So how is my winter garden doing in its community plot?

Oh, fine. Just fine. I have been extremely neglectful and haven’t even visited it since Thanksgiving. (I knew the rain would keep it from drying out.) I had no idea what to expect when I went up there yesterday, and I was astonished to see how green and vigorous it looked. My rapini is small, but it’s rapini. I have all kinds of salad greens. Jungle-sized kale, and a forest of spinach!

You can do this! If I can do it, anyone can. Really, it’s true. I’ve done basically nothing since I put the seeds in the soil.

So the garden is fine. I, on the other hand, am pathetic. Why? Because I didn’t want to harvest anything. I kept looking at the spinach, and telling myself to pick it, but  I know that nothing is going to grow again until March. So it just seemed cruel. I mean, if I start to pick, it’s all over for the spinach. Oh, I know. I would make such a lousy farmer.

I knew that you would laugh at me, or roll your eyes, or wash your hands of me altogether if I couldn’t harvest my vegetables. After all, growing food was the whole idea.  Besides,  the dime-sized holes in the leaves made it clear that if I didn’t eat the spinach, somebody else would continue their feast. So I took a really deep breath and I pinched a few leaves of spinach, and a few others of these reddish, somewhat spicy salad greens. (I can’t remember what they’re called.) Pretty soon I had two full bags.

I used the spinach to make Swimming Rama for dinner. It was good. Delicious homegrown spinach.

There’s good chowder, and then there’s good chowder. This little tidbit is about really good chowder. Ocean-conscious, sea-sensitive chowder.

Our oceans (and certain seafood species) are threatened by unsustainable fishing practices. So to kickstart November as Ocean Wise month, The Vancouver Aquarium hosted a cook-off to determine who makes the best chowder using sustainably caught seafood.

If you know much about seafood restaurants in Vancouver, I don’t think you’ll be surprised to learn that C Restaurant took the grand prize. Chef de Cuisine Quang Dang’s chowder featured Oyama smoked bacon, Manila clams, Dungeness crab, Qualicum Bay scallops and smoked sablefish. It’s on the menu at C, but Chef Dang has also kindly shared his recipe with us:

Seafood Chowder
Quang Dang, C Restaurant
 
Serves 4
 
150g    Oyama Smoked Bacon, medium dice
50g       butter
150g     carrots, medium dice
150g     celery, medium dice
150g     Yukon gold potato, medium dice
1 lg      walla walla onion, medium dice
1pc        fresh bay leaf
1 sprig    fresh thyme
3 cloves   garlic, rasped on microplane
100ml    white vermouth
100ml     white wine
1000ml    halibut stock
250ml    heavy cream  36%m.f. or higher
100g       smoked sablefish lg dice
400g      manila clams, rinsed no sand
100g      Dungeness crab meat
4pc         fresh Qualicum bay scallops, seared rare in a hot pan, sliced thin
to taste    black pepper, espelette pepper, salt
15g        chopped parsley
1pc        lemon juice
 
Directions:
 
Using a heavy bottom pot, over medium heat melt butter, add bacon.  Render until semi crispy.  Add carrots, celery, onions.  Sweat until tender.  Add garlic, thyme, bay leaf. Sweat for 1 more minute.  Deglaze with the white wine and vermouth.  Reduce by 2/3 add halibut stock.  Reduce by 1/3 add clams and sablefish.  Cook until all clams are open, add remaining ingredients and season to taste with salt, pepper, espelette.

So. Some of you are wondering how my garden is growing.

I’m delighted to report that my first harvest was Thanksgiving weekend. I picked a bag of young spinach leaves and the kohlrabi. It is somewhat humbling to write that: the kohlrabi. As in, there was only one. (I only planted one. They get just one per plant.) But it was the most delicious kohlrabi I’ve ever eaten. Slightly sweet and crisp and full of flavour.

I fully expected that by now I’d have a cold frame up, but work has seriously interfered with my gardening time, and at this point the little plants are still exposed. They aren’t shivering yet, but probably will be in a few weeks. Here’s the problem: (Or maybe it’s just an excuse.)

I was late planting the seeds. Probably a whole month late for the beets and the broccoli rabe. (Because I’d never heard of Hot Beds last summer when I should have been planting. I did not know that a winter garden had to be planted in the summer.)

Anyway, as of October 31, I’m told, all growth in the garden stops. The soil goes to sleep. The microbes disappear into hibernation. The plants have to be at a certain stage by then, or they wont’ get there. And mine aren’t there yet. A cold frame will protect the little lettuces from frost, and prevent the monsoons from turning my plot into a swamp, but it can’t make my beets or rabe any bigger than they are now. So there’s possibly no point in constructing a fairly elaborate (and let’s be frank, not inexpensive) cold frame.

I have not abandoned the idea, and am considering what I might be able to do using found materials, at least to protect the delicate lettuces. Or I might ask my mom to knit them a few little sweaters.

Pretty darn well, actually. At least so far. The kohlrabi is particularly impressive and exotic. (If you’re not familiar with kohlrabi, it’s the roundish, cosmic looking thing above.) The only thing that looks more or less ready to eat.

