The Successful Gardener’s Essential Tool

The greatest tool a kitchen gardener can have to ensure successful harvests is not a shovel, hoe, tractor or tiller. Though to be sure each of those tools are useful and necessary, none of them are the single most useful weapon in the gardener’s arsenal when it comes to getting good harvests year after year.

The essential kitchen gardener’s tool is simply this: a journal.

No, I don’t mean the kind where you record your most intimate thoughts and feelings about broccoli, though, of course, you are free to express those innermost brassical longings–I’m talking about a book (or laptop, for the die-hard geeky gardeners) where valuable data on weather, seed companies, plant varieties, planting dates, expenditures, profits and pests is recorded and kept year after year. All of this data is absolutely useful and crucial to creating a successful kitchen garden not just once or maybe twice, but for years to come.

I know, I know, I’m making all of this sound so boring and complicated. Why have a journal when all you have room to grow is a couple of big planters of tomatoes and a bunch of basil plants on your deck? Why bother with writing stuff down? Gardening is about getting out into the sunshine and the dirt, isn’t it?

Well, I guess that if all you are growing is a few tomatoes and some basil you don’t really need to write anything down about it, but believe me when I say this: you may start out with only a couple of tomatoes and some basil, but if they grow well, you will be amazed at how many plants you can cram into pots on your little tiny deck, and once you get into multiple varieties of the same plant–like tomatoes–you really should try and keep track of what you grow, where, when and how, so that when you come upon a couple of varieties that grow well for you, you can remember which ones they are.

And if you are talking about planting a seriously large backyard or community garden plot, it behooves you to keep careful notes even more, because when you plant more vegetables and fruits, you have more to loose than you did when you just plunked some plants in pots on your patio and called it done. Let’s face it–sure seeds are cheap, relatively speaking–but if you plant a variety that just plain old won’t grow for you one year, and then don’t write that down, what’s to stop you from buying that same variety again next year because you forgot which one did so poorly?

Yeah, sure you MIGHT remember the name of that zucchini that never germinated or that carrot that bolted right away or those eggplants who succumbed to tobacco mosaic virus, but then again, you might not. And really, you can’t rely on the pictures of the vegetables on the seed packs to help jog your memory–lots of zucchini look awfully similar, and many of them seem to be photographed in much the same arrangements on those seed packs. (Because, really, how easy is it to POSE zucchini so they look special and exciting? Can you really see the photographer telling the vegetables to work it? No, me either.)

So, at the very least, a journal is a good place to record your successes and failures so you can repeat the first and hopefully avoid the second next year.

But there is so much a good garden journal can do for you. Here’s a few ideas to get you started….

Keep Track of Expenses: I learned this one from my Grandpa, when I was a fairly little kid. Every time he went to the feed store for a bag of lime or a part for his John Deere, he’d carefully fold the receipt into a neat square and tuck it in the chest pocket of his work shirt, then button the flap over it so it couldn’t slither away and be lost. Then, every night, he’d take out the receipts and record them in his garden journal/ledger in a column marked “Expenses.”

Now, while my Grandpa was a farmer and made his living off the land, his practice is a good one for a plain old backyard gardener to follow too, because it can keep track of where you spend your money in the garden, what you buy, where you buy it, and how long these commodities last.

For example–gardening tools are expensive. BUT, they are usually one-time expenses. I mean, if you buy a good quality shovel or spading fork, and then take proper care of it, it’s going to last at least two decades. Even if you forget to bring it in from the rain and let your clumsy neighbor use it, it’s likely to last at least ten years. So, while it might cost a lot the first year, over the lifetime of its use, that tool will in actuality cost only a couple dollars a year, and the work it will help you do is worth WAAAAAY more than a couple of dollars.

You can make separate categories for your expenses like Grandpa did– tools, fertilizer, pest control, fences, seed starting equipment and hardware (stakes, floating row covers, trellises)–or you can just have one section entitled expenses, where you list everything together. It doesn’t really matter, but what matters is that you keep track of everything, so that at the end of the growing season you can see where you saved money and where you didn’t. If you keep track of what you bought for the garden and how it worked out, you can figured out what was a good investment and what wasn’t so you will purchase more wisely in the future.

