UnRecipe: Summer Scrounge

I had one of those moments recently where I looked in our refrigerator, pantry and even our backyard and said: That's it! No more buying anything -- we need to use what we have!! I don't even know why that statement needed to be said, as I'm the one who handles all the household upkeep and it's my own foolish overpurchasing during sales that leaves me with three pounds of bell peppers, two cases of canned tomatoes and no idea what to do next. But the biggest bounty has actually been from our own backyard, and figuring out how to use it.

You can be my huckleberry (yes, I'm gonna say that every summer) - Photo by Wasabi Prime

I found myself with several containers' worth of wild red huckleberries. Teeny-tiny red berries that grow wild in our backyard, from bushes that grow from rotted tree stumps. I know, sounds sexy, right? But they're fun berries to use -- a sharply acidic tart-flavored berry, kind of similar to cranberries but more tender and not as bitter. Lots of vitamin C, so no worries about getting scurvy if you eat them. It takes me about a week or two to gather enough to make jam. And when I say make jam, it's one small jar of the stuff. The berries cook down to nothing, but you're left with a super-concentrated paste of sour stuff that works as good as lemon juice, but with a bright red color.

Taking a cue from a previous post, where I made beet tarts, I made another batch of beet tarts, this time with the swirly Chioggia variety of beets, as we got a bunch in the CSA box and as we all know, they're not Mr. Wasabi's favorite, so it's on me to enjoy them. They're beautiful vegetables and the swirl of white and red means it stains your prep surface and hands much less. Barely at all, in comparison to the bloody murder of standard red beets. I spread the tart red huckleberry jam over the puff pastry, with cream cheese, and laid the roasted beet slices over that to finish in the oven. The sweetness of the beets were a nice companion to the sour berries, with the richness of the cream cheese and puff pastry to bring everything together. Just like buttery flaky pastry and creamy cheese to make a party, right?

Swirly-good beets for another colorful tart - Photos by  Wasabi Prime

I've been herb-harvesting in the yard as well -- before the heat totally baked our mint plant, I pulled handfuls of leaves, as well as a small bouquet's worth of lemon balm. I've done herb pestos with them in the past, but the latest thing that I can make easily and helps prune down the plants is herb-infused iced tea. I buy a supply of caffeine-free iced tea bags, usually a weak black tea blend, and steep a few bags with handfuls of cleaned mint and lemon balm. I put the whole thing in, stems, leaves and all. They just cook away with the tea bags, infusing the liquid with fresh flavor. I strain the liquid and let it chill in the refrigerator. I sometimes add sugar, but it tastes fine without it. If I have citrus, it's nice to let the rind of a lemon or orange sit in the mixture as well. It's one easy way to enjoy the garden every week, right in a glass.

Garden herbal tea - Photos by Wasabi Prime

Mixed Plate: Teatime With Wasabi

One of the benefits of having a garden full of fragrant herbs is you'll most likely wind up with excess, which can certainly be used in a pesto sauce, but I wanted to try something different: oven-drying aromatics and making custom mixes of herbal teas!

Call me Ms. T, where the T stands for... well, Tea - Photo by Wasabi Prime

Admittedly, this has been a longterm project that I've been working with since early spring -- our lemon balm and mint perked up and really went crazy, so I was snipping leaves from those first. I do regular walks on the trail that runs through Duvall, which has tons of greenery growing wild, including wild roses. My green-thumbed friend, Ms. SSG had talked about using rose hips before, so I started plucking the very heavily scented flowers, along with the buds. After much nitpicky labor, the flowers and buds were cleaned, separated and washed. Everything was put on sheets of parchment paper and dried at the lowest setting on the oven, just around 170 degrees Fahrenheit.

The bright and fresh "before" pics of mint, lemon balm and rose hips - Photos by Wasabi Prime

For small leafy things, it takes maybe three to four hours of low, slow oven drying. The parchment paper is key, as the leaves will definitely want to stick to everything as they dry and my Silpats always feel forever oily and I didn't want that getting into the leaves. Overall, the rose hips were surprisingly strong in terms of flavor; I thought the small handful of dried petals wouldn't yield much, but it definitely added a surprise punch of sweet fragrance. The mint and lemon balm seemed to mellow considerably through the drying process, so for the ratios of flavor, I'd say go heavy with the mint and lemon balm, but light with rose hips. This first batch of home DIY tea was just mint, lemon balm and rose hips, making a pretty mild herbal tea.

