PlanterTomato Vegetable Gardening

Humorous Gardening Haiku Contest

Five winners will receive a packet of seeds.  This is for fun, so talent is not a requirement to participate in the contest!

Haiku is a very terse form of Japanese poetry consisting of 17 syllables arranged in three lines: 5 syllables on the first line, 7 on the second, and 5 on the third.

Basho is the Japanese master this style of poetry, but the 5-7-5 structure of his poems are not retained when they are are translated into English.  So to give you some examples haiku in English, the following two poems are by American poet Richard Wright.  If you count the syllables, you'll see they are 5-7-5

                      Sleety rain at night
                   Seasoning swelling turnips
                   With a tangy taste.

                      Heaps of black cherries
                   Glittering with drops of rain
                   In the evening sun.

And here's a haiku with a more humorous gardening theme written by me:

                      Tiny green aphids
                   You suck the life from my plants
                   Ortho brings you rest.

You can write a very good haiku in just a few minutes.  (Or if you're like me, you can write a very bad one in the same amount of time.)  Good or bad, I encourage you to give haiku a try.

And to close out the Summer gardening season, I'm going to give away a free packet of seeds to five lucky winners who submit a haiku with a gardening theme.

Humorous Gardening Haiku Contest Rules:

• You must submit your own work.
  
• Winning haiku must relate to gardening in some way, conform to 5-7-5 structure, and be in English.
  
• No "R" rated language or themes. 
  
• You can submit as many haiku as you like.
• Only one winning entry will be awarded per person.
• Entries will be judged on cleverness and humor (But don't let quality stop you from submitting an entry, as you may still win.)
  
• Winners will receive one packet of seeds selected at random: Paul Robeson Tomato (Seeds of Change), Beefsteak Tomato (Baker Creek Seeds), Silver Queen Corn (Lake Valley Seed), Slenderette Bush Beans (Renee's Garden Seeds), Mignonette Alpine Strawberry (Renee's Garden Seeds).
• Winning entries will be published to this web site but authors retain all other rights if you care about that sort of thing.
• Contest ends on the first day of Fall (September 23, 2010)

To submit a haiku, just add a comment containing your poem to this blog posting, or e-mail me at [email protected].

Japanese Shishito Peppers

Tiny peppers from Japan with little to no heat.

If you've ever eaten Tempura, a Japanese dish where seafood and vegetables are lightly battered and fried, you probably were served green pepper as one of the vegetables.  In the U.S. the green peppers used are generally the standard green bell pepper that you can buy in any grocery store or farmers market. 

In Japan, tempura is often made with a tiny green pepper called shishi-togarashi.  The name, which means "lion pepper," is often abbreviated as shishi-to.  It's a thin walled green pepper with a wrinkled skin measuring about 3 inches long.   Generally shishi-to is a very mild pepper, but it is possible to get one with a bit more heat every now and then.  That said, it's never really hot like a serrano or other chili pepper.

In Japan, shishi-to is eaten as part of tempura, used in yaki-tori (grilled chicken kabobs) or just fried without breading and served with a little salt.  This is how I plan to eat them, but I think the shishi-to can be incorporated into any western recipe that calls for green bell pepper.  It might make a particularly nice pepper for salads because its so small you don't need to cut it up.  Alternatively, it might make be a good pickler because of its small size.

When I lived in Japan I ate shishi-to frequently, so I decided to try growing them in my garden this year.  One grows shishi-to like any other pepper; just sow the seeds in the late spring and they mature in about 60 days.   I grew mine in containers in my greenhouse and they produced large quantities of lovely little peppers.

I've always eaten shishi-to when they were green.  Growing these for the first time, I got a pleasant surprise because I discovered that when left to mature, shishi-to turn red like many other peppers.  I tasted the mature red pepper and they don't differ much in flavor from the peppers in their immature green state.  The red peppers are a bit more dry as one would expect with an older pepper.

