It might be cliché to go on about our bountiful mid-July harvest, but I think it’s appropriate in this case. When the summer is bounteous year after year, it is less cliché and more a midsummer motif.
The July harvest has been both prolific and diverse. The stars of the season, as usual, are the incredibly productive summer squash. It used to be one of my duties to pick them every morning, and I was astounded by their rate of growth. I think if you sit out in the field you can actually watch them grow.
Morning Glory Farm has a new variety of squash this year: pantheon, a sub variety of costata romanesco (English translation: ribbed roman). The name is apt. It is an Italian heirloom zucchini with prominent lengthwise ribs.
At Saturday’s farmers market, North Tabor Farm had a colorful display, with crooknecks, pattypans and zucchini splayed out, necks poking every which way. If you’re lucky, you might be able to snag the squash blossoms at their farmstand. Like most beautiful things, they are fleeting, and should be cooked fresh.
A transition is now in progress in the world of garlic, as scapes give way to bulbs, though both these harvests are in fact interconnected. Farmers would pick scapes, the underdeveloped flower of the garlic plant, even if no one wanted to buy them. Their harvest is essentially a castration, redirecting the plant’s energy to the root so it can reproduce asexually via its cloves. It’s the same concept behind castrating a young steer for higher quality meat. Farming is usually about sex, or the lack thereof.
Fire Cat Farm had some garlic at the market this week (variety: music), but it sold out before I could get any, and the Garden Farm’s garlic (variety: Romanian red) is still curing, but I did manage to acquire five other bulbs for an impromptu garlic tasting.
The first two were from Ghost Island farm. The spot might be unfamiliar to some readers since they do not attend the farmer’s market, but their stand off State Road in West Tisbury is worth a visit. I have been told that they have the best broccolini on the Island. Their shilla garlic, a Korean turban variety, was rich, just short of earthy, with a mild lingering head, while the killarney red was fresher and a bit spicier, each clove’s skin traced with a single vein of purple red.
The only uncured variety I tried was from Beetlebung Farm. Its freshness meant that the outer casing had yet to become papery. It had an oniony sweetness and a nasal heat.
The other two heads were not from farms, strictly, but they were from Island growers. Heidi Feldman from Martha’s Vineyard Sea Salt had some huge Spanish roja bulbs; its veins where a more muted red brown. Ken Roach from Ken’s Vineyard Kitchen had the only softneck clove, which he grows to use in jerky. It had more, smaller cloves.
After the tasting, I roasted the rest of the garlic and threw it in the blender with the juice of a whole lemon, a handful of my own parsley and chives, and a handful of hazelnuts for pesto. The result — Tom’s Nutty Island Pesto — is highly recommended.
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