Sage

How I Spent My Birthday

May 30, 2011

(the most important day of the year.)

We, in Minnesota, are in the midst of about the worst Spring ever. Rain, snow, frost, wind and more rain. It hasn’t been the best environment to garden in.

It. Has. Been. Dismal.

But on the most important day of the year, the sun shone. All day.

And I planted almost the whole garden. On May 25th, all I had in the garden was rhubarb (perennial), asparagus (perennial), garlic and shallots (planted last year), and onions (planted in early April).

And by the end of the day on May 26th, I had added tomatoes, perppers, beans, peas, edamame, cucumbers, corn, zucchini, all my potted herbs, zinnias.

I was tired, sunburned and princess for a day.

I love my birthday!

First I planted my herbs that wintered in the barn all winter.

The sage is so pretty!

The rosemary is a little worse for the wear, but will rebound fine, I’m sure.

Next, I went after that damn, damn “non-invasive” ginger mint.

You might remember that from last year and the year before, when I attempted to dig it out. Over and over. This year, I started with Round-Up. And after two applications, it’s still doing just fine. So I took out the big guns: Round-Up Poison Ivy and Tough Brush Killer. Somehow, I’m not optimistic. But stay tuned for an update in a few weeks.

And speaking of invasive, though on a much cuter level, we visit the ever-burgeoning Johnny Jump-Up population. Which, as predicted last April, has exponentially increased in number. But I didn’t Round-Up them. I probably should have. But I didn’t.

Instead, I dug them all out and placed them inside my round trellis. (All except one, that is.) Something tells me I’ll rue this day.

Needing refreshment, I decided to run up to the house for a drink and came upon Lola, with the door wide open. She apparently wanted a fresh drink too, and let herself in. Then decided to bask in the sun a bit.

Well, hello Lola. You bad dog!

And who is this, lurking among the garlic?

Why, it’s my psychotic rooster, Senor. He has finally figured out he is free.

And our lives may never be the same again. He is scary as Hell. And while he never attacked me all day, he did attack Dave when he got home with a delicious picnic lunch for my birthday! I have a video of it happening. It’s hilarious.

It was a great day. I was so grateful to be able to work outside. Then I had to pack it up and head off to a soccer game. Which isn’t how I’d voluntarily spend my birthday, given the choice. But that’s just the way it is sometimes, kids. And when that happens, I have to act like like a grown-up and not complain. (too much.)

We went out for a late bite at a Mexican spot the next town over. And had Boston cream pie for dessert at home! Like I said, it was a great day.

I should note that the temperature dropped steadily all night and was 34 degrees when I woke up. Looking out the window, I saw what looked an awful lot like frost on the roof of the barn.

Huh. Imagine that.

Meatless Monday 42

November 3, 2010

Fall Barley Risotto

Mmmm. I did it! I finally made a winner. Here’s the thing. In busy times, I tend to do some version of the following for dinner:

around 3:30pm when the kids get home, and having lost all track of time, I get up from my computer and look in the freezer
I take something out and plop in in a bowl of water to defrost
then I forget about it until…
somewhere between 5:30 and 6:30 pm when one of the kids needs to be somewhere: band, soccer, robotics, yearbook…
at which point I usually tell Charlie to have a bowl of cereal, or
tell Morgan to stop eating ice cream (or macaroni and cheese or some other large dinner-type substitute)
then, I start driving
when I return around 8pm, I
quickly and randomly throw something together from the defrosted item in the sink and anything I can find in my fridge

It doesn’t leave a lot of room for recipe research. I does leave a lot of room for improvement.

Maybe I have been made delusional from watching Top Chef to think that I, too, can throw some interesting ingredients and flavors together to create a harmonious and delicious meal in 40 minutes or less.

Yes, delusional.

Because it hardly ever works when I wing it. But there is always the exception. And Meatless Monday 42 is just that. The bummer, of course, is that I don’t document anything. I might take one picture and then as the cooking spirals downward, I stop. I mostly laugh.

And drink red wine.

So, I can’t really relate this recipe to you verbatim. But I can tell you the basic outline and structure of the dish. It certainly wouldn’t suffer from variations in ingredients or quantities. The fact that it is a barley risotto, rather than a traditional rice risotto, is simply because after having set my sights on squash risotto, I found I did not have enough rice to make it. Nothing new there. But I did have enough pearled barley. I had tried making a barley risotto sometime last year that was rather disastrous, but I did not let that distract me! Ed on Top Chef made a risotto out of corn! So there!

