Posts Tagged ‘vegetables’

05.04.2010

The Forbidden Ramp

I hope everyone had a wonderful Easter weekend. The weather around here was unbelievable, really. We had planned to spend the whole weekend hiking, but took Saturday off to relax on a blanket in the park, marveling over the unprecedented April warmth.

Do you know what these are?

On Friday at Oka (a lovely National park, in a village which is known in Canada as the site of the Oka Crisis) I spotted a few little spots of green among the brown leaves on the forest floor. I immediately knew what they were, and went closer for a better look. They were ramps! It was so exciting to find edible (and delicious) plants growing when I hadn’t even been looking for them. There was only one problem. That being that ramps are on the endangered list in Quebec, so we are supposed to leave them alone.

Lots of wild, onion-y goodness.

So, the very anti-climatic end to this story is that despite my joy at finding these lovely wild ramps, I decided to leave them in the forest where they were. Well, except for the few that I picked and tried raw, straight from the soil. They had a good, strong allium taste, so I was lucky enough to go on tasting them for the next hour or two (aka onion/garlic breath, big time).

We considered picking a few more to put on the banh mi’s we had packed for lunch, but decided against it in the end. I consoled myself about leaving the ramps with the thought that we still had a few hours of walking ahead of us, so they likely would have been pretty wilted and heat-weary by the time we got them home anyway.

Here’s a little more information on ramps: at The Forager Press, and The Atlantic.

And if you’d like to read about the Oka Crisis of 1990, the link will take you to the Wiki article.

So, are you much of a forager? Have you tried ramps? If so, did you buy them or pick them yourself?

love,
meg

Update– I watched an excellent documentary on the Oka Crisis, by Alanis Obomsawin. The entire film is available to watch at the NFB site here: Kanehsatake 270 Years of Resistance.

19.12.2009

Goya: more bitter than sweet

Though it is a fruit, there is nothing sweet about goya–also known as bitter melon or bitter gourd, it resembles a very bumpy cucumber and is in the same family as pumpkins, squash and gourds. It is traditionally eaten in Japan, China, Vietnam, India and other South and Southeast Asian countries.

this is the Vietnamese variety of bitter gourd

this is the Vietnamese variety of bitter gourd

C. says that while he was in Okinawa (where goya is very popular) people said the reason Okinawans live so long is because they eat lots of pork and lots of goya! I can’t verify this, but it sounds reasonable enough, I suppose. One dish that is very popular there is goya champuru which is a stir-fried dish that features goya and often pork, eggs, onion or garlic and other seasonings.
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15.10.2009

Ready… set… sprout!

In an effort to: a) eat more organic produce, b) be thriftier, and c) simplify finding fresh produce during the colder months, I have started growing my own sprouts. Growing sprouts is likely ‘old hat’ to many of the wonderful food-centric folk out there, but it is new to me, and it has been a revelation. It is really very easy and satisfying to grow your own sprouts, and it’s also cost-effective (great for our seemingly-hostile economic climate) and at least a little entertaining. I love peering into a jar of seeds/sprouts to see how much they have grown overnight.

in the beginning, there were seeds

in the beginning, there were seeds


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02.10.2009

Pumpkin and azuki bean soup: a simple recipe for a cool autumn evening.

I haven’t been feeling all that well lately. I’m not exactly sick, but my energy levels are pretty low. I have been feeling like I’m starting to get a cold for two weeks or so, only it never actually develops into a cold. I have felt like doing little more than lazing around the house–drinking tea and reading–though I do feel better when I get out and do something else. I love fall, but these days it doesn’t seem to love me. I’m finding it really cold for the beginning of October. It might be my imagination, but our spring, summer and fall (so far) have all been colder than usual here in Montreal. Maybe it’s some sort of global-warming-in-reverse.

Due to my lethargic state, C has been cooking our dinner more often than usual. However, a few days ago I made this wonderful soup, and it was just what we both needed: warm, comforting, nutritious, and simple (though soaking and cooking the beans does take awhile). We ate it with cooked millet, my homemade kimchi, some sliced raw veggies and a shredded cabbage salad. I was really impressed with the soup–it is truly greater than the sum of its parts. I got the basic recipe from a little cookbook that I found in a used bookshop a few weeks ago. It’s called Natural Remedies from the Japanese Kitchen by Fukuhara and Takahata. In it the authors talk about some traditional Japanese ingredients that are thought to be healing, and then introduce several simple recipes for each one. I didn’t make the recipe exactly as it was in the book, but made a thicker and heartier version using the same main ingredients.

this is the leftover soup with millet mixed in, for breakfast.

this is the leftover soup with millet mixed in, for breakfast.


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27.08.2009

Spring/summer/salad roll goodness!

cucumber, cilantro and squash. Note that they are resting on the prepared rice paper, but it hasn't been folded yet

cucumber, cilantro and squash: oh my!

These little beauties were modeled after the delicious Vietnamese salad roll, but they make no claims to authenticity: the ingredients used are somewhat unorthodox, but they suit me very well. We ate them two days in a row. The first day we used bean sprouts, carrot, cucumber, many herbs, shrimp and red pepper. The second day we used steamed sweet potato and squash as the main filler, supplemented with carrot, cucumber, herbs, and some had shrimp. C isn’t a big fan of shrimp, actually, so maybe half had shrimp in them.

The first batch featuring bean sprouts were good, but I vastly prefer the ones with sweet potato and squash–they were filling, the sweetness went nicely with the sauce (even if it wasn’t homemade), and with the many Vietnamese herbs we used. They were absolutely delicious. And easy–especially if you don’t prepare them beforehand. We just wrapped them up and ate them at the table, making just as many as we wanted. I recommend you try them. (more…)

26.05.2009

Food or flower?

a very humble flower

Or perhaps both?

This is what happens when Chinese broccoli sits in the fridge for so long that the florets stop being florets and start being flowers.

Cute!

And after another few days languishing beneath the snap peas and green onions, the very same Chinese broccoli is destined to meet its end tonight, in a pot of miso soup.

Yum!