Caldo Verde

Posted on April 19, 2012 by Liz

The last few weeks have been unseasonably warm here weatherwise.  Not hot just lovely, lovely weather.  All that is due to come to an end next week with a return to more seasonal averages.  With that it seems that my mind is already turning to cooler weather.  My garden seems to be thinking the same – today’s harvests were potatoes and kale.

With that harvest Caldo Verde came to mind and consequently that is what we had for dinner last night.  Caldo Verde is a Portuguese soup which is sometimes served with meat, sometimes without.  I generally make it with chorizo, as that is easy to come by – although what is generally sold as chorizo in Australia is a very, very, very distant cousin of what you can get in Spain.  While I make it with chorizo my personal preference is to eat it without the meat – the same can not be said for other members of my household.  Now this version is probably not particularly authentic but it is how I enjoy potato and kale soup.

Caldo Verde

  • 1 kg potatoes (any variety other than salad type potatoes) – cut into a large dice
  • 100g kale – sliced as thinly as you can
  • 2 stalks celery – finely chopped
  • 1 large or 2 medium onions – finely chopped
  • 1 carrot – finely chopped
  • 2 cloves garlic – finely chopped
  • 2 bay leaves
  • 250g chorizo – chopped into bite sized pieces
  • 1.25 litres stock ( I generally use chicken)
  • 2 tblspns olive oil*

Heat the oil in a large, soup sized saucepan.  Add the chorizo and fry until brown and it has released some of its oil.  Remove from the pan and set aside.  Add the onions, celery and carrots to the pan and fry on a low heat until softened.  Add the garlic and cook for another couple of minutes.  Add the stock, potatoes, and bay leaves.  Cook until the potatoes are completely soft.  Remove the bay leaves, season and puree the soup.  Add the kale.  Cook for a further 5 minutes until the Kale is cooked.  Serve topped with the chorizo.

*If you don’t use any meat you may need slightly more oil.

I’m sharing this recipe as part of the wonderful Gardener of Eden’s Thursday Kitchen Cupboard and Greenish Thumb’s Garden to Table.

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Posted in Greens - Lettuce, Spinach, Beets, Potatoes, Recipes | Tagged , | 23 Comments

Top 5: Things to grow more of next summer

Posted on April 17, 2012 by Liz

1. Drying beans – After the success of this years Borlotti crop I have definitely become a drying bean convert.  I’m calling them drying beans but the truth is I don’t have any left to dry having eaten them all while fresh.  I grew bush varieties this year but didn’t really leave enough space to plant the volume I would need to have enough for drying.   Next year that will change.  I plan to both devote more space to them and switch to climbers.  I believe you can get a climbing Borlotti bean (not sure where from but I will seek it out if it exists) and The Witches Kitchen rates Purple King (which I already have seed of) as a good substitute for kidney beans so that is what I will try.

2. Different capsicum varieties – I had very varied success with capsicums this year.  My overwintered plants were good early on but then stopped producing.  My main crop though still hasn’t turned red.  There is a reason for that – Sometimes it actually really pays to properly read a seed packet, that way you can avoid growing the capsicum variety that says:  The OUTSTANDING large green fruit is sought after by both the home gardener and commercial grower, when you want red peppers.  So next season I will grow red peppers.  I will also grow more small peppers for stuffing like the Mini Mamas I posted about last week.  I’m also thinking I could possibly find room for a long yellow variety as I think they look great.

3. Strawberries- I have loads of strawberry plants in the garden.  The problem is that all are badly sited, don’t get enough sun and are very vulnerable to slug attack.  As a result I hardly get any edible fruit.  Now I don’t have the space to grow as many strawberries as we get through each summer, but I would still like rather more than I got this year.  My plan is to try and grow them in hanging grow bags.  This will save on space and also keep them out of reach of the slugs.  The only downside is the kids wont be able to harvest their own as they will be too high up…..actually this is probably an upside isn’t it?  If anyone has  recommendations about varieties then please let me know.

