Which means it’s passata and sun dried tomato time.
In my kitchen is …
n my kitchen is a blackboard list of what is harvestable in the garden. I have a wonderful partner who does a lot of the cooking in our household but the garden is foreign lands to him. So I had the brainwave of writing a list of what is in the “outdoor pantry” right now. Dumb idea. He is never going to plough through that lot when he’s thinking about…
My glut crop this week is coriander seed. So easy to harvest this time of year.
My glut crop this week is peas, and they are only a glut crop because my kids are grown up. For years, all through pea season, a whole gang of kids would arrive after school and feast on peas straight from the vine. I still can’t think of any better way of dealing with a glut of peas than a gang of kids.
My glut crop at the moment is cauliflower, and though I’ve seen the odd white cabbage moth flutter through, they’re not getting got yet. My very favourite recipe for using lots of cauliflower is Greek Crumbed Cauli (kounoupith tiganito).
Cheesy broccoli omelettes for breakfast (my geriatric chooks only lay for a few months of the year, but they’ve decided it’s near enough to spring to start too), and broccoli with hollandaise for dinner. Raw broccoli in salads and lightly steamed broccoli with sesame oil, lemon juice and toasted sesame seeds in the lunch box. Broccoli in noodle stir fries, and in pasta. And a broccoli based party dish I’m…
My pickings today loaded up my kitchen bench. Mangoes are biennial, and this is a mango year, so I’ve been making smoothies and cakes and pickles and chutney and sorbet, and giving lots away. The spring this year was wet enough for the pomegranates to fruit well – often our springs are too dry – and the tamarillos are all ripening at once. I’m back to growing enough tomatoes to…
I love this time of year, when everything I harvest is the most magnificent colour. I ate the first of many mangoes for the season today. Mangoes are biennial but not every second year is good. It’s a complex mix of rain and heat at the right time that makes this kind of luck.
The paw paws have been prolific this year. We’re eating one a day most days, but they’re starting to slow down from now on. The strawberries weren’t as good this year as last year, mostly because I got too busy in winter to plant out a new bed or mulch up and compost the old one, so they were a bit neglected and they paid out on me for it.…