Posts from — June 2010

We have gotten in the habit of marking years by their culinary discoveries. 2004, for example, was the year of the Black Raspberry Daiquiri. Another year, we claimed marinated grilled chicken breasts as the dish of the year; all summer long, we marinated and grilled chicken often enough that we could tweak the recipe until we achieved perfection. In the summer of 2006, I believe, we learned how to make a darn good sangria.

2010 will be remembered in our history as the Year of the Serviceberry.

Last summer, the landscaper our neighbor hired to make her stone patio mentioned in passing that she had a serviceberry tree in her front yard. When that elicited no response from us, he continued telling us that serviceberries were in fact edible.

I don’t know about anyone else, but the thought of something called a serviceberry does not trigger a mouth-watering reflex for me. Nor a yum-response. More of a shrug. The name leaves one cold.

This summer, however, I stumbled upon a couple articles in our local (?) online newspaper that sang the praises of serviceberries and furthermore asserted that they were indeed edible. Linda Diane Feldt wrote about learning to identify and appreciate serviceberries. Edward Vielmetti’s article included information about where serviceberry trees are planted around town. His article also referenced the various names of the Amelanchier, including juneberry, sugarplum, shadberry, or saskatoon.

And I knew what a saskatoon was! When we lived in the big city of Toronto, our best friends were rather pleased and proud to have a saskatoon bush in the front yard of their apartment house. I remember Jan picking them and, I’m pretty sure, making a pie.

So armed with history, information and encouragement, I picked enough serviceberries to make a pie. When I gave a piece to our neighbor– the owner of the tree– she asked if I was sure it wouldn’t kill her. And it didn’t. In fact, she liked it a lot, maybe even better than blueberrypie. And we liked it too.

Three serviceberry pies later, I’m sharing my recipe. Next June, you can bet we won’t hesitate to pick and eat and bake with serviceberries.

Serviceberry Pie

Pastry for a 2 crust pie (my recipe is here)

3/4 cup of sugar
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg (I like fresh ground)
2 teaspoons lemon juice
1/8 teaspoon salt
5 cups serviceberries
1 tablespoon butter

1. Prepare pastry. Roll out half of pastry and line a 9-inch pie pan. Preheat oven to 425F.

2. For filling, toss together, sugar, flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, lemon juice and salt. Mix in and thoroughly coat serviceberries. Place berries in piecrust; dot with butter.

3. Roll out remaining pastry for top crust. Cut a few slashes and cover filling with slashed top crust.

Trim and tuck under to make a decorative edge.

Bake 45-50 minutes or until the piecrust is golden brown.

Tonight’s movie may be the last one of our 2009 retrospective. Unless we find other clips in the archive, we will be moving on to the Garden Clips 2010 Series very shortly.

This week’s 30 second tour is of the summer squash patch. There are some nearly ready to eat yellow crock neck squash on display– we like them best when they are just a little bigger than pictured and oh-so-tender. Listen carefully and you can hear the birds chirping in the background.

One of the things I love most about composting is that it’s one of the few activities you can be doing, without actually doing anything. Unlike making dinner or doing laundry or balancing the checkbook or working, composting is an ongoing activity for which you get full credit, whether you are thinking about it or not.

That being said, the Sun Chip Compostable Bag experiment sort of slipped my mind for a while. Sure, back in March when it was too early to get out in the garden and plant or weed or harvest, the compost pile was the light of my gardening life so I gave it a lot of thought and attention. Then the garden kicked into gear and, other than regular feedings of kitchen scraps, the compost has been left to its own devices. Which is sort of the point after all.

The other day when I was out in the garden with the camera, I thought of the Sun Chips Bag experiment. I dug around in the compost bin and snapped the picture above. The Sun Chips Bag is still there, but it is looking a bit more decomposed than in previous pictures. The bag got a bit torn up when I was digging around to find it, and the material seems more easily ripped. Compared to Day 1,

the Sun Chips Bag is definitely making progress breaking down after 90 days in our home compost bin; it’s just not there yet.

The mint that escaped its pot is thriving indeed. It has plans, perhaps, of taking over the whole bed, and possibly the whole garden. We must somehow manage to tame or control or harvest it into submission, but meanwhile, it’s rather lovely.

And delicious too.

Summer and mint make me long for tabbouleh, which I learned to love while teaching and eating lunch at the Armenian school 24 years ago. There are lots of ways to make tabbouleh, as well as lots of ways to spell it: tabouleh, tabbouli, tabouli… My usual recipe comes from the More with Less Cookbook, the book that taught me how to cook, and the key ingredients are fresh mint and fresh parsley. If you haven’t tried tabbouleh, may I suggest that it’s a really fantastic salad or side dish for any meal, and especially refreshing on summer days. If you are already a fan, this recipe will get you headed in the right direction. Note that you can also add a can of drained beans or chickpeas to your tabbouleh for added protein. I usually don’t do that because we will usually have our tabbouleh for a middle eastern meal, including hummos and pita bread and occasionally shish kebobs are well– and that’s enough food.

Depending on where you live and shop, finding bulgur in the grocery store might be a challenge. I buy it in bulk at the food co-op. I couldn’t find bulgur in the big grocery store; you might need to ask. Stores that carry produces from Bob’s Red Mill may stock it in packages. Bulgar can also be purchased from the online store of Bob’s Red Mill or from Amazon.com

Tabbouleh

Pour 4 c. boiling water over
1-1/4 c. bulgur
Let stand 2 hours, or until wheat is fluffy. Drain well.

Bulgar before draining

Mix with:
1-1/4 c. fresh minced parsley
3/4 c. fresh minced mint
1 onion, finely chopped
3 tomatoes, chopped

And add:
3/4 c. fresh lemon juice
1/3 c. olive oil
1 t. salt

Chill at least an hour.

Prepare to be refreshed. Serve and enjoy.

This week’s video clip is a tour of the garden bed with kale, broccoli, and horseradish. The horseradish is a perennial, and we like planting kale and broccoli in the same bed because their overall shapes and growing habits are similar. It’s very easy and convenient to reach into the bed and nip off kale leaves or the broccoli when it’s ready. Again, we plant the individual plants fairly close together to discourage weeds and we mulch heavily. There’s a rather pretty, thick layer of leaf mulch at the ground level.

This clip is from 2009 and we’ll be posting more recent clips. We do mix it up a little every year and try different combinations or varieties of vegetables. Here’s an active link to the movie below.