Farewell to the tomatoes and the cucumbers …There will be no more sad stories of how many buckets I picked that day.  The vines are all gone.  I gave the last of the green tomatoes and cucumbers to my sister, Vickie, who made green tomato chutney and cucumber relish with them.   I cooked up the last of the red tomatoes but, somehow, missed this guy so I decided to immortalise him.  There is one cucumber left and he is about to go in the bin.  We are having commercial pizza tonight.

Farewell to the Doc who has decided to put down his pen and blog no more.  All the very best, Doc.  I hope you and Sandee remain well.

Blogging is time-consuming and demanding with, to be honest, very little tangible reward.  I decided to do it because I like to take photos, love playing with Photoshop and, for some reason, needed some impetus to take photos.  What better way than to start a food and gardening blog (which are my other interests)?  That way, I would have to take photos.  It has worked .  My little Canon Photoshop G6 has been flat-out since I started.  I am no great shakes at any of these so I don’t really know what made me think I would be good at blogging but, of course, we don’t have to be good at things to have fun.

And farewell to Maus and me!!  Well, bon voyage, really.  We leave on our long anticipated holiday tomorrow.  All going well, we will be back mid-July. We are hoping that Lebanon stays safe and does not get any more entwined in Syria’s war.  War is no good to anyone.

The preparation for this holiday has taken so much work.  It is amazing how many things you have to organise just to leave the country.  It is doubly worse for us with two houses to clean (we are not the best of housekeepers usually), three dogs to wash and clip and cook for, and produce to pick and process.

We picked 215 kilos of olives which reaped 36.5 litres of oil.  We picked for three days.  I have frozen all the pomegranates seeds (I didn’t have time to do anything else) but, alas, the lemons remain on the trees.

We have been so busy which that is why there has been a reduction in the number of posts recently.

When we come back, there will be weeding and pruning the roses, setting up the second vegie patch and painting our fence in Perth.  It never stops, does it?

Thanks to Vickie, Eric, Sandra and Merle for looking after Maggie, Lily and Jules.  Looking after someone else’s dog is burden enough but when there are three and one has recently had a cruciate ligament operation, the burden is manifold.  Thank you so much.

Anyway, see you all in July.  Please return.  If you haven’t subscribed but check out the blog from time to time, now is a good time.  That way, you will get notification when I get back (lucky you)  .

Celi, from thekitchensgarden, has asked that bloggers all around the world show her what they see from their back door.  So, this is what I can see from my Perth back door.  I have joined two photos to get a panorama.

On the left is the garage.  It is not the original garage.  One evening, many years ago, I put my foot on the accelerator instead of the brake as I was parking the car … and that was the end of the original garage. The roof and walls collapsed onto the car.  I had to crawl out of the car from under the rubble.  I then realised that the interior light of the car was on so I crawled back in, avoiding fallen electric wires, and turned it off.  I didn’t want a flat battery to add to my woes!

All that was standing was the door frame and two big wooden doors.  I closed them as best I could.  When Maus came home, her first words were, ‘Why didn’t you close the garage doors properly?”   She had a surprise coming!

On the right is the ”wash house”, a separate building as was the custom when the house was built in 1926.  Originally, it had a big wooden fire-place incorporating an old copper tub (we still have it) in which clothes were put.  The poor old house wife used to stir the clothes with a big wooden paddle whilst they boiled.  Fortunately, we have modernised the interior.

Behind the laundry is another garage, a later addition.  It used to be Maus’ woodworking shed before she got one six times as big in Bridgetown.

The big tree in the foreground is an apricot tree.  It was espaliered against the original garage but, when I knocked the garage over, we moved it to its current position.  We have never had many apricots from it.  It used to fruit and we would spray them weekly to prevent fruit fly but they were still infected so we ceased to worry about them. Each year, we would have rotten fruit splattered all over the brick paving.  The tree has now stopped fruiting and all is well. The yellow leaves you see are from the apricot tree.  We returned to Perth just last night so we haven’t had an opportunity to rake them up.  Anyway, I quite like them.  Here is a close-up.

