Raise a Glass to the Summer Garden!
May Ends where the Garden Begins... with an Apéro.
At this time, the kitchen and the garden are in the most precarious balance. There is barely a fine line separating food from the seed and soil to the table and plate. Does eating a plump sweet pea, pod, and all, as lunch count? If you pluck the first raspberries, add to a handful of barely ripe strawberries (better to eat them before the snails), and wolf them down over a bowl of yogurt, is that breakfast? Is thinning the turnip greens and green onions, cutting back cilantro ready to bolt already, and pruning the newly planted oregano considered gardening… or cooking?
More than overspilling baskets of freshly plucked produce from the weekly markets, these micro-harvests from my own potager are as joyful as the later July abundance of kilos of tomatoes, armloads of Swiss chard, and daily cornichon collecting. So what do I do with a mere handful of greens and pungent herbs? Tightening the flavors to reflect the meager micro-recolte, I make a deep golden omelet and slip it onto a handful of freshly chopped herbs- cilantro, parsley, chives, and green onions dressed with a drizzle of vinaigrette. This becomes a sort of egg/salad for lunch. I find just enough radish leaf tops, tender turnip greens, and some spring sorrel to sauté in sweet butter with fresh green shallots and serve as the steaming bed for a piece of barely-cooked duck breast. The trimmed radishes get rolled around in the duck fat until they slightly soften and provide a pungent crisp counterpoint to the greens. Salt is all that is needed. That’s how I approach summer cooking by the scant handful.
Drink it up
May applauds the rose extravagance that rings the edges of Camont’s garden. However, I am equally grateful for the small fragrant herbal offerings, like a Victorian nose gay, that provide some pungent kitchen diversity after all these months. The thyme has begun to flower, the nasturtiums are spreading and flowering, and mint, verveine (lemon verbena), and pomegranate leaves flavor our garden mocktail-tisanes. While the cocktail world caught fire during Covid, I have slipped into a gentler Garden Herbal/Floral drinks regime using just enough fresh elderflower and lemon, or nettle and cilantro leaf, to flavor an icy drink to celebrate the end of the day and the beginning of Summer. I am leaning toward the savory rather than the sugary syrups of the August Dog Days. Think of the many possibilities:
Rosemary water infused with orange rind in a pitcher.
Thyme, sorrel (for sharpness), and pea pods!
Nasturtium (peppery), mint, and half of a grapefruit squeezed by hand.
The hardest part is coming up with clever names for them all: The Garden Mary—a freshly squeezed ripe tomato with one hot guindilla pepper, a tiny cornichon, thai basil, and green onion; The Soundtrack—inspired by the strawberry stealing birds, muddled with lemon verbena and the first ripe red currents; Thyme Out— Elderflower fizz from Suro**, thyme, and lime.
I like my garden Apéros tall, in a thin Spanish bar glass, like those used for serving Txakoli in the Basque Country, over ice, lots of it, with the fresh ingredients as the only garnish you’ll need. They are pretty enough and don’t require a lot of added ingredients- the bitters are released from the citrus rinds and the pungent oils from the fresh herbs. Like a instant deconstructed Vermouth, the spices, rinds, herbs, and fruit can go directly into the glass for minutes, not weeks. Sparkling water or tonic adds some spritz and of course, you can always substitute prosecco or cremant for the fizz and add your favorite alcohol at will.
All this plucking and stirring, muddling and might seem to distract from the tasks at hand—weeding and more weeding, but that moment that you sit and stare* at your growing garden, the icy rivulets running down the outside of the sparkling glass, is the money shot. That little sigh of “Look. It’s done—for the day” is exactly what an Apéritif is all about. This is one of my favorites—nettles, cilantro, and pineapple vinegar!
Now just add some toasted almonds, a small bowl of anchovy-stuffed olives, and maybe a few piment d’Espelette dusted potato chips. Welcome Summer!
*Many thanks to the inspiring Andrew Timothy O'Brien, author of To Stand and Stare, How to Garden while doing next to Nothing.” Listen, read, and learn more here…
http://www.gardensweedsandwords.com/
** Suro is the refreshing locally produced drink made by Lucinda Pryor and available at the Nerac market and at stockists locally.