What’s happening in the garden this week: Aug. 11-17
The action's in the kitchen, not the garden
In the kitchen
There’s a lot more going on in the kitchen than the garden these days. The garden is swelling with produce and so’s our refrigerator. The kitchen counter is being taken over by ripening tomatoes. Keeping up with it all is more of a challenge than growing it! Or so it seems. Here’s what we’ve been doing:
Cherry tomato confit: This great restaurant in Venice in Los Angeles called Gjelina has an excellent cookbook gifted to us by our son and daughter-in-love a few years ago, and one of our go-to recipes is making tomato confit out of all the cherry tomatoes. This year I regretfully didn’t grow Sun Gold, those glorious, sweet orange nuggets that are perfect for a confit (and much else, including a Mario Batali-inspired fresh tomato sauce). I made the confit this week out of a yellow cherry tomato called Eagle Smiley, which is tasty, if a bit pale. I took about three or four cups of tomatoes, par-boiled them for about 30 seconds and put them in ice water. When they cooled I peeled the skin, which is easy, and layered them in a baking dish. I added about two cups of olive oil, four crushed garlic cloves, about a half-cup of fresh basil and three or four sprigs of fresh thyme, plus a teaspoon or so of salt. I covered the pan in tin foil and baked the tomatoes at 350 degrees for about 45 minutes. You want the oil to be simmering in the pan but also want to take the tomatoes out of the oven while they still have their shape. Once cooled, I put the tomatoes, oil and everything else in a glass storage container where it will keep in the refrigerator, covered, for a few weeks. It’s a great topping for pizza, grilled vegetables like squash, zucchini or eggplant, or grilled chicken or fish. It also can be used for a bruschetta or on top of flatbreads, with cheese. Just stick them under the broiler for a minute or so! Yum.
If you have a lot of garlic, you can make a garlic confit in a similar fashion. It, too, is so versatile and lasts much longer in the refrigerator.
Bush beans: Maybe it’s me, but when I think of green beans I think of roast chicken or roast turkey, fall or winter evenings when the air is crisp and there’s a bottle of red wine on the counter. But beans grow in summer and there’s plenty to do with them. We’ve been making green and yellow bean salads, parboiling the beans until they’re slightly under-cooked and mixing them with olive oil and sliced red onion. We’ve also been freezing parboiled beans in quart-sized freezer bags. They’ll come in handy for those roast chickens down the road, plus are always nice to have on hand to throw into a minestrone along with other vegetables hanging around in the refrigerator.
Grilled vegetables: This is a standby for summer vegetables. This week I grilled eggplant, squash and peppers from the garden, plus some thickly sliced white onions, and they went great with marinated chicken and beef kabobs. The good thing about grilled vegetables, when you have a lot on hand to grill, is that they make excellent leftovers and can be served at room temperature. You can also use them for impromptu pasta sauces, mixed with a nice olive oil, some cheese, maybe a couple chopped up tomatoes, and pasta water, or in an omelet or frittata, or on top of a pizza. There’s also eggplant parmesan come to think of it!
Pizza: I’ve made it a personal challenge this summer to make pizzas topped only with ingredients from the garden (plus good olive oil and cheese, of course, plus maybe a kalamata olive or two). So far we’ve topped pizzas: 1) with pan-seared shishito peppers – salt, spice and sweet all in one bite – minced garlic and feta or mozzarella cheese, with a little freshly grated parmesan; 2) with mozzarella dotted with cherry or sliced tomatoes, with a little extra virgin olive oil drizzled on top; 3) with grilled eggplant and sliced tomatoes, along with mozzarella, drizzled with oil; 4) with thinly sliced squash resting on a layer of brushed garlic-infused olive oil, with feta and parmesan on top. These are the combinations I remember, and I may be mixing some up. But you get the picture. That’s the beauty of combining homemade pizza with whatever you grab from the garden that day.
Cucumber soup
We have so many cucumbers we can’t keep up with them. We slice them and add them to salads or make cucumber salads with vinegar and a little salt and sugar. We also like to make a cucumber soup, combining sliced cukes, an avocado, water, salt, plus the juice from a lemon or lime, and maybe a little jalapeno pepper or red pepper flakes. Put it all in a blender and churn until smooth and creamy and chill it. You can top the soup with some yogurt or sour cream, and chopped parsley or cilantro.
We’re already making plans for grilled eggplant sandwiches, with fresh tomatoes and green onions from the garden, along with ricotta, on toasted rustic bread. Definitely Gazpacho and tomato galettes, maybe with squash and onions, too. To be honest, there aren’t enough meals in the week! We’re sharing with friends and giving bags of produce away to neighbors.
Leeks
A first for me this summer has been successfully growing leeks. I pulled about a half-dozen nice-sized leeks from the garden bed this week, which is about half of what’s there. I think we’ll make potato-leek soup or, similarly, a lighter version of a vichyssoise without cream. I’ve planted another eight or 10 leeks that will grow into the fall, if all goes well.
Zucchini
It’s been a strange summer for our zucchini plants. There were two in one of the beds and one died. The other seems to be flagging a bit. I think it’s not getting enough sun. There’s a “dwarf” tomato growing next to it. It’s grown taller than I anticipated and is blocking the light for large parts of the day. I planted another zucchini in one of the straw bales and it’s produced three or four zucchinis but I don’t see any more coming at the moment. It’s crowded by an acorn squash plant sharing the bale. I grow tired of zucchini when we have too much of it but this summer we don’t have enough.
Previous updates:
What’s happening in the garden: Aug. 4-10
What’s happening in the garden: July 28-Aug. 3
What’s happening in the garden: July 21-27
What’s happening in the garden: July 14-20
What’s happening in the garden: July 7-13
What’s happening in the garden: June 30-July 6
What’s happening in the garden: June 23-30
What’s happening in the garden June 16-22
What’s happening in the garden: June 9-15