Using Fenugreek leaves – Aloo Gobi Methi

Posted on June 24, 2011 by Liz

Fenugreek – How I use it.

I really like the slightly curryish taste of fenugreek leaves and I think they work well in both meat and vegetarian dishes.  I do tend to prefer them fresh to dried as the flavour is not as strong and the end result tastes fresher.  Here I have added them to aloo gobi, they
would work equally well added to a chicken curry or perhaps even in a dhal.

Aloo Gobi Methi (Potato and Cauliflower Curry with Fenugreek)

Aloo Gobi Methi

  • 3 potatoes  cut into 1cm cubes (I used desiree in the picture but any all purpose potato will do ).  You can either peel them or leave the skin on.
  • ½ cauliflower cut into florets
  • 1 large onion – finely chopped
  • 1cm cube ginger – finely chopped
  • 3 garlic cloves – finely chopped
  • 2 hot chillies – finely chopped (and some chilli powder if you want more heat)
  • ½ tspn cumin seeds
  • 2 tspns ground coriander
  • 1.5 tspns ground cumin
  • ¼ tsp turmeric
  • 1 tomato – finely chopped
  • ¼ tsp garam masala
  • 1 bunch fenugreek leaves – leaves picked off stalks.
  • Coriander to garnish
  • 4 tbspns oil
  • Water

Cook potato and cauliflower until just cooked.  I tend to boil the potato and steam the cauliflower.  Try not to overcook the vegetables or the curry will be mushy (actually this can taste good too so don’t despair if theygo a bit over).

Heat the oil in a large fry pan or saucepan.  Add cumin seeds stir for 30 seconds and add
the onion.  Fry at a med-low heat until the onion starts to brown.  Add the ginger and garlic and cook this mixture until golden brown.  Add chopped chillies. Stir and then add
ground coriander, ground cumin & turmeric with salt to taste (potatoes take a fair amount of salt).  Fry this mixture for a couple of minutes and add the tomatoes.  Turn up the heat to medium and fry for another couple of minutes.  Add about 125ml of water to make a sauce (you may need to add either slightly more or less water).  Simmer sauce for about 10 mins.  Stir in fenugreek leaves and potatoes and cauliflower.  Cook for a couple of
minutes.  Sprinkle with garam masala.  Cook for another minute or two. Top with chopped coriander leaves and serve with chapattis.

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Posted in Autumn Harvesting, Brassicas, Herbs & Spices, Potatoes, Recipes, Spring Harvesting, Spring Planting, Winter Harvesting | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments

Preserving – Chillies

Posted on June 17, 2011 by Liz

It’s mid June and I am still harvesting chillies, YAY! but I don’t think it can last too much longer.  I have a few plants with tiny chillies on them but their growth seems to have stalled.  Otherwise I am just awaiting the last of the others to ripen.  The plants will then stay pretty much dormant until in starts to warm up Spring when they should put on new growth – that’s if it doesn’t get too cold for them over winter first.  They still look pretty good at the moment so I am quite hopeful that most will make it through.

In my most recent harvest I did get enough to preserve a few for cooking.  One of the easiest ways I have found to draw out the chilli season is to process ripe chillies with a teaspoon of salt and a splash of vinegar and keep them in a sterilised jar in the fridge.  You can then add this to any recipe using chillies.  It is similar to the Indonesian Sambal Olek.

For more information on growing chillies and details on how to dry them please see my earlier Chilli post: http://suburbantomato.com/2011/04/growing-chillies-in-melbourne/

 

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Battling the Aphids – Growing Broccoli

Posted on June 16, 2011 by Liz

Apparently the name broccoli comes from Italian broccolo, which means something like: ‘the flowering top of a cabbage’.  I read this on Wikipedia – I love Wikipedia – I find that even if the info on there isn’t true its usually entertaining enough for the truth not to matter.  This is a case in point; I like the idea that all over the English speaking world there are people referring to ‘the flowering top of a cabbage’ without even knowing they are doing so.  “Please pass the flowering top of a cabbage“, “Would you like more flowering top of a cabbage“, “I’d like a side order of flowering top of a cabbage with oyster sauce”.  So regardless of the accuracy of this particular piece of Wiki knowledge I am more than happy to think it might be true.  Actually I think that Wikipedia is supposedly more reliable than the ABC, but then again maybe that’s something I read on Wikipedia…..

But I digress and for no good reason as I love broccoli, unfortunately my partner hates broccoli – a textural thing he says.  I grow it anyway though.  My partners dislike not withstanding, of all the Brassicas (brussel sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, radishes amongst others are all Brassicas), I do think its the easiest to get kids to like.  Particularly if you call it trees, which is not particularly accurate – buds would be more so but that sounds a bit too try hard to be cool for me liking.  “Hey kids, Eat your buds!” – sounds alot like an ad for some appalling breakfast cereal, so trees it is.  And trees they like – particularly when smothered in a suitably salty Asian sauce of some description (I think that not giving them much in the way of salt in their other meals means that when they get some they go a bit crazy and will even eat foodstuffs that are green).

