Spring Things: Horta, or Wild Greens, Greek-Style

Coco and Dot explore the cover-crop jungle

Well, hello there! It's been a while since we've had any updates here from the farm... springtime is upon us, and that means busyness galore! But no worries, we'll be getting back into the swing of things blog-wise as the days warm and grow longer.

Which brings us to Spring Thing Number One: Horta!


What's that, you ask? Simply put, horta is any combination of wild greens, cooked together and drizzled with olive oil, lemon juice, and a bit of salt. It's Greek village food, a product of getting through the lean times with what you have at hand and enjoying the bounty of the countryside at its best. After all, wild plants are just that — wild — which means they don't need weeding, watering, or even planting. And they are far more delicious and nutritious than most "city folks" realize!


In Greek, horta (χόρτα) literally means "grasses;" that is, green wild-growing things. These are typically spring foods, enjoyed before the bounty of the summer garden arrives, and can be found in most little village tavernas as well as on every kitchen table. The greens are sometimes baked into pies and pites, but they are often eaten as a meal with just a piece of bread and a handful of olives.

In the Greek countryside, you will often see men, women, and children alike picking horta on the roadsides and in olive groves, gathering the greens into plastic bags, bushel baskets, or specially-designed large-pocketed aprons. On one visit to the ancient ruined city of Aptera, in Crete, we watched the site's elderly caretaker gathering horta among the stones and piling them into the back seat of his (very) tiny car. Later in the day, we spotted him — and his car — in front of the village kafeneio, selling his harvest to the other locals.

Clockwise from top left: mustard, more mustard, radicchio, sow thistle (achohi)

Popular varieties of horta in most parts of Greece include amaranth (vlita), dandelion, chicories (stamnagathi), radicchio (radikia), sow thistle (achohi) and mustards, although each region will have its favorites. Because of our Mediterranean climate, most of those will grow quite happily here as weeds, and you probably know of a vacant lot or field in your neighborhood where at least one variety of wild green is already well-established. Of course the usual cautions about picking wild foods are in order: make sure you can positively identify your quarry, make sure it isn't sprayed or growing in contaminated soil (such as a roadside), and, if you are new to foraging, take an experienced person with you if possible! That being said, most of these plants are very easy to identify, and you probably know how to spot several already.

I learned to pick horta from my Papu (that's Greek for grandfather). I'd follow him around when I was little, watching as he snipped mustard and thistle sprouts with a little knife. It always amazed me how the toughest, prickliest, bitterest greens turn tender and delicious with a bit of know-how — and that's really what horta is all about. It became a food by necessity, in times when Greece, particularly the island of Crete, was under invasion as so often happened (Ottomans, Venetians, Romans, et cetera...) Without the luxury of a grocery store, as we are now so used to, people had to grow or find their own food. And when turbulent times made farming difficult, unreliable, or impossible, you had to turn to the countryside to feed yourself and your family. That foraging culture, and self-sufficient mentality, has never left Greece, even in modern times.

And thank goodness for that! As a matter of fact, wild greens are a huge factor in the healthiness of the Mediterranean diet: the original studies that found that way of eating so beneficial took place in the 1950s in Crete, where horta plays a large part in the local diet. Wild foods, and greens in particular, are often far more nutritious than their cultivated counterparts, and are loaded with antioxidants, as well as vitamins and minerals. More on the Cretan diet here!

Wild greens, with a bit of Swiss chard from the garden

To pick horta, find yourself a sharp knife or scissor and a bucket or bag (unless you have already made yourself one of those neat horta-picking aprons!) The greens shrink down considerable when cooked; I usually fill a three-gallon bucket. Look for plants that have not yet started to flower, as those will be the most tender. Remember, the more mature the plant, the stronger the taste — if you aren't accustomed to bitter flavors, you might want to start with the younger greens. Take leaves and young shoots, but be careful not to cut the plant back all the way to the ground or you won't have any seeds for next year's crop! If you cut carefully (think pruning), you should be able to get several harvests from each plant over the season.

After you have picked your horta, you'll need to wash them. We pack them into a clean five-gallon bucket, fill the bucket with water, weight the greens with a plate, and soak them overnight to wash out all the dirt. If you prefer, you could wash them quickly as you would salad greens.

Papu cleaning the horta

The traditional way of cooking horta is to boil it in just enough water until the greens are tender, adding salt to taste before or after cooking. Serve warm or at room temperature, in bowls with plenty of the juice for dipping...


And don't forget the olive oil, lemon, and some good crusty bread!

