Inspired Media

Unusual vegetables get a little time in the limelight.

By Aryn Henning Nichols • Originally published in the Summer 2013 Inspire(d)

Just like people, vegetables come in all sorts of sizes, shapes, and characteristics. And, just like people, some are more popular than others. There always seems to be some produce that gets pushed to the back the fridge – if it even makes it there. More likely, those vegetables sit at the farmers market, still on the table at 11 am, way after the rush for lettuce and sugar snap peas has passed.

We here at Inspire(d) knew there was more to the story – the lives – of these (sometimes homely) little veggies (hey, have you SEEN celeriac?). So we asked our farmer, Erik Sessions, for more information. Erik runs Patchwork Green Farm with his wife, Sara Peterson, and his three daughters. We call him OUR farmer because, in a way, we bought (part of) the farm through a Patchwork Green Community Supported Agriculture share.

Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) offers a great way to “meet” some of the unsung heroes of vegetable land. At the beginning of (or a bit before) a growing season, CSA members buy a share of the anticipated harvest. Once things are growing and ready to harvest, members receive weekly “shares” of vegetables and fruit – ours comes in a reusable bag that we return the following week. Yes, lettuce and snap peas are often part of the bounty, but there’s also sometimes kohlrabi or fennel, and occasionally even flowers (the sunflowers from Patchwork Green Farm are particularly happy). With the share comes a letter detailing that week’s harvest, ways to use it and cook with it, and a couple of recipes too. Patchwork also offers “Farmers Market Shares” where you can put money on an account and just write down what you buy at the market and Erik and Sara will subtract that amount each week (or each week you purchase something) and report the remaining amount left on your CSA via email. It’s a great way to stock up on a certain thing or not worry about your veggies if you’re heading out of town.

The first CSA in Northeast Iowa launched in 1997: Sunflower Fields CSA was a collaborative of 10 small Northeast Iowa farms – most in the Postville area ­– that served a multi-county area for about 10 years. Patchwork Green Farm started offering shares in 1999, followed by Decorah-area Rock Spring Farm (no longer offering CSA shares) and Annie’s Gardens and Greens (Ft Atkinson). Kitchen Table CSA (Mary Klocke/Jeff Abbas) started to offer shares a few years ago and former Sweet Earth Farm (Decorah) offered vegetable CSA shares for two years. River Root Farm (Decorah) even offers a late fall/early winter CSA that brings subscribers fresh produce through the end of December.

“The part I love about our local CSAs is that each is run quite differently, each has it’s own niche, it’s own member demographics,” Erik says. “In a small community, I think this is vital, and it’s a great way to get local food to a wide variety of people.”

Anne Bohl, one of the former co-owners of Sweet Earth Farm, now operates Low Oaks Farm with Lew Klimesh. Anne and Lew are young farmers who are thoroughly passionate about bringing great produce to the region through Farmers Markets, Oneota Co-op, and CSA shares.

“Community Supported Agriculture is our ideal way to farm and distribute fresh local food to the community because it is a connection and support system for both the farmers and the members. By connecting where the food is being grown to where it is being eaten, and to have that connection be so close is a powerful thing,” Anne says. “It pulls us together as a community around a common goal.”

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Erik and Anne both took a minute out of the busy summer growing season to share some of their favorite “unsung heroes” of the Driftless Region farm. Check them out here, then pick them up at the market. C’mon, don’t leave a sad celeriac hanging!

Erik’s picks (www.patchworkgreen.com):

Kohlrabi is always at the top of my list, and I have been on a mission to get everyone to try it in the last couple of years. What kid can turn down a slice of raw, crisp, sweet kohlrabi? It is good in slaw, on a veggie platter, cooked in soup, mashed, etc., but best raw, I think. Tips: buy them small to medium size (except the giant variety). They are very tender when they have had lots of water and size up quickly in the field. If we are in a drought, ask if they were irrigated – if not, they are probably woody. Eat your kohlrabi as soon as you can (within a couple days of purchase) for sweetest flavor. Like most brassica family crops, it will get a strong flavor if it hangs out in the fridge too long.

