Plot to Plate is a SAVEUR column in which features editor Alex Testere exercises his green thumb, sharing practical gardening tips and seasonal produce-driven recipes from his patch of earth in New York’s Hudson Valley. He is also the author and illustrator of Please Grow: Lessons on Thriving for Plants (and People).

A tomato is never just a tomato. Even when you, alone in your garden on a late summer afternoon, sift through the tangle of overgrown vines, gently prodding each available fruit before plucking the ripest specimen from its stem—even then, you are merely scratching the surface. You may have planted that tomato, but who grew the fruit that produced the seed you sowed? Who packaged that seed and shipped it to your door, or trucked it to the retailer from which you procured it? Who raised the cow that created the manure that amended the compost that fertilized the bed? Maybe you, indefatigable farmsteader, did all these things yourself—in which case, kudos!—but if you look closely enough, I think you’ll find some spaces where another person’s work shines through the cracks. 

Gardening has always been a community-powered enterprise, and no one knows this better than Alice Waters, chef at Chez Panisse in Berkeley, California, and founder of the Edible Schoolyard Project, a nonprofit dedicated to teaching students around the world the value of (and skills behind) growing your own food. “There is no more meaningful work than that,” Waters told me recently in a Zoom call, where we discussed everything from the fleeting delights of perfectly ripe produce to gardening’s relationship to community and democracy. In October of this year, Waters will also receive the tenth annual Julia Child Award for her contributions to transforming American food and cooking. 

On the subject of ripeness, I started thinking about the summer fruits I look forward to this time of year. Peaches and nectarines come to mind, and tomatoes, too. I’m sure to face flak from some of you for this, but I am very solid in my belief that a tomato has no business being consumed in the American Northeast outside the month of August, with some occasional exceptions for July and September. When a slice of sun-ripened summer tomato adorns a BLT or sits beneath a heap of herby chicken salad, I constantly wonder whose cruel joke it was to turn the otherwise anemic slices of mealy fruit into year-round sandwich staples. Perhaps that’s what first drew me to Waters’ recipe for Heirloom and Cherry Tomato Salad, a dish simply designed to celebrate a glut of the beautiful multicolored fruits.

While I would never attempt to “improve” a recipe of Waters’, I was inspired by our conversation (you’ll see why below) to toss some stone fruits into the mix, a balanced blend of whatever I could find at the farmers market in that perfect window of ripeness. I took a tip from Waters’ 1996 Chez Panisse Vegetables book and tore up half of a stale miche, tossed it in olive oil and minced garlic, and toasted it in the oven to make some croutons, their craggy edges eagerly awaiting a soak in the salad’s herby, shallot-filled vinaigrette. It’s one of those dishes you might only get a chance to eat once a year, at the singular convergence of ripe stone fruit and ripe tomatoes—and I think it’s all the better for it.

What follows is an edited and condensed version of my conversation with Waters:

Alex Testere: Thank you so much for joining me today, Alice. I’m so excited to chat about plants and gardening and everything they have to teach us. 

Alice Waters: My pleasure! It seems we both see eye to eye there.

Will you tell me a little about how gardening first informed your relationship with food?

Well, I guess it began back when I was a kid. My parents had a victory garden during the war, and I grew up eating strawberries out of that garden when I was very, very little. It was very important for my parents—they had four kids and didn’t know how to feed them. And it was so great because all their neighbors had victory gardens, too, and they’d trade vegetables that way. I didn’t know that until I was a bit older, but I just love that idea, that you can get a neighborhood together and plant all different things and just share them. So no matter where we lived, including when we moved to California, they planted that victory garden. 

And how did that evolve as you grew up?

When I arrived at Berkeley amidst the Free Speech Movement, that really changed my life because I felt then the power of the people to make change. And [activist] Mario Savio said don’t just study one discipline at school, you know? Go to another country and see what an education looks like there. I took him very seriously, and I up and went to France. I didn’t know at the time that France was a slow food nation, that it hadn’t been industrialized yet, and that was my first experience of a culture of eating only what was in season. So, for example, when those little fraises de bois (wild strawberries) were gone, I cried! I didn’t know I couldn’t have them all the time, or that they had to be gathered from the woods; they couldn’t be cultivated. I remember eating a Charentais melon in September and just having these extraordinary foods. I didn’t realize later that it was all about ripeness. I came home and I wanted to be able to eat and live like that.

I can already see the throughline forming to your work at Chez Panisse and sourcing ingredients directly from local farms. 

Yes, and now, after 53 years, the reason for the longevity of that restaurant is absolutely the ripeness of the ingredients—and of course, you can’t have anything ripe if it’s shipped from halfway across the world. It has to be picked before it ripens, and it never actually ripens in travel. 

This whole idea of seasonal cooking really is about ripeness as a criteria for wonderful produce—and you can’t think about ripeness without thinking about where the food was grown, how far it’s traveling, and that perfect little window of time when that heirloom tomato, for example, is at its best. 

I think you’re absolutely right. In 40 Years of Chez Panisse, Michael Pollan wrote the afterword about this, and I think he just nailed it. He ordered the fruit bowl, which at the time was a selection of ripe peaches, and he just understood this exactly. 

[Editor’s note: Pollan describes the peaches, presented within their impossibly small window of ripeness, saying, “There are times … when no amount of culinary artifice can improve on what nature has already perfected, and it would be folly—hubris!—to try.”]

