Rhubarb, Strawberry, Maple & Lavender Agua Fresca

As summer has arrived officially via the solstice, let's celebrate with a refreshing agua fresca, a light, fruity beverage. Taking advantage of the still juicy rhubarb stalks along with some lavender in the garden, frozen strawberries/coulis, and astonishingly, enough maple syrup to sweeten more than adequately, I concocted a thirst-quenching drink with a sweet tang and a distinctive pink cloudiness which imparted just the right amount of body.

Gather a medium-sized, washed, trimmed-of-any-poisonous leaves rhubarb stalk, several large strawberries, either fresh or frozen, a few lavender buds, maple syrup, and 16 ounces/475 ml of cold water of which I keep a few bottles in the fridge during summer.

Any nicely coloured bits can be reserved for garnishing

To increase the zing, deepen the colour, and to have as a garnish, I used a good amount of frozen strawberry coulis (link to how to make it is at the end of this post) made from berries harvested the previous season. That incredible abundance is nicely complementing the meagre one at present. Though being frozen for nearly a year, their flavour is still tremendous.

Put the fresh (rinsed and hulled) or frozen strawberries, one-inch chunks of rhubarb, lavender buds, and water in a food processor or blender. Mix for a few minutes until everything is broken down; the texture will be far from smooth.

Pour the mixture into a fine-meshed sieve positioned over a bowl. Using a wooden spoon, work it until nearly dry.

If using coulis, add it along with the maple syrup to taste.

If suitably cold it can be quaffed down right now, but the flavours do intensify and commingle when kept overnight in the fridge.

Left over from making Chicken Pot Pie, some pastry dough once it was rolled out, well pricked, and baked in a hot oven for about ten minutes made just the right companion especially when topped with frozen coulis.

The melting strawberry ice oozed ever so wonderfully into the crevices of the crumbly pastry.

As much as I love the alluring taste of this agua fresca, I equally love its resembling the palest pink shantung silk flecked with purple and red.

In the garden the calla lily is the Queen of Cool!

Though I appreciate the vivid colour of the bougainvillea's bracts, I adore its true flower, a tiny, delicate star twinkling in a blazing sky.

Shasta daisies never fail to make me smile when I am in their company.

These daisies are a fast way of filling up the bare parts of a garden.

That's English lavender in the background, which is almost finished blooming

The second blooming flush by the super fragrant climber, Falstaff, has this pair of quartered-roses caressing each other's velvety petals.

Though the sky overhead provides all the blue anyone could want, I still love when it manages to make an appearance in the garden. Right now, that job rests completely on perennial geraniums.

The sun setting behind this anemone dahlia infuses it with a muted glow.

Coral bells may not consciously use their wiry stems to touch tenderly a lavender bloom on the other side of the path, but there's no harm in imagining they do.

With summer, come consistently high temperatures and as the potager faces south, I only can tend the garden with any amount of effort before ten o'clock and after eight o'clock. The rest of the time I can be found indoors sipping agua frescas!

The first tomatoes are coming in on the lower right corner!

À la prochaine!

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Hot Sandwich Wraps...and the twilight garden

If the Borscht Dumpling God decrees there will be a surplus of that nice soft dough made just with milk, flour, and salt, I'll stretch my culinary noodle so to speak and make some fresh pappardelle. However, one early evening saw my rolling that pliable mass into a circle which demurely asked to be left whole. Inspired by its shape, round and round I went in the kitchen gathering ingredients -- a few fresh sage leaves there, veggie oil here, and some eggs way over there. A mental image of a pan-fried sandwich wrap stuffed with speckled-with-sage scrambled eggs gradually came into focus.

For one 20 cm diameter wrap, thinly roll out some dough (mix 600 grams of plain, white flour, 325 ml of milk, and 1/2 tsp salt together and then knead about five to eight minutes until smooth which makes five pieces the size of baseballs, so a lot but they can be frozen or kept in the fridge for about a week) the size of a golf ball into a circle more or less -- any irregularities will not be noticed after it puffs up in hot oil.

Cover the bottom of a heavy skillet with an 1/8 inch (.3 cm) of oil and heat over moderate flame for a minute or two. Carefully ease the dough into the pan.

Let it fry for a couple of minutes or until it is covered with air bubbles and is nicely brown, and then flip it over. Reserve warm.

Rinse and chop a few fresh sage leaves. Pour off the excess oil in the skillet. Scramble some eggs beaten with the sage in what will still be a well oiled pan.

The Calm One replaced our spatula with one of my favorite colour, royal blue!

Blot it if so desired, put on a plate and arrange the eggs well inside one half of the wrap. Pick up the edge closest to the eggs and neatly tuck them within the first roll which needs to be nicely packed. Continue tightly rolling to the other side.

Cut into four pieces, their warmth comforted, their taste pleased, and their substance fulfilled.

As I gobbled down these using my hands, that fork is just for show!

Well fed, I returned to the garden to finish up the day's work and to take some photos in the twilight because such a setting shows a different side -- flower details are not washed out by abundant sunshine while the darker background makes their delicate outline be seen more clearly. The abelia, beloved by bees, is covered with tiny, sparkling flowers.

Their red sepals are pretty too!

