THE AROMAS OF COOKING FROM THE GARDEN

 

Autumn is an abundant time in South Australian fruit and vegetable gardens and sometimes it is hard to keep up with all the produce. Kitchens can be overflowing with aromatic ripe mangoes like those from my mother's garden, pans full of rich tomato flavours to be bottled for winter pasta meals, quinces bubbling away to produce jellies and pastes, roasting capsicums for preserving in olive oil, food processors working overtime making basil or rocket pesto packed with the punch of garlic and parmesan cheese and preserving pans heaving with late season, dark red plums being made into jams and sauces.

 

I so wish we had smell-a-blog so we could visit each others kitchens and smell the aromas of the foods we are cooking from the produce in our gardens. Barb gave me a box of golden delicious apples and I have lightly stewed  most of them to put into breakfast sized portions in the freezer because I love stewed fruit with my yoghurt and nuts and seeds.

 

 

 

 

 

 

But after that I had all the cores left, so I made apple and jaggery tea and THAT is what is the latest smell in my kitchen right now. 

 

 

 

 

 

Earlier this morning I started making a curry from some bits and pieces of feral goat that were on special at Wild Oz at the Central Market. I used my favourite Rick Stein recipe and this is how it looks now, several hours later. There are lots of vegetables from the garden in it too, some pureed and slowly simmered with spices down to a thick, rich sauce, with an aroma to make you go weak at the knees!

 

 

The green leaves in the curry is the bitter outside leaves of some Chicory Trevise that Deb sowed for me months ago. They hold their colour even when cooked. The central heart is such a gorgeous colour I will cook it separately another day, so I can marvel at it on my plate before I eat it. Unlike some other greens, this has not gone to seed in the hot weather and still looks fresh and new in the garden.

 

Although not in the original recipe, I added quite a few Red Cornos and Yellow Cornos capsicums from the garden. The tomatoes were some of Glenys' magnificent specimens and the plants look like they will still be producing at Christmas!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ian has been making Hot Cross Buns, in a Kitchen Garden in France..... imagine how wonderful his kitchen smells.

WALNUTS; FROM TREE TO TABLE

  One day recently I noticed a whole lot of green balls hanging from a tree at Glenys' s and went to see what they were. Some of the green balls had split open at the bottom and there, about to fall out of each ball, was a walnut. I was so excited and started gathering them up until I had more than I could carry and went to get a basket. I have written a lot of stuff about vegetables and fruit so it may surprise you to know that I have never seen walnuts growing before. Lots of people have shown me their walnut trees but never when they have had walnuts on them and friends have given me walnuts from their trees, but I have never actually seen them growing. 

Later I found a nut cracker and openned a couple and found them to be full and nicely coloured but very soft. Then I was worried I had picked them too soon. But how could this be so when they were falling out already? Anyway that was a week or so ago and I hadn't eaten any more since. Then it was coming up to Wednesday gardening and it was my turn to cook.... and I thought about the fantastically delicious walnut tarts I had eaten in France..... and I noticed I had a couple of recipes, one in French in a book I had bought in France and the other in Stephanie Alexander's book "Cooking and Travelling in South West France", in English. So I decided to make a sort of combination of the two. I tried another couple of walnuts and now they had hardened up and were perfect. Today was the day I made walnut tart, my way.....

I don't know why but I was quite restless all night, and this darn walnut tart was on my mind. So, once it was getting light I got up and thought ..... well if I make it early and it is awful then I will have time to make something else before the garden girls arrive. First thing to do was to crack open the walnuts, enough to make 300g. Well, as it turned out, first thing was to find some scales to weigh them...and it took me a while to work out how to adjust these giant, old-style scales I eventually found....and then I realised I didn't have a flan dish...or a measuring jug..... oh, the things you don't think of when you are at someone else's house....

I turned on the radio, sat at the kitchen table in my pj's and began the little job of getting 300g of walnuts assembled.... I thought I might be getting close at one stage..... but the scales said no.... so on and on I went and time ticked by.... At somewhere around 45 minutes of work my hands were getting sore from the sharp bits of shell and I was getting hungry so I had breakfast, got dressed, tidied the place up a bit then got back to work. It took me a good hour to shell 300g walnuts! A few were black and they were all quite small, but I had not bargained on so much time to complete step 1 of the recipe. Actually the recipe just said 300g walnuts, and did not even mention all the work involved in getting thus far, including the picking and shelling. Slow food.... is slow.

