B
Tuesday, June 1, 2021
The Observer & Baker City Herald
BETWEEN
THE ROWS
WENDY SCHMIDT
Wendy Schmidt/Contributed Photo
Aphids have infested the author’s
rose bush.
Aphids
invade my
rose bush:
now what?
Hillary Levin/St. Louis Post-Dispatch-TNS
Warm strawberries with baked meringues and vanilla ice cream, made with fresh strawberries.
Holy cow! There’s a crop of aphids
on my favorite rose bush. Now comes
the decision dilemma. Soapy water?
A hard spray of water from the hose?
Harvest them and hope there’s enough
for a meal (everything goes with rice)?
Certainly no poison will be used in this
yard. Yikes!
If nothing is done, the aphids will
feed on the rose and make more
aphids! This year the plans are to dry
most of the rose blossoms. Will the
sticky aphid residue mess up those
plans? (It may make them sweeter?)
It looks like the persimmon tree has
tiny blossoms. Perhaps that means
fruit this year for the fi rst time. The
quince and the peach are both forming
fruit. The grapes are ready to bloom.
All these joyous happenings fi ll me
with anticipation and a fi dgety feeling.
Spring fever has taken over. Disney
defi ned it as being “Twitter-pated.” We
all know what that feeling of anxiety
and butterfl ies is like.
Garden Chores
• Begin “hardening off” peppers to
prepare for transplant outdoors.
• Continue to plant seeds of bush,
lima and pole beans.
• Also plant seeds of cucumber and
okra.
• Make the last sowings of leaf let-
tuce and radish.
• Pinch back mums to promote
bushy growth.
• Take houseplants outdoors when
night temperatures will remain above
50 degrees.
If you have garden comments or
questions, please write: greengar-
dencolumn@yahoo.com Thanks for
reading!
T HE S WEETEST
OF THE S EASONS
■ Fresh strawberries make everything better — especially desserts
By Daniel Neman
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
It’s impossible to be sad when strawber-
ries are in season.
Everything looks better when there can
be fresh strawberries in your future. The
air smells sweeter. Dogs are friendlier. The
sounds of traffi c are more melodious.
Strawberries make a bad day better and
a good day great.
Strawberry season happens to be raging
at the moment, and I am in bliss. The stores
are full of them, the pick-your-own places
are going gangbusters and if you are lucky
enough to have your own strawberry patch,
then you know that paradise is the taste of
a sun-warmed strawberry right off the vine.
I don’t have my own strawberry patch, so
I backed a box truck up to my neighborhood
grocery store and fi lled it completely with
strawberries. Or so it seemed.
Strawberries have their savory uses, but
let’s face it, desserts are better. I had a lot,
so I used mine to make fi ve desserts.
The easiest was Strawberries Dusted
with Cardamom Sugar, which is only a little
more complicated than the name suggests.
But the complication makes a wonderfully
subtle difference. Before the strawber-
ries are rolled in a mixture of sugar and
cardamom, they are fi rst splashed with an
orange liqueur, such as Grand Marnier or
Cointreau.
You don’t quite taste it, but your taste
buds know it’s there.
The cardamom is also somewhat under-
stated. Cardamom is just about the only
spice that is equally at home in savory
dishes as it is in sweet. When used to
fl avor strawberries, it presents an alluring,
perfumed earthiness that brings the high-
fl ying strawberries and sugar back down to
earth.
The most diffi cult strawberry dessert I
made, in contrast, was a stunningly superb
strawberry tart. This is the kind of dish you
could easily see at a bakery. A good bakery.
It would be easier if you just used a
premade tart crust, but where is the fun
in that, or the fl avor? I used a leftover pie
crust dough that I had frozen, and it was
just as fl aky and delicious as it was when I
fi rst made it.
Inside the crust goes a crème pâtissière,
also known as pastry cream, which is just
a vanilla custard that has been thickened
with cornstarch. It is the classic fi lling for
an éclair and is frequently used in tarts
such as this because it is such a rich and
creamy foil for the fruit.
Whole strawberries fi ll the tart, and
they are then coated with a lightly thinned
marmalade glaze. Then all that is left is a
sprinkling of toasted almond slices.
It is a lot of work, but most of the steps
can be made in advance, except maybe the
easy glazing of the strawberries. And the
result is fairly stupendous.
Almost as impressive is my next des-
sert, a frozen strawberry souffl é. It’s like a
more sophisticated version of strawberry
ice cream, as elegant a repast as you would
want to serve.
See Sweet/Page 2B
Getting to the rub: making the most of grilling season
JeanMarie Brownson
The Daily Meal
True confession: I grill outside all
year long. Memorial Day weekend
just made it offi cial!
This year, I won’t stand for any-
thing bland to come off my grill —
and, if I can help it, yours. An herby
marinade sparked with a little
crushed red pepper can add fl avor
to lean meats and vegetables. A
dry seasoning blend that combines
smoke, spice and garlic will feature
in nearly all my steak and rib grill
sessions. And after grilling, I propose
the liberal use of rich, slightly sweet,
bronzed butter to add a chef’s touch
of fl avor and luxury.
Let’s talk about marinades. I
recommend using acidic, deeply-sea-
soned wet marinades to infuse fl avor
into simple poultry pieces, lean pork
and bland vegetables such as zuc-
chini and eggplant. Marinades high
in acid will do a bit of tenderizing,
in advance of grilling for the biggest
impact. A simple blend that contains
smoked paprika helps underscore
the smoke of a charcoal grill and
proves a great boon when cooking on
gas grills.
It might not be a well-kept secret,
but steakhouse chefs almost always
boost fl avor with butter. I propose
you follow suit with a highly-
seasoned butter full of caramelized
onions, fresh garlic, spices and a
splash of sweet-tart pomegranate
molasses. You can keep small par-
cels of the butter in the freezer for
easy retrieval on grilling day.
To take advantage of these fl avor-
Eberly Film Labs/The Daily Meal-TNS boosting creations, I’ll be grilling
Turkey and Vegetable Kebabs and Smoky Beef and Mushroom
kebabs for our small Memorial Day
Kebabs. Styled by Shannon Kinsella.
gathering. Kebabs please everyone.
We can make meatless kebabs, lean
too, although most don’t penetrate
— and sometimes sugar — to the
turkey kebabs and, for a treat, beef
more than ¼-inch into the foods.
surface of tender meats, such as beef sirloin kebabs. Scale the recipes up
Dry marinades, like grill season- steaks, chicken breasts and fi sh fi l- or down based on the number of
ing rubs, add fl avor as well as salt
lets. Dry rubs should be applied well people to serve.
For easiest grilling, use metal
skewers that are fl at so the meat
doesn’t move when you turn it
on the grill. Another option is a
two-pronged skewer which holds
everything in place. Wooden skewers
work too; just pick out a length that
fi ts on the grill and soak the skew-
ers in cool water before adding the
ingredients to them. Using a second
wooden skewer will help secure the
food.
Serve the kebabs over a bed of
greens, which will get the fl avor
from the juices dripping off the hot
kebabs. Steamed, small new pota-
toes sprinkled with the season’s fi rst
chives and tender dill fronds make
a perfect side — ditto for grilled or
steamed asparagus.
Gather around the grill with cold
rose wine or a variety of non-alcohol-
ic beers and enjoy!
See Grilling/Page 3B