Intro | What I have Learned this Month | Natural Dyes
‘The Tomorrow Book’ and other new Books | Schedule for 2010 | The February Garden A Few recipes – gluten-free Fabia Biscuits and a Whole lot of Pickling
There is a dog up the top of the avocado tree outside my study. Also three chooks, a currawong, a mobile phone, a mopoke, a trail bike, a koookaburra, a pallid cuckoo and a whip bird. Or possibly there’s a lyrebird instead.
I’m betting on the lyrebird, especially as it was there strutting up and down a branch when I went for my walk this morning, its tail fanned out, kicking its legs up like a can can dancer. It gave a startled croak, then ignored me and kept on dancing. The wildlife around here regard me as much less interesting – and less of a threat - than a brown snake or a red goshawk.
It’s the wrong time of year for lyrebird calls, but he’s a very young lyrebird, either full of teenage energy or determined to make his mark by singing all year round. “Hey, look, don’t you want me as the father of your eggs? I can sing for a whole twelve months.”
I doubt the females will take much notice. Most male courting displays – lyrebirds’ dances, blue wrens’ battles, decorated bowerbird bowers, or bright red sports cars for that matter, seem to impress other blokes more than females.
Plus the lyrebird in the avocado tree is scrawny from singing and dancing away the summer instead of scratching up bugs and eating. If I were a female lyrebird I’d go for a nice plump forager instead of a would-be rock star. Which is pretty much what I have done, come to think of it.
It’s been a good month. Actual weather – the sort where you need to look out the window to see if it’s rain, mist or blue sky, instead of cloudless days month after month. The creek is flowing, the swimming hole is clear and shimmering under a light layer of casuarina pollen. It’s also too cold for swimming black snakes, and almost too cold for us. Almost, but not quite.
And things are growing. I ran down to see the first of the flash floods rumble down the creek, all frothy water and tumbling tree trunks, and by the time I had got back to the house – about ten minutes – a new arrowroot leaf had speared 10 cms out of the soil.
I’ve ordered fruit trees again and I’m planting winter veg. According to the wallabies (Emily has a baby in her pouch) there’s going to be good grass for the next six months at least, which is time enough to grow another crop of spuds and a heck of a lot of cauliflowers.
It is good to smell the grass. And wet trees. And wet wombat, though Mothball looks at us balefully as though demanding we make the wet stuff stop, at least till she’s had her dinner.
It’s just good to have real weather.
Natural dyes
Fabia and friends came down for a dyeing workshop at our cottage last week, held by my dear friend Jenny, who works systematically with dyes and glorious fabrics where I just tend to bung stuff in a pot, boil and see what happens. The aim of the workshop was to find good, colourfast natural dyes, based on plants like onion skins and gum leaves, that would work without mordants, the often toxic substances added to make colours brighter and more colourfast.
It was wonderful wandering down the cottage track, hearing the laughter and watching the various fabrics flutter in the freeze from lines between the trees. Bryan spread out the trestles and Noel covered them with food, great platters of quinoa and pomegranate salad with olive oil and verjuice, kipfler potatoes, olives, nougat, grilled meat, green salads, carrot and chick pea salad and I can’t remember what else because I was tucking into first helpings of the quinoa, which I hadn’t had before.
Turmeric and native cherry trees (Expocarpus) gave the most brilliant bright yellow dye. They worked best with wool, cotton, linen and silk, not synthetics. I’m still hunting the perfect natural bright red dye – beetroot is more brown than red, and pomegranate looked good but faded. Ditto inkbush. Brown onion gave a subtle gold, red onion gave a glorious red gold, mistletoe a pale blue, tea bags, well, a tea colour, and walnuts a deep rich brown, almost black, but not the dull brown you get with artificial dyes. This brown still looked alive.
Anyhow, Fabia is writing up all the results, so hopefully they’ll be on the web site in a month or too.