Time to make the pastry. Now, I love making pastry so no problem..... but it was a little different to the method I usually use and I had to keep putting my glasses on and reading the recipe again and again and by now it was far too late to contemplate making something else. Then I couldn't find a rolling pin so I did the French thing and used a bottle of wine! This recipe also said bake blind which means lining the pastry-lined flan dish with greaseproof paper and filling it with dried peas and beans and cooking it for a while before taking all that out and pouring in the filling. I don't usually bother with baking blind....I am a lazy cook, but this is a special French recipe and I thought I would do it. Problem..... no dried beans..... so I though I would be clever (hahahaha). I had plenty of pastry so I just flopped the excess over the rim of the flan dish (all I could find actually was a cake tin) to stop it all falling into the centre as it heated in the oven.....Never ever try this!.... So now I had a big, soggy mess of hot pastry to sort out!!

Although it was very cold this morning, by this time I was very hot and bothered and just working in my short sleeves. After a lot of tricky manoeuvring I got all sides of the pastry to stay put at once but it was very soggy and uncooked. Undaunted, I soldiered on making the filling, changing it to make it more like those I had so enjoyed in France but ashamed to even use "France" together with my hopeless version, in the same breath! It was hard to measure small quantities of ingredients on scales meant to weigh about 15kg of produce..... but it was all I had and anyway this was a tart not a sponge cake so it should be ok....

After the recommended cooking time of 45 minutes, it was nicely browned, and the pastry was mostly doing the right thing..... sort of.... but it was still unset. Of course.... mine was all cramped up in a cake time, with horrible soggy, raw pastry so it was bound to take longer. Eventually I did Sally's trick.... turn the oven off, leave the tart/ cake/ whatever/ in the oven and let it sort itself out while you get on with the gardening.

Half an hour before we were due to eat, I removed the tart from the oven and I couldn't believe my eyes.... surely this was not my walnut tart! This tart was perfect.....and the kitchen smelled so good and the pastry..... oo la la la..... flaky, lightly browned and probably the best pastry I have ever made! I dusted the filling lightly with icing sugar to disguise the rough bits and in they all came, the garden group girls I mean..... and gazed in awe at my masterpiece.... and after the first mouthful..... silence.... then those sounds people make when eating something really really good......mmmmmmmm, oohhhhhh, wowwwww.....

And you know..... I never told them about the near disaster...and that it took me 3 hours to make it..... and unless they read this, they will never know..... they just think I am so good at walnut tarts.... promise you won't say a word.....

The Aussie Backyard Gardener

 

Click here to see more photos.

Hills and Plains Seed Savers: an autumn Sunday

A couple of dozen of our seed savers turned out for a Sunday afternoon tour of Andrew’s garden and Claudia’s kitchen, all of which was just a prelude to the ritual eating and drinking and sitting around in autumn sunshine (and a few drops of rain) that makes these get-togethers such a pleasant way to learn more about each other’s gardening experiences as well as weird and wonderful fruit and vegetables.

Here are a few photos, taken by Kate using Andrew’s camera…

  (From left to right) Pumpkin patch, spring onions, spinach and chard, luffas

Andrew explaining that he grew a zucchini “this big!” by humping a watering can for two hours a day throughout spring and summer.

Claudia standing in the kitchen doorway and explaining lacto-fermented vegetables while the husbands tried to figure out if their wives were planning to make them eat pickled carrots and ginger before each meal from now on…

“OK, enough gardens and vegetables”, said Barb, “let’s eat this great cake I made!”

And so on to the feasting!

And then everyone went home just as Bill was turning up from tango dancing classes, and so he and Andrew ate all the leftovers!

GETTING STARTED IN CONTAINERS

I received an email today from someone who has recently immigrated to Australia from the UK and is renting a house in the Adelaide hills. They would like to grow some food and wonder how on earth they get started, when, in his own words, Neil says he has never grown anything in his life. Having myself recently spent some time in France, with an Englishman, trying to grow vegetables, I feel I can perhaps understand how daunting it must be to attempt to grow anything in such a different climate, without some help. So, Neil and family, here is something to help you make a start.

Things you probably don't realise:

• We have a Mediterranean climate.... think of southern France/ Italy/Greece/ Lebanon.
• As we move into autumn, the weather gets more conducive to growing vegetables. I grow food all year round with no special equipment.
• It is highly unlikely you will ever overwater your vegetables enough to kill them, especially if you grow things in foam boxes, with good drainage holes punched in the bottom.
• It is highly unlikely you will get frost enough to kill anything, unless you are in a low, flat spot. Overnight temperatures may dip to zero degrees once in a blue moon.
• Full sun in the UK is not like full sun here. Here, most leaf vegetables will grow in the shade or with a bit of sun, even through winter but the more winter sun the faster they grow. In summer you will need to give all your vegetables some shade, some of the time. This never used to be the case but it is now.
• It is good that you have never grown anything before because you don't have fixed ideas about how things should be!

