February Harvest Dinner

Here's some of the venison we recently received in trade with one of the neighbors for pickles and other preserves we put up in the summer.

Apparently the neighbors have family with a farm in southern Virginia and have been plying us with venison in exchange for our home-grown produce. What they are most interested in are tomatoes. So this year we will be installing a couple of tomato plants in the garden that they can harvest from any time they like. In the bargain, we get a steady supply of the venison they harvest on the farm.

Call it town meets country.

I didn't do anything special with these venison tenderloin. After defrosting them a few days ago, I just wanted to make sure they got eaten. Season with extra-virgin olive oil, salt and pepper, grill on the Jennaire. I did have some leftover sauce from one meat dish or another to put a smile on that venison when it came to the table. The carrots and parsnips you see in the background are some of those recently harvested from the garden, roasted with thyme. Mashed potatoes round out the picture.

And I still have three portions of that tenderloin left over.

First Green Beans

I've been watching the beans swell in the bean patch and calculating when the time might be ripe for a harvest. The moment arrived yesterday with friends coming for dinner. I was amazed to see what a bounty my little plants had provided.

These are the Italian Romanette variety, a wide and flat bush bean I prefer for its gentle texture and meaty flavor. They always remind me of the year I spent in Switzerland when I was a youth. My host mother would cook a great heap of these beans in the pressure cooker until they were nearly falling apart and weeping with flavor.

My own plants--really just a small patch in a far away bed in the garden--were so heavy with fruit, they literally had fallen to the ground. I harvested close to two pounds in no time at all and began planning a prominent spot for them on the menu.

When our friends arrived we had a fresh guacamole displayed in our molcajete with blue corn tortilla chips. We also composed a relish assortment of pickled beets and pickled green tomatoes along with some of our latest deli-style dills and the refrigerator pickles that are now perfectly brined.

Dinner began with a platter of squash carpaccio with fresh Maryland goat cheese. I grilled a flank steak very simply with our favorite dry rub and served that with our own potatoes, browned and tossed with caramelized onions, and the green beans, cooked in salted water until tender, then tossed with sweet butter and finely chopped mint.

As usual, my wife presented a stunning dessert: cherry granita parfaits layered with almond-infused whipped cream and drizzled with aged Balsamic vinegar. We could not have ordered a more pleasant summer evening on the back deck.

A Frugal Dinner

Rummaging through the freezer the other day, I came across snack bags stuffed with last year's carrots. They'd been cooked, stored and forgotten. I pulled some out to defrost and discovered they make a wonderful meal, simply heated in the microwave. The carrots are still tender and sweet--hard to tell they were harvested 8 months ago.

Toss the carrots with some leftover brown Basmati rice and fresh cilantro. Dress with red wine vinegar, extra-virgin olive oil, a little salt, some freshly ground black pepper. Voila: dinner.

Preparation time: 5 minutes

Shopping: none