This summer, in what has been an exceptional growing season, local backyards will be serving up a veritable smorgasbord of fresh flavours and signature dishes. Ask a vegetable gardener about their tomatoes, cabbages, beets, beans, zucchini or whatever else they are growing and be sure to have a pen and paper or your iPhone handy. Mouth-watering family recipes for roasting, braising, steaming, grilling, fermenting or tossing the seasonal harvest with just the right amount of butter, olive oil, balsamic vinegar and other delicious ingredients are meant to be shared and savoured.
Vegetables are grown for their good looks, too. Tour-goers on the recent Hidden Gems of Transcona garden tour clamoured to know what Susan Richardson was growing alongside her foundation, shaded beneath the scalloped, fig-like leaves of a neighbouring eggplant. Richardson explained to each curious visitor that the perfect, rounded form, loose overlapping leaves reminiscent of an unfolding rose, and gorgeous wine-red colour belonged to a radicchio. She bought the plants in the spring at Arbo Flora, captivated by the colour of the leaves.
In addition to picturing a sun-kissed radicchio rosette nestled at the front of a container design, next year perhaps in two tall black containers at my front door, I wanted to know how Richardson plans to enjoy it in a recipe. "Grilled in olive oil, with a bit of salt and pepper, a splash of balsamic vinegar and creamy, melted cheese on top," was her reply.
A chicory, radicchio can be prepared in a variety of ways, even baked in slivers atop pizza. It has a mildly bitter flavour, soft, crunchy texture and is a good source of nutrients. Processed and packaged foods can't compete with either the nutritional value, fresh taste or cost of homegrown edibles. Regan Tataryn, a south Winnipeg gardener and self-confessed foodie, wants only the best in flavour and nutrition for her family. Tataryn's ample ingredients for the many recipes that reflect her European heritage are grown in two locations, her backyard and a community garden at St. Amant Centre, founded in 1931, and administered by the South Winnipeg Garden Club. This year Tataryn is growing Romanesco broccoli, also known as Romanesque cauliflower. Intrigued by its mathematical beauty -- it is a perfect geometric fractal -- Tataryn plans to brush the chartreuse-coloured mild-tasting vegetable with oil and roast it in the oven on a baking stone. Tataryn says anything roasted is delicious. She grows plenty of carrots in her garden and likes to roast them whole for roasted carrot soup. She also makes borscht and sauerkraut from her harvest to enjoy now and well into the winter. Tataryn grows just enough eggplant to make baba ganoush, a popular dish in Levantine or Mediterranean cuisine. She grows the Little Finger variety and says it is important to maintain adequate moisture. According to Tataryn, basil is a good companion plant when growing any variety of eggplant, tomato, or pepper because it helps to deter aphids.
Tataryn appreciates the beauty of a vegetable garden. Situated in the corner of her landscape and framed by a weathered wooden fence with chicken wire to keep out rabbits, the square foot beds when viewed from the deck and inside her house paint a picture filled with colour and texture. The wine coloured leaves of Bull's Blood and Detroit Dark Red beets fill the centre bed. Tataryn plans to layer beets with fontina cheese and walnuts and bake the creation in the oven. She is also growing Early Jersey Wakefield cabbage and Red Express cabbage, varieties that are growing beneath a protective layer of garden fleece, applied at the time of planting and removed only at time of harvest to deter hungry cabbage worms. In addition to coleslaw, Tataryn plans to make Rotkohl, a sweet and sour braised cabbage recipe and a favourite of her Austrian-born father.
Even sautéing cabbage with onions and garlic is tasty, says Tataryn. Of course, she grows heritage tomatoes as well. Favourites include Black Krim with its salty, smoky and sweet flavour, perfect for eating out of hand. She uses a dehydrator to dry Purple Russian tomatoes for use in recipes. This has been an incredible year for growing tomatoes, she says, this spring she planted Hawaiian Pineapple and Berkeley Pink Tie-Dye tomatoes again because last year's crop was disappointing.
