Welcome to Harvest Monday, where we celebrate all things harvest related. I’m getting a few new veggies in the harvests now that we have transitioned from summer to fall and winter harvests. I got a cutting of turnips greens one day, our first taste of the season. This is a Japanese variety called Nozawana that is grown specifically for the greens (it doesn’t make roots) which are smooth and mild tasting. I’m also growing one called Topper for the greens, plus Scarlet Ono Revival which has large leaves plus pink/magenta roots. The Nozawana cooked up literally in a few minutes. I only harvested the leaves and left the plants to grow more.
Nozawana Turnip greens
Another first for the season was a harvest of broccolini or stem broccoli. I’m growing three plants each of Artwork and Apollo and they both made small heads at the same time. In the below photo it’s Apollo on the left and Artwork on the right. The main heads of Apollo are a bit bigger, but it’s the side shoots that are the main attraction for these two. Though it’s getting late in the year hopefully the plants will hang on long enough for me to get a few more cuttings. I should get some of the heading broccoli this week since those plants are heading up too.
Apollo(L) and Artwork(R) broccoli
I also cut most of the Minuet Napa cabbage last week. I got one big head and two smaller ones that weighed just under four pounds total. That will give me enough for two quart jars of kimchi with a bit left for perhaps a stir fry. I’m still waiting on the other cabbages to make heads big enough to harvest. As always, the slugs had a feast on most of the outer leaves, but it cleaned up nicely for the kimchi.
Minuet cabbage
I made a cutting of the Tronchuda Beira last week, which is something I haven’t grown in a couple of years. I set out three plants in early August, and they have grown quite tall by now. I cut a bit over a pound, which was plenty for a batch of Caldo Verde I cooked up last night for dinner. The leaves are huge, and I want to try stuffing them too using Michelle’s recipe as a starting point. I’m looking for suggestions for other ways to use this productive green.
Tronchuda Beira leaves
Something else I haven’t grown in a few years is bulbing fennel. This year I started some of the 2017 AAS Winner Antares for a fall planting, and I’m glad I did. I got a half dozen bulbs of fennel for my efforts, weighing about two pounds after trimming off the leaves.
Antares fennel
We like fennel grilled or roasted, and these wound up getting roasted in a cast iron skillet. I’m planning on growing this one again next year for sure.
roasted fennel
Speaking of cooking up the harvest, my wife baked a pumpkin pie to take to a carry-in dinner last week, using some of the Dickinson puree I cooked up a while back. She used her recipe for Grandma’s Pumpkin Pie, and made pie dough leaves to decorate the top. I thought it was yummy, and there were no leftovers to bring home from the dinner! I see another pie in our future for Thanksgiving however, and more to come since we have several of the Dickinson pumpkins left. I baked a batch of my Multi-Grain Seeded Dinner Rolls to take along.
pumpkin pie
I managed to find a few more sweet peppers that survived the recent frosts and freezes. I was shocked, because it got down below freezing on a couple of nights. But while the foliage on the peppers was definitely zapped, the peppers slightly down below looked fine. From top to down in the below photo it’s Cece, Cornito Giallo, Cornito Rosso and Orange Blaze. Some of them wound up in a frittata I cooked up yesterday, along with a bit of fresh tromboncino, shallots, and dehydrated tomatoes. It’s a treat to have any fresh peppers here in November.
Cece, Cornito Giallo, Cornito Rosso, and Orange Blaze peppers
And in the previous harvest department, one of my favorite new kraut creations is the Pineapple-Turmeric-Ginger Sauerkraut I made from some of the spring planted cabbage. The sugars from the pineapple get fermented away, and the results is a tart pineapple taste with overtones from the turmeric and ginger. I added about a half cup of chopped pineapple to the salted cabbage, along with a teaspoon of turmeric powder and a heaping tablespoon of fresh grated ginger. I served it as a side dish for a salmon burger I ate one day for lunch, using one of my sourdough buns for bread. I hope to make more of this kraut if the fall cabbage ever heads up, using some of our homegrown turmeric and ginger.
