Food

Painted Mountain Corn

/ Robinne Weiss / 1 Comment

Last year, I tried planting a coloured corn, but the rats ate it all. This year, with some protection for my seedlings, I managed a crop of Painted Mountain. Though it’s popular for autumn decoration in the US, I’d never grown it myself.

I wasn’t certain it would produce well. The plants are shorter and faster-maturing than sweet corn, and they looked stunted. They were beautiful in the garden, though–deep burgundy-coloured stems and light green leaves. Dark red silk peeking out of the husks.

The beauty didn’t stop in the garden. My daughter and I sat on the porch yesterday evening and husked the harvest, exclaiming as each new cob was revealed. It was like Christmas, never knowing what surprise would be in the next package. The variety of colours and arrangements of colours was amazing. I’d seen all this before, in the “Indian corn” my mother decorated with each fall, but there was something magical about seeing the diversity emerge from one small crop I’d grown myself.

I have no intention of using this corn for decoration. It is beautiful, and I will enjoy it as it dries, but it is destined for more interesting uses. Painted mountain is a starch corn. Once it’s dry, I’ll grind it into cornmeal.

I have visions of beautiful, coloured corn chips, red cornbread, rosy polenta…mmm…can’t wait until it’s dry.

Summer Soups and Stews

/ Robinne Weiss / 2 Comments

One of the nicest things about the end of summer are those autumnal days that make me crave hearty soups and stews–dishes I haven’t particularly wanted to eat in the heat of summer.

To have a chill in the air, but still have a garden bursting with summer vegetables means we can make wonderful warming dishes with the very best of summer flavours.

We’re into our third day of rain, with temperatures hovering around 11°C (52°F), and enjoying the possibilities the weather has offered.

First up was a beautiful tomato soup, made with a king’s ransom of fresh, garden-ripened tomatoes, and handfuls of fresh herbs. It was amazing for dinner and made a wonderful warming lunch the following day, too.

Tonight it was black beans from this year’s harvest, cooked with more fresh tomatoes and herbs, accompanied by corn bread and our own melons.

It makes me look forward to more rainy days to come!

 

Crazy Cake Season: Cake #3

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

This is the ‘adult’ cake of the season. He asked for something along the lines of devil’s food cake–chocolate and cherries. He was expecting an ordinary layer cake.

Hehehe…

So here it is–a chocolate genoise sheet cake rolled around whipped cream and cherries. I couldn’t resist the meringue mushrooms and chocolate leaf litter for my soil ecologist.

With his favourite cream cheese frosting (in chocolate, of course), this dead log looks good enough to eat.

Mysteries of the Pomegranate

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

img_3242I know nothing about pomegranates. Sometimes my husband gives me one for Christmas, and I like them, especially in fruit salad. Beyond that, I’m completely ignorant.

So last year, when I saw a pomegranate tree for sale in a local nursery, I naturally bought it.

To be fair, I did do a little research first, just to make sure we had any chance of actually getting it to grow on our property. By the time I brought it home, I knew it had no less of a chance of surviving here than any other fruit tree (all of which prefer more water and less wind than they get here).

So we planted a pomegranate, and a couple of months later it lost all its leaves.

Are pomegranates deciduous, or is it dead? We didn’t even know this much. Turns out, yes, they are. Ours dutifully leafed out again in spring.

Once we knew it was alive, we promptly ignored it again, until a few weeks ago when we noticed little red bulbs on it.

Hey! Fruit! Though we had seen no flowers, we could easily have missed them. For all we knew, pomegranates had small, plain flowers.

Then today, one of those little red bulbs burst, unfurling this stunning big red bloom.

Wow! We had no idea. I’d grow this tree for the flowers alone. They have all the tropical exuberance of a hibiscus (but on a more cold-hardy plant).

I still have no idea when or if those flowers might become fruit (it seems the wrong time of year for any tree to be flowering) but, hey, we know a lot more about pomegranates than we did a year ago. Reason enough to grow something new.

And the Winner Is…

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2017-03-01-19-04-27It’s Oscar season in the garden–the time of year when I start reviewing in my head how various crops performed over the summer. I plant a wide variety of vegetables, because some do well and some don’t every year, and not always the same ones.

This year, for reasons known only to the plants, the black beans produced spectacularly well. I spent two hours harvesting yesterday and haven’t picked them all yet. I’ve easily got twice as many per square metre as I did last year. Add to that the fact I planted more this year than I did last year, and we’ve got a heap of beans.

You won’t find me complaining about that. Black beans are one of those staple foods for us that I can never produce enough of. I can already taste the burritos, chilli, and plain old beans and rice that will warm our stomachs through the rest of the year.

Of course, shelling them will take ages. I managed to shell about three-quarters of a bucket last night before the boredom got me. My secret to shelling without going crazy is movies. Movies I’ve watched before are best, so I don’t mind having to look away now and again to grab another handful of beans. I can settle in for the whole evening of shelling with a good movie. By the time I get to the final credits, I realise I’ve shelled a bucketful.

Perhaps I should watch Moonlight? Two winners together in one evening.

Zucchini Tomato Tart

/ Robinne Weiss / 1 Comment

img_3173I knew what I wanted for dinner this evening. I remembered seeing the photo of it in one of our cookbooks. I remembered making it once, ages ago–a tomato zucchini tart. I couldn’t find the recipe, though, so I punted. The resulting tart was spectacularly good.

Here’s the completely untested recipe I made up on the fly.

Make your favourite pie crust. Line a large tart pan with it and chill it in the fridge while you prepare the rest of the tart.