4. Pumpkins-  My pumpkins failed completely this year.  Actually I think that should probably read I failed my pumpkins this year.  Not only did I not give them enough sun I pulled them out just as they were thinking about setting some fruit.  So really they shoudn’t be on this list as something to grow more of as I didn’t actually grow anything other than a few miserable looking vines this year.  Next season though I will put them in as much sun as I can and also switch varieties.  I was hugely jealous of all L’s posts about Golden Nuggets so I will grow them and if I have space I will try Ebisu.  Ebisu is a Japanese variety that my father grew this year and it tastes great.  Nutty, sweet (but not too sweet) perfect for roasting, even better for soup and it makes a great pasta sauce.  I think it is dry enough to make superb gnocchi as well but I’ve yet to try as the kids are not keen on either pumpkin or gnocchi so a combination of the two might really be pushing it.

5. Rouge de Marmande tomatoes – Now I have to admit that despite the name of this blog I’m not actually a particularly good tomato grower.  I seem to have endless issues with pests, growth rates, watering, fruit set etc etc.  Through all that though there is one tomato variety that seems to produce regardless.  It resists the pests, sets a good volume of fruit and tastes good, and for me that variety is Rouge de Marmande.  I think that part of my issues with growing tomatoes is that I keep getting seducing by the idea of different varieties.  Rather than growing a decent number of plants of varieties that I know will perform I’ll grow one plant and experiment with a whole heap of others.  All the changing varieties means that I never get to really build much knowledge around the perfect growing conditions for an individual variety.  Next summer things will be different.  I will grow mainly Rouge de Marmande and just a couple of other varieties to see how they do.  That way I should get a good crop while; enabling me to build my knowledge of growing Rouge de Marmande, and at that same time indulging my need to try other things.

Need another top 5, The New Goodlife is in the kitchen this week.

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Monday Harvest – Apr 16 2012

Posted on April 16, 2012 by Liz

This week’s Monday Harvest post finds me extremely excited.  I have at last answered the question: Can you grow sweet potatoes in Melbourne?  And the answer is….drum roll please…. a resounding yes!  Actually I should clarify that somewhat, you can grow one sweet potato in Melbourne, whether it proves to be potatoes plural, remains to be seen.  I bandicooted this 500g beauty yesterday.  (For anyone unfamiliar with the term bandicooted then take a quick look at the comments after last weeks Monday Harvest post and hopefully all will become clear.)  The little one next to it was an accidental harvest the result of digging for normal potatoes.  It appears the vine had set down roots when it had sprawled amongst the other potatoes and was starting to set tubers there.

For the record the big one became fritters (or pakoras – I used chickpea flour and garam masala) which were served with a fresh mint chutney and even the non Sweet potato loving kids enjoyed it.

When I was thinking about this post I was tossing up whether to start or finish with the Sweet potato harvest as a part of me thinks that after that the rest somehow pales in comparison.  Having said that the borlotti beans were pretty damn exciting as well.

Not a huge harvest but a really pretty one.  These I braised with some onion and tomato.

The cherry tomatoes are still producing in dribs and drabs – I’ll give the plants another week or so then pull them out.

This was the best week so far for Lebanese eggplant, I harvested these two and at least 6 or 7 others the same size during the course of the week.  The chillies are still going strong.  This long cayenne I will save seed from and was eaten in the sweet potato fritters.

  

I have given away a lot of basil lately, I really must make the time to make some pesto for the freezer.  The beans are still producing, not heaps, but enough for a small side dish.

As usual I ate a lot of salads, the harvests below included lettuce, celery, lots of parsley, mint, Spring onions – including one that had started to bulb, and French breakfast radishes.

 

I made roast vegetables one night last week, it used the above eggplants and the beetroot below.

Still in a autumn/winter vegetable vein, I also cut a fair bit of chard this week; this lot became Chard and Ricotta gnocchi.  I’ve been making Chard & Ricotta gnocchi for years but I recently discovered a recipe that includes oregano (actually it said marjoram but I have to admit I struggle to tell the difference some times) which is cooked with the spinach prior to incorporating in the gnocchi mixture.  It really works well.

And that was my harvesting week.  If you need more then head over to Daphne’s Dandelions for examples from around the world.

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Posted in Autumn Harvesting | Tagged | 52 Comments

Growing garlic – Hardneck & Softneck varieties

Posted on April 14, 2012 by Liz

The first of my garlic, sown a week ago is up.  Green shoots are emerging through the soil underneath the cages I placed over them to protect them; partially from the blackbirds but mostly from my 2 year old who is a destructive force of nature.

