Harvest on July 13

Harvest
I love summer mornings. The day is just getting brighter, the air is still cool, and the dew on the grass tickles my feet.
My mints were growing tall and ready to flower. I cut them close to the base and they smelled, well, very minty. One bunch of spear mint and another bunch of pepper mint. If they dry well, I might have enough mints to fill up many tea bags and give them out as Christmas gifts to my friends.
The crazy squash jumble is making more squashes. I try to collect them when the fruits are still young, but they have rare talents of hiding behind big squash leaves. I also have green tigress zucchini and yellow crooked squash (my dear friend Amanda gave me seeds last year) starting to make more summer squashes.
More cucumbers and more tomatillos. I also started to harvest three different kinds of green beans. French variety, Haricots Verts, has slender and tender pods and great for fresh eating. The other two kinds freeze well and I plan to either freeze and/or pickle them.

What to do with them
After collecting the bounty, Dan and I went out the same day and bought a dozen of glass jars. I haven't really done canning before and I am very excited about the idea. I know I will be tired of jarring/caning by the end of summer, but at the moment I am excited.
We also picked up a mandoline slicer. Let me tell you, it is so much fun to slice the giant squash using mandoline and see them coming out as perfect slices. I tried sun-drying them but then realized that flies liked our sliced squashes too. I used an oven at the lowest temperature and dried the squash slices.
Mint bunches are just sitting in the kitchen, slowly drying. We grilled younger squashes and froze them for the winter time. We will be able to use them in soups, stir-fries and even vegetable lasagna.
I am looking for a recipe to make yummy cucumber pickles that keep well. Please let me know if you know one!

Yeon

Read More...

Summary only...

Harvesting giant squashes

We all heard about the stories of squashes showing up at a door step, a gift from your friendly gardener neighbor. Well, if you are one of my friends who live close to me, you might have giant squashes show up at your door. I know, this shouldn't happen till late summer and it's only July and I am promoting squash recipes now in the blog. And I could make squash bread, squash frittata, miso soup with squash, etc. and fill this blog with more recipes on squashes. But wouldn't it be fun to have a squash show up at your door?

I forgot about them only for a few days. I have been making beer-batter fried squashes/stuffed blossoms so I thought things were under control. I had no clue these giants were growing under the squash jungle. Well, the orange one is an exception. That one is my first squash and I intentionally let it go so that I can

1. figure out what kind of squash I have (these squash plants are volunteers from my previous compost file)
2. collect the seeds if I liked the squash.

I still don't know what kind of squash it is, but it is quite tasty. I am going to collect the seeds, grow them again next year, and give the seeds out to friends who might be interested.

Let me see if anybody at craft night wants to take them home tonight. Otherwise, a few chosen neighbors might receive an unsolicited gift of organically home-grown goodies. You know, just for fun.

Yeon

Read More...

Summary only...

Stuffed Squash Blossom

Dan came home after work on a weekday. We each started a bottle of beer and chatted a little. He went upstairs to change his clothes and didn't come back down. I went upstairs and found him asleep. I laid down next to him and fell asleep too. We were very tired. We both needed to empty out some of our thoughts and residues from the day. After about an hour, we woke up hungry.
What are we eating for dinner?
I don't know.
Um...
Um......
We didn't even finish our beers.
...! We can pick some squash blossoms, stuff them with goat cheese, make beer batter with the beer we didn't finish, and fry them up!

Now I was all excited about the idea of a squash blossom, that is a "stuffed and beer-batter fried" squash blossom. I went out to the garden and picked some young squashes and blossoms. Some squashes were so young they still had flowers attached to them. I also harvested first-of-the-season poblano peppers and a couple of basil leaves.

Preparation was simple. I cut the young squashes lengthwise. Cut the cap off the peppers and cut them lengthwise and removed seeds. For squash blossoms, I stuffed in about a teaspoon of creamy goat cheese from the Caprikorn farms. For poblano peppers, I put in small pieces of basil leaves and then placed a little bit of goat cheese too.