And I’m really relying on this idea to make school-supported agriculture a reality in our country. If we decide nationally—internationally, even—to have schools be the economic engine behind agriculture, then everyone would eat ripe food. I mean, Eliot Coleman is up there in Maine farming in his greenhouse in winter, and we’re going to need that, but this was how we always did things before 1950. No pesticides, no shipping of fresh produce. You know, I think it’s a part of how our democracy has lost its way. I know it’s about food, and this obsession with the values of fast, cheap, and easy. 

It really shows us that access to fresh, ripe food for everyone has to be a community project. It’s like we’ve collectively forgotten that part of the process, and that personal connection to where the food comes from is the missing piece of the puzzle.

This is where the Edible Schoolyard Project came from. A woman at the San Francisco County Jail, her name was Cathrine Sneed, called me—she was a gardener and therapist there, and she asked if we would buy their vegetables for Chez Panisse if they grew them to our specifications. And I said absolutely, and she had me come meet her students, some of the inmates there. This one guy, maybe about 17 years old, told me it was his first day in the garden, but it was the best day of his life. I cried, and I said to myself, if it can work in a jail, it can work in a school. Thirty years later, we’re part of a network of over 6,500 schools around the world. Many of them are independent of us now, too: I can’t tell you how many are in Japan; [activist] Carlo Petrini has a million signatures he’s giving to the president of Italy to bring these programs to every school in the country; the mayor of Paris, a year ago, decided they would only buy organic, regenerative produce for the city’s schools from within 125 miles of the city, and they’re already close to meeting their goal.

So it seems like there’s a need for this, an urgent desire for folks all over the world to create these kinds of community-driven food programs. 

It’s meaningful work: “I planted this seed, I grew this plant, I picked this tomato.” I think the greatest issue in our country is a lack of meaningful work, but we don’t ever talk about it. My father in particular, he said, “When I don’t have meaningful work, I don’t want to be here anymore.” I think about that, and I don’t want to ever have work that I don’t love. I’ve loved every minute of the restaurant, and it has been a big challenge at times. But I love the people and that kind of collaboration. I never had a search committee finding people for me. I just ran into them and said, “Hey, do you want to do this?” And they were people that had all different talents.

I can’t help but think of the way plants collaborate with each other, how their roots intertwine and exchange nutrients, and, as with many forms of companion planting, the garden becomes a community in and of itself. 

That’s exactly right. And everybody has a contribution to make, it doesn’t matter how small. If we didn’t have our wonderful dishwasher at Chez Panisse, we couldn’t run the restaurant. He deserves to be elevated, to have a nice place to work. And it’s that—this hierarchy of people we see as important and ones we see as not as important, it’s so wrong. We all eat together at the restaurant, whether it’s a dishwasher or the head chef, it doesn’t matter. And it is like the way nature works. But that’s why I think this idea, if it could really take hold in every country, then we could really address this question of meaningful work and community, but also of health and climate change, too.

We talked a little about regenerative agriculture, but what role do you feel gardening and growing food plays in addressing climate change? 

I think it’s probably biodiversity that is my greatest hope for the future, because in this frightening world of climate change, we need to know what to plant when it’s hot, when it’s raining, when it’s really cold. And to do that, we need to exchange seeds and to know what’s happening around the world in other climates now. And of course, with all the incredible varieties of produce, whether it’s tomatoes or green beans or chicories in every color of the rainbow—it’s like wow, could we have a delicious solution to climate change, too?

So by collectively tending our gardens, we could be cultivating community, feeding the hungry, fighting climate change, and it can taste great, too. It sounds like a win-win-win-win to me.

It’s so important. There’s really nothing to lose.

Recipe

Heirloom Tomato and Stone Fruit Salad with Garlicky Croutons

Get the recipe >

The post Why Alice Waters Believes Gardening Can Save Our Democracy appeared first on Saveur.

This summer salad is a testament to the fact that the best things in life are worth waiting for—among them juicy, ripe seasonal produce. Inspired by a conversation with Alice Waters, as well as the Heirloom and Cherry Tomato Salad from her 1999 Chez Panisse Café Cookbook, this recipe also takes advantage of another fleeting summer staple—stone fruit, including peaches, nectarines, apricots, and plums. A heap of craggy, garlicky croutons is also added to soak up the sweet-and-savory juices, a tip taken from Waters’ 1996 Chez Panisse Vegetables book. Visit your local farmers market (or better yet, your home garden) to source the ripest fruits, and savor the process of selecting them; this might be your one chance until next year. Even small fruits should be sliced in half so their interiors can be exposed and their juices released. It’s best served as soon as it’s prepared so the croutons stay crunchy and the fruits don’t get mushy, but if you’d like to prepare this an hour or two in advance, refrain from adding the croutons until just before serving.

Featured in “Why Alice Waters Believes Gardening Can Save Our Democracy.”

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In this hefty summer side dish, charred scallions are whipped with fresh ricotta to lend a smoky sweetness that matches the sugary crunch of fresh snap peas. A small amount of mild white miso adds a gentle cheesy character that doesn’t overpower the peas; more intense red or yellow miso will be too strong. Korean chile flakes (gochugaru) are not as hot as other varieties, so if substituting, use another chile powder with a milder heat, such as Aleppo pepper. The dish should be bright and lemony, and not particularly spicy. You can cut the scallions in half widthwise before charring if they are too long to fit in the pan.

