Welcome to the Epic Homestead. Today,
I'm going to roast and eat an entire sunflower head because I saw it
on a Facebook video from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, a long time ago.
It has since kind of made the rounds online and everyone's trying it.
So I'm joining the fun. Let's talk about it, though.
You don't want to roast a mature sunflower head. This one is immature.
You know that because these ray flower petals are still on the plant and
all the seeds, which I'll show you in a second, aren't mature yet.
They're not ready to like completely dry up and roast or save for future
propagation. The back is still nice and green,
so it's ready to harvest. I think it'll be nice and tender when we roast it up.
Let's go ahead and chop it off.
There we go. Before we roast this, we have to actually prepare it.
So let me show you what you need to do.
The first thing you're going to do is just remove all of the ray petals which
honestly still look pretty good.
Maybe there's something we can do with these here at the.
Homestead. We can like, you know what?
I'll save them as the table dressing or the plating for this.
That seems like the right chef's move. Jacques is in the background,
nodding his head.
So we know it's approved because the garden hermit knows how to cook.
The next thing I'm going to do is brush off all the disc flowers,
but I'm going to show you a close-up of that. Many might not know this,
but this is a secondary flower within the exterior of the sunflower,
or the ray petals.
You have these disc flowers that can all just easily be brushed off.
One of the more satisfying things you're going to do in the garden.
It just feels so good to just brush these off like this.
But you want to clean all of these off and take a look at the actual
sunflower seeds. They're immature.
So this is one that would have been a confectionery style.
One that would have a stripe sort of black and white pattern on it.
It's all white. That's how we know it's immature.
We want the seed hull to not be super tough when we bite into it, ideally.
So this middle sometimes can be a little bit trickier to get off because the
seeds tend to be smaller in that exterior, that interior.
But once this is off we'll give it a quick little brush and then we're good to
season it up. Like I said,
homegrown seasonings are going on top for the most part.
This is one of my Russian red hardneck garlics. I have not tried this one yet.
It has kind of just been curing and sitting around. So let's crack it open.
Let me show you actually. Let's crack this bad boy open.
Ooh, look at that clove.
Look at that freaking clove, guys! Okay, probably just two cloves.
So my cooking plan for this is to roast it in the oven
and then put it on top of the stove and sort of soften it up a little bit.
I'm not sure actually of the order to do those in yet,
but I'm keeping the seasonings right now, really simple.
This is homegrown garlic.
I'm just going to dice this up and then I'm going to do some olive oil right
here. This came from a friend of mine, Rachel,
whose family owns an olive orchard and they press their own oils. So,
really excited about that. These cloves are massive though. I mean,
look at the size of these cloves! I might actually have too much.
I'm going to be garlic forward, as the chef world would say,
garlic forward dish. All right. Let's chop it up.
Seasonings kept simple.
Garlic's minced as much as I have the patience to mince it up.
Let's get it in.
This little bowl here. I'll add the olive oil. We'll stir it.
Around and then we're going to brush it onto our delicious,
delicious sunflower. I'm going to give it a healthy dose of oil.
I think I really want to coat the entire surface with oil.
So that should be enough. Should be enough.
Got a little slurry going on. And now the moment of truth.
Just get it in there.
Let's just get it all the way in.
Every single nook and cranny is going to be covered in this oil - olive
oil/garlic slurry.
Kind of hard because the actual sunflower is quite
an odd surface. It's a sort of sloped surface,
but we'll get it in there somehow. Honestly,
I think I might need more.
Just for good measure we're going to hit it with a little driz,
a little quick driz. Here we go.
We're going to reapply some of the fallen debris.
And let's get this in the oven.
The way I saw this done was by placing the sunflower face down on a grill after
you covered it with oil and your toppings. I don't have a grill yet.
So what I'm going to do is I preheated this oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit.
I've crafted this little onion stand because the
sunflower is so curved. I don't want to broil it and have just the top,
like this side right here, get singed.
So I've tried to even it out just a little bit. I'm going to toss it in.
I preheated at 375. Here's my plan.
I'm going to keep it on broil on the low end right here,
not right up at the top, for like three minutes maybe.
See if I can get a nice sort of roast on there. And then after that,
I'm going to keep it in the oven for about 15 minutes to try to soften it up.
I may decide to put it into a pan and cover the pan and try to
steam soften it and see what happens. This is just an experiment.
I'm not the best cook. This is just my logic here. So if you have a better way,
throw it in the Comments. Well, let's turn it on to broil. While we.
Are baking that bad way in the oven, I do want some spices to go on top,
after the fact. So I'm going to take some columnar basil.
This is Greek columnar basil. And when I'm harvesting,
I'm just going to harvest it in a prune fashion.
So I'm cutting right above a node where they branch out,
just so I get a little bit more bushy.
The columnar basil is actually really columnar,
but you can force it to bush if you want to. So this should be good on that.
Just a couple sprigs.
And then I'm going to come up here and we'll grab probably some marjoram.
I'll do a couple of springs of marjoram. That's all I really want to do.
I'll get some spices too.
I'm sure I'm not telling you guys anything you don't already know,
but easy way to do this is to just hold the top and just gently strip down.
