Seeds from Italy

Taste the Difference

Supermarconi were - what can I say, they are supermarconi. They have been my standard for a Roma type for years. I personally think they are the best tasting Roma type I have ever eaten. I love the texture; even the pod has a bean taste and if you cook them well done, they kind of melt in your mouth. Other trial folks had different preferences. Some thought as I, others preferred one of the others. 

Garrafal Oro were probably six or seven days after Smeraldo. They were good producers. Unlike the other two, they are curved a bit. No strings. Good taste, good production.  The photo on the right is garrafal oro from  a bean trial participant in California.  

So what is the upshot of all of this. All of these are really good beans. You will not go wrong with any of them. They all produce well, taste good, and seem to have no disease problems. Of the 12 testers, only one reported any disease problems. 

This bean tower belongs to one of the folks participating in the trial. While you can not see much of the bean, the main reason I put this in was to mention my experience with bean towers and how this is a solution. I always go in the woods and cut some saplings, usually cutting them eight feet or so. Then I tie them at the top and make a bit of a teepee in my three foot wide beds. The tops of my towers are eight feet or so high, so every year the beans grow to the top, I can not reach the high ones, they get big and like all pole beans when you do not pick them, they think they have made seed and stop producing. Also, since the legs of my teepees are close together, they tend to be unstable in high winds, and often fall over; usually I drive a stake next to the tower and screw it to the tower. Finally, the junk saplings in the woods are all Norway maple, a really poor excuse for a tree. My poles last one year and then just break. Sometimes they do not even last that long.

So, looking at this arrangement, I said, my problems are solved. Use bamboo. It lasts a long time. Spread out things & I can pick everything. For those of you who use bamboo, I have been told that beans sometimes have a hard time climbing it & need some help (it is slippery); Wrapping a bait of twine around the bamboo will solve that.

7. Growing tip. Radicchio. A number of people have reported problems growing radicchio, usually saying they did not head up. However, even here in the Northeast, growing radicchio successfully should be a pretty straightforward task. Follow these rules and I can almost guarantee success.

First, figure out how many days to maturity for the variety you are planting. Find out when the average first frost date for your area is. From that date, back up the number of days it takes your variety to mature. That is your planting date. [The reason for this is you want the radicchio to be mature when the weather is getting cool, but still will have some time to continue to grow. Most years, after the first frost there are another three to four weeks of decent weather for cool season crops.] So, this year I grew treviso 2,(90 days or so), treviso svelta (90 days or so) and treviso tardiva (I was not sure which is one of the reasons I grew it). Treviso tardiva turned out to be 110 days or so. If you are one of those fortunate folks who live in areas which do not have freezes, snow, freezing rain, sleet, -10F, etc, it is even easier. Just plant your radicchio so that it begins to mature when the weather turns cool (as in nighttime temps in the low 40's or 30's.

So take the example of treviso 2 which is 90 days or so to maturity. Average frost in the field I was using is 1 October or so. 90 days before that is July 1. Toward the end of June, I seeded my radicchio in 72 cell plug trays (you can use anything to grow transplants or you can also just direct seed). Three week transplants went in the ground the middle of July. They were pretty much ready the end of September.

What does ready mean. It simply means that it has made a head. It does not mean that it is necessarily ready to eat. 

Here is a treviso 2 definitely not ready to eat. In fact, the entire head is gone. This one a deer snacked on. (Radicchio are one of the basic food groups for deer. They love them more than supermarconi pole beans). 

Seriously, here is a treviso 2 sometime around the fifteenth of October; it has made a head and is sort of ready. Notice, however, the greenish stems. It really could stand some blanching. One way to do it would be to tie up the top (assuming you still have 2-3 weeks of decent weather without freezes in the 20F range. The other way is to dig it up taking six or so inches of root. Shake off the dirt and bring it inside (basement, garage). Put it in a bucket with an inch or so water on the bottom and cover the top so that it keeps growing in darkness. [you can put a bunch of them together inside the bucket). After 3 weeks or so, inside the mass of leaves will be a head with white stems, very red tops and significantly less bitterness. You cut away the outer leaves (which probably will have rotted) and enjoy. Alternatively, you could 'replant' it in some wet sand or wet sand/peat and block out the light with some black plastic. Same result, less rot. I thought I had some photos of blanched treviso, but I guess not.

This is the fancy treviso svelta, also on 15 October. Notice the difference in color. The reason is the way it grows (the outer leaves block the light of the center core so it sort of self blanches. Also, they are somewhat earlier to mature than treviso 2, so in effect it blanched itself in the field. I had a taste when I picked it and it was definitely less bitter than the more green treviso 2.
However, if you cut it with some root and blanch it as above, it gets even fancier.  This is one of the smaller ones after three weeks of blanching.

