Two Veg in One

Allow me to introduce you to the Three Little Pigs. Tempted as I am they will not be individually named- but if they were then the middle one in this photo would have to be called Happy! These guys (yes, they are all boys) arrived this week and came from our friends Tim and Jen's farm and when the time comes we will give one back as a thank you….in freezer bags of course.

The veggie garden is still growing well and this week I picked the first baby beetroot of the season. I think beetroot is a beautiful vegetable. The cooked bulbous root is silky in texture, sweet and earthy in taste and vibrant in colour. It can be steamed, baked, braised and even eaten raw. Then there's the leaves- which unfortunately, are often wasted (in Australia at least). I like to cook beetroot leaves the same way that I do silver beet, which is stir fried with a bit of garlic. In fact, mixing the two leaves together works well and is a good option if you haven't got enough of one or the other.

I reckon silverbeet is one of the best veggies for the home garden. It's as tough as old boots, grows most of the year round (even here!), is really good for you and, I think, it tastes delicious….although I haven't managed to convince my sons of this! However, they will eat it if I make it into a mornay….in other words, smothered in cheese sauce!

It's a good idea to strip the leaves from the stalks before cooking either silver beet or beetroot leaves. This way you can slice the stalks separately and give them a bit more cooking time than the leaves. A wok is ideal for cooking these greens in because the wide top makes it easy to get the bulk of raw leaves in the pan. They don't take long to wilt down and don't need any water added to the pan, just a bit of oil and/or butter. For something different you can give it an Asian twist by adding a glug of oyster sauce towards the end of cooking. Yum!!

Ten Thousand Words….or Ten Photos!

Well, I'm not getting around to writing much so thought instead I'd post some photos and hope that makes up for the lack of words! Since the last post on May 4th we've had two nice falls of 24mm and 42mm of rain….quite an exceptional start to the season for us. I'm looking forward to posting photos of the wildflowers in a couple of months. In the meantime here's a glimpse of what's happening in the garden.

It's three weeks since the photo in the last post and the veggie garden is 

powering.  I am picking lettuces, Asian greens, radishes, silverbeet, coriander 

and parsley. I'm having a few issues with caterpillars on the  broccoli and 

red cabbages and the wind snapped some of the beans which were about to

flower. The beans I planted under the poly tunnel didn't germinate very well -I 

think they rotted- so I've taken it off and resown and will replace when it is properly 

cold. I've planted quite a few flowers in the veggie garden this year so it should be 

very pretty in about August.

The Spud Towers- I made a mistake in my last post saying that you 

should cover the spuds when the green shows through. Apparently

you cover the green when it is about 30cm high. 

Tom's newly planted lucern patch. This will be a valuable source of greens
for the chooks in summer and also for mulching material when it is cut and

dried out. 

I went into town the other day and found this coffee bush at the nursery.

I think it might be very tricky to keep alive in summer but I love

a gardening challenge! I've put lots of water saving crystals and compost  in the 

planting mix and covered the hole with some heavy duty 'mulch' to stop the chooks

scratching around it. 

This is a mini wicking bed made from a foam box. In it 

I've planted water spinach and laksa leaf/Vietnamese mint.

Tom and I are planning to make a large wicking bed from 

timber later this year.

Another gardening challenge!! I'm not sure how this 

blueberry (planted yesterday) will grow here 

but I'll never know if I don't try. Fingers crossed!

This simple tool (made by my Dad) is the best thing ever for 

cutting through and extracting weeds. It's a piece of flat stainless

steel curved and attached to an old broom stick with gutter bolts.

With this I can weed the garden without having to bend over.

This is the bacon hanging in our homemade smoker. You can just see the 

smoke seeping out of the inlet pipe at the bottom of the drum. I left the meat in 

the smoker for about 3 hours. It could have had slightly longer but I'd rather 

it is slightly under smoked than over as it tends to be a bit overpowering

and slightly nauseating if overdone!

