Found and Foraged Pesto

Here atop our little hill on top of Fobes Hill the ground that was once a dark mass of soil peppered with leaf litter. That dark earth is now contrasted by the deep green of new plant life. Many of these plants are commonly referred to as weeds; however, many of them are fabulously nutritious wild foods.

Currently available for food are: Nettle, Purple Dead Nettle, Chickweed, DayLily Shoots (Hemerocallis fulva, the orange and yellow) Dandelion Greens and Roots, Lambs Quarters, and Woolly Lambs Ear.

As much as we love foraging, we love Pesto. Well, we love any of the green sauces, Pistous, Salsa Verdes, Sauces of Green, or however you wish to think of them; the green things that are pummeled into submission with various flavor and texture elements.

Pesto seems to be one of the green sauces that everyone understands: A little Basil, a little Olive Oil, a few Pine Nuts, a little Parmesan. What everyone doesn’t know is that Pesto is just Peasant Food. It’s meant as a sauce to make seasonally using what you got!

And this season, I got wild greens. In abundance is Nettle.

To make this pesto is all too simple:

1. Harvest roughly 2 cups of greens

2. Wash greens and remove tough woody stems. I like to use a salad spinner to wash my greens: Soak, Rinse, Drain, Spin. If using nettle, blanch the leaves in hot water for barely a minute in order to distill the sting. **

3. Put greens in the food processor or high speed blender; add roughly half a cup of nuts, I used Pecan. Half a cup of grated cheese, I used Pecorino. Squeeze in half a lemon, reserve the rest for adding to taste. Add a few Garlic Cloves, don’t even bother removing the skin. Add a Pinch of Hot Chili Flakes. Add a Pinch of Black Pepper. Add a few Tablespoons of a fruity or peppery Olive Oil to start.

4. Blend. Taste. Add more lemon if you want tartness, add more heat if you like, add more garlic if you’re not tasting it, add more salt if need be. Add liquid as needed to get to desired consistency.

5. Blend, taste again. Remember that as mixtures like this sit, the flavors become entangled and more pronounced, so while you adjust things to taste think of how they might become overpowering when left to linger.

6. Use as a dip, as condiment, as marinade. Slather it over Salmon before baking. Rub it on Cod and Poach. Settle a few seared Scallops on top of it. Make homemade Sweet Potato Fries and dip ‘em, do what you will!!

This keeps great in the refrigerator for a week. It also freezes really well. Do cover the top with a little extra olive oil lest it browns.

**For this batch I used Nettle, Chickweed, Woolly Lambs Ear, and Dandelion Greens

I love love love love Hostas

Especially this hosta. I can see it from my living room window all the way out to the pathway in front of my gazebo. She is a stunner.

Natural Snail and Slug Control

As you may have guessed, I’m not one to go spreading Sluggo all around my landscape. Though it’s touted as not killing beneficial insects, only targeting the bad, I am loathe to believe this is true. And I certainly don’t want the product dusted by my food. And it’s a practice I don’t support, the use of chemicals at all. What we do here is akin to Permaculture. We are attempting to convert this space which once over water, over fertilized, and oversprayed, to care for itself, with some, of course, but little need for interference from we mere humans.

Hostas are a magnet for leaf eating critters. In fact, the Hosta leaves and flowers are edible for us as well. It’s sprouts are said to be especially delicious. Surprisingly, I’ve not tried them yet.

At any rate, the snail population when we moved into this place was absolutely impressive. The dogs had a heyday munching on them throughout the day. The sprinkler system provided year round moisture to foster their growth and the neglected soil, naked of mulch for many years, and bare of plants in many places, allowed them to roam freely from plant to plant. They seemed to enjoy the Lemon Balm and the Boxwood Shrubs the most.

In past gardens the presence of garden snakes were always visible, but I saw none that first growing season, nor even the second, and no birds seemed to linger in the space where the raised gardens stand. This seemed so strange to me as there are large cedars to the west and a wonderful hiding place underneath the hedge of red cedar to at the southern border.