What I have Learned this Month
• Natural indigo dye gives exactly the range of blues I adore. Jenny left a rubbish bin full for me, so I am slowly converting all the faded or boring colours in my wardrobe into shades of blue.
• Mothball has learned to take apart the new reinforced doormat Bryan was sure would foil her.
Wombats always win.
• Arrowroot can grow 16 cm in ten minutes after rain.
• Bryan doesn’t like quinoa salad. I love it. Will see if he likes quinoa in soup.
Book News
The Tomorrow Book
Illustrated by Sue de Gennaro… a look at the paradise we could create, maybe just tomorrow.
This is a special book. It’s closer to my heart than anything I’ve written, and Sue’s work is inspired: funny, whimsical and extraordinarily beautiful. It’s what happens when the king and queen retire and go off in the campervan, and leave the kids in charge, finding the solution to each of the world’s major problems in their library, and creating… tomorrow.
Every one of the solutions really does exist – and the possible tomorrows are very, very good indeed.
P.S. Sue created the extraordinary artwork in collage, using materials she found in her kitchen, from tea bags to labels. It is too magic to even have words to describe it.
Dance of the Deadly Dinosaurs
The sequel to LESSONS FOR A WEREWOLF WARRIOR,
continuing the crazy adventures of Boo, werewolf and hero-in-the making!
 Boo’s back … in another crazy adventure of Heroes, dinosaurs and the most fearsome weapon in the universes … the zombie sausage!
Boojum Bark, werewolf puppy and student Hero, is about to do what no Hero has done before - go into the scariest universe of them all, the Ghastly Otherwhen, rescue his mum and come back alive.
And he’ll need help from his friends: mysterious Yesterday, gorgeous Princess Princess Sunbeam Caresse of Pewké, Mug the down-to-earth zombie, and Squeak the warrior mouse.
But the Ghastly Otherwhen isn’t what Boo expects! And his friends
start acting strangely, too…
What is the bond between Yesterday and her dinosaurs? Why won’t she let Boo rescue her from slavery? Can Mug really be as dumb as he looks, or are zombies smart in zombie ways? And could Princess Princess be an actual Hero underneath her cowardly exterior?
The bogeys are scarier - and the food is grosser than ever!
And illustrator Andrea Potter’s dinosaurs are the best in the universes.
The Night They Stormed Eureka
A fresh look at the history we thought we knew.
Are the history books wrong? Could the rebels have succeeded? Could we too have seceded from Britain, like the USA?
This is the story of Sam, a modern teenager, thrust into the world of the Ballarat goldfields, with the Puddlehams, who run the best cook shop on the diggings and dream of a hotel with velvet seats, ten thousand miners who dream of gold and rebellion, and Professor Shamus O’Blivion, who tries not to dream at all. But there is a happy ending for Sam, who discovers that when you stand together, you really can change the world – and your own life, too.
Schedule for the Next Few Months
I’m sorry I can’t accept every invitation – there are always many more than I could fit into a year. But as I have family in Brisbane and Perth I always love an excuse to travel there... or anywhere that might involve a stop-over in Perth, too. New South Wales bookings are done by Lateral Learning, Queensland bookings by Helen Bain at Speaker’s Inc, Victoria by Boooked Out, simon@bookedout.com.au,and for other bookings contact me at jackiefrench72@gmail.com. But please don’t use this address for school projects- there are answers to nearly all questions on the website, and I can only answer 100 or so emails a day, not the thousands needed to answer school project questions from overseas as well as Australia).
Basically I can only do one trip away from home a month, and that includes trips to Canberra, so I mostly only speak to groups of more than 200, and where it will take no more than six hours travel each way (except Western Australia). I’ve also stopped doing early morning and after dinner talks, except for a few evening sessions.
March 17, 18, 19: Somerset Festival, Gold Coast, QLD. Sue de Gennaro and I will be launching ‘The Tomorrow Book’, about how tomorrow can be good.