Record Plant and Seed Varieties: This is my favorite part of my garden journal. Well, my second favorite part–we’ll get to the other part in a second. Here’s where you keep track of which seeds you plant, when you plant them and where you plant them and how they perform in your garden. This is all crucial information and if you are like me and plant more than one variety of any given vegetable in a year (we have three different types of carrots planted, three kinds of beets, three kinds of peas, two of beans and about six of tomatoes), then you absolutely should not rely on your memory alone to keep straight which varieties grew like gangbusters and which just petered out.

Or, what if you plant a type of tomato, say, that is supposed to be a heavy producer, but for you it only does so-so? I mean, what if it produces some good tomatoes, but not so many as was advertised or maybe not so many as your neighbors got? Well, if you have your journal, you can look at -when- you put it in the ground, where you put it and what the weather was like when it was growing–and you might find your answer there.

Maybe you planted the tomato out in mid-April because it had been warm and then suddenly, it turned rainy and cold and the tomato plant got stressed right away, and maybe it stunted its growth. Next time, maybe you should wait to plant that variety until May first, just to make sure that the temperatures are going to be more consistently warm.

Writing about each vegetable variety you grow is a good way to learn what exactly grows well for you in which season (because you may well find that one type of pea doesn’t produce well in the spring, but is great in the fall) and allows you to experiment with planting times, crop rotation and site selection in an organized fashion.

What should you record about each variety of plant or seed? Well, when I get my seed packets, I usually write down the name of the vegetable, variety name, seed company, germination time and average days till harvest. Then, I go back and after I plant that seed or plant, I record when and where I planted it, and then take notes through the season on how that plant grew in the garden and at the end, I record how much of a harvest I got from that variety.

All of this information is invaluable when you start drooling over the brightly colored seed catalogues that brighten the grey days of January, giving you a means to choose what to order based not only on ad copy and enticing photographs, but also on solid facts that you yourself observed and recorded in your garden.

Oh, and you can organize this section of your journal by seed company, vegetable type, (carrots, tomatoes and lettuces), or if you are really fancy, by vegetable family (brassicas, cucurbits and nightshades). It’s all up to you. I’m doing mine by seed company, but I may switch to vegetable family, just because I like using words like brassica.

Daily or Weekly Garden Log: This is my favorite part of my garden journal. This is where you write about what you did in your garden, what is growing, what isn’t, what beneficial bugs are visiting and what pernicious pests need eradicated, or at least convinced to leave and what the weather is blessing or cursing you with.

This part is fun. Because while writing about expenses is by its nature a simple list and recording facts about seed varieties can be a bit dry, you can make this part of your journal a lot more juicy. You can add pictures. You can wax poetic. You can be witty, funny or ironic. Just make sure to get all the useful, important information into the journal entries while you’re having fun. How much did you plant? How did you plant it? Where? When? How did you dig your garden? Did you use a tiller? Did you double dig? Did you build a raised bed? What did you build it out of? What did you fill it with? Did you see worms in your dirt? Were they active or sluggish? How about those slugs? Carrying a salt shaker in your pocket yet?

See what I mean? There is a wealth to write about when you start recording your gardening activities. And yeah, you can even write a poem about broccoli, if you want. I never have, but that doesn’t mean someone else can’t or won’t.

This is also where you can add photographs recording your garden progress, pressed leaf or flower bits, sketches of a new weed you’ve never seen before and hope to never see again, and garden plot diagrams so you can remember which square foot bit you put the cabbage in and which one is filled with mesclun.

A picture is worth a thousand words, and this is no less true in a garden journal than in any other context. Pictures also help keep you interested in keeping the journal and going back and reading over it later–because really–the truth is, recording all of this data is a worthless waste of time if you go to sleep every time you open it up and try and read it. So, take pictures. Draw pictures.

Hell, make cartoons out of your worst garden enemies, like Santorum Slug or Affleck the Aphid. Turn your resident ladybug into a comic book heroine–whatever works.

Finally, understand that you can use anything to make a garden journal. It can be as fussy and type-A personality or carefree and handmade as you want. It can be analog or digital–it can be a real book or a virtual one. It doesn’t matter. Whatever makes you happy and keeps your data organized and useful is perfectly fine.

Mine is a blank notebook made from recycled materials that I glued the front of a card that was given to me for my birthday by a friend ten years ago. (Yeah, I save stuff like that.) I added little Post-it tabs to make it easy to find my sections for expenses and seed varieties, and will add more as time goes on. I’m kind of winging it with mine by keeping it small and portable, and will have to probably have a different volume for each year, but you could use any kind of small or large notebook or blank book you like.

