"Balmoral Park" farm garden

Peter has not been well and it has been suggested that he try a diet that does not include wheat or sugar. In many ways this is not a huge issue as we don't eat much processed food at all but the things that have been difficult have been providing a nutritional, sweet snack that doesn't contain wheat or sugar and the quick meals that include Pasta and bread. I know you can buy wheat free pasta but the stuff I have tried in the past is really not very appetising, so we would rather do without. The good news is that he can eat Spelt, Chick pea flour and coconut flour. So bread and pasta are back on the menu, as soon as i have a chance to get some made. I actually really like pasta made with spelt flour.  http://balmoralparkgarden.blogspot.com.au/2011/01/spelt-pasta.html   so think that I will make a few batches and get some in the freezer so we can still have it for a quick meal. I am baking my first whole spelt loaf a bit later on today. So far it looks fine, just hasn...

My quest to eat seasonally and from our garden has brought some huge changes in the way that we eat. No more thoughtless following of popular recipes and food trends. If its not in season we don't have it. If there is food here that needs to be eaten we don't buy in other stuff. Now don't think we are in any way deprived by this, I would say we eat better than ever, our diet is very varied, my cooking is more creative, more driven by ideas and less by recipes and neither of us has had so much as a sniffle in the past twelve months. Having said that I must admit to be just a teeny bit over mandarins, (we've been eating them since July) Now there are so many berries the leftover citrus doesn't really rate a mention. The Mulberries are in full production and just look at these strawberries. Luxury! What I was  really thinking about when I started this post was the potatoes. We have never been huge potato eaters but I would have always had potatoes in the house...

In the absence of any international dining around here, other than the dumbed down ubiquitous Chinese and Thai, I strive to keep my own cooking international and flavourful. Well I haven't been to Morocco yet but I like all the flavours that appear in recipes for Moroccan food so have come up with my own quick and easy Vegetarian Tagine or casserole. I like to make this when I feel we need something a bit special and have had a surfeit of meat. Monday nights when we have guests staying and have eaten too much meat, eggs and the like on the weekend. Ingredients  Two brown or red onions cut into chunks 2 cloves Garlic, smashed 1 dessertspoon finely grated ginger 1 tablespoon Turmeric, fresh if you have it, I never do so its the powder 2 tsps Ground cumin seeds 1 tsp ground coriander seeds about four cups of vegetables cut into cubes, you could choose from sweet potato, potato, pumpkin, carrots, celery, cauliflower, beans etc. whatever needs to be used up really. I think the car...

At last I have enough coriander to pick and make a difference in flavour to something I am cooking. In celebration of this I made my standby pantry thai style fish cakes for dinner.  These are easy to make and taste pretty good. Of course if you have fresh salmon you could use that instead. Ingredients 2 200 g cans of red salmon 2 eggs 2 small chillis (or to taste) 4 tablespoons of fresh coriander 4 tablespoons shredded coconut 1 tsp five spice powder 2 kaffir lime leaves 1 tablespoon fish sauce 4 spring onions oil for frying What you do simply put it all in the food processor and give it a quick whiz until it is a chunky sort of paste refrigerate for about half an hour then form into small balls and fry I served these with a  rice vermicelli salad consisiting of soaked vermicelli, lots of julienned radishes fresh from the garden, a few turnip tops, a julienned capsicum, mint, and more coriander, tossed with a sauce made of caster sugar, water, lemon juice...

Whenever we are having children to stay I make a double batch of my choc chip and oatmeal cookies. Always popular with children and adults alike and quite a healthy cookie I think. I didn't discover these until after my girls were grown up so they used to get the much less healthy version. It didnt seem to do them any harm. Choc chip and oatmeal cookies Ingredients 150 grams softened butter 1 cup soft brown sugar 1 tsp vanilla paste 1 egg 1 cup plain flour 1 teaspoon baking powder 2 1/3 cups rolled oats 1 cup choc chips To make cream the butter and sugar add vanilla and egg add flour and baking powder and mix stir in rolled oats and choc hips form into balls and place on a baking tray lined with baking paper press down with a fork Bake at 180 degrees until golden You might as well make a double batch they will be gone in a flash While cooking for Jemima last time she was here i made an old fashioned pasta and salmon bake. I used to make this a lot when the girl...