Here is a comparison of the grains. As you can see, they are somewhat similar. But guess what? Pearled barley (and squash, for that matter) takes over an hour to cook! I didn’t have an hour! (It was already 8 pm at this point, mind you.) So I got out the pressure cooker and dumped the barley in with water (about 2 cups more than the basic recipe on the package called for), a bit of wine and plenty of salt and got it cooking while I put two sweet potatoes in the oven at 425 and sauteed some shallots.

In my brain stem, I felt a familiar stirring: I think I have actually heard of a risotto made entirely in the pressure cooker. Anyone else know of something like that? I know I’ve never tried it, but based on how the barley turned out, I can certainly see promise in concept. The barley was perfect, and the water had turned somewhat risotto-ish — as if I had been stirring it all along.

Anyway, I used water for the broth, rather than stock, because sweet potatoes (or squash) are rich enough. To the sauteed shallots I added a couple of cloves of garlic, then the 1/2 cup of risotto rice I had left in the container. Next, I added about 1/3 cup of white wine, stirring all the while as I normally would with risotto. When the barley was done (after about 15 minutes), I dumped half of it (I froze the other half. Do you have any idea how much two cups of dried barley actually makes? It’s INSANE!) along with it’s cooking liquid into the pot and simmered it with some slivered sage leaves.

When the sweet potatoes were done, I added those to pot, gently stirring to break them up. When everything was cooked to al dente — and barley is very forgiving in this respect, I added about 1/2 cup of finely shredded pecorino and garnished each bowl with a little more. The main spice I used was sage, but in retrospect I would choose rosemary. For whatever reason — and I normally LOVE sage — on this particular night the smell reminded me of cat pee. It seriously bummed me out.

I would also probably choose butternut squash over sweet potato if given enough time to roast it. The sweet potato was good — and very similar to squash — but had a vibrant, Tang-like color that wasn’t all that appealing. I continued to add more pecorino romano, which I have come to love more than aged parmesan, probably because I am cheap. But I really do love the flavor. It’s not quite as strong or sharp. Or something.

Of course the next day NOT being Meatless Monday, I added one small, but spectacular, topping for my lunch: Leftover pot roast!!

Sacrilege!

Spring?

March 4, 2010

Yes: when the mud starts flowing, it’s Spring.

It’s about time for a gardening post, don’cha think? Even though I’m getting my annual end-of-the-winter cold and feel pretty crappy, I was still chomping at the bit to go up to the barn and clean out the greenhouse yesterday. For crying out loud, the thermomulator said 40 degrees!

I didn’t get to it until early evening, right after I walked The Sociopath and before I started dinner. Given that my greenhouse is single-paned glass, I finally gave up heating it in the winter. Oh, I tried everything: bubble wrap insulation, Refletex (or whatever that silver bubble stuff is called), shrink wrapped film, plastic, passive heat (water filled 40 gallon drums painted black). You know I gave it my obsessive all.

And I also gave it most of my money.

Even with all my tricks, it still cost a lot to heat it, so I gave up.

Now, my program is to keep whatever I am trying to overwinter in the greenhouse until the sub-zero temps hit. Then I move everything into the garage, where it sits until the sub-zero temps are over — without light or water, at about 33-45 degrees.

I always screw it up.

This year, I failed to get the plants out of the greenhouse when the temps dipped into the -20 range. Amazingly, I only lost two plants, albeit two of my favorites — the two 5-foot tall upright rosemary plants. Boo. There is still a chance that they will come back, but as of yesterday, they were looking pretty crispy.

I’m sure I will continue to battle low temps as we wade our way through March. Why, just this morning it was only 7 degrees! I do have a small heater in there, but the energy miser is resistant to turning it up much above freezing.

[The energy miser is me. Just ask anyone who comes to my house during daylight hours during the winter.]

Anyway, I swept the greenhouse out, being that it is pretty much a giant home for the fat cats all winter long. They while the days away in the sun with my giant garden toad,

making a mess, whittling away the legs of the benches.

…Eventually these redwood posts will simply collapse. But that is probably better than scratching the other stuff in the barn, right?

It was fun to drag all the plants back into the sunshine and water them. Just look at the rosemary plants — all ready to bloom!

It amazes me that they make it through the dark winter in the barn. No light, no water. Even the transplants from last fall look pretty good. Nice and green.

Soon I’ll be filling the spaces with little pots of seedlings.

