Nourish Me

outside the magic square: a review

By mid-May growth in the kitchen garden slows r-i-g-h-t down. Things that, even a month ago, were progressing well are now almost dormant, sitting quietly in the cold soil, waiting for the winter solstice (about a month away, people) to return to us longer days and shorter nights, however incrementally. Gardening is both gymnasium and therapist as I once heard a woman on the ABC suggest, but it's nice, from time to time, to put your feet up to rest for a while as the winter quiets things down, to read and plan your next garden moves. Increasingly, growing your own food, on whatever scale is available to you, is being seen also as something of a political act in ever-widening circles. Cue Lolo Houbein's Outside the Magic Square: A Handbook for Food Security.

The challenging times that lie ahead of us collectively climate-wise are beyond the scope of discussion on this blog - I am not a political writer, but my thinking and conversation with friends and family is deeply immersed in that sphere and yet, here I am, a somewhat informed individual, who is ultimately as confused as the next. And frankly, in my (egads!) middle age, I feel helpless. I know that I'm not alone. Houbein's book manages to tackle these issues head on - there's no beating about the bush, here - but with one fabulously focussed difference; she offers real, practical solutions, so many in fact that the book is not likely to sink in over one sitting. Doom and gloom be gone! 

In How to use this book, Houbein says you can, "of course read the book cover to cover. Or take a dip and read the parts that appeal." I took the latter approach, reading my way through the ideas which are grouped thematically. Following the various trails of thought you'll find out that even one square metre of garden space - the premise for her first book, The Magic Square - can introduce a little something fresh to your diet each day, you'll learn about the future of food production in Australia (and beyond), the plight of farmers (shocking given 2012 is the Year of the Farmer), how to grow your plot without chemicals, what to grow, how to do it and when, how to build drought-proof beds, how to cook and preserve the food you're producing and loads more. There's a LOT to take in, so do it slowly. What I found particularly refreshing was that any questions she raises are answered, something lacking in many drier, more academic books. Not only that, but Houbein's enthusiasm is so infectious I dare anyone who reads it NOT to want to get their hands in the dirt immediately. 

This was our kitchen garden in November of last year. Much has changed, and much has been learned along the way (as is always the case, no?) and it provides so very much, without the use of nasty chemicals. One story, that of a fledgling nursed back to health by wildlife rescuers is particularly poignant:

...Ken fed it broccoli from the garden which the little bird gobbled up daily. When the broccoli ran out Ken bought it some, but the bird retreated to the corner of the cage and wouldn't touch the shop bought product. When organic broccoli was obtained the bird ate it again with gusto. This story alone is enough to make me an organic gardener!

Outside the Magic Square brims with practical, if not a little scattered, information, but the author is deeply involved in her message and her enthusiasm makes me yearn to live with my garden full-time. Yes, she may well be preaching to the converted, but I found the book both timely and encouraging. One of the best and most positive on the subject I've come across. And a-men to that.    

plenty

The Thursday before the Easter long weekend is always a happy jumble of  madness and excitement and, in our part of the world, a feeling that, at last, the harvest is in. That Good Friday this year just so happens to fall on the same day as the first Seder of Pesach meant that an early morning visit to the organic vegetable shop was crazy-good. A beautiful older woman sidled up next to me, basket heavily laden, and asked if I'd ever made chicken soup. We discussed the pros and cons of peeling the carrots and parsnips, whether swede would be a good addition (I think not, but perhaps I am wrong) and it was one of those gorgeous food chats I so love. 

Made my morning, truth be told. That and the visual plenty that boxes overflowing with apples and pears, quince and persimmon, fennel and celeraic (andandand) can make a cook feel.    

Right at the end I spied fresh horseradish, in a bucket  just beneath the herbs - if we didn't have so much parsley, I'd've gone nuts for the autumnally-fragrant dill draped softly above it. Only the loveliest of specimens came home. Horseradish is an essential part of the Seder plate, you see, represents the bitterness of the Jews' slavery under the Egyptians. That I grabbed it knowingly made me happy upon reflection; means I've been with these blokes long enough to have absorbed at least some of their 5000-year plus culture.

The light here is beautiful right now. This season of plenty is by far my very favourite. 

Happy break, guys. May it be energising and renewing for all.     

P.S. YOU guys. Thank you for all of your mint suggestions - I feel as though I am armed, now, with some of the best ideas. Wonderful stuff, people.   

mint

A small cry for help, today.

The Bog, which runs halfway along the eastern side of the property and which, now that the rain has subsided a little is no longer technically a bog, is home to not one large, out of control bed of mint, but two. We tame them periodically by either mowing over them or, far more excitingly, by cutting them down with our industrial-strength whipper-snipper. SO much fun, let me tell you. The smell alone is divine... 