The late season potato variety, desiree, which I had sowed just a mere two weeks ago, is flourishing in that lusty way happy plants have.

The potted bougainvillea is putting out its first flush of fabulous, pink bracts. Their actual flowers are tiny and inconspicuous.

These lilies are planted close to the front pathway which makes it easy to get a whiff of their heady fragrance when we are coming and going.

The perennial day lilies took several seasons after their planting to feel at home. Though a flower lasts just a day, they put out an abundance of them successively.

The shasta daisies are wonderful perennials to have in the garden; they are beautiful, generous, and flower all the way into autumn.

Hydrangeas, like peonies, usually don't do well in our long, dry, hot season, but I appreciate whatever they do.

Think of tucking a few perennial herbs here and there because they add so much to both the kitchen and garden. When picked fresh they perk up pasta, eggs, soups, stews, spreads, quick and yeast bread batters in the way only they can. Additionally they are great for garnishing. Outdoors they give both unusual foliage and flowers. Fennel which is now about six feet tall and whose feathery foliage is past its prime is putting out flower caps. By autumn they will be transformed into seed clusters. The young green seed tastes like dill seed while the mature grey-brown ones resemble caraway.

David Austin's Falstaff is revving up for another bunch of blooms.

That purple glow in the left background is lavender

I tried to photograph a murmuration of starlings who were flying to a couple of spruce trees for roosting, but instead I accidentally got this appealing shot of the mellow setting sun -- the sky in the upper half is a warm, pink-tinged gray while the lower half is tinted a cool blue-gray.

À la prochaine!

Pasta & Fresh Peas...and already buttered toast

Growing sweet green peas is always a challenge chez nous since we often do not have a long enough bout of cool weather for them to do really well. The ones planted this past February have produced a middling harvest, but the lack of abundance is more than compensated by the remarkable taste of what I consider to be more akin to green candy than a lowly veggie especially when it's eaten raw right out of the pod. Super fresh peas only need about a two/three minute dunk in simmering water. They are exceptional in form and substance when they come out of their beauty bath. If cooked longer, they will lose the very vibrancy which makes eating them so special.

Choose your pasta and put in boiling water.  Don't forget to add a handful or so of shelled, rinsed, fresh peas about a few minutes before the pasta is done.

With a few minutes more of cooking time, pasta and the just added peas will both be done

Saute some minced garlic and thyme in olive oil. Add several tablespoons of pasta cooking water. 

Since last season's garlic harvest is depleted, I have started pulling the present planting and using the bulbs without any curing. Their pleasing taste is closer to green onion than garlic.

By mid-July, they will have formed a cluster of papery, separate cloves instead of the onion-like bulb at present

Toss the slightly underdone, drained pasta into the skillet and cook the sauce down until all is coated well. Grind some black pepper over it and salt to taste.

Grated Parmesan could be sprinkled on but I am usually scoffing this simple but excellent dish before I even realize that there is cheese in the fridge. If there is some fleur de sel on the table, I do manage to dust my serving with that.

Some may say, too many peas! I say, not enough!

As with green beans, it is necessary to keeping picking pea pods every other day to encourage a bigger harvest. During the several weeks of harvesting, I have no problem fitting them into our menu.

Peas, potatoes (also from our potager) au gratin, and pot roast of lamb

Machines purpose built for just toasting bread are usually hard to keep crumb free while the bread needs not to be too thick or too thin. By the time it comes to the table, it is no longer hot enough to melt butter whose application then grates the toast causing an avalanche of crumbs. I do bake slathered-with-garlic-and-olive-oil whole slices of sourdough rye for topping our French Onion Soup and saute bread in bacon fat. However, sometimes you just want hot, buttered toast.

Using room-temperature butter, apply a thin film to both sides of the slice. Place in a heavy-bottomed skillet and grill at moderate heat for a couple of minutes or until it is toasted to your preference. Flip over and repeat.

This pan-grilled bread has a soft inside and a crunchy crust. And it is already buttered!

We like accompanying this kind of 'toast' with homemade soups. Flavoured versions (herbs, cayenne, cinnamon, vanilla extract, etc.) can be substituted, but usually I go plain because French butter is fabulous by itself. Of course, instead of the yellow yummy stuff, any tasty oil can be used, like olive or walnut or sesame.

Carrot soup and its best friend, grilled sourdough rye

English lavender, which bees adore, is in full bloom.

Two strawberry beds in front; rhubarb, raspberries & a corner of a tomato bed in the background

That's a bee, right? I don't want to be waxing poetic over hornets!

Oh yes, the early summer garden is humming along. Foreground: fennel, sage, tub of blueberries; mid-ground: staked tomatoes, two potato beds -- the yellowed foliage is a soon-to-be-harvested midseason variety; background: laurel nursery bed, irises, grapes, blackberries, red currants, and small peach tree. Incidentally, that's a duvet cover in the upper right and not some immense, tropical flowering plant intent on taking over the garden.

The early variety of the two potted -- to provide the acid soil they need as the pH of our soil is neutral -- blueberry plants already are putting out a few plump, sweet berries.

À la prochaine!

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RELATED LINKS
Giulietta Carrelli, her courageous toast 'palace', and how the artisan toast craze started