Harvest Monday and a yummy pumpkin recipe

Still not too much happening in the garden, but the last few days have been gloriously sunny so Little FB has officially declared it "Spring"  and we have been enjoying being outside.  Today's harvest was some mixed baby lettuce - yellowleaf, red oakleaf, cos, spinach and rocket. some parsley and thyme.  The lemons were from the food swap that I went to at the weekend, another lovely one where I came home with a brimming basket of goodies including tamarillos, pumpkin, strawberry and basil-mint plants and lots of lemons.

With all this lovely produce I wanted to try a recipe from my new cookbook, Plenty, which is a vegetarian cookbook by a non-vegetarian British chef. It has gorgeous photographs and some really interesting recipes.  Anyway, I decided to try the crusted pumpkin wedges with lemon and thyme and they were delicious, and looked just like the picture in the book (which never happens...) .

 

Here is the recipe:

700g pumpkin cut into 1cm wedges
20g breadcrumbs
Zest of 2 lemons
50g grated parmesan
11/2 tsp thyme, chopped
6 tbsp parsley, chopped
2 cloves garlic, crushed
Salt and pepper

Olive oil (for brushing)

Mix the topping ingredients together in a bowl.  Arrange the pumpkin slices on trays covered in greaseproof paper and brush generously with oil.  Top with the crumbs, pressing down slightly. Cook in a 200C oven for 30 mins until brown and crunchy. Serve with a dollop of greek yogurt and a green salad.

Been a bit busy decorating

I just realised that it's been a couple of weeks since I last posted.  I do have an excuse (sort of); the last two weekends have been a flurry of painting, re-vamping furniture and rearranging things around the house.  It's actually been hugely enjoyable, productive and an impressive transformation, especially considering that nothing new was purchased apart from the paint.  I am particularly fond of the lamp - found by the side of the road- which I covered with fabric.  It was a bit tricky, but a fun project and it only took a couple of hours.  Most of the other pieces of furniture in the room are op-shop bargains which just goes to show that it possible to decorate on a budget.

All the rain that has fallen this year is great for the reservoirs but I think the veggies need more warmth and sun. Despite this, there are still always something to pick for dinner - the perpetual spinach is doing well in the new raised bed and the broccolli is developing some nice heads.  Mind you, it doesn't last long with LittleFB and his friends around. Today they disappeared into the veggie patch in search of raw broccoli  before moving onto the carrots and snow peas! Makes it so worthwhile.  And there are radishes too - I  picked the most perfect bunch the other day that ended up, somewhat unusually, in a fresh tomato salsa which we ate with re-fried bean and corn quesidillas. Yum! Here is the recipe.:

Tomato and radish salsa

2 ripe tomatoes, chopped into dice
1/2 red onion, finely chopped

1 red chilli, chopped  (more if you want it hot, less if  not)
4 radishes, chopped
Small bunch coriander. chopped
Juice 1 lime
Salt & pepper

Mix all the ingredients together and leave for at least 1 hour to let the flavour develop.  Add more line/chilli/salt to taste. This salsa is also good with 1/2 mango instead of the radish.

Sourdough recipes

MMSTL and I made another successful batch of sourdough at the weekend so I thought I would post the recipe as well as some variations that we have been trying out. Thanks again the the inner northern food harvest ladies for the recipe, and the starter itself. A reminder that I write this as a complete novice, and am happy to receive comment and corrections!

Basic sourdough loaf

The sponge 
200g of sourdough starter
325mls of water
250g bread flour (we've been using strong organic white flour but you can use wholemeal so long as it is bread flour)
11/2 tsp salt

First: Take 200g of sourdough starter from starter jar. Then refresh your original starter by adding 100g of water (water goes in first) and mix and then 115g of strong flour, mix. 


In a large bowl add the 325ml water to the 200g of starter and mix. Then add the flour and salt, mix.  Cover with a clean tea towel and leave for 10-12 hours at room temp.   After this time the mixture should look full of bubbles.  

Dough
Add the remaining 200g flour to the sponge and mix, then turn out onto a floured board.  The dough starts off very sticky and you may  need to add more flour to your hands and the board.  Knead for 2 mins, rest for 5 mins and then knead for another 2 mins, adding more flour to your hands/board until the dough is smooth. Divide the dough if you are using 2 small tins and shape it into a loaf shape by rolling it gently and tucking the sides underneath.   If you want to add a grain/seed topping, wet the top of the loaf with a pastry brush or water spray and roll the top of the bread in the grains. if you want to stop the loaves from splitting when they rise you can slash the top a few times with a sharp knife

Cover the loaves with a clean tea towel and let them rise for 6-8 hours at room temp until doubled in size.  Transfer them gently to a 200C oven for 25-30mins until they sound hollow when tapped. they may need more cooking time than this depending on the size of the loaf tin.