April onwards: Sue de Gennaro’s artwork for ‘The Tomorrow Book’ will be at the Fremantle Children’s Literature Centre. Contact the Fremantle Children’s Literature Centre for more details.
April 1: Braidwood, opening the annual BRAG exhibition of local art and craft, Braidwood
April 8-11, talks in Perth
April 27, 28, 29, 30: Talks in Brisbane, as well as an address at The 3 R's - Reaching Reluctant Readers Conference. Contact Helen Bain: helen@speakers-ink.com.au.
May 22, 23 Sydney Writer’s Festival, including two workshops on creating picture books, a talk with Bruce Whatley about our Diary of a Wombat books, and a panel talk A Wombat At My Table.
Jun 3, 4, 5: Talks at libraries in Melbourne, including the Monash Literary Festival on Saturday. Contact Booked Out (simon@bookedout.com.au( for details.
June 18-19: NSW Children’s Book Council Conference, Sydney. Session with Bruce Whatley, the genius who created those incredible images of the wombat in ‘Diary of a Wombat’ and ‘Baby Wombat’s Week’. There is also a regal cocktail party to launch our next joint book, ‘Queen Victoria’s Underpants’, the almost entirely true story of how Queen Victoria revolutionised women’s lives. (It is rumoured that Victoria and her Albert may actually appear at the cocktail party, but I don’t know about the underpants).
July 7: Sydney, National History Conference.
July 14-17: Whitsunday Literary Festival, including a public gardening talk, Mackay, Qld.
July 30: Seymour Centre, Sydney. Opening night of Monkey Baa Theatre for Young People’s incredible play of ‘Hitler’s Daughter’. I’ll be there, with knobs on.
August 2-7: Talks and workshops at the Fremantle Children’s Literature Centre, contact the Centre for details or bookings.
August 18: Abbotsleigh Literary Festival, Sydney.
September: Possible trip to Yorke Peninsula, SA or Adelaide. No dates or details finalised yet. Contact Carole Carroll at c.carroll@internode.on.net for more details.
September 18: Talk to Friends of the Botanic Gardens, Canberra, 12.30 in the auditorium. All welcome, adults and kids.
October 2,3,4: Talks each day at Floriade, Canberra.
October 10: Talks at Floriade, Canberra.
October 27: International Children’s Day. I’ll be speaking at the awards in Canberra in my capacity as ACT Children’s Ambassador, and probably giving a talk or two somewhere else in Canberra that day too, if previous years are anything to go by.
November, 6 and 7: Open Garden workshops at our place. Contact the Open Garden organisers for bookings, act@opengarden.org.au. If you want to make a weekend of it, there are lots of places to stay, from cheap pubs to luxury B&B’s close by. Look at the Braidwood web site. We also have a cottage that we rent for weekends sometimes – with very limited tank water, a healthy population of snakes and lots of wildlife who’ll ignore you and go on munching
November 20: Eurobodalla Slow Food Festival at Moruya, NSW. I’ll be giving a series of talks during the day, on everything from fruit trees to wombats, and launching the festival once again as its patron.
The February Garden
This is planting time – doubly planting time for those in south-east Australia, where there’s been real, wet, soaking-in type rain… or even extremely wet flood through the living room type rain.
This is the time to put in all the veg you want to eat for winter, from more carrots and silver beet to broccoli, celery, caulies et al. It is also the perfect time to put in trees, bushes, asparagus… almost anything in fact. The soil is wet, the tanks are full, the ground is warm. Trees and vines cossetted now may double their size by winter – not just their tops but their roots too, making them better able to withstand the cold of winter and next summer’s heat.
So: plant.
Also: chop. All those weeds growing from drought bare soil will turn into stunning mulch and compost. Don’t waste them, don’t swear at them. Use them.
