Eggplant – A mini glut

Posted on March 22, 2012 by Liz

I spent a bit of time this afternoon in a valiant attempt to photograph some eggplants.  I don’t have a lot of time to do my photography.  I try to slot it in during TV watching time but the average length of an ABC for Kids show is about 10 minutes – unless its Play School, then I get close to half an hour.

Eggplants are really hard to photograph I’ve discovered.  Their reflective skins seem to play havoc with the camera and although my camera is a digital SLR, the lens is pre digital and doesn’t communicate well enough with the body for me to adjust any of the settings.  This means I have to rely on what the camera comes up with and with eggplant it doesn’t seem to come up with anything very spectacular.   I tried a number of different options to help it along (Play school was on at photography time today).  Shade, sun, on a colourful tray, against a pale background.  Not sure which worked best but I know I wont be trying the in the sun concept again….

 

 

Anyway I was really keen to photograph the eggplants as I have completely failed to photograph tonight’s dish.

I’ve harvested about  2kg of eggplant in the past week or so.  Not a ridiculous amount by any means, but enough that I have had to put some thought into what I’m going to make with it.  I’ve made a couple of eggplant curries, some involtini and my old favourite standby dip – baba ganoush.  It is this last one that I am going to share with you today.

The name Baba ganoush is a transliteration of the Arabic name for what essentially an eggplant puree.  Baba ganoush is eaten throughout the Middle East, although there are regional variations in the recipe.  There are also very similar dishes in Turkey and parts of Eastern Europe.  What all have in common is that the eggplant is pureed (usually after roasting and blackening) and combined with garlic, an acid – usually lemon juice but I have seen recipes with vinegar in them, and salt.  Other common flavourings are: tahini, chilli, parsley, and cumin.

Baba Ganoush

  • 1 large eggplant (mine are Bonica)
  • 1 tsp tahini (or to taste)
  • 1 clove of garlic – crushed
  • 1 tbspn extra virgin olive oil
  • juice of half a lemon
  • pinch salt

Keeping the eggplant whole roast it over a flame so that the skin blackens*.   Leave to cool a bit then remove the skin.  Place the eggplant and all the other ingredients in a food processor.  Whizz.  Taste and adjust seasoning, lemon juice and tahini if necessary.  Allow to cool completely.  Serve.  I like it with a bit of finely chopped parsley and eat it with bread – ideally Turkish.

*There are a number of ways to do the roasting:

I often put it in the oven to cook, then put it on the BBQ grill to blacken.  Alternatively you could do it all on the BBQ.  If you have a gas cooker and some tongs you can hold it over the gas ring, turning periodically, until cooked – about 20 mins or so.  Or most excitingly (I’m presuming); if you have a blow torch like L then you could always use it.

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

Share
Posted in Autumn Harvesting, Chillies, Capsicum & Eggplant, Recipes | Tagged , | 27 Comments

Top 5 – Ways with Silver Beet

Posted on March 20, 2012 by Liz

After talking up the fabulousness of Silver Beet a couple of posts ago I thought it only fitting that it be the subject of this weeks top 5, especially as quite a few people said they didn’t like the stuff.

So in an effort to dispel the suggestion that Chard is not an appetising vegetable these are my Top 5 ways with Silver Beet or Chard.

1. Chicken Saag – Yes I know that Saag is the Hindi word for Spinach and this is a post about silverbeet but I really, really, really like using Chard in this curry.  I cook the silver beet and puree it before adding it to the curry so it add flavour and colour without texture.  This seems to be a huge plus for the kids who will happily eat platefuls of this curry – provided I don’t add too much chilli that is.

2. Silver Beet & Ricotta Cannelloni – Yeah  I know I’m just taking yet another spinach recipe and substituting chard, but it works and spinach doesn’t grow well in Melbourne’s summer which is when you have the rest of the ingredients on tap.  I fill my cannelloni with a mixture of sauteed onion, ricotta, grated Parmesan and a bit of egg.  I then place the filled cannelloni in a baking dish, top with tomato sauce (with a bit of chilli in it) then add a layer of bechamel and bake.  I could happily eat this every other day and not get bored of it.  Real comfort food and delicious to boot.