Anyway, I like mint, but I do not completely love the stuff. Any ideas on what I can do with it all? 

brick oven: part 4

Back in June of 2011, it stopped raining just long enough one weekend for me to a) take a photo (one which, I think, shows how Dalek-like Peter's design turned out to be) and b) to get things fired up in there. You know, to actually use the thing.

Once again, Russell Jeavons displays a somewhat laid back approach to explaining how to fire up the beast, but we knew to expect that now, knew that it's all about learning how to use your particular oven, and, as such, there's no precise map to follow. So. Make a HUGE fire, get it burning fiercely and tend it for a good 2 hours or so before you want to cook. Longer is better in ours, but maybe not yours. It's one of those touchy-feely things. You'll need to shift it around a bit at that time, to make room for the food, raking out some coals occasionally. It'll take at least 2 barrows-ful of various kinds and sizes of wood. 

Peter took f-o-r-e-v-e-r to grasp that the fire needs to fill the thing. He kept leaving space to cook in, building small fires when, in fact, what is needed is a scary roaring fire (contained by the dome, of course). He is good at making that kind of fire, so once he was ready to listen to me reading out Jeavons' suggested scale, he decided to follow the rules.

I'm glad he finally did.   

Anyway, that was back in June. We made attempts from time to time to get out there and cook in it, but our timings were off, the rain kept pouring all damn year really, and the food coming out of it was, at best, lukewarm. We decided to wait until it was warm, sunny and dry. 

With family from Auckland here for New Year, our timing and the weather were, for once, just right. We got to work, a practice run of sorts, on the 29th of December.

Ta-daaa. First pizza!

(You'll have to excuse the exposure in the photo - too hot to get my lightmeter in there)

(Also, kale, sliced into shreds, arranged on top of your fridge-cleaning pizza then drizzled with olive oil before going in for a 5-7 minute blast is, I think, even better than kale made into chips. Just saying.)       

Pleased with ourselves? Hell yess.

New Year's Eve, Peter got his hat, workboots and kilt out and, despite the 40 degree heat, he had a ball firing it all up. A roaring (literally, considering the singed hairs on his arms) success, I'd say.

Happiness, in our camp, abounds.

The pizza dough I use is a Nigel Slater recipe, one I know by heart and the truly great thing about it is that it doubles as a flatbread recipe, so you'll only ever need this one set of measurements. Of course you can do it by hand, but there's something nice about knowing that the machine does a very fine job indeed. Makes 6 small flatbreads, 2 larger ones or 2 good-sized pizzas.     

Sift 500g (1lb & 2oz) of strong bread flour into the bowl of a standing mixer. Fit the machine with a dough hook. Add 1/2 a teaspooon of salt and about 1 tablespoon of olive oil. Dissolve 2 level teaspoons of active dried yeast in 300ml of blood-temperature water, add to mixer bowl and turn the machine on low. Stand back and let it do it's thing for about 5 minutes or so, give it a quick knead and then pop it back into the bowl. Dust generously with flour and leave to rise, covered, somewhere warm for an hour. Worry not if it's not balloned in that time; forge ahead regardless. Shape, pop on a flour-dusted baking tray and decorate as you like. In a domestic oven I preheat the oven to 220C and keep an eagle eye on things after 10 minutes, but about 20 minutes is how long things will take all up. In the brick oven? No idea what the temperature it gets to actually is - farking hot isn't precise enough, but that's what it is - and will take considerably less time to reach true perfection. If you've a pizza stone in either case, heat it up while the oven comes to temperature.              

tomatoes

We ordered a lot of ready-grown tomato seedlings from Diggers last year, spent what felt like a fortune because I'd missed the rather critical timings starting from seed requires. Seemed like the sensible thing to do. Thing is, and this is not the fault of the lovely people at Diggers, that Australia Post,"don't deliver parcels of that size" to country addresses. Interesting, right? More interesting is that also don't deliver the notices that tell you that said large parcel is awaiting collection. Hmm. I got them just in time, unpacked them, gave them light and water and love, then managed to get them in on the traditional date of Melbourne Cup Holiday. They just - just - survived.      