Last weekend I cooked dinner for fifty people at our Lions Club changeover dinner. This is a big event in the Lions club year. Normally it is held at the Eugowra Bowling club and catered for by either the resident cook, if we have one at the time, or external caterers. This year it was to be catered for by the current Chinese Cook. Until the Monday before, that is. Invitations had already been sent and accepted. It was far too late to hire caterers and we hadn't charged enough to get anyone good in any case. So I said I can do that, no problem. I've catered for quite a few big family events in the past. Cooking for fifty doesn't faze me. As it turned out the cooking was not a problem and went without a hitch. The hard part was transporting everything to the Bowling club and serving hot food in what was a very inadequate kitchen.  I worked out the following menu that I thought had: universal appeal could  be mostly cooked ahead was economical and value for money easy ...

I was feeling quite overwhelmed by this monster of a garden on Saturday. I have been away three days a week for the last few weeks and things are quite out of control again. The tomatoes are in urgent need of attention as are the pumpkins. Zucchini vines and pumpkins are covered in mildew and my giant pumpkin has dissolved into a rotting mess. Not to mention the lawns need mowing, the edges need trimming, the cat heads are flourishing. I had hoped for a tidy, orderly garden by the time Katie and Jemima arrived but it is not to be. At least it is a productive mess. I was considerably cheered up by the very first decent eggplants I have ever grown. Aren't they just beautiful. I don't know why they have failed to fruit in the past but this variety in particular is doing very well this year. The eggplants inspired me to make a sort of tasting plate for our dinner fresh from the garden. The beans have come good again so there were: beans with olive oil, garlic and preserved lemon...

Plum Jam has never been my favourite. Growing up Plum Jam was the jam most on offer in our house. It came in a can and was smooth, sweet and somewhat tasteless.My thoughts of Plum Jam are coloured by this memory. Nevertheless I could not let the last of the blood Plums go to waste and there is no more room for bottled or frozen plums. Plum Jam it would have to be. We have a fundraiser coming up so I can sell some there in anycase. I used my usual stone fruit jam method of equal parts of sugar and fruit with no added liquid. Cooked the quartered plums in their own juice for about twenty minutes until they were a bit soft and then added the warmed sugar. I had 3 kilos of plums, so 3 kilos of sugar. This produced a lot of liquid and quite a bit of foamy, scum on the top which I skimmed off. I used my thermometer and cooked it until it reached 104 degrees centigrade. This takes the jam right to the edge of being burnt and has produced a magnificent flavour. I thought I had overdone it for...

It is still such a pleasant surprise to me to wake up to grey cloudy skies and a real rainy day. In the first four years we were here we did not have one rainy day. The thing is though that I don't factor rainy days into my thinking anymore. The idea of putting off things to do on a rainy day had become obsolete. So today I had planned to spend the afternoon in the garden, after I finished off some work. As I had a big day at work yesterday and was away from dawn to dark there would be many things that needed picking, pruning, weeding or otherwise attending to. However it is cool and very damp so a gardening day is not to be although I will need to venture out and pick the tomatoes and Zucchinis as they are in full swing and  really need to be picked every day. Last year my neighbour brought over a magnificent tomato that one of his mates had grown. It was huge and delicious. I saved the seeds and grew some. It has grown true to type and is producing amazing tomatoes. I thin...

I have had a run of entertaining over the last few days. A friend came over for lunch on Friday and then we had houseguests for the weekend. I've always enjoyed cooking for friends and family but the enjoyment is significantly magnified when I am cooking and serving almost all of our own produce. Friday lunch was a zucchini quiche, made with the little rond de Nice zucchinis that I sliced and fried with their flowers attached before adding them to the quiche, of course I used our own fresh eggs. The finished product, pretty and delicious, served with a potato salad, homemade mayonnaise and tomatoes. Saturday morning we went to the Orange Farmers Market and derived considerable pleasure from the things we no longer need to buy, fruit, preserves, bread and vegetables. It was interesting to see that there are now two stalls selling organic garlic, maybe I will have to think about if  growing this on a large scale is still a good idea, perhaps I was too slow! We really only needed t...

