Herbalicious - Rosemary

Whenever I think of rosemary I think of my friend Miss M-ski. No she wasn't set to be called Rosemary then her mother found out her father had a rather dishy ex called Rosemary and no she doesn't even have any friends called Rosemary or friends with babies called Rosemary. She's not even obsessed with Roman Polamski's film 'Rosemary's Baby'. But Miss M-ski, my lovely Miss M-ski had finally become Dr M-ski. Not a useful doctor who could save your life by doing a double heart lung transplant, but an even more useful doctor of psychology. It took her a while but she got there and I am so proud. But it is not her nearly Dr status that makes me think of her when I see rosemary, it is her love of potato and rosemary pizza! She introduced me to it, at a fine little place on Errol street and I've never looked back. While it is a carb avoider's nightmare, it tastes divine. And I think it is the Rosemary that does the trick.

Long has humanity known the wonders of putting rosemary and the potato together. They just work, simple as that. Pumpkin or sweet potato is an adequate replacement in the pairing but nothing beats the original. After Dr M-ski introduced me to this devilishly good combination I added it to my cooking repertoire (though usually substituting puff pastry for pizza base if short on time.) Problem was I liked it so much my single rosemary bush was getting overly depleted. There was the option of cutting down on my consumption of this herbalicious wonder, or, another solution, which was to procure a new one! Luckily I had a birthday around this time and my kindly relatives solved the rosemary conundrum.

So now I have two rosemary bushes. See one,

and two.

They live in different parts of the balcony garden, one gets less sun, the other full sun.

They both seem happy, though the second one is a little hidden behind the corn and tomatoes nowadays.

I use rosemary in risotto too, and sometimes put it on meat when I slow roast it. It is truly versatile and so delicious. You can even use large sticks of it as an aromatic skewer! Do you grow rosemary? If so what kind? Any tips or tricks for growing? My tip is grow as much as you can, and if you're lucky it could end up looking like this one growing in my Mum's backyard!

Herbalicious - Mint

Given it is spring and I've just planted some more basil and coriander I think it might be high time to do a few little focus posts on the herbs in the balcony garden. Some, like the aforementioned greeny goodies basil and coriander are annuals. Basil I sow in Spring and Summer while coriander is a year round affair, when I remember to procure seeds that is. I'll post on them seperately. This post is for an amazing little green fellow who was one of the first plants in my garden. He grew from a cutting and has never changed pots (in 3 years, no new potting soil yet he lives and thrives.) If you haven't guessed by now this hardy little tacker is, it is mint.

Common mint for a bit more precision (let's not get into the tangle they did on Masterchef when naming mint.) I did have some ginger mint at one stage but it died a while back from neglect. I don't use mint very often. Maybe for a garnish but never as a star. That was until I started experimenting with cooking, and substituting it for other herby flavours. Mint and coriander go so well together, in rice paper rolls, salads and even as a soup garnish. Particularly different kinds of asian cuisine suit it divinely.

On Friday night I threw together a salad for a few people before a party. It included a dose of finely chopped mint (and coriander) from the garden sliced up on the lovely mezaluna given to me for my 30th brithday by my dear boss Dr A, lettuce from the garden, baby spinach, spicy fried potato noodles, garlic, ginger and chilli marinated baked chicken and some purple cabbage. Mostly healthy and full of flavour! I'd eat it again in an instant.

Do you grow mint? Is it almost like a weed as it is for some of my friends or do you have trouble with it? Should I expand my mint varieties - chocolate mint perhaps? or maybe fill another pot with mint? What is your favourite mint?

Hanging in there

Sorry for the lack of posting in the last week, between writing and giving a paper at a uni conference last Thursday and visiting my parents in Adelaide for Dad's 67th over the weekend I have had little time to think, let alone dwell in and about my balcony garden. Luckily I left it in Capable E's hands over the weekend, and I think he will look after it while I am overseas as well. Excellent. I look forward to harvest Monday next week too - there were some yummy things in that haul I can assure you.

