grilled chook and scapes

Today for dinner, I deboned a whole, free-range chook and marinated it with smoked paprika, dried greek oregano (from last year) and orange juice. I tied it up and then grilled it with a bunch of garlic scapes (the flowering stems) over embers on my fire drum. It was sooo good! The orange juice added some acidity and a bit of sweetness. The scapes tasted like a cross between roasted garlic and asparagus. A simple green salad (oak lettuce, mizuna, cucumbers, red tuscan onions) that Briony picked and made was a good accompaniment

malfatti

Malfatti, meaning badly made, are Italian ricotta dumplings. They are really easy to make. Steam a whole lot of spinach (500g to 1kg) and then squeeze ALL the water out. Chop it up finely with a small bunch of fresh basil then mix it into 2 and a 1/2 cups of ricotta. Not the creamy pureed stuff but the real Italian stuff that still has some texture. Mix in 3 eggs, salt, pepper and 1/2 a cup of grated parmesan or pecorino cheese and a cup of homemade breadcrumbs. Form the paste into quenelles with 2 dessertspoons and then roll them in some flour. Shake off the excess and drop them gently into a very large pot of salted boiling water. As soon as they have risen to the surface, scoop them out and serve them them with a really nice tomato sauce that has some basil in it. I used some of our bottled sauce from last summer. These malfatti are really, really delicious and better than any kind of meatball. You can serve them over pasta as you would a meatball sauce. We simply ate them with a green salad.

fresh faba falafels

We are having a glut of broad beans and I wondered if I would be able to use them to make falafels. You can make them with rehydrated dried beans so fresh ones should work. I ground up broad beans with garlic, coriander/cilantro, mint, cumin, chile a bit of flour and salt and pepper. Quenelle shapes were then fried in hot olive oil and served with yoghurt, garlic and tahini sauce and a salad made of cooked pearl barley with red onions, more coriander, mint, olive oil, lemon juice and

food getting greener

It's really nice to eat more green things. We did eat kale and cabbages over winter, but spring greenery tastes better or just different. This is a dish of salt and pepper deep fried flounder, topped with cilantro and green chiles (from the freezer) and served with kai lan (chinese broccoli) and oyster sauce.


The other green thing that we really love and truly signifies the start of the summer is pesto. Pesto has become so boring and bastardised that it's often ignored. If you make it with just picked basil (leaves only and completely dry of surface water), excellent garlic, extra-virgin tasmanian olive oil and really good cheese (we use a Romano), it is just divine.
By weight, use one third each of basil, pine nuts and cheese. Grind the leaves, nuts and garlic, then add oil till it's a bit looser than it should be. Then add the grated cheese. Adjust the texture with oil and add salt to taste.

tacos!

Tacos in Australia means those crispy taco shells from the supermarket filled with all sorts of horrible things. We really love real tacos in the USA from taco trucks and little taquerias. So, we have to make our own. Starting with masa harina (corn meal - not polenta) mixed with lard and water to make a soft dough. Balls of this are squashed into 4 inch circles and cooked on a steel plate. The filling can be pretty much any meat. Here, I've used free range ground pork cooked with garlic, onion, cumin, and corn (frozen from last summer).
Salsa verde is made by boiling tomatillos (also frozen from last summer) then blending them with salt, green chiles and coriander leaves. Chopped onion is then mixed through. Take a bite then take a bite of radish. These ones are called D'Avignon - not very mexican but they taste the same.

farfalle with rapa

Last night we made fresh farfalle (bow ties) with durum semolina and water. After rolling the dough in the pasta machine, Briony cut it into rectangles then pinched the centres to form the bows


Meanwhile, I fried a couple of salted anchovies, and a heap of sliced onions in olive oil. I threw in some chopped garlic and the very last of our semi-dried cherry tomatoes from last year.

Once a big pot of water was boiling and salted, the greens, known as rapa, cime di rapa, rapini or turnip greens (which they aren't, actually)


were chopped very coarsely and thrown in the water till just wilted then scooped out and put aside. The pasta was cooked in the same water, drained and then tossed with everything else, including a handful of chopped flatleaf parsley and some more olive oil. We grated some romano cheese on top, added a bit of chopped chili (from the freezer from last summer) and it was delicious.

late spring update

The weather finally decided to become spring-like and it looks like all of the rain is now over. The warm weather, plus time, has meant that the hungry patch is over and now there suddenly seems to be lots to eat in the garden again

Here's a bit of a list:

rocket, bok choy, rapa, mizuna, spinach, leeks, radishes and a couple of tantalising strawberries.

The warm weather encouraged us to plant out heat-loving plants like our tomatoes

with which we are trying a slightly modified trellising system this year. Last year we used strings up to a horizontal wire. The strings cut into the thickening stems and may have caused some problems - not sure. This time we're using thin and cheap 6ft bamboo poles inserted into the ground and tied off to the horizontal wire. We have planted all our old favourites (from saved seed) - stupice, costoluto, mamma mia, black krim (a superior version of black russian) a few cherry varieties and a new one we're trying this year called speckled banana.

