Posts tagged as:

herbs

Tomatoes as Themselves

by Linda on January 5, 2012

tomatoes

This post is just skiting really.  Not a recipe at all, just an excuse to show off. Can you see how proud I am of my tomatoes?

Tomatoes go up there with onions and garlic in my kitchen, as staples that I just can’t do without.  Up here in my frost free climate, I can usually keep cherry tomatoes going right through winter, so even in the lean times we have a few for eating fresh. But not enough for cooking, so tomatoes are one of the few things I bother preserving. I like to grow enough to bottle and sun dry some though the summer.

Year before last I had a very ordinary tomato year – just low yields and plants that looked like the “before” ad. I knew why. I had just tried to grow too many for too many years in a row, and I was repeating them in places they’d been before too recently. So last year I backed right off and gave most beds a complete break from tomatoes. Two years in a row with no tomatoes to boast about.

So this summer I’m very happy. I have Brandyvine, Principe Borghese, Yellow Cherry, and San Mazano tomatoes all doing well, and I had forgotten just how divine a salad of real tomatoes can be. Brandyvine are just a taste sensation, so very very different to anything you can buy.

The Recipe

You need real tomatoes –  sun ripened, in season, varieties bred for taste rather than transportability and artificial ripening.  For real decadence a few different varieties so you can savour each kind.

The dressing is just a teaspoon of balsamic vinegar, a teaspoon of olive oil, a little bit of finely sliced red salad onion, a teaspoon of chopped fresh basil, half a teaspoon of chopped fresh thyme, and a little salt and pepper.

Divine.

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Fresh Broad Bean Felafel

by Linda on November 2, 2011

Last broad bean recipe for the season I think.  They are all just about finished – this weekend I should get around to harvesting the last of them and cutting off the plants.  Broad beans are legumes and like all legumes, they are symbiotic with a  rhizobia that can grab nitrogen out of the air and “fix” it in a nitrogen compound that the legume can then use to make protein.  Which broad beans do really well – they’re one of the highest protein sources in plants (along with complex low GI carbs,  fibre,  vitamins, potassium, iron and  l- dopa ).

I’ll cut them off rather than pull them and follow with a nitrogen lover like zucchini.  The plants have a huge root system covered in nitrogen fixing nodules.  Although most of the nitrogen will have gone to the beans (and thus to us!) there’s still enough in the residual to be a good fertilizer hit.  And quite apart from the nitrogen, it’s good organic matter already dug in.

The Recipe

We ate this batch just as is, just the two of us, arguing about whether the chili dipping sauce or the yoghurt, mint and garlic dipping sauce was better.  But really the perfect way to serve is with pita bread, tabouli, and both sauces, in which case this would be plenty for four for dinner. (Although, having said that, there is a lot to be said for simple, one dish dinners where you just get to really appreciate one thing).

It’s fastest in a pressure cooker, but a pot with a tight lid is fine.

Saute an onion, diced, in a good swig of olive oil.  When the onion is starting to brown, add

  • four (or more) cloves of garlic, crushed,
  • 1½ cups of shelled  (not double-peeled) broad beans
  • a cup of water,
  • juice of half a lemon
  • a grinding of black pepper
  • and a good pinch of salt

Bring to pressure and pressure cook for 5 minutes, or put the lid on and simmer for 10 minutes watching it at the end.  Take the lid off and continue to cook to reduce until there is virtually no liquid in the pot.

Tip the broad bean mix into a food processor and add:

  • 1 egg
  • ½ teaspoon baking powder
  • a thick slice of wholemeal or multigrain bread

You can add a bit of chili powder too if you like it spicy, but I think it is better with the chili as a dipping sauce.

Pulse till it is a thick batter.  Add more bread or a little flour if you need to to make it thick enough to hold its shape (like peanut butter thickness). Then add:

  • a cup (packed) of mixed parsley, coriander, mint and spring onion

Pulse again just briefly to chop up the herbs but not blend them into a paste.  You want the herbs to have a bit of texture.

