Garden Kitchen

Fresh green peas

(Photo LOF - at last new fresh peas)
This is how we cook peas.

Use very fresh green peas (best from the garden) freshness is to peas -what bubbles are to champagne.
The best way to cook pea is à l'étouffé (literally smothered). Use a pot with a lid, a clay cooking pot is good but any one will do. In the bottom of the pot put a mattress of lettuce "chiffonade" (roll the lettuce leaves all together like a cigar and slice in thin strips).Choose a slightly bitter lettuce (4 Saisons or Reine de Mai). Put your shelled peas on top.
No salt , no oil - the water from the lettuce will be enough.
Put it on low low heat. Let cook for 10 minutes from the time it starts to boil. Its more heating than cooking - thats why it takes 10 minutes.
You can add a branch of peppermint 2 minutes before its done.
When its done  lean over the pot and breath in deeply. Irresistable.
Serve with a few petals of salted butter from the Açores (or equivalent). Thats it. 
(Photo LOF - green peas just before you put the lid on)

Its incredibly good.
So when you go back for a second harvest of green peas add a slice of chorizo per person inbetween te lettuce and the peas, chorizo from Barrancos.
Not too much, just enough to remind you that peas like pork. 
At  LOF, the chiffonade replaces the heart of lettuce that my grandmother used and avoids the crunchy bits and the miserable looking cooked stem. 
Pepper or not pepper its up to you.

(Photo LOF - buttered green peas)

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Artichokes - Violet de Provence

(Photo LOF - Violets de Provence artichokes wondering what could have happened to their friend who left at 11:45)

How to describe the pleasure of eating the first artichokes of the season, fresh from the garden, cooked in white wine. Is it possible? Have we reached the limit of communication ?
Not to be beaten I will describe it to you, because this experience can be reproduced ! yes !

(Photo LOF - Violets de Provence Artichokes cooked in white wine)

Its important to understand that its April - the first warm days of the season at noon, full of light, blue sky where everyone looks for a little shade to sit and look at the countryside with a cool drink. 
We don't saunter in the garden but quickly pick a few little violet artichokes, peel them as if they were apples and cut them in half.
Toss them in a pot with about 2cm of dry white wine, 2 cloves of garlic, a sprinkle of salt and a tbsp of olive oil.
Cook for 6-7 minutes so that they still have a little crunch.
Let cool.
Go ahead.
Thats really something !
So you've just discovered that if there is a limit in being able to describe it there is no limit in being able to do it.

(Photo LOF - Artichokes)

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Young broad beans in the pod

 
(Photo LOF - with your apéritif, young broad beans in the pod with oregano)
Pick brand new broad beans, about the size of green beans.
Steam them in their pods for 7 minutes with oregano.
Once on  the serving dish - a dash of olive oil.

Thats it !

Its good - its incredible. The young broad beans are just a bit bitter, yet sweet. The oregano adds an alentejo touch. 
 
A glass of young white wine and voila an evening thats starts well.

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Cod style Phillipe II

(Photo LOF - Bacalhau (salted cod, poached)
Is this Philippe II the king of Spain who invaded portugal in 1580 ? 
The bacahau is seasoned with parsley and not with the traditional coriander (a clue).

Steam the potatoes, they're important for the texture. Cook the onions in the frying pan on low heat to start with then 10 minutes later turn up the heat to give them a bit of colour. The  de-salted cod should be poached 10 minutes, drained then separated with a fork into small pieces.

Put all three ingredients in a deep frying pan , just to give them a bit colour.

A few minutes before serving add , chopped pparsley and a dash of olive oil.

So a recipe like this requires perfectly de-salted cod, a well cooked onion - the parsley does adiscreet but efficient job - you will probably ask for more.

Naturally when you get up from the table, you realize that Newton who believed that gravity was universal for a constant - was wrong. All portuguese physicists know that gravity increases in the same place proportionnally to the amount of bacalhau squared -  this is true with any recipe and all other factors being equal except the red wine.
(Photo LOF - Bacalhau Philippe II : don't forget the parsley)

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Limequat and smoked fish

(Photo LOF -  Lakeland Limequat - Bachès - orangeraie LOF n° 26)

Kumquats (Fortunella named after Robert Fortune who imported them to Europe) are often grown in pots on sunny balconies because they are small, resist freezing temperatures and produce fruit 6 months of the year (novembre – avril).

Besides using kumquats as decoration, recipes tend to be limited to kumquat vinager  (leave a few kumquats for 1 month in white wine vinager, it is surprizingly good with a spinach salad or in mayonnaise with crab or hollandaise sauce) and jams or compotes.

So make the giant leap to - limequats.
Of a lime father and a round japanese kumquat mother our limequat was born in Florida 100 years ago with the flavour of limes and the cold hardiness of kumquats.
(Photo LOF - Lakeland Limequat)

Everything about the limequat is good : not too strong, not too sour, fruity flavour, a sweet peel... on smoked fish, in  tagines,  in whitefish papillottes, sangrias....

If you don't have them growing in your garden you may have difficult time finding them . Why? Who knows - a lime lobby?  You will just have to plant one. The Lakeland variety is a good choice for the quality of its fruit.

(Photo LOF - Smoked salmon with limequats)

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Water with Pomelo and Thyme

(Photo LOF - water with yellow grapefruit and thyme)

Spring Cocktails 2005 in New-York they are working on drinks that are « less alcoholic and more casual and appropriate to outdoor drinking » – todays flavours? hibiscus, lavander and thyme.

