Late Summer: Harvest's Lead Into Autumn & Recipes

Though The Calm One prefers his raspberries sugared and smothered with whipped cream, these fresh-from-the-garden berries are pretty good on their own. After the first raspberry crop came in about late June which were born on previous season's canes, the patch was weeded, fertilised, mulched, and faithfully watered to encourage a copious second cropping on new canes. There are probably two more bowls to be had before harvesting will be complete. The tops of these canes will be pruned, leaving the rest of them to overwinter so they can produce berries for the first crop come next June.

The carrot crop promises to be abundant though it will be at least a couple of weeks before it will be ready to harvest. Until then, the rows which were thickly sowed will be thinned to provide some lovely baby carrots. These can be be trimmed, scrubbed, and simmered whole with some butter in a covered skillet.

Beefsteak tomatoes and romas continue to be harvested. About 36 kg (80 pounds) so far! Since we have a large freezer, all I have to do to keep on top of this red deluge is to wash and dry them, then to throw them into large ziplock freezer bags. Once frozen, if run under cold water, the skins can be rubbed off with your hands. Most of them will be made into concentrate (for soup) and sauce (See related links below for recipes).

The beet harvest is done and processed. They were scrubbed, tops trimmed, tails left on, boiled till tender, placed under cold running water so their skins, tops & tails could be rubbed off with my hands, and packed into ziplock freezer bags. An easy and simple way to serve both tomatoes and beets is to place slices, thin or thick (we like ours thick!) on a bed of couscous and then top with tuna/shrimp/chicken salad. For tuna salad served with beets, crème fraîche is a much better 'lubricant' than mayonnaise because beets and sour cream is a match made in heaven. Your favourite dressing and spices/herbs could be sprinkled over the salads.

There's enough in the freezer for borscht with scrumptious beef and onion dumplings all year round. Detailed instructions to make this fabulously satisfying meal in a bowl can be found here (some of the photos got corrupted in this ancient post, but the text remains intact). Though it takes two days to make it, there is plenty left over which can be frozen for many a meal. However, to lessen the work involved, canned beef broth can be used along with minced beef instead of homemade broth and simmered stewing beef.

Stir in a bit of crème fraîche for a ravishing raspberry-pink colour punch. Its slight sourness is a nice foil to the natural sweetness of the beets.

A couple of months ago, Daifla variety of potatoes, looked like this:

When their haulms (above ground foliage) are completely spent, they are ready to harvest.

This variety may be a prolific flowerer and a high yielder but the actual taters are not pretty. But what texture, flavour, and colour! These potatoes, made into a simple soup . . .

. . . shimmer with a golden glow as if a certain percentage of their flesh contains cream. They are exceedingly delicious with a smooth, rich texture.

Here are basic instructions to make this soup: A large potato per person should suffice (I usually make enough for eight servings). Saute a minced onion till soft, translucent, and yellow, which takes about 5 minutes. Add cubed potatoes. Barely cover with boiling water (an electric tea kettle is perfect for this) or with water right from the tap and bring to a boil, and then a simmer till potatoes are fork tender, about twenty minutes. Remove half of them and reserve. Using a stick mixer, blend smooth right in the pot. Add milk to get desired consistency. A couple of heaping tablespoons of crème fraîche ups the creamy quotient. Return the reserved potatoes to the pot. Salt to taste. Unabashedly plop some chunks of Bleu d'Auvergne into the serving bowls. Soup will keep in the fridge for several days, but can not be frozen as freezing changes the texture of the potatoes into something unrecognisable. 

À la prochaine!

RELATED LINKS

Have lots of tomatoes? Make estratto (tomato paste)! Second paragraph includes links to instructions for making tomato-sausage sauce and stewed tomatoes.

You Grow Food To Process . . . (Harvest 2017), includes instructions to make tomato concentrate to be used in soups

You Grow Food To Harvest To Process . . .

One side of our urban potager flanks an entrance driveway to a refrigeration depot.  Trucks amble more than roar as they pass our property because their speed is zapped well before the drivers reach the entry gates so they are not much of a bother to our peace of mind. Additionally their frequency occurs just from 9-5 on weekdays. But not during the month of August when it is common to be woken up by the grinding, gasping sounds of huge lorries arriving from Spain, Portugal, and Poland late in the night and early in the morning. The trucks emblazoned with PassionFroid (cold passion) along their sides never fail to make me smile. When that seasonal occurrence causes the first jarring of our sleep, we groggily mutter to each other, oh, the harvest is quickening. In our postage stamp of a potager and in the farm fields about a fifteen-minute drive from us (we live not that far from France profonde/Deep France), everything seems to be ripening all at once. Two styles of growing food are the crop and the sequential. The former is when all the seeds are sowed at one go, and the latter is when a series of sowing is done.  The crop approach is the one I use the most, and it results in heaps of produce groaning on tables which necessitates immediate attention to ensure the produce will be preserved with as much of the original freshness as possible.

