#young garlic

[balkanradfem]

First decent harvests this year! Asparagus is coming out every single day so I am eating it constantly. I also have some swiss chard, green onions and young garlic. I've been harvesting leek for a while as well! It didn't make it into the pictures.

[balkanradfem]

So, the last summer, I decided to try out the method of drying green-beans, to see if it would be a good alternative to freezing them. I love frozen green beans, but I want a method of preserving that doesn't take any energy to keep them frozen, dry stuff is shelf stable!

The way to do this is to grab a needle and a thread, stack the green beans on the thread vertically, and then hanging them up to dry. It takes them several weeks to dry, and I do have to say, they all dried properly, none went bad or started getting mold, the drying part went well! Then I put them in my big giant jar and promptly forgot about them for the whole winter.

And now, I'm going to test if they're good to eat!

Some of these are long noodle beans, and some are just normal green beans. In the container next to them are some young garlic plants I found in the field. I've decided to go and make a garlic+green bean soup, to make sure the green beans get a proper time to cook in there.

So, the method of rehydrating these is to put them in a pot, pour boiling hot water over them, and leave them to soak for an hour. This is how they looked when I took them out of the jar:

They seemed light and like there's not much substance to them, they're also pretty thin. I covered the pot and left it for an hour. In the meantime, let's look at the garlic plants. Firstly, what are they.

I sometimes forget to harvest a bulb of garlic, and then in the spring, I get 5-6 young garlic plants growing on top of each other. I tried to pry them apart and plant separately, but none of them would really go on to produce a big head of garlic. So I decided it's much more satisfying to just yank them all out and eat them in the spring as fresh garlic. The entire plant is filled with fresh garlic flavour!

I cleaned them up and separated the white parts from the green, because the white parts can be sauteed on oil, while the green parts will do better to just be cooked. I cut them in little soup-appropriate pieces.

Then I thought, well, this soup would just be so much better if there was a potato in it. Green beans and potatoes just go extremely well together. And I didn't have a young potato, all of mine have already sprouted, so I picked two that looked somewhat decent:

I know these look rough at first, but when you cut them, inside they're just fine! I didn't even peel them, just cut them in little cubes. Now let's look at how are the green beans doing:

They grew bigger! And they now feel very squishy and chewy, and there's much more weight to them, which I like. The smell coming out of them was not like a green-bean scent, it didn't smell much like anything really. I was very curious to how the water would taste where the green beans were soaking, so I tried it. And it tasted like tea. Usually when you cook some vegetable in hot water, it tastes like broth, right? Well this tasted like tea. Tea from leaves and bark. It was extremely interesting.

Anyway, I cut the green beans to little bits as well, and now we have all of the ingredients for cooking! It's going to be a very simple meal, but cool because we're just using garden stuff one can get in early spring.

I put the potatoes and salt on some oil first, because they can handle it for the longest time, and it draws out a more intense flavour in them. When they started smelling real nice, I added the garlic whites, and after a bit, garlic greens and green beans, or at this point they would be called 'leather britches', because people compare the texture of dry green beans to leather. And that's it! Extremely simple soup making. Here it is done:

I was excited to see what the flavour of green beans would be, because I was promised they have this very intense flavour, but I have to admit, this soup tasted overwhelmingly of potatoes and garlic! Which is a heavenly combination, so I loved it a lot. I was a little disappointed that I couldn't taste the green beans, I think the flavour possibly faded because I just left them sitting in a transparent jar for some 9+ months, and they should have been protected from the light better.

I could feel the texture, however, and it was okay, it was slightly leathery but by no means difficult to eat. I ended up eating the entire soup very quickly, and I have to say it was extremely sating. I felt very well fed afterwards and satisfied for hours. Food that is no trouble to store, easy to eat and sating, that sounds like a perfect thing for me.

I'll try it again this summer, but I'll see if I can eat the green beans before they lose the flavour completely, or if I could preserve it for longer by keeping them out of light, in a paper bag or a very dark spot. Possibly I should have tried putting them on oil to draw out the flavour, but I haven't thought of that at the time. I actually have a bit of them left over, because I wanted to see if they cook any different if I don't soak them first, so when I try that out, I'll put that information out as well!

[procrastibakingamiscellany]

Guacamole

I was so excited to get cilantro in my CSA this week. I was even more excited to discover I had 2 perfectly ripe avocados at home! So i made guacamole, and delighted in using the milder young garlic for this recipe. You can easily sub a whole garlic clove for the young garlic if you’ve already used yours. 

My husband says i make the best guacamole around. The secret is avoiding the urge to over-mash your avocados. Also, you’ll always need more lime juice and salt than you think. Always. 

Guacamole

Ingredients

2-3 ripe avocados 1/2 red onion 1 bunch cilantro 1-2 stalks young garlic, white part only juice of 2 limes salt and pepper to taste

Directions

Mince onion and cilantro and add to a medium-size mixing bowl. Slice the young garlic into skinny rounds and chop roughly. Add to bowl.

Cube avocados. I cut mine in half, remove the pith, and use a sharp paring knife to slice the meat into squares while still in the shell. Then I use a large spoon to scoop the cubes into the mixing bowl.

Add lime juice  and use a fork to mix together. Mash half the avocados with the fork, leaving the others whole.  Salt and pepper to taste. 

[vesperinbedlam]

spring garlic by Lisa S. (d.delight) on Flickr.