Featured in “This Green Vegetable Is a Triple Threat in the Garden.”

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Plot to Plate is a SAVEUR column in which features editor Alex Testere exercises his green thumb, sharing practical gardening tips and seasonal produce-driven recipes from his patch of earth in New York’s Hudson Valley. He is also the author and illustrator of Please Grow: Lessons on Thriving for Plants (and People).

While a well-tended garden plot has the potential to keep us flush with fresh produce all summer long, most growers aren’t just in it for the sustenance. Between plucking weeds on the weekends, meticulously flicking away worms, and delicately affixing tendrils to trellises, no one’s putting in that much effort simply to eat a few sun-ripened tomatoes. A garden’s perks go way beyond the harvest, and one such benefit, I would argue, is the beauty of it all.

Many garden vegetables are quite attractive: Squashes and gourds explode with enormous golden blooms, cherry tomatoes ripen in an ombre from green to red, humble cabbages unfurl from within rippling green foliage. But one vegetable in particular captivates me every year as the warm days roll in and spring tips over into summer. Snap peas I planted back in March, some of the first crops to pop up in the spring, have been climbing skyward ever since, sending out a smattering of pink orchid-like flowers along the way.

The appeal of snap peas, for me, is threefold: First, they offer height and drama to an otherwise level garden plot, quickly rising high above everything else in the bed. Second, their powerful roots, like other plants in the legume family, help fix valuable nitrogen in the soil—a boon for raised beds that struggle to maintain nutrients year after year. Third, and perhaps most importantly, they make for an effortless, near-constant garden snack. Often, I don’t even bother to wash them. (I’m sure some of you will fight me on this, but I can’t hear you beneath my gigantic gardening hat.) Plucked right from the vine, snap peas are practically luminescent, plump and crunchy and sweet, and still warm from the sun. The French refer to them as mangetout (literally “eat all”), and, if left to my own devices, that’s exactly what I would do. The first year I planted them, the harvest never even made it indoors—they were all consumed on the spot, a sugary carbohydrate boost to fuel the day’s garden tasks.

If I must bring snap peas into the kitchen, though, I want to celebrate their sweet and simple nature, cooking them very lightly so as to maintain their crunch. This time, I decided to serve them tossed in a sauce of lemon and miso, gently wrapping them in umami balanced by the brightness of fresh mint. A pile of ricotta blitzed with charred scallions echoes the peas’ sweetness and provides a creamy foil. Dragging a crusty heel through the lot of it makes for a timeless summer side dish I can’t get enough of. 

When it comes to planting, however, the work typically begins in late winter or early spring, as soon as the ground can be worked, since peas generally favor cooler temps. But many varieties are heat-tolerant and can also be planted in mid-summer for an abundant fall harvest. Now, in late July, I’m cutting back the spent plants I started in March and planting a new crop, which should be ready by early October. Read on for a few key tips to make the most of these gardening triple threats.

Think “up,” not “out”

One of the great appeals of peas is how little ground space they take up in a garden plot. I regularly plant mine in a row just 3 inches or so from their neighbors, and they grow upwards with vigorous abundance. The trick is to give them something to climb, or else their vines will languish in a mildewy mess on the ground. The vertical height adds drama to the garden, with some varieties climbing eight feet or higher. A trellised archway is a sight to behold when heavily laden with supple green pods. A four-foot roll of welded wire cattle fencing can be cut to size and supported by wooden posts, for a simple makeshift trellis of almost any size you need—an arch included. 

Focus on the shoulder seasons

Some pea varieties are more heat-tolerant than others, but all can readily handle the cooler months of spring and fall—including some near-freezing temps. Plant seeds as soon as the ground is soft enough to work, and they’ll poke through the soil at the first signs of spring. Once they’ve run their course, by mid- to late-July, plant another batch for an additional harvest in the fall. Too much hot sun can cause peas to wilt, and I will admit, I have gone so far as to affix an umbrella to my trellis to offer them a bit of shade on the hottest summer days. 

Plant alongside hearty greens 

Lettuces and brassicas such as kale, collards, cabbage, and Brussels sprouts also love the cooler seasons and will greatly benefit from the peas’ remarkable ability to store nitrogen in the soil. If you grow peas in the spring, cut them back mid-summer and plant leafy greens in their place; turn the soil and leave the delicate pea roots in the mix for a steady release of nitrogen that will last all season long. 

Know your type

Edible peas come in three main varieties: snap peas, snow peas, and sweet peas (also called English peas or garden peas). Sweet peas must be removed from their fibrous inedible pods—these are the kinds you’ll most frequently find by the bag in the frozen food aisle. Snap peas look quite similar, but with smaller peas inside and sweet, crunchy pods that are edible, even when raw. Snow peas are very popular in stir-fries and have the smallest peas inside, with wide, flat, edible pods. While all three varieties are great nitrogen fixers and love to climb a trellis, I prefer the ones with edible pods because they make for a delightful snack while out in the garden.

Recipe

Lemon-Miso Snap Peas with Charred-Scallion Ricotta

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Rhubarb has a pleasant sharpness on its own, but the acidity and tang can vary dramatically from stalk to stalk. Pickling in vinegar might seem aggressive for an already tart vegetable, but the result is quite balanced, and makes for a vibrant addition (in both flavor and hue) to this hearty spelt grain bowl. Inspired by edible garden perennials, which grow year after year with little maintenance, the salad also features asparagus—briefly blanched to capture its sweetness—and chives, which are the first plants to poke up in my raised beds each spring.