Our home made smoker is a bit rough and ready but it 

does the job! The rocks on the lid of the fire pit (an old road sign!) 

are to hold it down so that the smoke is forced to go up the pipe 

and into the 44 gal drum-the smoking chamber. As you can see, 

some smoke escapes! The pavers on the right are nothing to do 

with the smoker, they just happen to be stored there.

This beautiful creature has nothing to do with anything Outback 

Larder (we certainly didn't eat him!!) but he's pretty cute and I 

thought you might like to see some of the local wild life . When it 

rains here the country bursts into life. This tortoise would have been 

buried deep in the ground, hibernating until it was wet enough 

to dig his/her way out. We found it on the road in the middle 

of the day, travelling between water holes.

Dates, Spud Towers and Bruschetta

It's date season and the fruit eating birds around here are in heaven! The oldest date palm (below right), planted by my mum-in-law many years ago, is laden with fruit and is far too tall for me to pick it so the birds feast and fight over the fruit from morning 'til night. Fortunately we also have a few of younger trees and I have slipped some covers over their bunches to protect them from the birds (below centre), so at least we get a few!

Dates are very easy to grow in our climate, in fact they can be a bit of a pest and I am always pulling them out. If you want to harvest the dates you need to keep trimming the bottom fronds off with a saw or chain saw and you need to be very careful doing this because the leaves have a nasty spike on the end which can cause itching and inflammation if they stab you. It might be easier to buy them!

I like to eat dates straight off the tree but they are delicious when split on one side and filled with some creamy soft cheese and a pistachio or almond and served as an after dinner treat. From what I have been reading dates are having a bit of a renaissance in the Raw Food scene. They are used as a substitute for sugar in all sorts of recipes. My daughter likes to make 'ice-cream' from dates, bananas, cocoa, nut butter and coconut milk all blitzed together in a food processor. Here is a recipe from a blog called 'MindBodyGreen' for this virtuous treat.  Dates also add a delicious hint of sweetness when added to a lamb tagine, otherwise called Moroccan Lamb Stew.

We were very fortunate to have some wonderful rain last week.  For me the best thing about this is that now the trees and shrubs in the bush will stop dying. It has been heartbreaking to watch the country dying before our eyes and I am looking forward now to watching it recover. 

The veggie garden has enjoyed the rain too. Since writing last I have finished making the beds and have planted most of them up. I am trying very hard to be restrained and save some room for later plantings in order to prolong the harvest, but it is taking a lot of will power!

I've just taken possession of a plastic 'grow tunnel' under which I have planted beans. I am hopeful that the tunnel will keep conditions warm enough for winter grown beans, as well as protecting them from frost. We don't get a lot of frost here but of course it only takes one to wipe out a crop of anything susceptible. 

With Tom's help I have also erected three potato towers. The idea is that each time a green sprout pokes its head through you cover it with more soil, which forces the plant to get taller and taller - and hopefully produce potatoes all the way up the stem! When it gets to the top you let it do what it wants to do, which is make leaves in order to feed the potaoes underneath. When the leaves die back you lift the netting off and harvest the bounty. Well, that's the theory anyway. I've never grown spuds this way before so I guess we'll just see what happens. In two towers I've planted Dutch Creams and in the other Ruby Lou. It's a bit hard here in Western Australia to get hold of interesting varieties of seed potatoes because they can't be ordered from the Eastern States due to quarantine laws. I was pretty happy to find the Dutch Creams….I hope they do well! 

One of my favourite things to make for lunch is bruschetta, and that is what I had today, with the first coriander from the garden….it was pretty small but  I had to thin the plants anyway and fresh coriander has so much flavour you don't need heaps to get a good hit. It's a pretty ordinary photo but you get the idea. 

Bruschetta (pronounced Broo-scet-ta)

This is more of an idea than a recipe. What ever you choose to put on top of your bread here are a couple of tips that will ensure your bruschetta will be fabulous: Use a good, robust bread like sourdough (floppy white bread will not hold up under the topping), drizzle the bread with olive oil and grill it on a griddle pan or under a grill, rub the toasted bread with fresh cut garlic and use lovely fresh ingredients, including fresh herbs, in the topping. 