Nice things to add to your bread:
Fruit loaf: 1tsp of cinnamon, small handful each of  dried figs and apricots (chopped), cranberries and sultanas. This was yum....
Multigrain: 1/2 cup mixed grains - poppy seeds, linseeds, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds

We are still experimenting so this list will grow in time. Walnuts are on my list and I suspect that MMSTL is dreaming up ways of cramming even more poppy seeds into his loaf.  I also welcome suggestions from other seasoned breadmakers out there.

And finally. Some things that seem to work for us...

• Don't over knead the dough - the 2 mins, rest 2 mins seems to be enough
• Don't be tempted to add too much flour; a slightly sticky dough is better
• If you want to add grains, fruit etc, do it during the second knead.
• Keep your starter in the fridge and feed it once a week if you are not making bread.
• Remember the salt. As we found out forgetting it makes for a dismal loaf of bread!

Planting lettuce and greens

Saturday was perfect for spending a morning in the garden. The sun was out, the ground was nice and soft after all the rain this past week.   As is usual for me at the weekend, I did some "pyjama gardening"- when I'm so keen to get outside that I can't wait to get dressed so I just put my gumboots and a jumper over my PJ's and potter around like that.

The wong bok had gone to seed and was looking a bit scrappy so that went to the chooks (they were very, very happy about that). On the subject of the girls, they are looking very healthy right now.  They both went through a bad moult and lost a lot of feathers but most of them have grown back so they are sporting much fuller coats.  It seems like bad planning to go bald in winter though. Does anyone know why this is?

In the empty space I dug in some worm castings and some compost; the soil in some of the beds is clay and needs lots of organic matter to lighten it up.  Spinach and these rouge d'hiver lettuce seedlings went in. I love the colour of the lettuce, so pretty.  I also planted a couple of rows of tatsoi which should be nice for stir fries. More rain and cool temps in the forecast for next week.  All good, but I'm looking forward to some warmer weather soon.

Baking sourdough - it worked!

After an unsucessful first attempt at making a sourdough loaf (forgotten salt, not cooked long enough) MMSTL and I tried again this morning, helped by LittleFB. We added 250g of flour to the "sponge" - a mixture of starter, flour and water that had been brewing overnight. This time we remembered the salt, used two smaller tins and he did the kneading: 2 minutes, 5 minutes resting then 2 more minutes kneading, adding more flour (to the bench and his hands) when the dough got sticky. One loaf was dusted with seeds and the other with polenta flour.

When I got home from work this evening the loaves had risen beautifully and I baked them for 25 mins in a 200C oven. They sounded nice and hollow when tapped, which I took as them being properly cooked.

And here is the result:  lovely spongy, slightly chewy loaf with a subtle sour taste.  LittleFB ate three slices (one with Vegemite of course!)and declared it "the best bread ever". A success I think.

Harvest Monday - August 2nd

It's been a while since I posted a harvest so it was good to get out in the garden and go foraging for today's: the first broccoli of the season, mixed baby lettuce and spinach, some myer lemons, eggs and, wait for it, three snow peas.  It's been a bit of  a bad year for peas. The ones that I planted a couple of months back are growing really slowly and all the back-up peas that I planted into toilet tubes and had just sprouted got eaten  by pesky birds ( I said some bad words when I found the evidence...).  Anyone else having problems with peas this year? Maybe I just put them in too early: it has been a cold winter.

Anyway, this little harvest was certainly welcome and was made into a yummy pasta with broccoli, ricotta. lemon rind and toasted pine nuts with a green side salad.  We played "hunt the snow pea"  and Little FB found one in his dinner so he was happy. 

For more bountiful northern hemisphere harvests, and probably way more peas,  head over to Daphne's Dandelions.

Bread-making workshop

Picture courtesy of Emma

For the second of the simple-living workshops, we decided to take a more 'hands-on' approach, and ask a few friends to demonstrate sourdough bread making.  Ten eager participants gathered in the kitchen, donned a fine selection of aprons and pinnies and enjoyed a couple of hours of excellent teaching by the girls from the urban harvest.  The main difference between making sourdough and yeast-based bread is that sourdough uses a starter which has natural yeasts .  Starters can live for hundreds of years, as long as they are fed and looked after.  We learnt how to feed our starters (which can smell apparently of anything from bananas to nail polish remover!), with flour and water, how to make the 'sponge;' or the first stage, and then how to prepare and knead the dough from the sponge.  They also explained about different flour types and the best types of tins to use, as well as showing us how to make a good crust. There was so much information and I learned so much; it was great.

Apart from spending the afternnon with such a lovely bunch of people, I just loved kneading the dough - everyone had a go at this and it was interesting to see how different the kneading styles were.  At the end of the workshop we sat out in the garden afterwards eating delicious just-baked bread with homemade preserves. Mmmmm!