Or a ledger book like my Grandpa. Or you can buy a special gardener’s journal. Or you can download free templates to make a garden journal. (There are lots of places to download templates.)

Or you could use gardening software.

Or, you could do an online digital garden journal.

Or, you could just start a blog and share your garden journal with the world.

But as for me–I like my plain old analog garden journal, complete with dirty fingerprints and crooked, hand-drawn diagrams. It kind of reminds me of a more heartfelt version of my Grandpa’s extremely valuable and useful, but emotionally sterile, ledger. It’s small enough to take out to my community garden plot with me, but large enough that my handwriting can be read, even by folks other than myself. It’s made from recycled materials, and it looks homey and it expresses as much about me as it does about my garden, and that turns out to actually be important.

Because the truth is this–while the garden journal IS a great tool that helps a gardener reap successful harvests each season, it is also a little bit of a work of art, just as a garden is a work of art.

And like a garden, a garden journal is never, ever finished.

The Secret To Delightfully Tender Lamb Kofta

This technique is so simple, I almost feel silly writing about it. I only wish I had thought of it myself, but I have to admit to having read it in Niru Gupta’s slender but flavor-packed cookbook, Everyday Indian. And after having read it whilst perusing the book again a few weeks ago, I had to try her parent’s cook’s method for making meltingly tender lamb kofta, or meatballs.

You poach them in a thin curry sauce.

Yeah, you’d think that a culinary school grad like myself would have had sense enough to come up with that on her own, but no, I didn’t. It is, after all how the French cook their little quenelles, which really, are nothing more than very delicate egg-shaped meatballs so light and tender. Instead of frying them or baking them and then adding them to a sauce, they poach them very gently in a stock at a bare simmer.

Now, once I read that one sentence in her book, my mind clicked into high gear and thoughts went racing along at top speed on the subject of how to make koftas that were like quenelles without taking away their intrinsic Indian nature.

I came up with the idea of making the kofta as I usually do with the addition of one well beaten egg and a sprinkle of ground dalia (roasted split chana) as binders to keep the kofta from even thinking of just breaking apart in the sauce. And then, poaching them in a fairly thin curry sauce that is based on pureed browned onions, garlic and ginger, spices and meat stock–in this case, lacking lamb or veal stock, I used chicken. Then, after the kofta are cooked, I removed them and turned the heat up on the curry sauce and reduced it until it could coat the back of a spoon thinly–not a thick, slow-moving sauce, but more of a light, extremely flavorful sauce that was neither too thin nor too thick.

The sauce is then salted to taste, enriched with a couple of spoonsful of yogurt, the kofta are added back to the sauce and reheated and voila–dinner is served.

As always there are a pointers that will help you along as you make these kofta.

First, be as gentle as possible when mixing the kofta ingredients together. Use your hands, and be nice to the meat mixture. Don’t mush, squish or squash the meat too much–in fact–handle it as little as you possibly can to get the job done!

Secondly, when you form the kofta, don’t pack the meat together, or use the usual technique of squeezing the mixture out of your hand into perfectly round balls. Instead, gently pinch off a piece of meat that is roughly the size of a walnut or a bit larger, and roll it lightly between your palms–very lightly–to form your sphere. Work as quickly as possible and don’t handle the kofta or the meat mixture over much.

And finally–don’t get smart and think you will just leave the kofta in the sauce while you reduce it. There is no sense in poaching a bunch of meatballs into a tender, almost fluffy, light texture and then toughening them by boiling them. Take the extra step and remove them from the sauce with a skimmer–not tongs, because you’ll likely break them–and then, reduce the sauce as much as you want.

If you follow these suggestions, I promise you will make the most tender and flavorful kofta you have ever eaten. When Morganna took her first bite of them (I hadn’t told my line cook daughter how I had made them), her eyes closed and she smiled beatifically. “Oh, my God, Mom, these are great–what did you do to them, poach them?”

My answer: “Just like quenelle.”

Her answer: She nodded, grinned and tucked in, eating more than I had seen her eat in a long while.