I also have snails, and slugs.

This space was intended for my herb gardens, and I just so happened to know that if I planted herbs as hedges, at edges, in cracks, and spreading in between plants on bare soil, I could solve many of my slug and snail problems. By planting hardy drought tolerant evergreen perennial herbs, I could turn the sprinklers off. By planting pungent herbs, I could ward off creeping crawling critters from sensitive plants.

I am happy to announce that this effort has worked. I am also able to plant “enough”. So that when i do spot a slug laying eggs in my garden bed, I can simply toss her into the massive lemon balm and let her have it, there is enough for us to share, but she is unimpressed with the mint that also grows there and goes to find a less pungent home. But now, it seems, I have encouraged biodiversity in this little section of garden. I can only think that it is because I have fixed clay soil by bringing in loads of mulch. The mulch that inhibits the parade of slugs and snails due to its bumpy and impractical surface, and have encouraged tilth in my soil in order for beneficial bugs and insects to till the earth beneath the topsoil, a siren song to birds who come to eat the slim critters that once were killed off by weed suppressants and fertilizers.

I have also allowed space for garden snakes to slumber, by encouraging the hard over watered soils to soften. I allow leaf mulch and cedar litter to compost under the trees creating shelter for critters too. Previously it was raked clean.

While a perfectly groomed garden looks neat, I am more prone to the Wild and Unruly, full of creepy crawly things that find their own balance eventually.

But in that abundance is beauty. Think of the pungent herbs that you too can plant next to and within your hostas to keep the creepy crawly things away… just toss your slugs into the neighbors yard;)

Plant Carpets of Red Thyme that bloom in spring and fall and create a natural mulch

Plant Garlic or Shallots or Bunching Onions in between your roses and sensitive plants to keep critters and even some fungus away!

Oh! St. Pat’s Day

There is nary a hint of Irish in me, but boy do I love St. Patrick’s Day. It is a harbinger of spring with its pots of gold and rainbows. Its Shamrocks and little Leprechauns and wearing o’ the green. It’s a feast day for the Saint that’s said to have driven the snakes out of Ireland and purportedly raised people fromithe dead. He somehow has usurped the lovely Saint Brigid who founded the guild of nuns of Kildare, or purportedly they did it together. But at any rate, it’s a feast day that existed long before the Catholics. It was Ostara, a celebration fo the Spring Equinox, which is just 4 days away from this celebrated feast day. The pagans, you know people who lived with the seasons and honored the cycles of the earth, celebrated the goddess Eostre during this time (Easter anyone??) the goddess of spring and new beginnings. But that’s a post for April.

I do love a good feast day and St. Patrick’s is no different, no matter its sordid beginnings. My husband’s family used to hold the most wonderful St. Pat’s dinners. Tables were set all over the living room at my husbands grandmothers house and all kinds of family joined in the feast, my mother in law took over once Besta could no longer do the chore. The menu always stayed the same:

Corned Beef Brisket with a crusty Brown Sugar Mustard Crust

Boiled Cabbage and Potatoes served with Malt Vinegar and Sour Cream

Fried Chicken for the unadventurous Soda Bread

Mile High Strawberry Pie

Creme De Menthe Pie

And Dewars Scotch Whiskey was always served

For one reason and another those dinners no longer come together with all the folks that used to attend, and I even typically spend St. Pat’s Day by myself these days. But if I have a hankering, which I always do, no matter who is or isn’t in attendance, I will spend the day making up a Lamb and Guinness Stew and a few loaves of Soda Bread too. I will blast a playlist of Irish tunes and sip on Irish Whiskey. I will probably make a lemon curd to celebrate the coming on of eggs. I will most definitely have the doors open to celebrate the first 50 degree days. I will decorate the countertops with yellow daffodils. I will find real live cultured buttermilk, to make my soda bread with. I will make or buy some really good butter to slather on warm, thick slices of that bread. I will buy a shamrock plant, or two. I will light candles. I will decorate for spring!

