Heirloom Harvest

Raddish

They look like radish seedlings to your uneducated editor, but Farmer John cleared it up: They're Chinese Cabbage. Wait for them. Your editor is happy to report that on making Grilled Asian Pork Chops and Baby Bok Choy recently, his five-year-old son actually requested additional Bok Choy. (It was provided and consumed. If it takes a little Black Bean Garlic Sauce to get the game up, well, that's just the price of admission.)

The editor would like to admit that food photography is an art, and no one has accused him of being an artist, including the time that he wiped up black oil paint with his new turquoise shirt, when he was 9, and spent the rest of the day in the backyard. Nevertheless, this is what the above recipe looks like while it is cooking.

Good Root Vegetable Recipes (?)

Your Editor here. Haven't tried these recipes for soup and roasted veggies at the Globe Magazine yet but Julian and Riven are typically better than average.

Soup is SO ON

Your Editor here. I just made a soup tonight that seemed to go very well, and it might be really useful at harvest time. I thought I would write it down right away, and maybe prime the pump so we could get more recipes, especially in areas like vegan recipes.

Chicken-Turkey Winter Soup

Ingredients

1 chicken carcass

1 turkey breast carcass

1 onion

1 parsnip

3 carrots

1/2 big rutabaga

3 ribs celery

3 cloves garlic

1 lemon

1 handful egg noodles

fresh parsley to taste

Start by putting the chicken in a sizeable saucepan -- I used the largest saucepan I have, a RevereWare saucepan that holds about 8 quarts. And I just covered the carcass -- the idea here is to get intense broth. I simmered the carcass for about two hours, let the pot cool and put it in the fridge. I left it sit for a while, then lifted out the carcass, picked off the meat, and skimmed the fat off the broth.

I set the meat aside, and warmed the broth to a simmer. I squeezed in the juice of the lemon. I cut up and dropped in the vegetables, and let it simmer vigorously for about 75 minutes -- basically until the rutabaga was a nice sunset orange and the parsnips were falling-apart tender. I chopped the chicken coarsely, cut what meat off the turkey I could get, chopped it coarsely and dropped it in. Then I dropped the noodles, and let the noodles get just tender, which was a little more than 5 minutes. Then I dropped in the parsley, and then I served the soup by itself. I wished like heck I had a good peasant bread, but you can't plan ahead for everything.

As I say, we're meat eaters, but I know a lot of you all are not, and we would certainly welcome recipes for vegetarians of all disciplines and any other receipe that helps people use the farm vegetables to their best ability. (BTW, I think the onion that went in tonight was our last of the 2004 produce. Thanks again, John!)