FuoriBorgo

an aromatic salad of spring blossoms

Although I spend 676 hours in the kitchen a year, my favorite culinary time is when I'm out the house, in the garden.  Looking at what grows there in all the particulars - the texture, the colors, the aromas, the beauty of the plants at different stages of growth - always fills me with a special cooking creativity, and desire to be in the kitchen that I never experience when I open my fridge, or shop at the grocery store, or leaf through a cookbook.

I was in the garden the other morning, surrounded by the pink and blue blossoms of my herbs in bloom, when I suddenly had the impulse to taste them, and make something edible with them right now.  So, I picked a few blossoms of each: borage, thyme, savory, chives, rosemary, a clump of jasmine and some lettuce leaves.  And at 10am, I made myself a salad of spring blossoms (with olive oil, of course, salt and a dash of my berry-infused vinegar).

Are your herbs flowering right now?  If they are, give it a try: an aromatic salad of fragrant spring herbal blossoms is a celebration of Springtime.

yellow dinner

I could tell you about the incessant sound of the rain that we hear these days, or this spring's cold, wintry weather . . . but I'm not going to.  From what I hear, in fact, most of Europe is suffering through the same kind of spring.  What I will tell you, instead, is that on Saturday when I looked out at the puddle of mud that is my garden, I felt so tired of seeing the poor soggy winter cabbages out there that, armed with a knife, I ventured out to harvest the leftover vegetables.

The theme of our dinner that night turned out, in a completely unplanned way, to be "yellow": in fact, the stirred fried cabbage with turmeric rice, the cabbage salad in home-made mayonnaise, the candle holders, and the soft flames that gave us light:  all were yellow.  Yellow too was the bough of broom that I'd found in the woods, its flowers reminding us that spring will eventually win this battle against winter.

garden to table ~ stuffed tomatoes

My kitchen was overflowing with tomatoes one day, when I harvested all the beef-hearts after high winds and heavy rains were forecasted (and, oh boy, they sure came!).  It's the end of the tomato season for us, and we've been having tomatoes daily for a couple of months now.  Plus I was in one of those experimental moods that sometimes happen when I'm in the kitchen, so I tried something I hadn't cooked in ages: stuffed tomatoes.

I stuffed them with a mixture of millet, buckwheat, quinoa and dry split peas, all cooked in scooped out tomato together with fresh herbs, chopped red onion and garlic.  

When I took them out of the oven they looked to me like pretty tomato nests filled with tomatoey goodness.  Why on earth hadn't I made them in so long?

garden to table ~ heirloom zucchini with fusilli

They're funny vegetables, these heirloom zucchini from Liguria (trombette, "little trumpets", as they're called around here).  Long, thick and twisty, with a large seed bulb at the end, they grow from vines that are very similar to pumpkins.  The skin is edible, but thick enough that you can let the plants trail on the ground: the hardy trombette won't suffer.  I plant them at the edge of the garden, and let the vines grow and grow.   Like zucchini, it's a prolific plant, but, unlike zucchini, one single trombetta is often big enough to feed a family: heirloom zucchini are a gardener's joy to grow.

When cooked, trombette have a mild zucchini-like taste, but keep their firm texture, which makes them perfect for grating, and making a nice pasta sauce.  We like them sautéed with garlic and parsley, and often I also add a generous amount of clams (which I buy shelled and frozen).

Now, though making a tasty pasta sauce with one heirloom zucchini is as simple as it sounds, the tricky part is choosing the correct pasta shape.  If you were to ask Chef-Francesca, she'd tell you without hesitation "spaghetti".  But if you asked Mamma-Francesca, well, she'd give you a different answer, and would recommend a short type of pasta, like fusilli, because in her experience children between 5 and 15 years of age have an uncanny ability to roll up spaghetti on their forks, while leaving all the heirloom zucchini sauce - a big part of the nutrition of the dish - on their plates.  Fusilli, on the other hand, do the trick: their spiralling shape is perfect for trapping heirloom zucchini sauce.

Heirloom zucchini with fusilli: from the garden, to the table ... to children's mouth!

garden to table ~ peppers with oregano sauce

By now, I know what plants thrive in my garden, and what don't.  This is the kind of specific knowledge that can't be learned from books, or quite often even from neighbors.  It's a knowledge that comes from being aware of your own abilities (in terms of time, dedication, and willingness to experiment) and knowing your garden (the type of soil and micro-climate).

