Pumpkin Everyday – Roast Pumpkin & Cauliflower Salad with Lentils

Posted on August 10, 2011 by Liz

After my weekend of deep frying I felt the need for something a bit healthier so I turned back to my slowly diminishing pumpkin stash and made this wholesome but delicious salad.  You will note the presence of my vegetable of the moment – YAY for cauliflower!  Perhaps I should call this post Cauliflower Everyday although I only have a few left in the garden so may have to reign my eating in a bit.

Roast Pumpkin & Cauliflower Salad with Lentils (Serves 2 as a lunch dish)

  • 1 cup puy lentils
  • Either 1 carrot, a stick of celery, bunch of parsley, sprigs of thyme and water or about 1.5 cups vegetable stock.
  • 1 tomato diced
  • 250g diced (about 1cm cubes) pumpkin
  • Half a medium cauliflower – seperated into florets
  • Olive oil for roasting
  • Feta for crumbling over the top

Dressing

  • 3 tblspns olive oil
  • Juice and finely grated rind of a lemon.
  • 1/2 tsp dijon mustard
  • 2 cups chopped mixed herbs (I used a mixture of parsley, mint, coriander, dill, chervil and spring onion)

Heat the oven to 200.  Coat the pumpkin and cauliflower in olive oil and roast until cooked.

Meanwhile cook the lentils and tomato in either the stock or cover with water and add the carrot, celery, parsley and thyme for flavouring.

To make the dressing whizz all the dressing ingredients in a food processor.  Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Once the lentils are cooked drain them and leave to cool and remove the flavouring ingredients if used.

To complete the salad mix the lentils with the roasted pumpkin and cauliflower.  Dress with herb dressing, check seasoning and crumble feta on top to serve.

There are a couple of great alternatives which also work well with this salad.

  1. Use different vegetables – Capsicum, eggplant, beetroot, carrots could all be used successfully.
  2. Chop the herbs rather than process them in the dressing.  This will make for a more textured salad.

 

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Potato Experiments

Posted on August 9, 2011 by Liz

My seed potatoes finally arrived about a week ago.  I ordered 3 varieties this year – Kipfler, Dutch Cream and Pink Fir Apple.  I grew Kipfler last year and was so pleased with them I decided to grow them and a couple more varieties.  I had heard great things about Dutch Cream and Pink Fir Apple is a salad variety I used to buy a lot at the farmers markets in England.

Although I don’t have much experience with growing them I do like the idea of growing potatoes – I think its that they are a carbohydrate that makes their production exciting – it somehow lends realism to the idea of a meal from the garden.  Also digging them up is a lot of fun.

How I grow Potatoes:

Last year I grow potatoes both in the ground and in pots.  The pots were most productive but I suspect this is largely because the plants in the ground got little sun and were competing with some pretty large eucalypts for nutrients.  Frankly I’m supplied I got anything out of them at all.  Here are some plants which arrived post harvesting amidst my parsley.

This year I think I will only grow them in containers but experiment with 2 different methods.  For both I am using the same 40cm pots.  One pot I am filling up pretty much to the top with potting mix and then planting my potatoes about 5 cm under.  I will mulch heavily when the plants are growing to ensure that no light penetrates to the forming tubers.  The other pot I am filling by a third and planting the potatoes about 5cm under.

In the 2nd method the idea is that you add more potting mix as the plant grows allowing it to produce potatoes throughout the pot.  It will be interesting to see the difference (if any) between yields using each method.  Last year I just sowed my seed potatoes using the first method and my best container produced 70 potatoes out of the 1 seed potato in a 40cm pot so if the second method produces even more I will be more than happy.

I’m interested to see what proportion of the year I can successfully grow potatoes in.  I suspect you can actually grow potatoes year round in Melbourne.  I harvested some from the above plants a week or so ago and those plants sprung up in mid Autumn.  I know people who sow from May onwards so that pretty much covers the whole year.  I am planning monthly plantings starting with these seed potatoes and then sowing their progeny later in the year.  It seems I am going to need a lot of pots…….

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Monday Harvest – 8th August 2011

Posted on August 8, 2011 by Liz

Melbourne has had some warm, warm, warm days this week (well above 20 degrees Celsius anyway) – although normal service has now been resumed and we are back to winter temperatures (mid teens) but for awhile there it definitely looked like Spring had come early.  It’ll be interesting to see how the plants react.

One plant that did seem to react almost instantaneously was my mint which had heaps of harvest-able leaves so I did just that.

But that was on Sunday and I should really have started with Tuesday shouldn’t I?  On Tuesday I had a mixed salad for lunch again.

Later in the week and it was all about the brassicas.  I actually harvested 3 cauliflowers this week – 2 of which became part of these pakoras, with the mint from above going into a chutney I served alongside.

