Measuring the success of a garden isn’t simple. If it was a farm, it might be. You’d go by the output: the size of the crop, bushels per acre, or money made. Those are objective large-scale indicators. I don’t think that’s what gardeners are after when they buy seeds and plants in the spring and imagine what can be eaten fresh and preserved to be eaten later after frost finally brings growing to an end. Gardens are smaller in size and scope and more complex. They’re valued by gardeners in a different way, I think.
If I was simply measuring output, what remains to be
enjoyed during the winter, I’d just count the number of jars that came out of
the pressure cooker and the bags of vegetables in the freezer. Here’s
what that looks like for this year:
Jars of
Jerk Marinade 25
Jars of Irish
Asian Chili Paste 13
Jars of
Chilla Sauce 12
Jars of
Pickled Peppers 6
Amount of
Sriracha Sauce TBD
The jerk marinade is a Jamaican sauce whose main
ingredient is habanero peppers. I’ve
jiggered the recipes so that amount of ingredients in one batch fill my food
processor. A triple batch filled that number of
jars. Here’s the recipe for a single
batch.
1 5/8 cup
Sunflower oil
40
Habaneros unseeded
40
scallions
30 garlic
cloves peeled and smashed
1 cup thyme
leaves (no stalks)
1 cup
fresh ginger peeled and grated
1/2 cup brown
sugar
4 cups
Allspice berries
3 1/3 T
kosher salt
2.5 tsp
black pepper
Churn till
smooth in processor. Remove to a large
bowl, add
1 cup
white vinegar
2.5 cups freshly
squeezed lime juice
The classic way to use this marinade is slathered on
chicken wings etc. overnight. They’re
great when grilled over charcoal. You
can also use it as a table sauce by thinning it with soy sauce. The first time you use it, wash off all the
marinade before grilling. Next time, if you think you can handle it, leave the
marinade on while grilling. Either way, it
will clear your sinuses.
The chili paste recipe has evolved. It’s roughly based on a Thai-style paste called Nam Prik or Bird Chili paste. When making it the first time, I didn’t have all the ingredients, so I winged it. And liked the result a lot. So, as it stands it’s an Asian chili paste modified by an Irishman. Thus, Irish Asian Chili paste. Here’s the recipe for one batch.
Shallots 8 halves
Lemongrass 6 pieces of the white part, 4-5 inches long
Lime
juice 1/2 cup. Fresh squeezed is best.
Garlic 1/2 cup peeled then smashed, or
vice versa
Ginger
Root 1/4 cup grated
Worcestershire
Sauce 2
T
Kosher
salt 3
T
Hot Peppers Enough to fill processor. Use the kind you like. Mix it up.
Notes on the lemongrass. I used to grow it in the garden,
and the stalks were skinny without a lot of white. The stuff you buy in any Asian grocery is far
superior. I’ve concluded lemongrass grows
better and bigger in South Asia than Illinois.
You can use this paste conventionally, mixing a hockey puck-sized, 4-ounce lump of paste with coconut milk or broth to make the base for spicy meat and/or vegetable dish. But my
family uses it mostly as a spicy condiment.
It’s versatile. But you must like
heat and spicy flavor to enjoy it. Irish
Asian chili paste has a big kick.
The Chilla sauce is a sweet and sour sauce from my
mother’s side of the family, probably of Dutch origin. We used Chilla sauce on the farm specifically
for roast beef. I never saw the word for
this sauce written down so that’s a phonetic spelling. We had dinners centered around roast beef almost every Sunday of the year on the farm. Big meals, nice days. Those meals and the companionship drew my
older married siblings and their kids, my nephews and nieces, back home after
they moved out. I make this sauce for us. It’s McClure/Staubus/Deal comfort
food.
Thankfully, Mom finally wrote down an ingredient list and
rudimentary instructions. She had to
think about it, as she carried most of her recipes around in her head. She had a hard time figuring what to write as
a cook time, as she claimed to go by the color. She cryptically told me the
sauce must turn from bright red to brownish.
I’ve since determined that’s about two hours. Here’s that recipe.
1 quart
tomatoes
1 cup
vinegar
1 pepper
cut fine (type undetermined. Mom no
doubt used a green bell. I use a
Jalapeno.)
½ cup
sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1.2 tsp
cloves (ground I’ve found out)
2 medium
onions cut fine
1 tsp salt
Cook two
hours
The quick-pickled peppers came about this year simply
due to a bumper crop of peppers. My daughter’s
partner, June’s Dad, has been bringing around various “quick pickled”
vegetables; kohlrabi, cucumbers, onions, peppers. I tried it with hot peppers. Here’s the brine recipe. It’s amazingly simple.
1 ½ cup
distilled white vinegar
3/4 cup
water
2 T Honey
4 T
Kosher Salt
1 clove
of smashed garlic per jar
3
peppercorns per jar
Fresh
peppers/vegetables of your choice
Thinly slice
peppers and vegetables. Place in jars
with garlic and peppercorns. Heat liquid
to near-boiling. Remove, pour over peppers and veggies. Cool.
Place lid on the jar and refrigerate.
Quick pickled veggies last up to three months refrigerated,
which is plenty of time because they are always eaten before that. I think you can pickle damned near anything
in that little brine brew, but I’ve chosen to thinly slice up hot peppers with
onion and carrot. I put a variety in the
jar for color, along with other herbs and spices of your choice. Get creative.
Orange Habaneros, green Serranos, red Jalapenos, and a few sweet Jimmy
Nardellos or Sheep Nose peppers for balance.
It’s up to you. I love that mix
especially on hot dogs and sausages, but you can add it to anything. Great
in an omelet too.
