Apr. 24th, 2010 12:29 pm
Chive talking
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muckefuckEvery day leaving for work I pass our little plot of earth out back, see the thriving chives, and think how nice they'd be on toast mixed with a little quark from the corner market. Then I sigh, wonder how I could have such ridiculous priorities as to spend five precious minutes shouting down cranks on the Internet instead of clipping chives in the garden, and hustle to the shuttle.
So no prizes for guessing what I'm doing right now. (Hint: NOM NOM NOM!) The quark is крестьянский, i.e. Russian peasant style (made about 12 versts northwest of here), so as you might expect it's a little rougher than the Magerquark I grew to love in Germany. And the chives have never been quite as flavourful as the memory of the fresh ones we grew at the house in Troy, but that's probably just an artefact of brain varnish and dying tastebuds.
As I was clipping away, I noticed flowerbuds for the first time. Hurrah! I was so disappointed not to see them bloom last year--something I ascribed to the fact that they'd probably been started from seed at the nursery. It continually surprises me how many reasonably foody people I meet who don't know that you can eat those lovely pink-purple blossoms. I also remember them as powerful butterfly and bumblebee attractors, but we'll see if they've got what it takes to lure attractive insects into our little garden, given that not even our neighbour's "butterfly mix" showed much success.
So tell me, chive fans, have you ever eaten the bulbs? I ask because of a terminological question from Jay. This past week, he and Hera served me 달래김치, or kimchee made from the wild onion species Allium monanthum. Jay wanted to know how to say "달래" in English, and I confessed I had no idea despite having looked it up after they served me some last year. It's typically harvested in the spring and pickled whole. Various online sources suggest "Korean wild chive", but this seems like a misnomer to me.
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monshu suggested that our arbitrary sorting of Allium species into "onions", "garlics", and "chives" is based predominately on intensity. But I disagreed, since both "onions" and "garlic" run quite a gamut--"chives", too, if you consider "garlic chives" (A. tuberosum). To me, the main difference seems to be use: "garlic", just the bulbs; "onions", bulbs or ("spring onions") the whole shebang; "chives", just the stems. Of course, some of the wild species seem to challenge this scheme, since ramsons (A. ursinum) are also called "wild garlic" even though the leaves are eaten and ramps. Really, they're most similar to ramps (A. tricoccum), but that's not a name likely to be recognised by anyone but gourmets.
So no prizes for guessing what I'm doing right now. (Hint: NOM NOM NOM!) The quark is крестьянский, i.e. Russian peasant style (made about 12 versts northwest of here), so as you might expect it's a little rougher than the Magerquark I grew to love in Germany. And the chives have never been quite as flavourful as the memory of the fresh ones we grew at the house in Troy, but that's probably just an artefact of brain varnish and dying tastebuds.
As I was clipping away, I noticed flowerbuds for the first time. Hurrah! I was so disappointed not to see them bloom last year--something I ascribed to the fact that they'd probably been started from seed at the nursery. It continually surprises me how many reasonably foody people I meet who don't know that you can eat those lovely pink-purple blossoms. I also remember them as powerful butterfly and bumblebee attractors, but we'll see if they've got what it takes to lure attractive insects into our little garden, given that not even our neighbour's "butterfly mix" showed much success.
So tell me, chive fans, have you ever eaten the bulbs? I ask because of a terminological question from Jay. This past week, he and Hera served me 달래김치, or kimchee made from the wild onion species Allium monanthum. Jay wanted to know how to say "달래" in English, and I confessed I had no idea despite having looked it up after they served me some last year. It's typically harvested in the spring and pickled whole. Various online sources suggest "Korean wild chive", but this seems like a misnomer to me.
monshu suggested that our arbitrary sorting of Allium species into "onions", "garlics", and "chives" is based predominately on intensity. But I disagreed, since both "onions" and "garlic" run quite a gamut--"chives", too, if you consider "garlic chives" (A. tuberosum). To me, the main difference seems to be use: "garlic", just the bulbs; "onions", bulbs or ("spring onions") the whole shebang; "chives", just the stems. Of course, some of the wild species seem to challenge this scheme, since ramsons (A. ursinum) are also called "wild garlic" even though the leaves are eaten and ramps. Really, they're most similar to ramps (A. tricoccum), but that's not a name likely to be recognised by anyone but gourmets.