Port Potager

Some time over the summer, before we tore apart the kitchen, I decided to try my hand at pickling okra. I know this because I found this photo lurking in an unpublished post:  Careful forensic evidence reveals that this photo was taken on the old kitchen counter, while the kitchen was still lime green in sections. I also recall being inspired by some pickled okra we had at Loretta’s Last Call (otherwise unmemorable except for the pitchers of sweet tea) before a game at Fenway on the Fourth of July. So I imagine I threw some early okra in a jar back when the okra was just starting and we couldn’t harvest enough to eat or freeze in a decent-sized batch yet.  I also found a cryptic note to myself reading " old horseradish brine, vinegar, water, dill, peppercorn, garlic” under the photo. So, to the best of my knowledge, here’s what happened. I used a jar that had recently been emptied of its horseradish pickles and tossed in three pods of okra, in what can only ...

Last night we had a pretty excellent Sunday supper. It was all delicious, but can you spot the star ingredient? Our colorful wintertime plate included herbed mashed potatoes and gravy, a really tasty rosemary roast dressed with horseradish, roasted carrots and parsnips, and (drumroll) Brussels sprouts! If you have been following this blog for some time, you know that growing Brussels sprouts has been an ongoing challenge for us. This year we finally had some worth harvesting, and last night we enjoyed them sautéed with just a touch of maple syrup. They were sweet and tender after spending a good month out in the cold, and I will give a full accounting of the successes and failures of the Brussels sprout crop later this week. For dessert we opened up the spiced peaches that Jonas made back in the summer: True to their name, they were very, very spicy. Luckily, these were very ripe and very sweet peaches that could stand up to the powerful amount of cinnamon we ...

After a week in which we were struggling to acclimate ourselves to the blustery cold, today we were granted a sunny, almost-warm day. It was actually pleasant to be outside again, so we wasted no time picking up the last of the leaves and cleaning up the last bits of herbs that finally died in the freezing temperatures of the past week. We also were able to bring in a surprisingly ample post-frost harvest. There's still plenty of food out there under the cover of glass, plastic, or straw, so we should be eating well for the next few months. It may well be the last nice day, but it's not the last harvest. Here's what we brought in today: This kale bouquet is just a small bit of what we have. A lot of the Russian kale got nipped back by the cold since we left it unprotected, but we fixed that today, and there are still a whole lot of leafy greens left for the winter. Our last three cabbages were unaffected by the freezing weather, but won't last forev...

A couple weekends ago we had brunch with a good friend in Boston. This friend is an excellent cook and hostess, so it is sometimes hard to know what to bring to the table. The solution? Our kit for home-grown Bloody Marys: Turns out that this is the time of year that the ingredients for Bloody Marys are perfectly in season. Well, vodka is always in season, but tomatoes, celery, and horseradish are ready for harvest at the end of summer and into the fall. To make our kit, we used a box from a set of Mason jars, which still had its handy dividers intact. I suppose a more market-minded farmer would make nice wooden divided boxes, but we were mostly concerned with portability. Anyway, the compartments are stuffed with a bottle of vodka, four quarts of fresh tomato juice (made by running newly-picked tomatoes through the food mill ), a whole bunch of celery, some lemons, a bottle of Worcestershire sauce (from the store, but I have designs on making our own some day), a sm...

The day before Thanksgiving is Pie Day, but in addition to the traditional baking (pumpkin and apple, which I can share later), I also made a soup for Thanksgiving lunch. I have been ruminating about using our frozen corn for a corn chowder for a few months now, and this seemed the perfect day to give it a go. Corn, after all, is a pretty traditional New England Thanksgiving food. For us, though, it has always been a challenge to grow , so using the last of our hard-won kernels warranted a special occasion.  My recipe is modified from Pioneer Woman's Corn Chowder with Chilies [sic]. I liked the idea of spicing this up, but I went with our own dried chipotles instead of the canned ones called for in the recipe. Vinegary, canned peppers seemed weird to me in a creamy soup, but her addition of masa harina is genius. Here's my version: Chipotle Corn Chowder 4 slices of bacon (ours was from Tendercrop and was corn-cob smoked, which is extra smoky and rich-tasting, ...