You can use whatever you fancy for your topping. We had fresh corn cooked on the BBQ last night and there was a bit left over which, combined with  coriander, made me lean towards a slightly Mexican salsa theme…… So, into the bowl went diced tomatoes, diced red capsicum, chopped avocado, cooked  fresh corn, diced cucumber, finely sliced spring onion, fresh picked coriander, salt and pepper. All tossed together with some good extra virgin olive oil and a generous squeeze of lime. 

A classic bruschetta is a combo of fresh tomato and basil but you can top your toast with all sorts of things, for example: smoked salmon, dill and capers; tinned tuna, red onion, mayo and parsley; grilled eggplant, feta and mint; caramelised onions, goats cheese and rocket. The list is endless, and you can even do sweet fruit and cheese toppings….but better leave out the garlic!

Planting At Last!

Well, the weather is finally changing. It's still a bit warm in the day but the mornings are relatively cool and hopefully we won't get any more 40 degree days. It's amazing the positive effect the change of season has on my urge to garden.

Tom delivering compost to the vegetable garden

The compost Tom made is absolutely fantastic! It smells sweet and, apart from a few bones, the original contents are unidentifiable because they've broken down so well. It got very hot in the making so there should be no weed seeds still alive.

Because our water is slightly brackish, over time the salt builds up in the soil so, at about five yearly intervals, we take out the top 20 or 30 centimetres and replace it with fresh soil from a nearby pit. Ideally  soil would get better each year as more compost etc is added but unfortunately that's not the case when you are watering with salty water.   My vegetables are always best in the year that we do this soil exchange so I am expecting a good harvest in a few months.

The veggie garden is really getting a makeover this year. As well as fresh soil and compost, I have changed the layout and the watering system. For the last few years I have been watering with sprinklers because it is easy to cover a large area, but it is less than ideal for a few reasons, not least being that it puts salt on the leaves and increases evaporation rates. In the past I've had trouble using drip lines because I've found that they tend to block up, and the hole spacings are too far apart. A fellow outback gardener recommended a John Deere product called T Tape so we are giving that a go. Apparently it doesn't block and the spacings are 20cm which should be fine. If it works well I think it will be a huge improvement.


When finished there will be seven long beds and a couple of potato towers (I'll show you the towers in a separate post after I've done them.) So far I have made and planted up four beds with seedlings of: Asian greens, butter lettuce, broccoli, red cabbage, silver beet, cauliflower, kale, red onions, spring onions and seeds of: sugar snap peas, dwarf beans, coriander, carrots, parsnips, beetroot, Florence fennel, parsley, little gem lettuce and cloves of garlic. I've got leek seeds and a whole lot of flower seeds in punnets. I've snuck some sweet pea seeds in with the sugar snaps and some calendula seedlings in next to the garlic.  I'm planning to add stocks, snap dragons and poppies here and there also.

I have also planted one of my large raised beds with English spinach seeds. This bed is covered with shade cloth as I've found the spinach produces well in this environment. I've been a little frivolous this year and planted the other large raised bed totally with flowers and I am looking forward to having flowers to pick and bring inside.

Since I started writing this a few days ago we've had some quite hot weather. Today it was 35 degrees. The seedlings are hanging in there but they don't like it much. I just have to be conscientious about not letting them dry out and I really should mulch them but I haven't got around to that yet unfortunately.

With the continuation of the warm weather the nights are still balmy here; perfect for cooking and eating outside. One of the best ways I have discovered for doing this was in Vietnam, where everyone cooks their own food on a tabletop barbecue. It takes a bit of preparation but is such a lot of fun and a novel way to entertain.

You might have to be a bit creative about the actual barbecue…. we used the smoker box turned upside down and filled it with heat beads. This worked pretty well, although I should have put a heat proof mat between it and the tablecloth because it scorched the cloth a bit! We also used a traditional, earthenware  tagine base with a 'grill' on top (which I think was some sort of machine part!) I have seen bucket style barbecues in a camping shop which would be perfect.