Our broad (fava) beans will be ready soon and so will the garlic. I think the garlic will be early compared to last year.

early spring - it's getting exciting!

It's early spring here and things are getting exciting. Blossoms are abundant on our fruit trees and the garlic, which we planted in April, is looking very healthy.



We planted two varieties - a "tasmanian" purple softneck and this beautiful, pink, hardneck that we found in amongst some garlic at the greengrocers once.


We bulked it up last winter and this year have planted half of our crop (total of about 600 plants) to this variety because it tastes really good and keeps brilliantly.

At about the same time in April, we cleared up the summer gardens, rototilled them and then sowed the area to our usual green manure - oats, tic beans (small fava/broad beans), peas and lupins.


These survived the really wet weather and are now growing very quickly. I think I'll be slashing these and getting the summer beds ready in about 2 or 3 weeks.
This closes our annual cycle as we started this blog at around this biological time last year

hot sauce

I love hot stuff and have since I was about 5 years old. I'm obviously not alone as the use of chiles spread from the Americas through Asia, Africa and Europe. Just about any kind of condiment that has chile as a central ingredient makes me get really excited and curious. So, it might seem strange that I (and the rest of the family) still like tabasco sauce.

Last summer, we had a bumper crop of super hot chiles.


These were grown outdoors, in soil, with not a shred of plastic anywhere proving that Tasmania must have reasonable summers.

We froze and dried lots and then still had plenty to spare so I decided to try and make something that resembles tabasco sauce so that we wouldn't have to keep buying those dinky bottles in boxes imported all the way from the USA.

Using this recipe -

Ingredients:

1 pound fresh red chiles, chopped
2 cups cider vinegar
2 teaspoons salt

Directions:

Combine the chiles and the vinegar in a saucepan and heat. Stir in the salt and simmer for 5 minutes. Remove from the heat, cool, and place in a blender. Puree until smooth and place in a glass jar. Allow to steep for 2 weeks in the refrigerator. Remove, strain the sauce, and adjust the consistency by adding more vinegar if necessary.

I made about one litre of this sauce


It's really great and probably even better than tabasco even though it doesn't get the 3 years of aging in oak like tabasco does.

Winter is over and we are still alive.......

Although we haven't posted anything over the winter we are still alive and we have eaten well. It has been the wettest winter here for about 50 years apparently. Much of this wetness came later in winter and so our brassicas established themselves well early on and fed us right up till now. We have been eating heaps of kale (3 different types), broccoli, purple-sprouting broccoli, sugarloaf and savoy cabbages and purple cauliflowers


We also had a great crop of swedes (which I think are called rutabagas in North America), beets, carrots, winter spinach and silverbeet (chard). Together with our stored garlic, shallots, pumpkins and bottled tomatoes, frozen ducks and free-range pork (which we bought as a whole beats and froze) we have eaten really well this winter. Unfortunately, most of this went undocumented mostly because we were slack and partly because it's much nicer taking food photos with natural light. We're only now getting into days that are long enough to eat dinner at dusk.

Here are three random meals that I happened to photograph:

A kind of ratatouille made with the last of our eggplants, capsicums and tomatoes (all roasted first) served with polenta and grilled chicken thighs


A noodle, cabbage and carrot salad - Thai-style - served with grilled albacore tuna


agnoloti stuffed with roasted pumpkin and topped with sage, garlic, butter and parmesan

nam prik num

When we were in Northeast Thailand some years ago, we spent a lot of time eating. This was OK because we were cycle touring. A staple meal in those parts is steamed sticky (glutinous rice) eaten with grilled chicken (gai yaang) and green papaya salad (som tum). It's hard to describe how well those textures and flavours combine. The only thing that may surpass som tum as a component of this trio, in my humble opinion, is nam prik num (pronounced "num pick noom"). This is like a Thai version of babaganoush but it's better because it's got chillis in it.
It's very simple. Eggplants and big green chillis (hot but not superhot) are grilled, peeled


then pounded in a mortar and pestle (som) with lots of garlic, fish sauce and lime juice. Get the balance right!


Eat this with steamed sticky rice and, if you are an eggplant lover, you may not find anything better. Bri and I are eggplant lovers and, this dish, ratatouille and pasta con la Norma are the best reasons to grow eggplants.

a year's worth of tomato

Besides drying and freezing tomatoes, we make a year's supply of bottled puree (passata) so we never have to buy imported, tinned or bottled stuff picked by African labourers in Italy who are paid a pittance. Ours tastes better anyway.
Tomatoes are cut for the pot, preferably sitting beside an almond tree.


Occasionally it's OK to get distracted to eat some of the tomatoes with cucumber, basil and goat cheese.