If you want to grow shishi-to peppers in your garden next spring, you can order seeds from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds.

 

Growing Vegetables In The Fall & Winter & A Wrap Up of the Summer Season

With the Spring/Summer 2010 growing season drawing to an end, I'll do a bit of a wrap up of the season and outline some of the veggies you can grow in the fall and winter.

Getting Ready For Fall

Fall officially begins on September 23 this year, and with the weather as cool as it has been here in Northern California this year, I'm well into preparation for our Fall/Winter garden.  If you've never gardened in the "off season," here are some reasons to give it a try:

• Enjoy amazingly fresh vegetables 12 months of the year
• Increase the total annual harvest from your garden without adding more space
• Rely less on canned or preserved food
• Less pest damage in cooler months
• Less watering required
• Easier to garden in cooler temperatures
• Flavors of some vegetables are improved by cold temperatures

Do I Still Have Time to Plant?

Generally speaking, you should plant your Fall/Winter crops 8-10 weeks before your first frost date.  (You can find the first frost date for your area at the Victory Seed Company web site.) 

You should be mindful of the days-to-maturity for the varieties you grow.  Work backwards from you first frost date to ensure that you are giving any vegetables you intend to grow sufficient time to mature.  Since the days are shorter in the fall, it's generally recommended that you add about 2 weeks to the days-to-maturity estimates printed on seed packets.  Another strategy to manage to manage the constraints of days to maturity, is to buy seedlings for your garden from your local garden center, rather than trying to plant them from seeds. This give you a bit of a jump on the season.

Extending The Harvest Period

Prolonged periods when the temperature is below 32 degrees Fahrenheit will kill cold tolerant vegetables. You can increase your harvest period by using season extenders (greenhouse, cold frames, straw mulch, row covers etc.) to keep your crops warm and protected from driving rains.  Where I live, our temperatures rarely go below freezing.  With a greenhouse, we've been able to harvest fresh chard, kale, miners lettuce and other vegetables all winter long. 

If you're climate is less for forgiving, you'll generally need to harvest as the temperatures dip below freezing.   But there are some exceptions; once mature, some crops can be left (stored) in the garden even when goes below freezing.  These crops include most of the root vegetables such as carrots, parsnips, beets, salsify, oriental radishes as well as cabbage and leeks.

Finally, some vegetables can be overwintered -- planted in the Fall and then harvested in the spring.  Classic overwintering veggies include Fava Beans, Garlic, and onions.  For example, here in Northern California, we plant Fava Beans in November and harvest them in Spring.

All the vegetables shown below can be grown when the weather is cool.  The vegetables shown with an asterix are the most hardy.  These veggies can withstand temperatures as low as 28 degrees Fahrenheit for a few weeks and still make it. 

• Arugula
• Broccoli - For overwintering
  
• Brussels Sprouts(*)
  
• Beets(*) - for fall harvest or can be overwintered
  
• Cabbage - can be stored in the garden.
  
• Carrots(*) - can be stored in the garden.
  
• Chard- For Fall harvest or overwintering.
  
• Chicory
• Chinese Cabbage
• Fava Beans - For overwintering
  
• Garlic- For overwintering
  
• Grains (Oats, Wheat, Barley for overwintering in mild climates)
  
• Kale(*)
• Leeks(*) Use transplants if planting in the Fall.  Can be stored in the garden.
  
• Miners Lettuce
• Mache
• Onions- For overwintering.
  
• Parsnip(*) - Can be stored in the garden.
  
• Peas
  
• Radish(*) - Can be stored in the garden.
  
• Salsify - Can be stored in the garden.
  
• Spinach(*) - For fall harvest or overwintering
  
• Turnip - Can be stored in the garden.
  
