by Graham Kerr
Phosphorus (P): provides cell division and tissue development; good sources are mushroom compost, rock phosphate, and bonemeal.
Planting: how deeply to plant the seed and at what time; how much space to give the germinated seed so that it can attain its proper size without crowding.
Pollination: moving pollen from one plant to another to enable fertilization.
Potassium (K): promotes plant metabolism; found in wood ash, sawdust, granite dust, cocoa shell dust, and fish emulsion.
Rhizobia: bacteria found in legume roots that helps convert atmospheric nitrogen, enhancing plant growth.
Rotation: a means to avoid the buildup of pests, diseases, and so on, that are attracted to certain plant families by periodically changing location. Also, some plants take from the soil, some return to the soil; rotating crops improves the soil quality overall.
Sets: usually purchased in small bundles, these are immature plants, usually onions.
Side dressing: fertilizer sprinkled to one side of a plant and scratched lightly into the surface; liquids can be sprayed (such as fish fertilizer and compost tea).
Soil/fertile: many plant nutrients, well-drained and aerated.
Thinning: fine seeds (like lettuce and carrots) are removed when young to provide space and nutrition to those remaining.
Tilth: soil surface that is fine, crumbles easily, but is not dry; very suitable for seed germination.
Warm season: plants that need 75ºF for minimum growth; soil temperature between 65ºF and 80ºF.
Whitefly: a tiny white moth-like insect that hides in colonies under green leaves, which turn yellow and wilt; use orange sticky card traps or spray with neem oil.
Width: air circulation is a necessity; don’t risk overcrowding; allow enough space for plant to reach full maturity.
Yellows: a range of diseases that cause stunted growth and yellow leaves.
Zones: temperature range best suited to plant, based on first and last frost predictions.
Apple
There is a well-established myth that in the midst of the Garden of Eden, there was an apple tree, and that this may have been the socalled forbidden fruit. While I know of nobody who can prove or disprove this (since the fruit itself is never described), it is unlikely that Adam and Eve would have made it in a climate that featured up to 1,000 “chilling hours” without clothing!
I was delighted to learn that our plot of land is a more-or-less (nothing is perfect) ideal spot on which to grow a small orchard of highly prized apples. And so, with the guidance of the experts from the Washington State University Extension Service, Horticultural Division, in Mt. Vernon, Washington, I have planted six dwarf trees of the Honeycrisp cultivar and six other trees of a mix of apples that are well proven in this area and appear to be able to coexist.
I wanted trees that would not grow above 10 feet, so that their fruit would be easy to reach; that were good bearers; and, I hoped, that would make it without harsh chemical sprays during the fruiting season. So I have planted Jonagold, Gravenstein, Spartan, and Akane, all dwarves that can be topped at 8-10 feet.
Apple trees can tolerate winter temperatures as low as −40ºF. In fact, each variety requires a certain number of chilling hours each winter, which is the number of hours at 45ºF or below. Chilling hours can vary from 1,000 or more to as few as 400 hours. Choose an apple variety suited to your climate and winter temperatures.
Trees can be purchased bare root, balled and burlapped, or in a container. Bare-root and balled-and-burlapped trees are available in the winter and early spring, when the trees are dormant and without leaves. A container-grown tree can be planted any time during the growing season. Remove the container carefully and plant the root ball at the same depth as the container.
Once correctly planted and supported with a good 2-inch-diameter stake, there is little to do but spread good compost around the tree in the spring and water well. Please seek good local advice on how and when to prune.
You will need two trees that cross-pollinate. Again, your nursery will help with your perfect choice.
The Numbers
Per 100 g raw (3.5 oz; 1 medium): 52 calories, 0 g fat, 0 g saturated fat, 14 g carbohydrate, 0 g protein, 2 g dietary fiber, 1 mg sodium
Perennial
Water: Newly planted trees, moderate watering weekly; established trees, infrequent watering except during prolonged dry periods
Sun: Full
Pests: Susceptible to a number of insects that are very difficult to control without preventive spraying during the dormant season. Among the pests that attack are scale, apple maggots, codling moths, fruitworms, and mites. Many pests can be controlled with pheromone-bated insect traps.