For instance, I know that bell peppers don't grow well in my garden: because of its north-facing orientation, by the time the green peppers are ready to turn yellow and red, and become sweeter, it's usually September, when nighttime temperatures drop.  So I have to harvest the peppers while they're still green, or they'd die.  Unfortunately we don't like green peppers, so I don't grow them.  Though I do I grow littly hot chili peppers (here), and, as of this year, friggitelli peppers.

Friggitelli are a Southern Italian variety of small pepper that's mild in taste and is usually fried (hence the name).  They were totally new to me, a Northerner, and I took a chance when the vendor at the garden center proposed them back in the spring.  Would they be small enough to ripen fully before the end of summer?  Throughout August, I watched and nurtured my little green friggitelli peppers, wondering whether they'd turn red before the evening temperatures dropped.  Imagine my happiness when one day I found that, seemingly overnight, they had!

Then I grilled them - which only took a few minutes - and served them with a fresh oregano sauce that is also a new and successful experiment this year, and that has evolved from my increasing knowledge of what our wilderness can offer.

In fact, I'd never considered using fresh oregano before: isn't oregano a herb that you only think of as dry, really?  Like, dry and sprinkled over pizza?   Well, this summer I learned that the oregano bush that grows wild near the house can be picked and used fresh too.  It makes a very simple and tasty sauce which has accompanied many of our grilled vegetable dishes this summer: finely chopped with garlic, a pinch of salt, and olive oil.

Our dinner of grilled friggitelli peppers with oregano sauce, and freshly baked focaccia with sliced tomatoes and herbs (it was one of those inspired cooking days!), was full of the flavors and aromas of summer - in the garden and in the wilderness.

garden to table ~ bonsai zucchini

I still can't quite wrap my mind around the fact that this is a meager year in terms of zucchini.  What?  The vegetable that seemingly grows overnight, and produces in such huge quantities, day after day after day, that it's always a struggle to use up, and trying to give it away never works because everyone else is submerged in zucchini too?  Yes, that vegetable.  

I am harvesting some zucchini each time I go to the garden, but they're few, and small, and even when I purposely neglected them to see if they'll produce one of those gigantic zucchini that can feed a family for an entire season, even then, all I find are tiny little zucchini.  So be it: it's the summer of the bonsai zucchini.

The good news about bonsai zucchini is that they're really quick to prepare.  I typically make a frittata with them, or cut them lengthwise and grill them.

Together with eggplants, bonsai zucchini have become one of our favorite summer dishes: lightly grilled, sprinkled with fresh chopped herbs, drizzled with olive oil.  

garden to table ~ gelato

Oh, wouldn't it be great to have a gelato tree in the garden?  We think so, and these days it almost feels like we do, because we're making a new batch of strawberry gelato almost weekly – with strawberries from the strawberry-gelato patch out in the garden, of course!

In the summers past, after the first large strawberry harvest in late spring, when the strawberries conveniently ripen all at once, and jam and fruit salads can be made, I was never quite sure what to do with the few remaining strawberries that ripen, two and four at a time, the rest of the summer.  Because a few strawberries like this aren't much use in feeding a family of five.  In the past, those strawberries have been eaten right in the garden by three strawberry-loving kids, which wasn't so bad.  But to this gardner, it never seemed a very efficient way to use produce. 

So this year the gardner came up with a different idea.  She banned fresh strawberry snacking (don't worry, there are many other fruits to be snacked on out there!), and started collecting, saving and freezing those occasional strawberries and was surprised to see how quickly they accumulated into enough for a weekly batch of gelato (see my post on homemade gelato).

Fire-red, sweet and cool, it's the perfect way to end a hot summer day.

garden to table ~ green beans

Do you remember my post from a year ago, when I wondered whether my kids didn't care for green beans simply because they didn't like how I prepared them (here - check out the uncanny fact that Rebecca was wearing exactly the same dress, though a year ago she could only water, while this time she actually helped harvest)?  Back then many of you sent suggestions on how to cook them, and I was surprised to read how many of you like them with butter, because I don't think I've ever served vegetables with butter.  In Italian cooking, in fact, vegetables are always dressed with olive oil (though I'm sure there are exceptions I'm not remembering, most likely in the Alpine regions): fried, sauteed, baked, fresh and drizzled with - always with oil.

In our family, ever since Tom started his research and work on true olive oil (here and here), extra virgin olive oil has been the king in the kitchen, reigning on every imaginable dish, even cakes and desserts (I've done lots of successful experiments with olive oil, and found ways to replace butter in most of my baking).  Reading those comments a year ago, I knew that my kids - who've been indoctrinated on olive oil their entire lives, can tell good oil from bad, always eat with a bottle of olive oil on the table, and have toast with olive oil as a snack - wouldn't go for green beans and butter.  But I thought they might well like them with a condiment that had a texture like butter.

