Bookish Gardener

Eggplant harvest

O me of little faith. I didn't expect the garden to yield any eggplants this year, what with the skimpy hot weather and all. But "Diamond" came through. It's an heirloom variety from the Ukraine which matures earlier than other eggplant varieties and is similar in size to Japanese eggplant. It cooks up nicely, with firm flesh, thin skin, and almost imperceptible seeds. Naturally, I had to make ratatouille from this bounty. I started with a James Beard recipe, from his 1965 book Menus for Entertaining. (This is a most entertaining cookbook, indeed, complete with several full-color photographs of the author looking much like Uncle Fester, to very endearing effect, if you ask me.) You start with lotsa onion and lotsa garlic in lotsa olive oil, to which you add the eggplant in cubes and green pepper rings, and then chopped tomatoes and a fistful of fresh basil. Beard's recipe goes on to incorporate a pound of mushrooms, but I went my own way here and added sliced zucchini and chopped Swiss chard (most definitely including the stems) instead. It was good topped with grated Parmesan, and even better reheated the next day.

If the season had been longer and the yield greater, I would have had big plans for the eggplants. I think "Diamond" would have been perfect for Szechwan-style eggplant and green beans in red pepper black bean sauce (Fortex string beans being, if anything, a superior substitute for traditional Asian long beans). And although I originally envisioned my vegetable garden as a "ratatouille garden", that was before I stumbled upon Imam Bayeldi, the eggplant appetizer which I have anointed The Best Thing In a Jar (made in Bulgaria, sold under the brand name ZerGüt, with its linguist-tantalizing diaresis). Simply put, imam bayeldi is what ratatouille wants to be when it grows up. So, resolved for next year: more eggplant, early and often, in the Imam Bayeldi garden.

Zucchini harvest

I've been growing grey zucchini this season, which has a mellow, almost buttery flavor. I've been pretty good about harvesting the zucchini at the right size, but my attention lapsed for a couple of busy workdays last week, and Whomp! There it was. The foot-long zucchini. Would its overmaturity make it tough and bitter? It turned out just fine in a quick chicken breast sauté (in olive oil with onions, garlic and a pinch of red pepper flakes), with the half left over being more than enough for tonight's ratatouille.

This 'n That Harvest

The warm-weather vegetables have made only desultory progress this summer. (The sweet peas, on the other hand, are now seven feet high and still going to town.) So I did what I could with these, er, slim pickins' from the raised beds today: Swiss chard ('Bright Lights'), some Stupice tomatoes, a green-ripened-to-orange pepper (it only took three months), a Hungarian black hot pepper (it's not very hot, though, just a little piquant), a handful of Fortex string beans (which I learned about from the mavens at Cold Climate Gardening), a small clump of garlic chives, some plain ol' basil, and a few nasturtium blossoms. I sautéed chopped (store-bought) Vidalia sweet onion in a generous amount of olive oil, then added the tomatoes (chopped in chunks), both the peppers (the sweet pepper in narrow slices, the "hot" pepper in thin rings), the green beans, some salt, and let the whole thing cook down and blend for about ten minutes. The chard, basil (both cut in chiffonade strips) and garlic chives (finely chopped), were tossed in for the last minute or two, then the whole thing got ladled over spaghetti noodles and topped with shredded Parmesan, with the nasturtium as a garnish. I'm not calling this a stir-fry, because you don't want to undercook the vegetables; if you give the onions, tomatoes and peppers at least ten minutes to get comfortable, their flavors will play together very nicely. I enjoyed what I got to taste of the Fortex beans, but most were snuck out of the pan by my 11-year-old. The Stupice is an heirloom Czech tomato noted for early maturity, but its flavor, eaten straight from the vine, is a little tart. When cooked, though, its acidity really woke up the dish in a good way. Mmm...yum.

Cucumber harvest

I harvested the first cucumber of the season today...three weeks before Labor Day (sigh). This is a no-name "burpless" variety that I picked up as a transplant from the big-box at the beginning of the season.

Now, when it comes to slicing cucumbers, there's no two ways about it—the mandoline reigns.

Daikon Harvest

All my ratatouille ingredients have been sulking on their vines, given that we haven't yet had a single solid week with night temperatures consistently above 50°F, but the daikon radishes are ready! These are a smaller and more slender variety than the typical daikon (or, in Korean, mu). They grew solidly to the bottom of the one-foot raised bed, then started pushing themselves up above the surface (like a turkey pop-up timer button) once they hit clay. We'll sample their flavor in a couple of ways: as a Japanese su no mono-type vegetable and fruit side dish (good with white meat and "the other white meat") called kōhaku namasu, mixing the daikon with a sprinkle of carrots, apricots and lemon peel (everything julienned; better get the knives sharpened), in a sweetened rice vinegar amazu sauce; and as Korean mu na mul (as a side dish, this must be eaten with rice, and stands up to beef), where the julienned mu is combined with the four basic Korean spice groups: red pepper, garlic, sesame seed oil, and green onion, then marinated in a sweetened vinegar.

Lettuce Harvest

Old hat for long-time veggie gardeners, but a big deal for me: the first harvest from the raised beds...Grand Rapids, Black-Seeded Simpson, Salad Bowl, Merveille des Quatre Saisons, Red Oak Leaf, and Red Salad Bowl lettuces. Pesticide-free, except for the vapors from my Deep Woods Off!ed forearms (the mosquitos are 24/7 these days after the May rains). We enjoyed these at dinner tonight with a sprinkle of walnuts, fresh ground pepper, and a vinaigrette dressing.