Show Time

So much has happened since my last missive, embarrassingly over two months ago, that I hardly know where to start with this post! However, I hope this finds you in good health and spirits.

Spring is well and truly here, and has been for quite a while now. Agricultural shows and expos are happening across the state and the roadsides are alight with wildflowers. We had a very warm August and the fruit trees are now in full bloom- in fact the peaches have finished flowering and are sporting tiny fruit. The scent of citrus flowering in the orchard is almost overpowering. This morning I applied trace elements to all the fruit trees because, having attended a garden workshop  recently, I learnt that this is very important and far more beneficial than trying to guess at specific deficiencies and applying individual elements e.g. iron.

The veggie garden is in a period of seasonal transition. Our cool-room is full of broccoli, cauliflower and cabbages, in special green vegetable bags which help the veg keep longer, and the garden beds are looking a little bare,  however they will soon look lush again when the summer veg seeds and seedlings grow up.

We have butchered one of the pigs and he is delicious! When the time comes we will kill the last two at the same time rather than leave one, which might get lonely.

A collection of vegetables from my garden, labelled
 and presented in an old dried fruit wooden crate 

Our local agricultural show was held a couple of weekends ago and it was pretty chaotic around here in the week leading up to it, with lots of baking of scones, cakes, bread and biscuits, as well as picking and presenting herbs, vegetables and flowers and gathering together and labelling preserves and eggs. Trying to get all the goodies in the car and arrive at the pavilion, a hundred kilometres away, before 9am on the day was frantic to say the least! My eldest son and daughter also exhibited at the show, so between us the car was just about bursting.

Various herbs from my garden, presented for the local Ag Show

I was fortunate to come away with the most points in the vegetable section and runner-up in the cooking. After a bit of a lack lustre showing last year it was great to see the locals really get into the spirit of the show with lots of exhibits this year.



I have heaps of cavolo nero, or Tuscan kale, in the garden this year, which is great because I love eating this versatile, healthy vegetable. Lots of people ask me how to cook it. My favourite recipe at the moment is to devein and slice it then steam or blanch for a couple of minutes. Meanwhile, gently sauté some very finely sliced garlic and chopped chilli in olive oil, add a tin of chickpeas and fry them until they have a bit of colour before adding the kale to the pan and continuing to cook for another 4-5minutes. Season with salt and pepper and a squeeze of lemon juice. If you add some crumbled feta cheese it is a meal in itself!

Kale is an excellent addition to vegetable soups like minestrone and we also enjoy it, as a side dish, pureed with either some left over cheese sauce or some cream cheese.

Another, slightly unusual, vegetable that I am currently picking is fennel.  Fennel has quite a strong aniseed flavour which doesn't appeal to everyone. Fennel pairs very well with pork I think. I find that when it is cooked the flavour mellows but I actually love the flavour of it raw and this salad is a delicious way to celebrate spring and enjoy fennel's crisp, fresh flavour.

Fennel, Pear or Apple, Parmesan and Walnut Salad


Dressing

whisk together in a bowl large enough to hold the whole salad;

2 tablespoons good extra virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon apple cider/white wine vinegar or lemon juice
1/2 a teaspoon Dijon mustard
A pinch of salt


Add

1 bulb of fennel-sliced very finely using a knife of mandoline
1 pear or green apple- cored and slice finely
1/3 cup walnuts, toasted and roughly chopped
Shaved parmesan to taste - I use a vegetable peeler for this
Chunks of avocado- optional
Salt flakes and ground black pepper to taste

Garnish with some gently fried fennel fronds if desired.

How's your garden going?

The Green Gene

This morning I picked an Iceberg lettuce from "Tom's Patch". As you can see below, it weighed in at 1.3kg without the outer leaves, which is pretty impressive I reckon. The photo on the right is Tom's garden, his first attempt at growing vegetables. So far Tom is the only one of our three kids that has shown any interest in gardening, although they all love eating home grown veggies. I live in hope that the other two will take it up when they have their own places. I'm fairly confident it will happen, they have gardening genes from both sides of the family…how can they not? 