So I came up with a different way to serve green beans, in which olive oil was a main ingredient but not the only one: mayonnaise.  Mayonnaise, how simple is that?!  To tell the truth, I couldn't remember the last time I had mayonnaise, and my kids never had mayonnaise before: it's one of those dressings I taught them to refuse because I loathe the flabby, pale substance that comes out of jars or (worse!) is squeezed out of plastic dispensers, and invariably has a "best by" date sometime in the next decade.  How can anything made with fresh eggs and oil keep for that long?  The obvious answer is that store-bought, industrially-made mayo isn't made with fresh ingredients at all, and what's more, is loaded with preservatives.  Hence, we've never had store-bought mayo.  But in the last week or so, we've all become lovers of homemade mayonnaise.

Which, as I discovered, is very easy to make, and when you use fresh ingredients and quality extra virgin olive oil, you get a thick, creamy dressing with a truly addictive flavor.  There are gazillion recipes online, but I consulted my grandmother's recipe book.  All you need is 2 yolks, a pinch of salt, juice from half a lemon, and some high-quality extra virgin olive oil (about 1 cup), of course.  (The only tool you need is an electric whisk or mixer.)  There are only two secrets: all the ingredients must be at room temperature, and you have to add the olive oil and then the lemon juice slowly, drop by drop, while blending all the while, until you get the right, thick texture.  Making mayonnaise, in fact, is a culinary work of art that requires a slow pace: if you add the oil too fast, you'll get maionese impazzita, "crazy mayo" as we say in Italian (i.e. the mayonnaise separates).  But when you pour the oil very slowly, you get the perfect creamy mayonnaise.

And the results are well worth the patience: a simple, fresh, tasty dip that will even make your kids love steamed green beans ... at least that's what happened in our family!  Please let me know how yours reacts to a taste of homemade mayonnaise.

a fuller garden basket

In years past, by mid-June my garden has always been in full production, but this year it made a late start because of the cold weather, and it's still struggling a bit.  Gardening is an enriching experience - if you can take the humility you get along the way.  Gardening teaches patience:  even when everything goes right, weeks go by between sowing and harvesting.  And gardening teaches that you never stop learning:  each year the same type of vegetable will grow differently, and even within the same year, each plant of the same type of vegetable will develop in its own way - and you have to figure out what's going on.  Thirteen years of gardening have taught me this much.  

(Oopsy!  I missed that side shoot - I'll pinch it off first thing in the morning!)

So I water, weed, trim, rake, support, tend, and try to figure what the new brown spot on that leaf might be, while waiting for my plants to grow and start producing.  Slowly, at their own pace, things are beginning to happen, even on this slow year.  Blossoms appear where none were the day before, little baby fruits start growing, and each time I come home my garden basket is a little fuller and a little heavier.

Yesterday, for the first time this year, I came back with enough chard, new potatoes, baby zucchini, and borage to make a steamed mixed vegetable, marjoram and cheese omelette.  Served, naturally, with a side salad - always a side salad.

a dinner of fresh herbs

On Saturday our fridge was empty.  We'd had a very difficult week, and overlooked the sad state of our fridge.  Not a good thing when you have a family of seven to feed.  Seven?!  Yes, it's five of us, but when I grocery shop I buy for seven people, because two teenage boys, with their huge appetites, eat for two - at least for two.  So, our empty fridge was a major problem.

But when you have a garden, there's always something to eat out there in the warm season, even when the weather has been abysmal, and even when you've just planted it a week before (here).  This time we had a dinner of fresh perennial herbs.

I picked some large-leaf sage, made a batter of flour, water and salt, dipped the leaves in it, and fried them.  They were supposed to be a side dish, but all got eaten before they made it to the table - hot and crispy right out of the pan.

Next I tossed some chopped sage and rosemary in boiling water, cooked some leftover polenta flour in the infused water, cooled the polenta, cubed it, and used it to enhance a salad of chives, borage blossoms and lettuce leaves. 

Then I chopped up rosemary, sage, marjoram, and summer savory with garlic, sauteed the mixture, and used it to season a pasta dish: pasta alle erbe ("pasta with fresh herbs").

So, thanks to the fresh herbs in the garden, nobody went hungry that evening - despite the huge appetites!