Ziggizagna, pasta folds of summer harvest

August 16, 2006

Julie Upmeyer puts her face in a bunch of freshly picked purple basil and miraculously sheds 16 years!

Normally mid-August is time of change in the Occitanian weather; no more highs in the 40’s and we can start expecting violent thunderstorms. But this year Mama Nature has heralded an abrupt and unusual end to summer, summoning the mind back indoors for another season of Zitsfleisch procurement. Suddenly we’re layering the bikini with socks and sweaters and going to bed sporting PJs! Hopefully the kitchen garden can handle this weather blip and still come up with a second crop of tomatoes.

Ziggizagna, individually folded, ad hoc et à la minute

Ziggizagna, short for zigzag lasagna, is a collaborative recipe for an ad hoc lasagna prepared right on the plate, each fold presenting a new filling or course, an everlasting gobstopper of a summer pasta dish. Now that the Meat Master has temporarily returned to the Polar Circle, us girly-gals (and lone manly man Floris) have taken to preparing a lighter menu with garden fresh ingredients that fit in our baskets and can be transported on back and/or bike. This Ziggizagna has fresh tomatoes, purple basil and chard from the garden, apricots, olives, garlic and almonds fresh from the market. The brebis (sheep milk cheese) is also local, sold to me each week by an exceedingly tall and handsome man from le Fermier des Garrigues. We home-aged it with the help of some early onset Oldtimers, to give it an even sharper flavour. We’s lovin’ the Ziggizagna! (Please read more… )

debra at 11:50 | Comments (3) | post to del.icio.us

Actually, this IS my harvest

July 28, 2006

Back to square one, but with better soil composition

At the kitchen gardens, the question on everyone’s lips is, ‘Don’t you feel utterly demoralised by the fact that since January, you’ve only been able to produce a shitload of weeds?” But because I can’t admit defeat in front of my neighbours, I usually answer that I grew these specific plants on purpose as green manure to improve soil condition, and that they they should count themselves lucky to bear witness to this premier harvest of green manures. One woman, a dislocated urban Algerian that has befriended me because I seem to fulfill her misguided notion of rural bliss and independent thought, brought her boyfriend out to ogle the melange of green and brown veg, saying that she would like to grow next season’s potager in this ‘fashion’ (façon), as if it were a bedhead coiffure.

Not a day goes by that I don’t think about how my ridiculous notion of gainful employment caused me to miss out on an entire summer season of ambling fruit. In the lower garden, my entire crop of melon plants (cantaloup, galia and water) rotted underneath the burgeoning weed mass that grew faster and higher than the ‘other’ intended crop. My peppers and luffahs never even emerged, my cukes wilted once exposed to the sunlight, and only the gourds, pumpkins and spaghetti squash dared enter the survival contest, competing with the weeds for sunlight and soil nutrients during the growing season that occured while I was up in the Polar Circle.

A tangle of courgettes

During the first days of weeding, I engaged in the acultural act of wing-flapping every time I discovered a fruitbearing plant that had survived underneath the ‘canopy’. My vertical gardening arches are not exactly being used as I had intended, and I’ve just laid the surviving plants over the first rung, hoping they will get the hang of climbing before August. My neighbours feel sorry for me and give me piles of tomatoes, peppers and aubergines. In return, I give them fat bouquets of shiso, but everyone knows that to a French person, a tomato is worth a heq of a lot more than some strange hippy herb that their wife is just going to throw away anyway.

View from upper garden, weeds used to mulch the preferred plants. Looks sloppy, but smells good and is less dusty. Hoping the intended plants will fill out a bit and get the eye to focus on their bountiful shapes instead of the mulching.

Closeup of le potager bas

On the bright side, I am truly impressed with the 15cm thick mats of vegetation that are quickly turning from mulch to compost right on what will soon be my autumn beds and I remind myself that I did intend to increase the soil’s organic matter by growing these particular plants. Under the parts where there is still remaining weed layer, I reach in and yank the alfalfa and buckwheat by the roots and roll the mat back over itself. When I’m done with a section of the row, I have voluminous ‘felted’ piece of weed mat that is easily manipulated to cover the planting surface. The soil texture is superb, dark and moist, so that the weeding process goes quickly, but every now and again I look at all the other folks’ gardens, nice and neat, light sand, scraped clean of all organic matter, and think about how dogmatic I am. Sidi ElGouche still jokingly refers to the mustard covercrop I grew last Spring as mayonnaise. It all reminds me of the intro in Masanobu Fukuoka’s book One Straw Revolution, where he talks about how often he screwed up before getting the hang of his own form of no-till agriculture.

Enough talking shit about my garden, the courgette, calabash gourds, spaghetti squash and pumpkin plants all have numerous flowers, and I’ve seen a bunch of slutty bees engage them in some thorough and lengthy deep-kissing, only to go on to the next plant when they’ve had enough, flitting back and forth from the sunflowers. The summer isn’t halfway over.

When the plants fill out in a few weeks, I’m hoping that some of my intended colour fields will begin to emerge.

• LINK: What I aspired my lower garden to become back in May
• LINK: The lengthy upper garden inventory was handy-to-mouthy as I uncovered all the plants. Most everything lived, the horseradish is even thriving! But I learned from the lower garden to try less agressive plants as cover crops. Next try will be some Dutch or White Clover. Alfalfa and buckwheat are too hardy and kick ass on my baby plants.

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debra at 19:14 | Comments (0) | post to del.icio.us

Daddy brung home the bacon

July 26, 2006

Jamón Iberico, oooh Mama!

If you haven’t been home for six weeks, there’s really nothing that screams ‘I love you, Mama!’ like a big fat ham. Especially when that ham was raised on acorns, rooting around under the dappled shade of oak trees in Southern Spain. I swear these animals lead better lives than we do. Just compare your potential career as a ham to travelling back and forth across the Puddle and to and fro from the Continent and you’ll understand where I’m going with this. So after six weeks of absence, Mama was pleased with the return of her ham-bearing man, but more importantly, it seems she has developed a talent for shaving off ultra-thin slices of the complexly flavoured meat.

Mama ends up being a superb ham slicer

Only a few short days after his return, my parents arrive for their first visit, and nothing screams, ‘Welcome, crazy Jewish people!’ like a big fat ham. My family has its own funky brand of Judaism, ‘Jewism’ as Mama calls it, and we don’t let centuries of learned post mortem debate and culture get in the way at the dinner table. I’m certain that my porkatarianism stems from the forbidden fruit aspect genetically instilled in me by several millenia of inbreeding. Growing up, my folks would eat bacon and call it ‘veal’, giggling at each bite, like eleven year olds smoking their first joint.

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debra at 10:42 | Comments (10) | post to del.icio.us