• Upland Cress

Season Wrap Up:  A So-So Year

Each growing season has it's surprises.  This year, we had perhaps the coldest summer in anyone's memory here in Palo Alto.  August is normally our hottest month.  However, this year, we didn't have a day over 80 degrees Fahrenheit until Monday of this week (8/23) and the temperature is expected to return to the high 60's by Saturday.  This has meant a very disappointing year for many San Francisco Bay Area gardeners.  I have neighbors who have yet to harvested their first tomato.

I have to say we were relatively lucky.  I started my seeds early, and planted tomatoes, eggplants, and peppers in my greenhouse.  As a result, I've been harvesting tomatoes since late June and have more than enough of the other hot weather crops to feed us now and during the Winter.  Mercifully, we've had more than enough tomatoes for fresh consumption and have canned plenty for the winter months. We also had a small, but satisfying, yield of corn and good yields of peas, cucumbers, beans, eggplant, summer and winter squash etc.  Since June, we've harvested over 270 pounds of produce from our little suburban patch and roof garden.  But there were some major disappointments....

This was my first year growing sweet potatoes.  Woe is me.  They were a total bust.  I planted the first sweet potato slips early in the season, only to watch cold weather and rain kill them.  I re-ordered slips with a stiff upper lip, but cool weather the entire season meant these heat loving tubers never got what they needed.  I have only a few miserably small sweet potatoes to show for my effort.   I'll try again next year.

I also tried Charentais melons and Ali Baba watermelons this year.  A Charentais melon should weigh 2-3 pounds.  The few we've harvested are about 1 pound or less.  Tasty but tiny.  We're still waiting to harvest our first watermelon.  We'll see what that brings. 

The Boston Marrow and Delicata squash did well.  The Baby Blue Hubbards were stunted.  And so it goes.

Below is a photo of several varieties of Winter squash I harvested from the garden this year.  A fitting photo for a very cold 2010 summer growing season.

Beit Alpha Cucumber Reviewed

Review of the Beit Alpha Cucumber - A really great all-around cucumber.

Beit Alpha is an open pollinated, burpless, cucumber that is a winner on so many levels that it's hard to think of a better all-around variety.

Developed in Israel, Beit Alpha produces an abundance of 8-12 inch long cucumbers that have a skin so thin that it does not require peeling.  That's a real time saver when preparing them for a salad or when processing them for canning. 

Seeds for this variety germinate in about a week and the plant reaches maturity in 55 days.

Beit Alpha cucumbers are very sweet -- not a trace of bitterness.  And they are highly versatile as well; we used them in salads, ate them sliced on their own, and made many batches of lovely pickles. 

I really find it hard to find a single weakness in this variety.  If you can grow just one cucumber variety, this is the one.  You can buy seeds at Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds.

Cucumber Growing Tip - grow your cukes on a trellis.  Trellising will increase the yields and also produce nicer-looking straight cucumbers.

Snowberry Cherry Tomato Review

Review of an unusual yellow-white cherry tomato.

Snowberry is a European cherry tomato that is ranges in color from pale yellow to almost white.  The plant yields good quantities of 3/4 inch diameter tomatoes in about 75 days.

I decided to try this tomato because I thought it would add a little color variety to this years tomato crop since my selections this year leaned so heavily towards dark colored tomatoes (Black Krim, Japanese Trifele, Black Cherry, Cherokee Purple). 

Wow!  What a lucky choice; Snowberry is one of my favorite tomatoes of the season and the best cherry tomato I've grown to date.  What makes snowberry a treat is that it has intense sweetness but this is balanced by a good amount of acid.  This results in a more complex flavor than is offered by other cherry varieties such as Black Cherry (This too is a very lovely cherry but its flavor is sweet but otherwise bland)  I'm so happy with Snowberry, that I intend to grow more of it next year. 

Snowbery is an indeterminate variety and is open pollinated if you want to save the seeds.  I highly recommend this variety and give it the following ratings on a scale of 1 to 5 with five being the highest score.    

