Welcome to Harvest Monday, where we celebrate all things harvest related. The asparagus is still our #1 harvest, though the cold and rainy weather last week slowed it down a bit. We have harvested about 14 pounds so far this year, and it has showed up in a lot of meals. Last week I steamed a batch to go with a Rio Zape Bean and Sweet Potato Salad. I used one of our Purple sweet potatoes from storage for the salad, cut into chunks and roasted in the oven in a cast iron skillet until they were browned and crispy. Fried fresh sage leaves from the garden (Holt’s Mammoth) and toasted pine nuts top the salad, which is tossed with a vinaigrette dressing. The first time I made this it seemed like an unlikely combination of ingredients, but they go together amazingly well.
asparagus with Rio Zape Bean and Sweet Potato Salad
We also got our first taste of the fermented asparagus. For this first batch I added three cloves of smashed garlic, two dried mildly hot Aji Angelo peppers, and a bay leaf to the jar. I let it ferment for 5 days on our kitchen counter, and at that point decided it was ready for eating. The asparagus turned sort of an olive drab color, almost like it had been cooked. Amazingly though it stayed crunchy, with a tangy and tart flavor I find reminiscent of a cucumber pickle. It was tasty enough I started a second jar on Saturday, this time seasoned with the same amount of garlic and a few sprigs of fresh dill weed. I think it’s a good use for the small to medium size spears we get from the asparagus patch. Like many fermented veggies it is supposed to keep for a year in the refrigerator, but I predict this first jar will be lucky to last a week!
fermented asparagus pickles
Some of the asparagus also wound up in a frittata I cooked for lunch yesterday. The asparagus was joined by some of our dried tomatoes and sweet peppers (rehydrated), and a few leaves of arugula and mizspoona from the greenhouse. I sprinkled a little homemade mild paprika on top before baking to give it a little extra color and flavor. I love how versatile frittatas are in the kitchen, and such a good way to use so many different garden veggies.
frittata
I cut a bit of lettuce from a salad box in the greenhouse for salads. I believe this is mostly Tall Oaks, an oakleaf mix from Wild Garden Seeds, plus a few leaves of Jester. There’s plenty more lettuce coming on, though the recent cold spell had me wanting soup and not salad.
Tall Oaks lettuce
Of course for me soup always calls for bread. I had some rolls in the freezer, but I also baked up a loaf of my Rye and Whole Wheat Bread last week for sandwiches. I recently ordered some grains from Bluebird Farms in Washington state, and I was anxious to try them out. They specialize in growing certified organic ancient grains like emmer, spelt and einkorn, as well as some heirloom varieties of wheat and rye. I made this loaf using their Pasayten Hard White Spring Wheat and their Heritage Dark Northern Rye, fresh ground in our Nutrimill, along with King Arthur bread flour. It had a wonderful flavor, and I will be looking forward to baking more bread with these grains in the future.
Rye and Whole Wheat Sandwich Bread
And yesterday I made a batch of sourdough pita bread using their emmer wheat. I followed my recipe for Whole Wheat Sourdough Pita Bread, substituting emmer flour for the whole wheat and making a separate emmer levain from my six-year-old mother starter. I mixed the dough up and retarded it overnight in the refrigerator to accommodate my schedule, which worked out nicely. The dough was a bit tricky to work with, fragile and prone to tearing, and the lower gluten content was pretty obvious. But they puffed up nicely when they hit the hot pizza stone, and had a sweet, nutty flavor. I also want to try the Whole Emmer Sourdough Bread recipe at Breadtopia. The emmer should also work well in quick breads.
sourdough pita bread made with emmer flour
The weather is supposed to be dry and warm early this week, so I hope to get back out in the garden and do some planting. I want to get a small spot of bush beans planted, and I have the bush squash plants pretty much ready to go in the ground. I am so glad I got the garlic and brassica beds mulched before the rains came. I put down sheets of newspaper and then covered with wheat straw. We’ve had over five inches of rain the last two weeks, and the mulch surely kept the soil from washing out. The plants are loving the rain, and have grown quite a bit since the below photo was taken earlier last week. Hopefully I can get more plants out there this week to join in the garden party.
brassica and garlic beds after mulching
Harvest Monday is a day to show off your harvests, how you are saving your harvest, or how you are using your harvest. If you have a harvest you want to share, add your name and blog link to Mr Linky below. And be sure and check out what everyone is harvesting!
You sure are having a bountiful asparagus harvest, fermented asparagus pickles sounds interesting, so is your Bean and Sweet Potato Salad, such creative use of crops.
It’s lovely to see all your asparagus and what you’ve made with them. That’s great news that the fermented asparagus turned out good and crunchy. I’m intrigued by making pita bread… I need to try that sometime.
Isn’t it wonderful to eat seasonally–for now asparagus for you and artichokes for us. The pita looks beautiful and nice shot. I enjoy seeing your photos of the garden.
Asparagus sure is the one bright spot in an otherwise dreary spring, and your bounty is truly outstanding. I love the frittata. I’ll have mine with a side of pickled asparagus and some of that pita bread, please.
So far we’ve only eaten the few asparagus spears we’ve harvested plain – just to get the full flavour experience. I think I’ll take a page from your book, though, for our next picking, especially since a little goes a long way in a frittata and we are limiting how much we pick this year.
The fermented asparagus is very intriguing! My plants are still babies, but I hope some day to get a real harvest.
Your bean and sweet potato salad doesn’t sound strange to me, it sounds delicious. I really have to restrain myself from using fried sage leaves too often because they’re so delicious, but I need to keep some variety going!
I’m going to have to try some of those grains from Bluebird Farms, I’ve really been enjoying the various kinds of flour from different types of wheat. I just tried Turkey Red recently and it made a fabulous addition to my usual levain bread.
14 pounds of asparagus sounds heavenly. It would be fun to experiment cooking with such a large crop of it. I’ve seen the fried sage leaves before, makes me want to grow a few sage plants and try it out. The sweet potato salad sounds truly inspired.
Yummy fermented asparagus, mmm.
I’ve not had anything particularly exciting harvested this week, nor taken any photos, so will hopefully join back in next week.
My garden is very small, but I have enjoyed being a part of Harvest Monday this week. Maybe I will be able to join in again as the season progresses. Thanks for hosting, and thanks for your visit and comment on my blog.
Happy Gardening!