4/ PLANT VOLUNTEERS

Today, I found one, large, red-ripe strawberry under the witch hazel shrub in our yard. Jane and I ate it—delicious! Where did it come from? A few strawberry plants appeared under the witch hazel a couple of years ago, although we have never planted any in the yard. They had small leaves; I took them for wild strawberries. Did an animal transport them? Did they come from the compost? Maybe they arrived in the potting soil with the witch hazel when I bought it. In a recent New York Times video [http://video.on.nytimes.com/?fr_story=f8dc55859e9ba38bcd609ac8e1e311e29cc73f1e], a geologist working on stream restoration in Pennsylvania says, “native species, who survived centuries under the silt, are now thriving.” Wow, centuries. So, who knows?

We live in an old neighborhood—our house was built around 1915—and many seeds and bulbs and shrubs have come and gone. Last year, I fenced the witch hazel against the deer. Maybe someone planted strawberries here a long time ago, and they had been lying dormant in the yard until, this year, they had enough protection from deer and groundhog predation to reemerge. Welcome back, strawberries.

I am fascinated with volunteer plants and plant migration. We think of plants as stuck in place, but in fact they are constantly traveling. In my LiveJournal blog on May 14, 2007 [http://refwhiz.livejournal.com/], I wrote about two other plants that appeared in our yard:

Three years ago a few common milkweed plants (Asclepias syriaca) appeared in a marginal location, right next to the street curb in the midst of a forsythia. Last year they expanded to the south, downhill, under a Norway spruce. This spring they ring the very edge of the area under the spruce, right up next to the curb and the neighbor's driveway pavement. I counted 26 young plants this morning. The soil in this area is very dry—the spruce sucks up most of the moisture. Somehow the milkweed has found a foothold, right on the very edge. 
I like this because milkweeds have beautiful flowers and seeds; I didn't plant them, they volunteered; they are native plants; they occupy territory where little else will grow; and they are essential food for Monarch butterflies. Another big volunteer this year is gill-over-the-ground (Glechoma hederacea).
It is making a lovely low ground cover in the beds of the backyard and is covered in delicate, tubular blue-violet flowers. These volunteers come when they wish, stay only as long as they want, and leave on their own schedule. May they flourish, both of them.

And flourish they have. In this, the fourth year after the milkweed plants first appeared, we have over 50 milkweeds and more Monarch butterflies. The volunteer gill-over-the-ground continues to spread. We also have two new spruce seedlings (probably white spruce) that we are thinking of transplanting into the side yard as a windbreak. Jane found the first spruce volunteer under the hose outlet in deep shade right next to the house. It was scrawny and about six inches tall. She moved it out into partial sun and, after about seven years of growth, we harvested it for a Christmas tree.

Last year, our first volunteer thistle sprang up from a tiny dribble of soil between the base of the stone wall under the kitchen garden and the driveway asphalt. It grew 64 inches tall, with over 60 flowers, each a spiky mass of saturated pale violet, and attracted a lot of bees. Using Peterson’s Field Guide to Wildflowers, I identified it as a
bull thistle (Cirsium vulgare).
Once it began to go to seed, a pair of goldfinches showed up to eat the seeds for weeks. The thistles are back this year, growing from last year’s seeds, and now there are four. Yes!

Besides feeding the birds, some of the volunteers feed us. We have harvested horse mushrooms (Agaricus arvensis) several times out of the side yards. They fruit sometimes after heavy rains in the spring, summer, or fall. Our other main mushroom volunteer is not so benign: tippler’s bane (Coprinus atramentarius), so called because it causes “alarming symptoms (nausea, palpitations) when consumed with alcohol” (Roger Phillips, Mushrooms of North America). We don’t eat them.

And, there are plant volunteers that I harvest for the compost: plantain, dandelions, the dreaded garlic mustard, and creeping bellflower. We pick and choose which plant volunteers to befriend. But I am always interested to see who will show up next.

