Garden Recipe: Fig and Bleu Bites

Figs. Blue. Sweet. Savory.

What about those four words together doesn’t sound like a mashup you want to eat and with which you want to ply your guests?  We have a struggling little fig tree that provides about enough figs to make three tablespoons of fig preserves. Sometimes more, but at least figs are here this time of year and waiting for you to use them.

These are easy, so good, and you can even buy the fig preserves instead of making them.  This recipe makes about 3 dozen.

INGREDIENTS:

• 1 cup flour
• ½ cup unsalted butter, room temperature
• 4 ounces Point Reyes Original Blue cheese (or something equally as wonderful), crumbled
• Freshly ground black pepper
• Fig preserves, about 3 Tablespoons

RECIPE:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Place the flour, butter, blue cheese and a few grinds of black pepper in the bowl of a food processor. Process until the dough just comes together and starts to form a ball.

Dump the dough onto a lightly floured surface and knead a few times. Roll out to 1/8 inch thick with a floured rolling pin, wrap in waxed paper and refrigerate for about an hour.

Cut 1” rounds out of the dough with a floured cutter and transfer the rounds to the parchment-lined baking sheet. Using the back of a round half-teaspoon measure or your knuckle, make an indentation in the top of each dough round. Spoon about ¼ teaspoon of fig preserves into each indentation, using your finger to push the preserves as best as possible into the indentations.

Bake the savories for 10 – 14 minutes, until the preserves are bubbling and the pastry is light golden on the bottom. Let cool on the baking sheet for at least 10 minutes, then remove to a wire rack to cool. You can make these a day ahead and keep them in two layers separated by waxed paper in an airtight container.

GARDEN RECIPE FOR SPRING: EAT YOUR FLOWERS

April showers bring May flowers, right?  Though the selections of lovely spring blooms may be limited by a paucity of water and we didn’t really have April showers this year, the nasturtiums running wildly up and down my hill are plentiful and make a simple, peppery salad with bright red, yellow and orange  flowers and miniature lilypad-like leaves.  And from a favorite Flower Fairies book:

Nasturtium the jolly,
O ho, O ho!
He holds up his brolly
Just so, just so!
(A shelter from showers,
A shade from the sun;)
‘Mid flame-coloured flowers
He grins at the fun.
Up fences he scrambles,
Sing hey, sing hey!
All summer he rambles
So gay, go gay-
Till the night-frost strikes chilly,
And Autumn leaves fall,
And he’s gone, willy-nilly,
Umbrella and all.

NASTURTIUM AND ARUGULA SALAD

2 C nasturtium leaves
2 C arugula leaves
12 nasturtium blossoms
4 T really good olive oil
1 small clove garlic, minced
2 T cider vinegar
1 t honey
1 T finely chopped chives
Salt and pepper to taste

Combine nasturtium leaves, arugula and nasturtium blossoms.  Whisk remaining ingredients together and lightly toss with the leaves and flowers.  Swoon.

Photo Credit: Flowers, Creative Commons, Nasturtiums by Andy Wright is licensed under CC by 2.0 

Garden Recipes: A Taste of Summer with Pasta Meyer Lemon

Citrus fruit has a way of tricking us into thinking a corner of summer is with us in winter.  At Eye of the Day every one of our citrus trees are decorated with orange, gold and yellow fruit and I am HAPPY to harvest a few pieces every day. Get yourself some of the little golden, smooth skinned lemons that are on the trees and in the markets right now and make this: (don’t worry yourself silly about the cream, just do it!) And since you will have plenty of these yellow gems, make a cocktail too!

Pasta  Meyer Lemon  for 4-6 dinners

1 lb pasta, fettuccine or tagliatelle: perfect

2 C heavy cream

2 t Meyer lemon juice

1 sprig fresh rosemary leaves, chopped

Zest of 2 Meyer lemons

½ c freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano

1/8 tsp red pepper flakes

Flaky salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

Bring a large pot of water to a boil  and cook pasta until perfectly al dente.  While pasta is cooking, put cream and lemon juice into a large skillet and bring to a boil…reduce to a simmer and reduce to half.

When pasta finishes cooking, drain in a colander.  Add rosemary, lemon zest, Parmigiano, red pepper, salt and pepper to the cream mixture and stir until the cheese has melted.  Add the pasta to the skillet and toss to coat.  Taste for seasoning and add more salt and pepper if needed.  SERVE IT RIGHT NOW!

