Cooking Demo to Showcase these Pinky-sized Jewels in Caponata
Rebecca Lando is writer, producer, and host of the Web series Working Class Foodies. She will present cooking demonstration along with Chef Brendan McDermott at The Edible Garden Conservatory Kitchen on Saturday, August 28, at 1 and 3 p.m.
Eggplant is kind of the middle child of the summer farmer’s market.
Inedible raw unlike tomatoes, peppers, and cucumbers, and more complex to prepare than grilled or boiled corn, eggplant seems to stand out for all the wrong reasons: its dense flesh and generally heavy preparation can make it a bit of an overlooked anomaly. The time and degree of cooking generally necessary for eggplant makes it an awkward summer crop, seemingly out of place when you’re craving a light, refreshing dinner.
My mother used to halve and hollow large eggplants, stuff them with a sauteed mix of ground lamb, cubed eggplant flesh, onion, olives, and spices, top them with cheese, and broil them until the cheese was bubbly and the eggplant skin was crispy. Delicious and filling, but it would be torturous to eat in summer. Likewise, eggplant parmesan is too heavy for the hot months, and even a cooling baba ghanouj means turning on the oven.
But eggplant is far more versatile than you might think. Sliced thick and rubbed with a paste of olive oil, sea salt, crushed hot pepper, oregano, and lemon juice, then thrown on the grill, it’s a hearty and healthy alternative to steak. Cooked the same way and then cut down into cubes, it’s a fantastic base for a rustic Provencal ratatouille.
9-Year-Old Everett Sanderson Offers 9 Tips to Get Growing
Elizabeth Fisher is Associate Manager for Education Marketing and Public Relations.
Everett Sanderson is a talented soon-to-be fifth grader who has spent most of his nine summers gardening in the Ruth Rea Howell Family Garden, helping his mom, Han-Yu Hung, who is Garden Coordinator of the Children’s Gardening Program. In the Family Garden, kids work hands-on growing fruits and vegetables, learning that food, fun, health, and teamwork are connected. This year their garden plots have been in the spotlight as part of The Edible Garden.
Unlike most 9-year-olds, Everett is an accomplished gardener and a lover of veggies. Harvesting is what hooked him at first: “I realized that in order to harvest, you have to grow it, and in order to grow it, you have to plant it,” said Everett. Gardening also helped him to love eating vegetables: “If you can plant it, you have a better chance of liking it.”
Now a veteran of the Children’s Gardening Program, Everett, who lives in the Bronx, started gardening at age 3 as a “Garden Sprout” and is now a “Garden Crafter,” leading gardening lessons and hands-on activities.
He shares these helpful tips for kids to get their own gardens growing.
Guided tours give visitors an added boost of knowledge beyond exploring the Garden on one’s own. Each time I’ve embarked on one of our tours, I’ve learned bountiful gardening tips and scientific and historical facts.
That’s why I am especially excited and honored that Peter Kukielski, Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden Curator, has agreed to take groups on a tour of the award-winning, world-renowned Rose Garden during its spectacular fall bloom.
Peter’s passion for roses is inspirational. Over the past two years he and staff have replaced hundreds of roses with disease-resistant varieties, transforming the Rose Garden into one of the most sustainable public rose gardens in the world. Today 3,659 rose plants in 607 varieties thrive there. Earlier this year the Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden was inducted into the Great Rosarians of the World™ Rose Garden Hall of Fame.
Peter will be available to lead one-hour tours of the Rose Garden on September 16, October 7, or October 14. Tours include a private tram ride to and from the Rose Garden. You don’t have to come with a group, as we are signing up individuals to form groups of at least 15. For more information or to sign up, call Group Tours at 718-817-TOUR (8687) or e-mail grouptours@nybg.org.
From Traumatic Childhood Episode to Experimental Dishes
Pichet Ong is chef and owner of P*ong and Village Tart, and author of The Sweet Spot. He will present cooking demonstrations at The Edible Garden Conservatory Kitchen on Sunday, August 22, at 1 and 3 p.m.
I was born an adventurous eater. While the lunchboxes of my elementary school mates were filled with aluminum-wrapped peanut butter and jelly, ham and cheese, and egg salad sandwiches, mine often had well seasoned leftovers from our previous night’s family dinner—duck liver and minced quail stir-fry, bitter melon soup, twice-cooked pork belly, or potato vinaigrette with Sichuan peppercorns.
I remember the first time I had beets; my mother, Ruby, warned me: It’s not like eating a red plum, steak tartare, or raw tuna. She also promised me, like with all red foods, including watermelon, that it is good for the blood.
My first taste of beets came in the form of a borscht—a traditional Eastern European soup that made its way into modern Chinese cuisine due to the Chinese’s obsession with red-colored food. Inspired by the Hong Kong-style borscht, which is beef- stocked based with tomatoes, ketchup, and red vinegar (which has food dye), and last night’s leftover vegetables thrown in, my mother came up with an all-natural version that incorporates beetroots in lieu of artificial color in the recipe. More vibrant in fuchsia and red tones, and tastier than the ubiquitous version found in restaurants, despite my mother’s warning, I helped myself to seconds at the dinner table, and even packed up some for my lunch the next day. The next morning when I went to the boy’s room, I understood—explicitly—my mother’s warning. I left for school queasy, confused, and mellow—sans borscht.
See Honey Taken from Hive Saturday as Part of National Celebration
Toby Adams is Manager of the Ruth Rea Howell Family Garden.
Every day during the gardening season, the Family Garden is a hive of activity hours before visitors arrive. A diverse staff—coordinators, instructors, explainers, volunteers, and interns—zip about this way and that, preparing for the day’s programs. I’ve described this scene as resembling a beehive—the many tasks to be accomplished are shared by everyone, with necessary details divided and completed.