—Michael

3/ FAMILY MEALS

I would like to share, this week, an article about food but also about how food is more than “food.” Here's the link: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/22/magazine/22Food-t-001.html?ref=magazine

And here's a recipe:

PUNJABI GREENS

I’ll bet Michael and I have made this recipe from Madhur Jaffrey’s World-of-the-East Vegetarian Cooking a hundred times (she calls it “Mustard Greens or Broccoli Rabe, Cooked in the Punjabi Style”). Each mixture of greens tastes slightly different, and they're all wonderful. But you need the spinach to make it smooth. Broccoli rabe is available here through the entire winter, so we can eat fresh, intense greens all year long.

1 lb. broccoli rabe or other bitter greens (mustard, turnip, dandelion)
½ to 1 lb. spinach
½-inch piece of fresh ginger, peeled
½-1 fresh hot green chile (a jalapeño is good)
2-3 T. canola oil
2 T. cornmeal (stone ground, if possible)
1 t. salt

Trim leaves and flowers from broccoli rabe stems and wash them. De-stem the spinach and wash. Chop them coarsely and bring to a boil with 1 c. water in a large pot. Cover, lower the heat, and cook for about 15 minutes, or until greens are tender.

Put the ginger, seeded green chile, and ¼ c. water into a blender or food processor and whir them together. Add the drained, cooked greens, though it doesn’t hurt if a little of the cooking water ends up in the blender. Blend the greens until you have a smooth-ish paste. Add more water if necessary or blend in 2 batches.

Meanwhile, in a heavy, shallow pot, heat the oil over a medium-low flame. Add the cornmeal and cook for about 2 minutes, stirring all the time. Do not allow it to turn brown. The cornmeal should thicken the oil, like a kind of mush. Now add ¼ c. water and stir for another ½ minute. Turn the heat to low and add the blended greens a little at a time, to minimize hot splashes, and the salt. Cook just enough to heat everything through, and add more water if necessary to keep the greens from sticking.

Serve with any Indian meal. A simple combination is Punjabi Greens, brown basmati rice, and broiled tofu, with or without a fresh chutney.

—Jane

2/ HARISSA

Harissa is a fiercely hot and just as fiercely addictive chile paste from Morocco. Many cultures have invented their own version of this sauce—Thai sri racha, Vietnamese chile-garlic sauce, Korean hot sauce, Israeli zhug—all nearly interchangeable. It’s the wonder of peppers, I guess, which have evolved into so many regional varieties, all a great aid to taste and nutrition and digestion.

Harissa is delicious dropped in very small amounts onto hummus, on the side of anything potato-ey, next to roasted beets, added to mayo on an avocado sandwich, or just in tiny dollops with corn chips. It’s a real waker-upper. And it’s just as good in hot weather as cold.

Harissa keeps well in a jar in the refrigerator, though, given its ferocity, it is surprisingly not impervious to bacterial contamination. This is perhaps caused by children licking their fingers and dipping them into the harissa for a treat when bored with chocolate bars.

—Alastair Little and Richard Whittington, Food of the Sun: From the Mediterranean to Morocco and the Middle East

Lucy’s friend Simnia’s Tunisian stepmother Tikva makes a very basic harissa from just soaked hot chiles—seeds not removed—and olive oil.

The recipe from Food of the Sun, below, uses so much garlic it could be called hot, spiced garlic! And, even though I'm not wild about caraway seeds, this taste combination is something I start to crave after several weeks. Then I have to make more.

It seems like a kind of mystery to me that a food made “fresh” from “dried” ingredients can taste so good and so fresh. Michael says it’s about the essential oils whose freshness and flavor are retained when the package they’re in (dry pepper pods, garlic cloves, whole spices) remains unbroken. Then, when they’re soaked and whirred up or roasted and ground, the fresh oils are released—thus the marvelous flavor.

HARISSA

4 oz. dried hot red chiles
10 garlic cloves
1 T. coriander seeds
1½ t. caraway seeds
1 T. black peppercorns
½ t. salt
3 T. olive oil
3 T. vinegar

Pour boiling water over the chiles and leave to soak for 20-30 minutes. Don’t throw away this water. Note: I don’t have a kitchen scale, so I pile a ¼ c. measure very high and full with dried chiles—I buy a large bag from India that lasts for ages.