Then you just pop the top off when you're stripping your herbs.
So we'll do that here.
Basil can be a little trickier because there's some offshoots,
but same principle applies.
You don't need to stress about getting every single little bit of it either.
There's plenty, plenty more. And give these a little dice as well.
After the broil session,
I decided to put it into the aluminum foil and bake it for 15 minutes
to maybe try and soften it up a little bit. So let's see.
Ooh.
That does not look bad at all.
All right. All right. The first.
Thing I'm going to do is just toss over some of that marjoram and basil
and olive oil mixture, right on top. We'll let it naturally fall over.
That seems okay to me. I don't think we need to go overboard with this.
And then we will plate it up with a
little bit of the.
Ancestral leaves that used to be on the plant.
I don't know why, but I really can get into plating.
Not that this is by any means pro, I'm not trying to say that.
But it is kind of fun to do.
Honestly, that looks pretty cool.
We're going to give it a little pepper, sprinkling down from the heavens.
We're going to give it a nice healthy dose of sea salt.
Probably too much, but whatever. It's time to eat. All right.
We summoned the garden hermit. He's here to taste as well.
I'm going to do the first bite. I'm going to go on the exterior.
Apparently that's a little bit better. The seeds are a little bit softer.
So I'm going to try to get a bite that's got like a good chunk of the garlic,
all the seasonings that we put on there. And yeah,
let's see how this thing tastes. What do you think it's going to taste like.
Good? I think it's going to be good. It smells good. It smells really good.
That's actually pretty legit. Yeah. That's actually pretty dang good.
This is like a secret thing that nobody eats.
It doesn't have a lot of sunflower taste. It's like at the end it's sunflowery,
but at the beginning it's like crunchy and juicy. Here,
let's cut this in half and we can both.
I think you're probably gonna want to eat the whole half. Okay.
So we'll cut it in half. With homegrown garlic and herbs. It's homegrown. Yeah.
The whole thing. Look at that. It almost looks like a portabello cap.
Look at that guys. Okay. Look at the interior.
Is that not just a portabello? That's a portabello.
It smells. Okay here. Let's get in here. Yeah.
I don't know how to describe this smell.
Let's get the garden hermit because Jacques is kind of a foodie.
He grows for the flavor. He grows for the flavor so.
Let's see if you pulled it off. Let's see what you think. Yeah.
Bite's easy. Wow.
Isn't it? It's like something familiar,
but I can't like.
Something familiar yet so far away, you know. It's like really tender too.
It's a memory that you never had. It's one of those.
But honestly it's really good. Yeah. Okay.
Mmm.
I think we got it at the exact point at which the seeds aren't too hard and we
cooked it. I don't know if anyone's done a bake,
a broil to a bake play to a wrap. But it got it so tender.
And I think you've got to go heavy on the oil and whatever like seasoning you
really want, because it's got to infuse over that baking time. Check.
Out how easy the seeds come out too. Yeah.
I don't know if that's going to pop out. Yeah, there you go.
It just comes right out. This.
Is a buy for me. Yeah. Yeah. If I could buy this.
This would be a buy.
If this was at a fancy restaurant and you saw it on the menu,
you'd probably order it.
You know what?
I probably wouldn't cause it'd probably be $200 a dish and it'd be so fancy,
but let alone, you can just do this in your backyard. Yeah.
Wow! It's actually really good, it's really unique too.
It's probably good for you too. What.
Do you think, what do you think the bottom, like the back, tastes like?
I kind of, now that you mention it,
it kinda reminds me of like an artichoke almost. I don't know.
I'm going to eat it, I'm going to eat it. Honestly. It's not bad.
It's kinda sweet.
Honestly, that's that's kind of a delicacy. Hold on. Let's yeah, let's do,
I'm going to do a big bite.
It's crazy because I normally don't like eating sunflower seeds cause it's too
much work. We.
Had a long discussion. I actually got mad. Not really.
Cause people think I actually get mad at Jacques. I don't.
But philosophically and emotionally,
I got mad because I grew up eating sunflower seeds.
It's one of the few seeds or foods really that you eat as a pastime.
You're not hungry. You don't maybe even care about the flavor,
but you're getting a lot out of it though.
And that's the thing that he doesn't understand. It's a Zen moment.
It's a Zen activity. And if you're with me, drop it in the Comments.
Are you team no sunflowers or are you team sunflower seeds. If you grew up,
did you grow up playing baseball or no? That's the thing.
I think that's the big one. No, it might be it. Okay.
Honestly this, the part that holds the seed, is also good.
You can get to the bottom. Okay. Let me try that. Let me try that.
What would you call it, the sheath? I guess, yeah. I mean.
The bottom, this part.
It's a really weird texture. It's not bad. Okay. Hold on.
But that's not the texture I expected. Honestly,
I'm here for it. I don't mind it.
It's like very gelatinous. Hmm. But the flavor is good.
This whole experience has been good for me. No, I really like it. Okay.
Well I'll put my recipe down in the Comments. And uh, you know, bon appetito!
Have a good day and we're going to enjoy this and we'll
see you in the next video. Peace out.