Mixed gleanings from the May garden

There is so much happening in the garden now that it's hard to keep up with it. There is so much to do, and it's hard to take the time to appreciate things properly. Here are some recent glimpses from the garden:

First, Silene virginica, the fire pink. This plant grows wild in eastern North America, and one might expect to find it in every garden. But it's not a common garden plant at all, although it's readily available in the trade.

Here's another plant which, if easy availability and low price were considerations, one would also expect to find in many gardens. This is Ixiolirion tataricum (aka I. pallasii, I. montanum among many others). In this case its scarcity in local gardens probably has an explanation in the plant's requirement for dry summer conditions. Other than that, it appears to be easy to grow.

Here's Zephyranthes atamasco, said to be native to Maryland. I've never noticed a fragrance with this plant.

Here you can see the elongating scapes of culinary leeks. When they bloom they are as handsome as the ornamental onions. The related elephant garlic (which is a form of Allium ampeloprasum, the same species from which the culinary leek is derived) is even more ornamental as it approaches bloom: the spathe which sheathes the umbel of flowers suggests the onion domes of Russian churches.

The past winter was so mild that plants of cilantro (coriander) survived and are now blooming.

Here are some of the roses blooming now. First, 'Chevy Chase', a rose raised here in the greater Washington, D.C. area about seventy-five years ago. This is a very vigorous climbing rose with excellent, disease free foliage. The flowers are not fragrant, and the plant does not repeat, but other than that it is about as good as a rose gets. Few local gardeners seem to know about it; when I talk roses with a new acquaintance and they indicate that they know about 'Chevy Chase', I know I've found a new rose friend.

This is 'White Cockade', a climbing rose introduced about forty years ago; it's noted for very disease resistant foliage.

And here is 'Alida Lovett', one of the famous Van Fleet roses from the beginning of the Twentieth Century.

Here's a once famous mid-nineteenth century rose 'Rêve d’Or', one of the Noisette or tea-Noisette roses. This rose is a good example of what passed for yellow among rose enthusiasts of the time.  The best of the roses of this group combine beautifully blended soft colors with sweet fragrance.

This next one is 'Silver Moon', another Van Fleet rose, and one said to be a hybrid of Rosa laevigata. Rosa laevigata, sometimes called the Cherokee rose, is naturalized in the far southern states; it's noted for its huge white flowers. It's not hardy in the north, and it's not surprising that hybridists made an early effort to produce a rose such as 'Silver Moon' which is,  in effect, a hardy Cherokee rose.

Here's one last one for today: 'Eddie's Crimson', a hybrid of Rosa moyesii.

There is more on the way!

Easing one's way into entomophagy

I pity those born into cultures in which highly spiced foods prevail. Once one is accustomed to such foods, the rest of the world’s foods must seem boring indeed. But to someone raised on pabulum, the world has an immense horizon of potentially new tastes. And while it’s true that American food in the early twentieth century had already progressed beyond pabulum for at least important meals, menus of the time reveal that a lot of preparations based on starches softened in various liquids were apt to appear at meals throughout the day.

As a nation we’ve come a long way from the cooking practices which prevailed in the first half of the twentieth century. With certain exceptions, any reasonably sophisticated contemporary palate stands to be utterly unimpressed by the sort of foods our grandparents esteemed. Soft, gray, bland: this is not visually exciting food. But what it lacks in visual appeal it often more than makes up in flavor. Yet those flavors tend to be gentle flavors.

It was probably Italian food, and specifically pizza, which forever changed the American palate. In early twentieth century cookbooks there are recipes for various seemingly Italian preparations, but they read as chilly, dull attempts at imitating the real thing: no sunshine, no sparkle, no wit, no attitude - and no garlic! At first glance, French cooking seems better represented, and perhaps it was. But the translations must have been poor because the results have a distinctly American middle-of-the-road quality. Some of the Indian food we encounter here now is at the same stage: tamed beyond recognition but tamed to sell.