Beefsteak &  roma tomatoes,  plums, and peaches

The rhythm goes something like this. A few ripe fruits are noted one day. The next that number is doubled, and on and on until the peak, that is, the largest amount of produce is ready to be harvested at the same time. Then the production halves the next day, and so on until all the plants are emptied of their delicious bounty. The entire harvest takes around three weeks. Presently, most days, I am preserving food.

We eat as many fresh tomatoes as we can: these are reserved for stuffing with shrimp salad

My main mode of preservation is freezing. In the seven years of growing a hefty percentage of our produce, the bounty has never been so copious as to last more than a year. Hence freezing, which results in tastier and more nutritious food than canning, is perfect for our needs, especially as there is a large fridge/freezer in the sous-sol. Though frozen food doesn't go bad after a year, it does lose most of it flavour. Canned goods, on the other hand, remain appealing for several years. Making tomato concentrate to serve as a soup base is a favourite way of mine to preserve tomatoes. Put washed, cut-up tomatoes (I simmer around fifteen to twenty pounds of tomatoes at a time which amounts to about 3 litres of concentrate) in the largest, non-reactive (stainless steel/enamel) pot you have, add several sliced carrots, 3 sliced celery stalks with leaves, 2-3 onions peeled and quartered, 3-5 peeled garlic cloves, a teaspoon of black peppercorns, several bay leaves, a heaping teaspoon of dried basil, a half-teaspoon of dried thyme, a heaping teaspoon of dried parsley, and several Parmesan rinds. Simmer, partially covered, for about an hour or till all veggies are soft. Sieve through a Foley mill, portion, and freeze. We love to dilute the concentrate to an unctuous consistency, add crème fraîche, cooked brown rice, and cubed Edam.

In total, tomato plants number 23

This season, there has been the most fruits ever in the history of our garden. The conditions must have been perfect for setting fruit this past spring. Though I had thinned many immature fruits, the peach tree lost a limb during a recent storm because the weight of the remaining peaches along with some assistance from the wind and rain gave the branch no choice but to splinter and crack. Despite all the missing fruit, there are still around 200 ripening peaches. Peaches do not develop sugar after being picked, but their level of acidity does diminish, hence whatever sweetness they have is brought out. However, I do try to pick them when they are in an exquisite state of dribbling, sweet juiciness.

Oh, do they smell FANTASTIC!

The plum d'Ente also lost a limb, as it is located in a windy part of the garden. As with the peach tree, the broken branch was cleanly sawed off, close to the collar joining it to the trunk.  Eventually the collar will envelop the cut.

One of The Calm One's beloved sweets is fruit leather made from these plums

The mirabelle tree is chock a block with their golden-flushed-with-crimson, cherry-sized plums.

The raspberry bushes are putting out their second crop for the season. The first fruiting occurred early summer on canes from last year. They were cut down to make room for new canes which will bear ripe fruit in a week or so. The new canes will stay put until late winter, when the spent upper segments will be pruned to allow for next season's first crop.

Vegetables are more forgiving and can be left in the ground until convenient to harvest.

There are 70 plants of red-skinned, yellow-fleshed, all-purpose Desiree potatoes

The beets are patient.

Ditto for the carrots.

À la prochaine!

RELATED LINKS

Factors influencing fruiting
Keeping fresh tomatoes as juicy as possible (remove stems and store upside down on a plate in the fridge)

Carmelised Blackberry Ice Cream Sundae

Being awash in blackberries, I am focused on using them in recipes.  Of course, fully ripe berries, with their heady, almost alcoholic flavour, are glorious simply sprinkled with a little sugar.  Though blackberries are a wonderful addition to various cake batters from shortbread to cobblers to coffee cake, the temperature chez nous has been in the upper nineties, therefore the oven stays unused for now. This sauce is a twist on a basic coulis, and it is an attractive one, as I adore all things caramel. The sauce also freezes well. However, what I appreciate most about it is that the fresh taste of blackberries remains intact as the berry coulis is added after the carmelised syrup is made.

Ingredients
(makes about 3/4 of a quart)

• Blackberries, fully ripe, 1 quart
• Sugar, 3 cups*
• Water, 2 cups*
• Lemon juice, freshly squeezed, several tablespoons
• Ice cream (I used vanilla)
• Fresh blackberries/frozen sauce for garnishing

*American measure, that is, 8 oz

Rinse berries.

