Summer recipes

It's great to see the recipe idea taking off at Harvest Basket, with new recipe sheets appearing each month. Here are a couple more recipes you might like to try:

Beetroot and carrot salad
2-4 beetroot (depending on size)
2-4 carrots (ditto)
several mint leaves (peppermint probably best)
juice of half a lemon
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp salt
generous glug of olive oil

Peel the vegies, bung all the ingredients in the blender. Turn it on. Job done!
This makes a lovely, tangy salad with a slight Middle Eastern flavour. Goes well with sausages or other barbecued meats.

Jill Pring does a similar one with apple and coriander and without the cumin and lemon juice. Also yum!

Honey and almond cookies
250 g rye flour
120 g plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
250 g honey
250 g butter
1 cup coarsely chopped almonds (you could also try raw pistachios, hazelnuts, chocolate, dried fruits, etc. etc.)
2 standard eggs or 3 bantam eggs

Mix the dry ingredients in a bowl. Melt the butter in a saucepan then allow to cool slightly. Fold the eggs, honey and butter into the dry ingredients, then fold in the almonds. Don't overwork the dough: you want it just to hang together in a big, slightly crumbly lump. Adjust flour as necessary to achieve this.

Empty out the dough onto a well-floured surface and gently roll into a sausage about 10 cm across. Handle the dough as little as possible. Wrap in baking paper and chill in the fridge for about 30 minutes. (You can also freeze the dough and bake it later.)

Meanwhile preheat the oven to 160˚C. Cover two baking trays with baking paper.
Cut the dough into 1 cm thick slices and arrange on the baking trays. Bake in the oven until lightly browned on top (about 25 minutes). Allow to cool on a baking tray.

Makes about 15 generous-sized cookies. Would be gorgeous as a dessert with sour cream or ricotta and fresh berries.

My thanks to Rose Newberry, the wonderful chef at Milkwood Permaculture for a version of this recipe.

Rose's cookies are in themselves probably sufficient reason to travel to Milkwood, 60 km out of Mudgee!

German red cabbage

Our red cabbages are a little late this year, but they're ready now. They've formed nice tight heads, which are bug-free once the outer leaves have been stripped off. I use them for three main dishes: coleslaw, pickled red cabbage and German red cabbage (Rotkohl). Here's an easy way to do Rotkohl.

Ingredients

• half a red cabbage, finely sliced
• 1 apple, chopped
• 1 onion, chopped
• 2 rashers bacon
• 1 glass red wine
• 1 glass apple juice
• bay leaves
• half a dozen cloves
• seasoning
• sugar (optional)
• olive oil

Make sure the cabbage is clean and bug free. Quarter the cabbage and cut out the stalk. Slice the cabbage thinly. Chop the bacon, onion and apple.

Take a heavy cast-iron casserole or saucepan with a lid. Fry the bacon quickly in the oil, then add the onion and fry over a low heat for 5 mins. Add the chopped apple. When the onion is translucent, add the red cabbage, bay leaves, cloves and the wine and juice. Stir and simmer over a low heat with the lid on for 2-3 hours. Check from time to time to make sure there is still sufficient liquid, adding more juice or wine if necessary.

You may add 1-2 teaspoons of sugar, depending on how sweet your juice, apple and wine are. Personally I prefer not to. When cooked, your Rotkohl should be glutinous, sweet and sour and caramelised. It goes really well with roast or barbecued meat and can be frozen. You could also use it as a filling for a jacket potato with a blob of sour cream.

The original German version would use goose fat instead of olive oil, would use good quality German Speck rather than bacon back rashers and would be heavier on the sugar and may add a small amount of flour to make a more glutinous dish, but my version is a little lighter.

My favourite recipe book

Most of my cookbook purchases over the years have been 'aspirational': I'm seduced by a gorgeous-looking book, buy it, try one or two recipes and then the book retires to the bookcase, where it gathers dust. You see, mostly I'm a spur-of-the-moment cook and can't be bothered with elaborate recipes.

The one exception is Jamie at Home by Jamie Oliver, published by Penguin, 2007. I love this because it's a real gardener's cookbook. I cook every day, but I only get passionate about cooking with fresh produce that I've grown myself. This book is stacked with simple, rustic, delicious recipes, arranged by season.

Here's a sample, which as it happens is bubbling away in the oven right now, using capsicums, onions, tomatoes and herbs that I've just picked from the garden. (I've simplified and shortened the text a little.)

Spicy pork and chilli-pepper goulash
serves 4 to 6

2 kg pork shoulder off the bone, skin off, fat left on
olive oil
2 red onions, finely sliced
2 red chillies, finely chopped
2 heaped tbsp mild paprika
2 tsp caraway seeds
bunch fresh oregano
5 medium-large capsicums (pref. a mix of types and colours)
1 kg ripe tomatoes, peeled
4 tbsp red wine vinegar
small pot sour cream
zest of one lemon
bunch flat-leaf parsley, chopped

Preheat the oven to 180C. Get a deep, ovenproof casserole with a lid and heat it on the hob. Score the fat on the meat in a criss-cross pattern all the way through to the meat, then season generously with salt and pepper. Pour a good glug of olive oil into the pot and add the pork, fat side down. Cook for about 15 minutes on a medium heat, to render out the fat, then remove the pork from the pot and put it to one side.