So that I can forget to water them and throw them away.

Nice to know that there is someone out there more disorganized than you, isn’t it?

Meatless Monday Five!

February 4, 2010

Basil “Ricotta” Ravioli with Sage, Walnuts and Browned Butter

As usual, a few disclaimers.

1) yet another scramble at the last minute*

2) very few photos of process

3) very tough day**

* It wasn’t supposed to be a mad scramble. I had the butternut squash in the oven by 3pm to use as filling for the ravioli. However I failed to discern that my parents would be joining us and… My dad hates squash. He seriously hates squash. I have gotten him over many other food hurdles (like an irrational fear of eggs benedict), but he has been very stubborn about squash and sweet potatoes.

**We put our beloved Buzz-dog down on Monday and while I know the show must go on — especially for Meatless Monday — my heart wasn’t really in it, I spent a lot of time crying and the rest of the time writing his tribute… And I by the time I was done with that, well, I just didn’t give much of a rat’s ass about taking photos of the recipe’s progress.

Anyway, regarding the necessity for a last-minute butternut squash substitution — you will love this — I found a ravioli filling in a cookbook that called for ricotta and basil. I had neither ricotta or basil, and since we all know _____________ (please fill in the blank), substitutions were necessary.

Morgan was groaning, “Mom, just go to the grocery store. Why won’t you just go to the grocery store?!” While my mom was saying “Oh for crying out loud, I’ll go to the grocery store, what do you need?”

blah blah blah

We don’t need no stinkin’ trip to the grocery store! We have COTTAGE CHEESE, for heaven’s sake. It’s the same thing! (Morgan said, “It’s not the same thing!”) And for basil, I have this handy SQUEEZE TUBE STUFF, circa May 2009! **more pissing and moaning from the 15 year old** **more reprimands from the mother**

Ignoring their pleas, I zipped cottage cheese around in the food processor to make it more like ricotta and tasted the “fresh” basil paste. Seriously fine. No mold. Tastes like basil… Check. Check. I whipped the pasta dough up in the food processor, and got the pasta roller out.

Meanwhile, my mom and dad, sipping their wine and seated at the island watching me, finally asked, “What are you doing? …Are you making homemade pasta?!”

Seriously people, this is what I deal with. I mean, what did they think I was doing?

Certainly, it takes more time than buying it at the store, but once again — and repeat after me — then you can’t BRAG ABOUT IT and ACT SMUG. Isn’t that why we cook?

The whole ravioli making process took an hour, start to finish, and that includes making the sauce, setting the table, dealing with the stupid butternut squash and heating up a baguette and some kale from the freezer. An hour. That doesn’t really seem that bad for homemade ravioli, does it?

One more thing: The sage I used was from my freezer. Last fall, needing to cut back my gangly sage plants before digging out for the winter, I just threw whole branches into the freezer. I had completely forgotten about them until a couple weeks ago when I was trying to organize the mess and found them. I was too lazy to walk up to the barn to cut fresh sage (which isn’t looking so great this time of year anyway) and used the frozen leaves. They worked AWESOMELY. (Did I just use the word awesomely?) You could not tell at all. So I will be cutting more sage for the freezer next fall!

Fresh Pasta Dough

6 eggs (or as needed)
4 cups all purpose flour
2 T olive oil

Split into two batches when making in the food processor to ease strain on the machine. Process 3 eggs with 2 cups flour and 1 T oil until moist and crumbly. When squeezed it will form a ball. If your dough is too dry, dribble water in by the teaspoon until the right consistency. Briefly knead until ball forms a cohesive mass. It doesn’t have to be perfectly smooth. Then process the other half. You will then have two large balls.

Split balls into four equal pieces and cover with a towel until ready to roll.

Follow directions on pasta roller. And roll to a thickness of “6” (one less than the thinnest setting. Set sheets aside on a lightly dusted surface and cover with a towel until ready to fill.

Basil “Ricotta” Ravioli Filling
(makes 48 ravioli)

Leaves from one bunch of basil chopped fine (OR 3-4 T basil paste)
1 T olive oil (omit if using basil paste)
2 cloves garlic confit (or 1 clove fresh, minced)
1 1/2 c ricotta (OR use cottage cheese and process in food processor until curds are broken up well)
salt and pepper to taste

Mix ingredients together.