Getting started:

• Other people will have different ideas but this is what I would do.
• Foam boxes 1,2 and 3: It is cheapest to grow from seed but since you are new and keen to start, I recommend you go to a garden centre and buy some seedlings of the following vegetables -1 punnet of  lettuce, 1 of beetroot and/or spinach, and a punnet of mixed Asian greens.
• Foam box 4: Some herbs are dead easy to grow from seed: parsley, chervil, coriander, chives.
• Foam box 5: Sugar snap pea seeds.
• Into a wheelbarrow or on the driveway, mix the following:  3 bags S.A. Composters compost (it is THE best....and worth every cent), 1 bag some kind of composted manure (cow, zoo, chicken),1 or 2 bags cheap potting mix, 4 handsful of Blood and Bone (read the bag and get the purest and not the ones mixed with sawdust or anything). Get enough of everything, it is annoying to have to go back for another bag later!
• Each foam box needs 6 holes in the bottom, each as big as a 5c piece. Be careful how you make the holes or you will ruin the boxes.
• Cover the bottom of each box with a 2 sheet thickness of newspaper or a layer of shade cloth. This will stop all the soil washing out the holes and stop the ants crawling in through the holes.
• Fill the boxes to within 2 inches of the top with the compost mixture. Water well (yes, before you sow or plant anything!) with a watering can or gentle spray nozzle until thoroughly wet.
• Plant and sow. Read the packets for sowing instructions. Sow the peas all around the perimeter of the box. Make a wire square out of wire that you can fit your hand through and place it over the box of pea seeds so they can grow up the wire. It needs to be 2m high!! Use a solid support or it will blow over when your peas are tall.
• I would also buy a packet of Multiguard snail pellets... they are made of iron and won't harm birds or dogs etc.
• Water the seedlings in well. Leave in the semi-shade overnight or for longer if it is hot....ie 30 degrees or more.
• Pat down the covered seed beds and water with a sprayer or very fine hose nozzle. Cover the foam box with a piece of glass or plastic. Place in the shade if hot or dappled sun at most. (In winter, place them in the sun to germinate.)

What then?

• Once the seeds have germinated and the seedlings look happy, by then it will be well into April and they should all be out in the sun for most of the time, if possible. Keep the seed boxes covered with the glass or plastic at night until they plants are a couple of inches high. Protect them from heavy rain...if it ever rains again!
• Watering too much will leach out all the nutrients. Stick your finger into the soil down to the second knuckle. If there is dampness there, all is well. If not then water well.... not just a little spray, give them plenty and then leave them for a few days or a week or until they begin to look droopy.
• Begin picking a lettuce leaf or 2 as soon as you like and snip a few leaves of the herbs and you have your first meal from your own garden! Enjoy!

THE DANCE OF LIFE

These photos of breathtaking beauty were sent to me by Denis, in our seedsavers group. And the message is clear:

All you are asked to do is keep this circulating.  Even if it's to one more person .
In memory of anyone you know that has been struck down by cancer or is still living with it.

"Life may not be the party we hoped for...
but while we are here we might as well dance!!"

Dear God, I pray for the cure of cancer. Amen

 

                             'A true friend is someone who knows you're
                                 a good egg even if you're a little cracked.

 

These egg shells were cut with a high intensity precision Laser Beam. This gives a very good idea of what can be achieved with a Laser Beam. This gives you an idea what laser surgery performed on one's eye is all about. Is it any wonder how one's vision can be improved in just a few moments? Science is sometimes wonderful, and it's still on the frontier of gaining new knowledge. Incredible what can be done with an eggshell and a laser beam.

 

This picture was in the collection and I am including it because it no doubt has some important significance for the creator of these messages.....

I will put a link here to the rest of the photos later today.

THE PICCADILLY VALLEY

I went for a drive as the early evening light swept across the Piccadilly Valley, in the Adelaide Hills, and took some photos. I had driven through here a few days before and thought I would come back with my camera and capture some of the late summer / early autumn colours. The undulating hills around the valley allow you to, at one moment, get a grand view and the next, feel you are in the middle of a patch of cabbages, so close are they planted to the road.

 

 

 

 

 

 

With the cool nights, the liquidambers are beginning to don their autumn coats...

 

....And the grape vines are a picture of perfection.

 

 

 

 

 

There are big fields and small, and there are all sorts of things for sale at the farm gate, from bags of potatoes to fig and cherry trees, and horse manure to liquidamber trees.

 

 

I was too late to take a walk through the beautiful Mt. Lofty Botanic Gardens but I do love the leaf sculptures on the gates.

 

I had such a lovely time, driving along with the windows down on a balmy evening, looking for photo opportunities and drinking my Farmers' Union Iced Coffee.

 

There are more photos here.