Why people are afraid to cook

I love the web. Open up a search engine, type in "green beans, chard, beets, carrots" and out comes a recipe. Amazing.

Except when you try to make it.

"roast chard in oven until crispy, but not burnt" How long will that take? What will it look like? Should I do anything with it while it's in there?
"slowly drizzle in the oil to emulsify into vinaigrette" Do I just pour it, or do I have to mix it? How hard? How slow is a drizzle? How can I tell it's emulsified? What in the world does that even mean?
" Lay out prepped beets and carrots on a sheet pan and roast in same 400°F oven as the chard until nicely roasted" Again, how long? What constitutes "nicely roasted?"

So there we were with pan-fried mushrooms and green beans, steamed carrots and beets, and sorta kinda crispy chard. Annoyed with the recipe, we turned it into the Nelson Chin test kitchen and came up with:

Scalloped August veggies

2 large Carrots cut length-wise and then into wedges (I never peel carrots, but feel free)
5 Med.-Lrg. mixed Beets cut into wedges and peeled
Today's green bean harvest (we had about a pint), cleaned (i.e., cut the ends off)
1 large portobello mushroom, sliced
3 larges cloves of garlic, smashed and diced

30 large chard leaves, washed and stems removed
olive oil

Preheat oven to 400F/190C

Remove the stems, then clean and chop the chard. Toss in a large bowl with a couple tablespoons olive oil. Spread thinly on a baking sheet (one with raised edges works best) and roast about 25 minutes, or until it is crispy but not burnt (after 15 minutes, start checking it every 5 minutes). Remove from oven and set aside. Turn off oven and allow it to cool down a little.

Prepare a casserole with cooking spray. Scald 1 1/2 cups of milk (4-6 minutes on high in the microwave)

Steam, braise, or roast the beets and carrots until just tender. Saute the green beans, mushrooms and garlic in a little olive oil. Turn the oven back on, at 350F/175C. Put the two veggie mixes into the casserole in two layers. Each layer should be dotted with 1 tablespoon of butter, and dredged with 2 tablespoons of flour. Pour the hot milk over this, cover and bake for 30 minutes.

Serve over fettucini.

Punctuate the garden

A garden is more than just plants. Maydreams will tell you a garden needs Wanderability, Placeness,and Gardimacy among other things, but I think one of the things a garden needs is, well, things.

I have lots of things in my garden, big things like a tree and a trellis, a patio and a pond, and little things like a stone face or a clay snail, a literal white elephant (bought, yes, at a white elephant sale), and a couple of metal birds. Medium sized things like a sweet potato vine-breathing dragon and a gorgeous faience-blue pot shaped like a snail.

These small sculptures offer a little humor, a little focus, a little respite from the green and the work. They sneak up on you in corners or anchor a bed.

Find them all in my garden, or here.

Then there's the growing things. Here's what I made with today's harvest:

Harvest-stuffed Bell Peppers

Several large bell peppers (one for each diner)
Roasted beets, one per pepper
2-3 small onions, roasted
Andouille sausage for the meat eaters; leave this out otherwise
One medium eggplant, peeled and diced
Brown or wild rice
creole or other seasoning (a smoky herb like tarragon or sage would be nice with this)

To roast the beets, remove the roots and greens and thoroughly wash them. Place them in a foil-lined pan and drizzle with a little oil, then wrap them in the foil. Place them in a preheated 375F/190C oven and roast for about 20-25 (for smaller, fresher beets; longer for large or old beets), until tender. Add the onions about halfway through. Allow to cool, then remove the skins with a peeler (or just slip them off). Dice.

Bring a large pot of salted water to a full boil. Slice of the tops of the peppers and remove the seeds. Blanch the peppers and tops in the boiling water, about 3 minutes only; drain and place upright in a roasting dish.

Cook rice according to package directions. While the rice is cooking, dice the eggplant and macerate it in olive oil (i.e. cover it entirely in the olive oil). Chop the sausage and saute it in a little olive oil. Add the eggplant and spices. When thoroughly cooked (eggplant will be tender) add the rice and beets. For vegetarian/vegan, leave out the sausage. Fill the peppers with the rice mixture, using any extra mixture to fill the dish between the peppers. Cover and roast at 325 for 25-30 minutes.

Serve over seasoned mashed root vegetables with avgolemono or hollandaise sauce.

Lammas Harvest

True to the promise of the festival, today I had the first harvest too big to bring in as a single basketful or armload. The festival’s counterpart, Beltane at the beginning of summer, the planting of the crops and the marriage of the god and goddess, is full of promise and joy. Lammas is full of bounty and joy, but melancholy too, as the god begins to prepare for his yearly sacrifice and death, and the goddess begins to remember her anger over the loss of her daughters.

In modern patriarchal theology we think of lightning as a phallic manifestation, but I like to think of August storms as the fury and despair of the goddess who cannot save the earth her daughters from their imminent death, year after year after year. She brings us daily bounty, more than we can use, as both fruited gift and fruitless bribe. It means the downward slope towards the frozen midwinter is beginning.

Lammas Salad
10 Golden beets, blanched and sliced thin
3 small Chiogga beets, blanched and sliced thin
1 cucumber, seeded and sliced
1 green pepper, sliced very thin
1-2 ears of corn, nibletted and blanched
3 apricots, diced
1 Shishito pepper, seeded and diced

Macerate (i.e. soak) the cucumber in a couple tablespoons of honey and salt for 1-2 hours. Macerate the apricots and shishito peppers in cider vinegar for 1-2 hours. Drain and rinse just before mixing up the salad. To blanch the beets, trim the roots and stems (peeling optional), and drop them into actively boiling water for no more than 5 minutes. Allow to cool, then slice. To blanch the corn, slice the niblets from the cob, and drop them into actively boiling water; leave until the color deepens (a couple/few minutes at most).

Mix everything together with a couple of tablespoons of mayonnaise. (Make it yourself.)

I served this as a side with crab cakes.

Sconeday

Since I make scones once a week for breakfasts and snacks, I decided that "Monday" is now "Sconeday" Watch for a new scones recipe on most Mondays! This is the only recipe idea I ever had that I could not find that someone else had already come up with it.

Beet scones
a Mahlzeit original recipe

1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
2 tablespoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoons orange zest
1/3 cup sugar

1/2 cup cold butter, cut into small pieces
about 1 cup grated cooked beet (1 medium beet)

1 large egg
1/4 c honey
1/3 cup buttermilk or sour cream
1/2 teaspoon orange extract

Preheat oven to 425°.

Boil beet(s) until just al dente (don't overcook, because it needs to be firm enough to be grated). Allow to cool enough to handle, then grate it.

Mix together first 6 ingredients. Cut in cold butter until mixture resembles coarse meal. Add beets and mix until just blended. Whisk together egg, buttermilk, and orange extract in a separate bowl until blended. Add to flour mixture, and mix just until blended and slightly moist. Dough will be sticky, and pink.

Spoon large tablespoonsful onto a lightly greased baking sheet (or line a sheet with parchment paper). Bake at 425° for 12 to 15 minutes (shorter time for smaller scones). Makes 9 large or 12 medium scones.