garden ramble: sprinter

Sorry for the absence! Work is super crazy at this time of the year and I come home mentally wrung out. I’m writing and editing like a demon all day, so the last thing my frazzled little brain cells want to do after hours is even more — especially thoughtful, creative stuff. All I want to do is sink on the couch with a juicy gin and tonic and a magazine full of pictures, absolutely no words at all please.

My garden is a calming retreat (especially with that G&T in hand), and finally the days are getting brighter and better. It’s ‘sprinter’ here in Hobart — have you ever heard that word before? It’s perfect for this hopeful but maddening time of year, when there’s a day or two of glorious weather followed by too many of frost-forecasts and gloom. It’s when everyone starts grumbling that winter really has gone on for too long now, please (and my goodness, it’s been a doozy of a winter this one).

The daffies and jonquils and freesias and blossoms are providing much needed colour after the grey of winter. But we all know realistically that we could still have a treacherous frost or snow dumping in late October. That’s sprinter.

But I’m out in my garden. Last weekend I dug in the green manure crops I had going in my hibernating vegie beds. ‘Crops’ may be too lofty a word: it was a motley patchwork of soft wheat, chickweed, sweet peas, a lot of nettles and other assorted weeds that I let do their thing.

The garden bed before digging over. I grow good weeds, especially nettles and chickweed!

 

First I hacked the lush, soft green growth into pieces with old shears from mum ...

 

Then I chucked about some sheep poo and mushroom compost, before finally digging the beds over to cover and incorporate everything. The bed that held the tomatoes was particularly hard work, as it had been walked over all summer when tending and harvesting the toms. So after a few hours of that, a scalding hot shower, the couch and that gin was very much in order. Anyway, I’ll let it sit for another couple of weeks — early to mid October is when I’ll start sowing my planned crops.

 

After. I couldn't bear to dig the dark purple violas in, so they are safe for now

Some of the vegies that have been slowly, valiantly persisting over winter: Broccoli, purple peas, silverbeet

 

 

The resident blackbirds loved my work, of course. They are so very tame: they know that whenever I go near the beds,  chances are I’ll uncover some worms for them, so they fly right down next to me, waiting for me to unearth their dinner. I think we have a bit of a deal brokered; they can have some juicy worms, but they aren’t to eat all of them. Anyway, I do like their company (and their lovely melodic song) and a few worms is a small price to pay for knowing they feel safe and welcome in my suburban backyard.

Oh, and my PSB

What else? Two new passionfruit vines (from mum and dad) are in...

... and swaddled and coddled like babies. Literally — the day after we planted them we got frost and snow warnings, so I constructed a frame, and for a few nights I wrapped and pegged an old sheet around them for protection. The vines are beautifully soft and tender, so I was not going to risk them being damaged by cruel frosts (that’s what killed my first passionfruit, a year or so ago). It’s perhaps rather apt that the result makes me think of crime scene tents.

Framed ... and tented

A victim of the process. Sorry, pansy

In other major news, dad, mum and I spent the good part of one Sunday finally getting a frame up on the front wall of my house for the climbing roses (a soft pink Pierre du Ronsard and a hot pink Zepherine) to clamber over. It looks a bit pathetic at the moment but I am patient, I know in time they’ll cover the blank wall beautifully, fragrantly.

I also took the opportunity to get mum’s advice on the pelargoniums that were in front of the roses; once so pretty but now, frankly, taking over the joint. The result is that most of them were hacked out to make way for a greater variety of plantings.

It looks bare and ugly right now, and there is much to do here and elsewhere in the front garden. I have a specific list of new plants I want — a green boronia, a purple perennial wallflower, one or two bird-attracting grevilleas, and some pretty annuals such as zinnias and petunias.

I am learning that gardening is a long journey over many seasons, requiring great wells of patience as well as creativity, team work and hard work.

Some more colour from around my garden

 

 

on meal planning

A new al desko favourite: barlotto

 

Earlier this year, I tried to do the weekly meal planning thing. I thought it was The Grown Up Thing To Do. Everyone on the Kitchn it seems achieves zen by using military precision and many apps to plan each meal, each morsel, each ingredient, each day. I wanted a bit of that too.

