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 misticanza mix. Sprinkle the seeds over the bed as you would grass seeds—try to space them about ½ inch (13 mm) 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 there are many cats in the neighborhood, cover the bed with a floating row cover or bird netting. Anchor stakes in the corners of the beds and tie the netting to them so it is a few inches off the ground. Secure the sides of the row cover or netting with scrap lumber or bricks.
Keep the soil moist until seedlings 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 misticanza greens in six to eight weeks. Either pick individual leaves by hand or take kitchen shears and cut across the bed about an inch (2.5 cm) above the crowns of the plants. Cut only the amount you want at each harvest. If the weather is favorable, in the 40º–70ºF/4.4º–21.1ºC range, and you keep the bed moist and apply a little fish emulsion fertilizer, the greens will regrow and you can harvest misticanza again in a few weeks.
Garden Blanching Vegetables
Another aspect of Italian gardening that deserves special attention is garden blanching vegetables, sometimes referred to as “forcing.”
Garden blanching vegetables (as opposed to kitchen blanching vegetables in a pot of boiling water) is a technique whereby light is excluded from all or part of the growing vegetable to mitigate its strong taste. Vegetables that have been blanched are lighter in color and in most cases more tender than non-blanched ones. Vegetables most commonly blanched are asparagus, cardoon, cauliflower, celery, dandelions, some 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 varieties are more refined and seldom need blanching, and because forced vegetables are less nutritious and take more hand labor, they are generally less favored. So why blanch vegetables? Basically, because some vegetables have yet to be completely civilized. Cardoon, some radicchios, escarole, 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, for elegant salads, one might blanch endive to make its curly leaves light green and sweet in the center, or dandelion leaves to make them creamy colored, tender, and less bitter.
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. In most cases blanched vegetables are more tender than nonblanched ones.
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 and make sure not to keep the plants too moist. Such vegetables as cardoon and celery need air circulation around the stalks. Make sure you blanch only a few plants at a time and stagger your harvest because most vegetables are fragile and keep poorly once they have been blanched. Thus, you would not blanch your whole crop of cardoon, escarole, or endive at one time. After you harvest your blanched vegetables, keep them in a dark place, or they will turn green again and lose the very properties you worked to achieve.
Let’s go through the blanching process in detail first with a vegetable that must be blanched to be edible—Belgian endive.
In the fall cut off the tops of the plants to within an inch (2.5 cm) of the crown and dig up the roots. Once the plants are out of the ground, cut back the roots to 8–10 inches (20–25 cm). Bury the roots in a bucket in about a foot (0.3 m) of damp sand, packing them fairly close together. Store the roots in a dark cellar where it stays between 40º and 50ºF/4.4º and 10ºC. Check occasionally to make sure the sand stays moist; water sparingly when it gets dry. Within a month or so the crowns will start to resprout and produce “chicons” (the forced shoots), which you harvest when they get to be 4 or 5 inches (10 or 13 cm) tall. (The newest varieties maintain a tight head without being held in place by sand. Old varieties must have 4 or 5 inches (10 or 13 cm) of damp sand packed around the new shoots to hold them in a tight chicon.) The plants usually resprout at least once, and sometimes you can harvest them a third or fourth time. Some of the “forcing” radicchios can be blanched in the same way. In mild-winter areas both types of chicories can be blanched in the garden. Start the plants in midsummer, cut them back to the crown in early fall, build a temporary wooden box around the bed, and blanch them by covering the garden bed with 6–8 inches (15–20 cm) of sand.
To blanch celery, the stems are kept from sunlight for a few weeks. Here traditional terra cotta forms are used, but a wrapping of black plastic would also work. Cardoons are blanched in a similar manner. Curly endive can be blanched by being held in a tight head with a rubber band or string. This method also works for escarole, dandelions, and cauliflower. Heading chicories grow in loose heads when young. Once mature, some of the older varieties must be cut back at the crown. They will soon start to resprout and form a tight head.
The preferred way to blanch cardoon stalks is to wrap the stalks with burlap or straw, surround the bundles with black plastic, and then tie them with string.
To blanch cauliflower, after the curds start to show through the leaves, gather the leaves and tie them up with soft string or plastic strips to cover the emerging head. Other vegetables can be blanched in a somewhat similar way. Blanch dandelions by loosely tying up the leaves and covering the plant with a flowerpot for a week or so, or cover the bed with 4 or 5 inches (10 or 13 cm) of sand. The flowerpot process also works well with some of the leaf chicories and is occasionally used for romaine lettuce.
Serve these blanched vegetables with ceremony and give them special treatment. Most are quite mild and are best featured with light sauces and, because they are so tender, short cooking times.
Interview:
The Sebastiani Vegetable Garden
Vicki Sebastiani is a former co-owner of Viansa Winery in the Sonoma Valley of California. Vicki has been a vegetable gardener since the age of four. I visited Vicki a number of years ago to see her garden, renowned for its beauty and bounty. When I spoke with her, Vicki’s garden contained a hundred varieties of vegetables and herbs (most of them Italian), including red and yellow varieties of Italian tomatoes, white eggplant, Italian yellow and light green