Anyway, I am thrilled with Tom's success and there is nothing like success to breed enthusiasm!  Actually, Tom showed an inclination towards gardening when he was very young. I have vivid memories of him helping me weed the carrots when he was only three or four years old and we have a priceless video of him kicking out double-gees (prickles), wearing his little blue gumbooots. Of course all three kids used to love 'sneaking' into the veggie garden and stealing peas and carrots, especially when I'd told them they couldn't have anything to eat until dinner time!


My own love for gardening was also sparked at an early age. Both my Mum's mum and my Dad's parents were keen gardeners. Of my paternal grandparents, Nanny grew the flowers and Poppa the veggies. As kids we just loved picking strawberries, passionfruit, swedes and carrots from Poppa's garden. And Nanny delighted in taking us around her wonderful rose and flower beds, encouraging us to learn the names of all that grew in them. 

My Dad too, is a very good gardener. He had a wonderful veggie garden on the farm where my brother and sister and I grew up, and I strongly remember being dwarfed by his towering corn crop, and of the freezer being filled with corn on the cob. Incidentally, both my brother and sister are very keen and capable gardeners.

I hope I haven't bored you silly with my little trip down memory lane. I suppose I just wanted to illustrate the value of involving your children/grandchildren in the garden if you wish them to follow suit. The photo on the right is of me picking fruit from one of the two magnificent English mulberry trees on our farm…excuse the length of my shorts - it was the 70s!!

So, what's happening in my garden at the moment? Well, the beans are beaning, the peas are peaing (sorry I couldn't resist) and the first broccoli is ready to pick…in fact I have a feeling we are going to be eating a fair bit of broccoli over the coming few weeks! 

We've had a couple of frosts and the tomatoes got a bit burnt, but not wiped out, and everything else seems to have survived. Fortunately the beans were well protected near the wall of the garden and, in their towers, the spuds are too high off the ground to be bothered by a bit of common garden frost!  

I am picking carrots and beetroot but still waiting on the fennel. We are loving the beautiful little butter lettuces - I will happily eat the best part of a whole one, drizzled with good olive oil, a squeeze of lime juice and a sprinkle of salt and pepper.                                                                                                                      
The raised flower bed is looking very colourful, although the cornflowers haven't bloomed yet. I am totally enamoured with the stunning colours of the snap dragons…if only I could magic them into fabric!!

          

          
One problem I have with producing written recipes for  Outback Larder is that I am essentially an intuitive cook and, while I may get inspiration from books, blogs, magazines and websites, I rarely actually follow recipes….and I am not too good at recording what I do as I go!! So, this 'recipe' may not appeal to you if you like to follow them to the letter but if you like the idea of it then try Googling 'fish tacos.'

Recently my daughter Fran and I made fish tortillas and they were absolutely delicious. We made the tortillas from scratch, using the instructions on the packet of the Bob's Red Mill Masa Harina-Golden Corn Flour which is very simply to mix the flour, salt and water into a dough, rest it, roll it and cook it in a hot pan. This made about 10 tortillas- which were very 'rustic' and not very round!!

We then made a marinade paste by blending approximately:

50g (1 cup) roughly chopped coriander (cilantro) leaves and stems
2 teaspoons paprika
1 tablespoons cumin
1 small red chilli, seeded and chopped
1 tsp sea salt
freshly ground black pepper
zest of 1 lime
80ml (1/3 cup) olive oil

into which we rolled strips of firm white fish and left it to marinate for 15 minutes while making the salad.

Before serving we fried the fish in a hot pan with a bit of olive oil for a couple of minutes.

The salad was like a chunky guacamole of diced tomatoes, cucumber, and avocado, finely chopped red onion, chopped coriander, a bit of chopped chilli, lime juice, olive oil and salt and pepper. 

For the sauce we mixed half a cup of good, whole egg mayonnaise with the zest and juice of one lime.

Trust me, it tasted better than it looks in this very bad photo!!

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.