3. Spanakopita – I love Spanakopita, there’s something about the combination of salty feta and the slightly astringent lemony flavour of silver beet that just works so well.  The way I make it is to layer 10 sheets of filo pastry brushed with melted butter into a baking dish add a mixture of feta, ricotta, egg, sauteed onion and silver beet (much like the filling in the Spinach & Feta Triangle recipe), then add 10 more sheets of butter brushed filo before baking.

4. Silver Beet & Cannelini Bean Soup – The idea for this recipe came from a friend of mine for whom this is a fail safe recipe that all the family enjoys.  I love the combination of Silver beet and beans and sitting on some lovely sour dough bread.  When topped with cheese this makes a substantial lunch or pleasant dinner.

5. Boiled and served with gravy –  Silver beet is perhaps the vegetable that, whenever I eat it it immediately transports me back to childhood.  Served either with a knob of butter and black pepper, or better yet with gravy alongside a roast chicken it brings back memories of childhood meals .  I think its because boiled (or steamed) silver beet has a really distinctive taste and its a taste that I experienced a lot in childhood but not as much since.  Silver beet was a regular part of my mums meat and 3 veg meals.  It would have usually been a Fordhork Giant type variety – the huge ones with the crinkly leaves and she would always leave too much stalk attached for my liking.  To this day I don’t really like the stalks and remove them before chopping the leaves.  After leaving home it wasn’t a vegetable I bought regularly  (in fact as a student I don’t recall buying many vegetables, I tended to subsist on a diet of two minute noodles and baked beans – cheap and relatively filling).  Then after my impoverished student days I went to Britain and I don’t recall seeing it in the shops much there then.  Perhaps I didn’t look hard enough, or perhaps its more of an Australian thing to eat.  Regardless though I eat a lot of it now, but rarely do I enjoy it more than I when I eat a whole big mound of it covered in gravy, alongside a roast chicken.  Incidentally that gravy needs to by made with roasting tray juices, flour and a spoon of Vegemite added for both flavour and salt.  Anything else just wouldn’t be the same.

 

Share
Posted in Greens - Lettuce, Spinach, Beets, Recipes, Top 5 | Tagged | 28 Comments

Monday Harvest – Mar 19th 2012

Posted on March 19, 2012 by Liz

I’ve just gotten back from a long weekend on the Bellarine Peninsula, staying in Queenscliffe.  We had a lovely time; paddling in the sea, exploring rock pools, eating fish and chips and generally enjoying what the weather people say might be the last warm weather for a while.  The few days away meant I didn’t harvest as much as usual, except that is for chillies – I harvested a fair few of them.

As you can see in the above photo I am also still harvesting passionfruits.  The kids & I eat them as quickly as they arrive so I haven’t made anything new with them for a while.  My fig thief seems to have moved on so I am enjoying a few figs at the moment, I haven’t been doing anything more exciting than simply eating them either.  I harvested another eggplant and have quite a number of the bushes almost ready, including some of the Lebanese type which I will probably include next week.  The final item in the basket is a capsicum from the second round of fruit from one of my 2 year old plants.

After the assault on the eyes of my first harvest I thought the second I wrote about should be a soothing green.  These spring onions, mint and chilli went into a mint relish I served alongside a chicken curry.

As you may have noticed in my previous post I am harvesting rainbow chard at the moment.  This bunch went into a smoked trout quiche that I managed to overcook and thus it wasn’t nearly as delicious as it should have been.

I am continuing to harvest cherry tomatoes.  I have slicing tomatoes forming but none are ready to harvest at the moment.  The Black Cherry, Tommy Toe and another cherry variety are still bearing fruit – most of which gets eaten straight off the plants by the kids.