Kαλή όρεξη! Kalí órexi! Bon appetit!

Making Olives — Part Two

Being Greek, our family has made olives for generations. I have vivid memories of sitting in the wine cellar on chilly winter evenings, dunking into Papu's gigantic ceramic crock with a long-handled ladle; fishing out briny, bright-green and scrumptious homemade olives, and (occasionally) eating so many as to spoil my appetite for dinner. Water-cured olives (see previous post) are a bit simpler to make, but lye-cured olives have a particularly rich, almost buttery flavor that make them well worth the extra effort. And, really, it's a much shorter process than the weeks of soaking-and-draining necessary for water-curing; you'll just need to set aside a day or so when you can tend your olives every few hours.

In the olden days, everyone around here would use Lewis Lye for making olives. Nowadays — at our local hardware store, anyhow — our friend Lewis has been replaced by a product with the rather alarming name of "Rooto." It's sold as a drain cleaner, and costs three or four dollars a bottle (plenty for several batches of olives.) Just make sure whatever kind you buy clearly specifies "100% Lye" or "sodium hydroxide" on the label. If it doesn't, or if there are any other ingredients in the product, don't buy it; go to another store and try again. Look for lye in crystal form — liquid or flakes may measure differently and throw off the recipe.

It goes against everything your mother, grandmother, and kindergarten teacher ever taught you to put something called "Rooto" — found in the drain-cleaner section of the hardware store — in (or even near) your food, and, yes, you should use caution here. Lye is nasty stuff, as the riot of warnings on the label will inform you. Read those, okay? Make sure that you only use glass, plastic, stainless steel, ceramic, or wooden containers and utensils for this project, as some metals can react with lye to produce hydrogen gas or poison your olives. It's also highly corrosive, and can cause serious burns to skin. Treat it like bleach, and act accordingly: don't touch it with bare hands, and if you are accident-prone, wear goggles and gloves to be safe. A short list of things that should be kept far away from lye:

• Aluminum, tin, and galvanized metal containers and utensils
• Skin and eyes
• Food (other than the olives, of course)
• Children
• Pets
• Clothing
• Anything you really value

All that being said, there's really nothing to be afraid of when it comes to making lye-cured olives. Just use common sense and caution in handling the lye, and follow the directions, and you'll be just fine. All the lye gets washed out of the olives by the time you finish them, so they are quite safe to eat — and you'll be in good company with the Scandinavians and their lutefisk, or the Native Americans and their hominy, or even the Germans with their pretzels... (hey, olives aren't the only food you can make with lye! Just don't get carried away with the experiments.)

You'll need mature green olives for this recipe. To make sure olives are ready to be picked, give one a squeeze; a milky white juice should show. A tree will usually have olives of various stages of ripeness on the same branch, so if there are some red or black fruits on the tree, their greener neighbours are probably mature enough to be picked.

Olive trees are often planted for their looks; these are the trees that spangle the sidewalk with smashed purple fruits come autumn. The next time you spot an olive tree heavy with fruit, ask its owners if you might pick a bucket or two — chances are, they would be only too thrilled if you would please take the entire crop, far, far away, and do with them whatever you like, just get those foul little things out of our yard... so, of course you must now call all your friends and have yourselves an olive-making party!

Lye-Cured Green Olives

That gigantic olive crock has gotten a little too cracked and pitted from so many years of lye and salt (not to mention age itself), so this year I'm using a five-gallon food-grade plastic bucket instead... it works just as well, even if it isn't quite so nice, and will do the trick until I can find another crock (ideas, anyone?) Whatever your container, fill it about half full of olives — in this case, about 2 1/2 gallons of fruit.

This is a combination of my grandfather's and uncle's recipes for lye-cured olives. The lye soak takes anywhere from eight to twelve hours or longer, so plan carefully when you will start it. If you put your olives in to cure at 9 in the morning, they should be ready to rinse before bedtime; if you start them in the afternoon, you may be up all night checking them. After you have done a few batches and have an idea of what to expect, you could start them in the evening, let them soak overnight, and rinse them in the morning. Be sure to set up near a garden hose with household water, away from plants or lawns, preferably on gravel or pavement that you don't mind getting a bit stained temporarily (the lye darkens everything it touches, but this should eventually wash away.)

