Finding Inspiration

And so it begins again. What a fitting time to start a new book than springtime? EAT & DRINK book 4- with a focus on spring, some thoughts on summer and some past reminders of winter. I've created a rough draft list of recipes that I have already started to test. It's a challenge to think about favas and fresh spring onions when snow is in the forecast. Gourmet cooking magazines, my wall of cookbooks, food blogs and farmer's markets all help to inspire me to rethink an artichoke or try a new twist on lamb. The HerbFarm garden I know will inspire me to think differently about certain vegetables and of course, challenge me to go beyond my comfort zone limit with flavors. Since it is a recipe and local wine pairing book, I often think about common flavors in wine and try to pull those flavors out of food using different combinations of ingredients. For instance, one recipe I'm excited about is ham wrapped prawns with a chorizo apricot butter. The sweetness of the apricot and prawns should draw out some great flavors in a crisp Washington Riesling or perhaps complement well with a seafood-loving sauvingnon blanc.

The real trick when writing these recipes is trying to balance my cravings for my taste preferences while at the same time keeping things in perspective with my cooking audience's taste buds. Not that I am that extreme, I just know that most people are pickier than I am, and many home cooks like to dip their toes in the water instead of plunging in. Plus, I find the most successful recipe collections offer a little something for everyone; something for the novice, something for the gourmand and probably something that just makes you say, "oh interesting." Most of all, I want to inspire people who enjoy cooking to go out into the farmer's markets and check out what's fresh and dabble in the kitchen with some lovely, local ingredients! Is there anything better then sitting around with friends over some great wine, chatting about life and goals and making great delicious memories?

HerbFarm Day 3, Baby Greens

At the Trellis restaurant, they have a two-hour garden salad; all the ingredients in the salad are harvested two hours before service begins, at the HerbFarm, the chefs clip the baby greens from the living plants just outside the kitchen doors.
It's lovely to be offered a pair of scissors to clip baby greens with. After planting trees on Thursday and Friday before I left, Bill handed me a pair of scissors and said I could cut some greens for a salad. I clipped some chervil, baby mustard greens called Ruby Streak, miners lettuce and mache. I'll bring a camera to the garden soon and show you what they look like in the soil.

Miners Lettuce, baby Ruby Streak Mustard Greens. The miners lettuce isn't as flavorful as the others, but it's fun to eat- it reminds me of the texture of watercress but not at all spicy. The red streak adds a gorgeous color to a salad and is both nutty, bittersweet and reminiscent of garden peas.

Here is Mache leaves next to Chervil. I love Chervil, it has a light licorice flavor that adds a hint of flavor like a little minty surprise. The mache is smooth and nutty. The chervil is really delicate and almost wilts under water, the mache is heartier and can really lift up a salad that looks flat. With greens this lovely, my salad was a mixture of all four lettuces, high quality extra virgin olive oil, a squeeze of lemon juice and sea salt, just lovely. You can find mache at larger grocery stores near the arugula and herbs. It's likely the other greens will not be in the herb section, check out your closest farmers market or plant store for the other greens. Or better yet- grow some!

Planting Oak and Hazelnut Trees HerbFarm day 2

My back is a little sore. Not in the same way one feels when they've had a great workout or from something as silly as pulling a muscle by giving someone very tall an awkward hug. I'm sore from digging holes for two oak and two hazelnut trees, each inoculated with black truffles. “Are you kidding!?” is what I squealed when Bill, the head gardener at the HerbFarm said I’d be doing on Thursday. The trees are tiny and they won’t even produce a truffle likely for five years from now, but the idea that one could even buy a tree inoculated with black truffle spores is quite cool. They bought the trees online at TruffleTree.com , straight from Eugene, OR.

Ron and Carrie Zimmerman currently own the HerbFarm and because the soil in the culinary garden doesn't have great drainage, Bill decided we should plant a couple trees in their yard, not too far from the culinary garden. "Each tree needs 250 pounds of lime." That was what Bill said when we got to the Zimmerman's house in Woodinville. For prime conditions for these trees, the Ph in the soil needed to be less acidic. The Ph scale goes from 0-14, with 7 being neutral and below 7 being acidic. I don't know exactly where Seattle or the Eastside's soil Ph is, but I do know that there was a variety of soil types depending on where we dug. Rich potting soil type soil, rocky, clay and plain "dirt" looking soil. I'm sure that if we had a tool with which to measure the Ph, it would vary from area to area. Messing with the natural Ph can really destroy your soil unless you know what you are doing- Bill did a lot of research on the native plants in the area and how they would each react to the soil change and based the plantings on this information.

As I am pretty new to gardening- not to mention planting truffle trees! It was pretty neat to see several hundred pounds of lime up close. As we tore into the plastic bags, a child's sandbox came pouring out of each one. The lime was bright white with specks of grey and very fine. For each hole, (measuring at least 3 feet by 2 feet) we, meaning Bill, Mark, Winsome and myself, stirred the soil back in with the lime, then dug an 8 inch whole and planted a tree. If you want to see one of the trees, I believe Bill is planting one right next to the HerbFarm restaurant.