For years I’ve had my weekday working lunches down pat by making a big ‘something’ on the weekend. Right now it’s the barley and roast veg thing, risottos, barlottos, oven bakes and other casserole-y stick-to-your-rib one-pot wonders.

Potato and pumpkin curry, ready for work lunches

But after-work evening meals are a bit more haphazard; usually a last-minute decision guided by opening the fridge or pantry and making up something fairly pedestrian.

So, the weekly planning thing. I sat down before I went grocery shopping, armed with recipe books and torn-out pages, and thought about what was in season, what was doable after work (you know: when you really can’t be bothered), and what was something new I hadn’t tried before. I made lists and lists and lists!

Tomato soup made in the summer. Crackers and a magazine, what more could I want?

 

I decided to cover four nights, I’d cook two recipes, two serves each; the fifth night could be lazy single girl’s eggs on toast or soup from the freezer or even a bowl of muesli. Or even cake — because I can.

 

Anyway, a modest system, I thought. But life would get in the way and somehow the wheels fell off. A recipe made three or four portions, not two; or I’d get invited out; or somehow the more delicate ingredients (usually dairy) would not make it til their allocated night … and I was achieving no zen whatsoever.

Barlotto made with roasted summer zucchinis, from the freezer

 

Then winter hit with a dark and icy bang, and the last thing I wanted to do after work was stand in a frosty kitchen, even if it was for only half an hour for a speedy pasta dinner. It was bone-chilling and bonkers. I wanted to get out of my overcoat and into the warm part of my house!

 

So I had a re-think. I already used the weekend to cook my big Monday-to-Friday lunch ‘something’, so why not also for my Monday-to-Friday dinners? (weekends remain a lazy and haphazard affair, and I’m very happy with that. It’s the weekend after all. Vegemite on toast is entirely acceptable).

These white-bean croquettes were a bit of a let-down; they were mushy and bland

 

So here was my meal planning: one lunch, one dinner. Some may crinkle their noses at the lack of variety, but the sheer practicality means it’s a winner for me. I know there is something good waiting for me when I come home. Something delicious and healthy and — done!

 

Saturday morning is spent cooking and cooking; usually a good three hours in the kitchen. And then washing and washing: when you cook multiple meals at once (I’m also baking a pudding or cake), it seems that you use every utensil and bowl and chopping board and tea towel at once!

 

Broccoli, kale and toasted walnuts are a good combo!

 

But all that effort is worth it, because it frees my evenings up enormously, so I can spend more time on the important things in life. Right now that’s housework and reading on the couch. But come summer: gardening and being outside!

I’ve mostly been choosing one dish to be ‘fancy’ or new or more time-consuming, and the other to be more straightforward (I revert to the barley and roast veg often). Sometimes the ‘easy option’ is excavating a home-made pasta sauce or tomato soup from my chest freezer and enjoying that (I’m aware I need to eat my tomato sauces before next season).

This week's barlotto in the pot: pumpkin and roasted tomatoes and yellow capsicum

 

The good thing about weekend cooking, as I’m sure many of you know, is that you have the time and energy to try those new fancy recipes. Unrushed hours to get things right; and more if things go wrong and you have to dash to the supermarket and start again (it doesn’t happen often, thankfully). I need to psych myself up for new dishes, especially savoury ones; I’m currently working up the courage to try a from-scratch curry using eggplant and coconut milk, two ingredients that are never in my kitchen, using a tried-and-tested family-favourite recipe from my friend F.

So do you have a system? Are you an efficient meal planner? Are you a big-batch cooker, or a daily one? What works for you?

nigella's big choc cake

  

Does anyone else watch cooking shows and think, what a waste? Let me explain. Watch the cook or presenter chop up some herbs — and not put it all into the dish. Or take a bowl of flour or sugar from the carefully prepped and measured mise en place selection, and not use it all. Or whip up a cake batter, pour it into the baking tin, but leave a good portion behind in the mixing bowl.

I loved watching Luke Nguyen’s recent travels around the UK (what a friendly guy!) but I noticed when he didn’t use the whole portion of ingredients set out. Someone (probably some lowly assistant) went to the trouble of chopping and mincing and measuring out that spring onion, and lugging it out to some windy outdoors location — hey, use it all!

