Preserving Herbs: Drying & Freezing

Last year I managed to dry some thyme successfully and ruin some chives in an attempt to preserve both. This year the results were far more tangible.

back: dried sage, marjoram, & rosemary.
front: ground sage, mint, &  rosemary in jars

Michael Ruhlman's simple tip to place herbs in a wooden bowl and let the air circulate and dry them, naturally works incredibly well. We've got little buckets of sage, marjoram, rosemary (see above photo) along with jars of dried mint, ground sage, rosemary, and a rosemary/marjoram mix. This also works well with thyme and oregano.

Along with drying herbs we even freeze some. Granted herbs taste MUCH better when they are fresh with over 1.5 lbs of chives harvested this year, there is no way we could eat all them as we picked them. Throughout the season as I would cut chives I would freeze them in individual layers on cookie sheets and then put them in a freezer bag. We also freeze dill, a tip from my mother, which is great for soups and hearty potato dishes and freeze easily.

We keep a jar of 'fresh' pesto in a bit of oil in our fridge, but we also have baggies full of both basil and garlic scape pesto cubes that we freeze and use all year round. They are a great attention to fresh and canned tomato sauces!

What other herb preservation methods do you use?? Add them in the comments section, if I get a good list going, I will post it for posterity.

Harvest Monday June 26th 2011

More wet weather more slightly damp harvests this week. Despite the rain I went out to the garden a few times to survey some things and do a little harvesting.

Here's what I got:

Garlic Scapes .75 oz

Lettuce: 1.75 oz

Onion .45 oz

Scallions .85 oz

Kale 3.75 oz

Mesclun Greens: 3.90 oz

Total for the week: 11.45 oz

Total for the season: 2.625 lbs (42 oz)

Hopefully the rain is going to subside for a while and we will get some warmer temperatures soon!

If you want to see what others are harvesting or share in your own bounty stop by Daphne's Dandelions the home of Harvest Monday.

Harvest Monday June 20th 2011

It's been a busy week full of rain, and my Bruins winning the Stanley Cup so gardening was limited to Sunday, when Gail and I managed to to some massively overdue weeding and even planted a little.

I harvested a small amount of Garlic Scape's that I am going to count under 'green garlic' for the final tally. We also got the last of the spring radish's as well as most of the remaining kale, all but 2 smaller plants. The garlic scape's were made into a great pesto with basil from last year, while half the kale was used on another batch of kale chips!

What we harvested:

Garlic Scape's: .65 oz

Radish's: 2.20 oz

Kale 8.75 oz

Total for this week: 11.60 oz

Total for the season: 1.909 lbs (30.55 oz)

With the hockey playoffs wrapped up I should have more midweek time to spent at the garden, although I will be busy the next few weekends so any major projects will have to wait until next month.

If you want to see what other's are harvesting or share in your own bounty, stop by Daphne's Dandelions the home of Harvest Monday.

Garlic Scape Pesto Pizza!

No cooking related posts in a while so here is a quick one.

It was finally time to put some of the garlic scape pesto to good use. I made a garlic scape pesto, zucchini and ricotta pizza for dinner:

Probably not as impressive as Thomas' pizza making skills, but the pizza came out light and fluffy with a nice crunchy crust. Very simple and delicious. Dough from the bread maker (if there is interest I will share the super easy recipe), 4 'cubes' of garlic scape pesto, grated zucchini, and ricotta cheese. Light and delicious. Perfect for a nice summer evening.

Garlic Scape Pesto!

On Tuesday I picked up half a pound of garlic scapes at the farmers market:

A scape is the flowering stem which rises from the roots or crown of a plant. A garlic scape has a mild garlic flavor without the bite of too much garlic (to me there is no such thing). My impetus for getting the scapes was pesto. Garlic scape pesto is a great alternative to traditional basil pestos. Pesto freezes extremely well so I decided to make a larger quantity for storage purposes.

Ingredients:

1 cup of garlic scapes, cut into 1/4 to 1/2 inch pieces (approx. 1/4 lb)

1/3 of a cup of slightly crushed walnuts

3/4 of a cup of olive oil (a little less is perfectly fine)

1/2 cup of cubed or grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese

1/2 teaspoon salt (I prefer kosher salt)

a pinch of black pepper

First the scapes are cut into appropriate sized pieces and place them into the bowl of a food processor:

Next add the walnuts, cheese, salt, and pepper to the bowl:

Blend the ingredients until they are well combined:

Slowly add about half the oil and blend again. Repeat this process with remaining oil blending until desired texture is reached:

This yields about 6 ounces of garlicky delicious pesto. A serving is anywhere between 1 and 2 tablespoons depending on preference.

With my 1/2 lb of scapes I ended up with 2 batches of scape pesto in need of a home. I spooned them into a mini ice cube tray and froze them:

Each cube is 1.5 to 2 teaspoons worth of pesto:

Each batch yields about 36 delicious cubes. One serving is between 3 and 5 cubes depending on preference.

Now we have enough garlic pesto for the foreseeable future. It goes great with tofu, chicken, pasta (hot or cold) omelette's, pizza.