I served my seed loaves at a picnic recently, and, as is usual with this particular bread, the recipe was requested. Now it's up on Gardenista, via my weekly column.
It can take a long time to develop a recipe, and many, many tests. This is now a regular in my baking rotation, and has been for about two years.
What's the neon topping? An intensely savory bean pâté with some raw beet microplaned in at the last minute. The bean recipe is also on Gardenista, if you're desperately curious (it doesn't have to be puréed, but can be eaten as a warm casserole or a cool salad. It's divine).
Four, but no one knows this until after it's made: This seed bread makes the best toast. Ever. For that reason alone I keep it in the freezer, pre-sliced, to toast as needed.
Nkwe Pirelli. Pirelli to his friends. Puss-Puss to his intimates. Bushy-Brooks to the disrespectful. The cat formerly known as Percy. And Inky, before that.
I grated one small quince and squeezed lemon juice across it. Salt, some chile/chili/chilli, and it was a quick sambal, ready for the lamb chops we cooked over coals under a shimmering southern sky. The sheep eat the bushes that grow in the veld we can see.
In this old house where we are staying, with thick walls, low doors, and and high gables and layers of thatch, I wondered how many hands had prepared quinces, before me.
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Sometimes, dreams come true. A small whisper of an idea stayed with me as I booked a ticket to Cape Town for April. Maybe, maybe...maybe the Brunsvigias would bloom while I was here. And if they did, I would see them.
The ones in Nieuwoudtville. About four hours north of Cape Town, in the Northern Cape's Namakwa region. At the end of a dry summer, rain comes. Maybe. And about three weeks after that rain, these geophytes - Brunsvigia bosmaniae - emerge and bloom like vivid pink candelabras. There's no fine-tuning the planning. Bear all possibilities in mind, but it has to be serendipitous.
Word came, phone calls were made (I never call anyone), and here we are. It has been ten years since we visited this high escarpment, and then it was for its brilliant spring display.
There is so much more, too. There is Brunsvigia flava, another, yellow species that blooms earlier. There are thousands - hundreds of thousands - of tiny green seedlings softening the sand in the grey veld. They have risen after these rains and will be mature by spring (August, September) and will bloom in those famous carpets of flowers.
There are blue cranes in the fields, and bokmakieries ringing in the thorn trees. There are glittering stars at night.
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The ramps on the tiny terrace have broken their long hibernation. They made flowers last year, in summer, long after their leaves had disappeared in the heat. Several seeds formed and matured and I dug them back in. I wonder if they will germinate?
It takes around, give-or-take, roughly, approximately, more or less, seven years for a ramp grown from seed to be able to make its own flowers, and seeds.
Don't encourage vendors to sell mountains of ramps. Do ask them to sell ramp leaves only. They can be packaged just like delicate leaves like chicories and salad. And do soak some of the rooted plants overnight before planting them in pots or in the soil where they will get spring sunlight and summer shade. They are an Eastern US native, and appreciate cold winters. Compost, leaf litter, and slightly acidic soil help, too. But mine just grow in potting soil, with some of their woodland neighbors.
Many of my overwintered bulbs did not make it and turned to mush: lilies, alliums (the ornamental kind). It's not the cold that bothers them, but a repeat freeze-thaw cycle, and wet feet. Ramps like wet feet, for a bit. And here they are.
Read all about how to grow ramps in this story. And what ramp habitat looks like in spot we visist every spring, in the Catskills.
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Pictured above? Bloodroot, and ephemeral native wildflower, doing battle with English ivy. Who are your rooting for (sorry...)?
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The Frenchman's birthday daffodils ablaze in the early afternoon sunlight, now bright through the skylight as that medium-size star climbs higher and higher in the pre-spring sky.
These were the first daffodils I have seen sold locally, and that means we'll have them for the next couple of months. In parks and gardens, they are already in bud, but still tightly closed.
So where and how did I convert? This country. Living with a food-loving Mexican for four years may have had something to do with it. New York City, and it's plethora of Southeast Asian eateries. And simply being on the continent in proximity to so many forms of fresh and dried chiles had significant powers of persuasion.
I like heat, now. A lot. But there's heat and there's heat. For my recent experiments making shatta, a gently fermented and staple chile condiment eaten in Palestine (and other Eastern Mediterranean countries), I learned that long red cayenne peppers make a fantastic shatta—sweetly hot and mellow. But that compact Scotch bonnet peppers (I know, what was I thinking?) blew the house down.
My shatta recipe is up on Gardenista.
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The bare-branched, flat-roofed view from the terrace in February. It was warm enough to sit out for the first time this week.
The bare trees will leaf out, and then bloom. The roof...will stay flat. Until it is actually flattened and until a new building rises and eats the view of the trees. I hope the trees make it, when that happens. They are old and imposing and very beautiful.
From left to right: catalpa (lush white blossoms in early June), then a space. Then a horse chestnut (scented candelabras in May), and another catalpa—a many-branched green mansion where raccoons romp and shout in summer. A space. Then a Chinese scholar tree, whose fruit is besieged by birds, including monk parakeets from the nearby Green-Wood Cemetery colony, through winter. Hidden, out of frame to the right, are an oak and a hackberry.
I repotted some plants and rehomed some adopted shrubs and ramps, transferring them from white plastic buckets to terra cotta. The ramps had already sprouted, three inches below the soil's surface.
Tomorrow will be balmy, on the 1st of March. And then a deep freeze, again. Winter is still here, but things are happening.
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It's not exactly pepper season. But it's so bloody cold that we need something very hot. Enter the world market, and cayenne and Thai chiles. Chillies. Chilis.
The plan is to make shatta, a hot sauce from the Eastern Mediterranean. There is a recipe for it in Sami Tamimi's beautiful cookbook Falastin (a.k.a Palestine - there is no p-sound in Arabic), where the chopped peppers are fermented conservatively in the fridge. I'm throwing caution to the whipping, doom-laden winds and will ferment at room temperature, since very little happens in the cold.
Stay tuned.
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