Boc Choi is way better than celery – more versatile, crunchy, pretty, not stringy. Just as good in ‘American’ dishes as Asian.

Italian (flat) parsley has a wonderful, full flavor. Easy to grow (cut and come again), good raw and cooked, used in many cuisines around the world, keeps for several weeks in the fridge, loaded with vitamin A, etc.

Garlic Scapes are the flower head of the hard-neck garlic plant, ready to be trimmed off the plant and consumed in mid-June (ed. note: read more about garlic in this issue’s “Science, You’re Super: Garlic!”). They are not hollow like onions, and should be picked when they are very short and tender (not two-feet long and curled). Mild garlic flavor, best when cooked. They can be pickled, made into hummus, and sautéed with any recipe that calls for garlic. Keep in the fridge for a month!

Celeriac: Strong, celery flavor for soups and slaw. Not stringy, like celery. Keeps all winter in cold storage. Extremely ugly!

Patty pan squash: An unusual summer squash. Very tender at 2” size; good for stuffing and baking at the 4” size. They come in many color phases and can be eaten raw, sauteed, baked, etc. just like any summer squash or zucchini.

Anne’s picks (www.lowoaksfarm.com):

My first two may seem commonplace, but I’m tellin’ you, they should be waaaay more popular then they are…

Leeks: Full of vitamins and minerals, tasty, and delicious! Leeks are best in the fall and winter and are wonderful storage crops so you can use them into the winter months. They are fantastic in soups, although that’s what most people already do with them. I like to lightly sauté them in butter or olive oil as a precursor to just about every savory dish that I make when they are in season… fried/scrambled eggs, stir fry, sautéed greens (spinach and kale)… basically any time you would use onions or garlic, plus lots more because they are a little milder and a little more delicate of a flavor.

Italian Flat Leaf Parsley (pictured above as one of Erik’s faves too!): This is one of my all time favorite crops! It is so flavorful and juicy when harvested fresh and once it as gotten to a decent size. This is another vegetable I will put in everything when it is in season, which is practically the entire summer. It’s one of the first things in the spring, as well as one of the last hardy crops hanging on in the fall. I like to chop it up and put in all kinds of salads… really, any salad. Some fresh lettuce with chopped flat leaf parsley, olive oil, and lemon juice is the most refreshing salad a person could have. Italian parsley is also wonderful sautéed in a little butter or olive oil with your onions, garlic, or… leeks! It’s great in eggs for breakfast, salad for lunch, soups, parsley pesto, tabouli, and lots more.

My last two are a little harder to find at the market or in a CSA share, but are definitely worth seeking out.

• Mache/Corn Salad: Mache is a delicious little green harvested in rosettes that is very popular and common in Europe. It is a cold-loving crop, and can be grown in our climate pretty much all winter long if you have some basic row cover on it. It is wonderful eaten raw as a salad or slightly wilted w/a hot vinaigrette. Mache is a mild, tender, and delicate tasting green with a slightly nutty flavor to it. It does tend to be a bit more expensive because of the labor needed to grow, harvest, and wash it, but well worth seeking out when it’s in season.

• Fennel: Very high in antioxidants and with a unique flavor and texture, fennel is definitely on the list of unsung vegetable heroes. There are usually the few die hard, reliable fennel buyers out there, but their numbers are small. It is in season mid summer through fall. Fennel is a very versatile vegetable which is delicious paired with citrus and a light vinaigrette, roasted with beets and herbs, chopped into cubes and baked into a vegetable pot pie, and added to soups, gratins, or casseroles. It’s got a delicious, juicy crunch to it and very pleasant and unique flavor.