Also: have fun. Choose at least one luxury fruit or flower that you’d love to have, and treat yourself to it. Planting silver beet saves you money, gives you healthy exercise and happy dinners. But rambling roses, or a luxury pomegranate or two, give you beauty… though come to think of it, a row of multi-coloured rainbow chard gives both. But what the heck – life is too short and the world losing too many of its leaves to be stingy about planting. Just grow lots.
Plant: LOTS of potatoes for autumn, LOTS of garlic (a whole year’s worth, at least 60 cloves), more chives, spring onions etc for winter, plus:
Subtropical and tropical areas
Strawberry runners, sweet potatoes, passionfruit vines, parsley and other herbs, hand pollinate pumpkins and melons if heat or rain is preventing fruit set, plant beetroot, capsicum, carrot, caulies, celery, cucumber, eggplant, lettuce seedlings (lettuce seeds may not germinate in the heat), pak tsoi, pumpkin, radish, silverbeet, sweet corn, tomatoes and watermelon.
Temperate to cold areas:
Strawberry runners, passionfruit and banana passionfruit, rhubarb, blueberries, artichoke, beans, beetroot, broccoli, cabbage, carrots (try the tiny, fat, fast maturing ones in cold climates), sweet corn (fast maturing varieties only), leek, lettuce, white onions, salad greens like corn salad, mizuna, mitsuba, cress, red Italian chicory, silverbeet, spring onions and lots of English spinach.
Harvest: Much the same as for January. Late maturers like capsicum and eggplant will be ripening now. Stick large pumpkins on a hot roof, to harden them. Onions planted last winter for storage should be lifted now, when the tops die off. Leave the dug onions in the sun for a couple of days to dry off, but don’t let them get wet. Either hang them up in bunches by the dry tops or stick them in old orange netbags to make sure the air can circulate. Store them in a cool, dry, not necessarily dark place.
Don’t bother if you can’t eat everything that’s ripe in the garden, February always provides too much. Remember that in the self-sufficient garden nothing is wasted: those surplus lettuces will make good mulch. Don’t try and eat zucchini with every meal: throw them in the compost instead. Apples start to crop well now – that is, the ones like Jonnies and Delicious that will store a few months, unlike the early apples that must be eaten straight from the tree or they taste floury.
Pomegranate seeds will still be soft enough for pomegranate salad – you crunch the seed, sweet jelly and all. Add to other salad greens like lettuce or chopped parsley.
Fruit: Brambleberries, raspberries, peaches, nectarines, plums, apricots, apples, passionfruit, Kei apples, monstera deliciosa, Capulin cherry, natal plum, Brazilian cherry, fig, blueberries, Jakfruit, jaboticoba, guava, pepino, lychee, nashi, gooseberries, Cape gooseberries, hazelnuts, almonds, grapes, figs, babaco, pepino, pawpaw or mountain pawpaw in warm areas, orange, lemon, avocado, strawberry guavas, strawberries, early pears, early melons, tamarillos, and banana passionfruit.
Other jobs: Plant out strawberry runners. This is a good time for summer pruning, especially vines like kiwi fruit now the fruit has set. (Summer pruning’s other name is ‘hacking back the jungle’.) Cutting back unwanted growth now will check plants far less than a rigorous pruning in winter, and cuts will heal quicker. If you must prune apricots or cherries, do so now.
Pests: At the first sign of powdery or downy mildew, pull off the infected leaves and compost or burn them. Make sure the soil is well mulched to stop contact between vines and damp soil – and any leaf residues in the soil. Spray with milk. Spray under the leaves as well, and on top of the mulch where spores may linger.
Have another crop coming on elsewhere in the garden too: younger, strongly growing plants will be less stricken, and you’ll extend your cropping even if you don’t spray.
How to Make Your Garden Bigger
Most gardens still follow the ideal of the great aristocratic gardens – lots of grass to show that you can afford to have a lawn instead of grazing sheep. Once you look at your garden again you’ll find many areas where you can double or even treble the amount of growing things.
