Julia Shanks Recovering Chef and Urban Gardener
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I knew it was a mistake… I planted mint in the garden and I didn’t contain it. Mint tends to crawl unabashedly across the garden. Most (smart) people will bury a quart container of mint in the ground. By planting the container in the ground, the roots get protection during the winter months. And the container then contains the roots in the summer to keep the mint at bay.
I, of course, just transplanted the mint directly into the garden, with no means of controlling its growth. When it begins to creep out of control, I yank up the roots, and squelch it back.
If it was only mint that grew this way in my garden, it wouldn’t be a big deal. But now I have other things to contend with… the raspberries, the strawberries, and some lily of the valley. The strawberries went into the garden last year. I only got 4 berries for the entire season, and decided to give them another year to prove their worth. Now, I have potential for about a dozen berries, but they have spread into the tomato and kale patches.
If I let them grow out of control, they will take over the garden, with their roots suffocating other plants, depriving them of water and nutrients. As much as I like raspberries, strawberries and mint, I don’t like them enough to give up lettuces, tomatoes, and cucumbers.
My normal morning routine had been to grab a cup of coffee, head into the garden and take a survey… seeing what’s growing, what’s ready to harvest and pluck out the beginnings of new weeds. Now I head out with a trowel, digging up the roots that have shot up plants above the soil.
I first discovered Korean BBQ when I was in culinary school in San Francisco. Some friends took me to Brother’s Café in the Richmond district. I was unfamiliar with the cuisine, so I let them order for me (and the table). A few minutes later, the kitchen staff brought out a rack of red hot embers of charcoal and placed them in the cavity of the table, they replaced the cover with an oiled grill. A few minutes later, a platter of marinated beef and chicken arrived. We grilled our own meat table-side, and wrapped it in lettuce with rice and miso paste. The table was filled with little salads of seaweed and kimchi. I didn’t realize how good I had it – no other Korean restaurant I’ve been to since had charcoal grills table-side, only gas.
The Korean palate has a lot of similarities with Chinese and Japanese cuisine, which is not surprising given its proximity to both countries… it has the sushi, soups and noodles similar to Japanese, with the spicy kick and preserved vegetables of Northern Chinese. It’s hard to say which way the influence went, did the Koreans influence Japan and China or vice versa. Most Americans are less familiar with Korean cuisine than Chinese or Japanese, and in our myopic view tend to think that Korea was influenced by their neighbors.
Korean BBQ is easy to prepare at home, and if you have a charcoal grill, it’s all the better.
The recipe I use comes from a book I picked up in Singapore 10 years ago, Homestyle Korean Cooking in Pictures
Like the ground rice used in Larp of Chiang Mai, the ground sesame imparts flavor while helping the rest of the marinade cling to the meat. Sesame seeds can be ground in a coffee grinder. Just be sure to clean it thoroughly before and after.
Korean BBQ
I serve this with a cool cucumber salad.
2 lbs meat, either beef short ribs or chicken thighs
4 tbs. Soy sauce
2 tbs. Sugar
4 tbs. Minced scallion
1 ½ tbs. Ground sesame seeds
2 tsp. Garlic
1 tbs. chopped ginger
2 tbs. Sesame oil
pepper
2 tbs. sherry or Shaoix Shing Wine.
Marinate meat in remaining ingredients for at least 5 minutes before grilling. Prepare the grill. Grill for 5-10 minutes on all sides or until cooked through.
Like last year, the first thing to emerge in my garden is the scallions. Because they are perennials, they come back to life the minute the temperatures rise about freezing. And after a week of warm-ish temperatures, I have enough to harvest some.
Scallions are a staple in my cooking. I love the fresh oniony flavor that is mild enough that I can still have an intimate conversation without offending anyone (including myself). I always have a bunch in the fridge (when I don’t have them in the garden), along with onions, garlic and lemons. And when I cook Asian-style, I usually make a garnish salad or relish with a heavy dose.
The first cutting of the season is more tender than later cuttings. They haven’t been wind-blown and rained on enough to make them hardy. Not a big deal, but I need to be careful not to add them to a dish until the very last minute as they wilt quickly.
Last week, some friends gathered for a pot-luck dinner. I brought Korean marinated chicken thighs, and garnished it with a salad of carrots, cucumbers, Asian pears, and lots and lots of scallions.
Cool Crunchy Salad
1 rib celery, julienne
1 pear, julienne
3 carrot, peeled and julienne
1 cucumber, peeled and julienne
6 scallions, julienne
1 ½ tsp. vinegar
1 ½ tsp. lemon juice
2 tsp. Sugar
1 tbs. sesame oil
½ tsp. salt
Mix everything together.