OK, get all those t-bag jokes out of your system, I know you want to - Photos by Wasabi Prime

The second attempt had different ingredients -- ginger and citrus rind, along with the same usual minty/lemon balm suspects, although this round yielded rosebuds along with the petals. The warmer temperature was producing smaller flowers and more buds, which I unceremoniously pulled off as many plants as I could. At the risk of getting lots of weird sidelong glances by joggers passing by, I probably plucked a few cups' worth of rosebuds. I had extra ginger and saved the rind from a couple of lemons and an orange, so I loaded up the oven with everything for another drying session. The ginger and citrus rind took longer to fully dry, nearly double the time of the leafy herbs.

Rosy buds and a good use for extra ginger and citrus rind - Photos by Wasabi Prime

This time I put all the ingredients in separate plastic bags, so that I can custom-mix each brew. As the summer gets more into swing, I'm thinking more along the lines of iced teas or even fragrant cocktails and unique seltzers. I'd still brew the mixture of aromatics like a tea, but then chill, flavor with simple syrup or honey and carbonate, or just introduce the herbal elixir to my dear friend vodka. I'm also hoping to stockpile the dried aromatics for beer brewing, as Mr. Wasabi has been feeling the itch to brew again, and many recipes call for citrus rind. The nice thing about drying your own aromatics is once you get that liquid out properly and store it somewhere dry, they'll last quite a while and can have multiple uses.

I'm hoping to get lavender from our garden to have a nice stockpile of it for teas or baking. I'm already dreaming of a rose hip and mint shortbread, or a lemony lavender tea cookie! Stay tuned to see what other experiments come out of Wasabi Kitchen Stadium!

Kampai to ghetto-fabulous herbal teas! - Photo by Wasabi Prime

UnRecipe: Pesto, It's What's for Dinner!

Earlier posts have shown Le Jardin de Wasabi and you could see that the bulk of the harvest so far has been mostly herbs. Not wanting anything to go to waste, I've been snipping bouquet-size handfuls of lemon balm and mint, and making a non-traditional pesto. One of the best things it's been good for is slathering onto a just-grilled bit of pork for a pleasant summertime dinner!

Pork, Pesto and Potatoes - Easy P-sey Dinner - Photo by Wasabi Prime

Yeah, yeah, nuttin' fancy, but when you're in the middle of a heatwave, the last thing you want to do is be cooking over a hot stove and heating the house any more than you have to. Outdoor grilling has the benefit of keeping the heat outside as well as that fantastic grill mark sear with a fast cook time. Per usual, this meal had no real planning. I had defrosted some boneless pork chops and put them in a quick brine, had some leftover sweet potato gratin that I had made for a post on the Wisconsin Cheese Talk blog, and yes -- mystery herb pesto!

I don't think there's any Cardinal Rule that pesto has to be the combination of basil, parsley, Parmesan, garlic, pine nuts and olive oil. Pesto can really be any herby paste full of flavor, kind of like a tapenade, which I've also seen many variants on. The lemon and mint combine nicely for a light, almost Mediterranean flavor, and I added garlic, Parmesan and plain almonds for a bit of crunch. For the handfuls of herbs trimmed away, they buzzed down to about two jelly jars' worth of pesto. Granted, it looks more like the illegitimate child of pea soup and baby poo, but trust me, the flavor is there, and mixed into sauces or a topping over pork, poultry or fish, and it's delicious pea soup/baby poo.

Grillin' With Mr. Wasabi - Photos by Wasabi Prime

It was nice to use the grill -- we've not been using it as much as we should, considering it's summer, but seeing those lovely grill marks, it's a good reminder of why it's such a satisfying cooking process in both flavor as well as aesthetic. People love to see that cross-hatch of caramelized goodness, almost to the point where you want to take a Sharpie and start drawing them on everything!

As for the pesto, those two jars got quite a bit of meal-mileage; by the time this post went live, I'd used them to flavor roasted veggies, in a yogurt sauce to toss with a cold potato salad, breakfast frittatas, and another potato gratin as well as topping a few more pork/chicken dinners. By the time the last jar was scraped clean, I think our herb garden is due for another snipping, and this time I'll probably include more herbs including basil and parsley, making the mystery pesto that much more mysterious with flavor! Cheers to summer and frantic garden cooking!