Tender Lamb Kofta in a Light Curry Sauce
Ingredients for the Kofta:

4 green cardamom pods
1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds
1 teaspoon coriander seeds
1/2 inch piece cinnamon stick
10 peppercorns
1 clove
1/4 teaspoon fennel seeds
1 pound ground lamb
1 1 /2 teaspoons finely ground fresh ginger
2 teaspoons finely ground fresh garlic
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon mild chili flakes or to taste (I use Aleppo Pepper; you can use a hotter chili if you like.)

1 egg, well beaten
1 tablespoon ground dalia

Method:

Grind the whole spices together and set aside. Put the lamb in a bowl, and make a well in the center. Add the spices, ground ginger and garlic, salt, and chili flakes to the well, and mix these seasonings together with your fingers without combining them in the meat yet.

Add the egg to the well and sprinkle the dalia powder over everything.

Gently mix the meat together with your hands, touching the mixture only as much as is absolutely necessary to get it to combine.

When all is well mixed, pinch off roughly walnut sized bits of the mixture and quickly and gently roll into spheres between your two palms. Set aside and cover with a damp kitchen towel.

Ingredients for the Curry Sauce:

10 green cardamom pods
1 small bay leaf
1/2 teaspoon black peppercorns
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
1 1/2 teaspoon coriander seeds
1 teaspoon fennel seeds
1″ piece cinnamon stick
5 cloves
2 tablespoons ghee or canola oil
2 large yellow onions, thinly sliced
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 tablespoon finely ground fresh ginger
2 tablespoons finely ground fresh garlic
8-12 fresh curry leaves
5 whole dried red chilies
1 teaspoon turmeric
2 teaspoons paprika
1 quart chicken stock
water as needed
1/4-1/2 cup whole milk Greek style yogurt
salt to taste

Method:

Grind the whole spices and set them aside.

Heat the ghee or oil over medium heat in a heavy bottomed deep, wide skillet or pot and add the thinly sliced onions. Sprinkle the salt evenly over the onions and cook, stirring, until the onions are a dark golden color.

Add the ginger and garlic, and cook, stirring constantly until the onions are a golden brown. Add the ground spices and cook, stirring constantly until the onions are a deep reddish brown–which should only take a couple of minutes. Quickly remove the pan from the heat, scrape its contents into a food processor or spice grinder and puree into a smooth paste.

Put the pan back on medium heat, add a little more ghee or oil if needed (usually there is enough left in the pan from cooking the onions) and add the curry leaves and chilies. Cook, stirring, until very fragrant and a few blackened/browned spots appear on the leaves and pods. Add the pureed onion mixture, the turmeric and paprika and stir to combine. Deglaze the pan with the chicken stock, stirring to remove any browned bits. Bring to a simmer, adding as much water as is needed to cover the kofta when they are added to the pan.

Add the kofta one by one by lowering them to the top of the curry sauce and slipping them in. Don’t just drop them from a height–you’ll splash yourself and will either flatten the kofta or break them up.

Simmer for about fifteen minutes, or until the kofta are done all the way through–they should be barely pinkish on the inside. Stir them carefully now and again, if needed.

Remove the kofta with a skimmer and set them aside on a plate. Turn up the heat under the sauce and bring to a boil. Cook down until the sauce will thinly coat the back of a teaspoon.

Stir in the yogurt, turn the heat down to medium again, add the kofta back to the sauce and simmer just for a minute or two to reheat the meat.

Serve with a basmati rice pillau or plain steamed basmati rice and a vegetable based curry or two. Or three–you can never have enough vegetables…..

Speaking of which–you can parboil well-scrubbed fingerling potatoes or new potatoes until they are about halfway done and add them to the simmering curry sauce five minutes before you add the kofta. Let them cook five minutes, then add the kofta and cook as directed. You can leave them in when you reduce your sauce or remove them, but whichever you do–the potatoes will taste delicious with the kofta!

I Have Returned, For Real This Time. No, Really, I Mean It.

It’s funny.

When I first went back to writing this blog, I really believed I was fine. Everything was fine, I was fine, the world was fine, and all was well.

But, you know, that wasn’t really the case. Which is why I went quiet again–I wasn’t quite ready to become a public figure of sorts just yet, but I was too stubborn to recognize that fact. Therapy had brought me a long way, but post traumatic stress disorder has a way of creeping up on a person and biting her firmly in the (mental) butt, and that is what happened to me. I had ignored the fact that a VERY significant anniversary was coming up–one that played an important role in the development of my wonderful PTSD experience.

