Processing the Harvest

As Samuel Johnson said, or might have said: 'when one is tired of dessert one is tired of life, for there is in a good dessert all that life can afford; right after a good meal.'

But tonight is my Vietnamese rice paper wraps; spring rolls. I need to make the rice and the peanut sauce. I fill a lettuce leaf with rice and some spicy meat I make (very little) then roll it up in the wet rice paper and serve fresh at room temperature with peanut garlic sauce, wasabi, pickled ginger and sriracha.

Soup - just garden beans with hot banana peppers in a beef broth. The pavlova (fresh nectarine and garden berry sauce) to finish. The Tudors by 'Showtime' episode 4 for the movie. (not much to do with the actual Henry VIII, should have been called "Period Costume Drama #7' so as to not mislead). But like those dreadful Elizabeth movies, tolerable, if one just suspends belief.

 

So the Pavlova - I cooked these ones to crisp meringues instead of chewey for experimenting - bit high temp as you can see from the colour, but the taste is unaffected - they are great, and freeze perfectly. Takes minutes to make up the mix, 2 hours in the oven, just jammed into a used plastic bag together and put in freezer (to stop from getting soggy)




So I took 4 dead ripe nectarines ($1.19 a pound!), peeled, de-seeded, sliced, steeped in 1 1/2 T whole sugar. Whipped a cup of heavy cream with a T of sugar. Cut pavlova in half and on separate dessert plates (still frozen - they are no different frozen when crisp instead of chewy than if thawed.) put a thin spread of the cream, heaped on the fruit, topped with cream, and put the excellent blackberry syrup around it to dress the plates and be sheer fruit flavor. just so good as to surprise even me. And so easy!

Then wraps - I use the same meat mixture for tacos and spring rolls, easy, I make batches and freeze it in portions - a very easy meal!



Those rice paper disks are Thai or Vietnamese, a big stack of them is just over $2, increadably cheap - from the Vietnamese shops here (We have Vietnamese here that came to work the shrimp fleets (owner operators) and are part of the coast people now.) Have a pan of warm water - a large, shallow, pan - turn and swish the disk under water till it gets soft (3-4 seconds) then put on board and wrap the prepared lettuce leaf - that is a bit of a knack, but one learns in one go.




I make a very simple peanut butter sauce (garlic, peanut butter, brown sugar, water, soy sauce, soy oil, touch hoisin sauce. All put in tiny saucepan, brought to boil and it is done - is thickened and brown) in a minute, let cool, serve in individual ramekins. Then on the side - pickled ginger, wasabi, and sriracha. Just hold, put the sauce you wish in the end and bite - I like them all.

The only garden thing is the soup where I used red and yellow beans and banana peppers. The meat mix has garden hot peppers in it. In winter and spring, lettuce time, that comes from the garden.

These wraps are quite substantial, I have 3, my wife 2.

 

Looks a goodly meal Colne , I would like that,
Jenny

 

Tonight is Rogan Josh with plenty of whole cardamom chopped, and from the garden - peppers (I am making this one a bit hot), some tomatoes, and maybe a sprinkle of cilantro (coriander leaf)

Tonight's Pavlova is organic blueberries traded for eggs.

 

I found a vacuum pack of two small flounders in the freezer - from October when I froze over a dozen because they head out for winter. I filleted them because fish on the bone is not so good when it is old, and the brim I caught that had swallowed the hook yesterday. All very nice, and harvested - they were lightly coated with spices and fine cornmeal and sautéed in half butter, half olive oil. Three crab traps were set with the remains.

Soup was garden beans, cayenne peppers and banana peppers and cherry tomatoes all from the garden - made into a Moroccan soup.



And dessert was a friends organic blueberries, also, bought, but very nice, plums and nectarines, with blueberry syrup from the garden, (these above were picked too late.) made into 4 small pies. I enjoyed using a rolling pin again - although I used a frozen bought pie crust wadded up and rolled into the small shells. (I bought 200 of these shells very cheaply from a restaurant supply company - to make small pies.) I prebaked the crusts because I dislike undercooked pie crust.



