Top 5 – Pantry items for the Kitchen Gardener

Posted on April 24, 2012 by Liz

When I first thought of doing these Top 5’s this was pencilled in as one to do.  Then The
New Goodlife did a similar one so I put mine back a few weeks.

I am making a concerted effort this year to get the absolute most I can from my garden produce.  Although I have always used a lot of my harvest in my evening meals, last year I ate out at lunch-time a lot and as a result probably under-utilised what I had in the garden.  This year a change in my routine has meant that I am home at lunchtime most days of the week so I have been making sure I make something from the garden each day.  These are the ingredients I have in the pantry at all times to make sure I can make both lunch and dinner easily and using as much from the garden as possible.  Without these ingredients I would struggle to put together something edible from my produce, but with them I can make something appetising out of almost everything I grow.

 1. Extra Virgin Olive Oil – I love good olive oil.  I usually try and buy Mount Zero’s Extra Virgin Oil which they sell at Melbourne’s farmers markets.  It’s a lovely full flavoured oil and works perfectly with vegetables.  Incidentally Mount Zero also sell lovely lentils grown in the Grampians and are definitely worth seeking out at the Collingwood Children’s Farm market.  I use Olive oil pretty liberally (as my bank balance will attest) and find it indispensable when making everything from salad dressings, through sauces to finishing stews.  With a bit of olive oil and salt, tomatoes and basil become lunch, a puree becomes a dip, and a soup turns from mundane to delicious.

2. Nuts – Nuts are a great friend of the kitchen gardener.  Nuts can turn a salad into a meal.  They can add crunch to a pasta dish and make fabulous sauces.  One of my favourite ways of using my produce when I just have a bit of this and a bit of that is to make gado – gado.  Gado-gado is essentially a salad (warm or cold) of either cooked or raw vegetables smothered in a peanut (satay) sauce.  But the favourite sauce of the kitchen gardener must be pesto.  Basil pesto made with basil and pine nuts.  Parlsey pesto made with walnuts.  Capsicum pesto featuring almonds.  The possibilities are really only limited by what you have in the garden and your imagination.

3. Anchovies – I am a big fan of anchovies.  Not only do they add depth of flavour.  Not only do they give a dish a lovely salty kick.  Not only do they taste great on pizza (a great kitchen garden meal).  But they are an excellent source of calcium (due to the fact that you eat the bones).  My two absolute favourite things to do with anchovies are to put them in a puttanesca sauce and to use them in a salsa verde sauce/dressing.

4. Spices – Too broad a heading? Well if I have to narrow it down I will.  As much as I adore; coriander, cinnamon, fennel seeds, nutmeg, ginger, allspice, mustard seeds, and cardamon, my favourite has to be cumin.  I use a lot of cumin.  Its indispensable in curries, but I also use it in a range of other dishes; scattered on roasted veggies, as a warm spicy note in soups, and along with mustard seeds, chillies and curry leaves as a tempered flavouring for most vegetables.

5. Salt- My friend Julie came over for lunch today and took a few photos for this post.  The anchovies, olive oil and this picture (which, as you can tell, my son helped with….) of my last, and to me probably most indispensable, pantry item for the kitchen gardener were taken by her.  Salt gets a bad press.  Sure its not particularly good for you, but it does have a remarkable ability to transform the taste of food.  Salt and vegetables are made for each other.  Salt preserves them, it helps them retain colour and it makes them taste delicious.  My personal (and very non-medical) view is that it is better to use a bit (and you don’t need that much) of salt on vegetables to ensure they are eaten rather than be looking at a heap of uneaten food.

Looking for more – The New Goodlife will hopefully have another Top 5 to sate your appetite.

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Monday Harvest – April 23rd

Posted on April 23, 2012 by Liz

This week I thought I’d bookend this post with my daughters favourite harvests of the week.  To begin we have her ‘helping’ photograph the vegetables.  She often ‘helps’ although this usually involves more of her and less of the vegetable.  On this occasion we have reached a happy medium.

Once this ginger’s use as a shadow puppet was exhausted it was used in a couple of curries.  As were the below curry leaves.  I’m making the most of the curry tree at the moment before the leaves yellow in the cool of winter.

We are still harvesting a few of the summer vegetables; the occasional tomato – its really only the Rouge de Marmande which is still cropping.  Some eggplants and a capsicum which I was sick of waiting for it to turn red.  And of course some chillies – this week scotch bonnets and jalapenos.

  

My latest plantings of lettuce and salad leaves are beginning to mature.  The basket includes: rocket, mustard, parsley, basil, lettuce, and baby beetroot leaves.  It also includes some fairly invisible beans.  My jade plants are still producing – they might not germinate well but they sure produce for a good long time.

As you will have noticed there was also a radish in the basket.  That one was harvested before my 2 year old son decided to make ‘soup’ with the remainder of my crop – here are some I saved from the pot.  A pot which also contained much mud, sand and who knows what else.

They went into salads.  The mint and spring onions below became a fresh chutney to serve with curry.  I am a big fan of mint chutney and made it twice this week.

 

I started harvesting my Tuscan Kale this week, that and the potatoes became the Caldo Verde I posted about last week.  I also continue to harvest beetroots – this one I went into spiced vinegar and into the fridge.

   

My final harvest – and my daughters favourite was something of a surprise as I didn’t think any were quite ready yet.  I found this beauty on the lawn under the tree and it was perfectly ripe.  Welcome to tamarillo season!

For other harvests from around the globe get yourself across to Daphne’s.

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Lumpy bits – Citrus Gall Wasp

Posted on April 20, 2012 by Liz

My citrus are under attack, I have found the dreaded lumps on my Eureka Lemon, Meyer Lemon, Orange and Lime.  Unlike many of Australia’s pests citrus gall wasp is actually a native annoyance.  Having lived for years in our native limes it is now more likely to make its home in backyard lemons and limes along Australia’s East Coast.  It has so far ignored my finger lime in favour of its imported cousins.  Citrus gall wasp is a tiny wasp which lays it eggs in the new growth of citrus trees and as the larvae grow bumps appear on the branches of the trees.

When the larvae emerge in early Spring they leave small tell tale holes in the bumps.  Citrus gall wasp has the ability to severely limit the growth of trees, so my understanding is that it is best to do something about it.  With my lemon, which is in the ground, and has been for a couple of years, I pruned off the affected branches and placed them in the garbage.  With my dwarf potted citrus – the Meyer lemon, Tahitian Lime and the Navel Orange to prune off the affected branches would be to decimate the tree completely.  With these I have tried a different tact.  I have taken a slice out of each bump which although it is damaging the tree it is also killing the larvae.  As you can see below – the larvae have fallen out of the little holes in each bump.  Whether this will have gotten all the larvae in each lump remains to be seen but I felt it was more likely to save the tree than radical pruning would.

Whether this will be a completely successful method of getting rid of citrus gall wasp remains to be seen.  At the very least it should limit the number of larvae hatching.  I will isolate the affected plants in late winter (you should act against the wasp by late August as they hatch soon after) to try and stop it spreading to my other potted citrus.  I do hope I get rid of it as I love my citrus and they aren’t cheap to replace.  Its always the tinniest creatures that seem to do the most damage, as my black aphid eaten garlic chives will attest.

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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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