Isn’t this stunning. It’s the seed end of a tromboncino, a cross section slice. The seeds are not developed yet. I was about to cook it, but couldn’t resist a photo first.
Kasundi is a good way to make bottling tomatoes good enough for gifts and treats, worth the $5 or $6 a jar they would be worth if you paid yourself for the time it takes. It’s a rich, spicy but not too hot, tomato sauce, great with eggs or baked beans (or eggs and baked beans!), or with dhall or dosa or on bean burgers or kangaroo burgers or a…
We were all flooded in over the weekend, so we invited neighbours for a curry night. Curry nights are a great kind of potluck dinner, needing no co-ordination, and allowing people to go simple or as gourmet as they like.
The turmeric is flowering, such gorgeous flowers. They’re hidden deep within the foliage, but the plant is very good looking anyway. At least in summer. It doesn’t work so well as a decorative plant because it dies right back in winter – a period of yellowing daggy looking leaves, followed by bare ground with not a trace of the bounty underneath.
I was picking for an Indonesian style curry – ginger, galangal, turmeric, lemon grass, chili, Vietnamese mint (and I added – Kaffir lime leaves and garlic as well) and I couldn’t resist the photo. Add this spice base to an oily sauce and you have a wonderful curry sauce for fish or meat or poultry or vegetables.
We actually managed to harvest olives this year! Some years – most years in fact – we’re a bit too slow. I play chicken with the birds and lose. I like black olives better than green, so I wait and watch the trees, laden, ripening. Then one day, just at the point where I’m thinking best not to risk waiting any longer, I check and they’re all gone. All….gone.
I had many thoughts in mind for the platter this week – lots of different produce in glut and lots of occasions for sharing. But in the end I had one of those weekends where time just runs out and I found myself ditching all the cordon bleu options and going for very quick and easy. This is not the super healthiest of recipes but it’s a way of turning…
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 live smack bang in fruit fly territory. Bactrocera tryoni – Queensland Fruit Fly. They seem to be getting, if anything more prolific as the climate heats up, and I think over the years I’ve tried every known method of control, short of spraying, which I can tell without trying it wouldn’t work.
My platter this week was centred around a bowl of smoky eggplant and pomegranate dip, sort of like babaganoush but with pomegranate instead of lemon juice.