A time of bounty

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Summer is a time of bounty in the garden and our long evenings encourage gatherings of friends. My yellow pole beans have reached the top of their two metre stakes in a week!  My frilly lettuces are soft and luxuriant. Get out those recipes for tomatoes, zucchini, cucumbers, beans, chili and eggplant.

Summer is the moment for fruity dessert. Do ask around – and maybe you will discover that a neighbour or a friend has a backyard tree or a passionfruit vine dripping with more fruit than can be used.

Here are a few of my quick ideas for summer platters. Cherries with fromage frais and a crisp biscuit; simple fruit tarts with the fruit settled onto a layer of lightly sweetened smooth ricotta; upside-down cakes with plums, or peaches, or pineapple; halved stone fruit, stones removed, drizzled with orange juice and a bit of brown sugar and baked; chilled watermelon with torn mint and a few drops of rosewater; fruit salads with scooped passionfruit added to the mix.

I hope your gardens are dripping with beans and basil and beetroot, and that your tomatoes are growing strongly. There is stunning buffalo mozzarella for sale in markets at the moment. Ripe tomatoes, mozzarella chunks, torn basil leaves, sea salt, freshly ground pepper and a good drizzle of extra virgin olive oil has to be one of the all-time great summer lunches.

Lemongrassade and possum eggs

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The end of the school year is upon us. I squeezed in three visits in the last few weeks, two to schools in New South Wales, Bunghwahl and Forster ,and one in Victoria at Dunkeld.  All were memorable and it was a great way to finish the year. The enthusiasm of the students is a great energiser and over and over the staff at each school told me how much the program contributes to the life of the school and the differences it has made in so many ways.

We were welcomed to Forster (the largest of our schools in New South Wales with over 700 students)  with a smoking ceremony, and  a performance by the choir before a tour of both the extensive garden and the just-completed kitchen. A delicious morning tea had been prepared by the students and I tucked into hummus, various vegetable dips with grilled flatbreads, zucchini fritters with mint yoghurt and the most refreshing Lemongrassade.  One of the enthusiastic supporters of the kitchen garden, parent Amanda , surprised us by delivering a huge basket of local produce to our accommodation. Freshly-harvested oysters, freshly-caught snapper, salad greens, herbs, a lovely local cheese, some chocolates and a vase of home-grown roses. And special teas and cereals for breakfast. So special.  We sat on our balcony enjoying our banquet and listened to the soothing sound of the ocean slapping on the sand.

The next morning we visited tiny Bunghwahl as a complete contrast with just 42 students.  Once again we were warmly welcomed and we admired the very pretty garden where Nikki Dixon is both the kitchen and the garden specialist. She proudly led the tour of both the garden and the kitchen and told us a very funny story of how one morning the students found a possum sitting on freshly-laid eggs, and being very reluctant to allow anyone to collect the eggs. She has a wonderful photo to remember that incident. We watched an extraordinary display of the entire school population as they ‘Jumped rope for Heart health’ from the tiniest prep student to some very tall sixth graders.   And again we had a lovely lunch of stuffed eggs (from the chickens), leek tarts, home-made yoghurt, beetroot salad and a  leafy salad .

Both New South Wales schools included semi-tropical crops in their garden such as bananas and pineapples and lemongrass and chilli bushes.

I went to say Happy Holidays to our Kitchen Specialist extraordinaire Desley Insall at Collingwood College and her Wednesday team of volunteers, most of whom have been coming every week for nearly nine years.  I couldn’t stay for long but I left with a gift of honeycomb from suburban Surrey Hills, brought in by Jill, one of the star volunteers, whose husband tends hives in their garden. How delicious it was, the honey flooded my mouth with sweetness and perfume. I had forgotten what freshly-harvested honey tasted like. This was an important reminder.

And then I launched the program at another small school, at Dunkeld with towering and imposing Mt.Sturgeon in the background. The project has been embraced by the whole community, many of whom have signed on to a watering roster to care for the garden over the long school holidays. Irrigation will be installed in the new year.  The children have all adopted a tree in the extensive orchard and accept the responsibility for caring for this tree.  Lunch included a rosemary and potato pizza, a lovely salad with roasted pumpkin, green leaves, seeds and cauliflower, some parsnip crisps and a raspberry muffin. On each table was a big bowl of locally-gathered blackberries – donated by someone in the community, as well as bunches of country flowers that were absolutely beautiful.

I returned to Melbourne, ready for some downtime myself but feeling happy , knowing that our schools are forging ahead and that all that the Foundation does is truly appreciated.

