In the garden – Page 26 – Experiments in my New World Kitchen and Garden

Prickly Pear (Tunas) Harvest

It’s that time of year when the prickly pears are swollen and ripe and begging to be picked. I feel a but pretentious calling them tunas when we have the name prickly pear in English, but I don’t care for prickly pear. My life is full of many of these little dramas.

I singed the outsides of the pears with a flame, cut them in half and then scooped out the insides into a copper pot. The spent skins went to the chickens.

I cooked them for about an hour and then put them through a food mill before cooking them for another 2 hours. The reduction it makes is glorious and sweet. It tastes familiar and tropical and yet it’s like nothing else. I made popsicles for the kids and a tequila drink for me.

At the farmers market, I bought one of those dreamy St Benoit plain yogurts and mixed in some of the prickly pear reduction. Sometimes you just get inspired and reach great heights.

I love the taste, the sustainability aspect and of course the fact that they’re indigenous, but apparently new research shows that you can actually lower your cholesterol by eating a prickly pear. I don’t think we should think of them as exotic much longer.

Cellini Runners with Merguez Sausages

A market trade with Taylor from Fatted Calf led to this delicious dinner using leftover Cellini runner beans and fresh Merguez sausages from Fatted Calf. After cooking the sausages and reheating the beans, I crumbled some dried, smoked onions from Tierra as a topping.

It’s a Boy! It’s a Girl!

What’s the sound? I haven’t heard it since last Spring? What is this hen sitting on?
Holy smokes! Remember the eggs I found under the ramp of the chicken coop? Well, I never got around to cleaning them out and Mother Nature winked and graced us with eight new arrivals.

It’s the wrong season to be dealing with newborn chicks but one of the hens has taken on the task of being mother and she sits on them for hours to keep them warm and pecks at the other hens and the rooster if they hang out too long near the babies.

I’d completely forgotten how cute that peeping sound was until I heard it again. The other chickens don’t show much interest and as long as the rain holds off, they have a good chance of making it.

My Clever Chickens

The chicks that arrived in the mail this Spring have now come blossomed into a flock of very lovely ladies and one extremely lucky rooster, if you know what I mean and I think you do. They started laying eggs awhile back and while I’ve been kept in eggs quite nicely, I haven’t experienced the abundance you’d think with 16 hens.

As I let the gang out of the henhouse this morning to play and frolic in their pen, I heard a noise underneath the wood ramp inside the henhouse.

As you can see in the photo, the red box is where they lay their eggs. The two boxes on top were intended for laying but they never use them.

I ripped up the ramp, which had been nailed down and look what I found!

And underneath the chicken?

It’s going to be flan tonight!
Actually, I assume the eggs are fertile and maybe I’ll leave some to see what nature has in store for them.
In the meantime, there were still eggs in the red box this morning so I made Huevos Estilo Jalapa. What a glorious way to start the day. I’ll have the recipe here on Friday.

In other news…
One of my best customers is the cafe at Della Fattoria bakery in Petaluma. Chef Kay Baumhefner has left to offer her own cooking classes. For more information on her Come Home to Cooking classes, send her an email.

Rain in Napa

Here in Napa, June through October are normally very dry. This year was pretty average except for a funny little rain last week. Last night we had sheets and sheets of glorious rain and while it’s been a fine summer, I’m ready for a change.

We ended up getting close to an inch. I put all my clay bean pots in the empty field to collect the rainwater for bean cooking.

A little extreme? Maybe, but it’s there and it’s free for the taking.

Epazote

Every year I regret I that I haven’t planted epazote (Chenopodium ambrosioides) to sell at the farmers market. It’s easy to grow and people tend to ask about it. Somehow I’m always too busy and it’s such an easy thing to grow, even in a pot, that I don’t understand why people don’t just grow it themselves. Or hunt for it.

I was walking to a favorite taco shack with my kids. The short cut is along the railroad tracks and as we were walking, I spied my favorite weed- epazote!

The tops were starting to bolt but there were lots of leaves. As I looked around, it was all over the place. I tasted a leaf and the wild, naturalized epazote has a much better, stronger flavor than the cultivated type you occasionally find at the greengrocers. The flavor is something like mint and gasoline but it’s really good. I like it as part of a quesadilla but most people know it as an herb that is said to cut the flatulence caused by beans. A sprig or two in the post during the last 10 minutes or so is traditional. I don’t know if it works but I like the taste.

Nico will try anything on a dare (moments later he "mooned" the passing Wine Train) but even he had trouble with the plain epazote and ended up spitting it out. Better to save it for the beans.

Dried epazote is available but I think it’s pretty worthless.

Pickin’ up Paw Paws

At the Saturday market, you may have noticed Lagier Ranches with paw paws. John has been growing them for a few years but I never bothered tasting them. I wish I had.

The fruit is somewhere between a mango and a banana and if it didn’t have such big pits inside, I think it would be a more popular treat. John gave me sheets of information on paw paws but I quickly lost interest. The real point is they’re delicious and I’m inspired to get a few trees and see if I can’t grow them in Napa.

In the photo, John Lagier, who normally doesn’t look so much like David Crosby, offers up some of his delcious paw paws. I say get them while you can.

Starchy Corn for Posole, etc.

I’ve been working hard to find some decent Mexican-style corn that’s grown here in the states. I want an heirloom variety and as close to organic as possible. It’s rough. But I did get a sample from one of my bean guys from this year’s crop. It’s a variety bred to have a very small cob while the kernels are stay pretty big. I haven’t cooked it up yet but if it’s a go, we should have this available by next year, maybe a little bit of it this year.

I have access to slave labor, should it be needed. Don’t worry. His hands are washed!

The Big Sell Out: Garbanzos at Rancho Gordo

Our focus is New World Foods and heirloom varieties, so I have to admit I feel like a bit of a sell out offering chick peas. But they’re one of my favorites. One of my growers grew them this summer and I have a limited supply. The first time I made them, it took four hours in the slow cooker, unsoaked! When I’ve made commercial garbanzos, it’s taken a full 12 hours at times.

A classic Mexican soup using garbanzo beans is Caldo Tlalpeño. There are several versions but the best are basically a chicken soup, seasoned with chipotle chiles and packed with garbanzos and garnished with cool avocado. This seems to be a typical recipe.

New Heirloom Bean: Pebbles

Here’s a flash! We’ll be bringing a new crop of this beautiful heirloom bean, Pebbles, on Saturday to the farmers market.

Despite looking like a mix, it’s one plant and it produces this wild mix of colors. The next question is what does it taste like, but the last time I had the was about 5 years ago and I honestly don’t have any memory of the flavor. We’ll have to find out together.

I’ll add them to the website (for mail orders) next week. It’s a little sad how exciting a new bean is to me. Oh, who cares? Yippee.