Mash/crush them with a potato masher/blender/food processor/stick mixer.

Strain the pulp via a sieve or Foley mill.

You will have about two cups of puree.  Add lemon juice to taste. Reserve in the fridge.

Carmelising sugar is an interesting process, taking about one and a half hours.  A half a cup of water is added to the sugar in a spacious, heavy bottom saucepan.  Over medium low heat, the mixture is stirred from time to time.

In about forty-five minutes or so the water will evaporate. At first the mixture becomes thick.

Then it morphs into a lumpy, stiff mass.

Eventually it goes back to be being dry like the original sugar, but the texture is fluffy and powdery.

Finally it partially melts into soft lumps while turning golden. Be careful not to scorch it, adjusting the heat if necessary.

Take it off the heat.  Add the remaining one and a half cups of water and stir/whisk well.

Put the pot back on the heat until all the carmelised sugar is dissolved which takes about ten to fifteen minutes. The syrup will be a golden brown.

Check the chilled coulis if additional lemon juice is needed to brighten up the flavour.  Add it to the syrup. Chill well. The chilled sauce was a bit cloudy so I skimmed the top.

Once frozen, it's more like icy, gooey candy.

In a tall dessert dish/goblet/glass, layer some ice cream, then a few blackberries and sauce, another layer of ice cream, berries, and sauce, finishing with ice cream, sauce, berries, and a wodge of the frozen sauce.  If you want a less sweet, dryer presentation, use the sauce sparingly.  I didn't! This sundae was sublime--sweet, fruity, and cooling. 

The lozenge of intensely flavoured sherbert gleamed like a huge jewel.

The Calm One being quite fond of Ribena, a British fruit drink concentrate, suggested diluting the sauce to make a refreshing beverage which worked out well. The sauce can be frozen as ice cubes for more convenience -- just plop three cubes into a small glass of chilled water.

In the potager, the three blackberry bushes are putting out their first flush of berries.  The second flush will happen late summer.  This variety is thornless, so the ample harvest of giant berries is easily done.  If a gentle pull on the berry does not remove it from the bush, then that means it is not ripe enough. A ripe berry will not only be completely black and fragrant, but also each of its drupelets will be swollen and plump, touching each other. In addition to the berry-laden canes, there are several new canes which are the future fruit bearers for next season.  These need to be pruned about three feet from the ground.  Late winter, any side branches from these main canes will be trimmed to an one-foot length.

The first two canes on the left are new seasonal growth and will be fruit bearing next summer

They need to be watered deeply several times weekly, though I have never fertilised or staked them. I can't say I dutifully weed their beds either! Hence the care is minimal and in return you get an abundant, delicious harvest. However, like most fruits and veggies, they need loads of sunshine.

Our veterinary surgeon explained why Dayo's toe injury refused to heal.  Dayo's injured claw had needed to be completely clipped as it was no longer able to retract. As his new claw grew, it would retreat somewhere only to go to a different spot on another day. This back-and-forth motion essentially created holes in Dayo's paw!  His operation was a cross between a declawing and a partial amputation as only the last joint on his toe was removed.

He is recovering from the operation well and will most likely need to remain indoors for several weeks.

For a while, he would disappear for hours at a time, usually on the day when we needed to bring him to his doctor. One day, I decided to lure him out from wherever he was by opening noisily a can of tuna which along with butter is his favourite food.

We finally identified his hiding place!

À la prochaine! 

How to Try to Make Peach Melba...and how to propagate strawberries

Peaches are lovely fruit--friendly in a fuzzy way with every golden, flushed-with-red orb of juicy sweetness being beyond delicious.  When to pick peaches is almost as a heated debate as picking tomatoes.

Some say since harvested peaches will not produce any more sugar, they must be ripe, while others insist that they can be picked partially ripe and they will soften and be sweet.  Amazingly they are both right.   Sugar production is halted once picked.  However harvested peaches' acidity gradually lessens allowing the sugar already produced to be more pronounced.  Fully ripe peaches are great for eating out of hand, preferably over the kitchen sink as they are so juicy, while firm peaches are good for poaching and jams.

A Charentais melon sharing a basket with peaches

Decades ago when I was a young lass, I had to this day what was the best dinner of my life.  It was served to me on the porch of a restaurant in Woodstock, New York while a summer sunset over the mountains provided a gentle glow.  Though the entire meal was wonderful, the Peach Melba dessert was so scrumptious I still to this day have not found its match in perfection.  My hopes did rise when a Paris friend brought us to a well known brasserie close to his apartment near le jardin du Luxembourg.  He told us how the Polidor have customers who frequent the place so often that their own napkins are reserved for them.