The salad is best served as soon as it’s assembled, but you can make it last a little longer by leaving out the lettuce, which is quick to wilt, until you’re ready to serve. Without the lettuce, the dressed spelt berry mixture can keep quite well in the fridge for a few days, and makes for a satisfying lunchtime meal prep. Just allow it to sit out for a few minutes to take the chill off before adding fresh lettuce and serving. Ricotta salata strikes the ideal balance of salty and milky here, but another salty semi-firm cheese like Pecorino Romano or feta could work in a pinch. 

Featured in: “For a Low-Effort, High-Reward Garden, Plant These Perennial Vegetables.”

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Plot to Plate is a SAVEUR column in which features editor Alex Testere exercises his green thumb, sharing practical gardening tips and seasonal produce-driven recipes from his patch of earth in New York’s Hudson Valley. He is also the author and illustrator of Please Grow: Lessons on Thriving for Plants (and People).

Gardening, by nature, is not a pastime with swift rewards. If a trip to the farmers market is a cut-and-dried game of Go Fish, where the rules are clear and victory is simple, then growing your own produce is The Settlers of Catan, an afternoon-spanning exercise of shifting landscapes, variable resources, and tedious, long-haul strategy. Its perks come with patience, and thankfully, most of us are in it for the process just as much as we are for the harvest.

Playing the long game can be challenging; without knowing precisely when the rewards will come (or what shape they will take), it can be hard to find the motivation to do the work in the first place. It’s akin to trying to establish a daily workout routine, or setting aside money for retirement. On a much smaller scale, I feel it whenever it’s time to make a fresh jug of cold-brew coffee: My instinct-driven brain bristles at setting aside even 10 minutes of my day that won’t be paid back until later. But by the time I’ve poured myself that cup of iced coffee 24 hours later, the work that went into it is a distant memory, and all I feel is that cool, sweet reward. The same principle applies to garden perennials—except the returns can be even greater, with years upon years of edible rewards to reap down the line.

A botanist would say that a perennial is any flowering plant that lives longer than two years. While annuals flower and go to seed in one season, sowing the next generation before they die, perennials have a structure, typically the roots, designed to survive a dormant period, allowing the plant to grow again when the season is right. A plant’s ability to reemerge largely depends on the climate: Some tomato vines, for example, can live for several years in their native habitat in South and Central America, producing fruit each summer, but gardeners in the North typically grow them as annuals, discarding or composting them after their fruiting season has ended. From a practical standpoint, what counts as a “perennial,” is less a question of the plant’s habits and more a question of the gardener’s. For me, a perennial is anything that’s going to continue to blossom year after year—and which I only had to plant once.

Flowers get credit for most perennial payoffs—coneflowers, roses, peonies, and hydrangeas delight growers each summer with their blooms, becoming more abundant each year as the plant matures. A thoughtfully planted perennial flower bed can bloom for decades with relatively little tending. But what about a perennial vegetable bed? What edible plants can gardeners expect to provide a recurring, low-maintenance harvest? In the spirit of delayed gratification—and of encouraging my future self to do as little work as possible—I want to fill my garden beds with perennial vegetables this season. Here are a few suggestions for edible plants that will continue to provide for years to come.

Rhubarb

Originally hailing from mountainous Central Asia, rhubarb is one of the few edible plants that really requires a winter chill in order to produce well in the spring, something that gives me a smug sense of superiority over my gardening cohorts in sunny, mild California. (No offense to California, but you get to have literally everything else.) I planted rhubarb in my garden two summers ago, and this year was its first really vigorous showing, with a dozen or more tender, pink stalks poking up in the spring that took absolutely no effort to achieve.

Sunchokes

This perennial member of the Helianthus (sunflower) genus is native to eastern North America, where Indigenous people have cultivated their delicious, potato-like tubers as a food source for centuries. They are also known as Jerusalem artichokes, despite having no connection to either; a likely example of linguistic corruption of the Italian “girasola,” or “sunflower.” Sunchokes grow like weeds, and can be difficult to contain if left to grow wild, so plant them in a place where you can keep an eye on their spread. The tubers also happen to be accompanied by the cheeriest clusters of yellow flowers, a win-win in my gardening book.  

Horseradish

Another perennial prone to spreading, horseradish is in the Brassica family—along with kale, collards, cabbage, and broccoli—although its emphasis is on the root rather than the greens. The piquant vegetable, which grows in expanding, rooty clumps, is a zesty addition to creamy sauces and sandwiches, and, as long as you leave a section of the root in the ground, it will continue to grow anew each spring.  

Scallions & Chives

Another clumping vegetable, the bulbs of scallions and chives will expand outward over time, taking up more and more space, continuing to send up their aromatic greens. Leave the bulbs in the ground and simply cut off what you need, and the plants will keep growing. If they start spreading too much, pull them up, break them apart, and re-plant as much as you want to keep. Maintained in this way, a plot of alliums like these will thrive for ages. The delicate flowers are edible as well, adding an onion-y burst and shock of purple to soups and salads.