And beat heavy cream till very thick. we had one pie each - excellent. I think I like pies and Pavlova equally.

 

I am waiting for a business call - and have just made a batch of pressure cooker custard. My milk was going off, distinctly so - but not all the way off yet - which I found means cook it fast. So with 3 leftover egg yolks from the last dessert, 5 whole eggs (from my pile of dodgy ones, cracked - found on the pen floor so may have been in the heat 2 days, on the floor and covered in droppings, found outside the pen.......(I put them into a good dose of bleach water to clean - then crack them singly into a small bowl first - virtually always fine, but on rare occasions..)(I do not sell any that I have any doubts about at all - or are were dirty, although I wash them too)

So, 4 cups milk, 6 eggs, 1 cup half sugar substitute, half sugar (or 3/4 cup sugar if you like it less sweet, that is a fine amount if using all sugar) dash vanilla - beat, pressure cook 10 minutes, take off heat and leave closed 2 hours. Put in fridge. Excellent. I like to sprinkle the top with cinnamon and nutmeg before cooking too - very nice, but I. Video to fallow because I discovered this camera - takes 5 min to mix, 10 to cook, 5 to cleanup.

And uses odd eggs (and old milk) Now it is cooled in the refrigerator it is much prettier, firm and golden.

 

I know one person is out there, someone 'liked' my custard. And the custard is excellent. I always need to do something with eggs, and now egg yolks especially. When we were children in the middle East my father would make this for upset stomachs (which were common there).

That one had 3 yolks and 5 eggs - sometimes I use 7 eggs and that begins to make it taste eggy, which is nice too. If it was not for our hurricanes I may well keep a miniature Jersey cow which are available.

So the garden has settled into its daily production of various beans, peppers, tomatoes with okra beginning - cucumbers about to swamp us, the squash mostly had stem borers so are lost - some winter squash hanging on, as are the melons.

So this means the daily pot of soup and these veg below are for the nightly pot. Chili style last night, delicious as always.

 

Very handsome okra!

 

Hi Cinnamon, I will be planting purple okra soon, someone has extra seeds. I have never had cayenne like those pictured - they are not hot!

Someone dropped off 5 pounds of blueberries they grow. Inland from here everything is right for them and they grow like weeds to 10 foot tall. Mine just stay small and the berries crop well, but they never ripen. I have been putting pure sulfur on their soil every 4 months and hope to get the ph down to 5.5 so they will do better - it is too high - they are in tiny, individual, raised beds so have some hope of controlling ph.

I picked the constant flow of beans for tonight- it is going to be like this till cool weather - they are relentless. The chickens do not like them raw so feeding extra to them means cooking them. I have a Mediterranean style steak baking with loads of garden peppers and tomatoes (lots of bought Greek and Spanish olives)

 

Cinammon, tell us of African squash dishes, peanuts in stews, cornmeal breads, Indonesian fish curries - any interesting foods from your travels and work. I would like to hear of them for themselves, and to try any ideas.

So last night was the organic blueberries with cream:



before supper I crushed most of a cup and a half of berries in my fingers (washed hands first) and added a couple T of whole sugar to get the syrup forming. Then I mixed up some poppy seed/walnut/blueberry muffins and put them in the outside oven to bake. So split a muffin, pour on fruit, beat cream to stiff whipped cream with a touch of sugar and there it is, no effort, and muffins for breakfast (made 6). It was excellent, the muffin tops still crunchy, fruit sweet and sour, cream - great.