Diseases: Susceptible to many fungal diseases that are difficult to control without use of preventive spraying. Choose varieties that are resistant to the diseases in your region. Soil: Well-drained, loamy, sandy, and clay soils
Fertilizer: Aged compost around trees each year pH: 6.0-7.0
Varieties: There are nearly 10,000 different kinds, or varieties, of apples, of which about 7,000 grow in North America. Only about 1,000 of these are grown commercially or in home gardens. The most popular: Red Delicious, Golden Delicious, Granny Smith, and McIntosh.
Zones: 3-9
Planting: Plant bare root trees in spring as soon as soil can be worked. Harvest: From bloom to harvest, 95- 180 days, depending on variety. Should bear fruit in the second year. Spacing: 15-30 feet, depending on variety
Edible: Flesh of fruit
Apple
APPLE AND PEAR CRISP
This is an opportunity to reduce portion size because this dessert is so full of flavor you’ll only need a modest helping.
SERVES 9
FOR THE FRUIT
3 cooking apples (Jonagold, Winesap,
Northern Spy, or other tart flavorful apple)
3 Bosc pears
½ cup golden raisins
2 cups dealcoholized fruity white wine
⅛ teaspoon ground cloves
FOR THE TOPPING
½ cup old-fashioned oats
½ cup low-fat graham cracker crumbs or
whole-grain flour
3 tablespoons sliced almonds
½ cup packed dark brown sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg
3 tablespoons butter
½ cup low-fat vanilla yogurt
Preheat the oven to 350°F.
Peel and core the apples and cut into eighths. Peel and core the pears and cut into quarters. Place in a large skillet; add the raisins, wine, and cloves, and cover with a piece of waxed paper cut to fit. Bring to a boil, lower the heat, and poach gently 15 minutes or until tender but not mushy. Drain, reserving the liquid, and lay the fruit in a 12×12-inch baking dish.
Combine the oats, graham cracker crumbs, almonds, brown sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg in a bowl. Cut in the butter until the mixture holds together in a crumble. Scatter over the fruit and bake, uncovered, 30 minutes or until golden and crisp on top.
Meanwhile, pour the reserved liquid back into the large skillet and boil vigorously until reduced to about 2 tablespoons. Take off the heat and stir in the yogurt. Cut the crisp into 9 pieces and serve with the yogurt sauce.
Per serving: 226 calories, 6 g fat, 3 g saturated fat (4% calories from saturated fat), 41 g carbohydrate, 2 g protein, 4 g dietary fiber, 72 mg sodium. Exchanges: ½ Fat, 3 Carbohydrate
BAKED APPLES
A fruit lover’s dessert. The spice is like a perfume that makes the apple all the more desirable.
SERVES 4
4 medium cooking apples (Jonagold,
Northern Spy, Rome, or Winesap)
1 cup unsweetened apple juice or water
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
¼ teaspoon ground allspice
Pinch ground cloves
¼ cup packed dark brown sugar
¼ cup low-fat vanilla yogurt
Preheat
the oven to 350°F.
Core the apples with a spoon or apple corer and cut shallowly in a line around the fruit about 1 inch from the top. Set in a baking pan and pour on the juice. Lay a sheet of aluminum foil on top and bake 30-40 minutes or until the apples are tender.
Set the apples on dessert plates and pour the cooking liquid into a small saucepan. Stir in the cinnamon, allspice, cloves, and brown sugar. Bring to a boil and cook down until the sauce is a thick syrup. Pour over the apples and serve with a dollop of the yogurt.
Per serving: 186 calories, 1 g fat, 0 g saturated fat, 47 g carbohydrate, 1 g protein, 4 g dietary fiber, 18 mg sodium. Exchanges: 2 Fruit, 1 Carbohydrate
TARTE TATIN
This is the forerunner of all upside-down fruit desserts. It’s grand and glossy and begs the question, “How did you do that?!”