The Boston Marathon is just around the corner and the elite athletes are tapering their running and increasing their carbs. Our bodies take longer to break down complex carbohydrates, thus giving runners more sustained energy.
I won’t be running the marathon this year (nor have I ever, or likely ever will), but in solidarity with my fellow Bostonians, I will carbo-load with them.
One of my favorite starchy side dishes in spaetzle, a German boiled dumpling made with flour, eggs, milk and salt. It couldn’t be easier to make, but it’s a bit of a mess to clean up which is probably why I don’t make it more often.
Though, I usually serve spaetzle with chicken picatta, last night’s dinner was focused on cooking from the larder. I still have a hefty stash of tomatoes from last summer. Since I’m in the home-stretch until I’m knee-deep in tomatoes again, I’ve become more reckless using them in recipes. Some leeks in the crisper drawer were not looking so crisp. I further softened them in butter… the richness of the leeks played well with the spaetzle and offered a nice counterpoint to the acidic brightness of the tomato sauce.
Spaetzle
Spaetzle can be adorned with fresh herbs (such as scallions, basil or sage) or spices (nutmeg is most common). I prefer mine plain.
2 cups flour
2 tsp. salt
¾ cup milk
3 eggs
1 stick butter or 1 cup chicken broth or a combination of the two.
1. Whisk flour and salt together.
2. In a separate bowl, whisk eggs until well beaten, combine with milk.
3. Whisk flour with egg/milk mixture for about 30 seconds, or until just combined. Alternatively, mix in a food processor for 15 seconds. Let rest.
4. When water boils, push spaetzle dough through the spaetzle maker. (You may need to cook them in batches, depending on the size of your pot). Wait until they float to the top and cook for 1 minute more. Scoop out with a slotted spoon and put in butter broth dish.
I'm glad you found me here!
Have you heard the expression, "You can't jump a chasm in two leaps" ?
That's what I tried to do when I wanted to switch from Blogger to TypePad. I thought I could make the switch in small steps, but at some point I crossed the point of no return, and I had to take the big leap.
I'm here now, but I still need to move-in, unpack and get to know the neighborhood. I'm working on bringing all my old posts over here (I was only able to transfer about 30 out of 300 posts). And I need to fix many of the old links.
If you previously subscribed to Grow. Cook. Eat. in Google reader or other RSS feed, please resubscribe. Alas, in the transition, all feeds were canceled.
Happy Gardening, Happy Cooking and Happy Eating! I look forward to seeing you here more often.
During the summer between my two years of business school, I had a summer internship in China and traveled with a few of my classmates. Their biggest complaint about the food was that there were too many bones. The Chinese tend to cut meat into chunks, on the bone, and cook it that way. They do this for two reasons. First, it stretches the meat farther. A single chicken, for example, can serve 6-8 people when butchered this way, rather than American 4. But more importantly, meat cooked on the bone tastes better: it has more flavor and is more juicy.
The same is true for fish. The challenge for fish, of course, is that the bones are smaller. They are harder to pick out, and have a greater chance of getting stuck in your throat. When I serve that has been cooked on the bone, I carefully remove the bones in the kitchen before serving. It makes the eating more pleasurable in that you don’t have to cautiously pick around the meat.
When I cooked halibut the other night, I topped it with morels and asparagus. The last thing on my mind were bones… I wanted to savor the earthy, meaty flavor of the spring-time treat. Since I removed the bones in the kitchen, I had nothing to worry about, and could eat with abandon.
Seared Halibut with Morels, Asparagus and Red Wine
2 halibut steaks
1 tbs. butter
1 pound fresh morels
1 large shallot, peeled and diced
2 garlic cloves, peeled and minced
1 tsp. fresh thyme
1/4 cup dry sherry
1 tbs. canola oil
1 cup red wine
1/2 cup chicken stock
2-4 tbs. butter
1 tbs. fresh parsley
salt pepper and lemon juice to taste
1. Season halibut with salt and pepper.
2. Heat a large skillet over medium high flame. Add 1 tbs. butter. When melted, add the morels, 1/2 the shallots, garlic and thyme. Season with salt and pepper. Cook for 2 minutes wihtout stirring. Stir a little and then conintue cooking for a few minutes more. Add the sherry, and continue cooking until the liquid has evaporated. Set aside in a warm place.
3. Heat a second large skillet over high heat. Add canola oil. Pat fish dry and gently press into the pan. Cook for 5 minutes on the first side or until golden brown. Turn over, turn heat to medium and cook for 5 minutes more, covered. Remove fish from pan. Sprinkle parsley on top.
4. Add the remaining shallots and red wine to the halibut pan. Let wine reduce to 1/4 cup. Add the chicken stock and reduce to 1/4 cup. Remove pan from heat and swirl in butter, more or less to taste. Season to taste with salt, pepper and lemon juice.