One of my New Years Resolutions is to have a dinner party once a month. A real dinner party, clean the silver, get out the serviettes, light the candles sort of dinner. We have all these things that we rarely use so i plan to use them and make a regular social occasion.  The plan is to invite about four people over. A dinner party for six. Having made the resolution I was then humming and haaing about it, so finally on Wednesday rang some neighbours and issued the invitation for Saturday night, last  night. On the menu was almost entirely food we have produced ourselves. Entree Fried Zucchini flowers served with a garlic aoili, sage leaves and Fried Haloumi ( only the haloumi not from our place)  Main Course Roast turkey, stuffed with bacon, peach chutney and sage served with gravy, roast new potatoes, parsnips and Zucchini and steamed beans (just the bacon not from our place) Dessert A sort of Eton Mess, in a long glass I layered a light creamy custard with Mul...

All day yesterday I was looking forward to making one of our favourite summer dinners, fresh pasta with grated Zucchini. When I went to make it I discovered that I didn't have any of the flour I usually use. I was disappointed for a minute then remembered the packets of Spelt   flour that Zoe had bought for me. I'm sure I have seen spelt pasta so I decided to give it a go. I am really glad I did as it was a revelation. the best pasta I have made. We have been making our own pasta for about two years now, starting off hand rolling and progressing to using a small pasta machine. It is easy to do, satisfying and uses up eggs. Spelt Pasta 1 1/4 cups spelt flour 2 small eggs (I usually use three eggs to this quantity of flour so the spelt is moister perhaps) process is food processor until it just comes together, form into a disc and wrap in gladwrap. Rest on the bench for about an hour. Ours rested for two as I got sidetracked putting the poultry away. I think the long resting...

I decided it was cool enough yesterday to make some apricot Jam. Our Apricots are not as beautiful this year as they have been in the past.The humid weather led to many of them being covered with brownish/black freckles. A lot of them outgrew these though so there are still plenty of delicious apricots. I have bottled some and we have given quite a few away. We have actually run out of apricot Jam so I had better get busy and make a few batches. It is always popular and makes a good gift. I don't have a sweet tooth and generally prefer to eat pickles or chutneys on my toast but apricot Jam made in the following way is not too sweet and has a delicious depth of flavour. Very good on sourdough toast. Apricot Jam You need equal amounts of apricots and sugar. I used 3 1/2 kilos for this batch. I like a mix of very ripe, just ripe and underripe. Very ripe for deep colour, ripe for holding their shape and underripe for pectin which will help the jam set. Halve the apricots and rem...

There was a time when in my mind cheese and biscuits was synonymous with cubes of Coon cheese and Jatz crackers. The height of culinary sophistication. Usually accompanied by bright green pickled onions.  Around here people still serve it as well. However we progressed to rubbery Camembert and water crackers quite some time ago. Our exploration of new cheeses continued as we travelled and I read about food and as Sally and Zoe worked in the restaurant industry and taught us a thing or two. Rubbery Camembert has long been a thing of the past. However we continued with mass produced crackers until much more recent times. When Sally was working at Bistro Mont in Bowral we discovered Lavosh and that became our cracker of choice. Very nice, very expensive! About two years ago Ii was shopping in Orange and went to buy some. $5 for a little packet, I thought to myself "I'll bet I could make that" and came home to find there was a recipe in my Margaret Fulton cookbook. Super easy...

 I had a busy day in the kitchen yesterday preparing to go away for Christmas. I baked a  spinach and ricotta lasagne, with homemade pasta, for dinner tonight. some cheese and spinach rolls to take to last nights neighbours party. Prepared the turkey for rolling and stuffing. Chocolate croissants for Christmas morning breakfast. Croissants are not as hard to make as you might think and are a real treat, I watched and episode on Poh's Kitchen when Emmanuel made croissants and followed The Cook and the Chef recipe. Just add squares of dark chocolate when rolling up. Yum!  Have a Happy Christmas.