June 28
A Flat White May turnip with its greens, and two trimmed Purple Top turnips. Ayup.
This week's harvest:
NEW: Cilantro! This begins my attempt to always have some cilantro -- it wants to bolt, that is, grow flowers instead of leaves, immediately. Little sowings of cilantro go in regularly in hopes that one of them is ready every week.
Headed-up romaine lettuce; we ate half of the romaines I planted small, as just-lettuce, leaving the rest of them room to grow into romaine with "hearts".
Heritage turnip: the wide white, green-shouldered one is a Platte Wiite Mei, a Netherlands turnip I got through a seed collective in Chicago. It means "flat white May" turnip. The US classic is called Purple Top. Turnip enthusiasts are straightforward, I guess.
ONGOING: new potatoes and delicate frilly Black Seeded Simpson lettuce, as last week. More potatoes this week than last which is entirely because they had one more week to grow--I dug the same length of row. Snap peas. Familiar greens. Radishes. My fastest-growing and first-planted "Coral" carrots.
Storage notes:
As usual: greens like to be cool and humid but not touching water with their leaves. Root veg should have their tops, if any, taken off, after which the tops are just another kind of greens and the roots last longer. Peas don't want to dry out but really shouldn't touch liquid water (they get moldy fast, probably because they're so sweet).
Potatoes should breathe and not be exposed to light. A paper bag or dark cloth bag, rather than a plastic bag! A home fridge is a little cooler than is ideal, but if you don't have a 40degF dark spot where you won't forget the potatoes, the fridge is okay.
Recipe suggestions:
Green shakshuka uses a lot of greens, if the fridge begins to feel too full. Also handy: if you're cooking for people with different opinions as to how solid cooked eggs should be, the eggs can be taken out at different stages.
A Guardian collection of recipes for new potatoes.
Serious Eats on turnips , various recipes including a quick pickle.
I'm copying in two Elizabeth David turnip recipes; she collected traditional European cooking mid-last-century. They cook the turnips much longer than I would, and I don't know if they liked them mushier, or it was necessary for food safety before modern practices, or if modern varieties are that much more tender. I would cook until fork-tender and probably wouldn't peel them, though I would still blanch them unless I specifically wanted to maximize the turnipy, radishy "bite". (I cook excess radishes like really tender turnips.)
"Navets Glaces:
Put small, whole, peeled turnips (as nearly as possible the same size) into boiling salted water and cook them for 10-15 minutes, until they are nearly ready. Drain them, put them into a small buttered dish which will bear the heat of the flame, sprinkle them with castor sugar, put more butter on the top and 2 or 3 tablespoons of the water in which they have cooked, and put the dish on a very low fire until the sauce turns brown and slightly sticky. Watch carefully to see that it doesn't burn. Spoon a little of the glaze over each turnip and serve as they are, in the same dish.
Navoni all' Agliata
A Genoese dish. Blanch the peeled turnips in boiling salted water for 5 minutes. Cut them in quarters, and put them to stew gently in a small heavy pan with plenty of olive oil, and season them with salt.
Prepare the agliata by pounding two or three cloves of garlic in a mortar, and adding a very little vinegar. When the turnips are cooked, add this mixture to the turnips; stir well so that the garlic sauce is well amalgamated with the oil, add a little parsley, and serve."
New crops getting ripe for next week:
Beets; basil; some more varieties of lettuce; probably the purple snap peas.