tomato update

My tomatoes appear to be on their way to high yields and at least fist sized fruit. They are ripening at different stages, which more or less tracks with their initial growth in the soil.

The Mortgage Lifters have been slow growing and are only now producing small fruit. I couldn't catch the beauty of these early tomatoes on my phone, which in essence refuses to focus on the foreground fruit. It is ribbed and elliptical.

The Cherokee Purples are both growing at about the same speed. They flank the Sunny Boy plant, and sometimes appear rather dwarfed by it, but the tomatoes are of great size and shape. Many are bursting through their skins, leaving holes in part of them.

The Sunny Boy has the thickest stalk of anything outside the Jaune Flamee, and it is producing some rather pretty fruit in the ribbed style of the Mortgage Lifter.

The Orange Blossom tomatoes were the fastest to rise, the first to bloom, and now sport the biggest fruit.

Mortgage Lifters Popping

Cherokee Purple #1

Sunny Boy

Cherokee Purple #2

Orange Blossom

new planting

the weird and the waiting

alligator shadow puppet

Wanted to plant onions, but I am obviously too late for them, so I laid down some sweet peas--a perennial variety that acts like ground cover. It is the beginning of my slow advance across the street face. I used old soil, some new soil, and a lot of compost. The soil is kind of cakey. We'll see if the seeds can rise.

Fertilizing

Fertilized the garden today. On the eight tomato plants I broadcast 2 oz. (in 2 gallons water) of Neptune's Own fertilizer. On Maia's patch, the knockout roses and minature roses I dropped 1 oz. (in one gallon of water).

Orange Blossom: boxy and bodacious

The delicate sweet olive grape tomatoes

Mortgage lifter grows a second floor

Cilantro and Parsley a comin'

Juane Flamee on Fuego

Problematizing the Mojito

Muddling it up

For all of its gifts, the mojito is a frustrating drink. Short of adjusting the citrus source (substituting, say, kumquats for limes) or using mint-infused simple syrup rather than simply just muddling sugar and mint, there is not much you can really do with this drink. Granted, somewhere a househusband is muddling strawberries or blueberries with the mint much to the delight of his neighbors and fellow daddy-friends who have brought the kids over for a playdate-bbq-boozefest. I am not turning up my nose at such endeavors. If and when I start growing strawberries worthy of serious consumption, I will make all manner of simple drinks infused with that fruit.

But I want to mess with the mojito now, and I don't want to just throw some extra fruit into the mix. I have nothing from the garden to spice it up. So I decided to add a dash of bitters. Having purchased a small batch (one ounce) of Bittercube Jamaican #1 bitters (flavor profile: allspice, ginger, black pepper), I added a dash at the mixing stage and let it settle through the drink.

This addition subtly enhances the mojito.  The effect comes through mostly through the nose, which is immediately assaulted by the allspice and pepper. But then the bitters recede in favor of the rum and its friends. One adjustment I will try: add the bitters and don't stir. It curls through the mojito like cigar smoke and takes its time settling, making it an attractive addition right before stirring.

In truth, this is a corruption of the true mojito. My standard recipe is fairly traditional: muddle the juice of half a lime, a small pour of mint-infused syrup, and fresh peppermint; add rum (circa 2 oz.) and stir; add ice, splash that soda, stir again. Then go to flavor country.

The bitters doesn't tie the drink together, or balance the drink. Nor am I sure that it successfully adds complexity. In short, proper criticism will take more engagement.

garden update

Orange Blossom and on

With the exception of my carrots row, everything seems to be coming along quite nicely. The tomato plants have all grown up. The Jaune Flamee cherry tomatoes have produced the thickest stalk with the most vines, promising plump orange/yellow cherry tomatoes soon. From Right to left, the Mortgage Lifters are recovering from a weak start, the Cherokee Purple plants (both) are producing nicely, the Sunny Boy have produced a huge stalk and thick base.

Cucumber Invasion

The Orange Blossom has turned out boxy and produced fruit early, making it a nice early planter in the future. Had it started in a pot and gone in the ground three weeks earlier, it might have been yielding fruit for a couple of weeks now.

Barbarella--purple haze

Maia's Plot rolls along nicely. The Barabarella plant shows promise and is by far the most beautiful edible I have ever planted. It would make a splendid ornamental in one of the front plots.

First Fruit

The cucumber plants have threatened to take over. The first harvest is in. Report is due today!

Adobo Pork

The East Point Gentleman's Tasting Club visits my humble abode tonight, and to honor the gents I am preparing a taco night. The menu includes grilled corn on the cob (soaked, grilled in husks, and then charred), brothy black beans with green chilies, onion, and oregano, and local tortillas. As it turns out, we have quite a few local tortilla factories, and I have purchased both flour and corn tortillas for the occasion.

To fill the tacos, I have adobo pork and cilantro-lime-green chili shrimp. For toppings, I have queso fresca, chopped cilantro, diced onions, and diced tomatoes. I'll restrict this post to the adobo pork and hopefully will post about the rest of the meal tomorrow.

Making the Adobo Paste

The adobo sauce came out of the bon appetit magazine this month, and I addressed this in a previous blog entry. The recipe actually called for shrimp, but it is the kind of sauce that can go with any protein. After making the paste on Thursday, I wrung my hands and decided that the shrimp would have to be addressed differently. Adobo paste, like anything else made from dried chilies, is extraordinarily astringent. I believe it works better when fat can blend with it and smooth it out.