Pineapple-Turmeric-Ginger Sauerkraut
As I’ve said before, around here soup calls for bread, and for the Caldo Verde I thought it would be appropriate to serve a Portuguese Corn Bread called Broa. I’ve never eaten or made this bread before, and I settled on a King Arthur Flour recipe since I couldn’t find a recipe for it in any of my cookbooks. This is a yeasted bread, enriched with a bit of honey, milk (I used almond milk), and oil. For the cornmeal I used a stone-ground meal we got from the Old Mill in Pigeon Forge. I think it turned out nicely, and my version looks a lot like the one at King Arthur. It was sturdy with a crisp crust but had a soft crumb, and my wife and I both thought it went well with the soup. Together they were just the thing for a cold, gray, dreary day like it was here yesterday.
Broa Bread
crumb shot of Broa Bread
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!
The pumpkin pie looks delicious, something for us to make soon. Amazing about the peppers and great to have broccoli at this time of year.
Glad that you didn’t follow the King Arthur tradition of letting your bread burn!
The cole crops look great! The broccoli looks just like early-season. And I am strongly considering growing Tronchuda Beira based on your results. But what really got me going was the pumpkin pie and Broa bread…guess the cold weather is getting me in a “nesting” mood!
Oh the bread and soup sound delicious (and I say that while looking at the dusting of snow on the ground outside) 🙂 I would be interested to see if you come up with any more recipes for the Beira Tronchuda – I use it for Caldo Verde as well which is delicious, but usually the harvest is so prolific, even when you only grow a couple of plants, that it would be nice to have a few alternative uses. The idea of growing turnip greens just for the greens is intriguing – I have really missed them this year as the sowbugs really did a number on our turnips.
I imagine those peppers are really sweet which might be why the cold didn’t zap them because the sugar works like antifreeze.
Congrats on your fennel harvest, you’ve mentioned before that it’s a difficult veggie in your garden. I still struggle to get my timing right on planting fennel. This year I got some decent bulbs from an April sowing and then a few roots that got left in the ground produced some shoots this fall. Even now those roots have a couple of shoots growing which might make a couple of small bulbs. Next year I’m going to experiment more with getting a second crop from the roots.
It would be great to get some more ideas for Tronchuda Beira. I haven’t come up with anything beyond soup and stuffed cabbage.
Gorgeous pie, beautiful bread, and very interesting kraut.
Ooh lovely, I wish I could grow heading broccoli. I should get some purple sprouting broccoli in the spring but that’s a bit of a wait yet.
Have you ever used einkorn flour for your bread? I’ve heard a lot of good things about it recently, and it was mentioned in a film I saw the other day (a film called Sustainable, about sustainable agriculture in the US – have you seen it?)
I have experimented with einkorn flour, but not recently. The film doesn’t ring a bell – I will have to check it out though!
Hi Dave. Is the yellow cornmeal you used for the broa a fin ground or coarse meal? I am keen to have a go at this, especially as we have some Portuguese friends visiting in the New Year and would love to surprise them
I used a coarse ground meal, but I think either would work.
Thank you. I can look out for some when we next go to the shops.
I grew Tronchuda for the first time this year. Regarding suggestions: I used it in lieu of grape leaves in dolmades (with ground lamb or beef and rice), and it worked really well (recipe from the Complete Book Of Turkish Cooking by Ayla Esen Algar). Of course, the rolls are much larger than the grape leaf version!
It also worked great as a substitute in recipes for collard greens. Here are a couple that I make:
https://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/fusilli-with-collards-bacon-and-garlic-11640
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/patrick-and-gina-neely/dirty-rice-stuffed-collards-recipe-1949151
Susan
Thanks for the ideas Susan! I never thought about looking for collards recipes. I like the idea of using it with pasta, as well as stuffing the leaves.
Wow this post made me hungry! I have to take a reading break just to go raid the fridge now xD