Nigella is another, far worse offender. Watch her chop coriander and leave handfuls of it behind on the chopping board. Or whiz up a cheesecake, pour the batter into the tin, but not use a spatula to scrape it all out. Yes, it looks liberating and wantonly to cook with such abandon, but …

It’s a waste!

Surely it’s a mess to wash up all that unused batter or brush away that discarded herbage.

But mostly I can’t help think it’s food and money being thrown away. On the occasions when a cake I’ve made doesn’t turn out, I get cranky about the good eggs from mum’s chooks that have been wasted. Or the beautiful butter or nuts or chocolate or other quality ingredients I’ve bought — wasted. The ingredients that have been paid for — left behind, then washed down the drain or thrown into the garbage? Does that make sense?

Hopefully the vegetably ingredients are composted, though I doubt Luke, cooking on Hadrian’s wall, had a compost bucket off-camera. And maybe Nigella and her TV crew lick the bowl and beaters. Actually, with Nigella that’s highly likely. But still.

Contrast this to the French patisserie chef on a Food Safari episode: he scraped out every last lick of his raspberry soufflé into the moulds. This was a man appreciating exquisite ingredients; he was not prepared to waste a drop. This was a business man, considering expenses and profits, who had paid for those ingredients; he couldn’t afford to discard a drop. Oh la la, I wanted to applaud.

When I was a child, I begged my mum to leave some batter in the bowl for me (and she did) but now that I am my own cook, I’m pretty diligent at gathering every last bit of batter and putting it into the oven. But there’s a difference between a little bit left behind and a whole slick of the stuff.

What about you? Do you scrape the bowl as clean as possible?

Nigella’s big chocolate cake

Adapted from her fudge cake in 'Nigella Bites'.

• Prep a deep bundt cake tin and preheat your oven to 180.
• In a measuring jug, combine 3 eggs, 150 mls sour cream, and 2 tspns vanilla.
• In a medium bowl, combine 400 gms plain flour, 350 gms light brown sugar, 50 gms cocoa powder, 2 tspns baking powder, 1 tspn bicarb soda, and ½ tspn salt.
• In a large bowl, beat together 175gms butter that’s been melted and cooled slightly, 125 mls light olive oil, and 300 mls water. A free standing mixer is good for this recipe.
• Pour in the egg mixture and mix until combined.
• Slow the mixer down and gradually add the dry ingredients, then give it a whiz faster until nicely smooth. It will look like divine chocolate mousse, but resist the urge to start eating it now.
• Pour every last bit into your bundt tin; I also needed some cupcake papers (Nigella’s original recipe specified two 20 cm round tins, but I wanted the drama of my bundt).
• Bake for 45 minutes or so until done (about half that for any cupcakes). Allow to cool in tin for a few minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack to cool completely before frosting.
• To make the frosting, melt 100 gms of dark eating chocolate (the 70% stuff). Stir into this 125 gms butter , ½ tbspn vanilla, and 140 gms icing sugar. Now taste: I always adjust frostings a little, more icing sugar or vanilla, depending on how sweet my tastebuds are inclined that day.
• Daub and swirl all over the cake and enjoy.

cruelty-free cupcakes

No post last week — I was busy baking and icing for Cupcake Day for the RSPCA. I’ve been involved in charity fundraising before, so I knew the way to people’s wallets is thru their tummies. So whipping up some cakes to help fight animal neglect and cruelty? Too easy. I was in.

One of the loveliest parts of the whole event was that once I emailed my workplace to let them know my plans, three other ladies offered to bake goodies for the cake stall too. Isn’t that wonderful? It really swelled the offerings — actually, at first I was afraid we wouldn’t sell them all!

But we did. People came early in the morning and bought one, two or three cupcakes, they came back at morning tea and just before lunch and then at afternoon tea time. They bought cupcakes for themselves, their co-workers, their children and partners at home. They bought a cupcake and gave extra coins, which was so generous.

We started with easily 150 or more cupcakes (I was so busy setting up and selling I didn’t count, but I know I contributed 66). By the end of the day, I reckon we had only ten left standing. And at $2 a pop (half price from 3pm on to really shift them) we raised over $300 for the RSPCA. Woo!

