Who said you can't?

By late summer, many gardeners run screaming at the sight of yet another zucchini lurking in the garden. The delightful finger long babies guiltily picked at Christmas are long forgotten as more sneak their way into the chook bucket. Every year I seem to come across a new zucchini tip and here I have one new one that dispels the myth about freezing zucs, a dehydrator recipe and a Kofta recipe that is a beauty.


ZUCCHINI SPAGHETTI

grated and blanched

Spiralise your zucchini.
Blanch by pouring over boiling water then refresh with cold water.
Allow to drain.
Pack into a box or sealed bag and freeze.
Defrost in a sieve or colander to allow excess moisture to drain.
Use in your favourite recipe.
It does not need cooking, warm through if you like.
I cooked some mushrooms, melted in a block of frozen pesto and stirred through the zucchini with some pitted olives...divine!
It has a certain chewiness of texture reminiscent of al dente pasta.
One 20cm zuc will feed two people.


This is an old favourite that I am happy to repeat:

ZUCCHINI CHIPS

Slice evenly, sprinkle with salt and allow to degorge.
Pat dry, sprinkle with pepper and salt.
Dehydrate till leathery.
Flip slices and continue to dry till crispy.

Store in an airtight container.
Serve as a snack or with dips.
Use as a gluten free 'pasta' layer in lasagne
NO fat and virtually no calories!
One 20cm zucchini makes two trays/one coffee jar.




ZUCCHINI KOFTA
A recipe for the cook who shared the spaghetti secret with me!
Serves 4 with rice and is gluten free. For a vegan option replace dairy with coconut milk

Koftas

500g grated zucchini, salted and squeezed, save liquid.

1 green chilli, chopped fine
1 large onion, chopped fine
1/2tsp grated ginger
2Tbsp fresh coriander, chopped
2Tbsp chickpea flour

Mix all well and form into 16 balls.
Fry quickly till brown or brush with oil and bake at 180 degrees.

Sauce
2 onions, chopped fine
rice bran oil
Heat oil and fry till transparent

1/2 tsp turmeric
pinch cayenne pepper
2 tsp ground coriander
Add and cook for a minute or so, till fragrant

225g canned or fresh tomatoes, chopped
zuc water from above
Add to onions and spice, simmer until reduced in volume by half.

250ml cream or yoghurt
1/2 tsp garam masala
Gently warm through, pour over koftas and sprinkle with whole roasted cumin seed or fresh coriander.

I hope you all enjoy the last of the season - in the middle of winter!

Glass Pickles

habitat

shade grown

It is not often that two of my obsessions overlap in a serendipitous way. At the end of autumn I was walking with a friend along along estuary where he lives when I realised we were standing at the edge of a marshy area full of samphire.  I have never seen it near home so I harvested a small handful to take home to pickle. This Australian member of the genus salacornia, I believe to be tecticornia halophyte, a favourite plant of mine. Looking very much like the succulent 'Dead Man's Fingers' it thrives in tidal rivers, estuaries and salty marshland where it acts against erosion. A small shrub, it appears to have no leaves, only succulent stems. In shaded areas, it can double its height when given year round water. New growth is brilliant green,   during summer the older branches become pink or red.

Common names include 'sea asparagus', 'sea bean', 'sea pickle' and 'pousse-pierre' after the patron saint of fishermen.  AND...here comes the link to another obsession,,,,'glasswort' is another common name for samphire. Prior to the nineteenth century, the ashes of glasswort and saltwort were used as a source of soda ash for glass making. Other varieties are used as a source of biofuel, salt and building materials.High in nitrogen, it can be a good source of fodder. Aboriginal Australians collected the seeds to grind into flour.

washed for pickling

Samphire is a useful foraging plant. As with any native plants, it is best to check local regulations before harvesting. With samphire and marsh species, it is important to check the waterways in which they grow to avoid contamination. The best time to harvest is in spring when they are plump and juicy and the waterways have had a good flush of rain. I harvested mine at the end of summer and some of the stalks are a bit tough. Only take the top of the green shoots so as not to kill the plant.

The taste varies from  seaweed-salty to green-bland when it is grown in freshwater. It can be eaten raw, steamed or preserved. Traditionally it is served with seafood and historically, in spring, English fishmongers would present a bunch with every purchase (which was often binned by the ungrateful customer as 'poor' food).