It happened back in January. That anniversary. Twenty years since I left an abusive husband, starting a chain of events that culminated in losing most of my birth family, and my beloved infant daughter.

Said daughter, named Morganna, is now twenty-one, and is exceeding every expectation she ever had for herself. Not only has she lived with me or here in town on her own for the past six years, she has done amazingly well in college, and has risen through the ranks in the kitchen at one of the couple of fine dining restaurants here, and she loves it. She has matured, grown and dealt with her own trauma, and is, I am happy to say, contented and happy.

Not only that, she’s beautiful and talented and is a daughter I cannot help but be proud of. Not just for her accomplishments–not just for what she does, but for who she is. And I love her more than words can say, just as I always did all those terrible years we lived apart.

I’m not saying all of this so readers will pity me–far from it–it’s just that in order to go back to writing about food–which I very much want to do–I kind of had to get this mess off of my chest. I kind of had to speak truth to power, as it were, in large part, because of how I had written the stories in this blog for so long.

I never lied–I just ignored a lot of truths about my past, my family, and my life. I had repressed the terrible truths so tightly that, while I knew they existed, I was certain that those facts and feelings from the past could never affect me.

Ha. Ha. Ha.

Repression doesn’t work that way. It’s a useful psychological tool to get through trauma while it’s happening, but it is no long term solution for dealing with pain, anger and fear. But, because my mental health had been called into question during the divorce and had been used to bludgeon me into giving up during the custody dispute (it was only one weapon in the arsenal that was used by my parents, my ex-husband and his family to get me to give up and let them have Morganna), I had never felt safe doing anything BUT repress my emotions and memories of these traumatic events.

It wasn’t until Morganna’s twenty-first birthday that the last of the mental walls came crashing down and I could finally do the last, hardest bits of repair to my psyche, and I could finally let my guard down and admit that yes, dammit, I did have emotions, and some of them are negative and they are there for a VERY good bunch of reasons!

So, this winter, I went down into the underworld, and confronted the shades that live there. I confronted the bare facts about my childhood, which was not always as sunny as I have generally portrayed it–in fact–there was violence and abuse. I confronted the dysfunctional family heritage that was passed down to me through generations, and once again reiterated my refusal to pass it along to my daughters. I confronted my part in choosing bad relationships in the past–and forgave myself.

But most of all, I confronted my own shadow-self.

The one that was filled with rage, fear and hatred.

And I decided to love her. Not to reject her, because the truth is this–she was angry and afraid and filled with hate for many good reasons. She had been hurt time and time again by those who were supposed to love and protect her, and her anger was justified. She had to stand by and watch her helpless daughter be hurt time and again, all the while fearing for both her own life and her child’s, as well as her beloved husband’s.

That shadow lady who lives in my psyche isn’t just a mindless fury, filled with poison and terror–she’s there to help me. Well, now that I’ve embraced her, she’s my helpmate and friend. When I repressed her, she went out of her way to get my attention by various means, up to and including using physical pain and illness.

Once I started listening to her story, our story, well, no, MY story, it all started to come together. My shadow isn’t evil. She just wants to protect me and my daughters, my husband and my family. And she’s got the wits, instincts and sense to do that.

So, I’m glad to have her around.

All winter she and I sat and talked while the entire household suffered with typical cold-weather illnesses, flu, pneumonia, bronchitis, and norovirus. And as the long, cold nights began to shorten and the light of the sun painted the frigid Ohio sky a paler shade of grey as it brightened, I began to feel stronger again.

Stronger and more purposeful.

The days lengthened, and the snow finally stopped falling. The sun began to shine. And I saw a way out of the darkness and began my ascent.

When I emerged, the first snow crocus were beginning to bloom and the canopy-like leaves of the black hellebore had begun to unfurl. The wrens were singing and the goldfinches had begun to put on their sunnier summer plumage.

I was alive again, and whole, for I had embraced my shadow-lady and brought her out of the underworld with me. And like Persephone, I was filled with joy to be in the world again.

The natural world has been a balm to my heart and soul. Tending the flower garden Kat and I have worked on for years and watching the bulbs she and I planted in the fall blossom has made me remember all that is good in this world, even as tragedy close to home and far away has reminded me that life is, indeed, suffering.

