An End to the Season

Tomato, tomato, tomatoes!

Last weekend brought the end to the tomato growing season for the garden. It was a bittersweet end to be honest. Tomato soup, tomato salad, frozen tomato, tomato sauce, tomato relish, tomato in the casserole, tomato in the curry, tomato on toast, tomato in the kids lunches, tomato, tomato, tomatoes! Even my family were declining offers for bags of freshly picked tomatoes. There is a limit right? Room had to be made for my winter crops to go in anyway. What to do with the 3-5kgs of fruit still hanging on the vines Ahhhhhhhhhh. I really don’t like being wasteful and I know that in a couple of months tomatoes are going to be the price of gold in the supermarkets. I have been freezing tomatoes in small zip lock freezer bags as the season has progressed, which are going to be very useful as we head into winter. My wife made a comment as to how many tins of tomatoes we go through in our cooking during winter. Easily two or three a week.

As we don’t have our own canning set up, freezing was going to be the less time consuming method (yes, I have had enough of bottling for the time being). I decided to make single serve bags of ‘ready to use’ flavoured tomato mixes. Main ingredients were tomato, garlic, onion and a fresh herb (coriander or basil). Here is the method:

Dozen small tomatoes, half an onion, two garlic cloves, herbs

Add to a food processor and pulse

Pour into zip lock freezer bags and label

Looking forward to more fresh tomatoes next year.

Fruits of my labour: Rhubarb Jam

It was raining today, so what better thing to do than make jam.  I took a rhizome from a rhubarb plant growing at my parents place two years ago and did nothing but put it in the soil in my garden.  Within 6 months I had enough rhubarb to stew to have on my muesli for breakfast.  Now the plant provides continues crop.  Today I made some sweet rhubarb jam.  This is how I made it:

1.  Chopped up 1 kg of rhubarb cut straight out of the garden.

FREE from my garden

2.  Sliced up two Fuji apples.

27cents (NZD)

3.  Heated up a cup of water with 2 cups of sugar and added the rhubarb and apple.  Once the syrup and fruit start boiling turn down the heat.

85cents (NZD)

4.  Add finely grated lemon rind and juice.

FREE (off my friend lemon tree)

5.  Boil on low until it reduces and is nice and thick (keep stirring so it doesn't stick to the bottom and burn).

6.  Chop up 5 pieces of preserved ginger and stir into the jam about 2 minutes before the end off cooking.

75cents (NZD)

7.  Pour into sterilised jam jars.  Filled five of my small jars.

Recycled

Total = $1.87 for five jars of yummy jam.

I had it on hot buttered toast with a cup of tea.

Fruits of my labour: Silverbeet into Sag aloo

This time of year you should find that Silverbeet is prolific in your garden. It can be one of those veges that you grow, but leave uneaten in your plot because you don’t know how to make the most of this highly nutritious vegetable. Well I’m a fan of it just steamed or maybe with some butter and seasoning. It’s also great chopped finely in an omlet, quiche or frittata. Tonight though I took some inspiration from Mr Rick Stein and adapted his ‘Potatoes and Spinach with Cumin and Mustard Seeds’ recipe (Rick Stein’s Far Eastern Odyssey p. 278) for my own Silver Beet usage needs.

 For this recipe you will need 4Tbsp mustard oil (I just used rice bran), 1 tsp black mustard seeds, 1 tsp cumin seeds, 25g crushed garlic, 30g peeled and grated ginger, 2 thinly sliced green cayenne chillies (because I’m serving to small children I left these out), ½ tsp turmeric powder, ½ tsp kashmiri chilli powder, 700g peeled potatos cut into 2.5 cm pieces (didn’t measure every piece), 250g spinach (Silverbeet), ½ tsp Garam masala.

Heat the oil in pan, add the mustard seeds and cover with lid until the seeds stop popping, turn down the heat and add the cumin seeds, sizzle for a few seconds, add the garlic, ginger and chillies and fry for two minutes.  Stir in the turmeric and chilli powder, then the potatoes, 5 tablespoons of water and a teaspoon of salt.  Cover and cook.  Stir occasionally (add a little more water during cooking if needed, I didn’t).  Once the potatoes are tender, stir in the silverbeet and cook for a couple more minutes.  Sprinkle over the garam masala and eat!! 