Nutritionally it is a good source of vitamin A, calcium and iron. It can also be a source of selenium, which it draws from the soil and transpires into the atmosphere. This may need a note of caution not to consume large amounts in areas of samphire from soils rich in selenium.This is not usually a problem in Australia as our soils are selenium poor, except possibly where there is run off from commercial grain producing paddocks.

spice jars are the perfect shape

There are lots of methods to pickle samphire. After washing and removing the tough parts of the stems, either blanch in boiling water, drain and let dry then cover with cider or white wine vinegar, with or without spices. Or simply pack into sterile jars and pour over boiling vinegar and seal.
As a side dish, lightly steam and dress with lemon and butter or olive oil. Use raw is salads, pickled with fish, white meats and mild cheeses.

Samphire plants have recently appeared in nurseries in the coastal plants section. Tough and water wise, they are a worthwhile addition to your garden for so many reasons. I have taken some cuttings.I don't think the homegrown varieties will have that lovely salty taste but if you have high levels of salt in your water source, it could be just the plant for you.

As for collecting glass...that is purely for pleasure!

glass by Gerry Reilly
 www.meltingpotglass.com

Shooting Bamboo for the Pantry

You don't have to shoot bamboo, though when you live in the subtropics, this time of year you would probably want to.This time last year, I spent some time with a dear friend who lives in the hills behind Mullumbimby.The micro climate there allows her to grow an amazing variety of food crops from stone fruit to sub tropical species.

In April her giant edible bamboo is sending up massive shoots that grow as you watch. I was happy to spend an afternoon harvesting and processing them.

Thick gloves, long sleeves and a machete are essential. Theses shoots are tough and covered in itchy hairs.

After trimming them at ground level, the outer leaves are stripped and the shoots cut in half lengthwise.


This exposes the wonderful pattern of chambers that will stretch to become the hollow interior of the bamboo stems that make them so structurally strong and flexible.. It made me want to rush off for some
paint and paper to do some block printing with them.


They are then cooked in salted water until they are softened and a creamy yellow colour.








Drained and rinsed, they are then ready to use, cryvac or bottle. They keep well in the fridge.







My respect for bamboo has grown another notch. Fast growing without fertilisers or chemicals, we have have the most fabulous source of  material for making structures, bowls and plates, simple garden stakes, woven baskets, fabric, fuel, food and medicine. It can stabilise slopes and riverbanks and there are varieties to suit all climates. Investigate this fabulous resource further:

http://www.bamboobody.com.au/ plants, pictures and a data base
http://www.bambooweb.info/  How why and what of bamboo

Autumn Harvest

A lovely workshop last weekend. Everyone worked really hard, cooked, cleaned, laughed a lot and ate well. I had my rangehood and a nasty kitchen cupboard cleaned by the girls trying out the cleaning properties of lemon...maybe they would do windows this week, or is that pushing my luck?

This weekend we are into a bit more hubble bubble for the second half. An all girls group this time, we will be heating the cauldrons to create hand cream and other treats. There will be more food too.

Here’s a recipe that everyone loved:

Five Minute Lemonade

1 Lemons or 2 limes

50g Sugar

Chop the whole lemon into 1 cm cubes and place in a heatproof jug.

To each lemon add 50g of sugar / rice syrup or honey, adjusting to suit your taste.

Add boiling water to cover, put a plate on top of the jug and leave for 5 minutes.

Process with a blender.

Add  500ml cold water.

Strain through a sieve into a jug half full of ice.

Drink immediately.
 In winter, make this with honey and add hot water and drink while hot.

There is rarely time to take a rest in the garden. In the gap between the workshops the quinces have been thumping to the ground. Massive things that would brain one of the chickens that so generously fertilises it all year, demanding to be rescued from the parrots. Four crates ready for sale and three basketfuls for us...and the figs are coming on too.

Better get back to the kitchen!

Five Minute Lasagne

We have only had baby tomatoes ripen so far this year but we have millions of them. So when I spotted a bargain box of BIG juicy ripe tomatoes on a visit to the Sunday markets, I couldn’t resist.  A week later, I have fused my trusty food dryer, made  barbecue sauce, hands off chutney, raw tomato sauce, ratatouille and ratatouille flan, smoked and dried tomatoes and there are still some of them  awaiting my attention.

There is nothing like a glut to bring out some creative cooking. I have a very strong memory of the first time my Italian friend Luana, cooked lasagne for me many years. I have never asked her for the recipe - we always have so much else to talk about – but here is my version of what I remember.

It will take you less than five minutes to assemble and about forty minutes to cook. There are no amounts for ingredients, decide what size dish you want to make and keep on layering.

Deceptively simple, this is a light, fresh, elegant way to serve lasagne. The juices in the bottom had me sucking at the baking dish (á la Nigella!) before I did the dishes... Luscious!