This is the special selection treviso tardiva. Turns out that they are somewhere around 110 days to mature and I should have had this in the field three weeks or so before the treviso types. No matter, however. The old plant in the bucket of water trick takes care of all. This is what that same plant looked like after three weeks in the basement in water. Unfortunately, I learned the hard way and had too much water in the bucket (4-5 inches) so lots of outer leaf rotted. However, the center of the plant to change color, taste and texture.  IT is pretty hard to believe that these are the same plant.   

The same technique applies to any radicchio. Some like pan zucchero you just eat from the field (or store them someplace cool where they will hold for months at 40F or so. The pan zucchero grows in a really tight head and they pretty much blanch themselves. Here is a picture of a pan zucchero grown by a customer of mine. Notice the snow fence in the background. He covers his radicchio patch with it to keep the deer from snacking. Works quite effectively. 

 

 

8. Recipe. Roasted Fennel. This year I trialed montebianco and montovano fennels. [report on that next newsletter]. I had three forty foot rows of montebianco & three 40 foot rows of montovano. I can tell you that results in a lot of fennel and I scrambled to come up with ways to eat it. [The original plan was that I was going to sell a lot of it to a high end restaurant a few towns over but it just was not worth the hassle and it did taste pretty good. Anyway, I tried lots of ways to cook it and this was one of my favorites and probably the easiest. Trim the fennel, taking off any old or damaged stems. Cut off the green stems. Put the fennel in a bowl with some olive oil and swish things around to cover the fennel. [option a was to sprinkle over some salamoia mix which I am sure everyone remembers is just sea salt and chopped rosemary, sage & garlic]. Put in a flat roasting pan and bake in the oven until done-it takes somewhere between 35 & 50 minutes, depending on the size of the fennel bulb. They are amazingly good. The outer fronds may be a bit crisp and you can discard them, but the inside is all melted together and soft. Incredible. You could also of course roast a bunch of other vegetables at the same time: carrots, chunks of potato & winter squash or pumpkin, cippolini onions, etc. I get hungry just thinking of it. In fact, as I write this I am getting ready to roast a little pork tenderloin and there will be roast vegetables with it.

8A.  Recipe.  Roasted Radicchio.  These are amazing & I just stumbled on the technique.  A few nights ago I was baking some pork chops & making roast vegetables with them (onions, carrots, potatoes, fennel, etc.).  After I put the vegetables on the tray, there was still some olive oil & the salamoia mix left in the bowl.  There were also a couple of Treviso Svelta on the counter.  So, I rolled them around in the mixture & put them on the roasting tray also.  They were amazing.  After 50 minutes or so, the outside of the radicchio was a bit crisp, but tasty.  The inside, however, was amazing.  It was soft and creamy.  A slight bit bitter, but very little.  Great texture & taste.  They really made me a radicchio believer;  that is something I do not think I would have said a few years when I thought radicchio was bitter.

9. Some pleasant surprises. Every year I grow lots of new varieties. Some are pleasant surprises. In no particular order are some of the pleasant surprises for this year.

Padrone pepper. The only other time I grew padrone was ten years or so ago. The person who gave me the seed did not tell me much about them so I grew them until they were big and ripe. They were hot! Why would anyone eat such a pepper, thought I. This year I picked them when they need to be picked - 1 to 1.5" and cooked them the way they should be cooked. Fry them on fairly high heat in good olive oil. Cook them three or four minutes and serve hot. 

Carrot, flakee 2. I planted a small patch in June, thinned them & kept them weeded, but never did pick any. I kind of forgot about them. When I did my first batch of roast vegetables in September I picked a few. They were huge. (as in one and a half to two inches at the top) and some of them probably weighed six or seven ounces. Way too big, thought I. I peeled a few and cut them in half expecting to find some hard nasty cores. Nothing. Just orange carrot. Roasted them and they were really good. While I think they probably taste better picked smaller, they were very nice.

Pascal Celery. When I was a kid I lived on a farm and we mostly grew celery. Pascal was the variety. It was really good. I grew some this year, put it out, but it never got very large. (It was in a shady spot, we had no rain after the end of July and celery needs lots of water and thrives in muck soil [mine is sandy with lots of rocks]. I never did get around to blanching it either. I made some soup one day and needed some celery (along with carrots & onions for the soup base) so I cut some of that. What flavor. It was like being back on the farm again. 

