What's a heaven for?

To play on the aphorism-- a gardener's harvest should exceed her shelf space, or what's a basement for?

I have upwards of 30 pounds of winter melon that needs to be preserved. No matter how long it will keep in the shell, once I cut one I have to preserve it, because each one is way too big for two people to consume in a single meal, even with leftovers. Here's the first of a whole bunch of winter melon recipes:

Candied Winter Melon
5 pound winter melon
3 cups sugar
juice of two lemons
Remove the outer green skin of the winter melon and cut into finger length sticks just like french fries.

Blanch melon fingers by putting into a pot of fresh water with 1 tsp of baking soda, and bring to a rapid boil for 3 minutes. Transfer the melon to a colander to drain.

Heat the sugar and lemon juice in 1 1/4 quarts of water in a shallow pan until dissolved. Bring the syrup to the boil. Turn down heat to low. Transfer the drained melon to the pot of syrup. Make sure to completely immerse the fruit in the syrup. Bring the syrup slowly to a simmer and simmer for 5 to 10 minutes; do not let it boil.

At this point you have two options- store in the syrup, using heat canning, or drain and dry. For heat canning, transfer the hot syrup and melon into heated jars and follow standard procedure for heat canning. For drying, allow fruit to cool to room temperature. Do not drain. Leave it in the syrup for 24 hours whilst leaving the fruit undisturbed. Then, carefully lift the fruit from the syrup and leave to drain for 30 minutes. Transfer melons to wax paper or parchment and leave until dry, then store in an airtight container.

Ancestry

I’m from 4 generations of city dwellers, as is my husband, a rarity. Not a farmer among us. Despite having eventually landed on the central Illinois prairie, we can trace our soil-free urban ancestry back to the 1840s, on both sides, in a family stretching from Toisan to Stockholm to Dublin to Piraeus.

So how does a city girl come at gardening? Not honestly-- my mother once hired a landscaper who was into pine trees. Fortunately we couldn’t afford the 14 firs he wanted to put in on our quarter acre (which we didn’t know at the time get 100 feet tall). Cooler heads prevailed and we ended up with a gorgeous 8-foot tall hedge of mixed flowering shrubs and two decks enclosed by small trees and low bushes. I don’t think that woman ever planted a flower in her life.

So— flowers or vegetables? Flowers are pretty, but when I started I kept putting the floppy ones in the back, where they fell over on the ones that didn’t bloom until fall, except the floppy ones had deprived them of sun so they died. Annuals are pretty— they bloom for months! How hard can it be to plant 20 flats? Every year? I know! Prairie natives. Let’s put some Queen Anne’s Lace here, and some wild phlox, and how about mint! And loosestrife. Now, how do I get rid of it…

We started vegetables slowly and safely— tomatoes. When that went well, we tried green peppers, and then of course we needed oregano. How about salad? Beans and peas and carrots. Now I had to stop planting flats of annuals and get serious about a perennial garden, because there are only so many hours in the day. Before we knew it we were growing 6 months worth of vegetables, but had only 3 months worth of storage space.

It only took twenty years, but I think I have it figured it out— flower border, herb plot, patio, vegetables. The flowers are hard to start, but then they take care of themselves. The vegetables are easy to start, but need care all season. The herbs just deal.

Experimental stir-fry today, everything from the garden but the ginger, bean curd and rice. Instead of soy sauce, I even used some leftover chamomile tea from the herb garden to create a sauce. The ingredients:

Bean curd deep fried with lemon grass, ginger and dried orange zest (don't throw away those peels! Zest them and dry them in the microwave). Vegetables were green beans, snow peas, pumpkin blossoms, fennel, onion, and garlic. A very unusual and savory stir fry.

Rock Stars need to eat, too

I had rock stars staying at my house this week (really; actual members of a reasonably successful band who are friends of my son), and they made themselves a stir fry one night (cleaned up after themselves too, forsooth). Stir Fry is a great “stone soup” sort of recipe—you can make a stir fry from the meagerest offerings of a totally empty fridge.

I never thought about stir fry as needing a recipe, but the rock stars actually had some questions, so here goes.

Simple stir fry

Extra-long grain rice, 1/2 cup dry for each diner

3-4 vegetables, mix of colors and textures (more below)
extra-firm tofu, and/or almond slivers, and/or unsalted cashews,
and/or chicken, beef or pork cut into finger strips
Sesame, peanut or walnut oil (or corn oil if you don’t have the expensive nut ones)
1 T cornstarch
1 cup water
1/2 cup soy sauce
water in reserve, or left-over tea

appropriate spices for stir fry:
parsley
black or white pepper
and/or cayenne or red pepper flakes for a spicy dish
and/or lemon grass or coriander

Start the rice first; a narrow heavy saucepan works best. The water should be about a finger joint deeper than the rice no matter what pot you use (I like a heavy 1-quart aluminum saucepan; this will cook up to 2 cups of rice). Somewhere there is bound to be a proper recipe with a ratio (maybe on the rice bag?), but that’s how I’ve always eyeballed it. Bring it to a full boil uncovered, then turn the flame way down and steam it covered for about 20 minutes. Take it off the flame when it’s done, even if you’re not done with the veggies yet. Leave the cover on.

A wok is best, but you can also make a stir fry in a standard frying pan; you'll just have to be careful to keep the ingredients in motion, as frying pans don't heat as evenly as a wok.

Heat the empty wok over very high flame; put in 2-3 T of the nut oil and sear the tofu or meat. You want the tofu lightly brown on all sides; this will help hold it together. Don’t use a heavy oil like olive; the lighter nut oils or flavorless corn or canola oil are better for bringing out the delicate flavors of the vegetables. You can take the tofu out and set it aside to be added back later, or leave it in and cook the veggies with it. (Tofu can also go in very last.)

Do the vegetables according to texture—those you want softest go in first, crunchy goes in last. I always start with the onion because I like them very well cooked. Put them in and sauté until they’ve just started to go translucent, then start working your way up to the ones you want al dente, typically brightly colored vegetables like green beans, bell pepper, broccoli. Nuts last. You can also wait until here to put the tofu in for the first time. Don’t use more than 3-4 different vegetables as it disturbs the feng shui of the dish (not kidding). Put the meat/tofu back in at this point.

For a sauce thoroughly mix the corn starch, water and soy sauce in a measuring cup (make sure the corn starch is completely dissolved); if you use any of the spices add them here, sparingly. You don’t want too much spice in a stir fry, as the vegetables should provide the sensual point of the dish. Slowly pour this into the vegetable mix, stirring constantly as it will immediately thicken into a creamy sauce; add more water if it gets too sticky. If you have any left over tea sitting around in a pot, you can use it to thin the sauce. For some reason I never make tea specifically for this purpose, but I suppose you could.

Serve with the rice. Use chopsticks, it’s time you learned.