But today I want to show you one strange photo that I found in the mix of 30th birthday photos. Along with the shots of white jacketed men and 1940s women (it was a Casablanca themed party) there appeared this one photo which only proves the photographer was a true garden freak. It was ...

... a picture of my hanging pot of garlic which seems to have a few small coriander plants springing up around it. And the photographic culprit??? It was me! I can't usually see into the hanging pot very easily, and while out taking photos of my trivia friends who had nestled nicely in the back corner bench I must have, in champagne fueled wisdom, worked out a way to check the progress. Ahhhh gardeners, we are an odd bunch at times aren't we!

The Basil Stripped Bare

Yesterday I posted about my little tummy ache from an over-indulgence of jelly beans. Methinks another soul had a bit of a belly ache the other day. Just before I left I noticed that a transplanted basil plant was looking a little naked, and on closer inspection realised he had been stripped bare - OVERNIGHT!!! Sid the snail (not the actual Sid but an aggrieved relative) must had inflicted this damage.

Hope his tummy hurt as much as mine! Luckily there is still some other basil around the balcony, or at least I hope there will be when I return. Speaking of basil, I don't have a pic of it yet but Mum's basil is absolutely thriving. It is almost a metre tall!

Epic Storms and Epic Fails

After three tries and three epic fails by my web browser over the past few days, I gave up completing this post yesterday. Grrr to the confines of using university internet and thus not my usual browser (there is a long story of useless IT in this grandparent of a university.) Stupid explorer (not my first choice but my only choice at present when at uni) gobbled up my first three tries, but hopefully the fourth will work. Over the weekend we had a rather epic storm, a ‘once in a hundred years’ type storm complete with hailstones the size of golfballs (and one, I swear, that hit tennis ball size.) Melbourne received quite a bit of damage. One of my cousin’s houses had one damaged window, another cousin scored eight broken windows! Fierce. The balcony garden did not escape unscathed, the succulents were whittled away into green sculptures with no ‘leaf’ left undamaged, the lemons were shorn clear off their branches, as too were a few habaneroes which I found on the opposite side of the balcony to their bush, the basil was stripped bare in places, several sunflowers were decapitated, the zucchini and cucumber and tomato dissolved into a puddle of browny-green mush and the leek seedlings were hit so hard most of their potting mix ended up on the bench not in the seedling pot!!!

But it is not all doom and gloom. The time has come for Autumn planting and this destruction gives me a good excuse to remove all the plants I should remove but might not have given they had a little life left in them (that was until the storm hit.) So it is out with the cukes and the zukes and the matos and the mess, and in with broccoli, snowpeas and more lettuce. The dead flowers will be replaced by an autumn sowing, most likely a random blue mix or gerberas. From destruction there will be new life. And if it manages to stop drizzling I might even be able to clean up the leaf litter too!

And I did manage to salvage some produce from before it hit, a zucchini and two ripe habaneroes. Pictures soon.

On herbs and the Central Markets

Ah holidays. Today sees me lazing inside, slow cooking up a spaghetti bolognaise sauce for my parents whilte trying to get some RA work done. The sauce takes from 4 to 6 hours but is so rich and tomatoey it is worth the wait. Mum and I popped to the central markets in Adelaide (rival the Vic markets for sure, and in a moment of weakness I even declared them better than the vic markets!!!) this morning and bought some yummy tomatoes (the mortgage lifters Mum grows are way too good for this sauce.) We also bought some premium mince. I also wandered by the mushroom shop looking wistfully at the black french winter truffles on sale (reasonably priced too I might add, though Mum disagreed.) Usually I put mushrooms in my spag bol, but mon pere isn't too fond of the old fungus so I left it out.

However, what does go into the mix is a tonne of herbs from mum's garden. I pulled two fistfulls of basil leaves off the bush and you can barely tell. It is just so huge. I also picked some rosemary from this amazing bush, and some thyme from the one behind it (hidden in this photo.)

While lemongrass isn't the thing for bolognaise, I just had to show you a picture of it - simply huge.