Add the onions, chilli, paprika, caraway seeds, oregano and a good pinch of salt and pepper to the pot. Turn the heat down and gently cook the onions for 10 minutes, then add the sliced peppers and the tomatoes. Put the pork back in, give the pot a shake, then pour in enough water to cover the meat. Add the vinegar. Bring to the boil, put the lid on, then place in the oven for 3 hours.

Stir the sour cream, lemon zest and most of the parsley together in a little bowl. Serve the goulash in a dish or bowl, with basmati rice and the flavoured sour cream. Garnish with the rest of the parsley.

If you want any more recipes, you'll have to buy the book!

Marmalades

At the June Harvest Basket Lizzie was asking for a grapefruit marmalade recipe as she has lots of grapefruits this year. I haven't tried this one but it is from a good source. Here it is.

Grapefruit Marmalade

2 kg grapefruit

4 litres water

6 kg sugar

Cut the grapefruit into quarters, remove the seeds and white centres and slice the fruit finely. Put the pips and centres into a small basin with a little of the water. Cover the grapefruit with the rest of the water and stand for 24 hours. Next day pour the water off the pips and add to the fruit. Put into pan and boil for 1 hour. Add the sugar and boil until fruit is soft and will set when tested. Bottle and seal.

Someone brought mandarins to the june Harvest Basket. I'm sorry I don't know who it was but they said the fruit was cumquats but I am pretty sure they are mandarins. Yummy anyway. Today I followed a recipe for Mandarin Marmalade that I have not made before. It was a bit of a fiddle as I had to boil the fruit until the liquid was reduced to half and then measure it and add cup for cup in sugar. It seemed like a lot of sugar but it seems to have turned out alright. However in future I will stick to my lemon marmalade recipe for mandarins. No fiddle with

that one. I will bring some jars of the marmalade I made today to the July Harvest Basket.

Lots of Lemons

One minute we had no lemons on our tree and the next the tree is full of lemons that have all ripened at once. If this is also true for you, here are a couple of ideas for using some of them. Tried and true recipes we use all the time.

Lemon Cordial

1.5kg caster sugar

zest and juice of 7 or 8 lemons

1/4 cup citric acid

1 litre boiling water

Combine all ingredients in a pyrex or heat-proof china bowl (not metal). Stir until sugar is dissolved. Cover and stand over night.

Strain into sterilized bottles. I find it makes about 3 wine bottles worth.

Don't throw away the zest that is left over. It is yummy on ice-cream or stirred into plain yoghurt and keeps for quite a while covered in the fridge. 

Lemon Marmalade

6 lemons

7 cups boiling water

6 cups sugar

Slice lemons and cover with boiling water. Let stand overnight. Cook gently until rinds are soft, approximately 20 - 30 minutes. Add sugar, stir until dissolved and quickly boil 25 - 45 minutes or until fruit will gel. Put into sterilized jars.

I find it usually takes about 35 minutes and makes about 8 jam jars worth.

I have used the same recipe for limes as well as mandarins and it has worked just as well. I've also made lemon and lime.

Tomatoes galore

It's the end of May and tomatoes are still ripening in our garden. Not many, but enough to make me procrastinate about pulling out the vines. They'll have to go soon, though, to make way for the broad beans.

Everyone I've spoken to in the Geelong area to seems to have had great tomatoes this year. We've had the perfect summer for it, with decent rainfall and warm weather without searing heatwaves to frazzle the vines.

I always grow my tomato plants from seed, and always heirloom varieties, which crop for longer and (I think) have more taste. I grew Tommy Toe and Amish Paste varieties this year (seeds from Diggers Club).

Tommy Toe is the mainstay of our tomato crop each year: they grow like weeds in our garden and the fruit is great for sauces, salads, on pizzas - you name it. Amish Paste was a first-time experiment. Despite the rather unappetising name, they're a good medium-large slicing tomato, sweet with low acidity.

Amish Paste do seem prone to blossom-end rot, though, and I lost a large part of the early crop, yet no trouble with the Tommy Toes right next to them! Regular doses of Tomato Magic seemed to help correct the problem, but I doubt this is an allowable organic input, so next year I'll try harder to get the soil calcium right before I plant.

Speaking of soil prep, I've never lost a tomato plant to wilt or nematodes since I started growing mustard as a bio-fumigant two years ago. (The young leaves of the mustard make a nice spicy salad crop too.) Sow in winter, then, before the mustard flowers in the spring, smash it down and dig it in. You can plant tomatoes into the bed within a couple of weeks. Works for me.

Tomato sauce recipe (works best with small, sweet tomatoes like Tommy Toe):

• Enough whole fresh tomatoes to cover the base of a roasting tin or ovenproof dish
• Extra-virgin olive oil (we always get ours direct from Lighthouse on Anderson Road)
• A good pinch of sea salt
• Fresh oregano or cinnamon basil leaves
• A couple of cloves of garlic
• Optional: a glug of vino cotto, balsamic vinegar (don't overdo it) or red wine

Roll the tomatoes and herbs in the oil to make sure they're well covered. (Go on, get your hands oily!) Put in a preheated oven at about 180 C for 90 minutes or until the liquid is starting to reduce and the tomatoes are caramelised on top. Leave to cool, then whizz up in a food mixer. Will keep in the fridge for 7 days, or freeze in small containers.

I've never bothered sieving the tomatoes, though you could if you wanted a smooth paste.

Alternatively, just serve the whole tomatoes hot from the oven with roast meat or with pasta.