So, I’m back. And I have lots to write about. Recipes, yes, of course. And essays, yeah, those will be there, too. I can’t help but climb a soapbox every now and then and the world seems to be intent on riling my sense of justice these days. And book reviews, yes.

And, of course, stories. Everyone loves a good story, and since I am a natural born talespinner, there will be those too.

But there will be more. I’ll be chronicling the evolution of our family garden plot in the West Side Community Garden here in Athens. Zak, Morganna, Kat and I finally got off our duffs and decided to actually eat the most local food of all–food that we have grown with our own hands and hearts.

So, look for posts about what goes into a garden and what comes out. How-tos on every aspect of gardening and farming I can tell about along with interviews from other gardeners and real live farmers who can impart way more wisdom than I can.

So, here I am.

Finally.

Ready, willing and able to plant some seeds, and help the future grow, and hopefully prosper.

Honey-Ginger Pork and Baby Bok Choy

I’ve been enamored of developing simpler stir fry recipes that are based upon the principles of Cantonese cuisine: ingredients combined to create a flavor/color/texture contrast with minimal use of condiments so as to allow the natural flavors of the food to shine through. I never really loved Cantonese cuisine when I was younger, probably because I had only eaten wretchedly greasy, relatively flavorless, gloppy versions of it at bad restaurants. And let me tell you, the versions of Cantonese food I ate as a young adult are a far cry from being accurate representations of the cuisine!

But as I have aged, I have found myself drawn to the aesthetics of the Cantonese ways with food. I think it is because I grew up eating very simple food. My grandmothers prepared vegetables, in particular, simply–with only a bit of butter, (or, bacon grease!) salt and pepper and sometimes an onion or some vinegar. Now, granted, to my taste now, they overcooked their vegetables woefully, but they still tasted good–and like themselves, though admittedly, like overcooked versions of themselves. But still delicious.

Meat was prepared in much the same way–maybe some onions, a bay leaf, salt and pepper, sometimes garlic–and that was generally it. And particularly when it was the grass-fed beef my mother’s parents raised–the meat tasted like the very essence of itself.

And that is the challenge of cooking simple food. You must let the natural flavors shine through without making the food taste bland and lacking in depth. Part of the trick of this is to start out with the best ingredients you can get your hands on, and then don’t overcook or undercook them, and for goodness sake, be judicious in the use of your aromatics, spices and condiments.

So, that’s what I’ve been up to these days, when I haven’t been busily sewing Generic Winter Holiday presents. (That’s why no recent posts–been stitching, by hand and machine–oh, and moving a friend from a nightmare house into a nice house. That took a day…) I’ve been coming up with new and simpler ways to stir-fry fairly ordinary seasonal ingredients and transform them into the very essence of themselves.

And this recipe, like the Baby Gai Lan with Chicken and Chilies, is a good example of this process at work.

Oh, one more thing before we go on to the recipe, let’s talk about how to cut baby bok choy in half without having them fall sadly apart. See how pretty they look in the photo above? Well, they aren’t only pretty–they cook faster and more evenly in a wok if you cut them longitudinally. But, as I said, you have to cut them the correct way, or they just might fall apart on you and they also won’t be as lovely looking as my examples.

Okay, take a look at the bok choy in this photograph. I call the side that is up the “back” of the vegetable. And it is through the back that you want to cut the bok choy. If you turn the vegetable a quarter turn to the right or left–it doesn’t matter which–you will see that instead of a solid broad stem and leaf, that you are looking into the layers of the bok choy. I call that the front, and that is where you do NOT want to cut.

So, just cut through the “back” of the bok choy where you see a single broad stem and leaf, instead of through the “front” which shows the layers of the leaves. You get a prettier result that is less likely to fall apart on you.

How does this taste? Well, Kat loved it, as did Zak. I cooked it again tonight for Kat, Zak, Morganna and Brittney and the two line cooks loved it too. It is sweet, but not cloyingly so–just sweet enough to enhance the natural sweetness of the pork. The bok choy tastes green and fresh without being bitter and the mushrooms are like velvet–they all but melt in your mouth.