• Taste - 5
  
• Appearance - 5
  
• Yield - 4
  
• Hardiness - 4
  
• Disease & Pest Resistance - 4
  
• Overall Rating- 4

Snowberry is a wonderful tomato and I encourage you to consider adding it to your garden.

One more thing...If you have a favorite cherry tomato, consider reviewing it using the online tomato survey I created at the below link. 

                            Tomato Reviews

Preserving Your Harvets Part II: Canning

In this post, I explain some basics of canning.  If you are considering caning for the first time, this post will save you time doing research and give you a "quick start" guide to the process.

This is the first year that I've done caning at home and began the process with a sense of fear and dread.

Unlike freezing with which everyone has some experience due to the universal presence of the refrigerator, canning is a process that is a bit of a lost art for many of us; grandma canned, but her knowledge and skill wasn't transmitted to the next generation.  As a result, many of us have only fearful thoughts of canning (messing up and getting botulism or being scalded by hot steam, or exploding pressure caners etc.)

Well put your fears to rest.  It's not that hard or scary.  If I can do it, you can as well.  So here's the information you need to get you started.

The Hot Water Bath Process

This is the easiest and requires the least equipment.  It is generally used for preserving fruit, jams and jellies, tomatoes and pickles.  You can preserve a lot with the hot water bath method, but not everything (I elaborate on this below)

To can using the "hot water bath" method:

• Wash your vegetables and do the basic food preparation.  The prep. will vary depending on the vegetable or fruit you are preserving.  (For example, if you want to can tomatoes, you'll remove the skins by cutting an "X" into the bottom of the tomato with a knife and boiling for 1 minute.  The skin will then peel off easily) 
  
• Put your fruits or vegetables along with the proper additives into jars.  The additives (lemon juice, vinegar/spices, or sugar syrup) aid in food preservation and allow you to can at lower temperatures.  The proper additive will vary depending on what you are preserving, but will be listed in your recipe.
  
• Wipe of the lip of the jar with a clean paper towel and screw on the top.  (The lids should be sanitized by first boiling them in water)
  
• Place the jars into a pot so that the water which completely covers the tops
• Boil for 10-50 minutes depending on what you are canning and the size of the jar you are using.  You can find processing times listed in the USDA Complete Guide to Home Canning, your pressure caner instruction manual, or at cooking and caning web sites on the internet.
  

Equipment for Hot Water Bath Canning

The only equipment you need to do hot water bath canning is a large stock pot, a pair of canning tongs to remove hot jars from the pot, and special canning jars. 

These canning jars are made of thick glass to withstand the heat of the canning process and a special lid with a rubber gasket seal.  Canning jars are manufactured by two companies (Ball and Kerr) and are widely available at hardware stores, Wal-Mart and other retail locations.

The Bad News about Hot Water Bath Canning

Now here's the rub... The hot water bath process is good for many, but not all, canning applications.  Specifically, it's good for jams and jellies (sugar syrup additive used), canned tomatoes (lemon juice additive used) and pickles (vinegar and pickling spice additive used).  

If you want to preserve green beans, but don't want to add vinegar and pickling spices which will alter their flavor, boiling water alone will not be sufficient to prevent your food from spoiling.  You'll need to heat the food you are preserving to a temperature above that of boiling water and will need a pressure caner to accomplish this.

Pressure Canning

Pressure canning is a process which allows you to heat your canned vegetables and fruits above the temperature of boiling water (212 degrees Fahrenheit or 100 degrees Celsius).  As I mentioned above, by canning using higher temperatures, you're able to preserve a wider range of fruits and veggies and to forgo the use of additives in some cases.

Pressure canning works by using steam to do the preservation.  Under pressure, steam can reach much hotter temperatures than boiling water --generally temperature between 228 to 250 degrees Fahrenheit (107-118 degrees Celsius).  

I should also mention that pressure canning can be used to do all of the same foods that can be done using the hot water bath method, but to complete the canning process faster because you're using a higher temperature.