We used to have lawn but, when we got two little puppies called Maggie and Lily, before long the lawn looked more like the lunar landscape than lawn, so we decided to go with brickpaving.  We, specifically, requested a flat area to accommodate large dinner parties but alas, the last large dinner party we had was on the fore-mentioned lawn

Here is a close up of the back section.  I planted Cocos palms everywhere when we moved in (1985).  They were all the rage in Perth at that time.  Since then, cottage gardens were popular and, now, native gardens are in vogue.  I figure the tropical look will make a comeback, one day soon.

The only edible plants are a kaffir lime tree (you can just see the pot on the right in this photo) and a curry tree, which is just out of this photo on the left.

I cooked mine for a little longer than the recipe said as it didn’t appear cooked enough for my liking and that made my chutney a little dry, so watch it.

This recipe is from Maggie’s Table by Maggie Beer.

1. 1kg green tomatoes
2. 3 Granny Smith apples
3. 3 onions
4. 3 garlic cloves
5. 600 mls white wine vinegar
6. 250g sultanas
7. 1 tsp salt
8. 1 tsp coarsely ground pepper
9. 175g brown sugar

These quantities made 8 x 200 mil jars.

1. Peel and core the apples. Chop the tomatoes, apples and onions.
2. Finely chop the garlic.
3. Put all the ingredients except half of the vinegar into a non-reactive pot and bring to the boil.
4. Reduce to a simmer and cook gently for 40 minutes.
5. Add the remaining vinegar and simmer for a further 20 minutes or so until the chutney thickens.
6. Check for seasoning and ladle into warm, sterilised jars.

Redoute is a sport from Mary Rose, last week’s Rose of the Week.  Redoute is identical to Mary Rose except its flowers are a soft shade of lilac/pink.  I love Redoute.  The colour is gorgeous; it is the kind of pink one finds in the Alba Roses.

Redoute is free-flowering, repeats well and forms a good, shapely, bushy, twiggy shrub.  Like Mary Rose, it has only a light fragrance.

Redoute is named after Pierre Joseph Redoute (1759-1840), a famous rose painter.  His work included some 170 varieties from Empress Josephine’s garden at Malmaison.

Redoute was released by David Austin (UK) in 1992.

We are well and truly over tomatoes and, in that sense, were glad to see them go.  There are only so many tomatoes one can cope with.  But …. it was still very sad.

Look how amazingly healthy they still looked.  They were laden with tomatoes, some red, some a pale orange but mostly green.  Check out how they had taken over the whole vegie patch.  Underneath them, I found the following plants: two silverbeet, a sage, two chillies (laden), two parsley and an oregano. The rest had died.  I even found some very sad, sun-deprived spring onions I had grown from seed and … a rat.  Arhhhh!!!   The little shit has been eating my Romas.

We also pulled up the cucumber plants but that was not so traumatic as it was their time. Though, they were still struggling on.  Last week, I picked 15 and I picked another 10 or so today.

But the tomatoes …

They had spilled over the vegie patch on both sides.  The  branch in the foreground of the photo found itself a perfect spot to catch the northern sun.  Check out the photo below.  Look at the young, healthy growth with flowers.  I reckon, given half the chance, they would have still been producing next summer.  At least, this way, the soil has a chance to sit idle and recover before I go mad planting, again.

I have dried, roasted, cooked, made salsa and preserved so many I will be very surprised if we will be able to eat them all in two years.  I certainly won’t be growing more than one bush next summer. All up, this year I had 17 plants - I planted 16 and there was a self-sown one.  Let me tell you, that is way too many for two people.  It would be way too many for a family of six.  Notwithstanding all this,  I still found pulling up the plants traumatic.

As we were pulling them up,  we picked two buckets full of green Roma tomatoes and piles of green cherry tomatoes.  We left as many as we picked.  There were just too many, as there has been all summer/autumn.

Even with so much produce in the cupboard, my mind turned to what I was going to do with all these green tomatoes.

I had remembered that my favourite cook book, Mouneh, by Barbara Abdeni Massaad, had a recipe for Pickled Green Cherry Tomatoes.  (I have said it before, but I will say it again, if you love to preserve you must get this book.  It is a lovely book to look at and chock full (600 pages) of preserving ideas.)  I have no idea what pickled green cherry tomatoes taste like but I didn’t want to waste perfectly good food and, I figured, if we don’t like them, I should be able to find a friend or family member who does.  So if you are pulling out your cherry tomato plants and they are laden with green fruit, why not save some and give this recipe a go?