This is a rough sketch of how I make my lamb stew, I cannot devise a recipe because so much is dependent on the cut of lamb I use, or which root veggies I use. It’s a dance with the flavor and ingredients, dependent on how bitter the beer is, how sweet the veggies, how maillard the meat.

I begin by choosing a bone in style of lamb, it’s dependent on what I can quickly find, or how my lamb came cut that year as I’m typically at the whim of my butcher even if I ask for specific cuts.

I strip the meat from the bones.

I typically make a mirepoix of chopped Onion, Celery, and Carrot. I small dice all of these and set them aside.

I chunk up a few Potatoes, a few Carrots, and possibly a Parsnip, Turnip,and/or Rutabaga or two, depending on what I have or depending on my mood.

I set these aside.

The bones go in a pot with many branches of Rosemary, a few branches of Sage, several twigs of Thyme, a couple Bay Leaves, half an Onion, a few Garlic Cloves. This steeps away as I prep my vegetables and meat.

I then cube the meat into ½ to 1 inch pieces. Then, I dredge the meat pieces through a mixture of flour seasoned with salt and pepper.

I warm a stockpot on the stove, add olive oil once it’s nice and hot, then add the coated stew meat in single layers, crisping the crust that forms on the meat. I remove the meat to a platter.

I deglaze that meaty oily mess with a bit of the simmering lamb broth and add my mirepoix.

I gently sautee the mirepoix with a bit of broth, instead of adding more oil, until the vegetables are tender, adding just little amounts of broth as needed so that the mixture doesn’t burn.

I add the meat back to the pan.

I add the broth.

I add a can or bottle or two of Guinness.

Do I need more salt?

More pepper? More Rosemary?

Does this batch need a bit of Worcestershire sauce to add to the meaty-ness?

Does it need a bit of Onion powder to create some depth? Does it need a bit more garlic?

Is it too bitter?

Should I add a hint of sweet, or perhaps the carrots will add the sweet that it needs.

I turn the heat to low, go out to the yard to do the year’s first weeding, and wait for the ingredients to meld together.

I taste again before serving, asking myself the same questions as I did before.

It’s probably perfect, so I’ll just dig in, dipping warm buttered Soda Bread into the stew as needed.

I add the vegetable chunks.

I fill the pan with broth. I taste.

I have been tinkering with my soda bread recipe for oh so many years. Every year the ingredients from the stores seem to change. Some years the soda seems dormant, without flavor or activity, some years it's wildly active and overpowering. Sometimes I can find real raw living cultured buttermilk, and sometimes I can find none. During covid I had to use the reconstituted powdered variety. My flour choices are different each year. I’ve been using local whole wheat varieties and they tend to soak up the flavor, so I need more salt and more sugar, but less soda, somehow. The wilder the cultures in the buttermilk the more the soda activates, and the more the bread rises. It’s a dance of ingredients that used to be consistent from year to year, but that is the pleasure of cooking, of exploring new sources for ingredients, and to investigate the nuances of new things! So here is this year's version, which seems to work for me, but it might not for you, so adjust accordingly.

These loaves are so quick to throw together, I often make several batches. I make some plain, and some seeded, some fruited, some with nuts, you never know what you might cut into!

Donata's Soda Bread

3 cups flour

1teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon sugar

1 ½ cups Buttermilk add ins: 2 tablespoons Caraway Seed and/or 1/2 cup Currants, or one tablespoon Dill. I have even added sunflower seeds, grated carrots, and grated zucchini a time or two. This dough is incredibly forgiving, the cooking time may just need a bit of adjusting if you add wet ingredients like grated vegetables.

*Sift the dry ingredients together.

*Add the Buttermilk.

*Mix gently with a fork until the dough forms a ball

*Knead loose flour mixture from the bottom of the bowl, add a little more milk as needed.