Mum also grows a huge sage bush. Back at our old home she couldn't get it to grow, and nor can I on the balcony garden, but here it grows life a triffid!

Same with the chives, there are loads of them!

Also, whenever you wander around this garden a shadow seems to follow. I managed to capture the shadow the other day.

After a quick pat I sent him on his way. Seriously, any time I enter the garden he follows! He just loves it, and it is almost like it is his garden, not Mum's, though he is yet to be spotted actually helping with the gardening. Other favourite hobbies of his include sleeping on the couch cuddled up close (and snoring) and barking at the ants that congregate on his bones (chewy treat bones, not the ones in his body) in an attempt to get rid of them!!!

Monday Harvest

My camera is currently with a friend so I will be using older pictures, and some from earlier in the week to illustrate this week's harvest. I harvested lots of this, about 3 meals worth (for you Daphne.)

Two of these

One of these (the long one at the bottom which grew bigger, the fridge thing with the pollen worked!!!)

The long beans in this pot (not the peas) and then another large handful of the same tonight

five of these a night

and a handful of lettuce, basil, other herbs and onions pretty much every night! Great harvests for a great summer on the balcony garden

Yellow Flowers in Lieu of Harvest Pictures.

Alas no pictoral harvest post today. My camera is with a friend in the archives, and I didn't manage any blurry shots of the food I picked this week anyway. There was a harvest and it involved an eggplant which I stuffed with tomatoes, zucchini, rice and the insides of the eggplant itself for one meal, a few small zucchini, the dwindling tomatoes that manage to ripen, some carrots (some yellow ones from the carrot pot, some small purple ones from the tomato pot that got turfed yesterday), lots of silverbeet and plenty of herbs. I am not sure if this counts as a harvest post when there are no pictures. Actually here is an old picture of an eggplant - it's from the same bush so maybe we can just imagine! :)

Hopefully next week I can put in a harvest post before I have my 24 month thesis review and head off to Adelaide to visit my family. Still chugging along on the thesis while entertaining some lovely house guests at the moment so busy, busy, busy. I enchanted them with my yellow and purple carrots last night, along with the ubiquitous gnocchi, which went down a treat. In more floral news, things are beginning to bloom yellow on the balcony. Another sunflower has taken flight.

There are plenty more where that came from. I seem to have planted them everywhere in the garden at the moment, 4 around the eggplants, 5 in the new zucchini pot and one randomly in with some radishes! The marigold, even though it doesn't need to protect the tomatoes anymore, is beginning to open.

There is another yellow flower staring at me at present - a female zucchini flower, but no male flower on the plant. There was a male flower in full bloom yesterday so I took Dan's advice and put it in the fridge for safe keeping. Now to see if it actually worked!

Driven to Basil Distraction

Ugh thesis writing is keeping me away from the blog and away from the garden. Infuriating!!! Plus my camera is getting dithery in its old age and barely any photos from it are useable. The guest post from the lego people is coming soon, they promise me. Thanks for all your comments on the few posts I manage to write in this busy time, it keeps my spirits alive (writing a thesis on Nazi memoirs can be altogether draining on the grey matter.) In the mean time enjoy some thai basil that in my time starved life at present has gone to seed.

Zema Estate and the Parsnip Gnocchi Adventure

Hurricane J said it couldn't be done, or perhaps shouldn't, I can't recall the nuances but suffice it to say Parsnip Gnocchi was not to be made or consumed. Never, never ever ever ever, not now, not then, not ever. Never one to listen to anyone telling me what to do (ask my Mum, she'll agree) this negativity meant one thing - that the challenge was ON! I have, in the past, perfected the sweet potato gnocchi and adapted the recipe in various ways, jerusalem artichoke gnocchi, pumpkin gnocchi, gluten free gnocchi ... next stop was parsnip gnocchi.

Miss J and fellow academic Mr E were the guinea pigs in this culinary experiment. It started with ... the making of bolognaise!!! This for me is an all afternoon adventure. I start by peeling a motherload of tomatoes (alas not grown on the balcony garden.) Miss J is the best at this job but when the cat's busy getting ready for a trip to Paris, I, the mouse, have to peel.