As soon as I saw the canned sliced peaches suffocating in fluffy mounds of whipped cream pocked with spots of thin raspberry sauce, I knew the fabled Woodstock Peach Melba would retain its top place against all contenders.  I reluctantly turn around, expecting to see all the restaurant customers swooning in dismay at this travesty of a Peach Melba.  But no, no one but me noticed while our French friend nonchalantly shrugged off this horror.

Since our garden is producing both peaches and raspberries at the moment, and Picard down the street stocks an excellent vanilla ice cream, I decided to make Peach Melba.  It is a deceptively simple dessert which was made for Nellie Melba:  poached-in-syrup fresh peaches filled with vanilla ice cream and topped with fresh raspberry sauce.  I used Nigella Lawson's recipe.  

Sugar, lemon, peaches, and vanilla bean

My poached peaches were delicious but the texture was fibrous and the skins so difficult to remove that I, like the Polidor, sneakily suffocated the halves with ice cream as to hide their stressed state--at least I did use vanilla ice cream and not whipped cream!  The one served at the Woodstock restaurant was presented so simply, just a large peach half filled with a neat scoop of dense ice cream artfully topped with raspberry coulis.

Coulis:  liquidise raspberries, confectioner's sugar, and a bit of lemon juice, then strain.

Though my attempt was better than the Polidor's--but then again, any would be--I would not come back for seconds if this was restaurant fare.  However, I did thoroughly enjoy the melting ice cream intermingling with the raspberry coulis.

I reluctantly accepted that the quality of my peaches just did not cut the grade as this season in general was not conducive to good fruit harvests plus the peach tree had an infestation of mites early on which would explain the fibrous texture and difficult-to-remove skins.  Next season's harvest hopefully will be better.  It was the first time I poached fruit and I liked the technique, especially getting an intoxicating whiff of vanilla while I made up the poaching syrup.  If you do make Lawson's recipe, remember to use the best peaches possible.

Vanilla bean infusing in simmering poaching syrup

Growing strawberries takes a bit of know how to pull off well, but the effort is well worth it.  They, along with tomatoes, have the most pesticides on them of all supermarket produce.  Also, home-grown varieties' flavour are incomparable.  Now that I have successfully grown them, I am super focused on propagating my three varieties via runners.

One of the three is a continuously fruiting.  Though June bearing ones are fantastic and are presented as the ultimate in strawberry quality, nowadays there are excellent strains bearing well into the fall.  La Savoureuse de Willemse is a huge, fragrant, splendidly flavoured strawberry.  We have been eating about a pint of these weekly since the June bearers stopped fruiting a couple of months ago.

Strawberries start to put out runners in summer and rev up their production in late summer.  One runner can contain several baby plants.  Snip off the runner and gently tuck the baby plant root down in a prepared area. 

Runners cascading over the edge of a strawberry bed

If their bed is ready, I will make a transplant directly into its permanent location, if not which is the case this summer, I will transplant into shallow containers like recycled food trays, protecting them under horticultural fleece over the winter.  The setting out into their final destination can take place by end of September or be postponed until early spring.

RELATED POSTS

Transplanting strawberries
Freezing strawberries
Making strawberry jam
Glazed fresh strawberry pastry-free tartelettes
Uses for horticultural fleece

How to Harvest Charentais Melons and Grow Carrots...plus making velouté de carottes

Since we live in the Poitou Charente region of France, it's appropriate to grow succulent, fragrant Charentais melons which look like smoother skinned, small cantaloupes.   To check ripeness,  I smell the unattached end of the melon, often having to contort myself as not to break the vine, but nothing is more disappointing than a melon not bursting with ripe flavour.  It also needs to be flushed with gold and feel heavy.  Stopping watering around a week before harvesting may prevent melons splitting.  During the end of August, I walk and sniff around the melon patch because a split melon that is mostly ripe will fill the air with its heady fragrance.  If I note a split melon soon enough I will be able to eat it before the ants do.

When moving to France over a decade ago, the first dinner I was invited to had as its first course a slice of cantaloupe au nature, separated from its rind, cubed, and served on said rind.  Presenting melons this way emphasises their freshness.  Though melons  can be halved, seeds scooped out, and be eaten with a spoon, chunks have a satisfying texture and are a bit neater to eat.  First scrub the outside of the melon with a veggie brush under running water to prevent dirt and bacteria being transferred to the melon flesh.  Cut the seeded halves into slices, slip a knife between the rind and the flesh, and then slice in thick pieces and either serve on the rind or in a dish.  The Calm One eats way more fruit when it is not a chore for him to do.