Asparagus

I also planted my first asparagus crowns this year, another delightful perennial that loves cooler climates. Establishing it will require some attention: The bare roots should be placed in a trench lightly covered with soil, and monitored as they take root and send up shoots, then slowly covered with soil throughout the growing season until the trench is filled in and the plants are fully settled. But by next spring I’ll have my first (small) asparagus harvest—with even more bountiful harvests ahead—and this season’s constant caretaking will be a thing of the past, wholly replaced in my mind by the verdant crunch of those first supple stems.

Berries

Much of this list includes what we would categorize as vegetables, but most berries—like raspberries, blackberries, currants, and blueberries—grow on hardy shrubs. These, like many flowering trees, can survive for decades, and will set buds on their mature branches or canes in the winter before going dormant, ready to flower and produce fruit again in the spring and summer. Strawberry plants are actually short-lived perennials, but are constantly sending out runners to create new, connected plants, which can help keep a strawberry patch going for years on end. Be warned, though—strawberries will take over an entire field if you let them. 

Hardy Herbs

While many of us are familiar with basil plants wilting and withering after the first cold nights of fall, several herbs are hardy enough to survive the winter, and will live through multiple seasons. Mint—and its many varieties—does exceptionally well in colder climates, returning vigorously after a harsh winter (and will swiftly outcompete other plants if left to spread, so it’s best kept in containers). Oregano, thyme, rosemary, sage, and lavender are all perennials native to temperate climates, and some particularly adaptable cold-hardy varieties are available.  

To celebrate these perennial favorites in the kitchen, I combined rhubarb and asparagus in a salad with spelt berries, which I’ve been eating a lot of lately for their protein- and fiber-rich nutrient profile and satisfying nuttiness. As tart as the rhubarb was, I found that the sharpness varied from stalk to stalk, and decided a quick pickle would give it the bracing tang the salad was craving, as well as dialing that natural pink hue up to 11. Combined with other springtime favorites like fennel, radishes, baby lettuces, and chives (also a perennial!), the effect is a bounteous one: bright and fresh, and hearty enough to call a balanced meal.

Recipe

Spelt Salad with Asparagus and Pickled Rhubarb

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The post For a Low-Effort, High-Reward Garden, Plant These Perennial Vegetables appeared first on Saveur.

Plot to Plate is a SAVEUR column in which features editor Alex Testere exercises his green thumb, sharing practical gardening tips and seasonal produce-driven recipes from his patch of earth in New York’s Hudson Valley. He is also the author and illustrator of Please Grow: Lessons on Thriving for Plants (and People).

“How can something so small contain so much?” This is what I find myself muttering aloud while I sift through last year’s cache of seeds: the minuscule reproductive bits of various poppies, zinnias, sunflowers, and marigolds I’d grown the summer before. That fall, I collected the dried blooms—brittle husks of the delicate displays they once were—and crushed them between my fingers, allowing the tiny specks to scatter onto a plate. A constellation in miniature, each seed is a world all its own, containing the densely packed potential of an entire season’s worth of growth, if only some friendly gardener should take the time to plant it.

Maybe that’s giving the gardener too much credit, though. I’ve been planting seeds for long enough to know that some years they won’t grow quite how I expect them to, if they grow at all. I’ve marveled at the way that, despite my efforts to intervene, flowers like poppies prefer to take care of themselves—scattering their own seeds to the wind in the fall, settling lightly on the surface of the soil and enduring a necessary winter chill before germinating in the spring. Last year, for reasons I’m still trying to determine, all the tomato seedlings I started indoors turned yellow and died before I got to move them outside. But as it turned out, a couple yellow Sungolds that fell off the vine the summer before had deposited their seeds into the soil, a group of volunteers that came poking up around mid-May, eager, it seemed, to make their own way.

Seeds are bundles of pure potential, and springtime to me is imbued with that energy, this not-yet-realized vision of a flourishing future. Scribbling into my notebook, I plot out which beds I’d like to use for which produce, imagining how the squashes may weave beneath the corn stalks, how the peas climb their trellises (a mix this year of purple and green), or how the basil plants will form a protective pest-abatement barrier around the tomatoes, which will also make for an exceptionally easy sauce harvest. The leafy greens will thrive in clumps beneath the nitrogen-fixing peas, and along the back of the garden, where they won’t shade out any low-lying plants, the sunflowers will tower and sway and smile down at me, witness to it all. Sure, I might be in for a reality check in a few months’ time, but the romance of it all is an alluring distraction from the lingering chill in the air.

Another alluring distraction, I find, is cake. I wanted to come up with a way to enjoy the bounty and potential of garden seeds before it comes time to plant them, and my mind went straight to a seeded cake, not unlike a classic Victorian seed cake, traditionally baked around sowing season. My good friend Katy Beyer, head baker at Florence Pie Bar in Florence, Massachusetts, had the inspired idea to turn it into an upside-down cake, with a crunchy layer of seed-studded caramel at the bottom, flipped to become a sparkling topping. Perfumed with citrus zest and the aniselike pop of fennel seeds, sunflowers, pumpkins, and poppies—all seeds I love to plant in my garden—get their moment in the sun. And while you could technically make this cake with organically-sourced growing seeds, I recommend getting them instead from the spice aisle at your local grocery store. 