Pressure Caning Process

• To do pressure canning, you prepare your fruits or vegetables according to the recipe you are following.  This will be very similar to the hot water bath process.
• Fill the pressure caner with water so that the water level is about 1.5 inches above the bottom of the pot. 
  
• Place your jars into the pressure caner.  You will put the jars onto a rack that sits just above the bottom of the pot in your pressure caner that prevents the cans from sitting directly on the hot bottom of the caner.
• Lubricate the metal seal on the cover of the caner with a little Vaseline to prevent sticking and then screw down the lid being careful to gradually and evenly tighten opposite wing nuts.  This ensures that the cover will be properly sealed.
• Bring the the water to a boil.  You'll see steam escaping from a small vent at the top of the pressure caner.
• Place a weight (supplied with your caner) on the vent using a set of kitchen tongs so you don't get burned by escaping steam.  The weight will have settings for 5-15 pounds of pressure.  Use the setting specified in your recipe. (I describe the function of the weight in the last section of this post for those with inquiring minds)
  
• Steam for the time given in the recipe.
  
• When the cooking time has elapsed, turn off the stove. 
  
• Let the temperature/pressure gauge of your caner return to 212 degrees Fahrenheit/0 pounds of pressure.
• Gradually remove the hot weight from the pressure caner using a kitchen tongs so you don't get burned.
• Open the top and remove your preserved cans.  Allow to cool.

Pressure Caners & How They Work

There are two devices on the market - pressure cookers and pressure caners.  If you are canning fruits and vegetables, you want to buy a pressure caner.  Both devices work on the same principle of using steam to do the heating, but caners are larger and designed for caning jars.  Cookers are too small and the USDA warns against using them for canning.

A good brand of pressure caner is All American but there are other good brands on the market.  You can buy a variety of different sized pressure caners, but a  21 quart pressure caner is a good size for home caning applications.

The caner is basically a stock pot with a lid that can be screwed down to hold in pressurized steam. The lid of the caner has a gauge on it that will tell you the pressure in pounds per square inch (PSI) and the temperature within the pot.  There is also a small vent pipe on the top of the pot that allows steam to escape.  You control the pressure withing the pot (and hence the temperature) by regulating the amount of steam that is able to escape through this vent pipe.  You regulate the pressure by placing a small weight (supplied with your pressure caner) on top of the vent.  My weight has three settings on it and allows steam to escape so that the pressure in the pot is 5, 10 or 15 PSI.

If you are an experienced home caner, please feel free to add comments to this post.

      

Preserving Your Harvest Part I: Freezing & Vacuum Sealers

With summer vegetable harvest in full swing, we have more vegetables right now than we have bellies to fill.  Not a bad problem since it means we can put some of the surplus away for the winter.

In the next few postings, I'll cover some of the options you have to preserve your harvest and the equipment you need to do so.

In this first of the series on food preservation, I'll cover how to freeze vegetables and vacuum sealer machines.

Freezing

We are fortunate enough to have a deep freezer in our garage.  We originally purchased it because we buy meat in quantity and get a discount.  However, we have extra space and this allows us to put away frozen vegetables as well.

Freezing is remarkably easy to do and is a great way to store carrots, peas, corn, squash and even eggplant.  The procedure for freezing is simple. 

The key is to blanche the vegetables first to stop enzymatic activity within the vegetable which would cause deterioration.  Blanching is a cooking process where you first drop the vegetables in boiling water for a short period of time (generally 1-3 minute) and then transfer them to a bowl of ice cold water to stop the cooking process.  You leave them in the ice water bath for the same amount of time that they are in the boiling water.  The boiling and cooling time depends on the type and size of the vegetable.   You can find blanching times for common vegetables at the National Center for Home Food Preservation.

Storage Options

One the vegetables have been blanched and cooled, you can transfer into a plastic food storage bag. 