Slice on the bottom is separated from its rind and cubed.

Luscious, juicy, golden chunks

Watering has been necessary all throughout August and doing it at twilight is a mellow time both Dayo and I enjoy.  He needs to make sure each and every time I drag out the yellow hose that it has not become a snake.  He is very careful about such matters.

Iris foliage, yellow hose, and snake handler Dayo lit up by the setting sun

Carrots have an infamous reputation in the veggie patch as being difficult to grow.  Baby or short, round carrots are a cinch, but if you want substantial carrots it gets a bit more demanding.  My soil is semi-conducive to carrot growing, so half the crop comes out looking like this:

While the other half come out like this:

And if I am really lucky, I get a carrot as intriguing in appearance as this:

About two and half years ago, when I first started to grow our produce, I left out root veggies because home-grown did not seem to be cost-effective as store-bought is so inexpensive, and I had the mistaken conception that the quality would not be that different than if I grew my own.  In addition, the soil was a little stony which would impede the growth of succulent roots.  Be rest assured, beets, potatoes, onions, and carrots grown in the garden are exceptionally flavourful--earthy with a touch of sweetness and worth the effort.

Once you decide what size root is best for your soil--I choose mid-long varieties--the three main problems with growing carrots is that their seed is small so it is difficult to space well, they are vulnerable to getting blitzed by carrot fly, and they take several weeks to become little plants making weeding difficult.

I usually plant two carrot crops, one in early spring and the other in late summer as they prefer cooler weather. For the fall/winter harvest, I choose varieties which can withstand some frost and can be stored in the ground as the soil here does not freeze deeply.  First I prepare the area by spading, removing weeds and as many stones as possible, and forking in compost, letting the bed settle down for a week or so before actually sowing.  Young plants don't take kindly to either an impacted soil or a very loose one.

Taking a large pinch of seeds, I slowly deposit them by rubbing them between my first two fingers and thumb as I go down the furrow--spacing is about four to five inches between rows in my block beds--that has been partially filled with sowing mix.  Using sowing mix will not turn magically a stony soil into the perfect one for growing carrots, but it will allow for a greater number of tiny seeds not to meet up with a pebble or a soil lump that would prevent it from starting the growing process.  Once that process is started, the roots may not form straight, but they will form.

Rake, carrot seed packet, and sowing mix.  Note how fluffy the sowing mix is compared to the soil.

I then sow some widely spaced large radish seeds down the rows and then cover up with a light dusting of sowing mix.  Radishes sprout quickly, marking the row and guiding weeding plus I get a few radishes to eat as I harvest them in several weeks, allowing plenty of room for the carrots to develop, usually about three to four months. Using the back of the rake, I tamp down the rows and water thoroughly with a light spray.  To encourage sprouting, I keep the bed moist, but not soaked.

Once the plants are about two inches high, I place horticultural fleece over the bed, securing it by tucking it under the tiles framing the bed.  The fleece forms a mechanical barrier against carrot fly preventing its depositing eggs which would become legions of  hungry munchers devastating crop yields.  You would not be aware of this underground devouring until harvesting.  There is at least one variety that is resistant to carrot fly, but there are so many delightful varieties that aren't.

Velouté in French cuisine means the addition of chicken broth and cream which lends a velvety richness.  This is a gorgeous soup in taste and looks. It gives me immense pleasure when all the veggies and herbs in a recipe come from my potager.  Potage after all is the French word for soup. 

Velouté de carottes

(6 servings)

• Carrots, 8 large, sliced about 1/4 inch thick
• Chicken broth, preferably homemade, 2 liters
• Cream, 500 ml
• Potatoes, 4 medium
• Celery, 1/4 cup or preferably lovage, 1/8 cup
• Onions, 2 medium, chopped
• Parsley, flat leaf, a few sprigs and extra for garnishing
• butter, 60 grams
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper
• Bacon, two slices for each serving
• French bread, two slices for each serving

Melt the butter in a soup pot and let the carrots, onions, and celery/lovage saute for about 15 minutes.  This step brings out the flavour and ensures a nice colour to the soup.  Then add the cubed potatoes and parsley, mixing well.

Pour in the chicken stock and simmer until all the veggies are tender, about 20 minutes. 

Using a stick mixer, blend until very smooth.  Add cream/seasoning and keep hot.  Fry up the bacon, reserve, and keep warm.  Pan fry slices of French bread in the bacon fat. For each serving, sprinkle crumbled bacon and some minced parsley and serve with a slice or two of fried bread.

Bon appétit!