The recipe uses the same technique as for the pickled chillies.

1. Wash the tomatoes.
2. Pack the tomatoes into sterilised jars.
3. Add the pickling solution (see below).
4. Leave to settle for 10 minutes. Add more tomatoes and pickling solution, if necessary.
5. Seal.
6. Process for 15 minutes (see below).
7. Leave jars for, at least, one week before opening.  Refrigerate after opening.

Pickling liquid:

(Make as much as you need)

• 500 mls water
• 75g coarse salt
• 250 mls vinegar

1. Heat water and salt until salt has completely dissolved.
2. Allow to cool to room temperature.
3. Add the vinegar.

Processing:

1. Set a saucepan that is taller than the tallest jar you have used on the stove.
2. Place a trivet in the bottom of the saucepan.
3. Pour hot water into saucepan.
4. Put sealed jars into saucepan.
5. Top up hot water so it more than covers the tops of your jars.
6. Bring to the boil.
7. Boil for 15 minutes.
8. Remove jars from saucepan with a jar lifter or silicon gloves.
9. Set aside to cool completely.

This is a shot before they have been put into the boiling water.

This is a shot after they have been processed for the 15 minutes.

Now I have to turn my mind to the green Roma tomatoes.  I have spied a green tomato chutney recipe and a green tomato relish recipe, both of which require closer attention. Maybe, tomorrow … or maybe I will just ditch them.  I do have piles of pomegranates, apples and green chillies, three laden olive trees and three laden lemon trees, a bowl of sprouting garlic and an impending Emirates flight demanding my attention.  There is a limit to what one can do, even if she hates to throw out perfectly good produce.

At last, I am beginning to use the tomatoes I preserved from my summer/autumn bounty.  When at their peak, I oven-roasted lots of Roma tomatoes, vacuum packed and froze them.

This dish was inspired by a recipe in The Australian Women’s Weekly’s Sensational Stir Fries.  The original recipe used fresh tomatoes but I knew my roasted tomatoes would taste fab in the recipe.  If you are keen to make it but not inclined to roast the tomatoes beforehand, then quarter Roma tomatoes and fry them until just soft before adding the other ingredients.

These quantities make a hearty meal for two.

Ingredients:

• 250g spaghetti
• 2 tbs* basil
• 2 tbs* parsley
•  2 tbs* olive oil
• 1 tbs* lemon juice
• 1 tbs* balsamic vinegar
• olive oil, extra
• 100g prosciutto, roughly chopped
• 2 cloves garlic, crushed
• 6-8 roasted tomatoes (I cut my tomatoes in half, drizzled them with olive oil and sprinkled them with salt, pepper and mixed herbs.  I then roasted them for 1.5 hours at 120 -150°C.)
• 40g pine nuts

*These are 20 mil tablespoons.

Method:

1. Toast pine nuts and set aside.
2. Combine, basil, parsley, olive oil, lemon juice and vinegar then set aside.
3. Put a little olive oil in a frying pan and fry prosciutto until crisp.  Set aside.  Don’t wash the pan.
4. In a separate pot, cook the pasta.
5. Put the garlic in the pan the prosciutto was cooked in and fry for a minute or two.
6. Add the roasted tomatoes, stirring until heated through.
7. Add cooked, drained pasta and stir until coated.
8. Add herb mixture and stir for a minute or two.
9. Add the pine nuts and prosciutto.  Stir until combined and heated through.
10. Serve immediately.

I went to a typical Perth café the other night and had Saltimbocca, one of Italy’s best-known dishes and I can understand why.  It was lovely and  it’s easy to make.  It is simple enough for a weekday meal and fancy enough for a dinner party.

Stephanie Alexander suggests that the most difficult part of the recipe will be obtaining high-quality veal.   If you can’t get veal, try Girello which is readily available and nearly as nice.

This recipe is from Stephanie Alexander’s The Cook’s Companion.

These quantities serve 2.

