Beans and apricots actually rock together

Who would have thought? After long abstinence, here a little throw-together-what-is-left = beauty recipe, now from South Africa where I roam right now. The abundance of vegetables and people who know how to make beautiful salads out of them is amazing, and so is all that comes in my little weekly bag from Wild organics, just around the corner. For some reasons they decided to drown their customers in a wave of apricots, plums and nectarines all at the same time, being so beautifully ripe that they spoil by just looking at them.


That's why I threw some of the millions of apricot in with something that is basically a classic beans-tomato chili, but now with freshness and bright colours, much better for the summer days here than its classic form. And because I loved it so much, here is how:

-150g of dry, white or speckled beans (African sugarbeans I took. Borlotti might work wonders)
-a 400g can of chopped tomatoes
-a heaped teaspoon of ground cumin
-a pinch of good chili powder
-an onion
-a bit of neutral oil (sunflower, canola ...)
-a good handful of fresh basil
-4 apricots, with a bit of bite to them


Soak the beans a couple of hours and cook them until edibly soft, then drain. Chop the onion, fry it in some oil, after 5 minutes add the cumin and fry with for about 2 minutes. Add the tomatoes, the beans and the apricots, let them simmer for about 15 minutes. Season with salt and the chili and right before serving, stir in the chopped basil.

Showbags of beans

Above is a moment I love; opening a dirty brown wet bean pod without knowing what's in it (yes, I forgot which bean I planted where, classic) and in it a perfect little bean, red, white, lemony, speckled or brown (above you see Canadian Wonder, which alas had interbean-intercourse with, I assume, the originally rather brown Lazy Housewife, now their children are either faintly rosé or kidneybeancolour with white speckles. No seedsaving this year). The borlotti on the right found a home way above the Danish yellow pumpkin and still take a while to have seeds that can be dried for next year's garden. Now all of the beans (Dutch brown and lemon bean, besides the two sorts that had too close an affair) dry on a sheet besides the laptop fan.
As the bean weevil had a great summer vacation and ate through pretty much every single of the hundreds of John's holy beans in my room and then expanded himself into every corner and bedsheet wrinkle of my bedsheet, I'll try the freezing thing this year: dry the beans until really really dry (somebody suggested the hammer test: crush one with a hammer. If it cracks it's dry. It's still too wet when it just crushes gently, well). Then freeze at least 8 days and dry again, put them in glass jars after and hope the weevils pack their traps and leave to other far away beans.

Kunsthal kookt

Last weekend, Rotterdam turned a part of its art museum into a food cornucopia. Although mainly for restaurant people, caterers or people with a thick pocket, it was still obvious that good food these days more and more focuses on marketing itself in the same breath as environmentally concerned, socially good, culturally rooted. That's why you could see (and smell and TASTE) fantastic cheeses, produce from the Ark of Taste of Slow Food NL, endless variations of raspberries or the prettiest cupcakes of Lisette Kreischer, while passing by the longest moestuin (uhm: allotment garden), prepared by Rotterdam school children and displayed proudly: I was enjoying the sun outside behind the stand of the Youth Food Movement, or in front in a nun dress, trying to convince people to confess their foodsins on camera. Maarten made people amazed and happy with 1-day young apple juice, while Sam and Jiri filled hungry stomachs with self-made sausages from very happy pigs.

In between happened all the small and not so small talks to people about, guess what, food, and what and why the YFM does around it. Towards the end of the day an old lady walked by and was probably the happiest person on earth discovering that kunsthal kookt happened that weekend, telling she had forgotten until half an hour ago and quickly passed by before it closed for that day. The apple juice reminded her of her twenties when she fled post-war Germany and worked for a Dutch apple farmer and was still able to wear high-heels she informed everyone, then laughed and passed on into the kunsthal.






Beautiful berries from the delivery service Bio aan huis

Sharing almonds

10 am in the kitchen, grasshopper looking for almond snack (or just better weather to go outside again):

After the deluge: porcini!