1. Freezer Bags: You can buy plastic bags from the grocery store as long as they are identified as "Freezer" bags, not just plastic bags.   Vegetables stored in these bags will stay fresh for at least 3 weeks.
2. Vacuum Seal Bags: For long-term storage, freezer bags will not due the trick.  You'll need to use a food vacuum sealer machine and special vacuum sealer bags.  The vacuum sealer machine removes air from the bag and increases the shelf life to 8-12 months for blanched vegetables.

Vacuum Sealer Machines

Chamber Vacuum Sealers: The best machines are commercial grade chamber vacuum sealers.  These devices work by placing the bag into an internal chamber.  They create the strongest vacuum and have the ability to seal liquid items like soup.  Because they are designed to seal liquids, they are also better at sealing items like meat and fish which can give off alot of juice (blood) which can get sucked into the pump of other styles of vacuum sealers and foul them.

Unfortunately, these chamber style machines are also very expensive.  The smallest and cheapest of these devices is about $1700.  I looked in vain for months on eBay hoping to find a used model and finally gave up.  If you are a hunter or fisherman freezing lots of meat each year, you may want to bite the bullet and buy one of these chamber vacuum sealers.  Personally, this was way to expensive for me so I decided to buy a suction vacuum sealer.

Suction Vacuum Sealers:  Unlike chamber vacuum sealers, the bag in suction-style vacuum sealers hangs outside the machine.  You can find these machines at retail stores and on the internet and they generally cost between $150-$500 depending on the model.

The most common of these is FoodSaver brand.  My internet research on this brand showed that consumers had mixed feelings about these machines.  The older (and simpler) machines seemed to be favorably reviewed, but the newer models which automatically stop the vacuum and seal the bag, appear to be more spotty; I found lots of complaints that these machines only lasted a year or less before breaking.

In the end, I decided to purchase a brand called the VacUpack which cost $279.  What sold me on this particular model was that it a totally manual (less stuff to break) and it has a drain built in so that if you accidentally such fluids into the machine, the fluids will be drained onto the counter rather than being sucked into the pump.  

I've been using the VacUpack for several months and do like it, although it's too early to tell whether it will last longer than other brands of suction vacuum machines.

A Note On Vacuum Bags

The VacUpack comes with bag materials on rolls and also bags of predetermined size that are sealed on one end.  The roll material offers the advantage of allowing you to create bags of whatever size you want and the material is cheaper to purchase.  However, I did not find the quality of the rolls to be particularly good.  They just didn't seal as well as the pre-formed pouches. 

My recommendation is just to buy the pouches from VacuPack.  The more you buy, the cheaper they are.  In quantities of fifty, 6" x 10" Vac Strip pouches are $.34 each and 8" x 12" pouches are $.42 each.

If you have used a vacuum sealer or have experience freezing vegetables, please post a comment so that others can benefit from your knowledge.

________________________________________________________________________________

A chamber style vacuum is shown below:

A suction style vacuum sealer is shown below:

Free Vegetable Garden Tracking Template For Apple Bento Users

If you use Apple's Bento database program, here's a free template that you can use to track your vegetable and fruit garden.

If you want to improve your garden each year, you need a way to keep track of what you did and the results you received.  To make this easier, I created a vegetable tracking template for Apple Bento (database software) which allows me to do the following:

• Record when I planted (Date sown, date transplanted)
  
• Record what vegetable types and varieties I planted
• Record how it was planted (traditional bed, raised bed, clay pot, hydroponic etc.)
  
• Record where in my garden I planted them (aids in creating your rotation schedule)
• Automatically calculate the anticipated harvest date based on the variety's estimated days to maturity.
• Automatically calculate the actual days to maturity based on your first harvest date.
• Record the yield in ounces, pounds and automatically calculate the pounds per plant
• Record ratings of the variety on taste, appearance etc. using a 5 star rating system
• Provide a space for comments on disease/pests etc.
• Provide a space to keep a photo of the variety

I'm providing this template to my readers for free.  If you currently use Bento, this is a no brainer; just download the attached zip file and import the template into Bento. 