Sharon Hanna from Hot Beds came over to look at it when I’d planted a few things. Hot Beds is all about teaching people how to grow food, the lazy way, and Sharon is helping me grow food this winter. I had planted spinach, beets, kale, onions and rapini. Turned out that what I thought was Purple Sprouting Broccoli was actually another kale. (Good! I like kale, plus it explains why I couldn’t tell the difference between the broccoli and kale plants.) Then she gave me an actual Purple Sprouting Broccoli, so now I really have one. She also told me that my rapinis were planted too close together. (So hard to know when you’re planting from seeds. Anyway, I took her advice, moved them apart and so far they seem to have survived the move just fine.) She is not convinced I’ll get onions this year because I started them inside (too late) and transplanted them. Apparently onions are sensitive creatures that resent transplanting—who would have believed that of an onion? She showed me EXACTLY where to plant my garlic and made me promise to wait until October 15.

The plants were already doing pretty well, but I think they’re doing even better since her visit. I could feel them breathe a sigh of relief when they saw her, a collective kind of ‘Aah, finally. Help has arrived! Someone who knows what we need is in charge.’ So since that day they’ve all more or less doubled in size (except the poor onions, which are indeed wimpy.) She suggested I try these darling little things called Egyptian Walking Onions, so yesterday I planted them, along with various salad greens that should be fine until the frost. I also planted some little pea plants. I won’t get any peas because it’s not the time for peas, but the shoots are quite delicious and these legume things are apparently good for your soil.

Something interesting: I knew that Brussels sprouts were sweeter when picked after the first frost, but Sharon told me this is true of all vegetables. A plant’s sugars are its antifreeze, so they produce more when it gets cold. And those winter vegetables really will taste better if you wait until winter to pick them.

Last weekend I had the mission of tasting 22 different apple pies at the Trout Lake Farmers’ Market. The day was a wet one here in East Vancouver, and although we had some kind of cover, really the rain just rain off the edges of the tent and down the back of my neck. I was soaked through to my most intimate layers within about ten minutes.

But about the pie(s). The pie is important. As you might imagine, there were some tasties, and some beauties, and some tasty beauties. The winning pie (name Yin Yang) was made with ground pecans in the crust—yum. The second prize went to my personal favourite: a Persian Apple pie flavoured with two things that always go straight to my heart: cardamom and rosewater.

I’d had cardamom in an apple pie once before, one that I ate in an extremely no-frills cafe attached to the "supermarket" (more of a grocery store really), in Tahsis, a tiny remote village on the West Coast of Vancouver Island. You might never have heard of it; most people haven’t. Getting there requires a long, patient drive down a sometimes-terrifying logging road. But this cardamom-apple pie waits at the end of your journey and provides an excellent incentive. That was the first truly memorable apple pie I’d ever eaten. It’s haunted me, and ever since tasting it I’ve had this deep conviction that an apple pie just ought to have cardamom in it. As natural a pairing as oatmeal with cinnamon.

So you can imagine how happy I was to taste that Persian Apple pie yesterday. Soaked to the skin and shivering a little, but awfully happy to have apple pie with cardamom making my tastebuds smile. If you’re inspired to bake a pie, the winning recipes are here.

I have planted my first garden. Ever. In the past I’ve tried to grow things in pots from time to time, with little success. But I now have a raised bed, 3′ x 9′, in a community garden, with green things in it.

I already knew that for some people, gardening can become this larger-than-life obsession. I have been the victim of numerous garden-tours over the years, when friends and family have taken it upon themselves to walk me through their yard and expect me to exclaim over every little fruit and flower they were growing.

And now I understand. I have seen the light! I too want to drag my (remaining) friends over to view the optimistic little seedlings that are sprouting in my soil. I want them to admire the richness of the soil itself, to give the manure-bouqet an approving nod, and to find ‘my’ earthworms interesting.

My ambitions for growing food this winter are many: kale, kohlrabi, purple-sprouting brocooli, spinach, beets, onions and garlic. I sowed broccoli raab (aka rapini) seeds directly into the soil, and covered some of them with little plastic cloches (the bottoms of blueberry clamshells) to retain the heat. This has made a visible difference; the covered plants are about three times as big as the uncomvered ones planted at the same time.

I find myself wanting to be at the garden several times a day, so I can hover over my plants and watch them grow. Depending on my mood, sometimes I whisper encouragements, but patience is not in my nature, and often what I say to them is more like "Oh come on, hurry up already!". The garden is about a half hour walk (each way) from my home, so it is not realistic for me to visit more than once a day.

I’m beginning to think my plants discuss it amongst themselves and have decided that this is a good thing.

I’m generally choosy about tomatoes. I just don’t bother with those pale, flavourless things that get trucked up from Mexico in the winter. In season, I buy heirlooms at the farmers’ markets as often as I can. So I thought I knew a good tomato.

And then I had my mom’s tomatoes, from her hot, sunny garden in the hot, sunny Okanagan. Oh my. I don’t think I’ll ever be the same again. She heaped them on us, handing me a generous mound of fruits that were a little bigger than golf balls. Every one was a deep red, a red you can smell, a red that was invented precisely for ripe tomatoes. They’re nothing like the tomatoes you can buy in a store. Nothing. They shouldn’t share the same name.