Ah, horseradish. Delicious and so easy to grow you might want to plant it somewhere where it won't bother you if it takes over. It's kind of a bully in a garden bed, but that just means there's more to harvest in the fall. It's at its best after a frost when the leaves die back, but once it's established you can dig it up whenever you want, really. I went out on Tuesday to quick dig up bunches of roots while the temperatures were (temporarily) mild and the ground unfrozen. Although I was careful to leave behind at least a couple good roots for next year, I still brought in a big bucket of horseradish: In the midst of Pie Day (the day before Thanksgiving, when all the baking happens), I took some time to prep the horseradish for both eating and long-term storage. First, wash it and pat it dry: For storage, think about what you would do with any other root vegetable, maybe a carrot or turnip. Crisper drawer on high humidity will do, but only stor...

It occurs to me that I never wrote about how our brined kosher dills turned out. Since I started those back in mid-July, we have made a bunch more fermented pickles. First, a look at how the original batch turned out: This is what they look like after three weeks of fermenting in the crock. I pulled them out of the crock and gave them a quick rinse, then strained the brine into a pot to boil it.  (Now, I know that boiling it kills all the good bacteria from the fermentation process, making this no longer a "living food" and blah blah blah . But we don't have enough room in our refrigerator for 10 gallons of pickles chilling in their living brine. Gotta can them, and that means boiling it all up. It doesn't really change the flavor, which is my main purpose here.) Anyway, after boiling the strained brine, you pack the pickles in hot jars, pour the brine over them, and process in a boiling water bath canner for 15 minutes.  As you can see, t...

It's New Year's Eve! Not my favorite holiday, but at least it comes with a strong tradition of finger foods. My favorite thing to do with bite-size treats is to dip them in something, so that's what I was working on this afternoon. First up: some roasted garlic. Many of our Spanish Rosas have started to sprout in storage, so I grabbed those for this project: That may have been a mistake, since the flavor is a little greener once they sprout, but using these didn't make me sad about cutting off the tops, since that part is messed up now anyway. The cutting-off-the-tops thing seems to be pretty standard for making roasted garlic in the oven, although this is news to me. I never bothered with that when we roasted some heads on a wood fire back in the fall . I thought using a muffin tray seemed inspired, though, so that's what I did:   Next step is to coat them with olive oil. I kind of just drizzled it on. I guess the point is to keep the d...

Even with a pretty nice afternoon , it's hard not to feel some serious winter blahs when the sun sets at 4:09 p.m. We're working on just over nine hours of daylight here, and that's nothing short of terrible. One thing that did help make that early nightfall better was a really great Sunday dinner. First, a tray of vegetables ready for roasting: This is full of fresh-picked carrots and leeks, plus potatoes and garlic from winter storage. They were cut into pieces, drizzled with a bit of olive oil, and given a generous helping of rosemary leaves and whole sprigs of thyme. After an hour of roasting veggies and the beef, the house smelled great, and it was time to eat. Green salad to start: Fresh from the cold frames and greenhouse tunnels are lettuces, mache, and arugula. There are also some slices of fennel bulbs that we pulled last weekend. Non-garden ingredients are thinly sliced Granny Smiths and pomegranate seeds. Yum! Then the main course: ...

I forgot to mention the new addition to our Thanksgiving harvest traditions: horseradish! A few days before Thanksgiving I went out and dug up a root of horseradish that we had planted back in the spring. As you can see, it's pretty big after a summer of growth. For comparison, the original root we planted was only about as big as the light brown offshoot that is second from the left of the main root. I only dug up this one piece, which was half of one plant. We have four.  So yeah, that's way more horseradish than anyone needs. I brushed off the dirt and let it sit on the counter, and on Thanksgiving we used it for Bloody Marys. Since we live a few states away from family, we celebrate Thanksgiving with friends, cooking through the morning, taking a soccer break with the kids, and feasting in the afternoon. There are brunchy snacks while we cook, and this year we upped the ante with some Bloody Marys. And let me tell you, they were pretty damn good. Total...