Roasted pears

I like fruit as dessert, and winter is the best time to roast apples and pears. They fill the house with positive smells. Even better ones, when you add fir sugar and citrus to their cavities.

 The whys and hows are in my story for Gardenista:

Winter Comfort: Roasted Pears with Fir Sugar

Seed Bread - nuttily delicious

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).

The bread's appeal, I think, is threefold. One, it tastes very good: The toasted nuttinesss of a flock of seeds is very compelling. Two, it contains no flour, so is gluten-free: That also means it is far healthier than any bread that is flour-based because it is loaded with nutrition and fiber. Still, you feel like you're eating bread, and not something you have to, because it's "good for you." (And if you are sensitive to gluten, what do you miss the most? Bread!) Three - it's easy to make. There is no kneading. After a pan-toast, you mix, pour, and bake. Done.

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.

Happy baking! Go and buy your sunflowers seeds now...

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Gluten Free Seed Bread

The ramps have risen!

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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Seeing red?

"But why make it pink?" asked my faraway friend Bevan, crossly, via WhatsApp, after I sent him a picture of this beet hummus. "And why the sumac?" he continued. 

"It is pretty," he conceded.

Bevan is a purist.

My answer, unsent, is:"Why the hell not?" Also, he's living with a crisis in Turkey, which can make anyone short-tempered.

The real reasons to make beet hummus include, but are not limited to: 

1. It IS pretty! We need beauty, and if we can eat it, and smile at its ephemeral pleasure, let's do that.

2. I am seeing red and I'd rather be creative about it than burst my heart. Speaking of hearts - the raw as well as cooked beets in this hummus are loaded with nitrates, which dilate blood vessels and potentially lower blood pressure and improve oxygen uptake (good for all of us, and especially athletes). Beets are heart healthy.

3. Combined with the high-fibre chickpeas in hummus, the extra fibre in the beets load this dip-spread with that essential aspect of nutrition that so many Americans lack. 

4. Antioxidants! Lots. Which means anti-inflammatory. Inflammation is has been accused of my bad health associations than I can name, here.

5. Flavor. Perhaps that's the only argument. The sweetly earthy flavor of beets is wonderful with the garlic-singing smoothness of the chickpeas.

6. Spring. Put this beet hummus on platter with petals and pretty leaves. 

7. It's quick. It's filling. It's beautiful. It's nutritious.

The recipe is up on Gardenista: A Petal Party Platter for Spring.

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