Honey-Ginger Pork and Baby Bok Choy
Ingredients:

3/4 pound boneless pork loin, fat trimmed and cut into slices 1/4″ thick, 1/4″ wide and 1 1/2″ long
1 teaspoon honey
1 1/2 teaspoons light soy sauce
1/2 teaspoon Mirin, sake or Shao Hsing wine. (would you believe I didn’t have Shao Hsing in the pantry and had to make this with Mirin? How very odd for me, but it ended up tasting divine…)
1 1/2 tablespoons cornstarch
2-3 tablespoons canola oil
4 scallions, white and light green parts, trimmed then cut thinly on the bias
5 or 6 fresh shiitake mushrooms, stemmed and cut in half
1 garlic clove minced
2 1/2″ cube fresh ginger–as young as you can get it–minced
1 1/2 tablespoons honey
1 tablespoon light soy sauce
2 tablespoons Mirin or other alcohol as noted above
12 baby bok choy, washed, dried and cut longitudinally, as noted above
1/2 teaspoon toasted sesame oil

Method:

Toss pork with the first measures of soy sauce, mirin and honey, as well as the cornstarch. Allow to marinated for twenty minutes–which is about the amount of time it will take you to prepare the other ingredients.

Heat your wok over high heat until a thin thread of smoke spirals up from the surface. Add the canola oil and heat it until it shimmers–which should take about another thirty seconds or so.

Toss in the scallions and cook, stirring constantly, for one minute. Add the mushrooms and stir fry until the scallions take on a golden color.

Scrape the pork into the wok and arrange it into as close as a single layer as you can manage. Sprinkle with the garlic, ginger and the second measure of honey, then allow the pork to cook, undisturbed in the bottom of the wok, until it browns on that side. Then, start stir-frying again, and when it is nearly all white and brown and most of the pink is gone, deglaze the wok with the second measures of soy sauce and mirin. Add the bok choy immediately, and cook, stirring until it browns a bit and wilts slightly, and the pork is done, and a small amount of very thick brown sauce lightly glazes the ingredients.

Remove the wok from the heat and drizzle in the sesame oil and stir to combine it well. Serve with steamed rice–it is enough to feed two adults and one toddler. You can double this recipe, but if you do, either cook it in two batches, or cook the meat first, remove it from the wok and then cook the bok choy and bring everything together at the end with the second measures of mirin and soy sauce.

When the Weather Outside is Frightful…

…and your headache’s far from delightful, and your throat is sore, you know, blow your nose, blow your nose, blow your nose….

Yeah, I made that up just now. I have a gift for making up alternate lyrics to popular tunes on the fly. It’s a pretty useless talent, but it is amusing.

It might even make my sickly friend Janis smile.

I hope so, because, Janis, this post’s for you.

See, Janis has an untimely cold. I mean, yeah, it’s cold season, but it’s also holiday season and who wants to be feeling like death on toast warmed over when there is all that festive fun to be had?

So, I offered to tell her how to make my “Chinese/Auyervedic/Appalachian White Chick Voodoo Priestess Tea” recipe and so many of her Facebook friends wanted the recipe, too, I figured I’d just haul off and put it up on the blog.

But, before we get into the recipe, I have to post the standard disclaimer: I am not a medical doctor or practitioner of any sort. I’m a chef and a writer and a mother, and so what I am dispensing here is not medical advice, it is just a little something that has helped my kitchen staff, my family and friends boot a cold out the door just a little bit faster than it might have faded on its own. And–it makes you feel better. A lot better. Or, at least, it makes myself, my staff, my family and friends all feel better when they take it, so I hope it will work for Janis and the rest of you, should you need it.

This concoction is a concatenation of folk remedies from all over the globe. I learned about the green tea and ginger from one of the Chinese line cooks I worked with back in the day. He also told me to add a tiny bit of chili pepper if I was really feeling bad. The black pepper, cinnamon and clove comes from rasam, a South Indian lentil broth that is spiced out of this world delicious, and which kills a cold before it can even think of becoming bronchitis. I added the cardamom because one of my personal chef clients’ mother told me that it had a soothing effect on the throat when it was sore. The mint is from my own self who figured that if menthol is in Vick’s Vaporub and is good for you, then plain old mint would work, too.

The honey, lemon and whiskey is straight up from Southern Appalachian tradition.

Now, about that whiskey–it’s optional. No, really, it is. All of the other stuff is pretty necessary, but the whiskey–that’s for the nights when you can neither sleep, nor stomach another swallow of Nyquil.