I love a hustle for a good cause. I donned an cupcake-printed apron over my work dress and the chef’s hat from the RSPCA kit, and accosted people in the corridors: ‘You haven’t bought a cupcake from me yet! Or anyone else from your area — come and buy a cupcake or two!’ I did the big sell at the cake stall: ‘Try these ones — they are amazing! Hasn’t she decorated these so prettily? Tell the others in your corridor to get over here!’ A smile, a silly hat and loads of chocolate-frosted cupcakes and no one is offended.

Cruelty-free cupcakes in the pink striped paper cases; in the first pic, they are the ones on the far right still in the baking tins

So let’s get down to the cakes. I made old favourites, recipes I knew would not let me down on a busy day in the kitchen. My boozy sultana cakes, with fruit soaked in sherry for two weeks in advance. Butter cakes in little loaf tins, which I then sliced in half and filled with strawberry jam and whipped cream to make very pretty versions of a Victoria sponge. And Merle’s lamington recipe with the crack-cocaine of a chocolate frosting, guaranteed to induce the biggest sugar high (and crash). I used a massive six cups of icing sugar on Sunday for all the icing and frostings I made — I don’t want to see that white stuff for a very long time!

As this was for the RSPCA, I wanted to do a vegan cupcake — to be truly cruelty free. But I had a hard time finding something I liked, with not too weirdy ingredients (if you have one, I’d be interested for next year). So in the end I went for a dairy-free one, using olive oil and soy milk; and eggs from mum’s chooks, who are very lucky girls who get feds lots of greens and who can roam as freely as they wish.

When I had one warm from the oven, I was surprised at how light and fluffy it was. As well as being ethical cupcakes, they are also very practical ones: no need to soften butter, which is a big plus when your kitchen is cold or you have to whip up a batch very quickly. Their simplicity and speed would make these a great go-to for any cake stall baker; you could churn out — and sell — dozens of these in no time at all.

The other ladies bought their cakes after I took this photo; the table was groaning; then the crowds descended!

Cruelty-free cupcakes

Use free-range eggs to bake, eat and sell as many of these with an easy conscience. This made — oh, I forget how many this batch made; all I remember is the massive 66 cupcakes I had stacked up in my kitchen at the end of the day! Adapted from a taste.com.au recipe.

• Preheat your oven to 180 and prep some cupcake tins.
• Use electric beaters to whisk up ¾ cup soy milk, 2/3 cup light olive oil, 2 large eggs, 1 tspn vanilla, and ¾ cup sugar.
• Fold in 2 cups SR flour. And that’s it!
• Ladle into your tins (it’s a very runny batter) and bake for 10-15 minutes until lightly golden and baked thru.
• Allow to cool before decorating. For these ones I mixed up some icing sugar, lemon juice and pink food colouring then sprinkled with silver cachous. I can’t tell you the quantities — it was late in the day, I had icing-fatigue, and desperately needed some salty vegemite on toast! I just threw stuff in a bowl and mixed until it was a reasonable consistency. 

on new secateurs

Two new, one old faithful. And sunshine!

 

You know that line about turning into your mother? Well, I think I’m turning into my father. The weekend I hired the gnomes was bitterly cold, but I came home, donned a parka, and pottered about in the shed. I re-arranged my pruning tools and brooms, sorted thru a bucket that had collected bits of junk (old tights, plant tags, very old secateurs, a measuring vial). Then I moved into the vegie patch and pulled some weeds (a lot of nettle, possibly from the sheep poo) and assessed the placement of the gnomes — could I see them from the back door? More importantly, could they see and talk to one another?

Then sense hit me and I decided it was Too Cold To Be Outside. I needed a cup of tea to wrap my frozen hands around, and I went in.

My dad would have happily ignored the weather and continued pottering about in his shed or glasshouse (we like to ‘potter about’ in our family). Tough stuff, he is.

What prompted all this pottering were the new tools I’d bought (along with the gnomes). I can’t resist a hardware store and this was my first visit to the new super-mega-store across the way from me. There’s a smaller branch right next door to my work (I know, I'm very lucky) and I am a loyal and regular customer there, but this new outlet? Mind-blowingly vast. They hand out maps as you go in.

