This is the first “garden” salad I’ve made this year: beet, scallion, and carrot thinnings, parsley, and lettuce all grown on my fire escape. (I boiled the beets for just a few minutes to soften them.)
Sugar snap peas, and one large, early strawberry from my plot at Hart Street garden.
So much salad!
Cherry tomato plant in homemade SIP.
After seeing how well plants growing out of soda bottle SIPs did, I decided to try it out in a 5-gallon bucket. A SIP (sub-irrigated planter) is a fancy name for watering from the bottom up, sometimes called “self” watering. While it won’t really water itself, it doesn’t need to be watered nearly as often as plants in pots that get water from the traditional top-down, watering-can way.
This was so successful that this cherry tomato outgrew all the space I had in my window. Finally it started to look scraggly, the stems all bent in its confined space, and I had to let it go to the compost heap (this was early March, when it was too cold to transplant). Next time I try growing a tomato plant indoors, I’ll remember to select a dwarf variety instead of this seed harvested from the sprawlers from last years garden. Since the planter was a success, so I thought I’d post here how I made it.
Step one, find bucket or container, and a tube or hose a little longer than the height of the container you’ll be using (I got a drinking-water-safe hose and cut it into sections, since I was making more than one).
Step two, make a water reservoir with some space for dirt to hang out. I cut plastic milk jugs so that water could flow freely beneath them, but most of the dirt would rest on top, save for the spaces between which would allow just enough dirt to wick water upward to the plants.
Step three, make an overflow hole in the bucket for drainage, about the level of the top of the reservoir container.
Step three, assemble it all. Feed the watering tube into the reservoir.
Add dirt, water, and plants. Let grow! You can see in the photo that I covered the hose opening with tin foil, to keep out flies or anything else that might like standing water.
If I plant very small seedlings in a large bucket like this, I water from the top as well as filling the reservoir until they grow large enough to find the water with their roots. When this happens you’ll be able to tell, because they’ll really take off.
Hyssop flower seedlings.
Okra seedlings.
Peppers: jalapenos, pimentos, and Thai.
Tarragon sprouting.
Dill is as easy to grow inside as it is outside. I started this plant from seed back in January, and it’s flourishing now. Every time I cut it to harvest, fresh sprigs appear. Then today when I was outside in the garden I found, growing among the spring weeds – so – much – dill!
Last year my dill plants went to seed, bursting with large seed clusters that formed balls, kind of like dandelion seeds. Although I saved a lot of dill seeds, many fell to the ground and have sprung up now. I won’t have to plant any more dill this year, and I can’t wait to make pickles! But today, I was craving cheddar dill biscuits.
Cheddar Dill Biscuits – adapted from Gourmet, April 2005
12 Biscuits
Preheat oven to 400°F. Grate cheese and chop dill, set aside. Combine dry ingredients: flour, baking powder, sugar, baking soda, and salt.
Cut five tablespoons of butter from a stick. Unwrap it completely, and cut into small pieces. The way I do this is to cut length wise once; turn and cut lengthwise again so you have four mini sticks of butter. Now, holding the sticks together, chop in thick slices. Toss into the dry ingredients and incorporate roughly with a dough blender (or pulse in a food processor). As soon as the butter breaks down into small bits with the flour and looks like coarse meal, stop mixing! Add cheddar and dill, turn in gently.
Stir milk into yogurt until smooth, then add to the dough and mix just enough to bring the dough together. Drop onto an un-greased baking sheet (I always line it with parchment, to save washing the pan) in around 1/4 cup mounds. Bake until the edges turn golden, about 12 to 15 minutes.
These make a nice addition to a simple lunch of soup and salad — I also adore them with scrambled eggs, for breakfast.
After trying this great pizza dough recipe from 101 Cookbooks, I have been making pizza all week. This recipe makes enough for six cookie-sheet sized pizzas. Yes, six. Today I was tired, and had already used up the sauce and mozzarella I’d got for pizza earlier in the week. But – I still had that wonderful dough in my fridge, and I was starving.
Meanwhile, over in the windowsill, my first try at growing micro greens has gone well. Maybe too well. I over-planted with lettuce, radishes, and carrots all in a shoebox-size plastic container (what was I thinking?). Next time I’ll stick to micro-greens and lettuce, and let the root vegetables grow outside.
Besides these micro-greens I didn’t think I had much else. In the fridge was some bland cheddar cheese I’d been trying to use up, and on my counter a few really, really hard granny smith apples from the grocery store (I always regret buying apples unless I get them from the market).
But — all this combined to make a wonderfully delicious pizza. The cheddar came alive with flavor, the apples softened and mellowed to a lovely sweetness with a nice tart edge, and the micro-greens added a fresh, peppery zing.
I sprinkled the dough with a little olive oil and some maldon sea salt. Then I covered it with the cheddar (grated) and very thinly sliced apple pieces. It baked for around 12 minutes (ovens vary more than you might think) and finished it by sprinkling freshly cut micro greens on top.
Now that I know pizza dough can bring just about any meal together, I may make up some more right now to freeze, for those weeks when I don’t have time to cook.
I finally got to harvest my windowsill arugula. It had been thriving in some self-watering soda bottle SIPS (see how I made them here) for the past six weeks, but I wanted to pick it while it was still young. I’d used a few cuttings here and there, but today I wanted to make a salad with arugula as the base.
