Harvest time is an exciting time in the garden. Those plants you have been taking care of, feeding, weeding, and watering are now returning the favor with ripe pickings for you to enjoy. Very quickly you’ll have a kitchen counter or bushel filled with red and juicy tomatoes, tasty peppers, flavorful cucumbers, and more.
What to do with all this plenty—and when—present some of the last obstacles of the season for new vegetable gardeners. If you’re suddenly inundated with abundance, here are a few tips to remember to receive maximum flavor from your harvest:
Presenting Chef Muses on Creating Dishes with Tomatoes
Heather Carlucci-Rodriguez is Pastry Chef at Print Restaurant in Manhattan. She will present cooking demonstrations at The Edible Garden Conservatory Kitchen on August 8 at 1 and 3 p.m.
I really don’t think I could have gotten a better item than the tomato (the food selected as the theme of the weekend at The Edible Garden). I’d probably say that about corn if I had been given that as a topic to demo. But honestly, it leaves the whole world open for talk, cooking, pairing, art—you name it.
I grew up in the neighborhoods around The New York Botanical Garden, and I’m witness to the fact that, lucky for me, the tomato grows bountifully everywhere.
Being a pastry chef, I thought about doing something sweet for my August 8 demo…for about a minute. I am a complete pushover for anything savory with tomatoes. And the tomato is so perfect as it is. Adding sugar, as intriguing as it is, is so unnecessary. Sauces, salads, soups, by itself with a little salt and olive oil…It’s versatile and perfect at this time of year. A must in most of the mother cuisines. The best carrier of the flavor of herbs, vinegars.
I always enjoy a great concert in the summer, especially in one of New York City’s fabulous outdoor spaces. There is something just so civilized about hearing great music in exceptional garden surroundings.
I usually find, however, that I need to bring something to eat and to drink. Well, not at The New York Botanical Garden. We have thought of everything.
During the Waterlily Concert Series at the Garden, which begins this evening and continues on August 12 and 19, Abigail Kirsch is ready to cater to your needs. We are featuring picnic baskets with beer or wine, cheese, crudités, and fruit—a perfect accompaniment to a wonderful summer evening. Other refreshments will be available as well: sandwiches, a variety of snacks, non-alcoholic beverages, and cookies and desserts.
Before each performance, visitors can view The Edible Garden with its Celebrity Chef Kitchen Gardens, Martha Stewart Culinary Herb Garden, and more, and then hear commentary about the importance of food choices in our lives during Food for Thought presentations.
Although seating is provided rain or shine under the tent at the Conservatory Kitchen stage where the lectures and music will be held, I encourage you to bring a blanket to enhance your experience. Stretch out under the sky while enjoying sumptuous fare and listening to fabulous music. There’s no better way to beat the summer heat!
I recently visited the Greenmarket, as I do on most Wednesdays, to pick fresh fruit for the remainder of the work week. In the past, my visits lasted no more than the handful of minutes it took to find whatever items I craved. I left the endless supply of herbs and vegetables—many with names I did not recognize—untouched for a braver and more skilled chef than I can profess to be. But what I found on this particular Wednesday was a deeply enriching experience.
This is because now the Garden’s Greenmarket is about more than simply food. If you visit the market, you will find a host of free activities and programs designed to teach visitors how to lead a heart-healthy lifestyle. The Heart Smart Program, which is supported in part by an American Heart Association New York City Community Impact Grant and the MetLife Foundation, encourages participants to connect the foods they eat to their well-being through activities designed to improve cardiovascular health.
The New York Botanical Garden and Whole Foods Markets® have partnered to promote and support local food and sustainable agriculture through weekly cooking demonstrations. Each Friday at 2 p.m. during The Edible Garden, a chef from Whole Foods Market® presents innovative seasonal recipes using fresh ingredients at the Conservatory Kitchen.
July’s grilling theme comes to a close with today’s event. In August the cooking demonstrations will focus on healthy eating, including Whole Foods Market’s Health Starts Here program. The bountiful harvest takes the spotlight on Fridays in September and October.
Click on the video to view a recent Whole Foods Market® Fridays presentation. Then come and see for yourself in person. The event is included in the Weekday ticket.
Hear how Mario Batali uses pine nuts, learn how to cook zucchini flowers, find out how to use sweet potatoes in desserts, and garner more culinary tips by tuning in to the informative Celebrity Chef Audio Tour.
Augment your visitor experience during The Edible Garden by listening to several chefs, including Dan Barber, Michael Psilakis, and Sara Moulton, discuss a variety of delectable fruits and vegetables—how they grow and how you can use them in cooking.
You’ll also hear gardening advice from Botanical Garden staff members Annie Novak, coordinator of the Children’s Gardening Program, and Karen Daubmann, Director of Exhibitions and Seasonal Displays.
Do you have a story of your own about a particular vegetable or fruit that you’d like to share? Leave a message for others to hear. You can get links to recipes and growing tips sent directly to your cell phone as well.
To listen to the audio tour, look for the audio tour symbol and phone number on signs throughout the Garden grounds or call from home, 718.362.9561. Enter the prompt number you wish to listen to followed by the # key. (For instance, Mario Batali on pine nuts is 240#). Enter another prompt number at any time followed by the # key.
For a list of topics and numbers, click here. Better yet, come visit The Edible Garden and experience the tour in person.
Demonstration Shows How to Put Up Your Own at Home
Eugenia Bone is a veteran food writer and author ofWell-Preserved. She will present canning demonstrations atThe Edible GardenConservatory Kitchen on July 25 at 1 and 3 p.m.