This is not so much a recipe as an idea really. You can use whatever meat and vegetables you like. I used pork, very thinly sliced and marinated in fish sauce, lime juice and a bit of sugar, along with prawns (deveined, tail on) and a selection of cut up vegetables including: red capsicum, mushrooms, bok choy, shallots, spring onions, zucchini and broccoli (which I blanched first). I think it helps the cooking process to toss the veg in a bit of  oil before it hits the heat.  I also served fresh lettuce, cucumber, coriander, mint and Thai basil to add some clean, crisp contrast to the smoky cooked food.

If you want to create something to wrap the food in you could try making spring onion pancakes. The recipe I followed comes from Bill Granger's Everyday Asia cookbook. A few dipping sauces and some lime wedges make the meal complete. Sweet chill sauce and the nuoc cham, from my Vietnamese Tacos recipe posted earlier, work well. Oh, and it washes down deliciously with a refreshing, minty Mojito!

Berry Caperble

Sorry about the title, I couldn't resist!

My caper plants have been producing prolifically in the hot weather....unlike me, they seem to thrive in it! However, I've been away a bit recently and haven't been picking the buds regularly which means a lot have gone past the bud stage and into flower. The flowers are fragrant and very pretty to look at, delicate and orchid like, but sadly they only last one day. Having said that, if you haven't kept on top of the picking there will be plenty more flowers the next day!

The good news is that once capers flower they go on to make fruit (seed pods), which we know as caper berries. These are a bit slower growing so you have a bigger picking window. Of course, if left on the bush they will eventually grow too big to eat as berries and they are the ones I let mature fully and collect the seeds from....if I can beat the ants to them!

Like olives, the berries need to be brined in order to make them edible. I mix five teaspoons of salt into one cup of water and this seems to work ok. With this batch I am experimenting a little. I was going to add a bit of white wine vinegar but I don't have any so have sloshed in a bit of verjuice instead. I thought about adding some flavouring spices like mustard seeds and peppercorns, and maybe even some garlic, but decided I should do some research first. Has anyone reading this ever done that and how did it go?



I find these screw lid plastic fruit jars good for pickling capers in. Being plastic means there is no corrosion and it is very simple to keep adding capers/berries over a few weeks until the jar is full. The berries need to soak in the brine for at least a week before they are ready and can be left in there for ages....I don't honestly know how long they will last but we are still eating capers and berries from last year with no ill effects!

I guess the question then is, "What on earth do I do with caper berries?"

Well, if you don't like capers, don't bother with the berries, you probably won't like them either. Being a pickle, caper berries are good to serve with rich food because they kind of balance things out with their mouth puckering, saliva inducing pickliness! At a restaurant recently I had them served with panfried duck breast which worked very well.

You can use caper berries where ever you might use capers, either sliced or whole, 'raw' or cooked. They go with salmon, corned meat, chicken, veal, tuna, lamb, mayonnaise, eggs, cheese platters, fried haloumi, pasta, potato salad....the list is endless really. Being bigger, and usually with stems attached, they have more visual impact than capers and look great on the plate. Also, the insides are full of seeds and a cross section looks quite pretty.

This is a new recipe that I just made up for this post and have literally just finished eating! It was delicious, even if I do say so myself, and given there's no one home at the moment to share it with or give an opinion you'll have to take my word for it ;)

Potato, Bean and Salmon Salad with Caper Berries

6-8 Kipfler potatoes, scrubbed and steamed whole until tender but not mushy, then cut into bite sized chunks.
4 handfuls (about 400g) green beans, halved then steamed or boiled until tender
3 spring onions, sliced thinly on diagonal
1/2 a red onion, very finely sliced
2 Lebanese cucumbers, quartered lengthways and then sliced in about 1cm chunks-cucumber is optional but adds a nice crunch and freshness.
30 caper berries- slice about 20 into thirds and leave the remainder whole
A few sprigs of fresh mint - save some to garnish
4 salmon steaks- skin on
Olive oil and salt flakes

Dressing

4 tablespoon good mayonnaise
3 tablespoon sour cream  (if you don't have sour cream you could use Greek yogurt or just use more mayo)
3 teaspoons of grainy mustard (you could use Dijon instead)
Acid to balance - I used verjuice but you could use lemon juice or white wine vinegar- just add a little at a time and keep testing until it tastes good!