1 lb. unseeded stemmed red Jalapenos (aka Fresnos) (16 big ones)
½ pound unseeded stemmed red Serranos (20 more or less)
4 cloves
of garlic peeled
3 T brown
sugar
1 T
kosher salt
1/3 cup
water
½ cup
distilled white vinegar
Step 1
Chop peppers, retain seeds and membranes and place them into
a food processor or blender with garlic, brown sugar, salt, and water. Pulse several times to start. Blend until smooth.
Step 2
Transfer puree into a large glass container(pitcher or big
jar0. Cover container with plastic wrap
and place in a cool dark location (think basement) for 3-5 days, stirring once
a day. The mixture will bubble and
ferment. Scrape down the sides during
each stirring. Rewrap after every
stirring.
Step 3
Pour fermented mixture into blender or food processor with vinegar. Blend until smooth. Strain mixture through a
fine-mesh strainer into a saucepan, pushing as much of the pulp as possible through
the strainer into the sauce. Discard remaining
pulp, seeds, and skin left in the strainer.
Step 4
Heat sauce to a boil, stirring often until reduced to desire
thickness, 5-10 minutes. Skim foam if
desired.
Step 5
Remove saucepan from heat and let the sauce cool to room
temperature. The sauce will thicken a little
when cooled. Transfer sauce to jars or
bottles and refrigerate.
Cook’s note: I flipped the amount of Serranos and Jalapenos
looking for a spicier blend. It’s a bit
hotter than the squeeze bottle you buy in the store. I call it Wallace Township Rooster Sauce.
In addition to those jars, I have 5 quarts of simple tomato
sauce from the San Marzanos. In the freezer
are 10-quart bags of peeled plum tomatoes and 10 bags of a specific mix of
frozen peppers good in chili; Poblanos, Serranos, Jimmy Nardellos, and Sheep
Nose pimiento. They’re ready for winter
cooking.
So that’s the output as defined by jars in the cupboard and
bags in the freezer. But the garden gave
my family and me so much more than that. How
many BLT’s did we have when the tomatoes came ripe? Too many to count. And tomatoes and peppers for salads over and
over. And fresh-picked tomatoes peeled
and blended with peppers, olive oil, garlic, and salt for a same-day pasta sauce
that you can’t beat. That’s what a garden can give you.
My long row was six miles from my house in full sun with
water nearby. It gave me, sometimes my
wife and kids, an excuse to get out of the house and drive into the
country. We saw sunsets, approaching storms,
an unobscured horizon, every type of cloud.
It brought us closer to something big that you don’t get in town. That
itself made the garden worthwhile.
Last summer, during a full-blown pandemic with no vaccine,
those garden trips were more solitary and even more essential. This year was more relaxed and social. But these two years convinced me I need that
garden even if I don’t bring a single vegetable home.
But that won’t happen.
There is always that wonderful straight from the garden summer
eating.
I planted two kinds of Kale, broad-leafed Red Russian and
Dino with the long spear-like dark green leaves. I planted four of each. It’s too much. I couldn’t keep up with it all. How many Kale salads can one small family
eat? I found I liked the Dino Kale much
more. Next year I’ll skip the Red
Russian.
The broccoli never made the kind of heads you expect from
the produce counter at your grocer. It
was good but there wasn’t a lot of it for such a big plant. My Brussels Sprouts are still out there. I’ll cut them next week for
Thanksgiving. For most of the summer, I
thought they were failing, and then they came on strong in the fall. They like cold weather, even frost. Heads not quite as big as retail grocery
sprouts but they’re very tasty.
The peppers were prolific.
I don’t exactly know what makes a good year for peppers, but this summer
appeared to be perfect. I picked peppers
all summer and they just kept coming. I
planted nine types: Serrano, Habanero, Cayenne, Jalapeno, Poblano, Sheep Nose
Pimiento, Lunchbox, Shishito, and Jimmy Nardello. Of those nine, I’ll plant seven again. The Shishitos grew like crazy but they’re
bland. I knew they wouldn’t have a lot
of heat, but I didn’t expect the lack of flavor. The Cayenne grew far fewer
peppers than the Serrano and are not markedly different in taste. I’ll
skip both the Shishito and Cayenne.
By
far my best tomatoes were the plum tomatoes, which were nearly half the total
tomatoes planted. I went with a single
variety, the two-chambered San Marzano, and wasn’t disappointed. They grew like crazy and were plump and sweet. But surprisingly, the slicers-Early Girls, Beefsteaks,
Jet Stars, and the tomato cousin tomatillos never got to the size I
expected. I have no idea why one type of
tomato would thrive while others were sub-par.
I have to figure that out before next year. But I’ll be planting San Marzanos again. Maybe more.
The onions were, by and large, a bust. We ate some as scallions,
but the mature onions were small and unremarkable in taste. Perhaps I’m not cut out to raise onions. Why should they be so different than
garlic? Maybe I’ll give it another try.
What
was lost in onions was made up by potatoes.
We have never harvested such a big crop.
Every variety, reds, cobblers, fingerlings, even the quirky purple
potatoes, were plentiful and tasty. Some
question the value of growing potatoes when they are so cheap in the
store. To them, I say taste a fresh homegrown potato and talk to me again. I
have a bunch in the basement waiting, with the dirt still on them, to be eaten. Gives me a sense of security
Back home in my small house garden the Asparagus came in
quickly and didn’t last long enough. I
need to plant more roots. I haven’t dug the
Horseradish, but you know Horseradish.
You can’t kill it. It will be
fine down there underground whenever I get around to using it. The herbs had a good year in pots on the back
steps. I had enough flat-leafed Italian
parsley and Basil to choke a horse.
Still need to grow more Thyme for the jerk marinade but it takes so much
I doubt I will. The rosemary had a great
year. I’m wintering a pot of it over in
the house, so it gets a head start next spring.
And that’s the garden report for 2021.
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