Banana and Almond pancakes.

Banana and Almond Pancakes

Another new recipe that contains no gluten or dairy products for those of us with sensitive tummies.

First you get a really cute toddler to help mash two bananas.

Then mix in a large egg, a pinch of cinamon and about a cup of Almond meal (I grind my almonds in a blender so the meal is not as smooth as the pre-packaged almond meal from the shops).

Fry as for normal pancakes but on a lower temperature so they set harder.

Serve with a dollop of honey and scoff!

Gluten free dessert

I've been trying to eat Gluten free the last three weeks. It does seem to make me feel alot better but it's been tricky adjusting my cooking and meals to be gluten free.

Yesterday I created this dessert.

Apple and polenta cake.

First I stewed some apples in rice milk with some sugar, cardamon and cinnamon.

Then I added Polenta and cooked it until it had thickened, put it in a dish and sprinkled the top with a mixture of coconut, cashews, almonds, seasame seeds, sunflower seeds and sultanas.

I baked it for about twenty minutes until it was totally set and made a caramel sauce to drizzle over the top.

The result? Gluten free yumminess!!!

Roast Tomato Sauce

Before the recipe I just had to put up this photo of Tui in her new skirt. What a nice dancing skirt!

Now here's what I've been doing with all those hundreds of tomatoes we've been picking!

Roast Tomato Sauce

Put heaps of tomatoes (any kind, I used cherry, Roma and ox heart) in a roasting dish.

Add 4 cloves of garlic (or more or less to your taste), salt, pepper, a splash each of olive oil and balsamic vinegar, tsp of brown sugar and a pinch of chili flakes if you want it nice and spicy.

Roast in a medium hot oven until the tomatoes are flatand all their yummy juices are filling the pan and starting to caramelize (about an hour).

Chuck it all in a blender (when it cools down a bit) and whizz. (I leave it pretty chunky but it makes a nice smooth tomato sauce too.)

It's really yummy with pasta or rice or cold as a salsa dip.

Kids and Chooks

At the moment we have an abundance of eggs and zucchinis. So zucchini slice is on the menu again. I love summer veggies.

Zucchini Slice
Grate a couple of large zucchinis




Pick the first couple of onions from the garden. (which is exciting because it's the first time we have grown onions and they are so sweet!!!)
Finely chop onions and about 4 cloves of garlic.


Add 1/2 a dozen eggs and season with salt and pepper.
Cook in pie dish until golden on top.
It's pretty simple but is so yum.

And because I love chooks (chickens) not just for their yummy yellow eggs, but also because they are amusing animals to observe and they make great pets, here are a couple of photos.

Kohl Rabi

This beautiful looking veggie is a kohl Rabi. It's related to broccoli and is looks similar when growing apart from the swollen base of the stem.

I'd never eaten on until last week. I'm not even sure if Ive ever seen then in fruit and veggie shops. But P picked up some seeds for them awhile back and they have grown really well.

Really beautiful purple colour that my old camera doesn't do justice to.

After searching through all my recipe books (not with a lot of luck) I googled it and found a couple of recipes.

You can apparently eat them raw if you pick then young and tender enough but unfortunately ours are all beyond that stage.

I peeled it. You have to take off quiet a bit to get through the woody outer layers.

So firstly we tried it steamed tossed in olive oil at the end with a sprinkling of fresh parsley and garlic chives. It tastes a lot like a broccoli stem but also a bit like turnip.

And since I have been putting it in everything. Made a nice potato, leek, fennel and Kohl Rabi soup and it goes well in curries. I want to cook a potato bake and replace half the potato with Kohl Rabi tonight. We'll see how it goes.

Spinach and Cheese pastries

With so much spinach and silver beet in the garden I've been making a few spinach recipes. One of my favourites are spinach and cheese triangles.





I make home made ricotta cheese for these. Cheese making is easier than most people think and this is the easiest cheese to make of all.
Simply warm milk up to almost boiling point. Then turn it off and add a curdling agent. You can use vinegar, lemon juice or whey from a previous batch of cheese.


Pour into a strainer lined with a cheese cloth or as I've done here a new dish cloth.

Let it drain for a couple of hours.

Simple as that!!! I usually use about 2l of milk. Some people swear it has to be raw milk, while this is obviously better it even works with powdered milk.

To this I add about 2tablespoons of vinegar or lemon juice. If the whey is still milky looking, not clear and yellowish then you can add a bit more. You only need to give it a quick stir (literally 5 seconds) after adding the curdler. Stir anymore and you'll break up the curds.

I'll post another day how you then turn this cheese mix into a feta type cheese.

Now for the next step for the spinach and cheese triangles.

Fry some onions and garlic.

Wilt some spinach or silver beet. Chop finely and add to onions. Add all the ricotta and season with salt and pepper.

Roll into triangles in filo pastry.

Yummm.......

Recipe for Garden Soup

I call this recipe Garden Soup.



It takes a long time to prepare but the results are worth it.I made this for dinner last night and it was perfect warming winter food.


Step 1
This is the most time consuming part of the recipe, it can take a couple of months! You need to grow a variety of vegetables. This step involves digging the soil, mulching, weeding, watering and a lot of love.