Lasagne sheets

Large fresh tomatoes, sliced thickly

Fresh basil, whole leaves or torn

Salt and pepper

Olive oil

White wine

Begin by putting a very thin layer of white wine into the bottom of a dish.

Add lasagne sheets to cover.

Layer by covering with fresh tomato slices sprinkled with basil, drizzled with a little olive oil and seasoned with salt and pepper. Only use a couple of leaves for each layer or the taste will be overpowering.

Continue for at least three layers of pasta, more of you like, ending with a layer of tomatoes.

Cover with foil, making sure that the foil does not touch the tomatoes as it will dissolve the aluminium. (Yuk!)

Bake 180C for 40 minutes. Remove foil and check pasta for doneness by piercing with a skewer. Allow to rest for ten minutes before cutting.

If desired, grill for a couple of minutes to brown the top.

Serve with freshly grated parmesan.

Ten out of ten toys

Don’t you just love little kitchen gadgets? They lurk in the most unlikely places - their shiny steel and lurid colours beckoning to me to take them home. I have at least four gadgets for grating ginger and three that will cut fancy shapes, batons and even spirals. I have an antique cheese slicer and butter curler and handmade vegetable slicers that need oiling to keep them from rusting. Some I use all the time, some languish in the back of drawers in between garage sales.

Some of my favourites are from Asia. I have graters made from recycled cans and a zester made from laminated strips of bamboo and a beautiful hand carved wooden mould for making steamed sweets. The most bizarre came from California - a fold up vase made from plastic – perfect to take backpacking!

Returning from a trip to SFMOMA, friends bought me a few goodies. My favourite would have to be the clip from the No mess range from Trudeau Corp, a Canadian company. Made of silicone and steel, it is a spoon holder that lets the spoon drip back into the pot instead of onto a plate or your counter top. If you have ever had a jam spoon glue itself to your work surface, or had tomato/curry/plum stains on your white Formica you will appreciate how handy this gadget is.(if you are crazy enough to have a white counter top in the first place you deserve all you get!)                                                                                                             

 

Making piccalilli in an attempt to use copious quantities of zuc’s and cuc’s and turmeric was its first test. It held the wooden spoon easily. A few days later, it was doing service on a batch of hand cream. One of the biggest hazards with making emulsions is keeping my thermometers from falling in. I usually hook a piece of copper wire over the side of the pot but it tends to slide sideways and I have to fish it out of the hot oil or water. No Mess held onto the wire, no worries and even held my thin spatula, staying there through the whole process! It has the added advantage that you don’t forget where you left the spoon! Ten out of ten!

PS Check out the links...I even found the fold up vase there!

The dogs a glutton

The last few apricots are sitting on the shelf in the kitchen. Just when you think you can’t bear the sight of any more, they are finished. I have had to put these up a shelf. Lady, our dacshund, has taken to helping herself and has been leaving kernels and under ripe or bruised fruit all over the house. Of course she will only eat (and chase) the perfectly ripe ones. Now we are down to the final couple of kilos, they suddenly become precious – soft furry concentrated sunshine, picked warm from the tree, with juices dripping - so sensual .

We have had a bumper crop of stone fruit thanks to a cold snap and the lack of hail during spring. I have tried to be sensible about managing the apricot tree this year. It was radically pruned last year but a diet of soy whey, its position is next to the compost heap and above the septic tank has  will ensured this tree will tower over the shed roof again!

The accessible parts of the apricot were thinned after fruit set and one large lower branch netted so the fruit could sun ripen for eating. The ring necked parrots helped thin the upper branches, preventing any limb damage.

I picked most of the crop just as they began to change colour then laid them in single layers on trays and in baskets to ripen further. (That’s why Lady could reach them – the kitchen looked like a fruit shop for a couple of weeks.) Each day I checked them for marks and processed a few kilos.

I have frozen most of them, lightly stewing them first. I am not fond of dried apricots and have become realistic (finally!) about how much apricot jam the family can eat. I did make one batch and can always make more from the frozen fruit later if I choose.

Lady was quite annoyed all day yesterday without her fruit snacks. Today she was smug. On the rug we found a partially chewed under ripe Satsuma plum. Another plum lay in a purple pool under the table. They are obviously not ripe yet!

Picking for pectin

The quince outside the kitchen window has the most magical flowers looking like enormous single apple blossoms with a blush of pink and a delicate scent. As it grows in the chicken pen and gets the overflow from their water bowl and the garden sink, it thrives. This year we picked 21 kgs, leaving the highest fruit for the parrots, who adore them too.

Preparing quinces for cooking is a tedious job. You need to rub them under running water to remove their fuzz before peeling and coring. Cutting out the core of a quince is rather like trying to saw your bread board in half with a vegetable knife - hard and woody.