What should I grow? Types of Broccoli:

  • What is most commonly referred to as broccoli in Australia are those varieties with large green heads and thick stalks, like the one pictured above.
  • Sprouting or Bunching Broccoli’s (usually green or purple) are broccoli’s which don’t produce a largehead, instead they produce large amounts of side shoots often on long stems.
  • Romanesco broccoli is not actually the same sub species of brassica and is more like Cauliflower in both texture and growing habit.
  • Broccoli Raab (also known as Rabe) is also a different sub species and tastes more bitter than broccoli.
  • Chinese broccoli (Kai Lan) is more similar to Broccoli Raab in flavour than to the other broccolis.
  • Broccolini is a hybrid mix of Broccoli and Kai Lan.

What is Calabrese?

Well this seems to depend on who you ask.  I have bought sprouting broccoli under the banner Calabrese and I have bought seeds called Calabrese which produce plants that were indistinguishable from the usual large headed varieties.  In general – if the person you are talking to is a cook they are more likely to be talking about a sprouting broccoli but if the person is a gardener or is selling seeds the plant could be either sprouting or regular broccoli.

The name Calabrese comes from the name of an Italian province (Calabria), which is possibly where the large headed broccoli variety was developed.   If this is true then that is the one to call Calabrese. However the most popular variety in that part of Italy is probably Purple Sprouting broccoli – so perhaps that should be called Calabrese.   I have also heard it said that strictly speaking Calabrese describes broccoli varieties with green heads while broccoli should only be used for those with purple or white.   Confused?  I am.   In the end it probably doesn’t matter a great deal as long as you know what you are growing.

Growing Broccoli

In theory Broccoli can be grown pretty much all year round in Melbourne provided you pick the right varieties.  Having said that though I think it is far easier as a winter crop as during the warmer months keeping the pests away from it can amount to a full time job.  It also takes up a fair amount of space so to grow it during summer you would have to either; have a lot of space or really really like it.

For most varieties it is recommended to sow seeds between early summer and mid autumn.  There are quite large variations between varieties thought– I have seen varieties which you can sow as early as October and others as late as August  (so pretty much all year then…) but all are able to be sown December/January so if you don’t know what seed you have try it then to be on the safe side.

This year I am growing two types of broccoli – Purple Sprouting and Green Dragon.   I acquired both as seedlings (thanks dad!) which I planted out in March.  Broccoli usually takes about 4-5 months to produce flower heads when grown from seed, and 2-3 months from seedling stage so the plants are pretty much on target.

Unlike many other Brassicas broccoli can be a pick and come again crop making it ideal for the home garden.  Once you remove the central flowering stalk the plant will generally produce smaller side shoots which can also be harvested.  The picture below shows side shoots developing:

This can go on for a couple of months with the side shoots gradually getting smaller.  As a result you can get away with one mass broccoli planting.  However what is probably a better bet if you want to have broccoli from early winter the mid-late Spring would be to sow seed in both December and March and have some early and some late plants.

Broccoli seems to have a large number of predators (is that the right world when it’s a plant?).  It is loved by both Cabbage White Butterflies and Aphids and I have found many a stalk and flower head devoured by what I am presuming is mice (or possibly rats).

Aphids:

I find the aphids are most active in late Spring and Summer, so to avoid them infesting the flower heads it is easiest to treat the plant as a winter/early Spring crop.  It can be nigh on impossible to remove them from the flowerhead without some form of insecticide once they take up  residence.  Although if anyone has any ideas on this it would be much appreciated!!!!

If you are determined to grow it at other times (and I love broccoli so understand why you would ) then you will need to inspect your plants regularly and to develop some
techniques for keeping the aphids at bay (or be happy to eat them).  If they attack the plant before it sets flowers blasting them off with water has worked fine for me, however they hide in the flower heads and once they get in that technique doesn’t work as
well.  I am always hesitant to use insecticide (even organic ones) on aphids in case I kill a ladybird (ladybirds favourite meal is aphids so if you have a lot of ladybirds your problem is probably solved)  however if you are sure you don’t have ladybirds around then pyrethrum seems to work well on aphids.

Cabbage White Butterflies:

Most active in the Spring and Autumn, cabbage white butterflies can totally destroy your plants – particularly when they are at a young seedling stage.  I deploy two
methods for keeping them at bay.

