Grow your own ravioli

This recipe is so-called because most of the ingredients (eggs, spinach, tomatoes, basil) came from the garden and I wanted to do a post for grow your own roundup at House of Annie which stipulates that the dish has to contain  at least one item that you have raised yourself.  I don't have room for a cow (the ricotta and parmesan) or wheat (the flour) but I think this is well within the rules! It is adapted from a recipe from Stephanie Alexander's Cooking with Kids book.
 
Fresh pasta dough

200g 000 flour
1 tsp salt
2 eggs plus 1 egg yolk
Semolina flour (for rolling out)

Put the flour and salt in a food processor. Add the eggs and yolk one at a time with the motor running until the mixture forms a ball and is springy to the touch. Turn out onto a clean surface lightly floured with semolina flour and knead for a few minutes.  Cover with glad wrap (cling film) and leave to rest at room temperature for 30 minutes.

Filling

200g ricotta
50g parmesan, grated
1 egg yolk
Bunch of spinach ( I used perpetual spinach which is in between spinach and silverbeet), stems trimmed, washed and steamed until tender.
Salt and pepper

Fresh tomato sauce
500g fresh tomatoes, chopped (I used Romas)
Clove garlic
Handful fresh  
Olive oil

Squeeze the excess water out of the spinach and put into the food processor with the ricotta, parmesan and egg yolk. Process until smooth, season to taste.

To make the ravioli, cut the ball of dough in half and put each piece a few times through the highest setting of a pasta machine and then through the settings to the smallest. Dust with semolina flour to stop it sticking. I cut mine in half when I get halfway through which makes the dough a bit easier to handle. Place teaspoons of the filling on the sheet, leaving some space in between each.

Brush in between each mound of filling with some water and  place another sheet of pasta on the top.  You should get about 12 ravioli out of each (24 in total). 

Press down in between the filling to expel any air and cut out the ravioli with a round cutter.  You could also do square ones by cutting with a knife or one of those crinkly cutters (but I think ours was last used for play-dough and I'm not sure where it is.....)

For the sauce, briefly fry the garlic in the olive oil, add the tomatoes and basil and simmer until reduced (about 10 minutes). Serve the ravioli with the fresh tomato sauce, and enjoy, preferably in the sunshine!

Harvest monday

 

A decent haul of potatoes today - I did decide to dig up the patch. Mainly Ruby Lous, but a few dutch creams too.

For greens, a selection of salad leaves including a nice freckly one that I think came in a mixed seed pack from diggers.  I've been growing my lettuce under 60% shade cloth this year and you can really tell the difference; the leaves are really soft and tender. From now on I'll definitely be using shade cloth in the summer  for my more "tender" veggies.

 Finally, some french breakfast radishes. Nice, spicy flavour and a good crunch.

Strange alien forms in the garden...

Some of my potatoes have been a bit freakish, either huge or very odd shapes, like these Ruby Lous that I dug up yesterday. Actually, I've just realised that they look a bit rude !  Anyway,  I've been really pleased with this variety; it has produced well.  The others have not been so good.  I've dug two dutch cream plants, and they were delicious, but the yield was a bit small.  Most of the leaves of the remaining plants have started to yellow and I noticed spider-mite on some so I might dig them up too.  I remember reading somewhere that you can just cut the foliage off and leave the potatoes in the ground but I might be getting confused (too much gardening information in my head- arrgghh!)  If I do dig them up I have an empty patch which I'm not quite sure what to do with.  My rotation plan says 'green manure and lettuce' so I might try that, or I could grow a crop of beans - I  guess there is still time. Hmmm, decisions, decisions.

Havest Monday

I probably should have waited a little bit longer but I couldn't resist Little FB's excitement when he spotted the silk on some of the cobs turning brown (pleeeeeeeease can we pick it Mum, pleeeeeeeese!).  I cooked it straight away in some boiling water and managed to sneak a bite before he polished off the lot. It was sooo sweet and delicious.

The corn has done well this year. I did three staggered plantings, in September, October and November and started the early seeds in toilet tubes.  Most plants have two cobs, and one has three so I calculate that I should be harvestiing over 50 cobs this summer.  That's a pretty good return from one packet of seeds! The bed was where the broad beans were in the winter. After they had finished I slashed them at the base and just dug the roots so the corn must like all the nitrogen.  In an attempt at a three sisters plot I did plant some beans which are climbing up some of the stalks quite well, and a zucchini which went in rather too late and is struggling a bit under the shade of the corn.

Tomato harvest and recipes

I'm picking tomatoes every day now and little FB usuallly has a few for breakfast too :) Clockwise from top left - a selection of the first varieties to ripen: tommy toe,  reggae roma, cherry roma and tigerella; a nearly-ripe Mortgage Lifter, and yet-to-ripen plum variety from my Italian neighbour (I'm calling them Cosimo special), and Grosse Lisse.

Having so many delicious tomatoes makes me want to try some new recipes: I made baked eggs for breakfast the other day, which were yummy and easy - just cook the tomatoes with some crushed garlic, basil and parsley in an oven proof pan until they break down into a sauce. Then make hollows in the sauce, crack in 2 eggs, crumble over some feta and bake in a 200C oven for 10 mins until the eggs are set. Sprinkle with chives and serve out of the pan with warm flatbread.