Put a couple of spoonfuls of flour on a plate.  With wet hands shape spoonfuls of the mixture into little footballs and roll them in flour, just enough to stop them sticking together.

Shallow fry in hot olive oil in a heavy pan for a few minutes until golden.

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Roots and Perennials Planting in Early Spring – Sage, Rosemary and Thyme

by Linda on September 18, 2011

When I am away from my garden, it is the herbs I miss most.  If I only had pots to garden in, the top dozen plants on the priority list would all be herbs. There are just so many recipes that depend on fresh herbs to move food from fuel to experience, and it is so difficult and expensive to buy fresh herbs.  And dried herbs just don’t do it in the same way.

And it is the perennial herbs that give me the biggest return on gardening effort. I don’t grow a huge range.  There have been times in my life when I’ve got really excited about them, dropped big hints to get herb books for birthday presents, researched medicinal and culinary uses, sought out seeds and cuttings.  But many just didn’t get used and gradually the range has reduced to the ones I use regularly and would be lost without.

My cannot-live-without perennial herbs are oregano, marjoram, thyme, lemon thyme, sage, rosemary, bay, lemon grass, vietnamese mint, regular mint, greek basil, horseradish, nasturtiums, yarrow and comfrey, the last two used mainly in compost.  Add to them a few annuals – parsley, coriander, culantro, dill, borage, basil, lemon basil, lime basil, Thai basil, chives – and I have my minimum garden.

Early spring is a good time to plant most of the perennials, from seed or cutting.  So today, besides the usual round of beetroot, parsnips, carrots and spring onions, I’m planting out these baby thyme and sage plants that have already spent too long in the shadehouse.  I’m dividing up and refreshing my lemon grass – good time to do it because the wallaby that got in last week radically pruned it for me. And I’ll move some oregano from the spot where it’s getting old and slow to a new, well composted, sunny spot.

And then maybe I’ll go visiting with secateurs.

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Stuffed Squid

August 28, 2011

Australian Conservation Society conducted a sustainable seafood assessment project over the 2009-10 summer.  One of the five studies was the assessment of squid from the Hawkesbury River. My local river is the Richmond, not too much further north and fished in the same way, so I was really happy to see that squid was listed as sustainable. [...]

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Lemon and Herb Baked Labneh

May 17, 2011

This was an accidental discovery. I had some friends coming for lunch and I had baked ricotta with salad in my mind.  But I’d forgotten that I’d used the ricotta.  Oops. Lots of other lunch options of course, but you know when you have your mind set on something? I had some home-made Greek yoghurt [...]

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The Breakfast Challenge – Sweet Corn, Chili and Lime Pikelets

April 8, 2011

I saw an episode of Jamie Oliver’s American Food Revolution, where they were teaching people to cook corn on the cob with chili and lime.  The flavour combination inspired these.  They work really well. Sweet corn and lime basil are both in season in my garden and I’m just starting to pick the first of [...]

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Kangaroo Stuffed Peppers

March 28, 2011

Capsicums and chilis are right in season now and I’m harvesting both.  These ones are a banana pepper, and they’re either a very mild, sweet chili or a  capsicum with a bit of spiciness, depending on how you look at it.  They’re slightly laborious to stuff – the larger more common bell peppers would be [...]

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Thai Fish Cakes

March 19, 2011

Bream is not one of my favourite fish, but it’s one of the easier ones to catch, and Lewie likes fishing. Bream are a good source of omega 3 and listed as sustainable, so it’s very unfortunate that they’re a bit bland and soft for my taste.  I could never get appropriately excited about the [...]

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A One Pot Autumn Garden

March 12, 2011

My mowing meditation this morning – I was thinking about the basil and macadamia pesto post and how much basil we have harvested this summer.  Pesto on toast for breakfast and on sandwiches and wraps for lunch,  pesto pasto, pesto pizza sauce, basil in polenta and moussaka and fish cakes and quiches, gorgeous tomato and [...]

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