Farm Chef Blog

Curing our 2009 garlic crop

This summer, we had the biggest and best harvest of garlic I have ever had in over 10 years of growing garlic! After planting 2 boxes of seed garlic purchased for $200. , we now have around a thousand heads of beautiful, organic garlic. Like most chefs, I consider garlic a kitchen staple. But I hate to have to buy it. Nowadays, most restaurants use big plastic jars of pre-peeled, sulfited garlic, or worse yet, pureed garlic.  Like so many tasks in the restaurant industry, it is not worth the labour to pay someone to peel garlic. Even most of the garlic in the grocery store is imported from as far away as China and it is often chemically treated so that it will not sprout. So I try to grow enough garlic to last the whole year. Garlic is a wonderful crop to grow. Planted as the last task of the season, in mid October and mulched with straw to supress weeds, it lays dormant under a blanket of earth and snow until the soil warms up in spring. It will poke through the straw around March. In June it will sprout serpentine scapes,which should be cut off and then sauteed or pickled like beans. We cut back on watering by the beginning of July and let the garlic harden off, and from then on I check the size of the garlic by pulling out a plump head every couple of days. When the tops dry out and turn yellow and cloves have formed a skin the garlic is ready to harvest. This year the garlic harvest and subsequent cleaning, trimming and bundling took place over the course of one hot week in July and involved the help of WOOFERS (Willing Workers on Organic Farms), staff and even some of our guests! Our wonderful, creative gardener Valdilia figured out a way to weave them into decorative bunches. After about a month in a shady, drafty spot, we now have them dried and put away, enough for the whole year!

With so much beautiful garlic, I was inspired to make a  silky-smooth roasted garlic veloute. We served it to our guests several times this summer, with a zuchinni blossom stuffed with goat’s cheese and lemon thyme, a single, seared, Qualicum Bay scallop, some chopped arugula or a fresh salsa verde.

Tags: From the Garden, Recipes by Mara
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Sometimes the dark days of winter spook me. Unpredicatable weather and power outages. Cash flow challenges.  A lack of sunlight and fresh local produce means I depend more on the grocery store, and personally, I just feel more vulnerable. I lost both of my parents in the winter and my ram, hungry and cranky on a cold snowy day,  broke my leg in the winter. With the long daylight hours of summer I feel strong and alive, practically invincible. But in the winter I am not so bold and I retreat to the indoors, sleeping more and going out only for the bare necessities. Those around me have heard me refer to this as the time to stay home and eat lentils. Not only is it a comforting and affordable food to eat in winter, it just seems a lot less dangerous.

Lentils have long been known as a staple protein for vegetarians, and beacuase of that, perhaps they suffer a hippy stigma. But from India to Italy, the humble lentil offers a versitile source of daily protien which adapts well to a multitude of spices and cooking methods. Unlike other pulses, it’s small size means it can be cooked quickly.

Canada is actually the largest producer of lentils, with 28% of the world’s production grown on the Canadian praries in the provinces of Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Alberta. But some of the finest lentils come from regions such as Puy in France, or the Sicilian island of Ustica.

In Italy, traditionally, lentils are the first thing you eat for the New Year, as their small size and shape symbolize money and prosperity. On New Year’s eve they are often served with slices of smimmered fatty pork sausage such as Cotechino or Zampone, a stuffed pork trotter.

On a recent trip to Sicliy I tried the lentils from the Island of Ustica, which are one of 32 of Sicily’s Slow Food Presidia items. The Ustica lentils are the smallest I’ve seen, and cook quickly without pre-soaking.The classic preperation is a soup of pasta e lenticchie, with broken spagetti cooked on the side and added to the soup before serving. Here is a recipe inspired by a humble bowl of soup made with Ustica lentils which I was offered during the staff meal at La Lucerna restaurant in Porto Palo, near Menfi, in Sicily. Served with a generous swirl of freshly pressed, spicy Sicilian olive oil on top, it was the best lentil soup I have ever eaten.

Pasta e Lenticchie

 Rinse 2 cups of dried lentils several times. If you are using large lentils, let them soak for an hour or so. Chop a “sofritto”, a fine dice consiting of 1 Cup of onion, 1/2 a Cup of celery and 1/2 a Cup of carrot. Finely mince a large clove of garlic. In a soup pot, saute the sofritto and garlic in 2 Tbsp of olive oil, adding a pinch of salt, a little freshly milled black pepper and a bayleaf. Cook until the onions are soft and translucent. Add the lentils and 6 cups of water. Cook for between 45 minutes and 1 1/2 hours, depending on the size of the lentils, tasting them for doneness from time to time. Bring a seperate pot full of water to a boil.

Fill a one cup measure with spagetti broken into 3/4 inch pieces. (This is a good job for a kid) Salt the water and cook as per the package instructions. Taste the soup and add salt and pepper as needed, stir in the cooked spagetti and serve drizzled with the best quality olive oil you have in the house.

Tags: Ingredients, Recipes by Mara
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Navajo Churro lamb born Dec. 12, 08

December 12 was a full moon and the first really cold day we’ve had this year, and that was the day one of my Navajo Churro ewes decided to have her lamb. I admit, my farming style is somewhat hands off, which is exactly why I chose the Navajo Churro breed when I started raising a small flock of sheep 8 years ago.  A multi purpose rare breed, they can be raised for meat, milk or wool, but are not really champions in any category. Perhaps their greatest attribute is that they are low maintenance, seldom require veterinary care or help with birthing, and have good mothering skills. In fact, I often only notice a new lamb when I look out the window to see a small wobbly figure following it’s mother in our 2 acre orchard. Despite the fact that the sheep have a shelter with fresh straw to sleep on, they prefer to sleep under the stars, regardless of the weather. So this weekend, when the little black ram-lamb was born into cold wet conditions with a forecast for snow and sub zero temperatures, I agonized with the decision to intervene or not.

In the 12 years that I have spent on a farm, raising a few animals for meat has become  more and more difficult. New slaughter regulations and increasing centralization have meant  the disappearance of critical rural infrastructure, from finding someone to haul animals to the closure of many smaller abattoirs. Veterinarians can make more money giving dogs hip replacements in a big city then working in a rural area. A recent cover story in the Vancouver Sun stated that over 3 million farm animals die in Canada each year during transport to slaughter houses, a trip that can be up to 56 hours long without food or water. Calling up a food service supplier and ordering a box of industrially produced lamb racks from far away is just not an option for me. Local lamb, either from my flock or one of the few remaining local producers is a very special product and I need to use every piece of the animal.

All this ran through my head as the sun was setting and I could see the newborn lamb huddled with it’s mother in the freezing rain on the far end of the field. So my son and I caught the lamb and brought it under shelter to warm it up and dry it off but the mother, practically feral, refused to follow. In the end, we tried to bottle-feed the lamb some powdered sheep milk  and we placed it in a dog kennel in some straw. But seperating it from it’s mother just didn’t seem right and was giving stress to us all. So we left the door of the kennel open a little. The next morning, after a night of tossing and turning, I was relieved to find the lamb nursing from it’s mother at the end of the snowy field. I made them a big nest under a tree with some hay, and I am happy to report mother and baby are doing just fine.

Tags: Farm Life, Recipes by Mara
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