5. Gently separate the halibut steak from the bone. Pull out the main bone in the center, and the small pin bones on the each side. Run your finger along the insdie of the filet to make sure all bones are removed. Put the filet back together.
6. Serve halibut with sauce, morels and steamed asparagus.
If it’s true that you learn from your mistakes, I should be bordering on genius. As I begin my 8th season as an urban gardener, I recall all the things I’ve learned along the way. I’ve shared some key tips for the beginning home gardener on Katie’s site goodLife {eats}. She has a new weekly feature, titled “Grow. Cook. Eat.” I love the name, and since we clearly have so much in common, she invited me to write a guest post. Check it out here.
In general, I share thoughts on how to get started with your own garden. One of the specific questions she asked me to address was, “What are the best plants to grow?” This one I evaded, as it’s nearly impossible to give specific ideas. Grow what you like to eat!
Here are some of the bigger lessons I’ve learned over the years….
Don’t crowd the plants
I’ve made this mistake in various incarnations.
The first way is that I over-plant lettuces seeds. The seeds are so small that it’s hard to only plant two seeds per inch. This year was no different, and again, I will be out in the garden this weekend with my scissors thinning the lettuces.
The other is planting seedlings. The tomato label says, for example, plant seedlings 36” inches apart, and I’ll space them 24” inches, sometimes less. I’m trying to cram as many plants into the garden as possible. Then, I wonder why my tomatoes don’t grow very big. Over the years, I’ve gotten better about properly spacing vegetable plants. And what I’ve lost from having less plants, I’ve gained in larger vegetables and better yields.
I just purchased an injector seed-sower that should help me in the future.
I have micro-climates in my yard
I usually buy a six-pack of basil seedlings, and fit them into the garden wherever I can. Not all patches of soil are created equal, and the basil thrived in some corners and not others. I don’t know why the basil grows better in some patches than others, but I’ve made notes as to where it grows best.
Be Patient
On March 5th (this year), I planted lettuces, beets, kale and kohlrabi. I was heading out of town for two weeks and expected that when I came home, I would see tiny sprouts shooting up all over the garden. Instead, I found paw prints right along the rows I had planted. I assumed that a critter (or two) had come in and eaten every seed.
The next day, I bought some new seeds and replanted everything. And I decided to plant a few new things too – I had seen radishes at the garden center, and thought I should try those. I reconfigured what I planted where… decided the kohlrabi would be better where the kale was, and the kale would work better next to the garlic. The beets and radishes would go where the kohlrabi had originally been planted.
And the day after that…. A carpet of green sprouts spread across the garden. In fact, the seeds I had planted two and a half weeks prior had, in fact, sprouted!
Which leads me to my final point:
Label what you plant
I used to have a memory like an elephant. I’d plants seeds all around my yard and remember what I planted where. As my memory started to fade, I justified my lazy ways by telling myself “The plants will present themselves. When they grow big enough, I’ll be able to identify them, so it won’t really matter.”
Well, the plants don’t always tell you what they are, especially if they are root vegetables. And if you don’t know what they are, you don’t know when to harvest them.
And now with the current mess of plants in my garden, I don’t know what I have growing where. I know I need to thin the sprouts so they have enough room to grow… but am I thinning beets which need 6 inches, or kohlrabi that needs 12, or radishes that need 4???
It’s always an adventure, and I’m sure I’ll have plenty of vegetables to eat starting next month. I’m just not sure what it will be.
What have you learned from your garden?
Happy Gardening!
They say no idea is original, nor is any recipe. Most recipes take inspiration from someone else’s ideas. And my recipe for Juniper Scented Duck with Caramelized Balsamic Sauce and Celeriac Puree is no different.
Lorenza de Medici
As I often do, I substitute proteins within a recipe… chicken for pork, pork for duck, duck for beef or tuna, and so on… for this recipe, I decided duck breasts would be a fine substitute for the wild boar. And since duck breasts don’t require a long braising time (and in fact suffer from that) more modifications were necessary.
The duck received the same marinade as the original recipe. I then poached a technique from Thomas Keller to cook the duck “sous vide” I removed the skin, rolled up the duck breast lengthwise, the duck was rolled in a blanched cabbage leaf and then wrapped in plastic wrap like a tootsie roll. The whole package is poached in boiling water for 8 minutes for a perfect medium rare.
I liked the idea of the caramelized sugar for a sweet and sour sauce. But since I didn’t have red wine vinegar, I used balsamic instead. I didn’t want to lose the essence of the marinade, so I cooked that until the vegetables were tender, pureed that, and added it to the caramelized balsamic. Going back to the original recipe, I finished the sauce with chocolate. And recognizing my personal preferences, I omit the bay leaves, candied citron, raisins and pine nuts.