ingredients and supplies:
• Mature green olives (once again, even size and ripeness is important; you want them all to finish curing at the same time)
• 2/3 cup lye (100% pure)
• 2 1/4 gallons cold water
• Two ceramic, glass, or plastic containers — five gallons is a good manageable size — one for olives, the other to mix lye and brine in
• Lid for container, or piece of plywood or similar to cover
• Wooden, plastic, or stainless steel long-handled spoon and tongs
• Old washcloth or other small piece of fabric (white or undyed; colors may leach)
• Colander (plastic or stainless)
• Rubber gloves (and goggles if you like)
• Garden hose with household/potable water
• Stainless steel knife

Rinse and drain the olives; place them in the bucket you want to make them in. Pour 2 1/4 gallons cold water into your mixing bucket, and sprinkle the lye over the surface. Use the long-handled spoon to mix well, being careful not to splash. The lye will sink to the bottom and form a crust; be sure to scrape this up and dissolve it thoroughly into the water.

The lye will heat the water as it dissolves; if you start with very cold water, it won't be too warm for the olives (you don't want to cook them.) If the outside of the bucket feels warm, check the temperature — it's OK if the mixture is below 70°. Otherwise, allow it to cool before proceeding.

Pour the lye solution over the olives and stir. If you have extra lye solution left, pour it down a household drain — never near plants or down a storm drain.

For the first hour, stir the olives every fifteen minutes to prevent them from blistering in the lye. After that, stir every hour or two. Cover the surface with a washcloth or other piece of fabric; this will keep the olives from darkening with air contact. (Use the tongs to position the cloth.)

After about four hours, fish out one of the olives with your spoon, rinse it well, and slice it open to the pit. You'll notice a ring of yellow-green flesh around the outside, while the inside will be a creamy white. The yellow area is where the lye has penetrated, while the white has not yet been reached — eventually, you want the entire inside to be yellow. Check a couple olives again after six hours, and continue to check every hour after that.

The yellow areas will darken to brown with air exposure, making it easier to see how deeply the lye has penetrated. The olive on the left has been in the solution for four hours, while the one on the far right is almost finished, after nine hours. This batch of olives took about 9 1/2 hours total to soak; when the olives start to sink, instead of float, you'll know they are almost done.

As soon as the olives are completely yellow inside — check three or four of different sizes — carefully pour off the lye solution, wearing rubber gloves. (We covered the top of the bucket with a large colander and inverted the entire thing.) Rinse several times with clean water, until the water is no longer brownish.

Now that the lye has leached the bitterness out of the olives, you'll need to leach out the lye. This can take several days to a week, depending on your method and the size of the olives. We stick a garden hose all the way to the bottom of the bucket, set it on a slow trickle, and place the bucket lid or a piece of wood ajar on top to keep out leaves and curious critters. If you don't want to leave your water running, you could also just fill the bucket with water and then change the water several times a day; this method may take a bit longer. Either way, give them a stir once in a while, and slice into an olive occasionally after a day or so to see if it still feels soapy or slippery inside.

When the water no longer looks brownish, yellowish, or pinkish — after at least several days — slice open an olive and carefully taste it. When you can no longer detect any lye (it has a soapy taste), drain the olives and mix the brine:

Fill your mixing bucket with water — as much as you used to mix the lye, in this case 2 1/4 gallons — and add salt, stirring to dissolve thoroughly, until an egg (unboiled) floats in the brine, with a dime-size area of shell showing above the surface. Pour brine over olives and allow to set for at least several days before eating; you may wish to rinse the olives or soak them for a few hours in water to remove some of the salt before eating them. They may be portioned into pint mason jars and marinated with oil, vinegar, and/or whatever herbs you like — my uncle John makes fantastic olives with garlic and lemon, and oregano or thyme, or even chilies would also be delicious. Keep marinated olives in the refrigerator; your regular olives may be stored, in brine, for months in the fridge or even just in a cool place. (If the olives in brine start to feel a bit "slimy," drain them and add a new batch of brine; the olives are good as long as they remain firm in texture.)

* * *

Making lye-cured olives isn't scary or dangerous or even all that complicated — it just takes a bit of caution and patience, and the results are well worth every bit of work that goes into them! The UC Extension publication "Olives: Safe Methods for Home Pickling" has plenty of information on lye-curing olives, including safety tips and instructions for canning or freezing your olives. It can be downloaded for free here: http://anrcatalog.ucdavis.edu/Olives/8267.aspx

Making Olives — Part One

Ever tasted a fresh-picked olive? If so, you know that olives are one of those magical foods that undergo a complete transformation on the way from tree to table — the briny, deeply-flavored, tasty little morsels we love to snack on bear little resemblance to their bitter, astringent cousins on the branch except in that they are green (or purple) and grape-shaped. I always imagine the delight with which some primitive Mediterranean fellow must have discovered that the olives bobbing around in the sea tasted a whole lot better than those horrid little fruits on the tree nearby!