 Reduna Tomato. These are cluster type tomatoes and I have never run into a cluster type tomato that I liked.[the ones I am thinking of you find in the winter and usually have a very hard core & no taste, though they look nice enough] I grew the Reduna just because I have had them for years and never have grown them out. What a pleasant surprise. They tasted real good. Really good. They are an indeterminate plant, quite early and produce a large number of 5-7 ounce perfectly round red tomatoes on clusters in clusters of five. 

Chives (cippolini). These really are not chives since they are not a perennial and do not grow in clusters. I have to change the name. They are not a spring onion either since they do not make much of a bulb. They just make lots of really nice tasting green onion tops. Very tender. They were not treated very well (over in a corner of the garden that did not get much water) other than a weeding from time to time. It is now mid November and they are still green & tasty. 

Castelfranco Radicchio. People have told me this is a stunningly beautiful chicory so this summer I planted some of them. In the fall, when I harvested the radicchio, I looked at the castlefranco and said, well I am not impressed. This looks like a plain green radicchio. I only cut out a few and put them in to blanch with all of the treviso types I had. What a surprise when I pulled it out three weeks later. Beautiful color, really mild taste with just the right amount of bitterness. There is definitely something to this blanching thing. I think if I play around with it a bit, I may just be able to duplicate the seed pack fronts.  The radicchio on the left is the castelfranco in the field.  It is pretty hard to believe that the photo on the right is the same exact plant.

10. A new fava bean. I have a small quantity of a new fava bean. Precoce a grano viola (early purple seed). They are from southern Italy and the bean is not really purple, but rather is a very dark green. They are quite early. Pods are a bit smallish (as are many early varieties) at six inches and have six or seven beans per pod. These were only available as treated seed. Since I only have a small quantity, they will only be available with online or telephone orders since I am not sure I can get any more once they run out. 

11. Lampascioni. Some customers have written in and said they have not been able to get Lampascioni to grow for them. I would appreciate it those of you who have bought the seed and grown it out would send in your experiences. How did you start it, how did it grow, how long did it take to reach harvest size, how did you harvest it and cook it. Please also let me know what part of the country you are from and what month you planted. I personally have not grown it. I guess that is one more thing on the to do list for next year. In any case, please drop me a note at bmckay@growitalian.com Also, let me know if it is ok to publish your comments in the newsletter.

12. Reader Comments. 

Chard, Verde da Taglio. A customer from Virginia agrees with me that the thin stem chard (verde da taglio) is really, really good. Here are his comments. "Been a while since I wrote you; this message is a glowing recommendation for a type of Chard I bought from you that is very delicious and easy to prepare and it is very plentiful when cut on a regular basis.The variety is Bieta-Verde Da Taglio-DAL 1783-Busta termosaladata [what does busta termosaldata mean? -BUSTA THERMOSALDATA MEANS HERMETICALLY SEALED; THE PACKS ARE DESIGNED TO RESIST AIR/WATER VAPOR INFILTRATION AND PROMOTE LONG LIFE FOR THE SEEDS]. Anyhow, you must know that I am very fond of greens like kale, spinach, escarole, beet greens etc; with that confession defining my passion for tender greens I must say that this variety of chard is a generic-spinach-like substitute. The smooth, flat green leaves are easy to harvest and clean [slight rinse] it cooks up quickly to a very shiny black tender spinach that goes great with pasta and olive oil/garlic flavored dressing. I have thrown a handful of small shells in with the leaves as they quickly cook down in hot water and then drain the leaves and shells together in reserve for combining with red beans or cecci beans and onions--either as a side dish or as a soup ingredient. I hope you continue to handle this chard and that you will save me some as well as some of the Italian garlic you mentioned in your webgram."

Wild Arugula. A customer (from California, I believe) writes: i am lucky enough to have bumbled into having a beautiful wild arugula bed -I just planted too much to use, let it go in the fall & it popped up early in the spring! This is the third year for mine - and it just keeps growing --we sometimes do a whole salad of it, but it's pretty tangy for some people - mostly we mix it with other greens - often cultivated baby arugula from the market. dress it simply and shave some reggiano parmigiano on it. When i had too, too much, I made pesto and froze it -- just like the basil recipe - or half arugula and half flat leaf parsley - as in the salad you will find that dressing it - oil, garlic, salt. tames the flavor --the pesto is quite mild -- i do a linguine with grilled shrimp & arugula pesto - nice summer dinner. buon appetito! AB

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Good growing. As always, may your garden be woodchuck and deer free. Also, for those of you who have squirrels get in your attic, may you have a couple of red tailed hawks patrol your yard.


Bill McKay