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vampyrichamsterThis year, as it is every year, my attempts at gardening were beholden to the whimsies of fate. Every garden is ultimately a gamble, sure, but my efforts to research what might grow in our Victorianly-pale levels of sunlight always seem extra-tossed in the kind of RNG I expect from only the harshest of video games. Heck, I might as well say it's as bad as end-game fishing in FFXIV. There are fish in that game I'm sure hold some kind of blood grudge against me after years of trying to kick them out of the depths. There are plants I had to spend years trying to grow before they turned up when I no longer cared, and plenty of plants I cared about that wouldn't even try. Be that as it may, I grew violets for the first time after reading for several years about their potential culinary uses. In my attempt to make sure I got an edible variety, I wound up with Viola tricolor--not the scented kind, so no baking, although I probably could have dried and turned at least some into colour for cookies. The violets didn't have any particular flavour either, but they do add colour, and possibly some extra nutrition. All late spring and summer-long, I harvested a small pile of just-wilted violets to toss into dinner as a garnish. I didn't get the freshly bloomed ones to keep them around for as much as possible. Getting the flowers that had just begun to close served as efficient dead-heading and encouraged even more new buds.
Next year, I'm curious to try V. odorata (the famously smelly variety) or 'Rebecca', which apparently has notes of vanilla. They were quite easy to grow, already uncommon for me. If raccoons didn't come excavating through my pots every time I seemed to just sprout something new, I probably would have had much more violets. And even with the fuzzy miscreants, I got at least twenty plants. Like last year, I also grew out nasturtiums to turn into capers. They're tasty bursts of piquant in almost everything, but especially the usual suspects, i.e. lox open sandwiches and lemon caper butter sauce. Quite bizarrely, I did not get any accidental or deliberate shiso this year. I wonder if I was too enthusiastic about removing flowers to keep the leaves going from the last batch, although that really didn't help much, leaving few spare new seeds. None of the old seeds from the past two years would sprout, which was bizarre. That said, I got so much furikake from Don Quijote (locally called Don Don Donki) in Kuala Lumpur I probably have enough shiso flakes to last me until next year's crop. I darn near killed the poor lavender I've been trying to nurture for years. It dried out while I wasn't looking and somehow grew even more lush than ever before from a tiny miracle nub. Still no flowers, but I harvest any twigs drying out and grind the leaves because even these have a very strong lavender scent.
The other recurring plants in my garden are that catnip my cat doesn't care for unless I am trimming or processing branches (then the scented oils tickle their curiosity) and my two ever-living celery stalks. I call them "Mumm-Ra I" and "Mumm-Ra II". Both are the children of a wilting celery Seth saved and sprouted one winter. That parent plant died after a season but spread seeds everywhere, even with my careful gathering. "Mumm-Ra I" sprang up literally over the spot its dessicated parent was buried, while "Mumm-Ra II" somehow managed to sprout on its own in a totally different pot three feet away from its sibling. They have seeded. They have put out new shoots. They are weirdly immortal and pretty much ensure we can never run out of celery or celery seeds. Frankly, I think if I tried to sow them on purpose, I'd wind up being a celery farmer. Really, I wished it was spinach that did that instead. My taste for celery only goes so far. The greens I try to plant batches of throughout the year have had depressing fail rates except for the wasabina, which is reliable, but again, light and raccoons have not at all helped. I pretty much have to cage in pots I'm using for sprouting because they've shown up in the middle of the night and scraped out the topsoil (along with sprouts). A neighbour down the street has raccoon traps he noted can't be used on our neighbourhood raccoons because ours are...too fat. Statement on our wastefulness as urban humans?
The koji fermentation experiments, unlike my garden, did not subject me to fae-level aspects of whimsy. Actually, the best result turned out to be my shio koji. After fascinating me for about two months with its sizzling and popping, the liquid in my jar developed the scent and colour of liquid butter. I was deliberately going for low-salt, so it was only mildly salty with a natural sweetness. Were it not for the clearly watery mouthfeel and complete lack of fat, I could have mistaken this for melted butter. I'm tempted to see what I can do with it if blended with other things because of this odd profile. The sacrificial COVID-era white beans and brown lentils have definitely transformed into readily useable, delicious miso. More importantly, I have escaped the spectre of crunchy beans. As it turns out, fermenting beans that would otherwise have cooked up crunchy is possibly the only way to soften them. I am most pleased I was able to avoid wasting food. The white bean miso paste has a clean, sweet profile and is way less salty than any commercial paste I could buy. It is just salty enough I wouldn't use it in a dessert...or wouldn't I? Recently, I tried a salted vanilla bean ice cream that tasted exactly like my favourite salted caramels. I also know from practical testing that my white bean miso and butter makes an amazing sauce. Perhaps in tahini cookies? I have quite a lot of white bean miso paste, so definitely a lot to play with.