Making the adobo paste required a little improvising. First of all, I fire roasted the ancho peppers. Fire roasting is a superior means of toasting the chilies, if only because of the smoke that they absorb from the fire. It makes them far more fragrant. Once roasted, I transferred th charred chilies to the bowl and added the water. The recipe did not call for enough cooking liquid, so I had to add water, and still ended up with a pretty thick paste. I then had to adjust ingredients accordingly to create the right flavor--an earthy, smoky adobo sauce. I basted in the sauce, poked holes in it with a bamboo skewer, and let it marinate for about eight hours.

Then I smoked the pork shoulder. It sat in the smoker for two hours with cherrywood before I wrapped it in foil and let it cook overnight. The egg held its temperature all the way through the night, dropping only from 240 to 220. I let it cook for twelve hours total (eight pound picnic shoulder), rebasting it only once.

Pulling the Pork

Then I pulled it, let it sit, and dumped it into a dutch oven with a little more paste, where I let it slowly cook at low heat on the simmer burner for about an hour. The idea is to get the flavors to meld together and the fat to mellow out the adobo. I've let it sit all afternoon and will fire it up before everyone comes just to keep it hot and mix the flavors one last time.

Revisiting the Social

Start with strawberries and sugar

Muddle with Lemon

Alas, the restaurant is gone, but the cocktail it inspired in East Point kitchens remains alive, and a summer favorite. I posted this drink recipe a little over one year ago, and it is good to see it making the rounds again at the beginning of the summer.

In the drink family, I suppose this would be a daiquiri of sorts. It relies on pineapple juice rather than the sugar for its sweetness. It is a little sweeter than I remember, but as our host told us this last Friday, "a little pineapple juice goes a long way." The basil is a great herb for a drink like this, as the anise adds complex nose. It does make me wonder about how thyme might be incorporated into a similar drink.

Don't forget the basil. Or for that matter the rum.

Simplifying the Margarita

As I see it, there are two decent recipes for a margarita, at least before one begins experimenting with various fruits, bitters, or specialty liqueurs. One involves triple sec, and one does not. I've made both in the past week, and find them roughly similar. Here is the recipe range:

"Naked"
3 oz. tequila; 1 oz. agave syrup; 1.75 (circa) oz. lime juice (one big lime); dash sea salt

"Dressed"
4 oz. tequila; 1.75 oz. triple sec; 1 oz. agave syrup; 1.75 oz. lime juice (one big lime); dash sea salt

I've tried them on either end of this scale, with splendid results. The key, as always, is fresh lime juice. The latter represents something of a more traditional recipe, but it is a little sweet, which makes it less appealing as an appetite stimulant. Of course, one can omit the agave syrup for an option I might call "nuclear", or (to keep it within the metaphoric aesthetic established here) "Dressed to Kill." Perhaps this is not quite right. After all, omitting the agave syrup is a bit like heading out on the town without any undergarments: the difference may be imperceptible at first, but it eventually gets you into trouble.

Margaritas are all made of stars

In either version of the margarita one can adjust proportions to suit the sweet tooth, the acid lover, and the alcoholic. I have found that the "Naked" recipe above more or less balances the three perfectly, while the "Dressed" tends towards the sweet. Obviously, agave nectar can be adjusted to correct. Or omitted for the young and the restless.

A traditional "Cadillac" margarita substitutes Grand Mariner for triple sec. Grand Mariner is cognac based, and the margarita one creates from this will be heavier than the "Naked" variety. To carry the metaphor still, making this margarita with Grand Mariner might be "Oscar Dress" or "Prom Night." But by now this metaphor is losing its vitality. The point is that you can dress the margarita up or down and make small adjustments based on the relative acidity/sweetness of your limes and the taste of the liqueur. Dress her how you like. Just be careful of letting her undress you.

The tequila I used for all of these was El Jimador, a solid blanco tequila. I'm sure there are better tequilas for making margaritas, but I'm not sure I'd be willing to pay for them. Any suggestions would be welcome, should anyone feel the desire to write them in.

the barrier row

I'm planting a "barrier row" of herbs which had, up until this point, consisted of transplanted silver edge thyme, transplanted cilantro and parsley (both spent and useless), dill, and lemon balm. Today I finished up the row and planted parsley and cilantro seeds in the remainder. There is still room at the end for more, but I can't imagine I will want to continue planting herbs. Rather, I would like to throw down some annuals and follow them with ground cover in a bid to reclaim the lower patch of my front yard from noxious weeds. But in the mean time, I should be able to harvest parsley and cilantro by early Fall.

Transplanting Mortgage Lifters, Juane Flamee, and Golden Pineapple Sage

The cutting

Three different transplantation experiments, one conducted last week, two conducted today. The ones today are more delicate. I took a cutting from my mortgage lifter tomato plant, trimmed it to six inches and two leaves, then buried it in thoroughly soaked potting soil. I took a second cutting from my Juane Flamee plant and put it directly into the soil. The soil is particularly black and rich, but I supplemented it with potting soil and made sure it was thoroughly soaked.

Last week I transplanted two golden pineapple sage cuttings from the back to the front. Although the leaves withered in the sun every afternoon (only to be reborn miraculously the next day), both transplants appear to be thriving. Golden Pineapple Sage is indeed a weed.

the planting

in a pot

Veni Vidi Vici

The Juane Flamee plant is thriving and looks healthy. The Mortgage Lifter appears more sickly, and has been the slowest of all my plants to grow. The lower branches often wither and die, although the top of the plant does look good. It is possible (hopefully not too probable) that the plant has in fact contracted some kind of fungal disease. Or it is just a long, slow grower. I'll find a place for the transplant, should it take.