GARDEN RECIPE: Apple and Butternut Squash Soup

It’s beginning to look like autumn, and on some days it feels like it too.   The summer vegetable garden is sad and scraggly, so I know that it’s time for apples, persimmons, pomegranates and winter squash.  And soup.  This one.

• ½ c unsalted butter (or ½ c good olive oil, if you would rather)
• 3 large leeks, white part only, cleaned and chopped
• 1 tsp minced fresh ginger
• 2 ½ lbs butternut or Kabocha squash, peeled, seeded and cut into chunks
• ½ lb of your favorite variety of apples, peeled, seeded, cored and chopped
• Chicken broth or vegetable broth
• Salt and pepper to taste
• ¼ c chopped flat leaf parsley
• Crème fraiche

Cook the leeks in the butter until soft and translucent. Add ginger, squash and apples and pour enough broth to cover 1/3 of the vegetables.  Add salt and pepper to taste, bring to a simmer and cover the pot.

When everything is completely soft, puree the mixture in batches and return to the pot.  If it is too thick, add more broth to get the consistency you like.  Adjust the seasoning to taste and serve finished  with a sprinkle of parsley and a spoonful of crème fraiche.

Photo Credit: Soup, Creative Commons, Soup by monikalohmann is licensed under CC0 Public Domain. 

On most Sunday afternoons (though not so much in December and January) you would have a fairly good chance of finding us on our shaded back patio spending time with our trusty pizza oven. We will be stoking the fire with oak wine barrel staves, putting in or taking out one blistered pizza after another or checking on the golden chicken or vegetables we have put in to roast. As the temperature drops, we might even bake a pie or slow-roast some tomatoes, onions or grapes. Or all of the above, in consecutive order.

Life with a pizza oven is one of plenty, and the oven has often transformed the rewards of our garden into memorable feasts with friends and family. If you are one of the lucky ones and have your very own pizza oven, you’ll get a nice, smoky finish enhancing the flavor of these roasted tomatoes. This is a fine way to use tomatoes even if they’re not primo ripe; roasting them will intensify the flavor. If you don’t have a pizza oven, you can shrivel them in your oven at 250 degrees for a few hours until they are still a bit soft and have a little juice left. Then put them on your pizza to melt with Taleggio cheese and when it’s done, cast some basil and freshly grated Parmigiano Reggiano over the top with lots of black pepper.

Ingredients:

Cherry tomatoes or (even better) Roma tomatoes, cut in half lengthwise, enough to fill a sheet pan in an uncrowded manner

A handful of fresh rosemary leaves, not an over-abundance, maybe a brimming teaspoon

Sea salt, enough to make a difference

Freshly ground black pepper, ¼ – ½  teaspoon

GOOD olive oil

Put the tomatoes, rosemary, salt and pepper in a large bowl and add enough olive oil to make the tomatoes shine. Toss them well to coat and spread them in a sheet pan, cut side up and put them into your pre-heated, just below “hot” pizza oven. Leave the door open and check often. You don’t want them to dry out in an oven that’s too hot. They should be ready in about two hours. If the oven starts out hot, just let the fire die down while the tomatoes roast, until it’s just glowing embers at the end.

It’s still pretty early for lots of dining from the garden, but as we all know, Brent loves his chives and chive blossoms.  We have had a fairly steady supply of lettuces and herbs so far this year and even when it looked like we had lost our chives to the deadly December freeze, their little blades began pushing up and out in early February and now are grandly abundant with their pretty, delicate lavender blossoms.  And if you have a healthy forest of parsley, like we do, there’s nothing wrong with a shower of that minced greenness here.

CHIVES AND BLOSSOMS IN YOUR PASTA

1 pound pasta, linguine or fettucine  (make your own, if you’re so inclined!)

1/2 cup pasta water

5 tablespoons unsalted butter

1 cup freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano , plus more to serve

Salt and fresh ground black pepper to taste

4 cups lightly packed snipped chives

As many chive blossoms as you can muster

2 T minced Italian parsley (optional)
Cook the pasta in lots of boiling, salted water until slightly firm. Scoop out  the 1/2 cup of pasta water and put it in a large, warmed serving bowl. Drain the pasta and add it to the bowl.

Act fast:  add the cheese and butter and your desired amount of salt and pepper to the bowl and toss to combine so that the butter barely melts and there’s a little emulsification going on. Then add the chives, chive blossoms and optional parsley and serve immediately to get the fresh taste of the uncooked chives.  Have a nice little bowl of grated Parmigiano-Reggiano on the side to add, if you like.  Then: JUST EAT IT!

FOUR SERVINGS