 

We don't pick our tomatoes green here Colne. I suppose it adds a right colour to the dish in question. It was me who "liked" your egg custard. I like at little of it but it has to be very creamy for me - not too eggy. I like a Crème Brulee better as it disguises the egg. I don't est fried, boiled or poached egg - only scrambled egg with a lot of cheese in it.
Your pudding above looks mouth-wateringly delish,
Jenny

 

I have great luck with fruit and anything with whipped cream. I now buy the cream by the liter so am overdoing it possibly - but the fruit is bursting out right now. Those nectarines a few days ago, so affordable yet so perfectly ripe and fragrant - just fantastic. Berries everywhere, blackberries, strawberries, blueberries - I went wild and bought 1/3 a pound of amazing Washing State cherries for $2, and well worth it. Last night I had walnuts in the poppy seed muffins and they made it three star with the fresh berries - a great time of year for fruit.

It may sound like gluttony but I feel it is more of an aesthetic appreciation as well. The salads, the soup veg, the steamed vegetables, the fruits, eggs, fish, shellfish - all right from the earth and water.

 

Anyone worry about whipped cream? I do a bit because I am trying to get it just right. I do have the knack for knowing just when it is at its thickest and creamiest - which is when it begins to pull away from the bowl sides. In one second it will cross the line from being a thick liquidish, soft peak, texture till it instantly changes to a solid and no longer flows about the beaters.

So as the beaters leave some contours on the cream surface and it is almost doubled in bulk I add the sugar - and here is the thing - a tiny pinch salt and a tiny dash vanilla. I find this makes the flavor really pop. The texture is already amazing, it is whipped heavy cream; now the flavor has more depth for less sensitive tastes. So that is my present way - any purists disagree?

I am out of cream but want to experiment with fools - like here is a blueberry/yogurt fool that seems pretty OtT, so I should give it a go:

1 1/2 pint(s) blueberries

• 1/3 cup(s) honey, plus more if desired

• Juice of half a lime

• 5 fresh mint leaves

• 4 sprig(s) fresh mint leaves, for garnish

• 1/2 cup(s) cold heavy cream

• 1 cup(s) thick Greek-style yogurt

• 4 teaspoon(s) finely chopped pistachios

I have it all, organic honey from someone who keeps a hive of bees, mint, berries en-mass! And will get the cream, have the yogurt (from making a rhogan josh and general stuff, my wife has it with fruit pulp from my syrup making and granola, mixed, for breakfast)

(Martha Stewart)

edit: chopped pecans instead, we gather a few as they are the main nut here and grow in orchards all over the state - even in my town. I have 2 smallish trees on one property I care for - and can have the nuts.

 

So the post whipped cream topic is - Pogie Bread! I made another loaf, one every 3-4 days.



That is the great stuff - the perfect food when coupled with being in the forest grazing on green briar heads and tomatoes all day. (edited to say it is made from an oily fish I net - about half fish, half whole feed grains and corn meal and flour - it is chicken feed.) The chickens get 1/4 a loaf a day.

I have almost given up on the idea of canning tomatoes. I grew plenty, nice ones too - but when they turn ripe they are devoured by every thing. Rats, mice, raccoons, opossums, wood peckers, cow birds, mocking birds, cardinals, and chickens. They will take one the size of an orange and eat it to a scarlet disk around the stem in hours. Whole bushes stripped and bare that were laden. Amazing. The problem of a garden in the forest. I could easily kill then all, but that would be nuts - so I guess my tomatoes are ornamental/wildlife food. Well, I also get plenty - but by picking them yellow and letting them ripen inside.

 

We went fishing at the harbor last evening. to the South at sea was a big storm with lots of massive lightning and you could see the sheets of rain in the distance, as one can with the hot weather storms. We only had occasional sprinkles and crashes of distant thunder with the massive lightning running down vertically to the water. We went to my favorite spot at the harbor



Bait is always easy to net there and I got some lovely pogies - swarms of them were all about, yet no bites. Still a bit early in the season for the good numbers of predatory fish to be there - here is what I wanted, some trout, sheephead, redfish, and flounder - which is a real expectation beginning in August and running through October - the rest of the year is hit and miss.