Method

Mix all the dressing ingredients together in a small bowl. Season to taste with salt and white pepper. Place all other ingredients apart from salmon, oil and salt flakes into a large mixing bowl.

Heat a frying pan. Dry the salmon steaks with paper towel. Rub with olive oil and then press salt flakes into the skin. When pan is hot, pour a little bit of oil into it and place in the salmon, skin side down. Cook for about two or three minutes and then turn and cook the other side for a minute or two. Cook each side for about thirty seconds. (it's hard to be precise about cooking times because the size of the salmon pieces will vary. I like it to be a bit rare in the middle)

Remove the salmon from the pan and gently lift the skin off each piece. Pop the skin back in the pan and on the heat for a bit to get lovely and crispy.

Using your hands, gently flake the salmon into bit sized pieces, following the 'lines' of the fish. Place in the bowl with the rest of the ingredients. Pour over as much dressing as you think you'd like and then gently fold it all together. Taste and season with salt and white pepper. Garnish with the crispy skin, mint leaves and a few extra caper berries if desired.

Serves 4.

Vegetable Salads

Because it is so hot here in summer we love to eat salads, but I also love cooked vegetables and don’t want to miss out on them, so the obvious thing to do is make salads from cooked veggies!

For a long time now I have been making salads with roasted root vegetables like potato, sweet potato and red onion and also pumpkin, but I have only fairly recently discovered the joys of chargrilling brasiccas, namely broccoli and cauliflower….wow, what a taste sensation! Chargrilled Brussels sprouts are wonderful also (once tasted you will never steam or boil them again!) but not usually available in summer....well not where I live at any rate.

Grilled and roasted vegetable salads make an interesting and delicious side dish to go with  barbecued, grilled or roasted meat or, with a few ‘extra’ bits, can be a stand alone meal.

This broccoli salad recipe comes from Yotam Ottelenghi’s book, “ Ottelenghi, The Cookbook." I urge you to give it a go, it is a simple yet stunning combination of flavours.

Ottolengi's Chargrilled Broccoli with Chilli and Garlic 

2 heads of broccoli

115ml olive oil

4 cloves garlic, thinly sliced

2 mild red chillies, thinly sliced

Toasted almond flakes or thinly sliced lemon

Salt and pepper

Separate the broccoli into individual florets (leave stem on). Fill a large saucepan with water and bring to the boil. Throw in the broccoli and blanch for 2 minutes only. Using a slotted spoon transfer the broccoli into a bowl of iced water to stop it cooking and keep it a lovely vibrant green. Drain into a colander and allow to dry completely. Toss the broccoli with a couple of tablespoons of the oil and season well with salt and pepper.

Place a ridged griddle pan (or BBQ plate) over high heat and leave it to get very hot. Grill the broccoli in batches until it is charred all over - don't cram the pan. Transfer to a heatproof bowl.

While grilling the broccoli place the rest of the oil in a small saucepan with the garlic and chilli and gently warm them until the garlic just begins to turn golden. Be careful not to burn the garlic or you will have to start again as burnt garlic is very unpleasant. Pour the oil, garlic and chilli over the broccoli and toss together. Taste and adjust seasoning if necessary. Garnish with almonds or lemon just before serving. If using almonds I suggest serving with a wedge of lemon on the side.

Serve warm or at room temperature.