In reading Mrs. Fox, it struck me as odd that when she discussed basil, and went on to describe its culinary uses, there is no mention of pesto. And if the word pizza appears in her work , I have not found it. In other passages it is clear that her palate is very much one of the America of her time. In the discussion of rosemary, no culinary uses are discussed. This brought to mind Elizabeth David’s comment about the unpleasant effect produced when the spiky leaves appear in food. Yet Mrs. Fox goes on later to mention culinary uses of rue of all things: people eat rue? Evidently they do (or did). She even quotes Boulestin and Hill: “chopped leaves and brown bread make good sandwiches.”

Mrs. Fox mentions crême renversée, but either the meaning of that term has changed since her time or she was simply mistaken about its meaning, for of strawberries she writes “But best of all uses is to eat the berries with sugar and the thick, clotted cream of Devonshire, called crême renversée in France.” Here’s a link to a site which discusses crême renversée and shows its similarity to caramel flan:
http://www.latartinegourmande.com/2006/09/26/creme-renversee-of-my-dreams-creme-renversee-de-mes-reves/

Here’s another example of Mrs. Fox’s solidly American palate (and of her solidly early-twentieth century grasp of grammar) : in her discussion of coriander, she wrote frankly “the leaves taste horribly, and since they look very like those of anise, one should be careful not to pick them by mistake for the salads” and in her account of chervil “ when one goes to pick the leaves of the Umbelliferae for the salad, one is apt to mistake the coriander for the leaves of the cumin, or anise, a fatal dampening of ardor for the eating of herbs.”

I wonder what she would have thought of my comparison of the smell of cilantro (coriander leaves) to the smell of brown marmorated stink bugs. Actually, what I really wonder is what she would have made of the current cilantro craze which has swept American cuisine. Are we about to become a nation of bug eaters?

Brown Marmorated Cilantro

My bedtime reading for the last few nights, Helen Morgenthau Fox’s Gardening With Herbs from 1938, was prompted by a sudden recurrence in my interest in culinary herbs. Certain herbs I grow yearly, and they are so much a part of the gardening experience that I’ve long ceased to think of them as “herbs” in a specifically culinary sense. Although I do use them in food preparation, more than that I simply like to have them around to enjoy their scents. Typically, they never even get planted into the garden but instead spend the summer in pots out on the deck. Various basils and thymes, lemon verbena, rose geranium, rosemary, chervil and chives are personal favorites. A gardening friend brought some fresh, locally grown bay cuttings to a recent meeting of our rock gardening group, and the several which came home with me give hope that one day there might be a bay tree established in the ground here.
It makes better sense to buy some herbs than give them space in the garden. Chervil and cilantro are good examples, but try to find a grocer who sells fresh chervil. Cilantro on the other hand is now readily available throughout the year.
What does cilantro taste like? Wayne calls it soap plant, and indeed it is sometimes described as having a soapy taste. But this afternoon, another – and maybe more apt – comparison occurred to me. While preparing some cilantro for a sandwich today, I noticed that cilantro smells the way the brown marmorated stink bug smells! This is not so far-fetched as it seems. Cilantro, which in American usage refers almost exclusively to the leaf, is the plant from which coriander (again, in American usage this word almost exclusively refers to the seed) is obtained. I have a hunch that some translations from European languages into English fail to make this distinction. For instance, somewhere I read that Colette is said to have said that coriander smells like bed bugs. Most accounts say that coriander (the seeds) smell like burnt orange peel. Many people who eschew the fresh leaf of cilantro use and esteem the seeds, coriander, freely. Perhaps Colette was on a first name basis with bedbugs, but the word coriander itself is derived from the classical Greek word coris which means bedbug, and surely she knew that.
Now let’s switch briefly to zoology: bed bugs and marmorated stink bugs are related: both are true bugs. Evidently they share the family body odor problem.