  1. Inspect the plants regularly.  Pick off any caterpillars and dispatch them.  They like to hide up the veins of the leaves so take particular care there. Also running your fingers over the leaves to squish any eggs that have been laid is a good preventative measure. The eggs look like tiny raised white/yellow lines and are a couple of mm long (funnily enough I think there is an egg I missed visible on the broccoli photo above, it is near the bottow of the photo about half way across and 2cm up from the bottom.)
  2. Protect your plants are seedling stage by covering the plant.  I use 2 litre plastic bottles (soft drink ones) and cut off the bottom and use the top section as a cloche for the plant.  They look a bit silly but better that than shredded leaves from caterpillar attack.

Other predators:

I’m afraid I have no great solution to the problem of rodents.  Last year they ate pretty much all my broccoli heads and quite a number of stems.  This happened in Spring, so I am hoping that they will stay away at least until then – so far they have this year – perhaps there are more interesting food sources…..

Interestingly they ate the central stalk from one of my plants at a fairly young age.  This plant went on to produce four reasonable size flower heads and heaps of side shoots, unfortunately what the mice didn’t eat was so infested by aphids that it was inedible anyway.  However it might be a worth while experiment to prune the broccoli plant of its main stem fairly early on and see if it increases production as in this case it did seem to.

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Posted in Autumn Planting, Brassicas, Pests and Diseases, Spring Harvesting, Summer Planting, Winter Harvesting, Winter Planting | Tagged , | 3 Comments

Herbs – Oooodles of Parsley

Posted on June 7, 2011 by Liz

OOOOOOh I have a lot of parsley at the moment.  It is even doing really well in the bed that gets zero hours sun a day in winter.  I think the trick is to get it established there in the summer when the bed gets about 4 hours a day and then it just ticks over nicely in winter (or I hope it will continue to).  I plan to see if other crops will work the same way – if I can grow chard (silver beet) in this bed it will solve a big space issue for me.

All this parsley has got me thinking about parsley recipes – always a pleasant past time.  I got some nice walnuts at the farmers market so I thought I’d give parsley and walnut
pesto a go and I was really pleased with the results.  I put it through some fettuccini and my toddler and I agreed that it was a fab winter version of a summer favourite.

To make it I used my usual basil pesto recipe swapping the basil for parsley and the walnuts for pine nuts and this was the result:

Parsley & Walnut Pesto

  • 50g walnuts
  • 1 cup roughly chopped parsley leaves (a bunch with leaves picked
    off the stalks should give about this amount)
  • 1-2 cloves garlic (to taste and dependent on strength of the
    garlic)
  • 40g parmesan
  • 3 tblspns olive oil

Blitz all ingredients, except parmesan in a food processor.   Stir through parmesan.  Taste for seasoning and season if necessary.  Serve on pasta, in soups or in any other way you fancy.

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Planning your garden – To raise or not to raise…

Posted on June 7, 2011 by Liz

Most of the people I know grow veggies in raised beds (with a couple of notable exceptions).  My father uses raised beds, my grandfather had raised beds, quite possibly his before him did too, but do you need them? They create an artificial divide between food garden and non food garden that probably doesn’t need to be there. They can be expensive and time consuming to build and yet still we persist with them.   For me though they
do have advantages – this is why I choose to grow the majority of my food crops in raised beds.

Raised beds: Raised beds are simply garden beds that are raised above the normal level of your garden soil.  There are three main reasons why I use raised beds:

  • When I was first establishing my garden there was a severe drought and the ground was incredibly hard to get water to permeate and stay relatively moist.
    Having raised beds allowed me to control where the little water that we had, from our tank, went and to get the soil wet enough to grow vegetables.   It should be noted that raised beds also lose water more quickly than the ground, so in a normal year you will usually conserve more water by gardening direct in the soil.
  • I am impatient. The area I wanted to grow vegetables in had had large shrubs on it previously and the soil was depleted of nutrients and generally poor quality
    for vegetable growing.  There are, of course, numerous ways to improve soil quality but the simplest at the time seemed to be to buy in a veggie raising mix from the local sand and soil place (Coburg Sand and Soil if anyone is interested).  If you are buying in soil you need somewhere to put it – hence raised beds.
  • The final reason is competition.  My neighbours have some very large eucalypts
    growing up against our fence and I wanted to garden in a medium that would
    allow me to dig over the soil regularly (and easily) to ensure that it didn’t
    get too root bound from their roots.  Our soil is clay as the less I have dig directly in the clay the better.

These were my main reasons for having raised beds, and they are probably fairly typical (other than asthetics and tradition) of the sorts of reasons why people use raised beds.  The other major reason is height – if bending is an issue for you then a raised bed may provide a more comfortable gardening experience.  If these things aren’t an issue for you and you don’t like the look of raised beds then you probably don’t need them.

 

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