Sheep Sorrel and Seedling Pesto

Not the prettiest pesto you've ever met, but a tasty one.

It's exciting times in the garden. Yesterday, I spent a while in the garden doing a task I never enjoyed: thinning the seedlings. That is, until I started eating my seedlings. I wait until they're a decent size, and cull them. Once they are washed, roots and all, I can do various things with them, like putting them on a sandwich, like sprouts (which they are), or make soup (along the lines of this garlic mustard greens soup), or make a pesto-like sauce.

To call this pesto is a stretch, as there is no cheese or nuts, or any of the traditional pesto ingredients. I gathered all of my seedlings, a mix of mustard greens, arugula and radishes and added a good amount of wild sheep sorrel, a tangy lemony green that grows wild in my garden. Sheep sorrel is very tasty, and makes a great soup. It's also an indication that your soil is acidic, although every time I test my soil it's very alkaline. Go figure. Sheep sorrel is high in oxalic acid, hence it's tanginess, and the radishes are a little tough, so I blanched them quickly in boiling water. This turned the sorrel a horrible color, so the finished product is not that jewel-toned green hue that I love so much.

After blanching, the greens went into the food processor and got pureed with some olive oil, and a few cloves of garlic. I'll eat this as a condiment on sandwiches, tossed with pasta or steamed veggies. It's garlic-y and peppery, with a lemony tang.

Wild sorrel.

Roasted Ramp Stuffed Trout with Asparagus Salad

I keep this blog as a food journal so I remember what I did, but there are some things that just happen and probably won't again. I subscribe to the haphazard "what do I have on hand" way of cooking. This whole trout stuffed with a few ramps, olive oil, salt, pepper and lemon was roasted for twenty minutes in a 375 degree oven. The salad was fresh, local asparagus shaved thin, tossed with fava beans, garden radishes and chives, olive oil, pepper and ume vinegar. Topped with some local chevre and more olive oil. Goodness!

Vietnamese Carrot and Daikon Pickle

For this month's Tigress' Can Jam the focus, as many of you know, was carrots. A perfect pick, I thought, especially for me because while I've always been curious about carrot recipes my preserving fancy gets overwhelmed by more immediately enticing items. The sturdy dependable carrot is always there and sadly gets overlooked. I always have carrots around. I use them in so many recipes. And thanks to clever root cellars and great winter markets, I got to purchase some beautiful, local carrots from Four Winds Farm in Gardiner (check out their seedling sale in May, if you're local).

I went the straight and narrow for this post, but who can ever can just one recipe for the month's pick? There are too many interesting and delicious recipes to try. I think my next endeavor will be a chutney. But for now, we have a most satisfying and simple recipe. I have made this as a fresh pickle from The Joy of Pickling by Linda Ziedrich. I didn't know it could be canned, and didn't find out until I was flipping through the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving. It's key to bahn mi or perfect aside some nice Vietnamese pork chops.

The tweaking I did to this recipe was to halve it, add coriander instead of star anise, and add a sprinkling of turmeric because I thought it would impart a nice color. I also grated the vegetables instead of them being julienned, using a hand grater that makes a nice, long strand. The adapted version follows.

1 1/2 cups white vinegar

1 1/2 cups water

3/4 cups sugar

1 tsp. grated ginger

1 lb. carrots, peeled and grated

1 lb. daikon, peeled and grated

1 tsp. coriander seed

A sprinkling of turmeric- maybe an 1/8 of a teaspoon?

In a heavy-bottomed pan, combine vinegar, water, sugar and ginger. Bring to a boil over medium heat to dissolve sugar. Add carrot and daikon and stir for one minute. Add turmeric. Remove from heat.

Place 1/2 tsp. of coriander seed in the bottom of each hot jar. Pack hot vegetables in the jars within a generous 1/2 inch of top of jar. Ladle hot pickling liquid to cover vegetables, leaving 1/2 inch headspace. Remove air bubbles. Process in boiling water for ten minutes. This yielded two pint jars, firmly packed.

