Harvest Monday - May 5, 2014

The harvests are a bit less varied for the past week now that the spinach and other spring greens are done. The star for the week was the favas, I think they hit their peak this week.

Extra Precoce Violetto fava beans

I made a batch of my husband's favorite fava dip. We had that one night with really crisp leaves from the heart of one of the romaine lettuces that I harvested last week. Then I made a different fava dip using a recipe from Suzanne Goin's book Sunday Suppers at Lucques. That recipe uses a technique for cooking and flavoring the beans that was new to me, it sizzles some rosemary and a dried chile pepper (she uses an Arbol chile but I used Aji Angelo) in a generous amount of olive oil, then some garlic (I used a generous amount of green garlic), and then the peeled favas are cooked in the oil mixture until tender. The drained beans are then pureed (without the rosemary and chile pepper) with some of the oil and lemon juice, then served with a topping of feta, olives, and parsley on little garlic toasts. It was a big hit with my dinner guests and I will definitely be making it again.

The butterhead lettuces are all gone now and we've moved on to the romaine. I'll need to be harvesting the rest of the romaine in short order because it is on the verge of bolting.

Sweetie Baby romaine

I'm still pulling some of the onions planted for spring harvesting and I'm also raiding the garlic patch for green garlic on a regular basis. And I keep thinning out the fennel patch as well.

Spring onion, green garlic, fennel thinnings.

One of the spring onions actually had a pretty nice bulb developing.

I've started pulling the Superstar onions. They are trying to bloom, unfortunately, so I'll be using them  up as spring onions.

Superstar sweet onions.

I used those in a saute that also featured asparagus and snap peas from the farmer's market, plus some snow pea shoots from the garden and some green garlic.

Snow pea shoots and green garlic

A few more beets which were simply roasted and served with a green salad dressed with hazelnut oil and sherry vinegar.

Red Baron, Golden, and Chioggia beets.

Here's the harvest totals for the past week:

Chioggia beets - 14.9 oz. (including the greens)
Golden beets - 5.4 oz. (including the greens)
Red Baron beets - 7.2 oz. (including the greens)
Capers - 5.8 oz.
Extra Precoce Violetto fava beans - 15 lb., 10 oz. (which netted about 3.5 lbs of peeled beans)
Inchelium Red green garlic - 7.5 oz.
Spanish Roja green garlic - 6 oz.
Sweetie Baby romaine lettuce - 3 lb., 14.6 oz.
Mixed spring onions - 4.9 oz.
Superstar onions - 2 lb., 13.1 oz. (including tops)
Snow Pea shoots - 4.1 oz.

The total harvests for the past week were - 26 lb., 3.5 oz.
Which brings the total harvests for 2104 up to - 151 lb., 11.9 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.