Patio Herbs

I began to fully understand how the term “container garden” came to be in use, when I started thinking about writing to tell you about my “pot garden.” I might eat granola and have a slightly more laid-back lifestyle than is in vogue these days, but if you really know me, you know that really is oregano growing on my porch. To keep myself out of trouble, I’ll try to refer to my stash of culinary herbs on the back patio as a container garden or patio or porch garden (although I might become more google-able if I use the word “pot”).

Anyway, the herbs are growing, and only a few need to be transplanted to larger pots. (I had to buy some more potting soil…don’t you just hate buying dirt?) I should be able to supplement my dishes quite favorably (or flavorably) all summer. I have the “Scarborough Fair” quartet (parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme), oregano, four kinds of mint (spearmint, peppermint, orange, and chocolate), dill, tarragon, and summer savory, something new to my cooking that goes well with tomatoes and green beans. I also have a spicy salad greens mix just coming up from seed, and I planted two kinds of basil seeds that were pretty old, and I don’t know if they’ll come up.

I bought most of the herbs as plants from garden centers, but a few are leftovers from last year that I managed to keep alive over the winter. The oregano has actually survived two winters, at least. In magazines and such, they’ll tell you that you can keep a fresh herb garden at a sunny window all winter, but I think those bits of advice were written from places where the angle of the sun is higher in the winter than it is here in southeastern Minnesota. I can keep some things from dying during the cold months, but nothing really grows.

The thyme plants I bought were very well developed and there’s a lot that’s ready to eat, so, to celebrate my porch’s bounty, I used thyme to flavor some quick and easy drop biscuits. I didn’t have buttermilk or yogurt in the house, so I tried sour cream to make these (I had juuuuuust enough), with good results. We enjoyed these biscuits with scrambled eggs with more fresh herbs and cheese for Sunday brunch.

You could use knives or even your fingers to cut the butter into the flour mixture for these biscuits (or anything else that uses a similar procedure), but I really like using a pastry blender. The one I like is in the photo below, and has blades rather than thick wires as I have seen in other models. I also strongly recommend a Microplane grater for removing lemon zest. It takes off just the nice fragrant, flavorful yellow part, leaving the bitter pith behind. (I used my kitchen shears to harvest the thyme and the whisk to stir the flour mixture, so they got in the shot too.)

The dough for these biscuits is quite wet, but results in a nice crust and moist interior. They can be simply dropped onto a baking pan rather than rolled and cut.


Sour Cream Drop Biscuits with Lemon and Thyme
adapted from Cooking Pleasures magazine

1 cup all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
¼ teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons cold butter, cut into small cubes
½ cup sour cream
¼ cup milk
zest of 1 lemon
1 tablespoon lemon juice
3 tablespoons fresh thyme leaves

Preheat oven to 425 F.
1. Place flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a medium bowl. Stir well with a whisk. Add butter and cut in with a pastry blender until the butter is well-distributed and the mixture resembles coarse crumbs.

2. Mix the sour cream, milk and lemon juice together in a measuring cup or small bowl. Add to the flour mixture. Add thyme leaves. Stir gently just until the mixture is no longer dry. Do not beat or overmix.

3. Scoop out dough in equal portions and place on a baking sheet that has been greased, or lined with parchment paper or a silicone baking mat. I made large biscuits and got 5 out of the dough.

4. Bake at 425 for 12-15 minutes or until the outside of the biscuit is beginning to brown. Cool slightly before consuming. These are best right away, but are just fine later, and can be frozen as well.

Makes 5-6 large biscuits

Waiting (Im)patiently

I am not a patient person (although I acknowledge this problem and am working on it, thank you.) My first CSA* delivery will not be until June 2, but the “seasonal” recipes using spring vegetables and baby salad greens have been featured in cooking magazines for at least two months. We will most likely be getting asparagus (nice, healthy, sweet and crunchy organic asparagus) in our box from the CSA, but some pretty decent asparagus has been coming to town, just to taunt me as I try to eat more and more from local sources. I finally gave in. Asparagus season is short after all.