Step 2
Harvesting. This is best done as close to when you want to cook your soup as possible. It is a wonderful feeling eating something that you know was alive only a couple of hours ago. It still amazes me when I walk inn the garden and see all this delicious food that has seemingly arrived in my garden from nowhere.



I picked a whole bunch of celery, some curly kale(or Chinese broccoli) 10 radishes, 2 turnips, 2 spring onions and a pumpkin.








Step 3
Wash and roughly chop the veggies. This stage may involve you having to rescue the tiny green tree frog out of your bunch of celery. Give the frog to the children to take back to the garden.


Step 4

Put the vegetables into a large soup pot with a sprig each of rosemary and thyme and three bay leaves. Cover with fresh rainwater, collected off the roof and bring to the boil.








While it comes to the boil quickly run up to the garden to pick the broccoli you forgot to pick before . Chop and add to the soup

Step 5

Now have the children light a campfire so they can cook toast to go with the soup

Step 6 For atmosphere you can get your wwoofer to show the children how to make mandarin lanterns. Place these around the fire.

Step 7 Season the soup with salt and pepper. Serve with slightly burnt toast and sit back around the campfire and enjoy the fruits of your labours.

Gardeners who cook...

For a couple of years I've been hunting down recipies for some of the unusual fruit and vegies we have grown. Well, some of them aren't actually that strange to gardeners but they are not the typical food you see in a supermarket. So it stands to reason that they are also not featured very often in recipie books.




It seems that I often grow something new for a season, harvest it with good intentions and let it rot on the kitchen bench...maybe it takes guts to try something new and I just have to take my time.




So this year I've been trying to use everything that we grow and have been hunting down recipes and inventing others.




The first fruit I have struggled with in the past is the Choko. We haven't been very successful growing them here because the frost tends to kill the vines but in the past I have grown them and usually fed them to my chooks.








Even though we don't grow them we always end up with bags full each year. Maybe I'm not the only one who doesn't know how to cook these humble veg?

This is my recipe for choko crumble. Based on traditional apple crumble.

Firstly peel, core and roughly chop four large chokos.



Put them in a saucepan with one cup of sugar, one cup of water, a teaspoon of cinnamon and three cloves. Cook until the choko is tender. At this stage you can just eat the choko like stewed apple or use in any other recipies you would use apple or you can freeze it to use later.


For the crumble I use 1/4 cup each of ground almonds, coconut, ground oats, wholemeal flour and brown sugar. Rub through enough butter or marjerine to get the mixture to resemble bread crumbs.



Put the choko into a baking dish and spread the crumble on top. Cook for 20 minutes at 180 degrees.


The result was so scrumby. The kids loved it and thought it was even better than apple crumble so it was a winner all round. And now I know what to do with my chokos.

It's beautiful served with fresh cream.

Home sweet home

We've been spending most of our time pottering around the home lately trying to make it a cosier nicer place. We have started renovating the bathroom. It is quite a big job. The ceiling needs to be replaced as the material they originally used is not designed for wet areas so it has gone mouldy, tiling needs to be done around the floor wall junction. We have had to replace the sink cabinet, tile a splash back, build a linen closet and paint the whole room.

It's not quite finished yet but is starting to look good. Another week or so and it'll be one flash bathroom! At last I've got somewhere to store my towels...I wonder how long they will look this neat though?

Yes, these things do take time, especially when you've got lots of little helpers!

Tui was helping her daddy install the new cupboards.

I've also been trying to spend at least a little bit of time in the garden each day and it must be paying off as it is looking nice.
I love cooking with this curly leaf Kale.

Some of the vegies were hit by an unseasonably early frost but all the cool climate ones are doing well. The parsnips and turnips, the Kale, cabbages and cauliflowers and broccoli. And last week I planted some red onions, white onions, leeks, garlic, more beetroot and some black Kale.

Parsnips

lettuce and spinach

Loads of yummy mandarins at this time of year

and beautiful sweet Jap Pumpkins

I can't wait until this gets big...I love cooking with fennel

The wild ducks have taken a liking to my radish tops, and I've finally found some yummy recipes for radishes

I was a bit sick of only using the radish raw in salad, but have now been putting them in soups and stews and they are delicious baked.
Talking of recipes I. made this for dinner the other evening with all our fresh food from the garden
Baked Beetroot, fennel and sweet Potatoe Salad.
Bake some baby beets cut in halves or quarters, some fennel bulb pieces, and some sweet potatoe. Season and sprinkle with olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Serve on a bed of salad green (including the wilted leaves of the beets...no need to waste these nutritious leaves) Sprinkle with goats feta and a dolop of garlic aolie. It's a really filling salad and makkes quiet a meal on its own.

Happy Birthday Mungbean!

It was my darling partner's birthday earlier in the week. There are so many reasons why I love this man. He is a great father, a wonderful partner, so kind and caring...











He started the day with this special breakfast in bed.

French Toast with strawberries, blueberries, banana, maple syrup and cream

Then we went shopping to buy him a new rock climbing rope.









And then home for the Ultimate Chocolate cake. As you can probably guess MB is a bit of a sweet tooth!

The mud cake decorated with TimTams and Marshmellow bickies...yum.

May you have a beautiful year MB.