THE DAY AFTER THE CLOCKS WENT BACK, which this year coincided with Halloween, is not perhaps the most obvious day on which to begin a journal about cooking, gardening, and in particular about cooking food that I’ve grown myself. Now that fall is firmly entrenched, the main growing season is over, in our yard at least. Yesterday I dug over the bed in which I grow tomatoes, pole beans, and zucchini each summer, and sowed a winter cover crop of cereal rye and hairy vetch. And today Katherine and I ate the last of this year’s tomatoes (quartered with black olives and feta, dressed with olive oil and white balsamic vinegar).
But I also got to think of today as the first step towards spring, because I sowed my fava bean crop, which will yield fresh beans some time in April. Fresh favas are the highlight of spring food for me, and homegrown ones are so much better than any I can find in stores. Not just because they’re obviously fresher, although that’s a big part of it, but because the small-seeded varieties have more flavor and a much finer texture (less mealy) than the large-seeded kinds which are all I ever see in stores. The variety I grow is “Sweet Lorane” (from Territorial Seeds) – I bought a packet of seed several years ago, and now I just leave a dozen or so pods to dry on one of the plants each year -- they provide my seed for the following year.

More about favas when they actually get here. For now, I just want to get started on this journal, in which I hope to keep a record of what I cook week by week, and exchange information with other cooks and gardeners.

LUNCH: Kariotina (Greek batter pie with greens), and feta/tomato/olive salad.

The batter pie was adapted from a recipe in my most-consulted cookbook of the past year, Diane Kochilas’s “The Glorious Foods of Greece” (p. 282). Essentially it’s a mixture of cooked greens, onion, and herbs, sandwiched between two layers of pancake batter (flour, egg, water, salt). I made it a couple of times this past summer, and it was especially good when I had lots of mint and fennel (the leafy kind) to add to the spinach, chard, beet greens, parsley, sorrel, etc.). Today’s mixture of greens was about 50% frozen spinach, 35% beet greens (from some bought golden beets), and 15% common or garden (literally!) dandelion leaves, although I realized later that there are still some fresh fronds on my fennel plant, and I could have added those, too. The feta in the salad was the Israeli-produced feta sold by Trader Joe’s; the bottled Greek Kalamata olives, the olive oil, and the white balsamic vinegar were also from TJ’s.

Dinner: Spaghetti with Kale, Caramelized Onions, Red Peppers, and Balsamic Vinegar.

Adapted from two side-dish recipes in Jack Bishop’s “Vegetables Every Day” (2001): “Kale with Caramelized Onions and Balsamic Vinegar” and “Sauteed Bell Peppers” and served over spaghetti as a main course.