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Aryn Henning Nichols is going to make it a point to learn more about ALL the veggies on the farmers market tables. Who wouldn’t want to pull out one of those ugly celeriacs and know just what to do with it?!?!

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Did You Know?
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Some employers are even getting hip to the benefits of CSAs – Luther College in Decorah covers a portion of the cost if an employee wants to buy a share, recognizing the health benefits of eating healthy and locally. If you’re an employee of Luther, check it out! If you’re an employer yourself, consider trying something similar with your business!

Patchwork Green Farm CSA also offers a way to support the Decorah food pantry.
“The Master Gardeners in Decorah have partnered with the Winneshiek Farmers Market for quite a few years now to get end-of-the-day extras from market vendors to the Decorah First Lutheran Food Pantry. This is great for the vendors – we just bag up veggies, put them in the little red wagon, and then feel good that we are supporting the pantry and all the folks that utilize it,” Erik says. “Jackie Jones of the Master Gardeners and I came up with this plan years ago, and I always have lots of goodies to send. Sara and I decided that we could encourage even more giving by involving our CSA members. We offer them the chance to make a $50 contribution, and we then make sure that all of the pantry pledges go toward Patchwork Green produce heading up to the pantry. We are now sending not just ‘leftovers’ but lots of prime produce as well. Last year (2012), over $1000 was pledged by members of our CSA, and we added lots of top of that. Share the good food, right?”

Justin Scardina’s Piradzini “Piedogs”

Photos & text by Aryn Henning Nichols • Illustrations by Lauren Bonney
Recipes by Justin Scardina • Originally published in the Summer 2016 Inspire(d)

“I’m a quarter Latvian, half Sicilian, and a quarter ‘mutt,’” says Decorah chef Justin Scardina.

While the majority of people can’t even find Latvia on a map, Justin grew up with a grandma who had lived there the formative years of her life.

World War I had taken a great many soldiers, including Justin’s great grandfather. Without a spouse, his great grandmother was looking for a fresh start. Many people were emigrating from Latvia and settling in Chicago in the late 1930s – amongst them was Justin’s great grandmother, and her teenaged daughter, Sonja.

Grandma Sonja McGraw had five kids – four girls and one boy – and lived on the north side of Chicago.

“The culture was definitely present even for my mother,” Justin says. “She remembers going to events where everyone was still speaking Latvian.”

Justin’s mom, Karey (Scardina once she married), was the oldest of the brood, and, thus, Justin and his younger sister and brother were the oldest of the cousins. While the other cousins were still at home in diapers, Justin and his siblings would head the few blocks over to Grandma Sonja’s to make a Latvian snack called Piradzini.

Say what? “We called them piedogs,” Justin says. “Basically a baked sour cream roll stuffed with bacon, ham and onion…. good stuff.”

Pie (rhymes with me) dogs – a nonsensical word they made up so it would be easier for the little kids to pronounce– were a special treat made for all the big holidays in the McGraw family.

“We’d show up early, and Grandma would have everything set up in her big kitchen. The dough was all ready to go, and pretty simple to make, but the biggest task was mincing the meat and onion. You want the dice to be really small so, you know, you don’t have a huge chunk of bacon in one bite. Everything goes in uncooked,” Justin explains. “We’d use a water glass to cut out the dough rounds, then roll them out, add in the filling, and form the dumplings.”

While Grandma and the kids were inside prepping and baking piedogs – “It would take all day,” Justin says – Grandpa and the uncles grilled outside or took a boat out on the lake. The family would all come together for dinner – 16 could fit at Justin’s grandma’s long dining table.

“These were a huge event when ever some one made them in my family,” he says.

“My mom makes piedogs too – she bases her recipe off my great grandmothers, though. Grandma Sonja cut some of the fat out of the original recipe… it was the early 80s, you know,” Justin says with a laugh. “My mother put it back in.”

Justin made these for the first time himself about six years ago.

“I had a random craving and called home and asked for the recipe,” he says. “I could have sworn there was garlic in there, but mom says no.”