With the last bundle of pretty nice asparagus spears that I bought, I made Spring Vegetable Tabbouleh but had plenty left to make something else, so I fell back on an old favorite, a sautéed asparagus with a balsamic-tarragon vinaigrette from Cooking Light magazine. My patio herb garden is going strong (I wanted to post some photos of that, but it’s been raining every day since I planted) and I had plenty of tarragon. I didn’t want a side dish, however, so I increased the volume of the sauce and made it a pasta dish.

The sauce for this dish, which is mostly reduced balsamic vinegar and some sugar, is a bit sweet, but somehow the asparagus seems to soak up some vinegar before the vinegar reduces in volume and increases in sweetness, maintaining a bit of a tart quality that is a nice contrast. If you find the sauce too sweet (or think you will upon reviewing the recipe), just reduce the amount of sugar.

The Pernod (or other anise liqueur) is optional in this dish. It simply bumps up the anise flavor contributed by the fresh tarragon. It would not be necessary to buy a bottle just for the 1 tablespoon I included in this recipe. If you happen to have some around, however, I think it adds some character to the sauce. If you don’t groove on bacon (I’m having a hard time refraining from commenting, since I strongly respect a vegetarian lifestyle…I also, however, have strong feelings for bacon) you can leave that out of the dish as well and it will be entirely vegetarian. Just replace the bacon drippings with olive oil.

I’m a bit squeamish about making recommendations, especially for something that costs more than a pack of gum, but I had a very nice wine with this that I think really made the meal. I’m not a big drinker of alcohol, but I’ll have a bit of wine if I think it will compliment a dish at dinner. With this one, I tried Gazela Vinho Verde (2008), and thought it was magnificent. Vinho Verdes are young Portugese white wines that are quite inexpensive. The Gazela was tart rather than dry and a little fizzy, which really cut through and complimented the sweet sauce. I hope you can find it and give it a try.

Asparagus and Pasta with Balsamic-Tarragon Sauce and Bacon
To be honest, I’m not sure exactly how much asparagus I had left to use in this recipe. The moral of the story is, use what you have and it will still be good (simply because it will still be asparagus!)

3 strips thick-cut bacon
8 ounces bow-tie or other short pasta
½ cup thinly sliced onion
1 pound asparagus, tough ends removed and cut into 1-inch pieces
½ cup balsamic vinegar
2 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon Pernod (or other anise-flavored liqueur), optional
2 tablespoons chopped fresh tarragon
salt and pepper to taste
½ cup toasted chopped pecans

1. Cook the bacon in a frying pan until crisp. Remove and drain the bacon, reserving 2 tablespoons of the drippings (“drippings” is such a nice word for salty liquid pork fat).

2. Cook the pasta in boiling salted water until it is done as you like it. (I like “al dente.”) Drain the pasta, reserving ½ cup of the pasta cooking water.

3. Heat the reserved bacon drippings in a large saute pan over medium heat. Add the onion and a pinch of salt. Cook, stirring occasionally for 4 minutes, or until the onion starts to brown. Add the asparagus and sauté 2 mintues, stirring occasionally.

4. Add the balsamic vinegar and sugar, stirring well to dissolve the sugar. Cook several minutes until the vinegar has reduced by about half and has become slightly thicker and syrupy.

5. Add the Pernod and tarragon, and salt and pepper to taste (I used about ¼ tsp of each). Add the pasta and some of the reserved cooking water. Toss well. Crumble the bacon into the pan and stir it in. Garnish each serving with pecans.

Makes about 4 servings

* Community Supported Agriculture. The one to which I subscribe is here.