I thought I’d check out the dustpans — aisle 57. Fifty seven! I happily trawled thru towering shelves of things I had never seen before or knew anything about. But there were many men and women crouched down, intently considering one shiny metal thing against another; or standing hands on hips, looking upwards towards suspended other things. This was hardware mecca. It was monstrous, and it was wonderful.

I bought two dustpan-and-brush sets (one for indoor, one for out; both with that rubbery edge which means no dust escapes); bright, grippy pegs for my mother; yellow zucchini and purple pea seeds for dad (in the hope he will get them going and pass some seedlings on to me); and secateurs and a trowel for me.

I did not need new secateurs. Or a trowel. But these were so new! And shiny! And ah, the trowel, so solid in my hand. I hefted it a few times, I turned it and mimed digging. Then I squeezed and compared secateurs. I’d been lured into the garden tool aisle by the bright pink secateurs. The feminist in me says no to pink girl tools; the girly part of me says oooh — pink! To compensate, I bought a second pair which are heavier and a utilitarian dull grey; more your blokey no-nonsense pair, mate.

But ah, I love secateurs; come the warmer days, when I’m outside, I reach for my blunnies, sunhat and secateurs automatically — they’re part of getting dressed for work. I always have a pair in my hand or pocket, just in case something needs a snip or a trim.

So now I have six pairs of secateurs. I know! Much like lipsticks or shoes, one for every occasion, need or mood. Options!

But really, I blame that mega-hardware store. It made me buys dustpans, pegs, seeds, gnomes and two pairs of secateurs in one day.

I won’t be returning for a little while…

Where all the secateurs live

syrupy pear cake

I’ve been meaning to share this pudding with you for weeks, but something else keeps coming along to write about. But I need to hurry, before pear season is well and truly over.

 

This syrupy, mellow pudding came about after a string of failed attempts at making pear clafoutis. I wanted something where the fruit — beautiful beurre boscs from my father’s trees — were the stars (I refuse to say ‘hero’). More fruit than cake. But the two recipes I tried were complete rubbery disasters. One was even from a beautiful book documenting life in rural France, so I thought I’d be on a winner there! But the custards were thick and somehow solid-but-bendy, just like industrial flooring one might find in kitchens or warehouses to stop your feet from aching. If that rubbery flooring was a creamy yellow colour.

Looked good - tasted rubbery 

 

I was complaining one afternoon to my mother when the light bulb went off. Another tough clafoutis, I moaned. I want something light, something to show off these delicious pears with their woody patina, something perhaps like an upside-down cake but not too cake-y; something along the lines of that Donna Hay upside-down syrup cake I make with the orange slices …

 

Ping!

 

There was the answer, tucked away in my own file of favourites all along.

 

So instead of paper-thin orange slices, there are elegantly cored pear wedges (use a melon baller to remove the seeds for perfectly circular shapes). There is a wonderful slosh (or two) of sherry in there, because the rounded mellowness of sherry (excuse the pun) pairs beautifully with pears.  And as with my orange original, the cake-to-syrupy fruit ratio is heavily weighted in the fruit’s favour. This was the light, sticky affair I was dreaming of.

Syrupy pear cake
Adapted from my upside down orange cake

• Preheat oven to 160 and use a pan about 22-24 cm across that can go on your stovetop and in your oven.
• First make the pear topping: put 1 cup white sugar plus quarter cup sherry plus quarter cup water in the pan, stir over medium heat till dissolved. Then stir thru 1 tspn speckly vanilla paste, then add pear wedges - enough to cover the bottom. I cut up three or four pears and see how I go; it will depend on the size of your fruit. Cook over a gently bubbling heat for about 10-15 minutes until fruit is softened (though beurre boscs do maintain their shape). Once done, remove from heat.
• Next the cake: in a bowl, beat 2 eggs, half a cup of sugar and 1/2 tspn vanilla for about 10 minutes until the mix is pale and tripled in size. As I noted in my original recipe, have a stand mixer or very strong biceps.
• Then sift in 1/2 cup of SR flour, 1/2 cup almond meal, and 75 gms of butter that you’ve melted and cooled slightly (I put it in a small bowl in the preheating oven).
• Pour this carefully over the pears, then bake for 35-40 minutes. You may need to cover with foil towards the end. Once done, turn out onto a plate or enjoy straight from the tin.