Where I live, here in the Hudson Valley, seed-sowing season is officially kicking off. By the end of April there are still a few weeks until our official last frost date—just enough time to get a head start on indoor growth before transplanting outdoors. This year I’ve finally invested in some hanging grow lights, and outfitted an old wire shelf with them, creating what I hope is a reliable and consistent source of warmth and light for my seedlings. Lettuces, radishes, peas, and poppies (my favorite annuals that love to start with a cold snap) have already been sown outside, and are patiently awaiting their first warm mornings.

The sourcing, though, is half the fun of this transition period. I love to scour seed catalogs for the most eye-catching varieties—three-foot-long serpentine squashes, or white, warty pumpkins bigger than my head—and balance them with some old favorites, like crisp snap peas, or my enduring springtime favorite, French breakfast radishes. To help you get a head start on your own garden plotting, here is a selection of my favorite retailers of produce seeds, including some I’m looking forward to growing this year.

Hudson Valley Seed Co.

Maybe I’m biased based on where I live, but Hudson Valley Seed Company is the first place I turn each winter when I start thinking about planting the garden. The quality is top-notch, and every year they sponsor a series of artists to create original art for several of their seed packs, which come to feel like collectors’ items. 

This year I’m growing: Glass Gem Corn, Green Tiger Tomato, Misato Rose Radish, Sweet Siberian Watermelon

Fedco Seeds  

A cooperatively owned business based in Maine, Fedco prioritizes transparency in the sourcing for all their seeds, as well as paying it forward. Fedco shares a portion of their proceeds on seeds of Wabanaki provenance (the Indigenous group native to the region) with a local cultural organization called Nibezun, and for seeds that originated in Africa (or are part of historically Black foodways), they share the proceeds with the Northeast Farmers of Color Land Trust, which helps farmers of color to purchase their own farms. 

This year I’m growing: Painted Serpent Cucumber, Red Russian Siberian Kale, Benning’s Green Tint Patty Pan Squash

Row 7 Seeds

Cofounded by Blue Hill chef Dan Barber, it’s no surprise to find Row 7’s seeds place an emphasis on exceptional flavor. Whether it’s a purple snow pea that keeps its color after cooking, or a smaller, sweeter cousin to the butternut squash, these new produce varieties—organically developed in collaboration with breeders, chefs, and farmers—are destined to become the heirlooms of tomorrow. 

This year I’m growing: Beauregarde Snow Pea, Sweet Garleek, Teagan Lettuce

Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Co.

Baker Creek has grown into a huge operation since they started in 1998, but they’ve retained their commitment to quality heirloom seeds—and they’ve got about 1,000 varieties. Pro tip: Sign up for their free seed catalog, which is one of the greatest pieces of mail you’ll receive all year. 

This year I’m growing: Winter Squash Galeux D’Eysines, Miyama Turnips, Snow White Bok Choy, Pusa Jamuni Radish

Truelove Seeds

Truelove carries an astonishing selection of heirloom varieties from around the world—including many from Southeast Asia and throughout the African diaspora—with a demonstrated commitment to food sovereignty and community farming. Fifty percent of each seed purchase goes back to the farmer who grew them, with farmers encouraged to grow and share varieties that express the story of their ancestry or community. 

This year I’m growing: Intore (African Eggplant), Cossack Pineapple Ground Cherry, Indonesian Purple Long Beans, Taiwanese Sword Lettuce (Aa Choy)

Recipe

Mixed Seed Upside-Down Cake

Get the recipe >

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The tail end of winter citrus season meets the bounty of springtime seeds in this fragrant snacking cake. Some of my garden favorites—including poppies, sunflowers, pumpkins, and fennel—lend their edible seeds to a crunchy brown-sugar topping that contrasts with the tender, orange-scented olive oil cake. In trying to come up with a treat to highlight some of the seeds I plant in my garden each year, I reached out to my friend Katy Beyer, head baker at Florence Pie Bar in Florence, Massachusetts. She had the ingenious idea to bake the seeds in a brown sugar and butter mixture at the bottom of the cake, and invert it before serving, like a tarte tatin or an upside-down cake. 

The crunchy, chewy seed layer and the cake batter utilize both orange zest and juice: Two medium-size oranges, such as navel or Cara Cara, should produce enough. Hulled pumpkin seeds and sunflower seeds are often sold dry-roasted, but you can also use raw hulled seeds since they will toast in the pan as the cake bakes.

Featured in “Seeds Are the Epitome of Spring’s Unlimited Potential.”

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Bamboo shoots are widely used through much of Asia, but fresh ones can be hard to find in the U.S., especially outside their growing seasons in winter and spring. However you buy them, here’s how to work them into your favorite dishes.

RELATED: What It Takes to Be a Bamboo Harvester in China’s Sichuan Province

Fresh

These are great in stir-fries, but they also take well to soups, where they both absorb the flavors of the broth and imbue it with their own earthy savoriness in a way that parboiled versions do not. If you can find fresh shoots, peel off the husk by making a shallow cut lengthwise, then cut off the tough bottom end. Slice the rest and use immediately.

Vacuum-Sealed

A similar consistency to the canned variety, vacuum-packed bamboo shoots are parboiled but usually packaged whole, so you can slice them to your liking.

Canned

Many Asian markets carry canned, parboiled bamboo, either packed in chunks or cut into thin slices. Because they’re partially cooked, use them in quick, high-heat preparations such as stir-fries to retain some of their crunch.