SERVES 8
½ recipe Pie Crust (see page 289)
4½ Jonagold or other soft cooking apples
¼ cup water
⅓ cup sugar
¼ cup butter
1 teaspoon freshly grated lemon zest
Flour for dusting
Roll out dough for 1 pie crust to a 9-inch circle. Lay a cloth over it and set aside. Core, peel, and halve the apples. Leaving the apples in halves, lay them on a plate the same size as the pan you are going to use and trim the apples to fit together in a circle of 8 halves, with 1 in the center. Set aside.
Preheat the oven to 425°F.
Combine the water, sugar, and butter in an 8-inch chef ’s pan or heavy-bottomed ovenproof skillet. (If yours is larger, then increase the pie crust so that it is 1 inch larger than the diameter of your pan.) Bring to a boil and stir until it turns golden brown. Pull off the heat and lay the trimmed-to-fit apples in the pan, round side down. Scatter the lemon zest over the top. Reduce the heat to medium. Place a lid, 1 size smaller than the lip of the pan, right down on top of the apples. Cook, gently shaking occasionally, 15 minutes or until the apples are tender. Remove from the heat and cool 10 minutes.
Dust the prepared crust lightly with flour. Fold in quarters and lay on top of the apples, unfolding to cover completely. Tuck the edges down around the hot apples and prick the crust a few times with a fork. Bake 20-30 minutes or until the crust is brown. Set on a rack and cool slightly, about 10 minutes. Place a large inverted plate on top of the crust. Hold with a cloth in both hands and smartly turn the pan and plate upside down. (You can do it, really !) Lift off the pan. Cut the tart in wedges and serve warm or cold.
Per serving: 191 calories, 10 g fat, 0 g saturated fat, 26 g carbohydrate, 1 g protein, 1 g dietary fiber, 100 mg sodium. Exchanges: 2 Fat, 1½ Carbohydrate
Artichoke
Cynara scolymus
Since my first-year garden was both small and (in my case) totally experimental, I really didn’t have the space or inclination to grow artichokes, a fairly massive plant that winds up with so little to eat!
Artichokes come from southern Europe, and there is some genetic evidence that they came out of the wild cardoon, a naturally occurring thistle-like plant popular in ancient Greek and Roman cuisine.
It’s really quite regional as far as quality is concerned because the artichoke thrives in coolish, moist summers with mild winters. It also demands a degree of patience, as most plants don’t bloom and fruit until the second year. Although it’s a perennial that can last for up to 15 years (with good winter mulching), it may bear its fruit for only 4 or 5 of those years.
For my money, this is really a commercial grower’s crop, given its space and complexity. On the other hand, it’s one of those sunny corner plants for which a dozen or so can produce a sudden rush of admiration from those timid
souls who are just moving beyond lettuce and parsley, like me!
I’ve had two over-the-top opportunities to savor artichokes: One was the fairly typical pluck-’n’-dunk the cooked leaves from the globe into a rich hollandaise (butter, lemon, and egg yolk) sauce. The other involved removing the choke/heart and filling the space with pâté de foie gras (goose liver paste). Both these very gourmet delicacies came complete with concentrated saturated fat and high calories, and accompaniments that, in my judgment, obscured the flavors of the plant itself. My purpose in the recipes that follow is to do everything possible to enhance the natural flavors of the individual plant while retaining its maximum nourishment.
The Numbers
Per 100 g boiled (3.5 oz; 1 large head): 53 calories, 0 g fat, 0 g saturated fat, 12 g carbohydrate, 3 g protein, 9 g dietary fiber, 60 mg sodium
Artichoke
Perennial
Water: Moist
Sun: Full (8 hours minimum)
Companion Planting:
PRO: Asparagus, cabbage family
CON: Pole beans, cucumbers, tomatoes
Pests: Aphids, plume moths, slugs, snails
Diseases: Crown fungus rot
Soil : Bloodmeal and compost before planting out
Fertilizer: Spring/autumn with Microbesoft or fish emulsion every 14 days
pH: 6.0-6.8
Varieties: Green Globe (second season), Imperial Star (180 days from seed in first year)
Zones: 8-9
Planting: ¼-inch deep indoors, 10 weeks before last frost; transplant to 6 inches apart, then thin to 4 inches apart at 6-8 weeks. Won’t flower in first year; after summer harvest, prune back to 12 inches for second crop in autumn.