Also in the bowl are a fig, a passionfruit, one of the few strawberries not to be eaten on sight and a tomatillo.  The first tomatillo I’ve ever grown in fact.  I’m not really sure what to do with it.  I’m presuming it is ripe, the outside casing went all papery like a Cape Gooseberry does, but it seems quite hard to me.  Perhaps I’ll look at it for a while and eventually taste it.

My final harvest I forgot to photograph (actually I often forget to photograph things but this I remembered I’d forgotten earlier than usual) so I photographed what it made.  Basil pesto on spaghetti.

  

To have a look at other harvests from around the world hop on over to Daphne’s Dandelions.

Share
Posted in Autumn Harvesting | Tagged | 35 Comments

All the colours of the rainbow – Silver Beet

Posted on March 17, 2012 by Liz

I’m in a quandary about Silver Beet, or Chard as it is often called.  I love it, I find it really versatile to cook with – I use it both for its own sake and as a substitute for spinach.  It’s a really forgiving plant to grow: happy in sun but not adverse to shade.  It seems to require little in the way of extra attention beyond fairly regular watering.  Despite the odd caterpillar hole it is reasonably pest resistant and if succession planted to get through the tendency to bolt in Spring it can provide harvests all year round in Melbourne.   The quandary is not whether to grow it, rather which variety should I grow?   If I was to consider the matter on a purely rational basis then I would always grow the green stemmed varieties.  I grow both a variety called perpetual spinach and another Italian one the name of which I unfortunately tore off the seed packets a couple of years ago and now it is lost forever.  I find the green stemmed ones are the easiest to grow, they cope best with shade, are always productive and avoid the mildew I find the others can succumb to.  But then I get seduced by colour of the rainbow varieties.  Beautiful aren’t they?

 

Share
Posted in Greens - Lettuce, Spinach, Beets | Tagged | 27 Comments

Puttanesca

Posted on March 15, 2012 by Liz

I cook pasta at least once a week, actually that sentence should probably read I cook Pasta Puttanesca about once a week.  I cook pasta more often but serve it with different sauces on the other days.  Puttanesca, or prostitutes pasta if you want to be accurate about where the name derives, is the house (I’m not sure what this says about the house but still…)  favourite sauce – as voted for by me and the kids.  My partner doesn’t like  olives so I do a different sauce for him…

Puttanesca

Is it all 2 year olds that prefer hands to cutlery or just mine?

Although it does use a few store cupboard ingredients it is very much a kitchen garden sauce, especially the way I make it, with a decent amount of both tomato and parsley.  Intriguingly I did a quick search for puttanesca recipes on the net as I was writing this and although I’ve always made it with lots of parsley, many of the recipes substitute basil instead.  Depends on the palate of the prostitute perhaps?

Puttanesca Sauce (this is enough sauce for about 350g of dry pasta – I usually use spaghetti).  Incidently I usually use more parsley than shown in the pic below – my plants are looking a bit overharvested so I thought I’d give them a bit of a rest this week.

  • 3 tbpns olive oil
  • 6 large tomatoes or 1 pint of passata or 1 can tomatoes
  • 1 onion – finely chopped
  • 1 clove garlic – crushed
  • 1 tblspn capers
  • 4 anchovy fillets
  • 1 hot chilli or 1 tsp chilli paste
  • 20 black olives (I use Kalamata)
  • 1 large bunch flat leaf parsley – chopped

Heat the oil and fry the onion until soft, add the garlic and stir.  Add the anchovies and chilli and fry until the anchovies disintegrate.  Add the tomatoes.  Cook until the tomatoes dissolve and take on a sauce consistency.  Add the olives, capers and half the parsley.  Cook for another couple of minutes.

Combine with cooked pasta of choice – I particularly enjoy this sauce with spaghetti.  Transfer to serving plates and top with the remainder of the parsley.  Top with parmesan.  Serve.  Delicious and highly addictive.

To take a look at what others are cooking this week travel over to the Gardener of Eden.

Share
Posted in Herbs & Spices, Recipes, Tomatoes | Tagged , , | 24 Comments