If you want a ‘self-sufficient’ garden you need to work out different ways of using space. I’m not advocating you dig up your roses or plant crops in the kids’ sandpit. But nearly every garden has large areas that aren’t used: the shady bit along the side, the awkward corner of the lawn where no-one plays, unused ground below the trees, even the strips of lawn beneath the clothes line or up the drive. Use them!
Plant Your Fences (and lattice up the house and shed walls too).
Most fences don’t grow anything. I hate naked fences. They look better green.
Try:
• Perennial climbing beans – they’ll come up every year and give you thick, wide beans you can eat young and tender or keep for ‘dried’ beans. They’ll also cover your fence with greenery and bright red flowers.
. Chilacayote melons- perennial melons that fruit in autumn. Eat the tiny day-old fruit like zucchini, the massive hard-shelled melons in stir-fries or fruit salad. The fruit doesn’t taste of anything, but the texture is hard and superb and will take on the flavour of anything it’s cooked with. A good chilacayote will climb a 60-metre tree. Beware of falling fruit – it can squash you, the kids and the car. Vines die down in frost, wither in drought, but come back again.
• Chokos – eat the shoots as well as the fruit. Thumbnail sized fruit is eaten whole – and is far more delicious than the big coarse ones you buy.
• Hops – hops die down in winter and ramble all over the place in summer. Eat the young shoots in early spring, make beer from the flowers, or use them to stuff hop pillows. Warning: the pollen make you seriously euphoric.
• Plant passionfruit vines in frost-free places, granadilla in hot climates, banana passionfruit in cold areas.
• Loganberries, marionberries, boysenberries and other climbing berries can be trained up wire stapled to the fence.
• Grapes – there are hundreds of grape varieties in Australia, suitable for any area from snowy winters to tropical summers. Eat the young leaves in salads or stir-fried; make stuffed vine leaves from the older ones.
• Plant flowering climbers like clematis, wonga vine, perennial sweet peas, bougainvillea, jasmine, or rambling roses to attract birds, predaceous insects, and for pleasure.
• Edible Chinese convolvulus.
• Sweet potatoes or peanuts, for temperate areas only.
• Or use your fence to stake up tomatoes, peas, or broad beans.
Privacy Hedges
Hedge tall trees like avocadoes, pine nuts, pears, loquats along boundaries to give you privacy and cut down noise and pollution drift. Thin out the lower braches as needed. All these trees can be (sometimes must be) trimmed back so they are tall and narrow, not tall and wide, so they don’t take up so much space and cast too much shadow.
Don’t be afraid to prune trees drastically to fit your needs! Just don’t cut back into ‘bare wood’ where no leaves grow, or the branch may die back, encouraging wood rots. Always either cut back hard neatly to the trunk, and paint with fungicide paint, or trim braches back lightly and often.
House walls
This is one of the most valuable and wasted areas of your garden. Brick or stone house walls store a lot of heat. Use them as a micro-climate to grow fruit that may not survive in the open garden. Walled gardens are good too. We grow passionfruit on a pergola next to the walls here, bananas near the walls, perennial chillies among the rocks, and sweet potatoes, cardamom, and other frost-tender plants in a garden below them.
Espalier dwarf trees against the house walls
These act as extra insulation. Avoid in bushfire-prone areas – they can catch embers. Only grow dwarf trees near houses, as big roots can invade pipes or disturb foundations. Look for dwarf apples, cherries, almonds, mulberry, pears, peaches or nectarines.
Dwarf trees can also make attractive hedges at the front of the house.
Pergolas
Pergolas keep the house cool in summer, and like anything that grows plants UP instead of ACROSS, give you more growing space. Look for deciduous bearers like grapes, kiwi fruit, perennial peas, chokos or hops. Consider granadilla or pepper in hot areas.
Lawns
Lawns are usually the sunniest spot in the garden. Turn them into vegies and ‘small fruit’.
