Harvest Monday – 2nd April 2012

Posted on April 2, 2012 by Liz

It would seem that I have not been particularly diligent about photographing harvests this week.  This is, in part, due to the end of daylight saving which saw the clocks go back an hour, bringing forward dusk and the end of photographing dinner ingredients just before they hit the pot.  I will have to get more organised and harvest earlier in the day now.

I feel like I’ve picked a lot this week but just not many photos.  I do, of course, have photos of chillies:

This particular basket also includes ingredients for a vegetable stir fry I made to go alongside the lemongrass chicken I posted about last week, and used this lemongrass and spring onions to make.

These eggplants became caponata and a very big thankyou to Robin for reminding me about this wonderful dish.

The parsley, chilli and oregano also went into the caponata.  The passionfruits went straight from here into my mouth.

Below is a basket of bits and pieces that I collected as I pottered round the garden yesterday.  Some more Kipfler potatoes, coriander, chillies and a few cherry tomatoes.

I am still harvesting cherry tomatoes from a couple of plants although the majority have been pulled out to make way for the garlic I plan to plant this week.

Today’s harvest of green beans, pak choi and herbs for a noodle soup failed to make it in front of a camera which is a shame because they looked lovely as well as tasting pretty damn good.  The other thing I forgot to photograph was a solitary cucumber that I picked during the week.  I have pulled out all but one of my plants which has a couple of potential fruits on it.

Finally, as anyone who read my fig and pecorino post will know, I also harvested figs this week.  Lovely they were too and I have a some more ripening nicely for this weeks harvest.

For more ogling of fruits and vegetables  head over to Daphne’s Dandelions and see harvest from around the globe.

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An Autumn of Salads – Fig & Pecorino

Posted on March 30, 2012 by Liz

In my garden at the moment I have a lovely selection of leaves available for eating.  I have some new lettuces coming on: oakleaf varieties, Cos, Salad Bowl, my personal favourite – Freckles and a number of unknown varieties from a mix.  Other salad leaves are: rocket, mizuna, and perilla and all are growing happily.  I also have my usual number of herbs: sorrel, parsley, chervil, Vietnamese mint, basil, Thai basil, and mint.

As part of this monthly series of posts which I am sharing on Veg Plotting’s Salad Days I am attempting to post a recipe which highlights a different way salads leaves can be used.  In January I used lettuce as a base for a warm chorizo & haloumi salad.  Last month it was the turn of the aromatic leaves in a Calamari salad and this month I am highlighting peppery leaves.  This Fig and Pecorino salad was inspired by one in the Ottolenghi cookbook which I happened across in the Coburg library and am now about to purchase.  In this recipe the peppery leaves operate as a foil for the sweetness of the figs and honey dressing and add a dimension that would be otherwise lacking in this lovely autumnal combination.  The figs came from my neighbours tree and the leaves from my parents garden as it was at their house that I prepared the salad.

Fig & Pecorino Salad with Peppery Leaves

  • Figs
  • Shaved fresh pecorino
  • A mixture of peppery leaves like rocket, mustards, even Vietnamese mint
  • A handful of other soft herbs – basil, chervil, mint

Dressing:

  • 2 tbspns honey
  • 3 tbpns extra virgin olive oil
  • Salt & pepper

Mix together the dressing ingredients.  Arrange the salad ingredients on a plate.  Pour over dressing and eat.

I served the salad with some tabouleh and some baked mini peppers filled with a feta and herb mixture.  I think the combination worked well together.

After we had pretty much finished eating the salad I looked over at the serving plate and there was a big fat green caterpillar making its way around the plates edge.  Hugely funny but I have to admit being quite glad I didn’t eat it.  Shame it wasn’t in any of the photos though.

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Posted in Fruits, Greens - Lettuce, Spinach, Beets, Herbs & Spices, Recipes | Tagged , , | 21 Comments

Aussie Rules and Lemongrass Chicken

Posted on March 29, 2012 by Liz

The Australian Football League (AFL) season starts in earnest this weekend (it actually started last weekend but as there was only one match and it was between 2 Sydney teams that hardly counts).  I love AFL, always have, I think its the opportunity to yell with abandon at the TV screen, or better yet at the actual players as they run around the ground, that attracts me to it.  Since having kids my live footy experiences are limited to day games and even then I have been loathe to take Mr 2 since he turned one as I think he’d just be too much of a pain.  I used to be an Essendon member though and went every week (student concession membership was ridiculously cheap in those days).  I think my supporting reached fever pitch in about 1993 (yes I know this sounds like a long time ago but I did spend 1995 – 2007 in the UK and away from my beloved game) when Essendon won the premiership.  Although I didn’t go to the grand final I did attend the preliminary final and watched Michael Long turn the game and lead what must be one of the greatest comebacks of all time.  Michael Long has the distinction of not only being my favourite footballer of all time, (although I still have a place in my heart for Leon Baker but you’d have to be both a hardcore Bomber fan and about my age to remember him) but also is pictured here on my favourite piece of Essendon memorabilia.  This cookbook was published in 1995 and includes a recipe from each of the Essendon squad from that year.

