Harvest Monday - May 12, 2014

The onions are misbehaving, not all of them, but most of the Superstar and some of the Candy are sending up flower stalks. That means that the bulbs won't get much bigger and they definitely won't store well if I allow them to completely mature. So it has been the week of eating onions.

Candy onions

The bulbs are large enough to cut into thick slices and grill on my stovetop ridged griddle. My husband loves sweet onions prepared that way and eats them like they're candy...

Superstar onions

I prepare them very simply, just grilled and then tossed with salt, pepper, and a dash of agrodolce vinegar such as my favorite Late Harvest Sauvignon Blanc vinegar from Katz. The grilled onions keep well in the fridge so I always grill more than what I need for immediate use. I think I'm going to see how well they freeze.

Superstar onions

The garlic is not misbehaving, but it sure is delicious when harvested green, either in the scallion stage or when it starts to form bulbs. I used the entire bulb from this garlic to make a Romesco sauce with some roasted red peppers from my stash in the freezer. The sauce is delicious on grilled vegetables - such as onions. That was dinner last night, along with some grilled artichokes and haloumi cheese.

Inchelium Red garlic

Additional rooty matters came from the garden last week. We had a salad with roasted beets for dinner one night.

Red Baron, Chioggia, and Golden beets

If the beets aren't colorful enough for you, how about hot pink chard stems.

Flamingo and Peppermint Stick chard

Flamingo chard lives up to its name with pink stems from root to leaf tip. Peppermint Stick chard has brilliant pink strips along the base of the stem. These leaves were quite large but still tender. I blanched them and then stuffed them with a mixture of - you guessed it - grilled onions, pork sausage, chopped chard stems and a bit of Parmigiano. Those were baked with a bit of creme fraiche and chicken stock. The filling didn't hold together well but it sure was delicious.

Flamingo and Peppermint Stick chard

The volunteer chamomile is blooming like crazy. I harvested twice this week but the tally only shows the first harvest after it was dried. I don't use my dehydrator to dry the blossoms, I just spread them out in a basket and let them dry at room temperature. That method works fine here because the climate is very dry. The greenery in the center of the basket is my first trimming of the new patch of snow pea shoots.

The fava harvest is coming to an end. This basket of beans is what was left on the first four plants. Those plants were sown earlier than the rest of them and are the first to be done. I also picked a big basketful of beans from the remaining plants later in the week but I didn't photograph them.

Extra Precoce Violetto fava beans

Other harvests this week that weren't photographed were more green garlic, capers, and a few heads of romaine lettuce. The lettuce is looking less photogenic these days because it is quite mature and getting a bit raggedy around the edges. The hearts are quite dense but still tasty. I've been experimenting with stir frying and sauteing it with good results. Unfortunately I haven't been keeping notes about my experiments and my memory is failing me at the moment.

Here's the harvests for the past week:

Chioggia beets - 1 lb., 6.4 oz.
Golden beets - 13.9 oz.
Red Baron beets - 1 lb., 10 oz.
Capers - 6 oz.
Extra Precoce Violetto fava beans - 17 lb., .6 oz.
Chamomile, dried - .9 oz.
Flamingo chard - 1 lb., 4.1 oz.
Peppermint Stick chard - 1 lb., 7.5 oz.
Inchelium Red green garlic - 4.8 oz.
Spanish Roja green garlic - 2.5 oz.
Sweetie Baby Romaine lettuce - 3 lb., 15.2 oz.
Candy onions - 1 lb., 9.3 oz.
Superstar onions - 7 lb., 8.8 oz.
Usui pea shoots - .5 oz.

The total harvests for the week were - 37 lb., 10.5 oz.
Which brings the harvests for 2014 up to - 189 lb., 6.4 oz.

Harvest Monday is hosted by Daphne on her blog Daphne's Dandelions, head on over there to see what other garden bloggers have been harvesting lately.