Planting for the table

It's Spring and, Before I Settle on What Vegetables and Fruits I Want to Grow this Year in the Garden, I Spend Some Time Thinking About the Dishes I Make Most Often.

It sounds simpler than it is, actually. But if you're anything like me, it's just too easy to get caught up in the moment at the nursery and bring home flats and flats of vegetables that you rarely - if ever - use in your everyday cooking. I've even been know to bring home to my small garden vegetables I don't even like...maybe in the vain hope that broccoli or turnips might taste better if I grew them myself. Wrong!

But this is a blog on Middle Eastern Cooking, not garden planning, so let me get to the point here: So much of the basic food on any good Middle Eastern table is either fruit or vegetable in nature and so much of the taste of a well-prepared meal depends upon the freshness and quality of the ingredients that it really is kind of a drop kick to think about gardening this time of year.

I've gardened - in some fashion or another - ever since I can remember. In fact, I'm told that keeping me out of the family garden was always harder than getting me to "help" with it. Not that I was always that much help...

I'm told that once - when I was three or four - my grandfather warned me that if I set foot in his tomatoes without his permission one more time, I would be punished. He looked out the kitchen window a hour or so later to see me on my tummy at the edge of the garden, with every single inch of me except my feet straining to pick a tomato.

Gardening was serious business back then and what was picked that morning was processed all day long into everything from strawberry or peach jam to canned tomatoes and frozen squash or peppers. Mint, good Greek Oregano were cut, bundled and hung to dry. Other herbs, like Parsley, Basil and Coriander were carefully blanched and then frozen into little plastic packets for use in the winter. Of course, all summer long, the table was graced with whatever was ready to harvest that day.

Few gardens have the space to grow everything these days - apartment terraces and suburban lots are more the norm than acres of country property, and even when the space exists, the time usually does not. So, it really is important to pick and choose.

First, I look at the produce that, when store-bought, is never even close to the taste of the real deal: tomatoes, strawberries, figs (a real treasure where I live), squash, snap peas, melons, cucumbers, salad greens, green beans and most herbs fall into this column. If any room remains, I might add things like carrots and beets, small fingerling potatoes, garlic, some scallions, and so on.

In the Northeastern climate where I live, apricots and cherries are "iffy," at best, and other Middle Eastern favorites like okra, chick peas, pomagranates, dates, olives and such wouldn't grow, even if I had the space. So I consign myself to buying these at the store, knowing that lazily stripping dates off their stem on a hot afternoon and eating them with minted sweet tea and, perhaps, a bit of Irmig Helva or even some string cheese and choereg, is going to have to be a pleasure to forgo for now. Still, dried ones from an excellent source are almost as good - just a little less romantic...