• 4 veal scaloppine
• 4 sage leaves
• 4 thin slices of prosciutto
• plain flour
• salt and coarsely ground pepper
• 50g unsalted butter
• 20 mls olive oil
• 1/2 cup dry white wine

1. Flatten meat using a meat mallet, rolling pin or whatever.
2. Cut a slice of prosciutto the same size as each piece of veal.
3. Place a slice of prosciutto onto each piece of veal.
4. Place a sage leaf in the middle of each piece of prosciutto.
5. Secure the sage leaf and prosciutto onto the veal with a toothpick.
6. Dip veal into seasoned flour and shake off excess.
7. Gently heat the olive oil and butter in a frying pan on low to medium heat.
8. Add veal and cook for 3 minutes on each side.
9. Add wine and turn up heat to full.
10. Cook for one minute more.
11. Serve immediately.

Mary Rose is a David Austin Rose which he has classified into the group, Old Rose Hybrids.  The Old Rose Hybrids are the original English Roses.   They are the result of crossing the early summer-flowering Old Roses with modern Hybrid Tea and Floribunda roses with the idea of combining the best characteristics of both.  In the case of Mary Rose, this crossing has been a total success as Mary Rose has the charm of an Old Rose, with the reliable repeat-flowering habit of a modern Hybrid Tea or Floribunda.

Mary Rose was one of the first English Roses to become widely popular after the introduction of Constance Spry.  It has been used widely by David Austin in his  breeding programme.

Whilst David Austin has described Mary Rose as not a particularly glamorous rose,  he has also described it as a rose with many remarkable qualities.

The flowers are a strong rose-pink, with a touch of lavender. They are informally cupped and loosely quartered.  (It is a pity I don’t have a photo of a mature bloom to show you but it is a bit late in the season to get a perfect flower in full bloom.  The wind and the rain have, usually, damaged them before they are fully open.  I will add one next year.)  The flowers are borne at the end of long, arching canes.

The flowers tend to drop quickly after maturing, which I like as it keeps the bush free of dead heads but it also means that Mary Rose is not a particularly good rose for picking.   Mary Rose blooms continuously throughout the season so there is always a flower to appreciate.

The flowers have only a light fragrance which is unusual for a David Austin rose.

David Austin has described Mary Rose’s growth as near to ideal – bushy, twiggy and vigorous without being unruly – and it has a remarkable resistance to disease.

Foliage is mid-green and abundant .  The shrub has a cascading habit.

Mary Rose has produced two sports – the almost white Winchester Cathedral and the  softer pink Redoute.  Both sports have the same growth habit as Mary Rose so would make a perfect rose-pink, white and soft pink hedge.  I have been dreaming of planting such a hedge for years.  Maybe, one day….

Mary Rose is one of the most popular David Austin roses. It was introduced in 1983, the year that Henry VIII’s ship, Mary Rose, was raised from the sea.

This is not a recipe, just something I learned not so long ago that I thought I would share.  I know I run the risk of people thinking I am a wee bit handicapped but, alas, that is the risk I have decided to take.

When cooking for two there are always leftovers as most recipes serve 4 or even 6.  Some meals taste better the next day, some a lot better, but one dish that does not reheat well is risotto.   It usually ends up gluggy.

I regularly make Spinach and Walnut Risotto.  Here is the link to the recipe, if you are interested. The trouble with the recipe is, it makes enough for 4-6.  We usually have it for dinner the first night and then for lunch the next two days.  By the time we have finished it, neither of us wants to eat risotto ever again.

Now, here is the thing.  I did not realise, until recently, that Arancini is essentially cold risotto rolled into a ball, coated in flour, egg and breadcrumbs then deep fried.

After a lovely meal of risotto the other night but with the dread of two more lunches to come, I was relieved when this snippit of information surfaced in my brain.

It was very simple to make the balls and deep fry them and they tasted great.  Not at all like leftovers.

We had risotto for dinner one night, Arancini and salad the next and Arancini for lunch for two more days.  Maybe we should have frozen some of the Arancini…

Next time you make risotto and have some left over, consider making Arancini.  Next night’s dinner will be totally different from the night before and with very little additional effort.