After I had made four and a half kilos of quince paste and a quince crumble, I was well over processing quinces. Fortunately, you can pick quinces green and they will ripen off the tree, so I left the rest for a couple of days while I did some research and scrubbed the sticky goo off the kitchen walls.

My trusty Times Life preserving book mentions that you can make pectin out of quinces, as well as apples and as I use pectin often, I was happy to try.

Pectin

4.5kg quinces or apples

Water to cover

Roughly chop the washed fruit, including the peels, cores and seeds.

Place in a large pot and barely cover with water.

Bring to the boil then reduce heat and simmer till soft.

Drip contents through a jelly bag, at least overnight.

Return to the clean pan and boil until the quantity has reduced by half.

Test for pectin...exciting

You can test how strong the pectin content is by putting a teaspoon of juice into  bowl and mixing in two tablespoons of methylated spirits.

Swirl together.

If the pectin content is low, small separate lumps will form. Juice high in pectin will form one large mass.

Discard the mixture from the bowl...don’t attempt to eat it.

If the set is not strong, continue to reduce the liquid and test again.

Filter through muslin before bottling.

Pour into sterilised bottle and seal or freeze in ice block trays

To use:

Rule of thumb, according to the book, is 150ml of pectin to 1.25 litres of fruit juice for making jelly. It should be enough for 2kg of soft fruit when making jam.

Quince pectin has the lovely red colour of cooked quince and a distinctive flavour. It is particularly good with berries, pears and apples.

Happy preserving

nirala

Green Ones and Other Stuff !

Okay, this is my take on pickling olives. . .

We have just opened the last of the olives from 2007. I don’t use vinegar at all but stop the process at the brining stage and store them like that. I can’t be bothered with floating eggs and other witchery but use a 10% solution of brine in boiled and cooled rainwater. I do the whole process in the jars in which I will store them so the chance of bruising is less. I usually get 1 kg jars, fill them to the brim and screw the lid down between rinsings. I have never kept my olives in the dark, that’s why they are always a little pale coloured.

When I come to use the olives I rinse them and discard any that are bruised or feel a little slimy. Often a raft of slime will develop beneath the oil ( it’s a bit like “Mother of vinegar” ) and that is rinsed away too. I then either put them in fresh brine or marinade them in olive oil with herbs and garlic, always only making a small jar at a time and storing them in the refrigerator.

I know that there are issues around the growth of bacteria in olives, but the oil on top is designed to keep out air which seems to prevent anything too nasty from happening. I haven’t killed anyone yet. The best thing to do is throw anything away that seems at all suspicious, smells odd or fizzes when you take the lid off. Throw these in the compost and every worm for miles will come visiting.

You need to separate green olives from black

The Green Ones…

Nerys floats eggs and I stir up messes…we make a good working team, I am always ready to do the dirty jobs!

Wood Ash Method

Commercial olives are processed really quickly using a 3% solution of caustic soda. They keep their lovely colours and crunch. The CWA Cookbook will show you how to do this if you are interested in playing with dangerous substances, then eating them. Wood ash also creates lye in a much more gentle form. Green olives can be processed by rinsing alone but they do take a lot longer than the black ones and we don’t all have water to waste (rinse your olives onto plants, they love it.)

Sieve your ash on a day with out wind to remove lumps then mix to a runny paste with water and mix in your olives. Wear gloves if you have sensitive hands. I don’t and stir it with bare hands to help remove ground-in garden grime. Stir very gently each day, don’t use a spoon or you will bruise the olives.

When they have changed from bright green to khaki, they are ready to rinse and brine. These olives don’t keep as long as the rinsed ones, so don’t leave them more than two months. They may still look good but turn to mush when you touch them… definitely NOT for eating!

Salt Curing

In the drier Mediterranean areas where water is scarce, olives are preserved by salting.
I first came across this method in a book about Sufi masters and just had to try it.

This is lazy man’s olive preserving. Simply mix your olives with an equal weight of cooking salt and place half fill an old pillow case or flour bag. Tie the opening shut and hang in the shade. The olives will gradually become tiny, wrinkled little prunes. You simply reconstitute them in warm water. They have a delicious smokey taste. Be warned, this process can take a few months so if you have wet winters after harvest, you need to hang them in doors so they don’t absorb moisture from the air. Put a container beneath them in case they drip.

I did a variation of this last year by storing my already soaked and rinsed olives in a 50% salt and lemon juice solution. They have become wrinkled and taste too salty to eat with out rinsing but have a delicious flavour.