A Pan and a Plan

Just a few housekeeping items before I hold forth about my new bread-baking pan. First of all, many thanks to all who have been reading this blog. I am so appreciative of your compliments and encouragement! And thank you also for telling your friends! As I wrote to one of my dear friends, strangers are just friends you haven’t blogged to yet.

Second, I’ve learned that some of you have had difficulty posting comments. I wish I knew what was up with that. Harry and I have been testing it and it seems that sometimes when one attempts to post anonymously, the comment gets rejected, other times it does not. I do monitor all comments, but have never rejected any myself. At the end of the post titled Sprung, Harry has left a comment including some basic instructions on what has worked for him when commenting. I can only ask you to keep trying! If you continue to have difficulty leaving comments, feel free to contact me via e-mail. My address is given near the bottom of my profile page.

Finally, I have added a new recipe index. You can access it at the right under THE MESSY APRON EXTRAS. It’s a bit crude at this point, but, since many of my post titles have nothing at all in common with the recipes in them, I hope it will help you (and me!) find what you need.

I am a little surprised that I have made as many posts to The Messy Apron as I have and managed to hold myself to only one post about bread. Truthfully, I haven’t been making much of it lately, and, with much warmer days coming, I probably will be giving the oven more time off (though I intend to work on some grilled flatbreads and such.)

For some time, I had been on a quest for mesh trough pans for baking baguettes. They seemed to have come and gone in the kitchen and home stores, and I was even having a hard time finding one online. Williams Sonoma carries one, and it is quite lovely. I’m on a budget, however, and it is a little more than I want to spend at this time, especially since I had no idea whether I was going to like using it.

Finally, on a recent shopping trip after liberating a couple more lonely cookbooks from the shelves of a used bookstore, I found a mesh pan more suited to my budget. It was at le gourmet chef at that crazy retail behemoth known as the Mall of America. This pan is smaller than the one at Williams Sonoma, that is, it is for baking a narrower loaf sometimes known as a flute.

I was invited to a Memorial Day weekend al fresco dining experience (at my favorite place to be invited to dinner…thanks Aunt Beth and Uncle Bob), so I thought I would pick up some wine and bring some bread. Really, I’ll admit, it was an excuse to test my new pan.

I have a baguette recipe adapted from Cooking Light magazine, which has been good to me for a few years, so I used it to try out my new toy. I have to say, it worked very nicely and may have taken this recipe to an all new level. The bread had a consistent, crunchy crust through all 360 degrees of its surface. Oh ya, it tasted great, too!

I let the dough rise on the counter rather than in the pan, so the dough wouldn’t poke through the holes as it puffed up. (I didn’t want little porcupines that I couldn’t get out of the pan.) I then transferred the rising loaves to the mesh pan. You could certainly make this bread on a regular sheet pan, as I have for years with good results. Just let the loaf/loaves rise on the pan and skip the step of transferring it from the counter (not the easiest thing to do without ruining the bread…for me anyway.) You could also make a larger (fatter or longer) loaf, but you may need to adjust the baking time. The egg wash is optional, but I find that it really gives the bread a nice crunchy, golden crust.

BaguetteAdapted from Cooking Light Magazine

2 teaspoons active dry yeast (1 envelope)
1 ¼ cup warm water (100 to 110 F), divided
3 cups bread flour, divided (about 14 ¼ ounces)
1 teaspoon salt
Nonstick cooking spray
1 egg (optional)
2 tablespoons water (optional)

1. Dissolve yeast in ¼ cup warm water in a large bowl (such as the bowl of a heavy duty stand mixer). Let the yeast mixture stand 5 minutes or until foamy.

2. Add the remaining water and 2 cups flour to the yeast mixture. Stir until a soft, batter-like dough forms. Use the paddle attachment if using a stand mixer. Cover the dough and let stand 30 minutes.

3. Add the salt and ½ cup of remaining flour. Knead (using the dough hook or knead by hand) about 10 minutes until the dough is smooth and elastic, adding enough remaining flour a little at a time to keep dough from sticking. The final result will be a slightly tacky dough.