For the beer batter, I used

• 1/2 cup of all purpose flour
• 1/2 cup of stone-ground corn flour
• a pinch of salt
• two pinches of baking powder (about 1/2 tsp?)
• 3/4 cup ~ 1 cup of beer to make the batter smooth and fluid

Dipped the prepped veggies into the batter and pan-fried them up! They were delicious! So tasty that Dan made it again this past Sunday.

This time, fingerling potatoes from Summer Creek joined the plate. The choice of cheese was Monterey Jack and we also used some breadcrumbs from CakesForCause for stuffing. Also for a couple of squash blossoms, I threw in a couple of blueberries that I just picked from Glade-Link Farm. Dan didn't cut his poblano peppers lengthwise before cooking. He cut it just before serving.

I told him that I don't want any fried food for a while. But looking at the photos while writing this post, I feel an urge that I should make this dish again, soon. I mean real soon!

Yeon

Read More...

Summary only...

JapChae: stir-fried vermicelli noodle with vegetables

I got three different kinds of summer squash from Nancy at the Chesapeake's choice farm stand, and am also harvesting my volunteer squash. I would like to share some of the recipes for these yummy, young squashes. The first in the summer squash series is a stir-fried noodle. It is a variation of JapChae, one of the most popular and well-known Korean dishes. There are some ingredients that might be new to you:

• DangMyun: Vermicelli noodle. This one is made of 100% sweet potato starch, so it belongs to the cellophane noodle family. Cook the noodle in boiling water till tender about 10 min. Drain and rinse with cold water. Set aside.
• Dried Tree Ear Mushroom: This mushroom has a chewy texture with a rather bland flavor. They do look like ears once reconstituted in water.
  
• Dried Shitake Mushroom: Very unique taste. Sometimes you can find them even fresh in a grocery-store. Any Asian grocery store will carry dried shitake mushroom. Two to three mushroom caps in water for 15 minutes.
  

You could use any noodle of your choice, and any combination of mushroom. In traditional JapChae, we use cooked beef (marinated in Bulgogi style, I am sure I will post about Bulgogi at some point) but I skipped it this time. For me, standard JapChae also has to have cooked spinach but I skipped this ingredient too. Instead, here are my line-ups:

• Yellow Squash: from Nancy's farm stand. Julienned, sauteed with Shallot.
• Cucumber: from Chris' Jubilee Organic farm. Julienned, sauteed just to take some water out.
  
• Carrot:from Common Market. Julienned, sauteed with spring onion from Catoctin Mountain Orchard.
• Eggs: made in crepe style then cut.
• Poblano pepper: from my garden. Also julienned and sauteed.

Modern JapChae often features sweet peppers such as green pepper and/or red peppers. Basically if you are not worried about making "traditional" JapChae, pretty much any vegetable that can be stir-fried will do. You julienned them, saute them, and make sure season with salt and pepper for each item.


Now in a big stock pot or your paella pan or anything that is big enough to hold all the ingredients, put a little bit of veg oil, a little bit of sesame oil (Chinese/Korean/Japanese brand will do. Dark sesame oil, not the refined type), garlic, soy sauce and sugar. I don't know why but we make this noodle a little bit sweet. I tend to use a lot less sugar than other people, but it is really up to your preference. I add a bit of fish sauce, probably not very traditional but I do it anyway.
Cook the sauce and garlic a little bit, then on the low heat, introduce the cooked noodle to the pot, coat the noodle with the sauce. I don't measure when I cook Korean food because I adjust till I get what I am looking for. Just to give you a rough idea, I think I used about

• 4 cups of cooked vermicelli
• 2 TBS of soy sauce
• 1 TBS of fish sauce
• 1 TBS of dark sesame oil
• 1 TBS of vegetable oil
• 2 cloves of finely chopped garlic
• 1 TBS of sugar

Start with this measurements, and taste the noodle, add more stuff as needed. Season with salt and/or pepper. When noodle tastes good, add all the cooked vegetables and mix.



Decorated with egg and poblano pepper strips, this one is ready for me to eat! Sweet and tender yellow squash, crispy cucumber, yummy shitake with all the fixings built-in, this is a perfect one-pot meal for summer night.

Yeon

Read More...

Summary only...