The following recipe requires a real pomelo not a grapefruit. 
The pomelo is yellow and more aromatic than a grapefruit.
You use ½ pomelo cut in 4 for 75 cl of water.Let it sit for at least 4 hours in the refrigerator with a branch of dryed thyme.
Water with pomelo and thyme is a light water, good with salads, new vegetables, ham with melon , the joys of the first warm days. 

Its best when you are really thirsty; just back from the garden : drink and you cross a universe of images and perfumes.
Now, whether drinking pomelo water fights somnolence at the end of a meal, our gourmandotests show that YES  - especially compared to wine from Evora.
(Photo LOF - Citrus grandis "Thai Chandler" Bachès LOF n°55)

Pamplemousse in French = Pomelo in English
Pomelo in French = Grapefruit in English

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Pears with ginger

 
(Photo LOF - Pears with ginger)
There are as many recipes as there are cooks.
Pears and ginger are good friends.
Miramakes pears in ginger syrup. She uses lots of ginger - it more like ginger with pears.

At LOF we like pears confit with ginger,just a little sugar , maple syrup works well and a few slices of ginger root. Let it marinate in the refrigerator for 4 hours.
When will we have our first ginger from the garden - soon.
(Photo LOF - Sprouting ginger root)

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Deviled eggs with chervil

(Photo LOF - finely chopped chervil)

Finely chop herbs with scissors in a glass or bowl. Scissors cut, they don't hash, grind nor tear.
The chopped herbs keep all of there juice and so all of their flavour. They're happy (almost).

Imagine you are a bunch of chervil, you are someone sensitive, subtle, full of character, delicate.
You like to be picked early in the morning from your partly shady home.
Crunched, hashed, mashed, ground or torn - NO ! 
You're perfect, just like that, with a short hair cut - a good trim off the top. (Photo LOF - Chervil)

Deviled eggs with chervil : Hard boil your eggs, cool them. Mix a fair amount of Dijon mustard in your mayonnaise (chervil has quite a character) before mixing it with the egg yolks and chopped chervil, use a fork. Fill the egg whites.

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Mesclun

(Photo LOF : don't use garlic with mesclun)

The question is : was Mesclun  (mesclun = mixture) invented by seed companies to get rid of the rest of their seeds? Or is it an ancient salad created by monks from Nice that couldn't grow a full row of lettuce? or an italian import ?
Marc Meneau puts it in the category of "new born" salades and serves it with a vinagrette with balsamic vinegar, fresh coriander and zests of grapefruit confit (candied grapefruit peel).

A few opinions :
- a good mesclun is made with young salad leaves.
- a good mesclun has different textured leaves, that are crunchy - cressonnette du Maroc is crunchy even young,  purslane, mizuna  or bucks horn plantain , "la frisée" with is a type of curly chicory… or ice plant are all good.
- a good mesclun should have a touch of bitterness, wild rocket, garden rocket, dandelion leaves or trevise from italy…
- there are no flowers in mesclun, its a mix but not a bouquet
- at LOF we don't like young spinach leaves in the mesclun (or in any salad : tasteless vegetable blotting paper)

Is mesclun like truth ? Does a perfect, universal, eternal mesclun existe ?
Is mesclun perpetually changing? Is it - to each his own?
Mesclun generally has lettuce (including loose leaf lettuce Lactuca sativa var. crispa), chicory, scarole chicory, and aromatics like rocket and chervil.  Its worth working on the aromatic elements.
Mesclun with basil, mint or dill - voila technological innovations that go well with almost anything from mashed potatoes to cold meats.

How to grow mesclun : mix before or after it sprouts ?
Before: sow a mixture and cut it as soon as its 7cm high. Mix you own seeds or by a mixture Delbard's is well done. 
After : make your own mix with young plants from the cold frames before they are planted out. Heres how to play on the grand piano of salads : sow 15-20 rows of different varieties and compose your mesclun according to what you are serving.

(Photo LOF - mesclun)

The dressing : Like Madame de Pompadour - when the dress is sophisticated no need to add jewelry and a complicated coiffure. No garlic, no mustard. 

(Photo LOF - The grand piano)

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How to extract juice from a lemon

(Photo LOF - lemon)
Sweetness is to lemon juice what experience is to humans - a question of time.

Young, thick skinned and greenish, the young lemon has little juice that is very sour, as it gets older its juice becomes fruity, fuller flavoured and its peel - smooth and thin.
A good lemon (well watered tree, on the sunny side, picked when ripe) should spend 2 weeks in the fruit basket before you can expect the best juice.

The Meyer variety which is quite common(smooth peel, thin, a touch orange) is the least sour.The most common is the Eureka lemon.
(Photo LOF - stab the end of the lemon with a fork)
To juice a lemon, stab the end with a fork 3 times -  the end where the stem was not attached, - where there is a sort of belly button. Never stab just anywhere or in the middle of the stomach or with just anything.

The prongs on your fork follow the curve of your lemon, go ahead - push.

Remove the fork and press the lemon. Eureka  - juice with no seeds. Easy!

This method has been approved by the association against lemon torture. It lets you extract the juice from a lemon without seeds or getting your hands sticky and you can keep the rest of the lemon for a few days in the refrigerator.
(Photo LOF - The fork "you'll see she's going to squeeze you now , it tickles" - The lemon "ouch")

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