Our Best Bamboo Recipes

Shanghai Stir-Fried Rice Cakes (Chao Nian Gao)

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Panettone is a peculiar holiday tradition. Beloved by some, it’s written off by others for the grocery-store versions that are so often cloying and dense and filled with artificially dyed fruits. And yet a properly made panettone can transcend its middling reputation. While some of the best breads rarely leave their remote Italian villages, these six stellar producers have made their loaves available to an international audience.

1. Rustichella d’Abruzzo
Made by one of Italy’s best-regarded gourmet food brands, these hand-wrapped panettoni come in several different flavors, including classic citrus and raisin, dried fig and chocolate, saffron and Sicilian orange, and black cherry.

2. Manresa Bread
From California–based baker Avery Ruzicka, this naturally-leavened panettone is filled with hazelnut praline and dark Valhrona chocolate. There’s a minimum order for shipping, but you’ll be glad for the excuse to add a family-size kouign amann or a chocolate walnut babka to your basket.

3. Nudo
Based in Le Marche, Italy, Nudo uses its own local first-cold-pressed olive oil instead of the traditional butter in their panettone. (You can “adopt” one of the olive trees in the company’s grove, helping to support the region’s small-scale farmers).

4. Biasetto
In Padua, Italy, baker Luigi Biasetto makes panettone in the old-fashioned Milanese style, and with ingredients he sources himself, including honey from the Alps, and organic local eggs. They are available in America through the Italian importer Gustiamo.

5. Sant Ambroeus
Baked by a New York–based café with roots in Milan, this panettone might be colossal, but it’s still light, tender, and only subtly sweet. It features a classic filling of candied citrus and raisins, and arrives decorated in the brand’s colorful wrapping paper.

6. From Roy
Inside elegant, understated packaging is a pillowy bread swirled with bittersweet chocolate and scented with fresh orange zest. San Francisco baker Roy Shvartzapel spent years mastering his panettone, and it shows.

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Juan Gallardo Thurlow is a jolly figure in a coral-colored linen shirt. He lends heft to his statements with sustained eye contact and follows them with a wink, like your grandfather, like your uncle, like this stranger who I’ve just joined for dinner. To my left, his wife Gela tells me about the bougainvilleas in Jalisco, and how the orange ones are more difficult to grow—she doesn’t know why, she just knows it’s true. Conversation drifts, as it’s wont to do here in Guadalajara, to tequila: “For years now, it’s all I drink,” Gela says. “Nothing else will do.”

An industrious businessman from a prominent Mexican family, Gallardo has a diverse array of interests: He has served as both the CEO of a company that processes much of Mexico’s sugarcane and molasses, and as the director of a company that distributes all of the country’s Pepsi products; he has created a foundation to provide aspiring college graduates in Mexico City with financial scholarship; and, descending three stories into the hillside behind his Guadalajara home, he has devised an elaborate Japanese garden, a collaboration with a man he happened to meet one day at a local bank. “The garden represents a journey,” he says, gesturing toward a crashing waterfall that slowly meanders down a winding path before coming to rest in a tranquil pool.

Another such serendipitous encounter led Gallardo to some influential folks at French spirits group Moët Hennessy—among them Trent Fraser, former Vice President of champagne label Dom Perignon. As the friendship blossomed, a collaboration seemed inevitable, and a discreet inquiry was made: How might Moët Hennessy, overseer of prestigious brands like Dom and Krug and Veuve Clicquot, break into the tequila industry? And would Gallardo help?

“Project Blue,” as it was known then, was a secretive venture. Gallardo was an enthusiastic partner, and had the resources, recognition, and local connections to pull it off, but Fraser had another case to make: He had to prove to the folks at Moët Hennessy that not only was tequila a spirit worthy of their their investment, but that he could make one that would fit into their world-class collection.

Fraser spent more than 20 months exploring the Jalisco region of Mexico, the state believed to be the birthplace of tequila, searching for a distillery that could become the future home of this new operation. He and Gallardo met with local distillers and recruited artisans with deep ties to Jalisco’s tequila history, including Ana Maria Romero Mena, one of the industry’s most widely respected tequila experts, who was hired to develop the two unique blends that would ultimately make up the brand’s portfolio. Author of The Aromas of Tequila: The Art of Tasting and an influential maestra tequilera with some radical new ideas, there was no one better for the job.

Fraser ultimately found a small, run-down distillery that was barely producing anything, just outside the city of Tequila, from which the spirit took its name. The distillery was nestled in the shadow of the Volcán de Tequila, a volcano that erupted some 200,000 odd years ago, transforming the Mexican landscape and infusing the local soil with igneous rock and ash. After a complete overhaul of the distillery, they got it up and running and purchased some nearby land to plant agave of their own. It was given the name Volcán De Mi Tierra, an expression that (idiomatically) translates to “land of the volcano.”

But all the while, there remained the question of the tequila itself. How could a French beverage group, one famous for its champagnes and cognacs, oversee the making of a spirit that both impressed its tastemakers and paid homage to its centuries-old Mexican heritage? With Romero Mena at the wheel, they were able to prove that making tequila and making champagne—both of which involve the meticulous cultivation of a single plant to create the perfect expression of a region’s terroir—were not as different as they seemed.

