All posts tagged: garden

Eating noxious weeds

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Onion weed grows everywhere in New Zealand and is considered a noxious weed. Why  it hasn’t become a national ingredient is beyond me. We have a lot of onion weed in our backyard and I found out a little while ago that it was edible, but I hadn’t decided how to use it in my cooking. Our neighbour came around to our house last week – he and his baby daughter like to visit Tofu in the garden every now and then. My neighbour’s wife is Mongolian and he mentioned that Mongolians eat onion weed. His wife uses the leaves and flowers in dumplings. I often use spring onion or chives in pork dumplings, so onion weed would be an easy substitute. My first attempt to cook with onion weed was nothing fancy, just some scrambled eggs. My bouquet of onion weed, sage and coriander just before I chopped it up and added it to my scrambled eggs. Onion weed scrambled eggs with an onion weed flower as a garnish. The flowers have a much milder …

Paper packets

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The doorbell rang loudly this morning and I was greeted by a little crowd of children. One of them waved a paper packet at me and asked if I’d like to buy some carrots. Carrots? In a paper packet? What is wrong with kids these days? It was a fundraising exercise for their school and instead of flogging chocolate bars, they were selling packets of seeds. I sat down and flicked through their box of goodies. There was a good range of vegetables, herbs and flowers. I bought these 3 packets at $3 a packet. All edibles of course 🙂 Schools encourage mass chocolate bar consumption when they ask students to flog boxes and boxes of chocolate to their friends and family. This is a more conscientious, “save the planet” way to raise funds. Well done McGregor’s! Good luck little ones! I hope you reach your $60 target! Here’s a couple of photos of what my garden is up to at the moment. Brussel sprouts Broadbeans (Fava)

$5 for 5kg

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  I find it hard to pass up 5kg of potatoes for $5. 10kg for $10 is a common occurrence but who can eat 10kg of potatoes before they go funky? I don’t have an army to feed, so 5kg is more reasonable. Loose pototoes go for $2-3 per kilo. So even if you give away half of your 5kg bag, you are still better off. Now, what to do with all these pototoes? We’ve got lemons, sage and rosemary in the garden at the moment, so lemon, sage and rosemary wedges was calling out to be made. Lemon, Sage and Rosemary Wedges A spring time lunch for two. Ingredients 4 medium potatoes 1 tablespoon flour Zest of 1 lemon 1 tablespoon fresh chopped sage and rosemary 2 tablespoons oil Salt Pepper Sour Cream Cheese Preparation Preheat oven to 200°C. Cut potatoes into half and then into wedges. Place in a plastic bag and add flour, lemon zest, oil, salt and pepper. Shake well. Arrange potatoes onto a lightly oiled oven proof dish. Stand every piece …

Inspired by Noodle Pillows

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Reading a book about Vietnamese food and travel inspired me to make this chicken noodle soup. No recipe, I just made it up as I went along, so no claims on authenticity here! Vietnamese food to me, is really fresh, simple ingredients that enhance their flavours. Vietnamese food is highly underrated here in New Zealand. Hardly anyone talks about Vietnamese cuisine. I guess because it doesn’t have the hot, bright, bold or loud cuisine of Thailand or India, or the elegant, regimented cuisine of Japan, so it gets forgotten about. Chinese cuisine is pretty big here though, so maybe it’s simply been overlooked because it’s fairly similar to Chinese cooking? Vietnamese cuisine the kind of thing I can eat very often. The food is balanced and light. There is a strong Cantonese influence as well as a French influence on Vietnamese cuisine. It’s like someone grabbed two of the world’s culinary giants and married them up. Herbs help make everything fresh tasting and you are encouraged to interact with your food, adding each ingredient to …

Easy Pork Chop dinner

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This is the first time I’ve ever grown silverbeet, and while it’s not my favourite vegetable, it’s super easy to grow and easy to cook too. Here I served up sauteed silverbeet with some roast vegies like garlic, potato, onion and mushrooms. The porkchop was thickly coated in apple sauce, a little sugar, salt and pepper and pan fried until done. The black caramelised bits tasted like intense, savoury, applepork. Yes, applepork is a word. Well, now it is.

Broadbean shoots

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Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall on broad beans: The top few centimetres of growth on the main stems of your broad beans need to be pinched out anyway when their flowers are just starting to wilt, to stop the plant growing any taller and help it pod up. These “pinchings” have a lovely leguminous flavour – delicious as a side veg just lightly steamed and tossed in butter, and perfect in an omelette or tart. But you can also grow bean shoots “to order”, harvesting when a few inches high. I’m growing broad beans at the moment in the filing cabinet planter that we upcycled. No actual beans as yet and I finally got round to tying them up so they stand nice and tall. So I thought, what they hell, might as well eat some pinchings. What’s good enough for Hugh is good enough for us! It’s kinda funny how the landlord leaves a bit of long grass around the planter, so that you can’t see the faces of the painted rabbits, only their ears. Brussels sprouts, cauli flower …

Spring lunch

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We were quiet at work today so I decided to take the rest of the day off. Came home and made this meal: Mushroom, onion and cheese quesadillas, soft boiled egg on freshly picked rocket from my tiny garden. I figured what’s the point in having a half day if you can’t have a cocktail to go with it (I suspect this might become a regular half day mascot) so I made myself a lychee and pink grapefruit cocktail. Yes, that’s Tofu’s lunch in the background.

Feijoa chocolate muffins

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We have a feijoa (pronounced fee-jo-ah) tree in the backyard! We are looking forward to a whole season of these babies. For those that don’t know what the fudge a feijoa is, it’s a type of guava and has a strong, tart, sweet flavour. They have bright green skins that you don’t eat and inside is a mellow cream colour. Seeds are tiny and never an issue. They have a short but abundant season here in  New Zealand. Feijoa chocolate muffins 1 egg 1/4 cup oil 1/2 cup sugar 1 cup milk 2 1/2 cups plain flour 3 teaspoons baking powder 1 teaspoon cinnamon 1/2 cup chocolate buttons 1 cup chopped feijoas Preheat oven to 200C. Beat egg, oil, sugar and milk in a bowl. Sift flower, baking powder, cinnamon and add to egg mixture. Add feijoa and chocolate and mix lightly so that it is just combined. Spoon mixture into greased muffin tins. Baked at 200°C for 15 minutes. Nom. Makes about 10 muffins