4. Place dough in a large bowl coated with cooking spray. Spray the top of the dough and cover loosely with plastic wrap. Cover with a towel and let rise about 1 hour or until double in size.

5. Gently deflate the dough without completely squashing it. Reform into a ball. Cover and let rest 5 minutes. Divide the dough into 3 equal pieces. Working with 1 portion a t a time, roll each portion on a floured surface into a long, narrow loaf. Place the loaves on a well-floured surface. Cover with a towel and let rise 20 minutes.

6. Carefully lift the loaves onto a mesh baguette baking pan. Avoid deflating them as much as possible. Cut 3 to 4 1/4-inch deep slits into the top of each loaf. Cover with a towel.

7. Preheat oven to 450 F. Uncover the dough. Beat the egg with the water to make an egg wash. Brush the tops of each loaf with the egg mixture. (Leftover egg wash can be kept for a few days in the fridge. It can be used on other baking days or cooked as scrambled eggs.) Bake at 450 F for 20 minutes. Remove from the pan and cool on a wire rack.

Sprung

Spring has fully sprung in southern Minnesota. In fact it has probably become a bit excessive in its exuberance, and overshot its goal (it was 90 degrees on Tuesday). But everything is green and the lilacs are blooming beautifully. I couldn’t resist taking a bunch of photos, and tried to show some restraint in posting them here. This is a food blog after all, and as far as I know, you can’t eat a lilac, although placing a bouquet of them on the table can significantly enhance a dining experience.

I might not be able to eat the lilacs, but they are the heralds of delicious spring produce. I get particularly excited about asparagus when it is in season, and in this home, we love radishes. Since I had an over-abundance of medium-grain bulgur in the cupboard (after buying a package when I already had one…happens a lot around here), I decided to try a spring vegetable take on Tabbouleh, a hearty salad of Middle Eastern origin. All the Tabbouleh recipes I’ve seen have lemon juice, olive oil, and lots of herbs. My porch garden is going strong (more about that in another post, I hope), so I had the herbs covered, and I try to keep a lemon or two around for just such an occasion.

I find asparagus to be one of those fruits of the earth that can be totally ruined by cooking it (especially over-cooking), and I actually quite like it raw. I chopped the asparagus and radishes into pieces roughly the size of the peas. I find that salads of chopped vegetables are more appealing when the pieces are of similar size. Fresh peas can only make this salad better. I didn’t have any, but helped tidy up the freezer by using up the last of the frozen ones I did have. I’m waiting (not so) patiently for the first box of vegetables from the CSA so I can make this salad again. It’s a big bowl of salad, but will last several days in the refrigerator.

Spring Vegetable Tabbouleh
Use thin asparagus spears if you can and chop them and the radishes about the same size as the peas.

1 cup medium grain bulgur
1 ¼ cup boiling water
1 teaspoon salt, divided
¼ cup lemon juice
1 garlic clove, minced
¼ cup extra virgin olive oil
1 cup finely chopped thin asparagus (about 12 spears)
3 large radishes, finely chopped
½ cup peas, fresh or frozen
¼ cup chopped green onions
¼ cup chopped parsley
¼ cup chopped fresh mint

1. Place the bulgur in a large bowl. Pour boiling water over the bulgur. Add ½ teaspoon salt and stir. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let stand at least 20 minutes or until the bulgur absorbs the water.

2. In a small bowl, combine the garlic and lemon juice. Let stand 10 minutes. Add the olive oil and whisk until well combined

3. Add asparagus, radishes, peas, green onions, parsley, mint, and remaining ½ teaspoon salt to the bulgur. Stir gently to combine. Add lemon juice mixture and stir well. Cover and chill at least 30 minutes.

Makes 6-8 servings, and leftovers can stay in the refrigerator 4 days or so (if they last that long).

Third photo on this page by Harry Leckenby (he's just a better photographer than I am!)