Under the clothes line
This is a low-use area, trodden on only when you hang out or bring in the washing. Surround the base of your clothes line with a couple of rosemary bushes or lavender (it will make the clothes smell all the sweeter), and pave underneath it, leaving lots of spaces for herbs like marjoram, oregano, chamomile and mints that don’t mind being trodden on.
Shady areas
Many young subtropical trees grow well in semi-shade, heading upwards to find the light. Other plants grow naturally in shade.
The hotter the climate, the more shade your veg will tolerate. In hot summers you may find all your veg do well in dappled shade.
Experiment! The only way to find out what plants will grow in your shade is to try. If I’d never ignored the text books we wouldn’t have avocadoes and bananas ripening here, or tropical lillypillies, or potted cinnamon in the living room.
Heavy shade: Tamarillo, cape gooseberry, tea camellias.
Dappled shade: Avocado, native ginger, oranges, lychees, mango, custard apple, Davidson plum, rabbit ear or cos lettuce in summer, sorrel, ginseng (moist humus rich areas only), cinnamon and allspice
Growing upwards
Even in a very small garden you can ‘borrow’ space by growing upwards. Put up trellises and grow vegetables vertically instead of horizontally. Wherever possible I grow climbing varieties. They take up less room, and you only need to weed the small area at the base of the trellis. We grow climbing tomatoes, beans and peas as well as the standard cucumbers and melons.
Consider window boxes. Stick poles in the middle of the garden, for grapevines or chokos or passionfruit to wander up. They don’t have to be spread out: a ten-foot pole gives a lot of grapes and takes almost no room. You can also grow passionfruit or grapevines through your trees.
Make terraces for flowers, vegetables and small fruit like gooseberries and raspberries. Terraces give you much more planting space than flat ground. You can make terraces with railway sleepers or bricks or rocks, or even old tyres scavenged from the local garage. Build them as high as you can be bothered: the more tiers the more space.
String up hanging baskets from your eaves. If you hang them at different heights you may fit in 50-60 in a small area. Add drip irrigation (rain may not reach them) and make them BIG so they dry out more slowly and plants have more growing room. Hanging baskets next to the warmth of the house can grow frost sensitive sweet potatoes in cold areas; deep-rooted parsley in wet humid areas, or just masses of sprawling cherry tomatoes or bush pumpkins. But don’t ever say you have no more room if you still have wall space…
Useful and Beautiful
Useful plants can be beautiful… and beautiful plants can be useful.
Useful ornamentals: lavender, pyrethrum daisies, aloe vera, rugosa roses for fat heps, fragrant roses for perfume and rose petal tarts, calendulas, nasturtiums, hibiscus, fuchsia and elderflower.
Beautiful edibles: Saffron crocus, yellow marjoram, beds of flowering oregano, red-leafed or purple or frilly basil, red amaranth, hedges of flowering garlic chives, frothy parsley, bronze fennel, scented leaf pelargoniums, orris root iris, artichokes, the red berries of gone-to-seed asparagus, red-stemmed rhubarb.
Stunning but Useful Shrubs: Tea camellia, lemon verbena, lime verbena, red-fruited tamarillo, elderflower, purple-leafed elderflower, dwarf quince, juniper (need male and female for pollination and juniper berries), monstera deliciosa, perennial chilli, perennial bell peppers.
The Most Glorious Food Trees: Sugar maples, tea jasmine, crab apples, Himalayan pears (use the fruit for jelly), pomegranate (stunning flowers, fruit and autumn leaves), hedges of cumquat or ever-fruiting hardy calamondins, walking stick palm (edible berries), edible-seeded wattles, lillypillies – we have 13 species fruiting here, quondong, kurrajong, gingko, carob, persimmon – stunning leaves and hanging fruit and perfectly shaped trees, bay tree, Brazilian cherry – gorgeous bark and magenta leaves in autumn.