2kgs of beef in the pot, along with browned onions and garlic. I collected some herbs from the garden including oregano, basil, sage, rosemary and lemon thyme to add to the mix.

Can't forget the vino, I used this one, a Zema Estate Cab Sav because no other cheaper wine was available! Don't tell Dad!!! Although good cooks only cook with wine they would drink, and boy was this drop drinkable (and kinda pricey, but again don't tell Dad, because he bought it when he visited last!) Half for the pot, save the other half for me.

The gnocchi was easy to make, well relatively, although I took no photos of the process. AND I took no photos of the finished product, at least the parsnip ghocchi with bolognaise. I do have this shot of the entree, parsnip gnocchi with a nut brown butter and sage sauce!

And before you ask, yes the entree was parsnip gonocchi, so was the main, but the dessert had nothing to do with parsnips or gnocchi at all, it was homemade coconut cream and raspberry ripple icecream. Overall I have to say the flavour of parsnip gnocchi was very mild and was clouded by both sauces but the texture was definitely divine. I even made a second batch later in the week in which I incorporated goats cheese in the mix for extra fluffiness (Hurricane J tried that batch, and it was not spat out which is a promising sign.) Next gnocchi challenge has also been set ... beetroot gnocchi - at least this time I can use home grown produce!

Herb Flowers

This week I tried something different for my indoor arrangement. My coriander had gone to flower and I didn't particular want to wait around to collect the seed. So I put it in this week's posy, along with more lemon thyme. The room smells amazing and the posy looks pretty good too.

Pink and Red don't always Clash

I've picked up the posy theme again this week with a snazzy pink and red number. Mum always told me never to wear pink and red together because they clashed. Most times I agreed with her, but this time I think the hot pink of the boronia works nicely with the differing hues of the snapdragons and vibrant scarlet geranium. It also smells amazing because it is all bound together with lemon thyme!

Again I'm having camera issues so I've included both shots, one to give you an idea of colour, and one to show it more clearly (but flash makes the colour vibrancy fade.)

Balcony Garden Roast Post

Finally, after a week of cleaning and recovery, and also a week of far too much uni work, I have managed to pluck up the energy to write this post. The first ever Balcony Garden Sunday Roast was held over a week ago. It was held in lieu of another balcony garden dinner party, because the usual suspects couldn't find a single weekend evening free in common! Instead it turned into a Sunday roast, beef, yorkshire puddings (just like I used to make when I worked in the kitchens of English pubs) and all the trimmings, plus entree and dessert, all using at least one element from the balcony garden. While the balcony is big enough to host many plants, it is not an ersatz dairy and as such the cattle portion had to be obtained from the Vic markets. So too the cheese for the cheese platter was obtained at the markest, as unlike Gavin at The Greening of Gavin who seems to be a homemade cheesemaker extraordinaire, I am not quite set up to make my own cheese (but boy oh boy would I love to.) Indeed it is probably best to start the post with a look at the cheese platter. Normally something to end a dinner party this time it took the place of pre-dinner/lunch nibbles.

The garden element was multi-coloured carrot sticks taken from the pile pictured later in this post (the other half went into the salad.) So too a little sprig of indoor-grown basil added to the plate. This was to have homemade gluten free crakcers with it, which I lovingly cooked earlier in the week, adapting a recipe from here.

Probably in part due to my makeshirt wine bottle rolling pin, and the substitution of a gluten free flour to the mix difficulties arose. Alas the crackers were liable to break a tooth they were so hard, and provided a novelty factor for the day but served no real nutritional purpose. (note they were made with potato flour and the balcony garden element was rosemary)

The entree was a duo of soups. One was a potato, leek and bacon soup utlising leeks from the garden.

The other was a sweet potato, coriander, chilli and coconut cream number, which took chillis from the garden (the coriander, though also grown of the balcony garden, was taken from my cousin's garden as she had a ridiculous surplus!) It was all served with a steaming hot, homemade foccacia, same recipe as this one, just minus the leeks and bacon.

