Victor-Antoine dAvila-Latourrette - The Monastery Garden Cookbook: Farm-Fresh Recipes for the Home Cook

This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, saysplant gardens and eat what they produce. J EREMIAH 39:5

A N E ASY W AY TO F IND Y OUR F AVORITE V EGETABLE R ECIPES

The introductions will be especially helpful to those interested in trying some of the vegetables that are less familiar. The vegetable sections are arranged in alphabetical order, for convenience. Throughout the introductions and the recipes you will find suggestions for seasonal use, so the emphasis on freshness is also very much evident. At the end of the book, as an additional aid, you will find a seasonal organization of the vegetables. It is important to keep in mind, however, that the seasons overlap, as do the use and availability of some vegetables, especially those harvested at the tail end of their season. For example, asparagus and peas are considered essentially spring vegetables, but sometimes one continues to harvest and enjoy them throughout early summer.

Likewise, harvest and availability of some summer vegetables, such as corn and tomatoes, continue throughout the fall months until a hard frost kills the plants.

All sorts of grain which our own land doth yield Was hither brought, and sown in every field: As wheat and rye, barley, oats, bean and peas Here all thrive and they profit from them raise, All sorts of roots and herbs in gardens grow Parsnips, carrots, turnips or what youll sow, Onions, melons, cucumbers, radishes, Skirets, beets, coleworts and fair cabbages. WILLIAM BRADFORD

I NTRODUCTION

At first, I was surprised at his response. I had expected him to mention perhaps the beauty of the monastic churches or the unforgettable music of the chants in the Offices, for example. Of course, he found the prayerful Offices to be a deeply spiritual experience, he said, but he was most enchanted by what he found in the monastic gardens. There is real life in those gardens, he went on, and one can almost feel the pulse of a particular monastic community by the work that is being accomplished there in the gardens. He recalled for me how the charming and brightly colored miniatures from the ancient monastic manuscripts, where we often see a monk or nun depicted at work in the garden, suddenly became alive for him and deeply expressive of meaning. In all our monasteries, of course, the occupation of gardening is as old as monastic life itself.

Gardens and the constant tending of them have always been an integral part of our tradition. The first monks went about elaborating the principles of monastic gardening in the deserts of Egypt and Palestine, in the same way and at the same time that they elaborated the first rules and principles that were to become the base of their monastic living. For example, we read in an early life of Saint Antony, the first monk and the father of all monks, an episode that relates to his work in the garden: These vines and these little trees did he plant; the pool did he contrive, with much labor for the watering of his garden; with his rake did he break up the earth for many years. It is obvious from this description that Saint Antony worked very hard in his garden, and that the main reason for cultivating it was to provide food for himself and other monks, as well as for the poor and the pilgrims that came to see him. Saint Antony took to heart the biblical counsel that one must eat from the labor of ones hands. Two centuries later, Saint Benedict would insist on the importance of the same teaching by stating in his Rule that they are truly monks when they live by the labor of their hands, as did our fathers and the Apostles.

That meant for Saint Benedict that the monks had to work long hours in their gardens, orchards, and mills, producing the food necessary for the monastic table. And since the monastic regimen tends to be almost exclusively vegetarian, the cultivation of vegetable gardens and the care and maintenance of vineyards and orchards became of primary importance in the life of all monasteries. In this context, we can understand how some monks became passionate gardeners down through the centuries. There is, for example, the eighth-century monk Walafrid Strabo of the Abbey of Reichenau, who went so far as to praise gardening in a work called De cultura hortorum ( On the Cultivation of Gardens ). It was not only the monks who devoted time and skills in great measure to the work and the art of gardening. The nuns, living under the same Rule of Saint Benedict, invested their unique talents in this work, as we see from the case of the twelfth-century abbess Saint Hildegard of Bingen.