In early December, in Sydney for my nephew's baptism, Dad bundled up what heirloom (a bit over the endless overuse of this word) tomato seedlings he hadn't been able to put in their garden and you know what? Even though they too had a rough ride home (carry on baggage a-hoy) once in, they grew into far superior specimens. Thanks, Dad, and you are right: the Brandywine is a ratty looking plant, but I can't wait to sink my teeth into a fully ripe one.  

bessara

the first thing andrea did upon arrival was to get podding. i grabbed the cumin and ground it none too finely as she prepped her broad beans - picked just an hour or so before - and we chatted, as folk who grow and cook do, about our respective gardens, about composting, about what we've been doing in our kitchens. swapping fresh broad beans for dried, andrea's bessara was completely different to any i've had, whipped to a buttery paste of soft jade, the peaks dressed in the bowl with a heavy dusting of paprika, falling in red clumps in the hollows, just the way i like. we ate outside, feet stamping against the cold, dipping and cooing over the flavour. cultivating gardeners as friends seems to happen effortlessly these days. i feel inordinately lucky.  

my own broad bean crop went in too late - end of july, she notes to self - planted out in surprisingly organised rows by the front door, something i vow to do yearly from now on, and in a mass planting, one week later, out the back in the kitchen garden proper. they are thriving, fixing nitrogen to the soil, standing hip-high and looking gorgeous, but i have my doubts. when d. saw them a few weeks ago, he had his, but i can and indeed do live, as ever, in hope.

you live a little. you learn a tonne.

it occurred to me this weekend that i've not shared much in the way of progress of late here. correcting that now. above is how things looked in the kitchen garden one sunday late in september. the broad beans (far left) have grown a lot since then, and the rhubarb (front left) is coming along brilliantly after being ruthlessly divided mid-winter. changes and additions you'll need filling in on soon, but for now, this rather bad 'blad shot's the best i can offer.

i've just felt so...busy. i'm no longer afraid to tell you it's been a tough year, yet somehow, in and among it all, my cooking mojo returned. it'd been gone for so long that i'd almost forgotten just how good cooking can make one feel.  

the garden is full of pleasant surprises. the rocket has grown hilariously huge, some stalks almost as thick as my wrist, sturdy bases amid a sea of edible white blossom. i like that it bolts just so. the coriander is about to follow suit, and the balm that i cursed for its invasive bastardry so often last year is, this, wonderful in all manner of things that mint might go in to, just gorgeous in salsa verde. i've learned to tame it, to rip it out by the handful, knowing full-well it will come back. relaxing about the weeds means less planting, i've decided, so now we just go with the flow. i made a salad with tiny blades of sheep sorrel from the front lawn this weekend as if to prove just that. it was very good.

but what, after all that, of andrea's bessara you ask?

andrea's bessara, a moroccan broad bean dip

simmer 2 mugs-worth of shelled broad beans in a saucepan for about 10 minutes. chop 2 cloves of garlic and grind a little cumin - a teaspoon or so - while they cook. drain the beans. whiz in a food processor with the garlic and cumin, about 1/3 of a cup of olive oil and thin, if need be, with a little stock (powdered stock, thank god) until the consistency of hummus. season to taste, whiz again, then dust liberally with sweet paprika (so pretty against the green) and eat with a trace of warmth still clinging to it.

greenhouse

Fixing a hole

where the rain gets in 

and stops my mind from wandering...*

In the greenhouse, on a sunny day. Dreaming, today, about what to grow within.

Lots of projects on the go as always.

No rest for the wicked.

*with apologies to mr macartney, for it's all I could hear when I saw these pics. 

pre-spring

This photograph neatly sums up how our winter, our autumn and yes, even our summer has made me feel. Cold, wet, and grey, with a chance of spiky black stabbing bits getting you in, say, the eye if you're not careful, showering you with raindrops to boot as if to prove some depressing point. Victoria's lack of seasonal shift for most of 2011 - just a slow, pathetic drip toward winter from last September - seeped into my thinking, got under my skin.

One morning late in June, quite unannounced, tiny signs of spring began to emerge. One snowdrop at a time. Then last weekend arrived with glorious warmth, dry and blue-skied with temperatures to match. On Sunday, I wore a single layer and even then had to push my sleeves to my elbows. Bliss.    

Was beginning to think I was losing my tiny mind.

This chart, taken from this site, makes so much sense. Of course early settlers were longing for the more defined seasons they had at home in Europe finding themselves stuck on the other side of the planet, so far from what they knew. Of course they longed for the familiar, but that we still, 200-odd years later, stick to European notions of Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter is kinda dumb. I love this chart - it explains why jonquils and snowbells show their faces earlier than the calendar months would have us believe.

Also, why I am sneezing as though it's spring...it IS spring. Pre-spring.  

fennel

Jo rang on Saturday, excited about the new, to her, Orange Grove Market. For as long as I can remember my best friend has lived in the elegantly ruined parts of Sydney's east, places with history and peeling walls and faded art deco hallways, but also junkies and kleptomaniacs and noisy backpackers a-hoy. She recently moved to the other side of town and she's out there exploring but also, I think, mourning a little for the familiar. An unpretentious local farmer's market was a moment of joy, a seemingly small thing, but one that made her want to pick up the phone to enthuse long-distance. "The veg just looks like it should", she said, "like it grew in the soil, if you know what I mean".