Germinate: 10-14 days
Blooms: Mid-autumn (if not harvested)
Harvest: Summer; 150-180 days from seed, 50-100 days from suckers (offshoots or divisions)
Rotation: Don’t follow sunflowers
Edible: Soft part of leaves and heart
ARTICHOKE
Basic Preparation
Journalists and other students of the English language should be required to describe the preparation and cooking method of an artichoke (the globe variety) so that a cook who has never seen one could manage the task.
Every cookbook I could find simply assumes too much. They describe spines, bottom, heart, and choke as though each were obvious. As a result, they are mostly ignored!
So here is my attempt to remedy this situation.
The globe artichoke is really an enormous bud that has yet to blossom and is a large baseball-size globe of tough, green, sometimes spine-tipped overlapping leaves that sits on top of an inedible stalk.
When cut in half lengthwise, you can see that the stalk’s entry is surrounded by a dense graygreen collar about ½ inch thick, which forms the bottom. Immediately above the bottom is a fuzzy mass of fine fibers called the choke, which, like the stalk, is inedible and always removed.
Surrounding the choke are about four tender inner leaves that make up the heart, which includes the bottom.
A fair-size artichoke can weigh in at 12-15 ounces. The heart will provide 4-5 ounces max.
There are two basic methods of preparing the artichoke:
Whole: Trim the stalk off flat and lower the globe into boiling salted water, to which you’ve added 1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon
juice for every 1 pint of water. Cover and boil for 20 minutes. To test for doneness, tug out one central leaf; if it comes out easily, the artichoke is done. Remove, turn the globe upside down to drain, and cool. When the artichoke has cooled, pinch several leaves together at the top and twist sharply, remove, and set aside. Using a teaspoon, dig out the choke but leave the bottom.
Drizzle about a tablespoon of Treena’s Vinaigrette (see page 74) inside the globe. It will season the leaf ends when pulled out and those previously removed from the top. You eat only the fleshy end pieces that attach to the bottom.
Hearts: Cut the globe lengthwise in quarters with a large sharp knife. You will clearly see all the parts in cross-section. Put each piece bottom down into a bowl of freshly squeezed lemon juice immediately to prevent the flesh from blackening. Put a steamer on the stovetop and heat the water. Strip off all the outer leaves, leaving three or four of the tender
inside leaves, and cook covered in the steamer as hearts for 20 minutes. When cooled, detach the choke and stalk, and trim the outside of the bottom. Use as described in the recipes that follow.
ARTICHOKE OMELET
Artichoke hearts always provide a deep, smooth, rich texture and make this omelet a good candidate for brunch.
SERVES 6
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 bunch (about 6) green onions
3 garlic cloves, chopped
½ cup chopped red bell pepper
1 cup chopped zucchini, ½-inch pieces
1 cup shredded collard greens
8 Greek olives, pitted and chopped
1 cup frozen or canned artichoke heart
quarters (or prepared fresh, as on page 68)
½ teaspoon dried oregano
½ teaspoon dried basil
2 Roma or Viva Italia tomatoes, seeded and
chopped
¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
⅛ teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
2 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon freshly grated
Parmesan cheese
1¾ cups egg substitute1 or 1 cup egg substitute
plus 3 whole eggs for added texture
Heat 1 teaspoon of the oil in a heavy, ovenproof skillet on medium. Slice the white ends of the green onions and finely chop the green parts. Sauté the white parts with the garlic about 1 minute to release the flavors. Add the red pepper, zucchini, collard greens, olives, artichoke hearts, oregano, and basil, and cook 8 minutes or until the vegetables are crisp tender and colorful.
Stir in the tomatoes, black pepper, salt, and 1 tablespoon each of the parsley and Parmesan cheese. Pour the egg substitute into the vegetables, shaking the pan to distribute it evenly. Scatter 1 tablespoon of Parmesan cheese over the top. Cook on medium about 6 minutes or until the bottom is done and the top is still runny. Place under the broiler for 2 minutes to finish cooking. Scatter the remaining Parmesan cheese and parsley on top along with a tablespoon of the green onion tops; drizzle with the remaining olive oil. Cut into four wedges and serve.