Parsley Soup

Posted on May 24, 2012 by Liz

Parsley is something that is growing prolifically in the garden at the moment.  This is a good time of the year for green things.  Of all the crops I have growing the parsley and the silverbeet are probably doing best.  As a result I am cooking lot of both of them.  I have to thank Nina, one of my regular correspondants, for this recipe.  I am always on the look out for good parsley recipes but strangely I’d never thought of making soup.  Well I have now and I definitely will again.

Parsley Soup

  • 150g parsley, leaves seperated from stalks and both chopped finely.
  • 2 celery stalks – finely chopped
  • 2 medium onions – finely chopped
  • 1 clove garlic – finely chopped
  • 200g potatoes – diced
  • 50g butter
  • 1 – 1.5 litre chicken or vegetable stock (it will be richer with less stock but serve more people with more).
  • 1/4 cup cream
  • Salt and pepper

Melt the butter in a large pan.  Add the onions, parsley stalks and celery.  Saute over a low heat until softened.  Add the garlic and saute for another couple of minutes.  Add the stock and potatoes.  Bring to the boil and then add salt & pepper to taste.  Add half the finely chopped parsley leaves.  Simmer until the potato is cooked.  Puree.  Add remaining parsley (or add it just before pureeing for a smoother texture) and cream.  Mix together and heat through.  Serve, ideally with some nice toast.

I’m sharing this recipe on The Gardener of Eden’s Thursday Kitchen Cupboard , and Greenish Thumb’s Garden to Table.

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Top 5 – Melbourne’s garden oriented places to visit with kids

Posted on May 22, 2012 by Liz

As you can tell by the summery weather in some of these photos this is a post I’ve been working on for some time.  This weeks Top 5 is: The best places to visit in Melbourne to look at gardens (particularly kitchen gardens) with the kids in tow.  There are a few other places that may have made the list had they not been outside of Melbourne (ie Churchill Island on Phillip Island) or if they had a kitchen garden as well as stunning native gardens (ie the Australia Garden at Royal Botanic Gardens – Cranbourne).  But in Melbourne this is what I have come up with.

1. ROYAL BOTANICAL GARDENS – I love the children’s garden at the botanical gardens.  Not only is it right next to the kitchen garden.  Not only does it have nice bits of lawn to laze on.  But it also has sprinklers in summer for the kids to play in.  They can get very excited running in and out of the ever moving jets while you check out the cool pumpkin growing structures.

     

     

2. CERES – I do have occasional shopaholic tendencies, particularly in nurseries or garden centres.  At CERES they have a fun sandpit complete with old tractor to ride on inside the nursery, they also have chooks.  Enough entertainment then for the kids whilst you shop for seedlings or perhaps one of their excellent range of fruit trees.  One thing to note though – the sandpit is not enclosed, the kids can escape and there is a dam quite close – enough said.

  

3. COLLINGWOOD CHILDRENS FARM FARMERS MARKET – The farmers market at the Collingwood Children’s farm is on the 2nd Saturday of the month.  The $2 entry fee lets you shop, ogle the allotment style plots from the comfort of their elevated walkway and get up close to the livestock.  The market usually has a stall selling seedlings and more attractive to the kids is one selling frozen orange juice on a stick.  After shopping and devouring frozen products its off to see the pigs and goats.

   

4. HEIDE – I wish I had some photos of Heidi but unfortunately circumstances have conspired against me so you’ll have to content yourself with this link.   Heide is a museum of modern art, which in itself isn’t hugely suitable for small children – the staff can look very worried if you approach with a toddler.  What is fabulous is that the museum is set in the most lovely gardens.  There’s a huge kitchen garden and more interesting for the younger members of the party there’s a very cool sculpture garden.  I really like visiting at this time of year when the sculptures are often offset by a bit of mist and fog.  Having said that the kitchen garden, which is also used by Cafe Vue which operates on the premises, is probably more interesting in summer.

5. THE ZOO – The attraction for the kids at the zoo is fairly clear – lots of exciting animals.  But it also has a lot to offer the gardener.  There are some really nice native gardens, particularly near the Australian animal enclosures and they usually have some raised beds dedicated to veggies to have a look at.  And then of course there are the animals – my personal favourite being the orang-u-tans.  Very cool indeed.