The tomatoes are cooked until soft and pulpy with nothing added, then passed through the Mouli that Briony inherited from her mother.


The shelf is slowly filling with bottles.


P.S. this passata is always recooked before use, just in case.

the height of summer

Although it's officially autumn, our Tasmanian garden thinks it's the peak of summer. All of the heat-loving vegetables and later fruits are ready and we've got so much good stuff to eat and preserve.
Capsicums, tomatoes, zucchinis, dill, parsley and cucumbers mean we can have Greek-style stuffed vegetables with tzatziki (and Greek-style grilled lamb chops with Greek oregano grown from seed gleaned from a Greek man).


Sweetcorn means happy children


Eggplants, tomatoes and onions


mean pasta con la Norma. Fry eggplants in olive oil until golden. Add to a sauce made with sauteed onions, garlic and quartered tomatoes (should be chunky) and fold through homemade linguine with a good handful of basil leaves and chopped chiles.


And quinces just look and smell so good

Turning produce into crayfish into trouble

On Saturday, my good mate Giles dropped by with two beautiful, live crayfish (Southern rock lobster) that he caught while diving near Tinderbox. With my first opportunity in a while to trade food, I was really happy to swap a box of produce (apples, carrots, beets, plums, tomatoes and garlic). I put the crays in the fridge to go to sleep with a plan to barbecue them for dinner the following night.
The crays were split and a beautiful salad of cucumbers, tomatoes (mamma mia, stupice and sungold), red onion, parsley, olive oil and lemon juice was prepared.


Once the fire had died down to embers, I grilled the crays, shell down then meat side down after brushing the meat side liberally with a vinaigrette made from fresh tarragon, garlic, olive oil, red wine vinegar and Dijon mustard.


It was really delicious.

I have eaten crayfish several times before, so I didn't pay much attention to the strange tingling feeling in my lips. Soon after devouring my half a cray (plus a bit of Noah's), I felt quite uncomfortable - sore lips, throat and stomach. My stomach started to feel bloated and I felt nauseous. Nevertheless, we had our family soccer game to play and by the end of that I felt like crap. My face had swollen up and I was now developing hives all over my body and breathing was becoming difficult.


Briony gave me some antihistamine, steroids and ventolin then took me to the hospital where for the first time I walked straight in and was treated by several people at once (for those non-Aussies - we have a public health system here and this is unusual). A night in hospital and I felt much better. I was devastated to find out from the doctor that I should avoid all seafood for 4 weeks then shellfish (I forgot to check if that meant crustacea alone or molluscs as well) for a couple of years!! Hopefully, a visit to the immunology clinic might just tell me that I'm allergic to crayfish - a pity - but not prawns and crabs - a tragedy.

spaghetti con vongole

We are lucky to live on the coast and have a boat to sail on and harvest seafood from. One thing that we really love is clams. There are lot's of little ones here in Tasmania and most people don't bother with them.

We collected some little ones from Mickeys bay on Bruny Island the other day and made an Italian classic - spaghetti con vongole.

It's very simple. In lots of good olive oil, fry some shallots (we had a great harvest of these this year), garlic and chopped tomatoes. I used Stupice and Black Krim tomatoes. Add a small glass of white wine and reduce briefly before adding the clams. 

Steam them with the lid on and when they've just opened, stir through a generous amount of chopped flat-leaf parsley. Toss with spaghetti, red chillis and black pepper.

Bi bim bap

We all love Bi bim bap, a Korean dish that means "mix, mix rice". It's a great dish in early summer and a lovely way to eat lots of different vegetables.  

Vegetables are stir fried or steamed and dressed with sesame oil, garlic and soy and then served on rice with a raw egg yolk and some stir fried meat (marinated with ginger, soy bean paste, spring onions, toasted sesame seeds, soy, rice wine) and dollop of gojuchang, the Korean hot paste. Mix it all up and eat it!

This one we made has carrot, spinach, bok choy, zucchini, garlic scapes, snow peas and chicken. Although it'ss normally made with short grain white rice like that used for sushi, it's even better with short grain brown rice.

Mid-summer update

After a cool early summer, things have finally warmed up and the heat loving plants have sprung into action. 

The tomatoes have grown a lot. We lost a few plants to disease - some virus and some wilt - that I think was due to the cool weather making the plants more susceptible. Plants are approaching the tops of the string trellis system (which I have now learnt that I need to tie less tightly as I also strangled 2 plants to death) and there are plenty of ripe fruit on the Earligold and a few ripe ones on the Stupice, our steadfast cool-weather cropper.

The eggplants have grown tremendously and have set fruit. If the summer lingers we should get a good crop of these as well as the chillis and capsicums that have also grown well and set fruit.

what  bumper year for apricots!. This is the second tree, the Rival, which is just about ripe. The earlier tree - Goldrich - is 3 times as big and produced a big crop of huge and delicious fruit.