Perhaps that’s how recipes like this evolve over generations. Justin listened to his mom, though, and kept garlic out of his recipe… but he kept the fat in.

These days, when Justin isn’t making Latvian snacks or entertaining his seven-year-old daughter, Adina, he’s a chef at Luther College, and the mastermind and chef behind local pop-up restaurant Salt/Water. Check out Salt/Water on Facebook for details on upcoming menus and dinner dates.

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PRINT RECIPE HERE
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Piradzini “Piedogs”

Recipes by Justin Scardina (and family!)

Sour Cream Dough

1/2 C Sour Cream
1 C Warm Water, slightly above room temp.  110-115F
2T Sugar
1 1/4 t Salt
3 C All purpose Flour
3 t Yeast

Meat Filling

1 lb Bacon, best you can afford, diced finely
1/2 lb Smoked Ham, again best you can afford, diced finely
2 yellow onions, finely diced
Black Pepper, loads for freshly ground black pepper

Procedure:

Start the dough… mix the warm water, yeast, sugar to together and allow to sit to proof the yeast about 8-12 minutes. In the mean time, stir the flour and mix in salt in a large bowl and make a well in the center of the flour. Now mix in the sour cream in the yeast/water mix until well combined. Add that mixture to the flour and mix gently until the flour comes together in a elastic ball. Transfer to a new, oiled bowl and cover with plastic wrap or a towel. Allow to rise in a warm area for at least an hour.

In the mean time, chop all the bacon, ham and onions and mix well to combine. Liberally season with freshly ground black pepper, mix again and set aside until ready to use.

Now take the dough and knead for 5-10 minutes. Again place in an oiled bowl and allow to rise again. After a half hour, the dough will be ready. Take a 1/4 of the dough out on a floured surface and, using your hands, flatten a section at a time. Usually we would use a water glass to cut out 1-2″ circles of dough to stuff with our filling. Fill the circle with 1 to 1 1/2 teaspoon of the meat filling and fold the dough over the meat to make a dumpling shape. Repeat until you run out of dough or filling.

Preheat an oven to 350 F. Arrange your dumplings in a single, spaced out layer on a sheet tray. Bake for 15-20 minutes until golden brown on the outside. Make sure to check them after 10 minutes to rotate the sheet tray. Enjoy warm and stuff your face!

Read more Roots of Food: Family Recipes and Stories here!

Grandma Alice’s Apple Pie

Story & Recipes by Joyce Meyer • Illustrations by Lauren Bonney
Photos by Aryn Henning Nichols • Originally published in the Summer 2016 Inspire(d)

Thinking of apple pie conjures up memories of family. The sweet cinnamon-laced aroma of bubbling apple pie wafting through our old family farmhouse brings memories flooding back of my late grandmother, Alice Mansheim Uhlenhake. Grandma Alice lived with us while I was growing up, and being a former teacher, she was eager to teach me many things, including the art of making apple pies from the orchard on our family farm near Calmar, Iowa.

Grandma grew up with fruit orchards that included a peach grove in Fort Madison, in southern Iowa. Being the only daughter, grandma and her mother, Bernadina Mansheim, had plenty of practice making fruit pies. After she was married, Grandma’s brother, John, would even bring a truckload of peaches up to our area in Northeast Iowa each year. We were privileged to have grandma stay with us in her senior years. A month at a time, she made rounds to each of the four daughters and her only son, who farmed the Uhlenhake family farm by Ossian. Grandpa Ted died at age 61, so for many years Grandma worked as a cook and housekeeper for Monsignor Leander Reicks in Cherry Mound and Dougherty, Iowa.

When I was a child, Grandma would get up early, while the rest were milking cows, and we would wander the orchard together as the sun rose in the sky. We would check on the gardens, grapes, raspberries, and apple orchard. Grandma was a devote women, and at the end of our walk, we would stop to meditate over the beautiful purple Morning Glories as they opened up to the sun and we would offer up our work for the day. Then the bustling farm kitchen came alive.

