NW Farms & Food

It may seem too simple, but the simplicity is what makes it. Fresh from the garden, baby salad greens are incomparably tender and succulent. Bellingham food personality and cookbook author, Mary Ellen Carter, prepares baby lettuce salad virtually as is. “When it’s this good, you don’t need to do anything with it,” she says. “You’re messing with perfection!”

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When you think of a potatoes, you probably picture brown-skinned russets, the ubiquitous French fry and baking spuds. Because they are so prevalent (and uniformly predictable), we’ve come to think of all “potatoes” as tasting like russets. Think again! The Northwest has a colorful range of flavorful, texture-rich potatoes. Here is a guide to a few of the many varieties:

Red Potatoes – Chieftain, Red Pontiac, Red Lasoda
True to their name, red potatoes have smooth reddish skin and white flesh. Reds are generally round and waxy, with a firm texture. They have less starch than russets or whites. Good in soups, potato salads, boiled, steamed, sauteed, roasted, and scalloped/au gratin.

Yellow Potatoes – Yukon Gold, Yellow Finn, German Butterball
Yellow potatoes have golden flesh and skin, with a buttery flavor. These versatile potatoes are good boiled, mashed, steamed, baked, roasted or French fried.
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 This winter, as you pore over the seed catalogs and dream of next season’s garden, think about including seed saving in the harvest. Starting a seed-saving garden can be easy and cost-effective. For one, when you save your own, you won’t have to depend on seed companies for the next year’s plants. You also have a hand in shaping your garden. By selecting seeds from plants with the best flavor, size or other desired characteristics, you can create a garden most suited your tastes and microclimate.
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Topping my list of favorite fall foods are sweet, saucer-shaped cipollini onions. I stock up on cipollinis at the farmers market in autumn, so I’ll have plenty to last for a couple of months. (You can also find them in grocery stores throughout a good part of the winter.)
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RECIPE

Small, sweet, saucer-shaped cipollini onions are delicious when oven roasted and slowly caramelized in olive oil. Serve these savory onions as an appetizer, with crackers, or as a side dish for meat or chicken.

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When pastry chef Tina Hoban of Scratch Desserts, needs fresh eggs for baking, she can step outside her commercial kitchen to the hen house and gather some. And when she wants fresh fruit for pear or apple tarts, she only has to walk past the vegetable garden to her orchard.

That’s because Scratch Desserts, the artisan bakery Tina founded in November 2010, is located as close to fresh foods as she can get it: on her farm.
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Contemporary research shows a potentially important medicinal role for the culinary herb, coriander (or cilantro, as the leaves are sometimes known). Scientists in Portugal, testing oil from coriander seeds, found the herb effective against such dangerous bacteria as E.coli and staphylococcus.
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Watching deer in the wild can be beautiful, but once these hooved herbivores decide to make a meal of your garden, it’s time to plan your defenses.
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If you want to minimize deer damage in an open garden, its best to start with plants that deer don’t like. Deer will “browse” on most anything when wild food sources are low. Some garden edibles, however, are less attractive to these voracious munchers than others.
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RECIPE
Cookbook author Mary Ellen Carter created this tangy coleslaw recipe, featuring raw kohlrabi. Kohlrabi’s crunchy texture and mild cabbage flavor make it an excellent choice for slaws.


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