Cabbage and Radish Kimchi

Last week I started some kimchi, which I had been craving. I found a nice head of Chinese (napa) cabbage and a large daikon radish. Both of them were two pounds, so I had to double the recipe I used, which was from The Joy of Pickling by Linda Ziedrich. I love kimchi, but I am embarrassed to admit I'm a bit of a wimp when it comes to tolerating heat in foods. I used half cayenne and half paprika for this (suggested in the book), and it's still a tad hot. But boy is it good! Maybe that's the lure for people who love spicy stuff---the sado-masochistic side of it. Not being able to stop even when it hurts. I stop. I'm such a baby!

This will last in the fridge for a super long time. I'll probably try to foist some on a friend, because I did make 2 1/2 quarts of it. Last night we had potatoes, apples and kielbasa (all local!) and we didn't have sauerkraut, so I served it with the kimchi and the rest of the pickled onions at the bottom of the jar of bread and butter lemon cucumber pickles. What a great wintry meal!


I doubled this recipe, and used paprika and cayenne instead of Korean dried hot pepper.

3 tablespoons pickling salt

5 cups water

1 pound Chinese cabbage, cut into 2 inch squares

1 pound daikon, peeled and sliced

1 1/2 tablespoons minced fresh ginger

5 scallions, sliced

1 1/2 tablespoons of Korean ground dried hot pepper

1 teaspoon sugar

Dissolve 2 T plus 2 t of salt in the water. Reserve 1 teaspoon for later! Combine vegetables in large crock and cover with the brine. Weight the veggies down, and let stand for 12 hours. I used the lining of my crock pot. Works great for pickles.

Drain and reserve brine. Combine vegetables and the rest of the ingredients with the remaining 1 teaspoon of salt. Pack mixture into a 2 quart jar. (I used three quart jars.) Cover with reserved brine, then put a freezer bag in and fill it with more brine to weight down the vegetables. Seal the bag. Let it ferment for 3 to 6 days, at a temperature no higher than 68 degrees (my basement does the trick). When it's done, remove the bag, seal the jar and keep in the fridge. It will keep for months.

N.B. This is brilliant. A recipe for Kimchi pancake: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/13/dining/131vrex.html?ref=dining

Pickled Turnips and Radishes

This morning I opened a jar of pickles I made this summer from my bountiful lemon cucumber crop. They are outrageously good bread and butters with extra coriander and turmeric. So good in fact, that my fifteen-month old kept jamming them in his mouth. I had to hide the jar or else he might have eaten them all. Which, yeah, I don't think so! I think that was his first pickle experience. It was really quite beautiful to watch. We have a believer. He then helped me make this pickle recipe. He's really good at pushing the food processor on and off.

I was so excited to write about these pickles because they look incredible. But, it will be a few days until I can back that up empirically. I based it on a couple of recipes, mostly Linda Ziedrich's Pink Pickled Turnips for the measurements. There are a bunch of recipes for this Middle Eastern pickle, and they all have beets in them. Seeing as how I drank my last beet yesterday (with some carrots and ginger), I decided to use these watermelon radishes instead. Both the red turnips and watermelon radishes are local, purchased at the winter market the other day. The radishes are from but a few miles from my home, as the crow flies. I wondered if the reds and pinks would do what the beets do, and that is color the pickle. And yes, they did. A beautiful pink blush showed as soon as the brine hit the vegetables. I will post back to record their success (or failure).

2 1/2 pounds of turnips and radishes, cleaned, trimmed and sliced in fine rounds

4 garlic cloves, crushed

2 cups white vinegar

2 cups water

3 tablespoons of pickling salt

teaspoon of celery seed

1/2 teaspoon of peppercorns

a few sprigs of fresh dill

Sterilize three pint jars, or a 2 quart jar, if you have it. Put the vegetables into a large glass bowl. Dissolve salt in water and vinegar. Pour over vegetables. Add spices. Pack vegetables into hot jars. Add brine to cover. Remove bubbles and add dill. Seal tightly and let them stand at room temperature for about 10 days. Then refrigerate. Will keep for about a month.