If you own a Mac but don't currently own Bento, you'll need to buy Bento first in order to use the template.  Bento version 3 is available from the Apple Store for $49.

To use the template, download the below Zip file:

Download Vegetable Garden Tracker from PlanterTomato.com.bentoTemplate

 

If you don't own Bento, you can create a similar tracking system using an Excel spreadsheet, but it will not be as convenient or easy to use.  I'm attaching an Excel spreadsheet that has the column headings for the data I am tracking in Bento which will help you create your own tracking system if you choose to do so.  The file is below:

Download Vegetable Garden Tracker Column Headers

Hmong Red Cucumbers & A Refreshing Cucumber Mint Cooler

A very unusual cucumber and an equally unusual drink that will cool you down on those hot summer days.

I love to try new things in my garden each year.  This year, when looking through the Baker Creek seed catalog, I noticed an unusual orange-yellow cucumber called a Hmong (pronounced Mah-ng) Red.  Intrigued, I decided to try them this year and I harvested the first one this weekend.

The Hmong Red cucumber is named after a specific ethnic group (The Hmong) who originate from Asia:  China, Vietnam, Laos and Thailand. About 200,000 ethnic Hmong currently live in the United States, many of them arriving in the mid 1970's as refugees from the Vietnam War. 

Although the Baker Creek catalog did not state this specifically, I suspect that these immigrants brought seeds for this unusual cucumber with them, and this is how they made their way into the Baker Creek catalog.

The Hmong red is as easy to grow as any other cucumber -- which is pretty easy.  They also grow to an amazing size; the one shown in the attached picture weighed 2 pounds 4 ounces.  When young, the cucumber is green, but it gradually turns yellow, and then orange. 

Many cucumbers are quite sweet.  The Hmong Red (when harvested at the yellow/orange stage) has a mild sour/bitter flavor.  You can use it as a salad cucumber, but I wanted to see if I could find a more interesting and authentic way to eat it.  And here it is....

Hmong Cucumber Mint Cooler

This recipe was developed by Andrea Nguyen, an author, freelance writer and cooking teacher who lives in Northern California. The below cucumber mint cooler recipe and drink photo are printed with her permission, www.vietworldkitchen.com.

Andrea has won high praise and a numerous awards.  Her cookbooks including Into the Vietnamese Kitchen: Treasured Foodways, Modern Flavors and Asian Dumplings: Mastering Gyoza, Spring Rolls, Samosas, and More can be purchased through Amazon.com or other book stores.

Cucumber Mint Cooler Recipe

The Hmong cucumber is halfway between a cucumber and a melon. It doesn’t taste like much on its own until you add sugar. Then it is transformed.  Without a Hmong cucumber, use honeydew melon.

Ingredients:

One whole or a half Hmong cucumber
Sugar
5 to 8 large mint leaves
Ice
Filtered Water

Instructions:

1. Halve the cucumber lengthwise, in needed. Use a spoon to scoop out the seeds.

2. Use the tines of a fork to scrape out the flesh, depositing them in a bowl. Try to get down to the cucumber skin. Discard when there is little flesh left. The flesh will be in pale green pieces. (If you want a smoothie-like texture, puree the flesh in a blender before moving on.)

3. Measure how much flesh you have. For every cup, stir in 2 1/2 to 3 tablespoons sugar and 3 or 4 mint leaves. Your stirring will dissolve the sugar and bruise the mint.  Don’t be alarmed as the cucumber flesh gives off some bubbles. Taste to make sure there is a pronounced sweet flavor.

4. For each 1 cup of flesh, add 1/2 cup water, stirring to combine. Serve over ice, stirring a few times to chill the mixture. (Alternatively, chill the mixture and then serve it over ice.) Present this cooler with a spoon for guests to eat the flesh.