Category Archives: Travel

Autumn

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Melbourne in March is justly famous  for superb weather – warm days with just a light breeze, mellow afternoons, and cool evenings. Perfect weather for gardening. I have made jars of pesto and still have armfuls of basil. Reminder to self. Don’t plant so much next year! I have made two batches of cumquat marmalade and there is enough fruit for another batch. And I rescued my almond crop before the birds found it. The leaves of the stripped crabapple trees are just starting to turn a bit golden and the first leaves of the glory vine have drifted down. The first few pomegranates are ripening on my tree. They do have to struggle for sunshine so will not be prize specimens.
In the vegetable department I still have wonderful crops of climbing yellow beans, bush beans both green and yellow, capsicums, round zucchini, two varieties of eggplant, and the very last of the stunning tomatoes.  I just couldn’t eat them fast enough so I made several pans of roasted tomato sauce and I have frozen it. Each container provides a perfect sauce for a grilled eggplant or a bowl or two of pasta, enlivened with more of that basil and some extra virgin olive oil.  I have also harvested my first ever watermelon and I was really very excited about it. Next year I will be more careful about pollinating more flowers to get more than one melon. And the Chantenay carrots were very successful and I have sowed a third crop.

I am about to publish my memoirs and am feeling both excited and anxious about it!  A Cook’s Life hits the bookshops on March 21. One’s own life is certainly very interesting to explore.  The challenge is to do it in a way that is not seen as self-indulgent, engages the reader, maybe leads to personal reflection, even some questions, and gives a convincing picture of a certain period in our history….One of the strongest motives for writing the book was because I wanted to tell the story of Australia’s food development, the importance of our migrants, and the rapid rise of restaurant culture from the late sixties to today.

Once you have read mine, another book to look out for is Annie’s Garden to Table written by my long-ago apprentice, the very talented Annie Smithers owner and chef at her bistro in Kyneton in country Victoria. I had a quick peep at her preview copy and was enchanted. There is more about country life and country cooking in Rosa’s Farm by Rosa Mitchell. Both books have me thinking up some delicious rustic lunches. Rosa’s book has also had me planning where I can plant the cicoria that I have ordered from The Italian Gardener (www.theitaliangardener.com.au)

The planting of the cooler weather crops may have to wait until I return from my own book tour which will take me to most states and a variety of venues over the next four weeks.

In amongst the touring and talking will be a delicious little Easter break with friends.

Spring brings sunshine and showers

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An excerpt from ‘Stephanie’s latest’ first published on the Kitchen Garden Foundation website. The full text is available here.

I have been travelling again. I had the opportunity to travel with my elder daughter to exotic Jamaica, last visited by me over forty years ago. Whilst you were all freezing and enjoying the generous rainfall, I was sweltering in 30+ temperatures with high humidity. I slept under a mosquito net, which was a different experience, and swam almost every day in the balmy ocean.

It was mango season, as well as the season for tiny sweet bananas and papaya and small delicious pineapples, so you can imagine what I had for breakfast each day. As we travelled over the mountains past tiny settlements along very bumpy and stony roads, we often stopped at roadside food stalls or fruit stands. Favourite dishes were goat curry served with rice and peas cooked in coconut milk, and jerked pork and jerked chicken, served with bammy cakes, made from grated cassava root. The national dish of Jamaica is ackee and saltfish, which was always on offer at breakfast time. The ackee fruit looks like scrambled egg and tastes a little like avocado. It is a fascinating tree with capsicum-sized pinky-red fruits that burst open when ripe to display shiny black seeds (inedible) and the creamy flesh. Unless the fruits have opened naturally, it is said that the fruit is poisonous.

Once back in Australia it was off to Brisbane to officially launch the expansion of the grants by the Queensland Government with the Queensland Minister for Education Hon. Cameron Dick. Minister Dick really enjoyed his tour of the garden, and I loved tasting a variety of spidery-red kale that, as one student told me, tasted like cooked potato. And it did too! In the kitchen we watched the capable students of Bulimba SS serve up their pumpkin bruschetta and tomato bruschetta. Both were excellent.

And then it was off to Western Australia, firstly to attend the Truffle Festival at Mundaring, half an hour from Perth, before visiting several schools over the next few days. And did it rain! All the Western Australians were grinning from ear to ear as the state has been in drought for a long time. We sympathised but we did get very wet, several times! Both East Maddington PS and Palmyra PS sent students to the Truffle Festival, and Bertram PS set up and displayed a magnificent Harvest Table. The demonstration was very successful, and the students received rousing applause.

It is always exciting to visit Kitchen Garden Schools for the first time, and meet the students and the Specialists. Several of the new kitchens were very colourful, with cupboards and benchtops finished in bright colours. I met a hen called Stephanie. I now understand wicking gardens properly and I enjoyed a delicious Caesar salad and a potato & herb frittata at one school, Desley’s Mum’s potato & silver beet curry at another, a beetroot & cumin seed dip with flat bread at another, and I missed out on a stunning lunch prepared by the students at Bertram PS as I had an appointment with the Western Australian Minister for Education. I was told later about the rhubarb & apple oat crumble to finish!

My own garden is between seasons. The peas are still growing. Both golden and red beetroot are ready for harvesting. The frilly oakleaf lettuces are growing well, as are several green leafy plants such as rainbow chard, collard greens and sprouting broccoli. The broad beans are in flower in one of my raised beds and are so tall I may have to stand on a stepladder to harvest them. As I write the almond tree is in full bloom, the first of the edible trees to flower, although the peach and nectarine are just a few days away.

With the first spring sunshine I am eager to start sowing some seeds in my small hothouse. And it is a good time to plant some more leek seedlings (deeply to maximise the white shank), and to direct-sow some carrots and turnips.

I was so inspired by the very beautiful Chelsea Flower Show in London earlier in the year (and encouraged by the end of the drought), that I am having my own front garden replanted as a small herbaceous border. Cannot wait to see those foxgloves, and campanula, and the new fragrant roses, in bloom. I have to be patient as it will probably take two years for the ‘new look’ to settle in. My venerable lemon tree has had a mighty cutback in an attempt to eradicate the leaf gall, and it looks a bit crestfallen. Left a big tub of lemons, more than a hundred, outside the front gate and invited all the neighbours to help themselves. Had several thank you notes pushed into the letterbox.

Now that the soil has warmed up, it is time to add a dressing of Rocket Fuel. And it is also time to plant disease-free seed potatoes. Plant more broccoli and more salads and more carrots. Try a different salad variety this season.

My purple-podded and yellow-podded peas are such fun. They do need a strong support of at least two metres tall. And even then some snails attacked them more than a metre from the ground. As I have just six plants there is not often more than a good handful ready to pick every couple of days, so I drop the shelled peas into pasta, and simmer them alongside a sautéed piece of veal schnitzel. The broad beans are much more generous. I am enjoying them every which way – raw crushed with parmesan and olive oil on grilled bread; quickly blanched and double-peeled and added to almost any spring dish. And in a few weeks I will start my first climbing beans.

Happy spring everyone.