Veteran staff mentor new arrivals in how to get tiny seeds and delicate plantings off to a good start. Difficult projects are completed through teamwork and cooperation, and the most unglamorous but important of chores (cleaning the tools and washing the dirty dishes) taken on by a willing hand for the benefit of the group.
I’ve come to realize that this analogy to a beehive is most appropriate. Since May 1, I’ve had the awesome opportunity to witness the activity of a real beehive while helping to manage our newest addition to the Family Garden—two honeybee hives placed on top of our garage.
How Hot Can You Tolerate? Visit Trial Bed in Home Gardening Center
Some might say this summer’s weather has been hotter than a chili pepper. But there are some really intense chili peppers out there! During The Edible Garden, the Home Gardening Center is featuring a Chili Pepper Trial Bed, highlighting 48 plants of 12 cultivars in a range of colors, sizes, and heat intensity.
The chili pepper is thought to be the most popular spice: Over 20 percent of the world’s population uses it in some form. Famous for a hot flavor, there are many different cultivated types, each with distinct characteristics.
The term chili pepper is used for several of the nearly 25 species in the genus Capsicum, all of which originated in Central and South America. The two most common species are Capsicum annuum and Capsicum frutescens.
The level of the pungent compound capsaicin is what accounts for the pungency or heat in chilies. Some peppers are so pungent that farmers and cooks need to wear gloves to protect their skin, which can become irritated or blistered just by touching the peppers.
The hotness of a chili pepper is measured in Scoville Heat Units, named after the U.S. pharmacologist Wilbur Scoville who in 1912 invented a hotness gauge. On the Scoville scale, a sweet pepper scores 0, a jalapeño pepper around 3,000, and a Mexican habañero a scorching 500,000.
The Chili Pepper Trial Bed is arranged according to the Scoville scale and includes Capsicum chinese ‘Bhut Jolokia’ from India, which registers over 1 million Scoville units! Labels in the garden indicate how hot each pepper is.
Come visit the trial bed and The Edible Garden to get ideas on which types you’d like to try—in your garden and in your cooking. On Saturday, September 25, we’ll present a home gardening demonstration on chili peppers, Some Like It Hot, as part of the Fiesta de Flores y Comida festival weekend, celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month with flowers, food, dancing, cooking demonstrations (with Chef Maricel Presilla and others), and more.
View the Diversity, Distribution, and Status of 45 Species
Brian M. Boom, Ph.D., is Director of the Caribbean Biodiversity Program at The New York Botanical Garden.
Regular readers of Plant Talk may recall the post I co-wrote during The Orchid Show: Cuba in Flower in March that highlighted the long history and current program of plant exploration in Cuba by scientists of The New York Botanical Garden. Orchids are one of the most diverse of flowering plant families in Cuba, where some 497 species and varieties are known, of which about 181 (36%) are endemic to the island.
Cuban botanists presently consider that at least 32 species of orchids are threatened due to various factors such as habitat modification and climate change. However, the process of evaluating at-risk species in Cuba, and elsewhere, is far from complete. The Botanical Garden is currently developing a new method to evaluate at-risk species much more rapidly than has been done traditionally so that we can get a more complete view of the status of plants in Cuba and throughout the Caribbean. (See page 6 of Garden News.)
Anything Goes—and Grows—in Potting Up Vegetables for Small Spaces
Francisca Coelho is the Vivian and Edward Merrin Associate Vice President for Glasshouses and Exhibitions.
You may not be aware of this, but every plant you have grown in a pot, box, can, tub, or other vessel is an example of container gardening. Your potted houseplants, summer pots of annuals, and hanging baskets all represent gardening in containers. In the tropics where I grew up, people lined their front steps with many colorful, painted containers of every shape and size. They filled them with beautiful, tropical, flowering exotics and with plants used for food and medicine. Versatility is the hallmark of the container gardener!
In front of the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory, as part of The Edible Garden, I am growing an assortment of tasty vegetables in containers. The design is simple-a mix of semicircles and straight lines with pots ranging in size from 14 to 36 inches in diameter.
The steps leading up to the elevated area are lined with pots filled with Tumbling Tom tomatoes, mammoth red cabbages, purple kohlrabi and kale, ornamental trailing sweet potato vines, and marigolds, included to ward off unwelcomed pests and to encourage hungry bees to pollinate my edible delights.
What Do These Have to Do with Helping Solve the Climate Crisis?
Anna Lappé is author of Diet for a Hot Planet: The Climate Crisis at the End of Your Fork and What You Can Do About. She will give a talk at the Garden as part ofThe Edible Garden’sFood for Thoughtseries on August 19 at 7 p.m.
A few nights ago, I watched the sky darken over the East River while I listened to clucking chickens peacefully pecking on the roof of a loft in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Eagle Street Rooftop Farm is just one of the rooftop farms sprouting up across the city, bringing to communities fresh food and the opportunity to get our hands in the dirt.
Eagle Street, all 6,000 square feet of it, has only been around two growing seasons, but it already boasts a loyal following. A dozen families are members of its CSA; hundreds of kids have munched on its peppers and tomatoes; and from 40 to 65 volunteers a week have dug in its raised beds. The place is buzzing with life and, the day I was there, newborn rabbits, who earn their keep with droppings used for fertilizer.
Eagle Street is just one of the reasons I’m not feeling so blue these days. In the face of mounting environmental catastrophes—from global climate change to a dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico that swells to the size of New Jersey every year—there’s a lot to feel depressed about. These crises can feel far removed from our daily lives and from our control. But with every choice we make about where get our food, how we support sustainable solutions in our cities, we are helping to heal the climate.
