My cabbages are getting away from me now too, the last of the winter crops colliding with the first of the summer ones.  We’re just about to pass Beltane, the point on the calendar when the day length curve flattens out into the long hot days of summer.  From now on, leafy greens are hard. Those big green leaves are adapted to catching every bit of scarce sunlight, not to avoiding sunburn.  The grasshoppers and cabbage moths are getting active.  And everything wants to reproduce.  As fast as I harvest them, another makes a bolt.

So we are eating a lot of cabbage. Okonomiyaki are a Japanese cabbage pancake, and if you are conjuring up images of British boiled cabbage or bubble and squeak, you’re on the wrong track.  Okonomiyaki are comfort food, crispy on the outside and soft in the middle, not very cabbagey at all but a vehicle for the toppings, nothing at all of acquired taste about them.  I’d be willing to bet you could get them past the pickiest of non-vegetable eaters.

Proper Okonomiyaki have several special ingredients that are hard to get in my little country town.  But inauthentic Okonomiyaki are fast and easy with just what I have in the garden and in an ordinary pantry.

The Recipe:

Makes two large, dinner sized Okonomiyaki, or four small ones.

The toppings make it, so start with them.

Proper classic okonomiyaki have a whole range of toppings including Japanese mayonnaise and seaweed and bonito flakes.  I never have the right toppings in my pantry, so I make do with homemade mayonnaise with a little honey added, Worcestershire sauce mixed half and half with tomato sauce, chopped spring onion tops or chives, and toasted macadamia flakes.

Have the toppings ready because the okonomiyaki are best topped and eaten straight away while they are hot and fresh.

• Finely shred a couple of cups, packed, of cabbage, and two big spring onions (the whites and some of the green)
• Put in a big bowl and tip in half a cup of wholemeal flour and a pinch of salt.
• Toss the cabbage and spring onion in the flour so that they are coated. (I just use my hands for this).
• Beat two big or three small eggs till they are frothy.  Tip into the floury cabbage and mix until it is all just combined.  Don’t overmix it – you want the gluten undeveloped. (Again, I find this easiest with hands).  You want the flour to be all wet and the mix to stick together if you squeeze a handful.  If it is too thick, add a little water.
• Heat some light olive oil in a pan. Spoon the cabbage mix in and flatten it with the back of a spatula (or your hands) to make a thick pancake, or a big, thin pattie.
• Fry for a few minutes until it is browning and crispy on the bottom  and the top is more or less set.
• Now comes the tricky bit.  I find it easy to turn by putting a plate over it and flipping the pancake onto the plate, then sliding it off the plate back into the pan.  If the top is not set enough, you can flip it again onto another plate, then into the pan. I think you would have to be very skilled to flip big ones with just an eggflip without breaking them.
• Cook until the other side is brown and crispy too, then serve hot with toppings.

My caulis are getting away from me.  Only three or four left in the garden now, which is fairly nicely timed because the white cabbage moths are just starting to appear and in a couple of weeks it will become a battle not worth the prize to keep them off the Brassicas.  Fairly nicely. We’re not quite keeping up with them and the last few are being harvested a little late, heads loosening up and florets with longer, light green stems.   I could, I should, harvest them while they still look like perfect supermarket caulis and give the extras away.  But we’ve developed a bit of an addiction to roasted cauliflower, and these slightly blown ones make the best roasted cauli.  And there’s only a few left.  Greedy.

Roasted cauli is a surprise. It is so so so much better than you would think.  The basic recipe is:  just chop the cauli into florets, not too small.  With these ones I cut lengthwise through the florets to leave quite a lot of stem on. Put them in a big bowl, sprinkle generously with olive oil and salt and pepper, toss well to coat, spread in a single layer in a roasting pan, and roast in a hot oven for around half an hour until they are just tender and getting little caramelised browned bits. Best just that little bit undercooked but browning, which needs a hot oven.

Just like that is hard to go past.  We ate this bowl for lunch with fingers straight from the bowl.  But it’s also good hot as a side dish or cold in salads or blended with stock as a soup.  From there though, there are any number of elaborations possible.

• A s sprinkle of finely grated parmesan and back into the oven till it melts and browns (this is probably my favourite).
• Or a generous sprinkle of dukkah
• A squeeze of lemon juice and a couple of cloves of garlic crushed in with the olive oil (or perhaps this is the favourite).
• With some dried chili if you like it spicy (Lewie’s favourite)
• Or a spoonful of tomato paste
• Or a couple of big spoonfuls of tahini

Really though, I think you can easily overelaborate food. Maybe just salt, pepper and olive oil is the favourite.

