Yesterday’s adventure combined some of my favorite (admittedly simple) things: being outside in the sun, taking a little trip, picking berries, and free food. We ventured over to in New York State to pick blueberries from an old grove there.
Did I mention it was free?
I had a hard time finding out any information on why there’s an enormous patch of seemingly cultivated blueberries in this state park. It looks as though it used to be a blueberry farm that was eventually annexed by the state. The shrubs are overgrown, the grassy paths are untamed, and other plants (some edible, some not) snake through and around the blueberries. But I’d heard picking was allowed and even encouraged, and that was all I needed to know.
We picked two quarts’ worth of tiny, delicious berries, before the mosquitos got the best of us. (“That’s the price you have to pay,” said Dano.)
At home, I rinsed the berries and lay them out on two cookie sheets to freeze. Once they’re frozen, I’ll transfer them to bags.
Jewel-like chioggia beets over penne, with herbs and greens
Lately our CSA has had the most gorgeous, tiny beets available, their greens still intact. These beets are so young, and so fresh, they require no peeling, and they adorn any meal like little candied jewels. One night, as an appetizer, I quartered them and slow-cooked them in butter with garlic and oregano. Served up in a small glass bowl, we plucked them out with our fingers and ate them all hovering over the butcher-block table in the kitchen while Dan put the finishing touches on the pizza. Here, I’ve tossed them with pasta and herbs and their own greens, for a simple lunch or dinner.
Best eaten outside, in the sun, with a glass of cold white wine. But what meal isn’t improved by such circumstances?
Pasta with Baby Beets & Herbs
Any herbs will do here — use whatever you have on hand, but make sure it’s fresh.
1/2 lb. pasta, whatever shape you like
One small bunch baby beets — 4-5 — with their greens
Wash and scrub the beets, trimming any long roots. Rinse the greens, but do not dry. Quarter the larger beets, and half the smaller ones. (If they are very small, you can leave them whole.) Trim the greens from the beets, removing any tough stems, and roughly chop. Set aside.
Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil and add the pasta, cooking according to package directions or your liking. Set the baby beets in a small metal strainer and parboil them in the pasta cooking water for 5 minutes, or until tender. (Yes, this may color your pasta. Does it matter? No.) Drain the pasta and set aside.
Meanwhile, set a saute pan over medium heat and add the butter and olive oil, swirling as it melts. Add the garlic scapes or garlic and cook over medium-low heat until soft and fragrant. Add the cooked baby beets, tossing to coat with the butter-oil mixture, and some salt.
Turn the heat up to medium-high, and add the beet greens to the beet-garlic mixture. Saute until wilted, then add the pasta, mixing thoroughly.
Season with salt and pepper and a squeeze of lemon juice, to taste, and remove from the heat. Stir in the herbs and serve immediately, with parmesan or pecorino romano, if you like.
The radish leaves this week at my CSA pick-up were starting to look a little haggard. Not yellow yet, and still crisp, but a bit bug-eaten. I suppose that’s the tradeoff for vegetables utterly free of any nasty pesticides. Perforated or not, radish greens can be put to good use in the kitchen. Instead of tossing them directly into the compost bin, combine them with a bit of cheese and nuts and you’ve got yourself a spicy, herbaceous pesto perfect for spreading on toasted bread (top it with a fried egg at breakfast) or slathering over pasta or pizza.
Just be sure your radish leaves are clean — a trip through the salad spinner should do the trick — and you might want to trim any particularly large stems. Usually I separate the leaves from the radishes as soon as I get them home, and make the pesto immediately. That way, the leaves don’t languish in the fridge for too long.
Radish Top Pesto Recipe
You could also use the leaves of small white turnips, or supplement the garlic with garlic chives, garlic scapes, ramps, or young green onions. Essentially, you’re working with an ounce of cheese and an ounce of nuts to a few handfuls of greens — experiment!