  

Had enough tourism, then head over to The New Goodlife for her weekly top 5, but before you go I’d love to know about your favourite places to take the kids.

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Monday Harvest – May 21st 2012

Posted on May 21, 2012 by Liz

Its really starting to feel like winter’s coming now, I’m craving soups and the nighttime temps are due to sink to single figures (Celsius that is) by the end of this week.  With that in mind I’m pretty pleased with this weeks harvest.  As usual I harvested silverbeet and oregano, this I used in a silverbeet and ricotta canneloni – my kind of comfort food.

Other usual suspects, harvest wise, included parsley…and more parsley…..

  

These lots were turned into soup and pasta puttanesca and the lot in the basket below went into a veg stock, along with the rest of the baskets ingredients.

Adding some colour to this weeks bounty were more tamarillos – I reckon I’ll have about 3 more weeks of harvesting tamarillos left.  Incidentally how do other people growing fruit account for it on their spreadsheets?  Tamarillos are $1.50 each at Woolworths (which is where I get my veg prices from) but given I will probably harvest close to 300 fruit it will distort things if I account for them at $1.50 each.  I think I will cap income from them at $50 (which is what I did with passionfruit earlier in the year) but I would interested to know how others see it.

Although its the end of May I do still have one tomato plant left in the ground but the tomatoes its producing are pretty sad and sorry individuals.  I should really pull it but then I’d be admitting it really is almost winter.

Norma at Garden to Wok has inspired me to do more cooking with tofu, so this week I made a lovely (although the rest of the family didn’t agree) lemongrass and turmeric tofu.  The below lemongrass went into it, the thai basil and the pak choi went into the noodles that I served with it.

To prove we really are headed into winter my last harvest of the week was a very seasonal one – my first ever orange.  It is a Washington Navel and I picked it too early but I still loved every mouthful.

  

For more harvests from around the world head over to Daphne’s and feast your eyes on some more delicious veg.

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Small Green Annoyances

Posted on May 19, 2012 by Liz

The damage:

The culprit:

Lots of cabbage white caterpillars and a solitary baby snail.  Shame I don’t yet have any chooks to feed them to.

Actually although I have quite a few brassicas in the garden at the moment this is the only one with much damage.  The cabbage white butterflies don’t seem to be as prolific this year.  Either that or my attempts to get rid of their eggs, by regularly rubbing the underside of susceptible leaves, is working well.

Have you had problems with the butterflies this year?

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Thai (ish) Red Curry Paste

Posted on May 17, 2012 by Liz

I made red curry paste last week.   I intend to make a few batches of it before both; I exhaust my supply of fresh lemongrass and the thai basil packs it in for this year.  I find you can be fairly flexible with the ingredients of curry paste.  This probably isn’t particularly authentic but to me thats not as important as whether it tastes good.  For instance I would prefer to make my own with fresh ingredients and potentially sacrifice a component or two, (in a ideal world this would have galangal in it), rather than buy a paste that has sat around in a jar for months.

This is what I put in this weeks paste:

Thai Red Curry Paste

  • 2 tspn coriander seeds
  • 1 tsp cumin seeds
  • 100g shallots – chopped
  • 4 large cloves garlic (actually I used about 8 small ones as thats what I have left from my summer harvest) – chopped
  • 5 hot chillies – chopped (or more to taste)
  • 3 lemongrass stalks – chopped
  • 1 tspn chopped coriander root
  • 2 tsp shrimp paste

Roast the cumin and coriander seeds*, then grind.  Place all ingredients including ground spices into a food processor and whizz together with a splash or two of water to make a paste.

I haven’t included ginger in this paste as I usually use this paste to make curry and I add the ginger seperately.  If you are using it for something else it might be worth adding ginger into the above recipe.  Galangal also works really well in this recipe, as do ground white peppercorns.

I use fresh chillies because that is what I have at the moment.  Dry ones are great too – just soak in water first.

*I do this on the stove top in a dry frypan – move them around a lot and roast until they just start to change colour and smell yummy.

I’m sharing this recipe on The Gardener of Eden’s Thursday Kitchen Cupboard , which this week is at Spring Garden Acre and Greenish Thumb’s Garden to Table.

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Posted in Autumn Harvesting, Chillies, Capsicum & Eggplant, Herbs & Spices, Recipes | Tagged , | 23 Comments