The prunes transformed into a tart relish with fresh plums, shallots and thyme.
Celeriac Puree pairs magically with the sauce – complimenting both the sweet and sour flavor, as well as the juniper.
Of course, I couldn’t lose the duck skin. Those went into the oven until they transformed into cracklings.
All together, this was an elegant main meal for the Passover Seder last week. I serve this dish year-round, sometimes with duck, other times with pork tenderloin, and sometimes even with tuna.
Original Recipe:
3 pounds wild boar
2 carrots, peeled and roughly chopped
2 celery stalks, roughly chopped
2 yellow onions, peeled and roughly chopped
½ bottle red wine
4 tbs. extra virgin olive oil
1 tsp. juniper berries
2 bay leaves
salt
1 tsp. black pepper
¼ cup sugar
½ cup red wine vinegar
4 cloves garlic, coarsely chopped
2 oz. grated bitter chocolate
1/3 cup raisins, soaked in water
½ cup pitted prunes, soaked in water
¼ cup pine nuts
1 tbs. candied citron, finely chopped.
1. Twenty-fours ahead, put the meat in a good-sized, flameproof casserole together with the carrots, celery and onions. Add the wine and marinate for 24 hours, turning from time to time.
2. On the serving day, remove the meat from the marinade and pat dry. In a large skillet, heat the olive oil until it begins to color. Brown the meat on all sides. Strain the vegetables from the marinade add to the meat with the juniper berries, 1 of the bay leaves, salt and pepper. Pour some of the marinade over. Cover and simmer for 1 ½ hours or until the meat is tender, adding the remaining marinade, a little at a time.
3. Transfer the meat to a flameproof casserole. Puree the vegetables, then pour them over the meat and reheat. In a sauce pan, melt the sugar with the garlic and remaining bay leaf, and cook until lightly colored. Add the vinegar and bitter chocolate. Boil for a few minutes. Add the sauce to the meat together with the raisins, prunes, pine nuts and candied citron. Simmer for an additional 10 minutes before serving.
Julia’s Revised Recipe
Duck Roulade with Caramelized Balsamic Sauce, Roasted Plums and Juniper
8 duck breasts, skin removed
2 carrots, peeled and chopped
2 celery stalks, chopped
2 onions, peeled and chopped
2 cups red wine
1 tsp. juniper berries
8 big leaves from savoy cabbage (with no splits or tears)
1/4 cup sugar
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1/2 cup balsamic vinegar
2 oz. chocolate or butter
2 plums, quartered and chopped
6 prunes, pitted and chopped coarsely.
1 tsp. thyme, chopped
1 shallot, sliced or diced
salt and pepper to taste
1. Marinate duck with wine, juniper, salt, pepper, carrots, onions, and celery for up to 24 hours.
2. Bring a pot of water to boil. Cook cabbage leaves for 1 or 2 minutes, or just until wilted. Drain. Carefully, cut away large rib.
3. Remove duck from marinade.
4. Tear off a piece of plastic wrap about 20 inches long, and lay it across a work surface. Place cabbage leaf down. Roll duck breast, lengthwise into cylinder, and place cylinder of cabbage leaf. Roll leaf around breast. Trim edges, and roll tightly into plastic wrap. Roll both ends of wrap to secure shape and tie with kitchen string. Refrigerate packets until ready to cook.
5. Meanwhile, combine the sugar with the garlic and ¼ cup of water in a small sauce pot. Stir, over high flame just until the sugar dissolves. When the sugar begins to caramelize and turns a deep amber color, add the vinegar. Simmer for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the sugar re-dissolves (it will seize up with the vinegar is added)
6. Cook marinade in a covered sauce pot over medium flame until carrots are tender. Puree the vegetables with a little bit of the wine and add about 1/2 – 1 cup to the balsamic sauce (taste after adding 1/2 cup and add more to taste). Swirl in chocolate and set aside in a warm place.
7. Toss plums with shallots and thyme. Season with salt, pepper, and balsamic vinegar. Roast in the oven for 15 minutes. Mix with prunes
8. Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Add duck packages and cook for 8 minutes, for medium/medium-rare. Remove from water and let rest for a few minutes before removing the plastic and slicing.
9. Serve with asparagus and celeriac puree
Celeriac Puree
3 knobs celery root (celeriac)
½ – 1 cup cream
truffle carpaccio
salt, pepper and lemon juice to taste
Peel celery root. Cut into 1/8th. Put in a pot of cold salted water. Boil the be-jeebies out of it. When tender, drain. Put in a food processor, and puree with approximately 1/2 cup of cream. Add lemon juice, 1 squeeze at a time, until it is seasoned to your taste. Adjust seasoning with salt and pepper.