 

 

Sweeping into Summer

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

It is such a busy time in the garden, cleaning up after the last of the brassicas (although I still have sprouting broccoli to pick) and planting out eggplant, sweet peppers and zucchini or squash. And of course basil. Every available bit of free space in my front beds is taken up with magnificent self-seeded lettuce. Even though I share with my friends it is impossible to eat it fast enough. I am still waiting for my beans and cucumber to start growing strongly up the bamboo tepees I have waiting for them.

Like all gardeners I have been delighted by the great rain we have had over the last few weeks. One downside is that the snails in my garden have taken over my empty bamboo teepees for their own personal gymnasium. I am disposing of them ruthlessly.

As always the last few weeks of the year seem to start speeding up and here we are nearly at the end of another school year, and already deep in planning mode for 2012. We hope that every school has a water plan to carry them over the vacation so that students will return to a bumper harvest. We may be in for a hot summer this year so all gardeners will be thinking of the best way to protect their gardens over the long holidays. Mulch, mulch, mulch I hear you all say. And maybe some of the fruit trees should be netted to frustrate the birds.

Some schools will have some crops ready to pick just before going on holiday. It is rare for any berries to make it to the kitchen – the perfect treat to enjoy in the garden. But maybe cherries or early apricots or nectarines, or even a first crop of tomatoes. Fruit can be poached and the chunks frozen, or it can be turned into a purée, or bottled. Tomatoes can be cooked to make a very fast tomato sauce, which is a fabulous resource to come back to.

Once again the messages we are promoting have proved irresistible to a wide range of media and many schools have featured on television and in print. I have spoken to a very wide range of audiences. But the most pleasurable moments in my year have been visiting schools and watching and listening to the students. Enthusiasm, excitement and pride in achievement are what I see and hear, wherever I go.

 

 

My November garden

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An excerpt from my regular column, Stephanie’s Garden in Australian Gourmet Traveller.

Well I couldn’t resist.  I now have my very own herbaceous border, small compared with those magical gardens I saw in England but glorious nonetheless.  It has been a team effort with my gardener doing the heavy work, her garden designer friend advising and laying out a lovely plan and all curbing my enthusiasm for too many different things, and the result is a delight.  As I write the plants are just starting to flower. I am in love with the foxgloves and the new roses. I have Mme Isaac Pereire, Stanwell Perpetual and Tess of the d’Urbevilles. My border will be mostly in luscious purples, rose-pinks, white and some silver-grey. I have salvias and verbena, and campanula and aquilegia and many, many more. I have been warned that it will take twelve months to attain its full glory.

I did have an anxious  couple of weeks when all the existing shrubs had to come out for re-location or to go to foster homes. Passers-by worried too. There were many enquiries as to my intention, and one woman asked my gardener, ‘Does she intend to plant more vegetables?’. A Greek neighbour leant over the fence and asked if she could have one of my globe artichoke plants in exchange for some rocket seedlings. I dug up one of the smaller plants but cannot believe that her rocket clump will grow. I usually select an enclosed space, such as a wine tub, and broadcast rocket seed freely. It is important to keep rocket picked so it does not become leggy and impossibly bitter. And if it has, pull it up and probably it will have seeded itself and new plants will emerge.

Elsewhere in the garden the sweet peas I purchased at the Chelsea Flower Show are growing well and soon should be covering their frames with pastel-coloured flowers. The blossom on the peach and nectarines has all finished for the year and the fruit is setting. This month I am looking forward to the glory of my five crabapple trees all about to flower. I have an anxious eye on the new miniature cherry. Will it produce even one cherry this year?

Two months ago I wrapped each of my celery plants in many folds of newspaper and tied each one firmly with twine. I have been thrilled at the result. It is true that once I removed the paper I discovered that quite a few very small  snails and slugs had enjoyed the protection, but I also have the crispest, whitest, crunchiest stalks. Once well-washed and free of the afore-mentioned invaders,my celery has featured in many a lunchtime salad tossed with frilly leaves, soft goat cheese, or anchovies. I also made a very lovely soup in the tradition of potato and leek, substituting a lot of sliced celery for the leeks. When both potato and celery were quite soft I added several handfuls of very fresh watercress leaves. I turned up the heat for just a few minutes before pureeing the lot and straining it . I now have a beautiful pale-green soup with a little bite from the watercress.

The French rarely serve butter with cheese. An exception is roquefort that is almost always offered with butter. I squashed about one-third unsalted butter with two-thirds roquefort and made a very retro party appetiser by piping this soft mix into the channels of my perfect white celery sticks. And whilst on my celery theme I made another classic – waldorf salad – using more of my celery, orange segments, toasted walnuts, and a little sour cream. I added thinly sliced nashi pear (which I did not grow).

I am still enjoying broad beans and peas and am starting to wonder where the beans will go?  It is a dilemma in a small garden space, not just for reasons of rotation, but simply where to put the next crop when the earlier one is still producing. Not a bad problem to have though.

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.