Mollie Katzen Online

An Exclusive to MollieKatzen.Com

Dear Friends,

This month we have a guest here on the Kitchen Table Gazette: Andy Griffin, who, along with his wife Julia, farms delicious organic produce in Watsonville, California. Andy is a terrific writer as well as a dedicated farmer. I'm pleased he has permitted me to share his vision with you.

Yours In health,
Mollie

By Andy Griffin
Mariquita Farm
Organically Grown Vegetables, Berries and Herbs
P.O. Box 2065 Watsonville, CA 95077
(831)761-3226
www.mariquita.com

Spring Farmer's Market

Imagine what life must have been like in the early spring for our peasant ancestors. (Those of you descended from royalty or with roots in the carefree tropics just bear with me for a minute, please.) The days would be getting longer just as everybody's tempers were getting shorter from being cooped up in a hut around a smoky hearth for too long. Sure, their root cellars would have once been crammed with beets and turnips and their larders stuffed with salted meats, pickles, and dried fruits but all that would be nearly gone by the end of March. People's bodies would be craving fresh greens and vitamins. Yes, spring was a time of love and flowers and renewal but any crops left overwintered in the field would be flowering themselves and unfit to eat. Hunger was never very far away in the springtime.

Now look at what Mariquita Farm has on the menu down at the farmer's market this week. We have an almost perfect display of what a hardworking peasant family could hope to eat for dinner on a cool spring evening in the dark ages. Everybody would be hungry, too, after all the effort it had taken to get the meal to the table.

Soup, beautiful soup, so rich and green, might have come to the table first, perhaps made from sorrel or nettles. Once upon a time children had to work and, after a motherly admonition about the big bad wolf they would be dispatched for the day to the fields to watch the goats or geese and gather such greens into a basket as they might find. The children would be wise to follow the flocks closely, too, because sour sorrel and stinging nettle are both very high in vitamins and thus very attractive to the goats and geese. Animals are smart about nutrition. A little fresh sorrel is refreshingly lemony on the tongue for children getting tired of their chores. And nettles? Well, picking nettles stings the hands a bit but better that than have your mother sting your bottom with a switch for coming home with an empty basket.

Parsnips or white carrots baked on the coals could come after soup to fill the belly. Both root crops are very resistant to bolting to flower and were a very important part of the diet a long time ago. Reading old recipes today it's actually difficult to tell which white root cooks were using because the few people that could write generally used the same word for both parsnips and carrots. And all carrots were white, at least in Europe, with none of today's decorator colors in evidence. (Ok, in Asia there were red and purple and black carrots and a wealth of spices, but I'm being ethnocentric and thinking of my own ancestors to whom Asia was fabled and exotic and far away.) Roots were grubbed out of the muddy ground with a dull knife called a spud. You will recognize the word spud as the ancestor to our word spade. Before potatoes came to the old world parsnips were "spuds," so named for the tool that brought the roots to light.

Saladings, or sallets, could follow the roots for a complete meal. Orach might fill the salad bowl because it is very tolerant of cold weather and can grow lushly as soon as the snow melts or the fields dry out enough to turn and plant. In some places orach grew wild too and could be gathered ahead of the goats. Or maybe dandelion might make the salad. This bitter green is very tonic. We plant it for you today but once it too would have been foraged from wild meadows. The children would undoubtably have kept their eyes open for any wild strawberries, too, and if the precious fruit made it back to the hut it could be dessert. We are watching our own strawberry patch. The recent heat wave sped things up a bit and we will begin a modest harvest soon.

Now imagine you lived back then and were dependent upon your own garden and the herbs of the magical dark forests that surrounded your little hut. And let's pretend that last night a slavering herd of red-eyed wild boar broke into your garden and ravaged it, leaving you nothing, and now you have to put a spear to your shoulder and brave the big bad wolf and venture into the deep woods and kill a pig in order to survive. I'm betting you wished you lived in a future where spring's bounty showed up in a downtown market place with flowers and espresso drinks. Well, you're in luck!

Recipes

Dandelion, orach, nettles, white carrots, A Salat
Serves 6

Salads, made mainly of herbs, were popular throughout the Middle Ages, often served at the start of a meal, rather than after the main course. The make up of the salad would change according to the season and what grew in the cook's herb garden, so feel free to adapt this basic recipe as desired.

1/2 pound orach leaves, removed from the stems, washed & dried
1 bunch dandelion greens, washed and roughly chopped
2 stalks green garlic, very finely diced
6 spring onions, chopped small
1 bulb of fennel, slicked in thin match-sticks
1 large handful of fresh parsley, pull off into small sprigs
the leaves from 1 young sprig of fresh rosemary
the leaves from 4-6 prigs of fresh mint, slightly chopped
a few leaves from any other herb you have (take care not to use too much of any very strong flavored ones)
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
2-3 tablespoons wine vinegar
4-5 tablespoons olive oil

Dry and toss the orach and dandelion leaves in a large salad bowl. Mix them with the green garlic, spring onions, fennel, and any herbs you are using, then sprinkle with salt and pepper, and mix again. Mix the oil with the vinegar and pour over the salad just before serving.

Adapted From: http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~mjw/recipes/ethnic/historical/med-european-coll.htm l

Mashed Parsnips and Scallions
this recipe was submitted by our long time CSA member Nancy M. in Gilroy
Makes 4 servings

1 pound parsnips, peeled and roughly cut up
1/2 pound potato, peeled and roughly cut up
Salt
1 bunch green onions (scallions), trimmed, cleaned and sliced thin
1/2 cup milk
4 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 teaspoon grated lemon zest
Freshly ground black pepper

Directions:
Place the parsnips and potatoes in a 3- to 4-quart saucepan. Pour in enough cold water to cover by three inches. Add a generous amount of salt and bring to a boil over high heat. Cook until tender, about 15 minutes. Add the scallions and cook 3 minutes.

Meanwhile, heat the milk and butter over low heat until the butter is melted. Drain the vegetables thoroughly and return them to the empty pot. Mash the vegetables with a potato masher, gradually adding the milk mixture, to a smooth texture. Add the lemon zest and season to taste with salt and pepper. Serve immediately.

Nettle Recipes:
http://www.mariquita.com/recipes/nettles.html

Parsnip Recipes:
http://www.mariquita.com/recipes/parsnips.html