I could barely take the flavour of the brown lentils in their original form when cooked. Although lentils never go crunchy with age, I couldn't say I found it appetising either. As a five-month-old miso paste, it is now earthy with a nutty sweetness, something I can and have mixed into all sorts of dishes as a salt substitute and flavour enhancer. There's a part of me that wants to go out and buy more koji so I can try other things, but I honestly have a lot of stuff at home now. It can wait. Especially since I did all this to avoid wasting food! With the stuff I have on hand, I could pickle us a portal into the pickle dimension. And yes, before you ask, it is incredibly easy to over-pickle.
Next year, I'm curious to try V. odorata (the famously smelly variety) or 'Rebecca', which apparently has notes of vanilla. They were quite easy to grow, already uncommon for me. If raccoons didn't come excavating through my pots every time I seemed to just sprout something new, I probably would have had much more violets. And even with the fuzzy miscreants, I got at least twenty plants. Like last year, I also grew out nasturtiums to turn into capers. They're tasty bursts of piquant in almost everything, but especially the usual suspects, i.e. lox open sandwiches and lemon caper butter sauce. Quite bizarrely, I did not get any accidental or deliberate shiso this year. I wonder if I was too enthusiastic about removing flowers to keep the leaves going from the last batch, although that really didn't help much, leaving few spare new seeds. None of the old seeds from the past two years would sprout, which was bizarre. That said, I got so much furikake from Don Quijote (locally called Don Don Donki) in Kuala Lumpur I probably have enough shiso flakes to last me until next year's crop. I darn near killed the poor lavender I've been trying to nurture for years. It dried out while I wasn't looking and somehow grew even more lush than ever before from a tiny miracle nub. Still no flowers, but I harvest any twigs drying out and grind the leaves because even these have a very strong lavender scent.
The other recurring plants in my garden are that catnip my cat doesn't care for unless I am trimming or processing branches (then the scented oils tickle their curiosity) and my two ever-living celery stalks. I call them "Mumm-Ra I" and "Mumm-Ra II". Both are the children of a wilting celery Seth saved and sprouted one winter. That parent plant died after a season but spread seeds everywhere, even with my careful gathering. "Mumm-Ra I" sprang up literally over the spot its dessicated parent was buried, while "Mumm-Ra II" somehow managed to sprout on its own in a totally different pot three feet away from its sibling. They have seeded. They have put out new shoots. They are weirdly immortal and pretty much ensure we can never run out of celery or celery seeds. Frankly, I think if I tried to sow them on purpose, I'd wind up being a celery farmer. Really, I wished it was spinach that did that instead. My taste for celery only goes so far. The greens I try to plant batches of throughout the year have had depressing fail rates except for the wasabina, which is reliable, but again, light and raccoons have not at all helped. I pretty much have to cage in pots I'm using for sprouting because they've shown up in the middle of the night and scraped out the topsoil (along with sprouts). A neighbour down the street has raccoon traps he noted can't be used on our neighbourhood raccoons because ours are...too fat. Statement on our wastefulness as urban humans?
The koji fermentation experiments, unlike my garden, did not subject me to fae-level aspects of whimsy. Actually, the best result turned out to be my shio koji. After fascinating me for about two months with its sizzling and popping, the liquid in my jar developed the scent and colour of liquid butter. I was deliberately going for low-salt, so it was only mildly salty with a natural sweetness. Were it not for the clearly watery mouthfeel and complete lack of fat, I could have mistaken this for melted butter. I'm tempted to see what I can do with it if blended with other things because of this odd profile. The sacrificial COVID-era white beans and brown lentils have definitely transformed into readily useable, delicious miso. More importantly, I have escaped the spectre of crunchy beans. As it turns out, fermenting beans that would otherwise have cooked up crunchy is possibly the only way to soften them. I am most pleased I was able to avoid wasting food. The white bean miso paste has a clean, sweet profile and is way less salty than any commercial paste I could buy. It is just salty enough I wouldn't use it in a dessert...or wouldn't I? Recently, I tried a salted vanilla bean ice cream that tasted exactly like my favourite salted caramels. I also know from practical testing that my white bean miso and butter makes an amazing sauce. Perhaps in tahini cookies? I have quite a lot of white bean miso paste, so definitely a lot to play with.
I could barely take the flavour of the brown lentils in their original form when cooked. Although lentils never go crunchy with age, I couldn't say I found it appetising either. As a five-month-old miso paste, it is now earthy with a nutty sweetness, something I can and have mixed into all sorts of dishes as a salt substitute and flavour enhancer. There's a part of me that wants to go out and buy more koji so I can try other things, but I honestly have a lot of stuff at home now. It can wait. Especially since I did all this to avoid wasting food! With the stuff I have on hand, I could pickle us a portal into the pickle dimension. And yes, before you ask, it is incredibly easy to over-pickle.
no subject
Date: 2025-10-25 03:37 pm (UTC)A friend from Finland mistook one of our neighbourhood raccoons for a small bear.
no subject
Date: 2025-10-27 10:35 pm (UTC)