 

Unlike last year when I just grew one variety of garlic, this year I have planted four, a mixture of hard and soft necked varieties.  The difference between hard and soft neck garlic is that hard neck garlic flowers and you harvest it after it has flowered and the flower stem starts to soften.  Soft neck doesn’t flower and is harvested when the plants die back.   Or at least that is what works for the varieties I have and am growing.

My first task when planting the garlic was to separate the cloves.  My understanding is that the middle cloves of soft necked garlic aren’t great for planting for bulbs, so I separated those out.  I later planted those cloves in a large pot really close together the idea being that I will use them as green garlic.  The remainder of the cloves I placed into separate bags for each variety.  This level of organisation is rare for me so I was proud enough of it to take a photo.

I even wrote on each bag how many cloves there were so I can happily report that I planted:

  • 20 Purple Monaro – a hard necked variety reputed to have 8-10 cloves per bulb.
  • 40 Italian White & Italian ‘common’-  soft necked varieties that I personally have trouble distinguishing between.  Some was from my crop from last year some I bought this year.
  •  29 cloves that mum & dad got from their food swap – its a hard necked variety (you can tell by the flower stem providing a ‘hardneck’ in the bulb.) but that’s all I know.
  • 20 Dad’s garlic which he has been growing for years so I’m not sure of the variety but its a soft neck.

I planted just over 100 cloves, with the pointy end pointing up, about 3cm deep in a 15cm grid.  Last year I planted on a 12cm grid but some of the bulbs were a bit on the small side so I decided to  space them a little further apart this year.  Having said that I have had good results using a 12cm grid so the smaller bulbs could have been something else entirely.

 

From now until harvest, which should be in December, these beauties should grow, and grow and grow.  I will fertilise them with fish emulsion every now and then but other than watering them if they get too dry that’s about all the attention they’ll need until harvest.  Well at least that’s what I’m hoping….

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Posted in Alliums - Onions, Leeks, Garlic, Autumn Planting, Summer Harvesting | Tagged | 24 Comments

Little Peppers – Cheese stuffed Capsicums

Posted on April 12, 2012 by Liz

As you may have noticed from my Monday Harvest posts I’m growing a fair few peppers this year.  Whilst the capsicums have been horrendously slow – I still haven’t harvested a capsicum from any of the plants planted this season (all my harvest has been from overwintered plants).  I really need to change variety as I should have had crops by now.  The chillies on the other hand have been wonderful, producing endless harvests with the varieties staggering themselves nicely so that when one finishes another starts.

     

I recently acquired another capsicum plant from Mum & Dad who are hoping I can overwinter it for them, as they get frost but I don’t.  Called Mini Mama (capsicum annuum) it produces small sweet red fruits which are about 2cm in diameter.    I have found the fruits the perfect size to be stuffed with cheese.  The plant was purchased as a seedling at the large green superstore and I’d love to know if anyone grows anything similar and where they get seed as although we have saved seed it was in an area with a lot of other capsicums and chillies so may have crossed.

The Mini Mama fruits are the round ones pictured below:

As the plant had a few decent sized fruit on it I decided to stuff them, and some chillies, for lunch.  I used a few jalapenos and some of the Scotch Bonnet chillies for stuffing.  I really must find out the Latin name for what I am calling Scotch Bonnet as that isn’t what they are know as internationally but it is what they were called on the seed packet.  They are far, far milder than what I would normally call Scotch Bonnet – more like a jalapeno in temperature.

Peppers stuffed with Cheese

  • 200g mild chillies or baby sized capsicums
  • 150g feta
  • 2 tblspns cream cheese or ricotta (optional – if you are using a mild smooth feta you won’t need it)
  • 1.5 tblspns soft herbs finely chopped (I used basil, parsley & chervil today)
  • Olive oil from drizzling

Heat the oven to 200.  Slice the top off the peppers and remove seeds.

Mix together the cheeses and herbs.  Season.  Fill the peppers with the cheese mixture (if you have some left over it makes a lovely omelette filling).  Place in a baking dish.  Drizzle over some olive oil.  Bake for about 20 minutes or until the peppers have softened.

Serve either hot or cold as a canape or with other salads/mezze.

To see what others are eating this week head over to the Gardener of Eden’s place for Thursday’s Kitchen Cupboard, or to Greenish Thumb for the Garden to Table Challenge.

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Posted in Autumn Harvesting, Chillies, Capsicum & Eggplant, Recipes | Tagged , , | 39 Comments