A mix of black-eyed peas, black seeded snake beans and brown seeded snake beans, all home grown and harvested today, about to go in the slow cooker. Protein, fibre, complex carbs, versatility, deliciousness. And a step into a blue zone.
Colcannon is Irish mashed potato with cabbage, and it is one of those surprisingly wonderful recipes that have you going “aha! I understand how this became a national dish”. It has just four ingredients and like any of those classics that every kid remembers grandma making, there are more versions than you would think possible with so few ingredients. This is mine.
This is so simple, yet it is one of my most used recipes this time of year, when both parsley and lemons are in glut and dinner is often a long slow-cooked soup or stew that could do with some brightening up.
This morning on my picking walk, I picked silver beet, lucullus, chives, spring onion greens, nasturtium leaves, dandelion leaves, chickweed, scurvy weed, aragula, leaf amaranth, sweet potato leaves, lemon basil, dill, oregano, parsley, sorrel, curly kale, dino kale, rocket, warrigal greens, molokhia. So I made a last minute pie to take to a picnic lunch.
I picked a couple of eggplants on my picking walk, and there were at least another three or four needing to be picked this week. It had to be eggplant for dinner. These barbeque skewers turned out so well that I had to write out the recipe even if just to remember it myself, for next eggplant glut, next week.
It’s bunya nut season, and though it’s not one of the bi-or-triennial bumper seasons like last year was, it is worth checking the ground around your favourite bunya pines for fallen cones. Here’s how I process them, and how to make bunya felafels.
Sometimes I think we overelaborate recipes. Last night I made a Middle Eastern style stuffed eggplants for dinner, and it was good, but when I compare it with tonight’s Pasta alla Norma, I think it was over-elaborated. In-season produce needs so little. Pasta alla Norma does justice to eggplants – so good, so much better than you would think for something that simple.