Start of the summer harvest

The harvest is starting, but due to the lack of rainfall we're not having the success I'd hoped for.  Still, as our first year in a new district I guess it is to be expected that things don't always go, well, as expected!

So far we have managed to harvest:
1 kg Zucchini
3 kg carrots
6 (good size) leeks
250 grams blueberries
2 kg Beetroot
4 kg potatoes
1/2 kg cherry tomatoes

Mostly it is picking a few bits here and there, but within a few weeks we will be harvesting kilos of tomatoes, zucchinis, eggplants, pumpkins and melons each day.  For the moment we're able to use what we pick as we pick.

My wife bought me an early Christmas present, a book called Whole Larder Love. It is a collection of recipes and tips by a former chef who's virtually living off the land from his home grown produce, hunted and scavenged foods.  One recipe he has is perfect for our current produce of eggs, leeks and potatoes Tortilla Espanola.  I've modified it slightly, but my recipe is based substantially on his.

The basic ingredients are 6 eggs, 6 potatoes and 1 onion.  I substituted the onion for leek, and also added a small capsicum.  Once I got it into our frying pan, I also realised I needed more eggs, so I added another 4 eggs, but next time I'll just use a smaller pan.

The first step is to par-boil the potatoes, and then slice/cube the potatoes to fry up in some oil.  It only takes around 7 minutes on a hot stove, plus I added the leek to get it cooking.

After browning the potatoes and leeks, you pour those back into a mixing bowl with the beaten eggs, paprika, salt and pepper.  Then the whole mixture goes back into the frying pan to "set" the sides.  If your pan can go straight into an oven, you can cook it for around 20 mins in the oven.  Ours isn't oven proof, so I mostly cooked the tortilla on the stove, transferring it to an oven tray for the last 10 minutes of cooking.

 The end result: a great tasting Tortilla Espanola!

Happy harvest to all those Down Under!

Rhubarb and Apple Crumble - without the crumble!

The Rhubarb's getting a bit overgrown at the moment, so I thought that it would be a great time to get some Crumble going. Only thing is that we're out of butter, so it's just straight Rhubarb for now!

I plan in some of my writings to include recipes for cooking, along with preservation techniques. The idea is that this isn't simply about the garden itself, it's suggestions of how to deal with the produce.

So tonight the Rhubarb.

This is a really easy recipe. You start with around 10-15 stalks of rhubarb, add a half cup of sugar, and two apples. I did it over a reasonably moderate heat as the rhubarb was almost cooked by the time I'd finished slicing the apple.


In this shot you can kind of see the rhubarb's cooked already. To make sure that the apple wasn't raw, I left it on the low heat, with the lid on, for the apple to continue cooking and soak up some of the juices. It worked pretty well, about 10-15 minutes all up.

You could then take this mix and put a mixture of sugar, oats, flour and butter on top to make the crumble. Ice cream worked just as well though. I did use brown sugar for this tonight, and I think that it's made it a bit browner overall - this photo kind of looks like a chocolate pudding!

Still, I think that the kids would be able to tell that it's a little bit more tart than chocolate.

Budget (Home Made) Pizza

Time for a confession - I'm a definite pizza fanatic. One of my first jobs was delivering pizzas, and through that I got to learn the pizza making process. If was also a money saver. During our first years of marriage, I was working part time, and with my wife's low income position (Office Junior) our combined income was around $20k per year. Pizza's that weren't fit for customer's consumption became a staple in our house for free meals!

Since that time, things have improved (thankfully)! Whenever we've travelled, sampling local pizza has always been a priority to me - along with other foods of course. A highlight was a few years ago when I was in Chicago and got to experience Chicago-style pizza at Pizzeria Due on the North Side. It's a deep pan pizza, but can not compare to Australian deep pan pizza.

I've previously come across a recipe for a Chicago-style pizza dough, and have made it before with moderate levels of success. Today I thought that I'd give it another go. From a budget perspective, I made two pizzas for maybe around $4 using the following ingredients.Plus added water...

I deviated from the recipe a little, but basically started with activating the yeast by adding to warm water and sugar. If you do that a few minutes before combining with the flour, salt and cornflour, then you end up with a a foamy mix of water and yeast.


By gradually adding the liquid ingredients to the mix, you end up with your dough. It's still not perfectly mixed, but a few minutes of kneading the dough helps with that process. Then you simply roll into a ball and leave for an hour approximately until the dough ball is roughly double in size.
Strictly, this recipe makes one base, but for the sake of spreading the dough a little further, it is more than satisfactory if you half the dough and make two bases. They still ended up almost a centimetre (a third of an inch) thick. After splitting in half, roll the doughs out to slightly larger than the pan, as they will shrink a little. I also pinch the edges, which helps form a great crust (poke the base with a fork a bit so that it doesn't rise or bubble too much also).
Parbake the bases for around 5 minutes in a hot (220C) oven, and then you can get the toppings on. True Chicago-style pizza toppings would be easiest to describe as being and upside down pizza on a pie - it's literally like the cheese and toppings are on the base, then the sauce (which is like a napolitana sauce on the top. While the sauce is quite "wet" compared to regular pizza sauce, it really combines well with the pizza dough soaking up the moisture. If I haven't done it justice in this description - you'll have to go to Chicago to experience it yourself!

The pizzas I made today were fairly straight forward. One bacon and pineapple for the kids, and one with bacon, chicken, onion and avocado for the parents. A fantastic meal, and there's leftovers for lunch tomorrow. Plus, it was only $4, not $12-15 per pizza that we would have paid tonight in town.