For those outside Australia or those who avoid Australian Rules like the plague; Essendon’s nickname is the Bombers hence the books title.  This book does make entertaining reading and I am inclined to think that the players may have actually submitted recipes themselves (or at the very least asked a family member for one).  Out of a total of 42 recipes there are 6 for pasta with cream/cheese sauce, there is also one for mashed potato and another for scrambled eggs with cheese – ingredients: eggs, butter & cheese.  Michael Long himself supplies a recipe for burgers which consists of mince, bread rolls and then a list of possible fillings, so unfortunately I wont be cooking his dish today.  Instead I bypassed the big names of James Hird, Mark Harvey, Damien Hardwick, Dustin Fletcher, Matthew Lloyd and Bomber Thompson to bring you a dish from the little known Ryan O’Connor.  I have to say I have only the vaguest recollection of Ryan as a footballer, but his dish contained a decent quantity of lemongrass which is what I have a lot of in the garden at the moment thus I chose to cook it.

When I came to cook this dish I read the ingredients list and then prepared them assuming that this was a recipe for a stir fry.  The original recipe calls for whole chicken thighs which are cooked in the sauce in a frypan,  apologies to Ryan but it I think works as a stir fry – not sure about as whole pieces.

Lemongrass Chicken Stir Fry

  • 500g chicken breasts or thighs thinly sliced.
  • 1 tbspn fish sauce
  • 3  10cm lengths of lemongrass – finely cut
  • 4 spring onions
  • 2 tbspns peanut oil
  • 1 cup chicken stock
  • 1 tspn chilli paste
  • 1 tspn palm or brown sugar

Heat the oil in a wok.  Stir fry the chicken until lightly browned.  Remove from wok.  Add the lemongrass, spring onions and chilli paste, stir twice.  Add the fish sauce, stock and sugar.  Reduce by about half.  Add the chicken.  Stir to combine and then serve with rice and some stir fried or steamed Asian vegetables.

I think if I was to make this recipe again I would add a clove or two of finely chopped garlic but otherwise it worked well.  It got my partner’s approval but the kids were fairly ambivalent.  Miss 5 ate about half hers:

To see what others are preparing this week head over to the Gardener of Eden’s place.

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Harvest Monday – Mar 26th 2012

Posted on March 26, 2012 by Liz

The weather has taken a turn for the autumnal this week which frankly I could do without – especially as some days have been quite chilly.  Still it is due to warm up again later in the week and the plants don’t seem to mind so I shouldn’t complain.

In fact the eggplants have been really quite prolific of late.  Some of these went into an eggplant pickle I made yesterday.  The green chillies were used in it as well.

 

The recipe also called for ginger and I had exhausted my supply in the fridge so I ventured outside to harvest the first of this years crop.

I harvested this from the plants in the ground which are a lot smaller than my potted ones, even so this was enough for my eggplant with some left over for a curry later this week.

With the pickle safely maturing in the fridge I turned my attention to dinner and decided to make fish pie.  This called for: some silver beet, parsley, celery, lettuce for a side salad and whilst I was in the harvesting mood a few more chillies.

This wasn’t my only celery harvest, I think I harvested a bit every day this week.  The stalks are nice and thick at the moment and the plants are growing well, so it seems a good time to be eating it.

I am still getting a few tomatoes and one cucumber this week.  I also harvested a new pot of Kipfler potatoes but was really disappointed with the amount.  These were summer grown – put back into the pot after I harvested in December, so either it was simply too hot for them to set tubers or they ran out of food.  I did put some more slow release fertiliser into the pot before replanting them but perhaps not enough…

  

Otherwise my harvest was mostly about more chillies and herbs.  I have been so happy with the chillies this year and my long cayenne has flowers all over it at the moment so hopefully it is contemplating a second crop.

My final harvest of the week is cheating somewhat as it didn’t come from my trees but as I spent quite a while scrambling about under the trees at mum & dads amidst the rodent droppings (there were quite large piles of empty shells about the place) I thought I could claim it as my own.  I certainly will be eating it.

For other harvests from around the globe head on over to Daphne’s – she’s ever so hospitable.

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Fruiting against the odds

Posted on March 24, 2012 by Liz

Last year I was tempted to pull out my old passionfruit vine.  It was established in the garden when we bought the house 5 years ago and was fruiting when we moved in that July – which is in the middle of Melbourne’s winter.  I’m not sure what would have prompted it to fruit at that time of the year.   I reckon it is at least 9-10 years old if not older – the neighbours couldn’t quite remember when it was planted – only that they had fruit on their side of the fence too.  9 years is pretty old for a passionfruit – most sources seem to suggest they only live for about 5 -7 years.  It hadn’t really fruited for the last 2 years so last Autumn I decided it had to go.  Fortunately laziness got the better of me and I left it in.  Having done so I decided to fertilise it last Spring.  The vine decided to reward me with fruit.  Whilst we haven’t had a huge harvest we have had at least 30 fruit with a couple more still on the vine.

What is even more remarkable is that it is fruiting despite the condition of its trunk which looks like this:

 

 Looking at it from that angle and its quite unbelievable that it is even alive, but it is, with a good number of leaves.

There is an area on the underside of the trunk which looks marginally more healthy and it is up that part that the nutrients must be travelling.

I can’t imagine this vine will get through another year so I really will have to pull it out this winter.  Being grafted, it means I will have to poison it which I don’t like doing but there isn’t any other relatively easy way of getting rid of all those suckers.   The suckers are currently taking over and are running across next doors roof so in the spirit of good neighbourliness it has to go.  I do feel sad though as it has been a wonderful vine and I am really appreciative of this last lot of fruit.

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