When I planted them I aimed for two seeds per pot, in a dozen small jiffy peat pots. The seeds are tiny and stuck to my fingers, and sometimes a few more fell in. One to four sprouts emerged from each little pot. Five weeks ago they looked like this.
When the sprouts started out growing the egg carton tray, I divided the tray in four 2-liter soda bottle SIP planters. I noticed the sprouts that were growing only one or two to a pot were larger than the ones crowded three or four to a pot at this stage.
After a few more weeks in the soda bottle planters, the arugula with more space to grow had gotten visibly bigger than the ones that were crowded. So, it seems 4-5 arugula plants per 2-liter bottle was a good growing space for them.
These 4 containers of arugula, when harvested, made 1 ounce, or enough for a medium size salad for one.
This means if I wanted to eat a salad like this three times a week, I’d need roughly 18 square feet; if I wanted a salad a day I’d need about the area of my bedroom (8×10) in which to grow only salad greens. While too much for an apartment dweller to fit on a windowsill, if one had access to a backyard or rooftop — on the other hand, what if you prepared meals for other people who ate salad too?
Okay, so it’s a little unfeasible to make this a routine, but it was a really fun way to make a special salad, and I got to enjoy bright green leaves in my window during the winter. It’s certainly a great way to grow enough arugula to mix in with store-bought greens, and next time I will plant smaller amounts of, say five seeds at intervals, so I can have a small amount on hand.
Arugula Salad with Fennel
Dressing adapted from Bon Appetit, March 2006; Idea for including Parmesan and fennel from Chow.com message boards.
Rinse arugula. Cut a portion of fennel bulb very thinly (I only used about 1/4 of a bulb). When sliced extra thin, the licoricy flavor of the fennel really shines.
Mix olive oil and lemon juice in a ratio of about two to one, to taste, guessing is okay. Grate in a little lemon rind and add salt and pepper. Drizzle over arugula and fennel.
Shave Parmesan on top, and dig in.
There is something about “fresh picked” that just sounds like hype. It’s not.
Poppy and juicy pomegranate seeds, with a little orange zest, made a delicious addition to my favorite basic muffin recipe.
I used 3 tablespoons of poppy seeds because I really like them, but this is really a matter of taste; ½ cup pomegranate seeds (about half a small pomegranate), and the zest of one orange.
Pomegranates are so pretty, their skin covered in little dots of red over mottled pink and peach. Even with a few brown spots this one still looks good, about the size and shape of a lumpy orange. To start removing the seeds, I cut it in half along the equator.
It reminds me of the inside of a kaleidoscope like this. I’ve tried several methods of seeding a pomegranate, but the only thing that works for me is pulling it apart with my hands, as though I’m turning the half inside out.
I got lucky with this one, it remained intact and reversed with only a few tears, to show the five sections of seeds, separated by white membrane.
I held it over a colander and nudged the seeds from their nooks and crannies with my fingers. Then I rinsed off all the stray bits of white pith and picked out any brownish ones.
The seeds remind me of blunt teeth, or fish eggs.
There are so many fun things to do with pomegranate, but nothing needs to be done, they are like candy eaten fresh.
After my recent experiment with rye flour in muffins last week, I’m craving the taste of rye again — which is good because I now have a whole bag of Bob’s Red Mill dark rye flour in my cupboard. It’s a snowy (sort of) Saturday here in Brooklyn and I wanted pancakes, rye pancakes. This simple recipe made 5 small but very thick, fluffy, and hearty pancakes.
If your baking powder has aluminum in it (as the stuff I had been using until recently did) you may want to read David Leibovitz’s great article about why seeking out aluminum free baking powder – and keeping it fresh – is worth the trouble.
Rye Pancakes
Adapted from Food.com recipe #182315
Combine the flours, baking powder, and salt in a large bowl.
Beat the egg in a medium bowl, then whisk in the melted butter and milk.
Stir wet ingredients into dry until just mixed.
Drop scoops of around 1/3 cup onto a hot, oiled skillet and cook a few minutes, until bubbles start to rise (because these were thick there weren’t many bubbles) or browned on one side, then flip and brown the other side. While the pancakes cook, start melting butter for this improv lemon butter sauce.
The light lemon and sugar flavors work really well on these hearty rye pancakes — and the apples = delicious.
Lemon Butter Sauce with Apples
Melt the butter over low heat. Mix in the chopped apple pieces and let them heat up. Then stir in the sugar. Let it cook a few minutes, then squeeze in the lemon juice. It started smelling really delicious at this point.
I let it cook down a little bit, just a few minutes more while I finished up the last of the pancakes in the frying pan. The sauce was just starting to show a light browning when I considered it done and poured it over the pancakes. Yum!
This is my favorite mustard so far – again so simple to make and a wonderful flavor. The only real work of making mustard is the patience it takes to let it sit — a day or two as the seeds begin to ferment, and then a day after blending to let the flavors settle in a bit.
Spicy Stout Mustard
Adapted from Saveur.com
Mix everything together in a bowl, cover loosely, and let stand at room temperature for at least 24 hours, up to 2 days.
Pour into a blender (or food processor) and blend until mustard becomes a spreadable consistency.
Can be used immediately, but it’s very strong. I liked the flavor best after a day at rest in the refrigerator. Store tightly covered and refrigerated; good for up to 6 months.
So delicious on pretzels! I put mine on Martin’s pretzels because I didn’t feel up to trying my hand at homemade pretzels – I’ll save that for another day.