There are a variety of methods for curing olives, ranging from simple (i.e., toss them in the sea) to complicated indeed. Our olive trees are laden this year, so we'll be making several kinds of olives: water-cured, lye-cured, and salt-cured... and, of course, sharing the methods with you here...

The simplest, and quite possibly the oldest, method of curing olives involves soaking them in water to draw out the bitterness — a similar technique to the one the Native Americans in our area used to render acorns palatable. Breaking the olive's skin allows the water to penetrate and wash out the astringency more quickly; it's a bit time-consuming, but the result will be a much tastier olive, so it's worth your while. And the work goes quickly if you round up a few pals to help — it's one of those pleasantly mindless activities, like shelling beans or polishing apples, that are well-suited to conversation and daydreaming!

This recipe is adapted from the UC Extension publication "Olives: Safe Methods for Home Pickling." You can download the complete document at anrcatalog.ucdavis.edu (highly recommended, with a nice variety of methods for curing olives.)

Water-Cured Olives, Kalamata style

This is a good place to start — a simple method, adaptable to any amount, large or small. You'll need olives that are ripe but firm; ours are fairly red with a greenish tinge, but you could use riper ones too, as long as they aren't soft (be sure to check them over for worms!) Uniformity is important when making olives: pick fruits that are fairly even in size and ripeness for the best results. A gallon or two is a good amount to start with.

ingredients and supplies:
• Firm-ripe olives (light to dark red)
• Water — plenty of it!
• Pickling salt
• Red wine vinegar
• Olive oil
• Sharp knife or razor blade
• One-gallon glass jars, or other similar glass or plastic containers
• Extra jar or bucket for mixing brine

Rinse and drain the olives. With knife or razor blade, make two or three lengthwise cuts on each olive, on opposite sides of the fruit, to pit depth. (These olives were fairly large, so we made three slices; smaller olives would only need two.)

Place the olives in the jars or your containers of choice, and fill with cool water. Place a small saucer, wooden disc, or a plastic bag filled with water on the surface to keep the olives submerged — too much air exposure will turn them dark. Soak for 24 hours, then drain and cover again with water.

Change the water once or twice daily. After about a week, taste the olives to check for bitterness; continue to taste every day or so until the olives are no longer bitter. (It may take up to three weeks to remove all the bitterness.)

To make the brine: Mix one pound (1 1/2 c) pickling salt with 1 gallon cool water. Stir to dissolve, then add 1 quart (4 c) vinegar; pour mixture over drained olives. (Note: this will make enough brine for 10 lbs of olives; you can increase or decrease the amounts to suit your needs.)

Drizzle about 1/2 inch olive oil over surface, close container firmly, and store at 60-80° for about 1 month before eating. The olives may be stored this way for up to a year.

* * *

If slicing each olive sounds like too much work, you can also make cracked water-cured olives: start with green olives rather than red, and give each fruit a whack with a mallet, rolling pin, rock, or other similar device. You want to crack the skin and meat, but not mash the fruit. Proceed as above, replacing the red wine vinegar with 2 cups white wine vinegar. Pour brine over drained olives and refrigerate. Let the olives soak in the brine for at least four days before eating; keep these ones in the fridge, where they will also last for up to a year (provided you don't eat them all up immediately!)

Happy pickling!

Fresh From The Garden: Zucchini Gratin

Finally — a way to use all that zucchini! (And, no, we're not talking about zucchini bread that only takes a squash or two; this will use a whole basket full!)


This recipe is adapted from Richard Olney's Simple French Food (which, incidentally, has a considerable section devoted to zucchini.) Flip through the "vegetables" chapter and you will come to a delightful revelation: just about anything can be made into a gratin, and furthermore, once gratinéed, it will be absolutely delicious. Case in point: the infamous zucchini, staple of summer gardens, the very definition of overabundance. No matter how many (or few) seeds you plant, there always seems to come a point where the zucchini far outnumber the willing zucchini-eaters ... cue the recipes for zucchini bread, zucchini pancakes, zucchini chocolate cake, et cetera...

... or just find a little parsley and garlic, some cheese, a couple of eggs, and a handful of other ingredients and cook up a scrumptious gratin — perfectly simple, perfectly summer!