Phil used a few of these to make a fantastic salsa the other night. (Four tomatoes, chopped fine and juices strained. Half a red onion, half a jalapeno, a fistful of cilantro, the juice of half a lime and a bit of sea salt. Oh, and a clove of garlic. Heaven.)

But the Greek salad we made on Thursday was even better. It was, to be absolutely honest, the best Greek salad I’ve ever had (including numerous Greek salads eaten in Greece, where, oddly enough, the tomatoes are often pale orange and unimpressive). We made it the way we’ve had it on the islands, with nice slabs of feta, a drizzle of good olive oil and just a spash of balsamic. (I don’t like my Greek salad too vinegary, or too wet.) Served with a fresh, crusty bread, it was the kind of meal where you just sit back in your chair, close your eyes as you chew, and think how very good life can be. And you eat up every bit, use the bread to mop up the juices, and imagine that you could repeat the whole experience with another large bowl of salad and another half-loaf of bread. Instead you push yourself away from the table and do the dishes. That night you dream of Greek salad. For days, every time you hear the word tomato, or see a tomato, you’re reminded of the flavour of Mom’s tomatoes, and you feel a pang of sadness knowing that it will probably be a year, a full year, before you get any more that good.

When tomato seeds are planted, they whisper that when they grow up, they all want to taste like those tomatoes. And it’s an outrage that so few do.

I’m going to give you the recipe for the salad, but I know it is not about the recipe. It is about the tomatoes, all about the tomatoes. And if you don’t use transcendent tomatoes, the recipe will just make a rather nice salad instead of a salad to crown all salads. If you’re lucky enough to find transcendent tomatoes at a farmer’s market, buy as many as you can carry, and eat this salad every day while they last.

Greek Salad, Island Style

4-6 really excellent tomatoes, cut in wedges

6-8 inch cucumber, peeled and cut into chunks

1 green pepper, sliced very thin

1/2 red onion, sliced thin

2 artichoke hearts, sliced (not the marinated variety)*

About 125g feta (preferably goat feta), cut into slabs

6-8 kalamata olives

Olive oil

balsamic vinegar

about I tsp dill

about I/2 tsp oregano

small pinch of sea salt

just a dusting of paprika

*Truthfully, in Greece this salad doesn’t usually have artichokes. But I’d opened a tin a few days before and they were staring at me, insisting I use them. And they worked wonderfully well.

Put tomatoes, cucumber, pepper, onion and artichokes in a bowl. Splash on the olive oil and follow with just a drizzle and a half of balsamic. Add the dill, oregano and salt. Top with slabs of feta and dust these with just a hint of paprika. Scatter olives over the salad and serve with a good, crusty bread.

The other night Phil and I were sitting with my mother over a pre-dinner drink, watching the yellow house finches feast on nuts and seeds, and talking about pudding. (Don’t ask me why. We invariably talk about food, but pudding was not on the menu that night; fresh, Okanagan cantaloupe was to be our dessert.) Anyway, our talk turned to rice puddings that came out so dense they had to be sliced like cake. And the bread puddings from Phil’s childhood in England—an economical way to turn slightly stale bread into a dish of sweet comfort. He introduced me years ago to sticky toffee pudding, which was so powerfully delicious that after my first bite I became utterly obsessed with the idea of making it. Phil told us about bread-and-butter pudding, a distinctly different dessert from the bread pudding Mom and I both love. My mother reminisced about a cakey pudding she used to make: hot and gooey, with a crown of warm caramel sauce.

The combined pudding-experience of my husband (pudding-eater) and my mother (pudding-maker) seemed vast, and I was astonished to learn that neither had ever had this so-simple pudding made with bread and berries. The bread in this one is virtually undetectable; it gets completely berrified by the fruit. Perfect for blackberry season, and a great way to use frozen berries.

Summer Berry Pudding

About 7-8 slices stale white bread, crusts removed (slices should be about ½” thick)
2 lbs blackberries (the pudding will taste better if you forage for wild berries, proving your pureness of heart by getting spiderwebs in your hair and bramble scratches on your limbs)
1/3 cup sugar, or more if you like things sweet

Line the bottom and sides of a large bowl with bread slices, cutting into shapes that fit together for good coverage. Put the fruit in a large saucepan, add the sugar, and bring to a boil over low heat. Cook about 3 minutes and set aside about 2 tablespoons of the berry juice. Pour the fruit and the rest of the juice over the bread, covering bread completely. Set a plate over the fruit-bread mixture, one smaller than the bowl so that it will sit inside the edge of the bowl. Put a heavy jar or can on top of the plate, weighting it down and pushing the bread deep into the fruit. Refrigerate for 8 hours.

To serve, remove the weight and the plate. Cover with a larger serving plate and invert the bowl, unmolding the pudding. Pour the reserved juice over any edges of bread that are not soaked through with berry colour. Serve with a cheerful little cap of whipped cream.