You may remember your grandmother putting up fruits in glass jars. Well, that practice is alive and well in New York City today, and it’s as safe and easy as it ever was.
The motivation for urban and suburban canning is to have foods on hand to eat off-season (as well as for health, economic, and environmental reasons). All you have to do is decide what you’d really like to have stocked in the cupboard. People often ask me what is a good starter product for the beginner canner. I always say, whatever you like to eat! For me, that’s tomatoes. But to make it manageable, I put up a couple of pints at a time, when I am cooking dinner and hanging around the kitchen anyway.
Though tomatoes are a fruit, they have a pH usually of 4.5 or 4.6, which is just on the borderline of foods you can safely process in a water bath. For this reason, the Feds recommend you acidify all tomato products. You can use 2 tablespoons of lemon juice per pint, but I prefer a 1/4 teaspoon of citric acid. I buy 4-ounce jars of NOW citric acid online (www.nowfoods.com, keyword “citric acid”), and that does the trick of acidifying tomatoes beautifully.
I can tomatoes two ways, depending on how much time I have.
No, “eating local” does not mean going to the Burger King that is down the block. It involves a set of conscious decisions about sourcing your chow in a way that emphasizes sustainability, nutrition, appearance, and taste, while leaving a smaller carbon trail.
Greenmarkets, community supported agriculture (CSA), produce exchanges, and farm stands are all manifestations of this concept. So, too, are celebrations like The Edible Garden, our summer into fall exhibition here at The New York Botanical Garden that is showcasing a number of chefs who create healthful recipes using harvest-based, seasonal, and organic ingredients.
Throughout The Edible Garden, Shop in the Garden is featuring a number of works by authors who believe that transforming our diet is critical not just to our own health but planet Earth’s health, too.
Louisa Shafia’s Lucid Food: Cooking for an Eco-Conscious Lifeis a cookbook with integrity. The first thing the author does is share all her “tried-and-true methods for putting a beautiful meal on the table while keeping a clear conscience.” Humane, seasonal, and sustainable are not bandied about like buzzwords but are used with passion and commitment. All this does not lead to cream of boiled water soup: the food is lovely, flavorful, and exotic, with concise recipes that don’t require specialized equipment or hard-to-find ingredients that need a flight to Damascus to get. The red-as-rhubarb jacket design is especially alluring. Louisa Shafia presented cooking demos at our Conservatory Kitchen and signed copies of Lucid Food this past Sunday (July 18).
Our grandparent’s secrets of putting food by (yes, we ate their homemade pickles that came out of a dubious-looking, scum-covered barrel set like a secret in a curtain-covered pantry—and lived to tell about it) are revealed by Eugenia Bone in Well-Preserved: Recipes and Techniques for Putting Up Small Batches of Seasonal Foods. Sure I can freeze my own blueberries, but after that I’m all thumbs and a bit of a nervous Nellie, as I’m a little afraid of sending a houseful of dinner guests to the emergency room even if they have health insurance. Eugenia Bone describes even difficult techniques like water bath canning, curing, and smoking in a reassuring way so that even a novice will be turning out house-made gravlax in no time. Eugenia Bone will show how to do it and sign copies of her book this Sunday, July 25.
The Locavore’s Handbook: The Busy Person’s Guide to Eating Local on a Budget, by Leda Meredith, is an introduction and guide to eating locally for everyone, but seems especially geared for budget-minded city folk. The virtue of this book is that it actually is practical, showing you how to consume sustainably without breaking your (grass-fed, humanely raised) piggy bank. It has very useful money-saving tips on menu planning, growing and harvesting (even when your back 40 is that many inches of balcony), bartering, even packaging. Leda Meredith, an instructor here at NYBG, will be talking about her life as a locavore and signing copies of her book on Sunday, August 15.
As we dance our way through the seasons, Dan Barber (pictured left with me) reminds me often that I (the farmer) lead the way. If this is so, I have learned all my moves from watching and imitating the nimble flow of nature. Whether the tarantella or a tomato salad, the principles remain the same: communication and respect.
Understanding the fundamentals of the soil and the seasons is key to growing delicious food for nourishing and inspiring meals. At Stone Barns, we rely on several principles to maintain balance in our ecosystem, and these principles can guide the home gardener as well.
First, recognize that the whole of nature exhibits diversity and change. In the garden we replicate this through a balanced rotation of diversified crops. My preference is to diversify by plant families such as the nightshade, legume, mustard, or chicory.
Harvest time is an exciting time in the garden. Those plants you have been taking care of, feeding, weeding, and watering are now returning the favor with ripe pickings for you to enjoy. Very quickly you’ll have a kitchen counter or bushel filled with red and juicy tomatoes, tasty peppers, flavorful cucumbers, and more. 
Louisa Shafia’s 
The Locavore’s Handbook: The Busy Person’s Guide to Eating Local on a Budget, by Leda Meredith, is an introduction and guide to eating locally for everyone, but seems especially geared for budget-minded city folk. The virtue of this book is that it actually is practical, showing you how to consume sustainably without breaking your (grass-fed, humanely raised) piggy bank. It has very useful money-saving tips on menu planning, growing and harvesting (even when your back 40 is that many inches of balcony), bartering, even packaging. Leda Meredith, an instructor here at NYBG, will be talking about her life as a locavore and signing copies of her book on Sunday, August 15.