The wildlife doesn’t share my sense of frugal.   The pumpkin stack is slowly going down now.  The cold has killed off all the vines so no new ones are being added. The bush turkeys going to town on the ones left in the garden, and I think it is a possum raiding the verandah stack because I keep coming out in the morning to find pumpkins with wasteful bites out of them. I’ve tried many ways over the years to store pumpkins, from suspended in nets just under the verandah roof to tea chests and trunks, and I’ve decided they are just too attractive.  Those oil rich seeds, that lovely orange carotene flesh.  At some stage (and often much earlier than this), the creatures just decide I’m being greedy trying to keep them to myself.

This is just my Pumpkin and Feta tartlets baked as a pie instead, and with the feta crumbled over the top rather than blended in with the egg mix.  And with an olive oil crust, though you could just as easily make it with a wholemeal shortcrust pastry instead.   Worth a post though because it was so good.  It’s been lunches for us for a few days now, eaten cold straight from the hand.  We still have a couple more weeks of them, then pumpkins are over for another year.

I first had injera at an Ethiopian restaurant in Coffs Harbour, lovely spongy sourdough crepes that are the perfect soaker-upper for spicy stews and curries.  But a little internet research discovered they are made with “teff”, or Ethiopian gluten free flour made from a little grain the size of a poppy seed, and being as how I live near a little country town with an African population you can count on your fingers, the idea of trying to make them disappeared for a while.

Then on a run-out-of-eggs day with mushrooms and cream in the fridge and the idea of mushroom crepes that wouldn’t let go, I decided to have a go at making eggless crepes with sourdough culture, and they turned out pretty much exactly as I remembered injera.

So these very inauthentic teff-less injera have become somewhat of a staple in our house, preferred to chapati for going with curry, preferred to flatbread for going with tagines, preferred to crepes for going with creamy garlic mushrooms.  And all the better because, if you have sourdough starter, they are practically instant.

The pumpkin stew is slightly more authentic but not much. It’s a surprisingly sweet spicy stew that makes a meal that is mostly pumpkin and still desirable, even this close to the end of a long haul pumpkin season.

The Pumpkin Stew:

Makes four serves.  It looks like a lot of ingredients, but like most spice mixes, they are just a sprinkle of this and a dash of that, and everyone no doubt has their own version so if you don’t have an ingredient, you are probably just making a different version.

Pu a heavy pan or pot with a lid on a medium-low heat.   Add a large onion finely diced, then, in more or less this order, stirring as you go and keeping it all moving enough so the seeds pop but don’t burn:

• ½ teaspoon  cumin seeds
• ¼ teaspoon coriander seeds
• ¼ teaspoon fenugreek seeds
• ¼ teaspoon cardamom seeds (not the pods, just the seeds)
• Small thumb of ginger, grated (or a scant teaspoon powder)
• Small thumb of turmeric, grated (or a scant teaspoon powder)
• Chili – more or less depending on how hot your chilis and how hot your taste.  I use a teaspoon of dried bishops crown chilis.
• 3 scant teaspoons paprika
• pinch cinnamon
• pinch cloves
• grinding of black pepper and some salt
• 4 heaped cups of pumpkin, chopped into 3 cm pieces
• a jar of tomato passata
• a bit of water, depending on how thick your passata is, just enough to give a nice stew consistency.

Turn the heat down to low and let it simmer for about half an hour till the pumpkin is very soft but not disintegrating. Taste and add salt to taste. Sprinkle with fresh coriander.

Meanwhile, make the injera.

Injera:

My inauthentic injera are just fed sourdough starter, cooked as crepes.  So you need to start ahead by feeding your sourdough starter and keeping it in a warm spot for four or five hours, or overnight, till it is bubbly.  Add a little water if you need to to get a thin crepe batter.

Wipe a large, flat pan with oil and put it on a medium slow heat.

Add a ladle of batter and use the back of the ladle to spread it thin.  Put a lid on the pan and cook slowly till the batter is set but not browning.  You generally only cook injera on one side so it should be set all the way through.  You may need to flip it onto a plate.  They should end up soft and spongy and tender.

Serve under or alongside the pumpkin stew, or any kind of curry or stew really, and break off bits to scoop with.