FoodNuts!

Archive for the ‘Grow your own’ Category

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Those of you that live in the sunny, warm land to my south are lucky in some ways that I am envious of. One of those are things citrus. When I lived there I loved picking lemons, oranges and grapefruit. There seemed to be at least one of these at, neglected, every house. Many of the fruits of these excursions ended up in screwdrivers, greyhounds (or salty dogs), and margaritas. Ahh, if only it was a bit more temperate of a family rather than so stubbornly sub-tropical. I still can get them, but there is something missing when one must purchase rather than enjoy the thrill of the hunt.

Along with the aforementioned gifts from the Goddess Pomona, I also have a love of the mandarin. Its flavor is more subtle and its intoxicating aroma is a large part of its taste (like the lime). But sometimes even the best of things can get better.

Enter the Shasta Gold mandarin, one of the newest members of the family.  I was at a fruit stand the other day and they caught my eye. Deeply orange, large with a rough-appearing hide, it looked sort of like a tangelo without the nipple. Since I am given to exploring novelties of the food world, I picked up about a half a dozen. They’re fantastic.  Easy to peel (and the peel is thin), seedless and very juicy. They have the aroma that I expected of a mandarin, and a wee bit tarter than the Murcott.

Apparently, it was developed in 2002 at the University of California Riverside. It is a hybrid of the Temple tangor (a tangerine/orange hybrid) and Dancy and Encore mandarins. So, as far as things go, it’s a real newcomer. If I still lived in the sunny, warm land of my origin, I would definitely plant at least one in my yard. But, then again, if I lived there I would be getting my apples and pears by proxy. Such a conundrum!

Anyway, my fellow foodnuts, give it a go. Perhaps one day it will be as common as other citrus are in the land of Helios. Then your children might have memories of “Shasta Gold” hunts to make an as-yet-unnamed cocktail.

Well, moving from a city to a decent chunk of land, one is at first completely overwhelmed with what to do with it all. Thats the first, maybe second year, but you get over it. You start to view things in a different way, a way different from how you thought when you lived in cities, where you were born and raised and developed your sensibilities. And you start to think of all that you can do that you never thought of before.

So, two years ago, while clearing some of the land, I decided to plant a small orchard of plum and pluot trees (pluots are an hybrid of the plum and apricot). I already have an Italian plum, so I wanted to expand it out, so to speak. I planted 6 trees (varieties are Shiro, Flavor Supreme, Flavor King, Santa Rosa, Brooks and Satsuma), a good range of colors, flavors and ripening times. They are now two years in the ground, and should start to produce in quantity this year. I added to the plum orchard this year with the addition of plum cherries (another hybrid, apparently they grow in cluster throws like a cherry, but are larger and taste more like a plum. varieties are Sprite and Delight). All of these are common to each other in pollination, so the bees will have no problem helping me with a crop.

Last year, I continued to expand the concept, and this time it was pears. I planted 6 pears (Bartlett, Red Bartlett, Anjou, Red Anjou, Seckel and Bosc) Hopefully, I get some crop off of them this year, as they usually take 2-3 years to produce after planting.

This year, its apples. Unlike plums and pears, choosing apples can be very overwhelming, as there are thousands of cultivators. When I started to select varieties for planting, I wanted to give up and just go and buy whatever the local nursery had. But I persevered and decided to plant old varieties, varieties that were popular in the past, yet are not “commercially viable” today. Some I selected go back to the 16th century in England and France.

It gets even better. I found a commercial nursery in my area that was selling 5 year old saplings for $15.00. That’s an incredible savings when you consider that most retail nurseries charge anywhere from $40.00-$50.00 per tree! I bought 11 apple trees for under $200.00! And they are very established and healthy! The varieties are Chehalis, Arkansas Black, Honey Crisp, Cox’s Orange Pippin, Gravenstein, Spitzburgen, Whitney Crab Apple, Bramley Seedling, Enterprise, Macoun, Fameuse and Wolf River. This is a great start to a “Heritage” apple orchard. They even had a couple of European and Asian pears that are hard to find, but that may be for next year.

I haven’t posted in awhile, so I thought I would bring you up to date on whats new. I have also been on a program of “Mortification of the Flesh”, in other words, a diet. I am getting down to the weight I consider ideal, so, obviously, I have not been expermenting too much in the larder/kitchen/scullery. Don’t worry, I’ll get back to it in due time.

Off again to the local meat cutter (Ward’s Meats and it’s just that: you buy an animal from the farmer, the butcher kills it, and off it goes to a local meat cutter for cutting and packing. Our cutter is Ward). This time the goal of the journey is beef bones, both for us (consommé) and the dogs (chewing and burying). Oh, and for sausage casings (I’ve yet to attempt to make these on my own. It’s a project for the future). However, this discussion will focus on neither of these.

In our lives, we try to get closer to the source of our food. Not only is it better for you and you know all about it, but you can get things that normally you would pay for in the store for free (trading homemade preserves for things you want really does work) I like to make beef broth, consommé and stock, but to do this I need a lot of good beef bones. You can’t get these at the local grocery store, and butcher shops are getting to be few and far between. So, since the butcher and the cutter end up with an awful lot of them (and offal) and they just get sent to the rendering plant anyway, I intercept them at the cutter. Normally, we don’t pay anything for them, and they’ll give you more than you can take. We got some bones, and he also gave us a complete ox tail, sectioned, that a customer didn’t take. Ward just wanted it out of his freezer.

Once home, I got to work on Ox tail soup. I thawed them, opened them up and rinsed them off.

That’s them. So, now that we are at the starting point of this recipe, what shall we do? Let’s start, I say!

Ingredients:

21/2 pounds oxtail, cut and trimmed

½ cup unsifted flour plus 2 Tablespoons

2 Tablespoons beef drippings or vegetable oil

2 medium yellow onions, peeled and minced

6 cups of water and 1 pint bouillon

2 Tablespoons tomato paste

2 teaspoons salt1/4 teaspoon pepper

1 bay leaf

½ teaspoon thyme

3 cloves

2 sprigs of parsley

2 medium carrots, peeled and diced

1 stalk celery, diced

1/3 cup sherry or port wine

Dredge the oxtails in ½ cup flour:

Once dredged, brown in drippings. You will need a large, heavy-bottomed stockpot for this:

Drain on paper towels after browning. Add onions to oil, turn up heat to medium and sauté till golden, but not burnt. Sprinkle in remaining flour, mix well and brown lightly.

Slowly add the water and bouillon, stir in tomato paste, salt and pepper;

Place bay leaf, thyme, cloves and parsley in a bouquet garni and add to pot.

Return the oxtail to the pot, cover, and let simmer for 3 hours until the meat is tender.

Remove bouquet garni. Remove meat and separate from the bones, cut to bite size and add back to the pot. Add carrots and celery.

Cover and simmer till carrots are tender, about 15 minutes. Add wine when tender.

I often wondered why this dish exists. There is a high bone to meat ratio, and its the tail. After eating it, I now know why. It has an incredible beefy flavor, and the texture is like tender rib steak. A wonderful soup, it went very well with a cold, rainy winter day in the northwest.