Yes, I know it is criminal to eat Arancini with tomato sauce but Maus does like her tomato sauce… and it was homemade.

I started off my post on preserving tomatoes, in February, by saying,

It’s nearing the end of summer and still the tomatoes are coming.

I then when on to say,

If, after you have made relish and salsa and have dried, pickled and roasted your tomatoes, you are still picking them by the bucket load, it is time for some serious preserving.

Well… it’s nearly winter and still the tomatoes keep coming.  I have preserved so many tomatoes, I seriously doubt my cupboard will ever be free of them. It is time for something different.

The other day, I was going through my recipe book and I came across a recipe for tomato sauce quaintly called, “Mum’s Mum’s Tomato Sauce”.  So, the other night after picking another load of tomatoes, I decided I would make tomato sauce with them.

As luck would have it, I was in Bridgetown and the “Mum’s Mum’s” recipe was in Perth.  I went through my books at hand and found a recipe in the Family Circle book, Jams, Pickles & Chutneys, which was rather similar to the Mum’s Mum’s recipe. 

I have always been intrigued by tomato sauce recipes that have apples in them.  I have often wondered how, in the good old days before cold storage, people had access to tomatoes and apples at the same time.  Well, my apples are beginning to ripen so I have access to both right now!!  I used windfall apples and some that Maus picked too green.  It is great to use up produce that would otherwise be wasted.

The tomato sauce turned out great.  I don’t usually eat tomato sauce but this sauce tastes so much better than the commercial stuff.  Maus has given it the thumbs up.

Pity about the Grolsch bottles.  I do have some lovely bottles that would have been perfect for the sauce but, alas, they are also in Perth.  Maus was so happy that she had saved these when I was searching frantically for bottles to put my sauce in.

I doubled the recipe (I used 4 kilograms of tomatoes) and made just over 4 litres of sauce.  These quantities will make about 2 litres.

• 2 kg ripe tomatoes (I had a mixture of cherry tomatoes and Romas)
• 3 green apples
• 3 onions (I only used 2 because 3 seemed like a lot to me)
• 2½ cups malt vinegar
• 1 clove garlic, chopped
• 2 cups sugar
• ½ tsp cayenne pepper
• 1 tsp whole cloves
• 1 tsp whole allspice

I added one chilli which gave the sauce a little extra zing.

1. Wash the tomatoes and apples, core and roughly chop (I threw the cherry tomatoes in whole).
2. Peel and roughly chop the onions.
3. Combine tomatoes, apples, onions, vinegar and garlic (and chilli, if using) in large saucepan.
4. Bring to the boil and simmer, uncovered, for 1 hour or until all the ingredients are soft and mushy.
5. Sift the ingredients.  I have a colander and sieve attachment to my Kenwood Major which is fantastic.  It very quickly separated the seeds and skins from the pulp and juice.  If you have to do it by hand then …. you have to do it by hand.
6. Return the sieved mixture to saucepan.
7. Add the sugar, salt and cayenne pepper.
8. Tie the cloves and allspice in a piece of muslin and add to the pan.
9. Bring to the boil and simmer for about 30 minutes or until sauce has thickened slightly.
10. Remove muslin bag from pan.
11. At this stage, I thickened the sauce with Clearjel*.  This wasn’t part of the recipe but it gives the sauce body, much like commercial sauce.
12.  Pour the sauce into warm, sterilised jars or bottles and seal immediately.*Clear Jel is a corn starch derivative.  You can’t get it in Australia but you can buy it online from the States.  It is a commercial thickening product used by bakeries and for frozen food.There are two types of Clear Jel, “instant” and “regular”.  “Instant” does not require heat to thicken. It will thicken as soon as liquid is added.  It is usually recommended to mix Instant Clearjel with sugar or other dry ingredient before adding it to the liquid, or mixing it in with a stick blender, otherwise it will grab.“Regular” must be heated. This is, generally, the preferred type to use in products to be preserved.  To use Clear Jel in a hot dish, first mix a small amount in cold water, then add gradually to the hot liquid, mixing constantly. Or, mix everything together while cold, and then heat and stir to thicken.Clear Jel is tasteless and colourless and much more stable than cornflour (starch).  I am totally sold on it.