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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Basil and Macadamia Pesto

March 11, 2011

We are harvesting the first macadamias of the season, and by the look of our trees it will be a good year. And the basil is going off in my garden. Traditional cuisines are all built on things that are in season together, but I wonder if that is all there is to it. It’s [...]

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Asian Style Bean and Capsicum Salad

February 8, 2011

After floods followed by heat wave, my garden has practically no leafy greens in it.  The parsley and celery keeled over in the wet – they hate waterlogged roots and although my drainage is pretty good, it wasn’t up to 150mm of rain in a day.  The lettuces and rocket keeled over in the heat [...]

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Slow Cooked Green Beans Italian Style

December 18, 2010

Beans are like octopus – they need to be cooked either very fast or very slow. I love snake beans cooked in an Asian way – just barely blanched, so they are still crunchy and tossed in a dressing.  But these purple king beans have such a nice deep flavour, I think they go better [...]

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Herb Crusted Whiting

December 10, 2010

I remember when I was quite a small child my grandfather had a shack on Bribie Island.  Just before dusk, he would take his rod and walk down to the beach.  We kids would play in the shallows and barely have time to make a sandcastle before it was time to head back with a [...]

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Albanian Style Snapper, Squid, and Spring Vegetable Soup

November 18, 2010

We stopped in at a fish shop on the way home from visiting our daughter at the coast yesterday.  I had just bought a half kilo of squid, thinking calamari, when I noticed they had snapper frames at a ridiculously low price. Snapper are listed as a sustainable catch, and I like the idea that, [...]

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Dolmades with Lemon and Herbs

October 5, 2010

I forgot vine leaves in my October In Season post! And it was a bad omission, because everything you need for making dolmades is now in season – young, tender vine leaves, the last of the fresh in-shell macadamias, lots of herbs, and still lots of lemons. I am very very pleased that we have [...]

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Italian Kangaroo Meatballs

September 15, 2010

I nearly share a birthday with my father, so I made these for our shared birthday dinner.  We had family and friends for dinner, and  the last thing I wanted to do on my birthday was to be so busy I missed all the jokes.  The recipe is elegant enough to be a celebration dinner, [...]

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Lao Style Fragrant Fish Soup

May 27, 2010

It’s getting a bit cold now of an evening for barbeques, but my partner still loves fishing. Fish soup is a great way to make a dinner party of the catch, and using the whole fish –  head, bones and all - I feel like an ethical predator. This recipe works really well with bony fish [...]

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