I also made some quick tomato relish - saute onion and garlic until soft, add the tomatoes, some smoky paprika, a spoon of brown sugar and some balsamic vinegar and cook until reduced. We ate it with some zucchini  fritters  but it would also be nice with chicken or wedges.

Urban Food Harvest today

Zinnias

The zinnias are in bloom and they are so pretty. I wish I had planted more.

And I can't stop taking pictures of the incredible sunflower!

What a whopper!

Weighing in at an impressive 454g, this ruby lou potato. Ok, so it's not as big as this one, but still pretty big I reckon. I went out to bandicoot a few for dinner and this was the first one that I came across. Needless to say, I didn't need to collect any more! It was the star of the show in tonight's dinner - roast veggies with feta . Also featuring were capsicum from yesterday's harvest, a few tommy toe tomatoes, shallots, carrots, button squash and market-bought cauliflower. oh, and a couple of parsnips.  There would have been more but the ground was so hard that it was too difficult to pull them up.  We really need some rain....

 

On the topic of giant things in the garden the 3m tall sunflower is blooming. It's actually hard to take a decent picture of it because it's just so TALL. So far eight of the thirty heads are out; I'm hoping that they will all be in bloom together which will look amazing!

Harvest monday

I braved the 41C heat and picked some tomatoes - tommy toes, cherry romas and the first ripe tigerellas - a couple of capsicum, some basil and the last of the purple carrots. The carrots are a bit small but the dreaded spider mites were all over the leaves so I thought it would be best to pull them rather than spray. Also, despite the soaring temps, the girls laid an egg each, the troopers. Poor things, they are panting away in their coop. I gave them a hose down with some cool water earlier which didn't go down too well (much unhappy bock-bocking!) and gave them a change of drinking water because the guy in the chicken shop told me that they won't drink water if it has warmed up. This seems like a bit of a design flaw but there you go.

I'm hoping the veggies will cope. Earlier on today I watered the garden and then covered it with as much shade as I could - sheets, bits of shade cloth, hessian, whatever was to hand. It looks likes a strange laundry out there but hopefully will do the job. Phew! How is everyone else in South Australia coping in the heat?

Apricot leather

Stuck for ideas with what to do with a glut of apricots? I can highly recommend apricot leather. I made my first batch a few days ago and it was a great success! It was just the right texture and not too sweet, just full of fruity flavour. The first batch was demolished by Little FB and all his friends so I made another batch today which is drying outside.

First, stone and roughly chop the apricots (10 cups) and cook on a low heat with 1/3 cup sugar, juice of half a lemon and a splash of water until soft, then puree the mixture.

Spread the puree onto baking sheets lined with glad wrap, cover with muslin or light cloth (there is probably an easier way to do this than my peg-heavy method). Leave in the sun for 2 days (bring in at night).
Peel off the glad wrap and cut into strips. The finished product should store well for a few months in an airtight container, although this batch was eaten almost immediately!

I spy something beginning with C

Capsicum, or peppers as we would say in the UK, are starting to form on a few of my plants. The yellowy green ones in the top right of the picture are in the big tub down the side of the house and the tiny green ones in the bottom right picture are near the tomatoes. The best ones are on the plant that over-wintered that I almost pulled out at the end of the summer - there must be 20 or so fruit, some of them about 10cm long. I'm not actually sure what varieties they are because I failed to label any of them (see my new year gardening resolutions) but they all look slightly different. Also, see how the light green ones are sticking up and all the others are hanging down. Hmmm, I hope I will be pleasantly surprised.

Tomato, zucchini and pesto tart

What a beautiful day it was today. I felt very serene floating around the garden in the late afternoon gathering veggies for tonight's dinner with the birds singing.
And here it is - tomato, pesto and zucchini tart. I made the pesto with basil from the garden but you could use shop-bought. We ate with a garden salad and potatoes. Summery and delicious.

I also made some apricot jam today from my neighbour's apricots. We picked a laundry basket full a couple of days ago and the tree is still laden. With hot weather forecast for the rest of the week I might try making apricot leather which sounds disgusting but might be quite nice. I also like the sound of this recipe for boozy preserved apricots.

New year gardening resolutions

It's a bit late I know but I have been thinking about what I aspire to do differently in the garden this year and came up with some resolutions:

1) I won't get too disappointed if veggies don't grow well, or get eaten by bugs and birds - it's all part of the gardening experience.
2) I will not plant things too close together.
3) I will label my seedlings more carefully so that I have at least some idea of what variety I am growing.
4) I will try not to plant things too early, convinced that it is Spring when really I should have waited another month.
5) I will keep my blog updated!

On the topic of new year resolutions - check out this youtube video from Anyone for Tennis. Very funny.

Pollination problems

Some of my button squash and pumpkins were dropping off when they reached about 5cm - a sign that they are not being pollinated. This is a bit strange as I have never had problems with pollination before.

There are definitely bees around - they love the sunflowers, but they are over the other side of the garden so maybe they can't be bothered to travel! To try and solve the problem and attract more bees to the patch I've planted some zinnias in the curcubit patch. While I wait for them to flower I've been hand pollinating. This is pretty simple - you just get a paint brush and transfer pollen from the boy flowers to the girl flowers.

It does seems to be working because at least one pumpkin is now growing nice and big, and the cucs are also looking promising. Little FB was fascinated with the process; maybe when it is time to tell him about the "birds and the bees" it will be easier!!