A few handfuls of radish leaves, roughly chopped
1 oz (30 grams) aged, salty cheese, like pecorino romano, parmesan, grated
1 oz (30 grams) pine nuts, almonds, or walnuts
1 garlic clove, roughly chopped
lemon zest to taste
drizzle of olive oil
salt and pepper to taste
Put everything in a food processor and blend until smooth, drizzling in olive oil to get the consistency you like. Taste for salt and pepper. Freeze in small packets, or store in the fridge for a week or so, with a layer of olive oil over the top.
We eat a lot of beans around here. They’re cheap, delicious, really good for you, and they take to a lot of different flavor profiles. Some nights it’s dahl, with soft red lentils, or hearty yellow ones, and lots of cumin; some nights it’s a bowl of chipotle-infused black beans with sliced avocado and short grain brown rice (I often think fondly about the black-olive-spiked beans that I prepared and devoured on a daily basis at a little vegetarian café in Brooklyn in the early oughties); some nights it’s chick peas with saffron, tomatoes, and millet. And some nights it’s even simpler — a quick satué of beans, greens, and some alliums.
My copy of the wonderful arrived in the mail a few weeks ago, and Heidi’s spicy chick peas and dandelion greens recipe was my source of inspiration for this recipe. But it’s really less a recipe than a formula, or a set of very flexible rules. I’d had on hand some really lovely Soldier Beans from — so fresh, they cooked in about 30 minutes — and an enormous amount of tender greens from atop the hakurei turnips I’d gotten fro at the Bennington Farmers’ Market on Tuesday. Why not use what’s fresh and local to you? (The dandelions here are a bit past their prime.) The photo above shows the beans and greens I cooked up for lunch on Wednesday — I added onion, and some on top for a little heat — and the formula below is what I made for dinner on Tuesday.
Beans & Greens Recipe
We ate these rich, simple beans with big hunks of crusty homemade sourdough and a wedge of bloomy cow’s cheese. If you think of it, reserve some of the bean cooking broth to throw back into the pot for a soupier, sultrier dish. A good drizzle of olive oil over the top is great, too.
2 c. cooked white beans, chick peas, or any heirloom bean you like
4-5 cloves of garlic, chopped
1/2 tsp. crushed red pepper, or more to taste
a good bunch of tender greens, such as turnip greens, kale, mustard, spinach, chard, or even radish tops, rinsed, tough stems removed, roughly chopped
grated zest of one lemon
olive oil
Heat the olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Toss in the garlic and red pepper, and cook, stirring occasionally. Don’t let the garlic brown.
Add the greens and satué, stirring until soft and wilted, about 5 minutes. The more robust greens — kale, etc. — will need more time. If you reserved some of the bean cooking liquid, you can add it here to help steam the greens.
When the greens are just about soft, add the beans and keep them over the heat for just long enough to warm. Add the zest and stir to combine.
Season to taste with salt and pepper, or a shot of tamari. Serve hot or warm.
I finally had the pleasure of joining Evan Strusinski and a pack of wild food enthusiasts on a foraging walk up on Stone Hill, in Williamstown. This was in the midst of what turned out to be a stressful weekend — our dog, , got sick and required surgery (he’s okay now) — so it really did me some good to get out into the woods, chew on some Japanese knotweed, and inspect various mushrooms. Of course, I brought my camera along, and tried to capture some of the edibles Evan showed us. You can see the whole photo set at , if you’re so inclined. The foraging walk was great fun; if you’ve been putting off signing up, you’re running out of time — the last two walks are this weekend, with Blanche Derby and John Root, in Stockbridge and Lee.
If you like the idea of wild edibles, but would prefer to keep your fingernails clean, you can sample foraged goodies at this weekend’s , where Berkshires chefs will be serving up wild-foods-inspired dishes in their dining rooms.
All this instructional foraging paid off, because I discovered — with great shock — a handful of morels growing in our sodden backyard yesterday afternoon. After work today, instead of reading or unwinding in front of the television, or whatever it is normal people do, Dan and I plan to head up the hill at the back of our property to see if we can find any more.