“We had all these amazing noses at the table,” says Gallardo, referring to the time the leaders of Moët Hennessy’s spirit brands visited Jalisco to sample the early expressions of Romero Mena’s tequila. “Glenmorangie, Hennessy, Dom [Perignon], all of them.” It was imperative that the company’s significant talent, known for identifying and cultivating sublime flavors in their respective products, understood the subtlety of flavor that could come from tequila, how dramatically the terroir, the roasting process, the ferment, and the distillation could affect the final product—and, how they could manipulate each of these factors to reach what they believed was the ultimate distillation of the Mexican landscape.

Romero Mena supervised 177 unique trials before finally settling on the one that would ultimately become Volcan’s “Blanco” tequila. But to understand what makes it so special, a quick lesson in tequila production is in order.

How Do You Make Tequila?

All tequila starts with blue agave, one of hundreds of species of the agave plant that flourishes across Mexico. Mezcal is the blanket term for any spirit distilled from agave plants, and has been made in Mexico for centuries, but tequila has become its own designation, ever since the Mexican government created a “Declaration for the Protection of the Appellation of Origin” for it in 1997, ensuring that any product sold as “tequila” must be made in the state of Jalisco (or a few restricted outlying counties), and be made primarily from blue agave. Even with the official name of “tequila,” a good portion of a tequila’s must, or mosto, (the liquid fermented before distilling) can be made of other ingredients; just 51% has to be blue agave. Further distinctions, like “100% pure agave” are used when the ferment can be confirmed by the authorities to be made entirely from blue agave. For some context, Jose Cuervo’s ubiquitous line of “Especial” tequilas are mixtos, made from blue agave supplemented with sugarcane. Their “Tradicional” line is certified “100% de agave” and retails for about twice as much.

But while the official distinctions end there (aside from age designations like joven [young], reposado [rested], and anejo [old]), dramatic variability can exist even between 100% agave tequilas, and can be the result of dozens of factors including, just to name a few, the age of the agave plants, how they’re roasted, and the soil in which their grown. Agave grown in the highlands, for example, in iron-rich red volcanic soil, tends to have a lower fiber density than other agave plants, which causes them to carry more moisture, providing more pronounced floral, fruity flavors. Lowlands agave (which still grow at a dizzying 3,800 feet above sea level) tends to carry more herbaceous, grassy flavors, largely a result of higher temperatures and more intense sunlight. This is where the French champagne sensibility comes in: Instead of sourcing one single variety of agave, Romero Mena made use of both highland and lowland varieties—roasting, juicing, fermenting, and distilling them entirely separately before blending the resulting spirits to perfection. To a sommelier, the idea might seem rather obvious, but Romero Mena’s approach is a first in Mexico’s tequila industry: No tequila on the mass market has ever used this model before.

“We went through 177 unique trials,” says Fraser, now Volcan’s CEO. “The final version actually ended up using champagne yeast in the fermentation. Most people think that’s because we’re so known for champagne—Dom and Moët and so on—but it’s just because of those 177 attempts, it was the absolute best. And there was no way we were going to put a product out on the market until it was consistently the best.”

But Romero Mena’s vision went even further: Not only would they pull plants from both of the two agave-growing regions, but each plant would have to be individually processed, a laborious and expensive effort that would ensure that only the most desirable components of each plant make it into the fermentation. The piña, the massive heart of a mature agave plant, develops unique flavor compounds as it roasts. Many makers use the whole plant, but Volcán’s approach focuses entirely on the piña, which requires master jimadors, as the agave harvesters are known, to deftly strip each plant of its dozens of dense, swordlike leaves. The leaves, they found, produced too many “green” flavors when roasted, which they felt muddled the elegance of the expression of the piña itself. Outside the distillery, with the agave fields rolling away behind him, master jimador Joaquín Parra Ortega expertly eviscerates the leaves from a 175-pound agave plant, reducing the monstrous growth, which has spent nearly 8 years maturing, to an ovoid orb the size of a prize-winning pumpkin.

The trimmed piñas are then roasted: The lowlands piñas go into a traditional horno, a brick oven where they’ll bake low and slow for 44 hours, concentrating the sugars and developing deep caramel flavors. Still warm from the oven, a shred of the roasted piña’s fibrous flesh has the sticky sweetness of sugar cane and, after a taste, leaves a juicy trail dripping down my arm. The highlands piñas go into an autoclave, where they cook at a higher temperature for only 12 hours, which helps to emphasize its lofty floral aromas. The lowlands agave, which makes up 75% of Volcán’s tequila ferment, is pressed on a tahona, a massive set of stone wheels dragged in a circle repeatedly, until the soft, fleshy piñas are reduced to a pulp. The liquid is siphoned off into tanks to ferment—with a proprietary champagne yeast for the highlands and a rum yeast for the lowlands—while the fibrous pulp is piled in heaps to dry, destined to return to the soil and provide nutrients for the next generation. The mosto is distilled just twice, lest it lose too much of its delicately crafted flavors, and blended, according to Romena Mena’s precise recipe, before proceeding to a tiny machine where it is bottled just four bottles at a time.

Tequila has been made in much the same way for hundreds of years in Mexico, but while Volcán has managed to innovate on the genre, it’s still, at its heart, a pure expression of the art. Back at Gallardo’s home, the jacaranda trees shaking in the breeze, a bottle appears on the table. “They say it’s quite healthy for you too,” he intones playfully. Murmurs of assent ripple around the table; true or not, we’re glad for the excuse to enjoy another glass.

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