Harvest Monday - 10th June '13

This week the winter produce has started to come in.  It's a great feeling. The pickings have been broccoli, chillies and some tiny capsicums picked green to beat the frost.

A little fennel - this bulb was picked as a baby fennel lightly sautéed to accompany a meal.

LOADS of parsley, loads and loads  - parsley with everything. At present I only have curled parsley.

More broccoli and the first of the cauliflower,

a rather pathetically small cauli, sigh!

A wonderful wombok,

much admired by Muriel the chicken,

Rocket, loads of rocket and a little rosemary. This rocket made a salad of rocket, shaved pecorino, garlic oil and lemon juice. It was fantastic.

It feels great to finally have so much produce. As a result, I have decided I don't need to buy any greens at all for the foreseeable. I have this produce and more coming thru. Finally after a horribly hard summer with almost no produce at all, this little pile of produce feels like true bounty.

How is your produce going? I am contributing this to Daphne's  Harvest Monday, pop over and see  the produce of others - there will be a little list of links to others' growings when the world turns a little more.

Zucchini Tuesday - Zucchini trifolati

Now I am sure that you will agree with me that 4 zucchini is not a glut, but compared to the productivity to date from my zucchini, 4 feels like inundation.

The slightly cooler weather (still in the low 30s) has been kinder on all my plants and the zucchini is finally comfortable enough to set a number of fruit.

Armed with 4 small home-grown zukes, I decided to make this side dish. The recipe comes from a Gourmet Traveller but which issue I have no idea, I cut the recipe out. I provide the amounts here I used which are  pretty much the same as in the original  recipe. It takes no time at all to make. The most time consuming part is slicing the zuke very thinly which I definitely recommend you doing - it's worth it. Indeed 'trifolati' in Italian (apparently) means to slice thinly as you would a truffle.

Zucchini trifolati  (* from the garden)
50mls extra virgin olive oil
4 garlic cloves crushed
2 anchovy fillets
*1 tbsp chopped rosemary
* 4  small zucchini  sliced thinly across wise ( the recipe suggests two yellow and two green skinned)
* 2 tbsp oregano leaves

Heat the oil and add garlic, rosemary and anchovy fillets and cook until the anchovy starts to disappear. Add zucchini and oregano and stir until zucchini is just tender. Serve warm or at room temp.  It would be beautiful with a white fish or smoked chicken, I had it with some left over cold roast lamb because that's what I had hanging around.

How is your zucchini crop? Still going?  Contemplating zucchini preserves yet? Relish or chutney?

This week Jen from Digging up the Dirt has made a zucchini burger, I am liking it!

Until next week - love your zucchini

Potting up, moving out

My patch is pretty empty now. I have harvested the last of my savoy cabbages and beetroot and now the only things left in the patch are some herbs (mint, Vietnamese mint, thyme, chives, parsley), some flowers (poppies, lupins, the end of the violas and pansies) and some self-seeded tomatoes from last year's crop. I hope that the new residents will like what is left and feel excited about planting up their favourite things into the patch.

Everything that I would have in the ground at this time of the year has been raised in pots ready for the move.

I have these vegetables ready for the move:

• eggplants
• tomatoes 
• chillies 
• fennel
• spring onions
• zucchini

and these herbs:

• parsley - Italian and curled
• mint - Vietnamese and just mint
• basil
• sage
• dill
• thyme
• chives
• garlic chives
• marjoram / oregano - I never know which -  do you?
• rosemary
• lavender
• bay
• yarrow

and then there is some fruit:

•  Collette the finger lime (this is probably overly optimistic as I am not sure how she will handle the frosts!)
• the blueberries

I have cut some right back -  the chives and bay have received a big haircut today. Others have been staked, well watered and mulched over some time so they might be more tolerant of the drive. I hope that it will be a mild day the day we move.

I am hoping that they all survive and that the vegetables will settle into a new, no-dig  raised bed  which will be hastily constructed soon after arrival. The herbs I am likely to keep in pots for a while. And then there will be other things to get started  as soon as I get organised at the new place - beans, corn, pumpkin, rock melon, cucumber ...

I will be leaving behind my special, special espaliered lime trees and my fabulous lemon tree. These citrus plants have given such pleasure.

This final picture is of my last harvest - 3 savoy cabbages and some baby beetroot.

Bye my Sydney garden - friend and comforter.

Harvest Monday - 27th Aug

Pickings are slim at the moment. To make it even worse, this week I picked the last of my spring onions, fennel and snow peas.

As ever, the snow peas have been a delight. They have supplied greens every second day for 4 months.  Most of the time we eat them just steamed and sometimes in the yummy Chinese-inspired  meals that the lad makes.

Very often the snow peas don't even make it in the back door.  Standing and the crop eating them as picked is a special pleasure.

As for the citrus, the lemons are still coming  but I also picked the last of my limes - some were very small.

Herbs are fairing better. In the last week I picked loads of thyme and rosemary  for all sorts of dishes.

I also got stuck into the mint which is starting to wake up again after the winter slow down.

Next year I really must plan better so I don't have such a hungry gap. Bring on spring!

More harvests are over at Daphne's place.

Dried beans and winter food

One of the great pleasures of winter is beany, soupy, stewy things. They are the kind of food, like good porridge and risotto, that warm you from the inside out.

It was a cold for Sydney (max 14c) and drizzly wet day yesterday (and is again today) and so I decided to make a beany thing. It all started by me remembering that, way back in the cupboard, was a stash of home grown dried beans.

I have two jars of a former season's dried beans. I didn't dry any of last summer's beans, I guess I didn't need to considering I had two jars! I tend to dry my beans when I have been away on holidays from the garden when the beans are in full flush and come home to beans too fat and bulging to be nice to eat green. I don't let them go to waste though and pick them off  just before they are fully dry and do the last bit of drying on the back verandah and then jar them up.

The two jars are of two different beans. One is a  lovely brown skinned bean. It was a green bean, but do you think I can remember which?  I am serially bad at noting varieties, its something I need to change.

The other jar is the dried bean of a climbing borlotti. It dries a two-toned brown rather than lovely red and cream pods they come from. The original seeds came over the fence from the Italian-origin neighbours. The pods were red and cream -  just like normal dwarf borlotti beans.

I made a beany, soupy thing out of the brown beans.

Lamb shank and bean thick soup
(* from the garden)

2 lamb shanks
1 cup dried brown beans*
1 onion chopped fine
2 carrots chopped fine
2 sticks celery chopped fine
4 cloves garlic chopped fine
1 can tinned toms
stock (I had home made chicken stock in the freezer)
risoni
bay leaves*
rosemary*
thyme*

Soak beans overnight. Drain and put on to boil  until cooked a long way thru they don't have to be totally cooked cause you will cook them in with the rest of the ingredients. Brown the lamb shanks and discard any excess unwanted fat. Sweat onion, garlic carrot and celery in the same pan that you browned the shanks in. Add all ingredients into a large saucepan and cook on a low heat. Eventually the meat falls off the bone, remove the bone and any of the bits that you don't like.When the beans are cooked thru serve with toast.

I am contributing this recipe to Greenish Thumb's Garden to Table Challenge.

But what's your favourite beany thing to eat during winter? Are you a chilli con carne fan like myself?
Which beans to you grow to dry?