write about anything other than apricots? Apricots have indeed taken over my brain, but as far as obsessions go, this one seems rather harmless and quite delicious, so I’ll keep indulging it.

These last few weeks of feasting on apricots I’ve come back, over and over, to this tart. I can’t get enough of it. I like it any time of day, for breakfast, for dessert after lunch or dinner, with a cup of tea in the afternoon. When it comes to making dinner, unfortunately, I have a very strong taboo against unbalanced meals. And I say unfortunately because this tart has recently caused many a late dinner in my household. Take yesterday, I came back home from the garden at about seven, and set out to make dinner. It’s a little late, I’m hungry. First thing I see when I open the fridge, a bowl of apricots. The last ones left from that last basket I picked Monday. Of course, I need to make my beloved apricot tart. But I can’t just eat tart for dinner, I need a balanced meal. So, after the tart is in the oven the real meal needs to be fixed,  greens, meat, salad… Dessert is not a meal. We sat down for dinner at nine, starving. We enjoyed every bit of it, and I specially loved the dessert.

The dough for this tart has a fair amount of egg in it and not a lot of butter. It turns out somewhat bread-like, not at all flaky like pastry dough, so it absorbs the juices of freshly picked apricots without getting soggy. I found it in Deborah Madison’s Local Flavors: Cooking and Eating from America’s Farmers’ Markets, a great resource for ideas on cooking from our garden’s bounty. Over time I have modified Madison’s recipe to better suit my taste and needs in the kitchen. Here you have my adaptation of her recipe.

For a 10 inch tart pan you will need:

• 1 cup + 2 TBSP all purpose flour (185 grams)
• 1/3 cup sugar (67 grams)
• A little pinch of salt
• 4 TBSP butter
• 2 large eggs
• 2 TBSP milk
• 1 tsp. vanilla extract
• A bit more butter and sugar to glaze the tart

Butter the pan and preheat the oven to 375°. You can do the mixing by hand or use a food processor.

1. Cut butter into little squares.
2. Mix flour, sugar and salt.
3. Mix in butter until you get a coarse texture.
4. Lightly beat eggs, add milk and vanilla extract.
5. Add the egg mixture to the flour mixture.
6. Mix until you get a sticky batter.
7. Dump the batter on the prepared tart pan, and with well floured fingers, spread it to cover the entire pan and go a little bit up the sides. You may need to sprinkle flour on the surface of the dough to be able to spread it if it gets too sticky.
8. Arrange apricot halves on tart dough in a spiral, concentric circles, or any other pretty pattern of your choice. If you are feeling indulgent or your fruit is very acidic, sprinkle sugar over the fruit and melt a little bit of butter and distribute it with a spoon or brush over the fruit.
9. Put in the preheated 375° oven for 35 minutes. Take a look, if you think it needs a bit more time, leave it for some 10 more minutes inside the oven with the fire off. If you don’t like the edges of the fruit to get a little burned, like you see in the photo above, you’ll need to keep an eye on your tart as it bakes and cover it with aluminum foil when you see it reach the level of “toastiness” that you like. If covered, I would bake it for 45 minutes.
10. Cool the tart on a rack for 5 or 10 minutes. You can then take it out of the tart pan, or you can leave it there until it is time to serve it.

I am now going to cut a slice of yesterday’s tart to have with my afternoon tea. I also had a slice of tart for breakfast. As I say, this summer I am loving this apricot tart.