I do, and am thrilled to welcome  a(nother) convert to the tribe. 

Among the chief reasons to grow food yourself is that very sense of it having once been alive, a quicker transition from garden to fork than Jo, and indeed most of us, has become accustomed to.  Fresh food is highly addictive and growing it yourself, when and if you have the space to do so, is the next logical step.

All very hip, right, and okay for those with garden space, but there really is a bit more than that going on.  Satisfying the parts of myself that like to feel useful, the parts that need quiet, need time spent outdoors, where things take their merry time and do not, on any account, especially mine, hurry. I like that.      

For a long time I had a fantasy of sorts, born of watching an early (very) episode of The Food Lover's Guide to Australia. A herb farm run by a wonderful woman in Capertee, a town lodged somewhere between Oberon and Mudgee. Laura made a salad I remember vividly, one with evening primrose leaves and avocado, chervil and toasted sunflower seeds and, no doubt, more goodness besides. It wasn't simply that the evening primrose leaves seemed so exotic, or that either Maeve O'Mara or Joanna Savill, for I cannot recall which of the two, was so absolutely stunned by the flavour of the evening primrose, it was that she saw this simple, fresh-picked daily meal as a kind of medicine. She was one of the most interesting food people I've ever come across, naming her farm after a valley in her beloved northern Lebanon, and investing the kind of energy into her herbs that I longed to possess.

Scrawled across the then current journal is a note that reads I now know what it is I want to be:  a herb farmer.

For a while that thought got packed away because there wasn't a chance in hell, there and then, that it could happen. Instead, our potted herbs became my babies, a source of great pleasure to tend. They were moved from house to house, a travelling garden that longed to expand into something more diverse, more permanent. Just a pause, with a lot of learning and daydreaming to while away the time.

Last year, things began to fall into place. I suppose what I'm saying is that daydreaming can pay off, for it's well within the realm of possibility that, over the next few years, I'll be able to do (and be) just that and the way that makes my heart feel is very, very good. 

I rang Jo back that afternoon with six curvaceous bulbs of fennel under the other arm. "What will you do with them?", she asked. Well.

One was sliced super-thin and tossed with champagne vinegar, though cider vinegar is just as good, and drizzled with a real throat-catcher of an extra virgin olive oil. I wolfed the whole thing down, a hunk of bread chasing the dressing around the plate for lunch. Three more went in to a favourite dish of braised fennel not unlike this version, and the other two went into this rather incredible pie.

fennel and walnut pie

For 2. Adapted, if memory serves me right, from Leith's Vegetarian Bible. 

First, get the oven on to 180 C.

Thinly slice 2 fat bulbs of fennel. Slice them any way you like, so long as they are sliced very, very thin. Here you can add other thinly sliced vegetables too. Leek is good, so is a little potato, maybe some pumpkin, maybe just fennel. Play is what I'm saying. Fry them gently in a little olive oil with a good pinch of salt for about 10 minutes, watching they do not colour too much. Normally I like to push fennel to a caramel edge of golden brown, the best way to highlight its sweetness, but here I think it needs a gentler touch. Toward the end of cooking time add chopped garlic (if it's not in season, a pinch of powdered is fine), a heaped teaspoon of fennel seeds and a level teaspoon of paprika and the zest of either an orange or a lemon. Take the pan off the heat. Taste and adjust the seasoning, adding a tiny drizzle of honey if you like. (I like.) 

Whisk together 1 egg, 1/2 cup of plain yoghurt and 1/3 cup milk (non-dairy works a treat) to make a custard. Chop a palmful of fennel greens and some parsley and add, stirring well. Lots of pepper and mix again. 

Arrange the cooked fennel in the base of a small baking dish, pour the custard over and add a couple of tablespoons of chopped walnuts.

Unfurl a packet of filo pastry on the bench and place a clean tea towel on top. You'll probably need about half the pack, so I hesitate to give an exact quantity. It's all about the size of your dish, you see. Brush sheets liberally with melted butter (or oil, or a mixture of both) and crumple to arrange over the top, ensuring the dish is completely covered.

Bake in the preheated oven for 30 minutes. I don't think it's too much to suggest that a salad of raw fennel a la above would go astray on the side. If I'd had one left, it's exactly what I'd have done.

signs of winter

it's cold and misty up in the hills.

walking around, camera in hand, is all very magical, but can we stop it with the rain now, please?

just one sunny weekend. if it's not too much to ask for.