what's called a cut-and-come-again method, and the third is the practice of blanching vegetables in the garden. The French are willing to grow specialty vegetables and varieties for which the timing of the harvest is critical, sometimes within hours. For instance, the French filet beans (haricots verts) are exquisitely tender if harvested when tiny (a sixth of an inch across), but tough and stringy if larger or more mature. To achieve perfection, one must harvest them at least once a day. Optimal harvest time is critical for petits pois and especially charentais melons. A charentais melon stays at its peak flavor and texture for only a few hours. The French go to great lengths to monitor harvesting because they feel that perfect haricots verts, petits pois, and melons are worth the extra effort.
Growing Mesclun Salads
Growing baby salad greens in France has a long tradition. Mesclun is the Provençal term for a salad that combines many flavors and textures of greens and herbs. The object is to create a salad that is a concert for your mouth by including all the elements your palate can experience. Sweet lettuces and fennel, say; slightly bitter radicchios and endives; the slightly sour sorrel; plus peppery greens like arugula or mustard. To these are added contrasting textures like crispy romaine and velvety 'Bibb' lettuces. (A recipe for a classic mesclun salad is given on page 74)
Growing a mesclun salad garden is easy and quick, as well as a rewarding way to start growing your own salad greens. Unlike large lettuces grown in rows in a traditional vegetable garden, mesclun greens are sown in a small patch and harvested when the plants are still babies, a few inches tall.
To grow a mesclun bed, in the spring or early fall, purchase seed packets that already combine the many types of greens in a traditional mix or create your own mix by purchasing individual packages of seeds of three or four types of lettuce. Add seeds of a few other greens, for example, spinach, mustard, arugula, or finely curled endive.
Choose a well-drained site that receives at least six hours of midday sun. Mark out an area about ten feet by four feet—a generous amount for a small family. Dig the area well and cover the bed with compost and manure to a depth of three or four inches. Sprinkle the bed with a pound or so of blood meal or hoof and horn meal and work all the amendments into the soil. Rake the bed smooth to remove clods and rocks, and you are ready to plant.
My garden beds are often filled with French specialties. Here a bed of mesclun planted but a few weeks before is starting to fill in, and the baby greens will be ready for harvest in a month.
In the summer my garden bed grows 'Roc d'Or' bush beans, 'Ronde de Nice' zucchini, and baby fennel as well as rosemary and lavender.
Gudi Riter steps away from her recipe testing to plant a small bed of baby salad greens, often called mesclun, in my front garden. First the soil is prepared by applying four inches of compost, and a few cups of blood and bone meal, and working them into the soil with a spading fork.
Once the soil is light and fluffy and the nutrients are incorporated, the seeds from a prepackaged mesclun mix are sprinkled lightly over the soil so that the seeds average from ½ to 1 inch apart. A half inch or so of light soil or compost is then sprinkled over the bed and the seeds and the compost are patted down to assure that the seeds are in contact with the soil.
A label that includes the name of the seed mix and the date is pushed into the soil. The seeds are than gently watered in with a watering can until the soil is thoroughly moist.
A piece of floating row cover is then applied to prevent critters from destroying the bed. To make sure the row cover won't blow away, and critters can't get in under it, the row cover is secured tightly by putting bricks or such at the corners, and along the edges if bird problems are severe.
Mix the seeds in a small bowl if you are making your own mesclun combination. Sprinkle the seeds over the bed as you would grass seeds—try to space them about a half an inch to an inch apart. Sprinkle fluffy soil or compost over the bed, pat it down, and water the bed in well, being careful not to wash away the seeds. If you have problems with birds or many cats in the neighborhood, cover the bed with floating row covers or black plastic bird netting. Anchor the corners of the row covers with bricks or stones. If you are using bird netting, place stakes at the corners of the bed and anchor the netting to them. Secure the sides of the netting with scrap lumber or bricks.
Keep the soil moist until the seeds emerge in seven to ten days. Pull any weeds, but no thinning is necessary. Keep the bed fairly moist, and depending on the weather, you will have harvestable mesclun greens in six to eight weeks. To harvest, either pick individual leaves by hand or take kitchen shears and cut across the bed about an inch above the crowns of the plants. (The crown is the cluster where the leaves join the base of the plant. Cut only the amount you want at each harvest. If the weather is favorable, in the 40-70°F range, keep the bed moist—the greens will regrow, and you can harvest mesclun again in a few weeks.
Garden Blanching Vegetables
Another aspect of French gardening that deserves special mention is the garden blanching of vegetables, sometimes referred to as forcing. While not exclusively French (for example, the Italians commonly blanch radicchio, cardoon, and endive), this technique seems most appreciated in France and is necessary for a few of the popular French vegetables. Because blanching requires detailed attention, it warrants special discussion here.
Blanching vegetables involves a technique whereby light is excluded from all or part of the growing vegetable to reduce the vegetable's strong taste. Vegetables that have been blanched are lighter in color than nonblanched ones and in most cases more tender. Vegetables most commonly blanched are asparagus, cardoon, cauliflower, celery, dandelions, romaine lettuces, and the chicories, including Belgian endive (Witloof chicory), radicchio, escarole, and curly endive (frisée).
We can trace the concept of blanching back several centuries, to the time when vegetables were more closely related to their primitive ancestors—which meant they were often tough, stringy, and bitter. Blanching made them both less strong-tasting and more tender. Nowadays, most modern vegetable varieties are more refined and seldom need blanching, and because forced vegetables are less nutritious and take more hand labor than nonforced produce, they are generally less favored. So why blanch vegetables? Basically because some vegetables have yet to be completely civilized. Cardoon, some radicchios, dandelions, and some heirloom varieties of celery and cauliflower are all preferable blanched, and Belgian endive can be eaten no other way. And sometimes gardener-cooks blanch vegetables simply to alter the taste for a treat. Thus, one might blanch asparagus in order to savor a plump white version of this vegetable, which makes an unusual and historic dish. Or for elegant salads, one might blanch endive to make its curly leaves light green in the center, or dandelion leaves to make them creamy colored, tender, and sweet.
The blanching process consists of blocking light from the part of the vegetable you plan to eat, be it leaf, stem, or shoot. The blockage keeps chlorophyll from forming, and the vegetable part will therefore be white, very pale, or, in the case of red vegetables, pink. A few general principles cover most blanching techniques. First, you must be careful to prevent the vegetable from rotting, since the process can create fungus problems. Select only unbruised, healthy plants to blanch, and make sure not to keep the plants too moist. Such vegetables as cardoon