Slice zucchinis and tomatoes into 3 mm (1/8 inch) slices. How many? I don’t know…enough. You can always slice more as you go.

Spread a generous layer of chevre (a soft goat cheese) on the bottom of the crust.

Layer slices of zucchini alternated with slices of tomato, starting at the outside edge of the pan and working toward the centre in rings. (Because I could, I used a different variety of zucchini for each ring, moving from dark green to light green to yellow…but I’m weird like that)

Sprinkle freshly grated parmesan cheese over the top, along with a generous grinding of black pepper and salt.

Bake at 210°C (400°F) for about 40 minutes.

I served this with corn on the cob and a cucumber and onion salad for a mid-week meal that felt more like a weekend feast.

The price of the beach

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

img_3170We spent yesterday at the beach–sun, sand, and surf!

It was glorious.

Today I paid for it.

Not in sunburn or sand in my shorts, but in work. It was time to make our annual vat of summer soup, I was milking for the neighbour this weekend, and I had a weekend of cleaning and animal care to do–all in one day.

While I milked the neighbour’s goats, the rest of the family started picking and chopping vegetables. When I got home with a pot of milk, I made cheese around the vegetable prepping, then I joined in.

As the pot of soup came together, we started calculating how many jars we needed to hold it all. It was several more than we had empty.

So I made apple crisp, freeing up two jars (which still held last year’s apples). I baked that while the first load of jars was in the canner.

I had also planned on baking lunchbox desserts this weekend, so after putting the second load of jars in the canner, I made cookies.

I also took down and folded the laundry (and patched a hole in my daughter’s shirt), and washed a ton of dishes.

While the third load of jars was in the canner, I cleaned the house (mostly), and milked my own goat. Before that batch of jars was finished, it was dinnertime. I sat down for the first time since breakfast.

Whew!

The final tally for the day was 23 quarts of soup, 6 quarts of vegetable stock, 6 dozen cookies, one beautiful apple crisp, and a batch of chevre (and a clean house and laundry).

Unfortunately, the chicken house hasn’t gotten cleaned yet, nor has the bathroom. I could probably manage them yet today.

Or I could pour myself a glass of wine and worry about them tomorrow…

Lovely Leftovers

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

2017-02-20-20-05-18-smMost days I eat dinner leftovers for lunch. Sometimes they’re okay, sometimes they’re lame, occasionally they’re quite good.

But some leftovers are always nice.

During crazy cake season, I make a lot of icing, marzipan, and other special items for decorating cakes. Invariably I make too much–after all, I don’t want to run out in the middle of decorating a cake.

Some leftovers are eaten as-is–meringue mushrooms were a huge hit one year, as I recall, as were chocolate leaves.

Other leftovers need to be incorporated into something else to be enjoyable. This week I had a lot of marzipan leftover. Marzipan is okay on its own, but it’s much better with chocolate.

I rolled the leftover marzipan into 24 little balls, and placed each ball into the middle of a chocolate cupcake. The presence of the marzipan flattened the cupcakes (and made little belly buttons in some), but the chocolate-almond combination is excellent.

Best leftovers I’ve eaten in a long time. Now, if only I could justify eating them for lunch…

Uplifted Polenta Lasagne

/ Robinne Weiss / 2 Comments

2017-02-11-18-05-05-smLet me start by saying I had nothing to do with this meal, aside from growing the raw ingredients and making the feta and parmesan cheese. I was off doing other things while my husband cooked this. I didn’t even do the dishes afterwards–the kids washed.

Do I have the best family, or what?

This incredible dish is actually quite simple. My husband started by making firm polenta (flavoured with parmesan cheese, rosemary, salt and pepper) and allowing it to cool in an oiled jelly roll pan. When the polenta was firm, he cut it into squares, and layered the squares at an angle in an oiled lasagne pan with slabs of raw zucchini, slices of tomato, salt and pepper, and a mix of feta and grated edam cheese. He sprinkled fresh basil, chopped garlic, and diced tomato on top, and baked it at 220°C (on fan bake) for about 20 minutes. The result was rich, juicy and flavourful.

My contribution to the dinner was a simple salad of thinly sliced cucumbers tossed with salt, red wine vinegar, olive oil, and chopped fresh fennel leaves–a perfect accompaniment.

Summer cooking just doesn’t get better than this.

Cake #2 of Crazy Cake Season

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

img_3078He asked for a cube. Said I could decorate it however I wanted to. My first thought was to create a building (because he’s keen on architecture) but, truth is, a cubical building just looks wrong. Then I thought a Rubix cube or Lego block would be cute…but dreadfully boring to make. I wanted to create something unexpected, something not meant to be cubical. And I wanted an excuse to play with more Mexican paste.

So, inspired by Terry Pratchett’s Discworld, I created Cubeworld. Instead of elephants holding it up, there is a dragon holding it down…or something.

Along the way, I learned more about Mexican paste (or maybe I learned more about my sculpting skills…). Creating largish shapes with it is easy–it’s lovely to work with–but fashioning tiny animals was almost impossible (again, probably my skill here, not the Mexican paste at fault). I tried to make the dragon smaller, in keeping with the scale of the other parts of the scene, but I just couldn’t manage the tiny spikes and other sculptural details needed. And the longer I fussed with it, the drier it got, until the thin parts started crumbling. I just couldn’t work fast enough at a tiny scale.

In hindsight, it would have been good to practise with modelling clay or plasticine until I could form the dragon quickly.

Despite its limitations, the Mexican paste was, again, fun to play with, and was able to do things icing just can’t do.