Dead nettle
crude mousse for dinner

May 14, 2006

Kruudmoes leafy green selection from 9 o’clock: white deadnettle (dovenetel), kohlrabi leaves, spring onions, curly leaf parsley, chicory and ground elder (zevenblad).

Ten days before the Here as the Centre of the World dinner and I’m busy testing traditional recipes from Overijssel for the main course. I have decided on a Twentse Kruudmoes, which translates roughly into herb mousse but is in fact a leafy green and pearl barley gruel. Since I wasn’t born in the Middle Ages and am therefore not a huge fan of eating green and glutinous slime, I’m thinking more along the lines of an herbacious and chlorophyl rich, pork-spiked barley risotto. Place the dutch oven with the boiling barley in your Oma’s hay box with some pork fatback, raisins and buttermilk. Stir in the sauce vert at the last minute, and it’s locative food from the Dutch Middle East.

The myriad of kruudmoes recipes offer no consensus as to which greens to use, in the spirit of a true ‘end of hungry gap’ recipe. Yesterday I was thrilled to find dovenetel at the farmer’s market. For English speakers and Latin-lovers, that’s white deadnettle and lamium respectively, a plant wholly unrelated to stinging nettle, thus ‘deadened’, and the vernacular blooms before our very eyes. The flower and leaf taste of snow peas with an afterthought of hemp. The flower markings look like two ants sucking nectar side by side.

• White Deadnettle at Wikipedia
• Ground elder at the English Wikipedia
• A proper herbarium
• Dovenetel at the Dutch Wikipedia

Pity, but these recipes for kruudmoes are all in Dutch. When I have settled upon a recipe, I will publish it here but will not guarantee its authenticity, because I see my life as one big mission to eliminate overcooked leafy greens and slimey food.

• The pan-cultural kitchen
• Dutch recipes - click on kruudmoes
• Official locative cuisine
• Wikipedia loves kruudmoes
• Regional recipes from Overijssel

If you can’t get enough of those hilarious Dutch weblogs, you’ll love the following rough text about kruudmoes by Ilja Gort (Als Gort in Frankrijk and met Gort de Boer Op).
(Please read more… )

debra at 19:29 | Comments (1) | post to del.icio.us

The vertical
kitchen garden

May 12, 2006

Spring planting is finished but before returning to the Polar Circle, I took this image of the bamboo framework for my vertical gardening concept. The plan is to train the wandering plants (melons, gourds, squash) to grow up the wide end of the frame, allowing them optimum sunlight, saving roaming space in the garden and eventually providing a tunnel of dappled light to walk through or linger in on hot August afternoons. An added benefit will be that my hanging calabash will grow with straight necks.

On the ’short end of the stick’ side, morning glory will wind its way up the poles and produce blue and purple flowers. If everything goes according to plan (!) there will be yellow flowering plants climbing up the ‘wide end’ of the framework (left - in these images) and purple/blue flowering plants on the ’short end of the stick’ side.

This idea is inspired by the Dutch architects MVRDV who also write about vertical farming in their book on density, KM3. I know, I know, they would never favour such vernacular materials or style.

debra at 10:14 | Comments (2) | post to del.icio.us

Kitchen garden inventory

May 10, 2006

What is intensely boring to one person can be rivetting to another. Case in point: my kitchen garden inventory as of the 10th of May 2006: Upper Garden

Row 0 l: (up) sage, cali poppy, silver dollar, rocket, (down) opal basil

Row 0 r: (down) basil, (down) opal basil

Row 1l: (up) sage, fennel, various bulbs rainbow chard, sage, (down) strawberries, delphinia, rainbow chard, bulbs

Row 1r: (up) fennel, red kale, purple cauliflower, purple kohlrabi, (down) silverdollar plant, red cabbage, brock calabria, violet cauliflower

Row 2l: (up) strawberries, onions (x2) coreander, marigold, tulips, dill, (down) strawberries, shallots, purple haze carrots

Row 2r: (up) purple shiso, borage x 3, amaranth, (down) bergamot x 4, onions

Row 3l: (up) strawberries, choke early and purple, choke late, (down) choke late

Row 3r: (up) jalapeño, paprika, jalapeño, paprika, aubergine, gladiola, marigold, aubergine, (down) jalapeño paprika, paprika, jalapeño, onions

Row 4l: (up) opal basil, mizuna, amaranth, (down) opal basil, mizuna, red berry bush, mizuna

Row 4r: (up) mangetout peas, onions, (down) mangetout peas, onions, carrots (made a mistake because onions and peas don’t go together supposedly)

Row 5l: (up) 2 x cherry tomatoes, 4 x ondine cornu, (down) 4 x roma, 1 x cherry tomato

Row 5r: (up) celery, onions, dahlia, (down) onions, radishes, red cabbage, beets

Row 6l: (up) moneymaker x 4, cherry tomato, (down) 4 x ondine cornu, cherry tomato

Row 6r: (up) red cabbage, beets, marigold, fennel, (down) rhubarb x 2, beets (detroit, candycane, egyptian flat), fennel, horseradish, beets

Row 7l: (up) 3 x roma, cherry tomato, (down) 3 x moneymaker, opal and green basil, purple and green shiso on borders of tomato rows 5-7

Row 7r: (up) horseradish (x4), beets, (down) brassica corner, bruxelles sprouts, romanesca, beets, chervil, fennel

Row 8: (up) beets, genovese basil, lupines, (down) coreander, lupines, gladiolas, fennel, cali poppy, fenugreek

In front of upper kitchen garden shed right: fig, mint, peppermint, ginger, marigolds, calendula, iris germanica (please grow you dang thing!), dahlias, lupines, lavender.

Perimeter Upper Garden left: mint, mint and more mint, peppermint, lupines, glads, delphinia, cali poppies, shiso red and green, basil green and purple

Lower Kitchen Garden:
Row 1: sunflowers, dill, soy
Row 2: soy, dill, chickpea
Row 3: adzuki, dill, red night kidney (at pole: morning glory)

Raised beds from upper to lower:
Bed 1: marigold, gold rush yellow courgette
Bed 2: pickling cucumbers
Bed 3: luffah
Bed 4: pumpkin
Bed 5: spaghetti squash
Bed 6: calabash gourds
Bed 7: galia melons
Bed 8: cantaloup
Bed 9: watermelon
Bed 10: poblano chilies, marconi peppers
Bottom 2 rows: golden bantam corn
Perimeter: amaranth, buckwheat and temporarily alfalfa and buckwheat were compulsively planted on the beds to change my weed environment to these weeds.

debra at 9:07 | Comments (1) | post to del.icio.us