Out of My Back Yard Today

By: Tom Freeland, HottyToddy.com, Blogger

Here’s some things that came out of my back yard this evening.  First, some herbs:  parsley and oregano for chimichurri sauce.  A lot of my herb garden keeps going except in the absolute dead of winter (a month or so in late January/February)– rosemary, always, thyme and lemon thyme, pretty much always, oregano and parsley, all but a brief time in the dead of winter.

Chimichurri sauce is a South American sauce for roasted meats, particularly beef.  I use it on flank or hanger steak, and it’s wonderful.  It’s pretty simple if you have the ingredients and the time; I’ve adapted mine from Kevin Gillespie’s book Fire in My Belly, using roasted hatch chillies instead of bell peppers, homemade hot sauce instead of pepper flakes, and the white parts of scallions instead of red onion.

Here’s the recipe:  Roast a hatch chilli (or a poblano if you can’t get that) on the burner of your stove or in the oven until charred.  Cool a moment, then put in a bag and steam a bit. Rinse to remove charred peel, then seed and finely chop.  Reserve 1 tbs; reserve the rest for something else.  Mix 1 tsp. salt, 1 tbs dried oregano, 1/4 tsp espellete pepper (or, if unavailable, the best paprika you can get), and 2 tbs red wine vinegar until the salt dissolves.  Add 1/4 tbs chopped flat leaf parsley, 2 tbs chopped fresh oregano, 1/4 cup olive oil, 1 tbs chopped white-parts of scallions, the reserved chili pepper, 2 tsp minced garlic, 1/2 tsp hot sauce.  Mix thoroughly.

Spoon this on roasted meat, or serve on the table as a condiment.  Local ingredients were the hot sauce, garlic, scallions, parsley, and oregano.

Lately, I’ve had a project of trying to harvest persimmons off of two really tall trees at the back of my property.  They are obviously part of a very old fence line, and I set up nets a few weeks ago to catch fruit off the trees.  My hope is to have persimmon pulp for a persimmon pudding for Thanksgiving (persimmon pudding is a holiday cake from Appalachia, an obvious descendent from plum pudding, although plum pudding has no plums, while this certainly has persimmons).  Today, a decent amount had accumulated since this morning.

Read more blog posts by Tom Freeland at his NMissCommentor blog page.