One day when I was about 10, Grandma decided it was time to teach me how to make pie by myself. It sounded like fun, so we gathered apples from the orchard and the flour went flying as she patiently taught me how to roll out the lard-based dough. It took practice and learning to use less flour to roll out the dough. I eventually became so proficient at my pie-making skills that I was sent to my sister Juanita Elsbernd Cole’s home in Cedar Rapids a few years later to make pies for a baptismal dinner. My mother, Ruth Elsbernd, recalls that Wealthy apples were the choice apples out of the orchard for pies.

Summers were busy on the farm, and many times there were extra hungry workmen to feed. Grandma, mom, my sister Eileen (Schissel), and I made large meals at noon, and often the meal ended with her flaky apple pie. We learned the difference of our generations – sometimes we laughed about it, sometimes we just listened. It was the era of “hot pants” for us, as we became teenagers. We would chuckle, looking out at the clothes blowing on the line with grandma’s bloomers alongside our shorts… that just so happened to be shorter than her bloomers.

As soon as I was in high school, I was thrilled to sign up for Home Economics class. Poor Mrs. Grimes may have found me adequate to lacking in my cooking skills, so it came as quite a surprise that I could make a great pie. All because my grandmother felt it was a culinary skill she wanted to pass on to her grandchildren.

Years later, as our children were growing up, it became a tradition with my husband Kevin and our children, Lisa (Keigan) and Scott, to make apple pies to give to neighbors, friends, and put in the freezer for the long winter days ahead in Iowa.

When it was time to say good-by to my 93-year-old grandmother (who said lard is bad for you?!), many of us granddaughters brought pie for the meal after the funeral. I remember looking over the rows and rows of pies and thinking it was a perfect tribute to a wonderful lady we called Grandma.

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PRINT RECIPE
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Grandma’s Pie Crust – makes 3 regular crusts or two deep-dish crusts

• 3 cups flour
• 1 cup shortening
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 4 to 5 cold tablespoons water

Apple Pie Filling

• 5 or 6 sliced apples (Honey Crisp is a favorite as well!)
• ¾ to 1 cup sugar
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• Tablespoon of flour
• Speck of nutmeg

Make dough by sifting flour and salt together. Add flour mixture to shortening slowly; use a pastry blender or a fork, cutting it to the size of small peas. Chill for 30-60 minutes (or longer), then slowly add water up to 5 tablespoons until the mixture is barely dampened. Take half of the mixture and press into compact ball.

Dust flour on rolling pin and board. Roll pastry out to about 1/8 thick and about an inch larger that pie plate. Fit into pie pan. Sprinkle a little flour over it and add 5 or so sliced tart apples. Pour in ¾ to 1 cup of sugar, little dab of butter, 1 teaspoon of cinnamon, and a speck of nutmeg.

Next roll up the rest of pastry and place on top of pie pan and crimp the edges. Mix a small amount of cream or milk with sugar and using a pastry brush, brush mixture lightly on top of crust. Cut slits in the top crust to allow for steam to release in oven. Bake for approximately an hour at 350 degrees.

Tip: If you don’t mix water in dough, you can keep it for almost a week in the refrigerator and make a one crust cream pie (I make Key Lime pie) with the third crust. When making apple pie I use a deep-dish pie pan about 11 inches – so I use all the dough from this recipe. Also if you have a little leftover dough, we cut small squares & put jam in them-pinch ends to make tarts. Bake about 10 minutes.

Tip 2: If you choose to make three regular crusts, take a cup of the dry dough mixture out (and save it for later), then only add 2 to 3 1/2 tablespoons of water to finish the dough. If making a deep dish (or a two-crust pie and a one-crust pie) you can slowly add water as needed, up to 5 T.

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Read more Roots of Food: Family Recipes and Stories here!