Neighbours Larry and Beverley Kulbacki grow most of their own food, as well. With a smaller garden than Tataryn's, they are growing some of their vegetables vertically. Gusta Italia purple and yellow pole beans grow on tall freestanding fence posts wrapped in stucco wire. In a narrow, irregularly shaped part of the yard, cucumbers grow on a slanted vertical trellis made of nine-gauge reinforcing mesh suspended between two posts, for an overall size of approximately two metres tall by 1.5 metres wide. The 15 centimetre squares will easily accommodate the cucumbers as they grow. The vertical design, a perfect example of form and function, will make harvesting easy. The rest of the space, framed by railway ties, has been planted with beets, dill, and a massive zucchini. In one favourite recipe, Beverley places a small amount of rice with garlic, salt and pepper onto beet leaves that are rolled up, topped with a layer of more beet leaves, and baked in the oven. She serves the casserole with a generous amount of fresh dill fried with a bit of margarine. A delicious variation, handed down by her Ukrainian mother, substitutes bread dough for the rice. Larry and Beverley also grow several tomatoes for canning, including Early Girl and Lemon Boy, served over warm homemade noodles. A bit of baking soda added to the tomatoes helps to cut down on the acid.
Never grown vegetables before or think that you have no room for a vegetable garden, even one that is vertical? Anne and Terry Macyk are only in their second year of growing vegetables. On their driveway. Inspired by the square foot gardening method taught by Mick Manfield, a certified square-foot gardening instructor from Lockport, the Macyk's hired Urban Eatin' Landscapes to design a series of interlinked raised beds that sit on a portion of their driveway. Constructed with cedar by Terry, the square foot garden can be disassembled for easy storage in winter.
The soil in each 30 cm square is Manfield's recipe and consists of 1/3 coarse vermiculite, peat moss and blended compost (mushroom, sheep, steer or cow, worm castings and Sea Soil). Manfield mixes the compost ingredients first, then adds the peat moss and vermiculite. A critical component, he says, is to add compost each time a plant is harvested and removed. This helps to regenerate the nutrition in the soil mixture.
Manfield also recommends adding compost tea twice monthly to a square foot garden. He prepares his by adding two shovels full of horse manure or Sea Soil to a hessian sack which he suspends inside a 205-litre water butt or barrel filled with water. After two days it is ready for applying to plants either as a foliar or root application. Anne selects seeds from online sources such as Territorial Seeds, Swallowtail Garden Seeds and Hawthorne Farm and grows only as much as she can use. Planted with a mix of salad greens, tomatoes, eggplant, chocolate peppers, and squash as well as zinnias and Starfire Signet marigolds, her innovative, space-saving garden is eye-catching.
Intriguing varieties of romaine lettuce such as Outredgeous Red, Brown Golding and especially Flashy Trout's Back -- an Austrian heirloom with wine-red speckles -- are attractive enough to compete with any perennial bed or annual container design. A dwarf zucchini, Costata Romanesco, fills one of the 30 cm squares. In another square Anne has planted Listada di Gandia, an eggplant which she says is amazingly prolific. In another space-saving innovation, the Macyk's have erected a tall wooden trellis along their property line and planted scarlet runner beans for a colourful, edible living wall that also doubles as a privacy screen.
What's a delicious homegrown meal without dessert? Perhaps a smoothie made with fresh fruits and vegetables, infused with delicious flavour and packed with nutrition that is good for you. Tataryn bakes blackcurrant pies and harvests six different varieties of apples from a single multi-grafted tree she bought at Shelmerdine Garden Centre, baking them into pies and apple crisp. It was a recipe, though, for sour cherry vodka that she invited me to sample before leaving her garden. Made from two large pails of Carmine Jewel cherries which she picked in her backyard last summer, then placed in a roomy glass jar with vodka poured over and allowed to infuse for at least six weeks, the tantalizing flavour is almost indescribable. Serve with anything.
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