Harvest Monday - June 8, 2015

The harvests have slowed down for a bit since the spring garden is mostly done and the summer plantings aren't producing yet, with the predictable exception of the Romanesco zucchini.

Romanesco zucchini

I've managed to keep radish successions going.

Helios and Pink Beauty radishes

Most of the onions that I segregated for spring harvests have been pulled and now I'm pulling the main crop onions that are producing flower stalks. Candy and Superstar are once again trying to flower early, just like last year. I had hoped that it was the stress of a warm winter that made them bolt, and perhaps that was the case because we had unusually warm winters both last year and this year, but if that's the new normal than I need to find some new onions to grow.

Candy onion

At least there's something of a bulb to slice and most of the the stalks are still tender enough to use as well. I used this onion in a zucchini dish that I'm adding to my lineup of zucchini recipes. The recipe came from Saveur magazine, although I adapted it for what I had because the onions in the Zucchini, Onion and Ricotta Pie turned out to be shallots and garlic with nary an onion. So I used onions instead of garlic and shallots and rather than using a 10-inch pie pan (which I don't have) I baked it in a gratin dish. It was delicious and got the Dave seal of approval.

Dave has also given his approval to Italienischer lettuce, a variety that I'm trying for the first time. It's a large oakleaf type that was recommended to me by a local gardener. It's growing like crazy and I started to harvest leaf by leaf early last week but that didn't slow it down so I started harvesting whole heads.

Italienischer lettuce

We enjoyed a simple tossed salad dressed with red wine vinegar, pomegranate molasses, and hazelnut oil with a scattering of chopped radishes and toasted hazelnuts.

Italienischer lettuce

These days I keep a variety of tubtrugs in various sizes around the garden. The large one is really handy for doing the initial wash right in the garden and then I can easily use the wash water to spot water around the garden (which is less likely if I have to haul it from the kitchen).

Other harvests not photographed included the amazingly small cauliflowers. The entire harvest was equal to less than 2 of the the heads I harvested last year. I used about half the harvest to make smashed cauliflower - chopped blanched cauliflower cooked in butter with some onion until soft, then smashed with some creme fraiche - a potato haters substitute for chunky mashed potatoes. There were also more sprouting broccoli shoots and one of the last spring onions. That last spring onion went into a dish made mostly from storage items - a warm salad of Petaluma Gold Rush beans, some preserved Odessa Market sweet peppers (from October 2014 and still very good), and good Spanish oil packed tuna. I tossed the sliced onion with red wine vinegar (homemade) and a bit of fish sauce, then the salad was dressed with more wine vinegar and olive oil, and seasoned with fresh sage and ground smoked Tarahumara pepper. Another hit with Dave.

Here's the details of the harvests:

Purple Peacock broccoli - 6.3 oz.
Spigariello Liscia broccoli - 7.7 oz.
Amazing Taste cauliflower - 3 lb., 3.5 oz.
Italienischer lettuce - 11.2 oz.
Candy onions - 2 lb., 1.4 oz.
Spring onion - 9.9 oz.
Helios radishes - 4 oz.
Pink Beauty radishes - 3.8 oz.
Romanesco zucchini - 7.3 oz.

Total for the week - 8 lb., 7.1 oz.
2015 YTD - 331 lb., 6.3 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.