So, here’s how I make the tea. I used to make it for Morganna until she grew old enough to learn it, and now, she’s taught her friends and now I’m teaching it to you.

I sure hope it helps cure what ails you.

But if it doesn’t cure you, it certainly won’t kill you and it tastes mighty fine as it goes down.

Please note–all of the amounts are approximate. Voodoo tea is generally made by feel, but use your common sense. You know that a huge handful of peppercorns in your tea is not only going to taste bad, but will probably hurt you as well. so don’t put a handful in.

Oh, and one more thing–it doesn’t matter what phase the moon is in when you make this tea, nor do you need to use water gathered at the full moon from a mountain spring while you sing thirty-two verses of some holy chant or another. You just make it and take it when you need it, and that’s good enough.

Chinese/Auyervedic/Appalachian White Chick Voodoo Priestess Tea
Ingredients:

2 good, heaping teaspoons worth of jasmine-scented green tea (If you must use teabags, Numi’s Monkey King green jasmine will work perfectly well.)
1/2 teaspoon dried spearmint, or one sprig of fresh spearmint, bruised lightly
1/2-1″ cube fresh ginger, peeled and grated finely
1″ piece of cinnamon stick
3-5 whole cloves, lightly crushed
2-4 whole green cardamom pods, lightly crushed
3-5 whole black peppercorns
a pinch of Aleppo pepper flakes (optional, but it is very warming–and you CAN use hotter chili flakes if you want–but the Aleppo works more gently)
two or three good long, wide flakes of lemon zest–just use a vegetable peeler to remove it from the rind
3 1/2 cups water
juice of one lemon–about a 1/4 cup–fresh is best
honey to taste, but I suggest at least two tablespoons–honey is very soothing to sore throats–especially buckwheat honey–it works amazingly well on coughs
1 jigger whiskey–that’s for the whole pot–if you are using it–or you can do the whiskey to taste

Method:

Take the tea, and all of the other ingredients up to the water, and put them into the basket of either a press-style teapot or a French press coffee maker. (What? You don’t have either of those? Well, you can use a regular old tea ball, but then when it is done steeping, you have to play with pressing all the goodness out of the tea, herbs and spices with the back of a spoon into the pot, which is something truly bothersome to do while sick. Or, you can just throw it all loose in a pot and strain it as you pour it, but then you don’t get to squeeze the goodies out that way at all. So, suit yourself on this matter.)

Bring the water to a boil, and pour it over the ingredients in the basket and into the pot, cover with the lid and then pop a tea cozy or a towel over the pot to keep the liquid warm. (What? You don’t have a tea cozy? Well, don’t worry because neither do I. I always thought they were rather a bit twee for my taste, so I go with the towel method. There are always towels in varied states of cleanliness around the kitchen, but I doubt you will see a tea cozy any time soon. Oh, but be sure and pick the cleanest of your kitchen towels for this duty. No need to add anything odd to the tea when you are already feeling crappy.)

Allow to steep for a much longer time than you normally would for tea. About 5-8 minutes.

After the steeping time is done, press down the plunger on the pot, thus squeezing all of the essential oils, tannins, and flavors from the tea ingredients into the tea. Take out the basket if you are using a teapot, or pour off the tea into another vessel if you are using a French press coffeepot. (That’s the problem with using a French press. You get the squeeze out all the goodness, but you can’t add the lemon juice and honey to the pot unless you pour it into another pot, which is a pain in the tuckus, so I suggest not doing it that way. Just get a nice little teapot like mine–it will make your potion-making much easier.)

Now, add the juice of one lemon–about 1/4 cup, and stir well. Add the honey and stir to dissolve. Taste. If it isn’t sweet enough, add more honey. Too much honey isn’t really too much when you are talking about a sore throat and a cough.

Finally, add the whiskey if you are going to use it. I usually don’t use it unless the cough is truly horrific, but I am not opposed to using it either.

Drink this over the day–I prefer it hot, because I find its more soothing that way, but if you want, you can drink it lukewarm. And save those herbs, spices and other goodie bits in your tea basket, because you can make a second steeping from them, though you have to steep it for 8-10 minutes to get the same effect. And you have to add more lemon, honey and whiskey to it, too….

Well, that’s it. See–it was easy, wasn’t it? I hope that just reading it makes you feel better, Janis.
Hugs and love to you!