On Saturday I had people over for dinner and we had curries – so curry leaves, chillies and coriander were needed.  I also used the other cauliflower then – I love cauliflower cooked with ginger, cumin and chilli.  Delicious.

And that was about it for this week – lots of flavourings but aside from the cauliflower not much substance.  Oh well, the purple sprouting broccolli must start producing soon….surely….

For other Monday Harvests check out Daphne’s Dandelions blog.

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More Adventures with Cauliflower – Pakoras

Posted on August 7, 2011 by Liz

You would think that I would learn wouldn’t you?  Yet again I have planted all my cauliflower plants from the same punnet of seedlings on the same day and yet again I am mildly surprised when I have most of them maturing at pretty much the same time.

Oh well its not the worst problem to have…..

As a result of this glut I am cooking a lot of cauliflower.  Today I had a play with pakora recipes.  I often find cauliflower pakoras a bit blah – heavy batter with too much cauliflower inside.  This tends to happen when you cook large dense florets in overly thick batter.  I have found two ways around this – both of which work well dependant what sort of cauliflower you have.    If you have home grown cauliflower with spread out florets (as in the pic above) then the traditional method of battering the florets works well as the batter can get into the florets much better. The cauliflower also cooks much more quickly as the oil can penetrate the florets.  If, on the other hand, you have store bought cauliflower with a dense head then I like the pakora cooked differently to the traditional method – see the second method below.

Cauliflower Pakoras

For both my pakora methods the ingredients are pretty much the same:

  • 1 cauliflower
  • 50g besam (gram or chickpea flour)
  • 1/4 tsp turmeric
  • 1 tsp cumin seeds
  • 1 tsp ground cumin
  • 1/2 tsp garam masala
  • 1/2 tsp chilli power (or to taste)
  • 1/2 salt (or to taste)

Cauliflower Pakoras Method 1:

Break the cauliflower into florets.  Combine all the other ingredients, (except the cauliflower) and mix in 50ml of water to form a batter.  Your batter should be runny – if you think yours is a bit thick add a little more water.  Coat the florets in the batter.

Deep fry in hot oil until golden.  Serve with a mint chutney or mint yoghurt – see recipe below.

Cauliflower Pakoras Method 2

Additional ingredient: 1 egg beaten (you could try using water to bring the mixture together instead of the egg)

Grate the cauliflower.  Mix the remaining ingredients together.  Add the cauliflower.  Using your hands bring the mixture together into small balls or small flat discs.

Deep fry in hot oil.  Serve with a mint chutney or mint yoghurt – see recipe below.

Chutneys:

I absolutely love these chutneys and regularly serve the first one with any curry I am eating or simply with poppadoms – it is fabulous!  The second is my kids favourite and my preference for serving with pakoras or bhajis.  Yum.

Mint & Coriander Chutney

  • A bunch of mint (about 1 cups worth of leaves)
  • A bunch of coriander (as for mint)
  • 4 spring onions (or half a small onion) chopped
  • 2 chillis (more or less to taste)
  • Juice of one lemon (or lime if you prefer)
  • 1 tsp sugar
  • 1/4 tsp salt

Whizz all the above ingredients in a food processor.  Serve.

Mint and Coriander Yoghurt Chutney

Add a tablespoon of the above chutney to a cup of yoghurt.  Stir to combine.

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July – The Wrap Up

Posted on August 5, 2011 by Liz

I am sitting here after one of the warmest August weeks in Melbourne ever – it did include the warmest day for the first week of August ever – 23 degrees from memory.  Unfortunately the forecast is for normal service to be resumed next week and the temperature to go back to mid teens.  More scary than the prospect of more cold though is the fact that once again we have had two drier than average months in a row.  I know that it’s probably a little soon to worry but I think I’d feel just a bit happier if it would rain.  Still the dams are a 60% so hopefully watering our veg wont be restricted too much even if it is dry.  I do have a tank but unless it rains a fair bit I still have to use the odd bit of mains water.

July was dry, other than that it was well a normal winter month.  On the plus side: My winter crops grew nicely.  I finally harvested some leeks.  My potatoes arrived and are ready for planting.  I had a few great winter garden salads.  I sowed what I hope will go on to be a beautiful summer crop of tomatoes and I generally prepared for Spring.  On the down side I finished the last of my home grown garlic – I will have to buy it from now until about Christmas which is a bit depressing.  I have planted more this year so hopefully next year I wont run out so early.    The other negative is that I have just noticed the annoying gum leave in the bottom corner of the above photo – still it is fairly representative of my garden – I spend a lot of time moving gum leaves off my beds.  Still all in all it wasn’t too bad a month at all really.

For a full record of what I ate from the garden and did in the garden in July click here: July 2011

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