i hope you eat good food, grow beautiful things, and have more love than you know what to do with.
I got my last box of ugly produce this past week as my garden has sprung to life and I won’t be needing their services until winter. I received two eggplants in it and while I do like eggplants, for busy weeks it’s one of …
While it isn’t a true perennial, rather, biennial (meaning it dies after the second year when it flowers), parsley (Petroselinum crispum) is a staple in my food forest. I actually never really used it in my cooking until a few years ago, when I started …
I planted ramps (Allium tricoccum) about two years ago–itty bitty bulbs that I wasn’t sure was going to take. But surprisingly, they all survived and have established themselves in a dark, shady corner of my perennial food forest. They do best in rich, moist soils with partial or full shade. Hardy from zones 3 to 7, they’re a great addition to a mature food forest, or one that is slightly boggy or too shaded for other things.
Considered a forager’s delight, their garlick-y, onion-y flavor is favored among those who pick wild food during the spring. But, to be honest, since I also grow both onion and garlic chives, and regular garlic which has delicious greens too, I don’t fully understand the draw of it other than the fact that it thrives in places where other things may not grow due to constant soil moisture and lack of sun. It takes so long for them to reach a harvestable age, compared with my garlics and other allium species. Perhaps when they’re big enough for me to harvest, I’ll change my tune.
Their leaves die back quickly during the spring, grow a single flower stalk, go to seed, and remain dormant until the next year. Supposedly, at around 7 years old, the mature bulbs begin giving off bulblets which will grow new plants. If you choose to plant them from seed, they have a long germination time of 6 – 18 months, require specific conditions to do so. They take a long time to grow, which is why there have been special concerns about foragers harvesting them. If you find a patch, it’s better to just harvest a single leaf from each plant, rather than taking the entire bulb.
I’ve been meaning to make a post about this particular dish but I find myself always finishing it before taking a picture. This is a nostalgic childhood dish–my mom would make a huge pot of it during chilly days, and we’d immediately recognize the fragrant, …
With the abundance of radishes in my Misfit Market box (read my review here), I started to think of creative ways to use them up. I just so happen to still have two mason jars full of dried black trumpets from last year’s mushroom foraging …
I am often at a loss as to what to do with radishes–after soups, salads, and pickles, any extra ones seem more like a peppery curse than they do a boon. But I got a bag of them in this week’s Misfit Market box and wanted to try out something simple and delicious with them. The French apparently serve them with just butter and some sea salt, but since I tend to go overboard with everything I do, I decided a bright lemon herb butter, made with generous amounts of lemon zest, would pair perfectly with the crunchy, round bites of itty bitty radishes. It was a good choice, because I ended up eating almost all of it while surfing the internet. I still can’t decide if it was healthy or not–oh well!
Homemade butter is super easy to make, rich and creamy, but you can whip in minced zest and herbs into softened store bought butter too.
I feel like I’ve mentioned often how much I absolutely adore sea urchin. While I most often meet it in the sushi restaurant, occasionally I’ll purchase it from the Asian grocery store if it’s available. While I have prepared it in other ways, including pasta, …
I didn’t think there could be a better way to eat raw crabs other than the spicy variety–but I was wrong. I’ve never actually had the soy sauce marinated version, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. I think a part of me thought that it was impossible to match the spicy sweetness of the hot pepper version I made yesterday, and I was fully prepared to be underwhelmed. Today, when I opened the fridge, I looked at the box of marinating big fat blue claws, actually sighed and said to myself, “I made too much.”
Spoiler alert: I did not make too much.
I have to say, with great surprise, that the soy sauce marinated version heightened my understanding as to why this was considered such a delicacy. A little salty, and the flesh of the crabs with a delicate seafood sweetness that is truly unmatched, I absolutely get why this side dish is called a “rice thief.”
I ended up eating most of the whole crab plus a big ol’ bowl of rice before remembering I needed to take a picture. My only issue is that separating the shell from the body is a bit of hard work, and I’m always terrified of accidentally flinging it around, but the reward is worth it.
I had looked up a whole bunch of different recipes–it seems every family has their own, and ended up picking the parts I liked best from each. I think this will definitely be something I will be making often, when blue claws are coming up in the traps in the bay.
As always, raw seafood comes with some risk.
It’s midwinter and I was suddenly hit with the craving for raw marinated crabs. Don’t ask me why but my appetite told me I needed to get me some of that delicious and succulent sweet treat or else I wasn’t going to be in a …