Emma's Optional Extras

Crispy fried proscuitto

Crumbled feta

There is a multitude of cooked vegetable salad recipes on the internet so, if you are in a bit of a funk about what to serve with your steak or chops tonight, have a look at the vegetables in your fridge (or pantry for spuds and onions) and google that ingredient + salad recipe...you are bound to find an interesting way to serve it. Or you could just make something up! I think it's important to add a bit of green to a salad and baby spinach, rocket and soft herbs are all useful for this. A basic dressing of olive oil and vinegar or lemon juice with a pinch of salt and a hint of honey or sugar works well with most salads.

Do you have any fabulous veggie salad recipes to share?

Gobble Guts!

Years ago sticky baked turkey wings made a regular appearance at our table because, apart from being really delicious, they were incredibly cheap at just $2 a kilo. Then, for reasons unknown to me, they just  disappeared from the meat section of our 'local' supermarket and I hadn't seen them again.....until about 3 weeks ago. I was so excited I nearly did a little dance in the shop!! They have doubled in price since I bought them last but the new ones are from a free range farm so I am happy to pay more and, let's face it, $4 a kilo is still very cheap! 

Another good thing about cooking turkey wings this way is that they are very quick and easy to prepare before being popped in the oven for a slow bake. If you like you could make the marinade in the morning, leave the wings steeping in it while you are at work, and when you get home put them on to bake for a couple of hours, to be ready in time for dinner. I like to serve them with fried brown rice made with lots of veggies, but they also go well with plain steamed rice and veg or salad on the side.

I don't like to light the oven in the kitchen here in summer (at 30 degrees with the air con on, it is quite hot enough thank you!) so, when it comes to baking meat I do it all in the barbecue and I find it works really well. I just put the tray on one side of the barbie and light the burner on the other side, then close the lid and monitor the temperature now and then. I turn the tray around about half way through the cooking time.

When baking any meat with sugar in the sauce I always line the tray with baking paper. This way you 

get to keep all the sauce rather than it sticking to the pan and, more importantly, the tray is easy to wash!

This recipe makes a lot so please adjust the quantities according to your needs...but I might add that it's worth cooking extras of these as they make great lunchbox fillers!

Ingredients

8 turkey wings, jointed into 2 pieces

Marinade

1 cup light soy sauce

2 tablespoons honey

1/3 cup sweet chilli sauce

2 thumbs of fresh ginger, grated finely

4 cloves garlic, crushed or grated finely (I use a microplane grater for ginger and garlic)

1/2 teaspoon Chinese five spice

2  whole star anise (this is quite a strong flavour and if not to your liking it can be omitted)

Peeled rind and squeezed juice of one orange

1/2 cup of water 

Method

Mix all the marinade ingredients together. Put the wings in a large bowl and pour the marinade over them. Cover and sit in the fridge overnight or for as long as you have. 

Preheat the oven (or barbecue) to 160 degrees Celsius. Line a tray (large enough to hold all the wings in a single layer) with baking paper. If a single sheet is not big enough to go up the sides of the tray then use two sheets folded together along the centre line a few times and then open out. 

Place the wings in a single layer in the tray and pour the marinade over them. Cover the tray tight with foil and place in the oven.

Bake at 160 deg for about 1 1/2 hours then take out and remove the foil. Turn the wings over in the sauce.

Put the tray back in the oven, turn the heat up to 180 deg and bake for another 1/2 an hour, or until the wings are a lovely burnished colour and the meat is coming away from the bone. 

These really are finger lickin' good but finger bowls might be a good idea!

This same recipe can be used with pork ribs.

I cooked 8 wings in this big tray. That's 8 big pieces
and 8 smaller pieces. This photo only shows half
the tray. It was enough for dinner for 6 and lunch
the next day.

And while we are on the subject of turkeys.....I killed the last of my turkeys the other day. I have been putting it off, thinking I might keep her, but I think she was a bit lonely and also she was annoying the chooks by pecking at them and dominating over the scraps from the chook bucket.

It is a little bit older than is ideal for eating but, rather than roasting, I will probably cut up and braise her slowly. I will make pate from the liver and add the heart and giblet to the carcass for stock. I will then hide in a corner and eat the giblet, sprinkled liberally with salt and pepper, all by myself!

Have you got any good turkey wing recipes?