Both soups were tasty and some members of the dinner party with less dietary restrictions decided to sample a bowl of each. Then came the main course of roast beef, yorkshire puddings, roasted potatoes (four varieties), jerusalem artichokes and mushrooms, steamed snow peas, broccoli, beet leaves and silverbeet and a salad of greens, tomatoes and carrots. All steamed greens and salad elements were balcony garden grown.

The final piece-de-resistance alas comes with no photos of the final product. I blame wine induced forgetfulness. It was a deconstruction of a lemon meringue pie. I made meringue casings, and in them placed homemade lemon curd icecream (which used lemons from the balcony garden) on top of which was to be placed a nut crumble. I burned the nut crumbled in my view so declined from serving it, however most disagreed and ate it straight from the cooking dish! Raspberry sauce I got at christmas topped this little number off and it was enjoyed by all.

All in all it was a magical day. Somehow the intended afternoon meal went well into the night, with most guests staying until 9pm!!! I suspect the 12 bottles of wine and apple wine and coffee cocktail I crazily made helped in this regard. Thanks to everyone who came, and particular thanks to those who helped with the dishes, it made the hungover Monday cleanup that much easier! I will definitely have another balcony garden function once the next harvest comes in. Until then I am enjoying the remaining greens and carrots all by myself!

The Radish part two

A few days ago I posted proudly about my single daikon radish sitting in the garden. It had grown extra leafy and I suspected it needed to be eaten. Plus the foliage was shadowing the new little black radishes so I thought it best that I pull it sooner rather than later. This is what he looked like!

He was much bigger than any of the carrots I have grown, maybe because he had an almost adequate amount of space. Now in the shops they are a million times bigger than this, but I never want that much radish. This one was perfect for a very large, and decadent meal for one. I grated the daikon with some carrot and added some greens and coriander from the garden. Thinly sliced some fresh raw sashimi grade salmon to add to the top and dotted it with some soy.

Was extra tasty and also pretty healthy. The daikon acts as a digestive so it all settled quite well. The flavour is very mild, almost creamy. The crispish texture went to well with the soft salmon and greens. I'll have to wait several more months for another home grown one, in fact it will be longer because I am waiting for a pot to become available so I can plant some!

Produce in the Pan

Flowers are wonderful, they make a garden colourful, fragrant and attract a bevy of friendly bees. If you want a post about pretty flowers go here. However, when space is tight, only beneficial flowers, impulse buy flowers and personal favourites make it in. For me ornamental flowers come second to the flowers in the veggie patch, and for the matter the veggies themselves. I grow to enjoy, and flowers are certainly enjoyable, but they are better viewed while munching on a lemon slice, made with home grown lemons or a salad from garden greens, or something equally delicious produced with the garden veggies.

If you haven't guessed by now this is going to be another cooking/gardening post. I wanted to show what I did with all that extra produce I found when I got back to Adelaide (click here to find out why totally awesome second balcony sitter did not devour it all, bless her.) This is only a basic recipe, a stirfry to be exact. But I just had to use all those yummy snow peas. And don't forget the broccoli shoots, which, having been left for 2 weeks grew big, almost to bursting/flowering stage. (aha now there is one flower that is not welcome in my garden, a broccoli flower which is an omen of the armageddon for the broccoli plant.)

I also had 5 bush beans, taken from my two bush bean plants which were now compost, well my balcony version of compost. Not a lage haul but I blame the time of year I planted them. I needed the pot for a tomato, and to help the leeks in there, because they don't really get along with beans and thus were not thriving. Presto chango, 5 beans to eat and one happy indoor tomato/leek pot.

I also had some more snow peas, coriander and silvetbeet. What to do?

Stick it all in a frying pan with chicken, a chili soy sauce (don't forget the teaspoon of sugar also) and noodles.

Serve with a side salad

et voila, one wonderful way to use balcony produce which may or may not be eaten in the vicinity of balcony garden flowers.