As you can see I served with some steamed peas and a tasty piece of pan-fried salmon.

I would love to see the fruits of your labour and what you do with them, too.  Send me your photos.

Fruits of my labour: Cauliflower

I’ve got into the habit of late of planting just a couple of varieties of the identical plant at regular intervals, so that I don’t get lots of the same plant fruiting at the same time.  I don’t have a very big garden, but I have set aside room for growing 13 larger vege at a time, along side the plants that don’t take up so much room.

I really like the idea of sharing plants with friends.  If you can find a fellow keen gardener in your neighbourhood where you each buy a punnet (or better still grow from seed) of one variety of vege and swap a few plants with each other, then you can save a lot of money and wastage of your crops from being sick of eating the same vege every night. 

This weeks vege that was ready to pick: two good-sized heads of cauliflower that I planted out about 18 weeks ago.  Cauliflower takes longer to grow than other Brassica.   

They also grow with big leaves pointing towards the sky that makes it look like nothing but leaf is growing.  I have known people to pull them out because of this, but just a week before the cauliflower is ready to pick the leaves will open up displaying it’s head.  You don’t even have to grow the old school white cauliflower these days; there are also varieties that are green, orange and purple (I just replaced last weeks picking with the purple variety). I certainly couldn’t have it every night, but cauliflower is a really delicious vege.  My favourite way to cook it is to steam it until it’s cooked but still firm and cover with lots of creamy cheese sauce (dinner last Wednesday)!!   

This weekend I’m going to cook the Indian dish Aloo gobi which uses cauliflower and potato as its main ingredients.

All Brassica (cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage etc) grow really well in the cold and there are special varieties that can be planted out all year round.

This weeks challenge:  Find someone this weekend who can be your ‘Vege buddy’, one buy a punnet of broccoli and one a punnet of cauliflower, and get swapping!!

Fruits of my labour: Beetroot

When I think of beetroot: homemade burgers, stained t-shirts and canned vege come immediately to mind.  Back in February I put into the ground 15 or so cork beetroot seeds  (I went for a mix of Cylindra and Super king this year).  One of the easiest vege to grow in my opinion (I’ll go into how soon).  If you have never seen the seeds of a beetroot (see photo) they have a corky-like outer and can contain between 2 to 4 of the ‘true’ seeds inside.  The cork takes on moister once it comes in contact with the soil, triggering the germination process.

Out of the 15 corks I got about 30+ full-grown plants and were ready for harvesting after just over three months growing (I know the packet says sooner, but this wasn’t the case for me).  Over the past few years I have tried both rasing the seeds in trays first and buying seedling punnets from the shop.  So, this was the first time for direct sowing of the seeds and subsequently having the greatest success.  So what did I do?

Step 1.

The gardening books I have read suggest soaking the corky seeds in warm water for a few hours before sowing.  The concept made sense to me, so I did.

Step 2.

I put a few handfuls of my rich homemade compost and a sprinkling of NPK fertiliser graduals on the soil and raked it in gently.

Step 3.

Once soaked, I sowed the seeds roughly 20 cm apart and in a couple of rows.  My intention was to plant another two rows in a few weeks time to keep a circulation of plants growing (never happened though).

Step 4. 

Germination took about ten days and after a few weeks I thinned out the double up of plants and planted these in another two rows.

I did very little other than weeding and giving the plants a water of worm wee. And, last weekend I pulled up all of the brilliant red roots. Mmmmmm what now?

I saved a couple to roast up with potatoes that evening for dinner and the rest I decided to bottle.

As with everything in this blog being only my opinion (and those who agree), the simplest recipe for bottled beetroot can be found in Digby Law’s “Pickle & Chutney Cookbook” http://www.fishpond.co.nz/Books/Cooking,_Food_Drink/Canning_Preserving/9781869710552/

For less than the cost of one can of bought beetroot (and much MUCH tastier) I bottled three and a half large jars of simply the best t-shirt staining beetroot in town.  And if you don’t believe me come round for a sample.

The best time of the year for growing beetroot is July – March in most areas (NZ) but really all year round (except if very wet during the sowing time) in warmer areas.

Extra for blooming geeks:  The experts say that beetroot is packed with antioxidants and rummer has it, beetroot has an aphrodisiac quality.