Pull the softened peppers apart, then scrape out the seeds and discard them. Put the flesh into a blender or food processor. (Wash your hands carefully with soap after handling the hot peppers, and try not to touch your eyes for awhile.) Peel and chop the garlic and put in with the chiles. Add the salt, olive oil, and vinegar. Whizz to a thick paste.

Toast the coriander, caraway, and black peppercorns in a dry pan over a low flame. Grind in a spice grinder and add to the blender or processor. If the paste is too thick, add a couple of tablespoons of the pepper soaking water (or just water if you don’t want to add any more heat). And enjoy.

Note: I’ll add a photo the next time I make harissa.

—Jane

1/ RADISHES

My favorite recipes are based on cheap, fresh, healthy, local, even homely ingredients—foods we can all appreciate and add to meals. Simple foods that, at the same time, taste wonderful.

We came home with a bunch of French breakfast radishes from the Farmer’s market last week, just as our summer hot weather was starting, and I remembered this recipe: Salatit Fijl (Lebanese Radish Salad), adapted from Food of the Sun. It’s delicious.

Radishes go best of all with, well, radishes. Throughout history they have been eaten in glorious isolation—usually with nothing more than a little sea salt—and they make a deliciously peppery nibble to enjoy with an aperitif. The French eat them with unsalted butter, salt, and baguette, a splendid combination. They are equally good with thin toasted slices of sourdough bread. Radishes really do not combine with any of the usual leaves or vegetables of the European salad tradition, being altogether too forceful and dominant. In Morocco, however, they are successfully paired with oranges: the radishes cut in thin slices and the oranges in small segments, which are then tossed together with lemon juice and a little salt. The Lebanese salatit fijl is properly made from the giant white winter radish and raw diced onion, but is nicer—we think—with an English radish, like White Icicle, mixed with spring onions.

—Alastair Little and Richard Whittington, Food of the Sun: From the Mediterranean to Morocco and the Middle East

The Food of the Sun authors recommend this salad as “a palate cleanser” between courses or as one among an array of little dishes. I like it for the simple ingredients and for the light, refreshing, spring taste. See what you think. It's great next to potato salad.

SALATIT FIJL
Lebanese Radish Salad

1 bunch of radishes
2-3 scallions
1-2 T. fresh-squeezed lemon juice
3 T. olive oil
salt
1 garlic clove
a handful of cilantro

Wash, top, and tail the radishes (I have tried fresh, local red and French breakfast radishes so far) and cut them across into thin slices. Wash the scallions and cut across at an angle into ½-inch lengths.

Stir together the olive oil, salt, and lemon juice with a fork in a salad bowl. Smash and chop the garlic (or put through a press) and add to the dressing, then add the radish slices and scallions, and toss to coat.

To serve: scatter over a handful of cilantro and serve immediately.

—Jane


P.S. Today, June 9, with the high temperature in Ithaca reaching 95°, I made the Moroccan version for lunch. It’s a completely different taste from the Lebanese salad—very crisp, light, and refreshing. Here’s the recipe:

MOROCCAN RADISH SALAD

1 bunch radishes (I used French breakfast)
2 oranges (I used Valencias)
juice of ½ lemon
salt to taste

That’s it. Top and tail the radishes, wash, cut into slices. Peel, section, and slice the oranges. Add the lemon juice and salt, mix, and serve.

At dinnertime—the temp had dropped to 93° on the porch—we tried another great hot-weather recipe: mango lassi, adapted from Quick and Easy Indian Cooking, by Madhur Jaffrey:

AAM KI LASSI
Mango Smoothie

1 ripe mango
about 1 c. plain yogurt
1 T. sugar, or to taste
12 ice cubes

Cut the mango off the core in angled slices, then remove the skin. Combine the mango slices and other ingredients in a blender and blend until fairly smooth. Some ice pieces may remain. Pour into 2 or 3 glasses and serve.