Place one rolled pasta sheet on work surface and spoon small rounded teaspoons of filling on to pasta sheet 1 inch in from the sides and 2 inches apart from each other in two strips (like an egg carton). Using a pastry brush, lightly moisten the pasta on the edges and in between the mounds with cold water. Cover with a second sheet of pasta and press firmly all around the edges and between the mounds. Cut with a ravioli or pizza cutter (or knife) Approximately 2 -3 inches is the best size. Store in a single layer between waxed paper in the refrigerator until ready to cook.

Butter, Walnut and Crispy Sage Sauce

1 stick of butter
1/2 cup chopped walnuts (or substitute pine nuts, pistachio, pecans, etc.)
6-100* sage leaves
Grated parmesan

Before beginning the sauce, bring a big pot of salted water to boil so that the ravioli are done at the same time as the sauce. If you have to cook the ravioli in batches, turn the oven on to 200 and store the pasta, tossed with either the finished sauce or some olive oil in the oven until all the pasta is ready. Then re-toss and serve.

For sauce: in a large saute pan, combine butter, nuts and sage over high to medium high heat until the butter melts and begins to brown and the sage turns bright green and crispy. The key to the flavor of sauce is that the butter MUST begin to turn brown, but over brown. Immediately toss with ravioli, top with parmesan and serve.

* I’m only partly kidding about using 100 sage leaves. We love them. The kids hoard them. And I never seem to have enough. The recipe called for 6. I used the big pile shown in the picture above.

Rosemary: Out of One, There Were Many

October 6, 2009

What a stupid title. Some days, I just don’t have it.

I’m chronicling my fall garden tasks and since rosemary is one of my top two flavors (the other being garlic), I always take care of my rosemary plants.

I live in Minnesota. Global warming (or marketing gimmicks) have pushed the Minneapolis/St. Paul gardening climate into definitive zone 4 and even zone 5 according to some. I, in the hinterlands of Watertown, down in my deep hidey-hole, am a committed zone 3 gardener. It’s just plain colder here. Plus, I hate buying plants that don’t make it through a marginal winter. Some talk about micro-climates. Well, I live in a ass-freezing macro climate of cold. So that’s why I have to take special pains with my rosemary.

Rosemary can take a bit of frost, no problem, but I don’t push it too far. We’ve had two frosts so far, one was a pretty good killing frost for almost everything: beans, pumpkin & squash vines, tomatoes, cucumbers, edamame)

…The hardiest garden dwellers live on: chard, kale, carrots, parsnips, cilantro, sage, beets, raspberries, even my strawberries still look okay.

So, this weekend, I figured it was time to start digging stuff out. First on the list: Rosemary and Lantana. I fear I might be too late with the Lantana, since frost nicked the tops pretty bad in that first frost. When I’m done, I will still need to dig the sage and the thyme. I shouldn’t have to bother with thyme since it’s “hardy” (ha!) Sometimes my thyme makes it through, but it always looks horrible, so I just dig it out to be safe.

For the record. I have a single pane glass greenhouse which is totally useless in the winter, unless you happen to have money dripping off trees and don’t mind 80% of your heating dollars melting away through the glass. I use it as long as I can without heating. When the subzero temps threaten, I drag all these pots of herbs into the dark barn, which doesn’t dip below 32 degrees, but hovers somewhere around 40. I stop watering and basically just leave them alone for a month or two, with the exception of scooping out the inevitable barn-cat poop that appears magically sometime during January.

When the sub zero temps are mostly past, I haul them back into the sunlight, cut them back and begin to water. I’ve been doing this for years with pots of rosemary and sage. You could do it in a basement, too.

One thing that has never worked for me, though, is keeping rosemary in my house. Honestly, I just can’t do it. Sometimes, when my pots burst into flower during February or March, I will bring them into the house to enjoy, but I have seriously almost killed them in just a couple weeks. I have no idea why. Maybe I’m cursed.

Anyway, while digging out the rosemary, I noticed that one of the plants had long, drooping branches that touched the ground. Where they touched the ground, they took root and made it difficult to dig out and put into a pot.

Being an opportunist, I decided to take advantage of this. It’s the same concept as deliberate layering — a complicated process to propagate plants and some woody shrubs which always eluded me up until now. But here, I’m a better gardener than I thought! (Take that, smug people who can keep rosemary alive in their houses!) I layered my rosemary! Which is really nothing more that pushing a branch down into the dirt and letting it root, then cutting it off the main plant and potting it up.

So that’s what I did.

Now we’ll see if I can remember to water the little pains-in-the-ass.