I made it through garlic harvesting weekend before the rains set in.
Twenty rows of garlic, 12 varieties, two dozen bunches tied with twine, labeled, and hung in the barn to cure.
And now the barn is flooding.
That’s what I love about the little farming I do—you never know what challenges lie ahead.
My mother often sings, “The old gray mare, she ain’t what she used to be…” These days I substitute the word “achy” for “gray”. But this harvest was a special joy—I had a personal chef and didn’t have to plan or cook a meal, or entertain my mother. Chef-phew Wille was up for the weekend from Washington, D.C. , to visit his Nonna.
Friday, Wille stacked firewood in the outdoor pizza oven and roasted Peruvian purple potatoes (halved lengthwise) and whole rainbow trout (stuffed with lemon discs). With that, he served a cold salad of chopped peaches, corn sliced raw from the cob, quinoa, couscous and orzo tossed with fresh basil, olive oil, lime zest and juice, and sprinkled with salt and pepper.
Chef Lesson #1: Color matters. How often have I served chicken or a fish with white potatoes or white rice on a white dinner plate? All-blue (purple) potatoes really make a statement.
Chef Lesson #2: Peaches and corn—what an unusual combo. The fresh corn was so sweet it didn’t need to be cooked. The olive oil, basil, and lime made a simple, refreshing dressing.
Saturday Wille planned a pizza party. He spent the day with his Nonna preparing fresh pesto (with fresh garlic), homemade tomato sauce (with fresh garlic), cheeses, vegetables, and meats to top each pizza. He added split firewood in the pizza oven and got a hot fire going. The weather had other ideas. The rain started at 4 p.m. and didn’t let up until 4 a.m. Wille was a trooper and dashed outside to slide each pizza in the oven, while we all sat inside, dry, watching. Then, he’d scoot out again, pull out the steaming, crusty pizza with the long handle of the pizza peel, bring it into the house, slap it on a dish, cut it, and we’d gobble away.
But the show-stopper and tummy-popper was the appetizer: A platter of charred Shishito peppers.
Chef Lesson #3: Shishito peppers. Yum!
I had never heard of Shishitos until Wille dived at a display of them at a farm market and made off with four pints, $1.25 each. (What a steal.)
Shishitos are a variety of pepper, Capsicum annuum. They are a sweet pepper from East Asia. Each is about the size of a finger, and are often confused with their smaller, stouter, and smoother cousin, the Spanish Padrón. Unlike the Padrón, the Shishito has a wrinkled skin. In Korea it is called kkwari-gochu “groundcherry pepper” because the skin resembles the wrapper of a groundcherry (I’m not sure I agree with that, but..)
Wille warned that one in 10 Shishitos are hot, but I have yet to bite into a spicy one—and I probably went through 20 or so Saturday night. On the Scoville scale which measures the pungency of chili peppers, Shishitos fall in the 50 to 200 range; Jalapenos score anywhere from 2500 to 4500.
The best thing about Shishitos is that you don’t need a personal chef to prepare them. Wille heated olive oil in a cast iron pan, tossed the peppers in the pan, placed the pan in the pizza oven on hot coals and shook it a few times to flip and distribute the peppers. Within minutes, the thin skins of the Shishitos were blistered and charred. Wille placed them on a platter, salted them, and voilà, Shishito tasting time. (You can do the same in a cast iron skillet on a burner of your stove, medium heat.)
Laurie Lesson #1: To eat, hold the stem, bite the Shishito at the crown of the pepper, and enjoy, seeds and all. It will melt in your mouth—unless you get a hot one. That’s a chance I’m willing to take. Laurie Lynch
Written on Slate: “We don’t need a melting pot in this country, folks. We need a salad bowl. In a salad bowl, you put in different things. You want vegetables—the lettuce, the cucumbers, the onions, the green peppers—to maintain their identity. You appreciate differences.” Jane Elliot
Ewes taking shelter from the storm:
Fleur-de-Blog 