 

garden share: august

It should be acknowledged that, as a single woman in possession of a home and garden but mediocre upper-body strength, I must often rely on bloke friends, my dad, and occasionally a paid tradesman to help out with ‘the heavy lifting’. The bloke friends are paid in cake, and dad is re-paid in kind (I’d like to think) when I help with the weeding or deadheading or general tidying up when I visit him and mum for a weekend.

But I have recently recruited a whole new group of fellows, eager to help out, providing their cheer for free and even bringing their own tools with them:

It’s still the quiet, cold time of year — I can’t recall a year with more frosts and snow-on-the-mountain — and gardening is still restricted to weekends. So what have we been up to in the garden?

There’s been very little rain, so we’ve been watering the peas, which have happily re-shot since being pecked off by sparrows. The tinsel must be working:

The garlic is growing strong, though we really must weed out the nettles that are popping up everywhere:

Lemons on my original tree are ripening very slowly, but the fruit this year is the largest I’ve ever had, quite possibly because when we got my new tree, the lady at the nursery shamed me into feeding it more regularly. I love how the bright yellow orbs punctuate the bare garden on a gloomy day:

And we’ve harvested my first broccoli! So tender and slim of stem, it made for a modest pasta dinner that night, along with some anaemic, hairy carrots sown a couple of months ago:

 

Inspired by Bek, we’ve started drawing up planting schemes for spring. There won’t be any real action until the soil and weather warms up around October, but it was a pleasant evening sorting thru my seeds (why did I save so many marigold seeds? How old are those butternut seeds from dad?) and working out where to put things. The plans we’ll run past dad, to see if we’ve got the rotation thing right.

Otherwise, we are enjoying the first hints of spring:

This is much needed colour for this time of year. My ornamental garden is also slumbering, and I do miss seeing the riot of bright colour that comes in spring. Every year I tell myself ‘this is what winter is’, but it’s no less depressing.

So acid-yellow lemons, yolky jonquils, and red gnomes are just the ticket to make me smile until those long-away warmer, brighter days arrive.

 

My original gnome, well over ten years old, and a little weather-beaten:

 

cauliflower cheese pie

Cauliflower cheese in a pie? I know, insane! And - insanely good! Delicious, amazing, yummmmm! Why has no one ever thought of this twist on a classic before? Okay, maybe they have, but it's only just turned up on my dinner plate.

And really, this is as easy as ... pie. Cook your cauliflower, moosh it up with some cheese and eggs, and encase it in puffed pastry. Isn't anything better wrapped in pastry? You bet. The crisp flakiness is the perfect contrast to the filling, which is creamy and cheesy but not-too-much.

A good shake of nutmeg adds a cosy flavour for the colder winter months, but if I had fresh chives growing in my garden right now (they are dormant for the winter), then their green speckles and freshness would be another nice take on this pie.

Quite simply, I like this and will definitely make it again. A comforting delicious flavour and so easy to make - who wouldn't?

Cauliflower cheese pie
Mum gave this recipe, and I made her write it out how she made it - not how it appeared in her oven's instruction manual. Now you know where I get my tweaking skills from.

• Preheat oven to 180. Line a 20x20 baking dish (I used my trusty hand-me-down pyrex) with one sheet of (frozen and thawing) ready-made puff pastry, and have another sheet close by for the top.
• Steam 300 gms of cauliflower, then give it a mash (I whizzed it in my food processor) and allow to cool. You could also use leftovers.
• In a mixing bowl, combine the cauliflower with 2 eggs, a good half cup of deli ricotta or cottage cheese, and a good cup of grated cheese (I used a strong tasty cheddar; some parmesan would be good too). Add a dash of grated nutmeg and some S&P.
• Add to the pie dish and flatten out lightly. Place the second sheet of pastry on top and crimp the edges together as best you can (which means, don't be too fussy). Wash with a little melted butter or beaten egg and sprinkle with black sesame seeds.
• Bake for 30 to 40 minutes or until a light golden brown colour.
• Enjoy!