After nearly two weeks of pouring rain and no true August in sight, Friday and Saturday had finally brought a blazing 26 degrees back again. And with it popped up mushrooms, among them a bunny-sized one in our backyard, most likely inedible but quite cute. After venturing in vain for the gigantic white puffball we settled for a lurid bolete close to our house. My mum pointed us at him referring to the Polish hauler who turns up at my dad's factory about once a year and manically crawls beneath the trees, taking bags of this lurid bolete (and offering them to my frightened mum who happily refuses). Not us! (we thought.) But then, slight discomfort arose thinking of an intense mushroom death, albeit psychedelic it might be.

This made me go to Pete's dad today who collects mushrooms for years and just walked over the doorway, still dripping from the rain that decided to revisit, now with 100 litres tonight.

In his hand though a shopping bag full of porcini which he proudly showcased and turned right into a steaming, meaty mushroom mess. Cut them in thin slices, fry in oil or butter until most of the liquid has gone and then add a finely cubed onion for about every 150-200g of mushrooms, leave to become translucent, add half a crushed garlic clove, and leave it be for 2 more minutes. Then season with salt, pepper and a good handful of parsley. Pete's dad put a sourdough bread with cold butter to serve on the side, good for adding something substantial and perfectly complementary.

So if you have some rain and then some sun around this time of the year, check out the base of beech trees on your next walk out, maybe you can find some of these tasty fellows (here's how by Leslie Land, nothing more to say)!

Strawberry Fields Forever?

Imagine nearly a thousand varieties of strawberries, then take more than a hundred varieties of gooseberries, raspberries and countless other fruit and berry seeds and their living plants in a field, 90% of it only found in this special place: the Pavlovsk Seed Station, found outside of St. Petersburg, Russia.
Initiated in 1926 by the dedicated Nikolai Vavilov, it has been saved through a worldwar (amongst others due to starvation of the scientists dedicated to the survival of the countless peas, beans and other seeds that could have saved their life), and decades of socialist regime plus the onset of capitalist Russia which now could be its death sentence. Private housing estate has seized the land and the final decision if one of the oldest global seed banks can be bulldozed for houses will be decided this week in the Russian court.
Relocation of the seed station is impossible as it is an in situ conservation station: no preservation in coolers and movable packages but largely on fields and in gardens where seeds can further adapt and exhibit traits that might be highly valuable for future agriculture. Think drought resistant species, think flooding resistant species, think early or late maturing species, finally think much-more-tasteful-than-now species.
Please sign the petition of Martin Wik Fowler whose dad has been working a big part of his life (amongst many others!) on building and preserving this unique collection of agrobiodiversity. If you would like to read some of the interesting press coverage, check out BBC, the Guardian or USA Today.

Public fruit tree map, finally for Europe!

Once upon a time five friends (one of them above) have gone on a rowing trip, and saw many fruit trees on the shore that bore even more fruit. They realized that the fruit they took for their trip came from Argentina and how the fruit on the riverbench wasn't taken by anyone and how that made for a bit of a sad situation. The idea of a public fruit tree map for Europe (and beyond?) was born. Now it is alive: mundraub.org (mundraub = a charming German word for hand-to-mouth theft of food) and also shows herbs, nuts, berries and even juice mills. If you're capable of reading or writing German, use it across the whole Europe map by finding and adding (even Morocco features some public lemon trees)! The idea behind is that so many public fruit trees, as well as private fruit trees, bear beautiful fruit that no one harvests and that rot away while we import apples from New Zealand or Walnuts from the US. Web 2.0 has found another way for those trees, and also private tree owners that do not have the time or interest to harvest their tree are called to make an entry allowing harvesting of their fruit. This project has gotten some good press coverage lately and even received the German sustainability award. Yay for public food!

I've known of such thing before from San Francisco, with the neighborhoodfruit site. There though you have to register (for free) but a nice little fruit ripe alarm is included, so you can get a notice of ripe cherry trees in the city on your phone, for example.

Not bad? Not bad! Now we only need to wait for the global map, accessible in everyone's language. Volunteers?