It’s nut season. Here it’s macadamia nuts, but further south it will be almonds and hazelnuts. We’re getting decent harvests from our trees now, and I’m loving learning to use them in savory food as well as baking. Pesto is a bit of a staple, and nut based curry and satay sauces, but I’m only just getting into extending the range.
It hasn’t been a great year for zucchinis. This La Ninã year has been so wet here, that they are only having a short life before succumbing to fungal diseases. The trombochino though is loving it. Because it climbs, the vines and fruit are up off the ground and get better air flow. It’s the difference between growing commercially and home gardening, and one of the reasons why I think…
Since I’ve been making sourdough, over a year now, I haven’t bought bread but I also haven’t bought crispbread. Crisp, seedy biscuit topped with cottage cheese and salad used to be a really regular lunch for me. So I’ve been playing with a homemade sourdough based version, and it’s joined the list of things I like homemade best.
It’s not as photogenic as it was delicious. Green beans in a creamy, nut based mild curry sauce.
We’re picking the very first of the limes, which opens up a whole batch of central American recipes. They’re still a bit green but juicy enough. And the third round of beans for the season are now bearing, so I also now have so many green beans of various kinds that even my favourites – the snake beans – are being allowed to grow out to mature for shelling. So…
This year’s sweet corn has been less than exciting. First it was mice. Then it was weather. Some years there is so much sweet corn, I am using up all my repertoire of corn recipes. This year, half the cobs were missing kernels. I’ve had to actually choose my favourite recipes to use it on. This one made it.
My partner is a chili fiend. He would eat chili beans for every meal if he could. We compromise. But I do make chili beans quite a lot. He’s a big bloke and he needs a lot of fuel. But, like me, he alternates between being very physically active and spending too much time doing sitting work. So the perfect fuel is very filling but low calorie, low GI, high…
I’m not a big preserve maker, nor do I freeze vegetables. I sun-dry tomatoes and make passata if I have enough, but I am lucky enough to live in a climate where, if I plant sequentially and we eat seasonally, we can eat fresh all year. So preserves tend to just sit on the shelf looking decorative. So if I make preserves, it’s not to preserve things but because the…
Now how do you do justice to a tomato like this? You can stuff up beautiful produce by overelaborating. It’s hard to go past just a slice of sourdough toast, a drizzle of olive oil, and a beautiful, vine ripened Brandywine tomato in thick slices with salt and pepper. Tomato on toast for dinner – if you have real bread and a real tomato, you could elaborate a great deal…
Capsicums are the feature crop out of my garden this week, and they are so much in season that even if you aren’t growing them, you should be able to get beautiful local ones at Farmers Markets.