Zucchini Gratin (Gratin de Courgettes)

2 - 1/2 lbs small zucchini, sliced coin-thin (we use a mandoline for this)
4 Tb olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste
1/2 c bread crumbs
About 1/4 c milk
2 eggs
4 cloves garlic, pressed or finely chopped
One small bunch parsley, chopped
8 ounces cheese — Gruyere, Jack, or a mixture
2 Tb butter

Toss the zucchini with olive oil in a large skillet over high heat — I do this in two batches — until limp and just barely starting to brown, about 7 minutes. (As you heat the zucchini, it will release water; toss gently until most of the liquid is evaporated.) Season with salt and pepper to taste.


While zucchini cooks, mix together bread crumbs, milk, eggs, garlic, and parsley in a large bowl. Add zucchini and cheese; toss to coat evenly. (Add a little extra milk if it looks too dry — the mixture should be moist but not soupy.) If you like, reserve about 1/3 c cheese to sprinkle over the top.

Pour into a buttered gratin dish; top with dots of butter and, if you like, the remaining cheese. Bake at 400° for about 25 minutes, or until browned and bubbly. Serve warm or at room temperature.

We brought this to the marvelous Placer County Slow Food pot luck picnic earlier today — what a fantastic array of homemade foods and local ingredients!

The Perfect Peach Tart

It's always a race to see who gets to the peaches first — the birds, or us. This year, we were feeling particularly protective of our small crop, as a late frost took just about all our stone fruit; a handful of peaches looked like all we'd get. To our surprise, as the peaches started to ripen and turn to a more obvious and easy-to-spot color, we were thrilled to see that we'd actually have a decent, albeit smallish, crop of peaches this year — enough to make some jam, and this simple, scrumptious rustic tart. I love love love this recipe because it's so simple — flour, sugar, butter, peaches. All you need. Of course, when you're working with so few ingredients, they all should be the best you can find... especially the peaches. Make sure they're fragrant, fresh, and ripe but ripe!

These peaches came from a tree that my grandfather started from a peach-pit! The little sprout is now a tremendous tree, and it makes some of the best and prettiest peaches I've tasted. When storing peaches, remember to set them on their stem ends, with their pointy blossom ends facing up; they'll keep better that way.

OK, now for the recipe!:

B H Ranch Rustic Peach Tart

For the crust:

1 1/4 c flour
1 stick (1/2 c) salted butter (or unsalted butter plus a generous pinch of salt)
1/2 tsp sugar
about 1/4 c vodka + ice water *

*Trust me on this one! It sounds weird, but it works. Fill half a 1/4 c measure with vodka; top it off with ice water, and proceed as usual with your recipe. Too much water allows gluten chains to form and toughens the dough, but the vodka — being alcohol, not water — lets you add extra liquid to the dough without toughening it. It's magic — perfect pastry every time. Cooks Illustrated Magazine ran an article on this technique several years ago in their December issue, and I've used it ever since. You can apply the same trick to any pie-crust recipe; just swap out half the water for vodka. The alcohol evaporates during baking, but if you'd rather skip the vodka, you can go ahead and use all ice water; just be careful not to over-mix.

For the filling:

2 lbs peaches, preferably freestone, peeled and sliced
2 Tb sugar
1 Tb flour
1 Tb butter

Place flour and sugar in food processor; pulse to blend. (You can also use a pastry cutter for this recipe if you prefer.) Add butter in 1/2" chunks; pulse until the mixture becomes a coarse meal with plenty of butter chunks visible. Sprinkle the water/vodka mixture over the dough and mix (carefully, just barely) until the liquid is evenly distributed. (You may need to add slightly more than 1/4 c. The dough should look chunky, kind of like cottage cheese.) Place dough on a sheet of plastic wrap; shape into a flat circle, wrap, and chill for about an hour (can be made in advance).

Make the filling: place sliced peaches in a bowl; gently toss with flour and sugar.

Roll out the dough between sheets of waxed paper, making a circle a little larger that 12 inches in diameter. Transfer the dough to a sheet of parchment paper and place on a baking sheet — I use a small pizza pan — preferably something with a rim, in case it gets a little juicy while baking.

Pile the peaches in the centre of the dough circle, and gently lift and fold the edges of the dough over the filling. Pinch the dough to seal and hold it in place. Dot the peaches with bits of butter. Use your fingers to dab a bit of water on the pastry, and sprinkle with sugar.


Bake the tart at 375 degrees for about half an hour, until the crust is golden and the peaches are tender. I like to sprinkle a little extra sugar over the hot peaches as soon as I remove the tart from the oven; the sugar melts and forms a pretty glaze. Serve the tart warm, preferably with whipped cream or ice cream!