It’s the southern hemisphere Halloween, and I totally get it why Halloween features pumpkin lamps. Halloween is the final harvest festival, and marks the start of the season of gathering in – firewood, mulch, water, pumpkins, passata, preserves, warm clothes, books, tribe and wisdom.
I had two recipe successes at the beach, and this is the other one. I live with a bloke whose idea of bliss is standing thigh deep in ocean on an overcast day using all the sensory skills of a hunter. We were at a good fishing beach, there was a nice east coast low making perfect conditions, he spent many hours at it. And still, we ended up at…
I make this the first time on holiday at the beach – overripe bananas, sourdough starter, flour and a little salt and that’s all. And it was spectacularly good. In the weeks since, I’ve tried adding kibble and adding nuts and adding cinnamon and nothing has come near that perfect banana-y but not overly sweet crusty and chewy bread, toasted with butter and nothing else. Simple and divine. Overcomplication is…
This is a very fast, healthy, easy, seasonal, meal in a bowl. It will generously serve two on its own, or four as a main side dish. The key ingredient, besides the pumpkin, is a Moroccan spice mix.
I post a lot of vegetarian recipes here but we’re not vegetarian. Sometimes we go for ages eating vegetarian, but more because that’s what I feel like cooking and eating and I have all the ingredients I need without going shopping, than for any philosophical reason. If you’ve ever seriously tried to feed yourself out of a garden, you will know that animals – big ones and very little ones…
My favourite variety of beans at the moment – brown seeded snake beans. So long as I can keep water up to them, they don’t mind how hot it gets, and they bear really prolifically over a month or more. They make a great salad, blanched then dressed with a balsamic olive oil garlic dressing while they are still warm. Or, like this, lightly sauteed with lots of garlic, then…
I don’t make jam. If I did, I’d just have to eat it and I really don’t need that much sugar. Besides, I am very very lucky in that I live in a place where there is some fruit in season pretty well any time of the year, and making not-jam is so much easier. Mulberry not jam, followed by strawberry, then peach and nectarine and plum, then mango, then…