Three-tier planting
What I’ve described above is a classic peasant garden. Peasant gardens are ‘three-tier’ gardens: a framework of trees with small bushes and low crops between them. The third tier consists of animals: chooks, ducks, rabbits, guinea pigs, geese, and guinea fowl.
Re-think all unused space. Plant the drive with strawberries: you’ll squash a few berries sometimes, but that’s better than no harvest at all. Plant out the nature strip (preferably with plants that passers-by won’t recognise as edible and pinch): tea camellias, loquats, medlars, pomegranates, japonica (make jam or stewed fruit), Irish strawberries, guavas, hibiscus, kurrajong, elderberries, white mulberries.
Even a small backyard should be able to grow some forty trees, thousands of strawberry plants, several dozen berry bushes, climbing berries and a good number of fruiting shrubs.
Self-sufficient gardens are beautiful: a ramble of productivity, a profusion of smells and colour. We’ve forgotten how beautiful edible plants can be: fat, red apples and tendrils of grapes, bountiful chokos and soft feathery fennel, the wide, bright blooms of passionfruit, the scent of orange blossom on a summer night. It’s like a Garden of Eden in your own backyard.
A Few Recipes
Fabia’s Biscuits
A gluten-free and totally delicious biscuit that is far better for you than most packaged cereal, using protein- and calcium-rich raw ground almonds instead of flour
Until a couple of hundred years ago ground nuts were used to make many biscuits and cakes, as well as to thicken sauces. But as wheat flour became cheaper, and societies affluent enough to buy products from far away instead of using the nuts from their back gardens, ground nut recipes gave way to flour ones.
Which is a pity. Even if you aren’t gluten intolerant, ground nuts add richness without butter or other cholesterol-rich fats, and moisture too.
This is a new recipe, made to welcome Fabia and her friends down last week for their dyeing workshop. It’s crisp and crunchy, but slightly chewy inside too, with just the best hint of chocolate.
Note: Can't give exact measurements as egg whites vary in size, even when the eggs are the same size.
2 egg whites
2 tbsps caster sugar
8 tbsps ground almonds or more if the mixture seems sloppy
8 tbsps very finely chopped dried pineapple and dried cherries or cranberries
2 level tbsps grated dark chocolate – I use a sugar-free 80% cooking chocolate, too bitter to eat by itself.
Preheat oven to 200º C.
Line 2 baking trays with baking paper.
Beat egg whites till stiff. Beat in sugar till it dissolves.
Gently mix in other ingredients.
Scoop out teaspoonsful onto the two days, a few cms apart – these don't spread much.
Cook for about 6-10 minutes or till pale brown on top.
Take out. They will turn crisp on top and bottom as they cool but stay just slightly chewy inside.
Chutneys and pickles
A good store cupboard of chutneys or sauces means quick savoury meals.
I boil green beans, carrots, thin wedges of zucchini etc with a splodge of good chutney: a five second stunner.
Add chutney or kasundi just before rice is cooked for an instant savoury rice.
Put a splodge of chilli jam or chutney next to steamed veg. Take a bit of each as you eat them.
Marinate meat in chutney and yoghurt before barbecueing or baking.
Add a tbsp of chutney to stir-fried veg about thirty seconds before you toss them onto the plates.
Recipes:
A Non-traditional Tomato Kasundi
1/2 cup vegetable oil... I use olive oil as any flavour is swamped
3 red onions, chopped
10 cloves garlic, chopped
2 tbsps ground turmeric or 1 tbsp grated fresh turmeric
1 tbsp cumin seeds or ground cumin
1 tbsp grated fresh ginger or powdered if you must
1-5 chopped chillies (wear gloves) seeds removed. Warning: this year's chillies are hotter than normal.
½ cup brown sugar
2 cups peeled and seeded fresh tomatoes or canned chopped tomatoes, or just throw in about 3 cups of whole fresh tomatoes and be prepared to pick out shreds of skin
Optional: 4 small chopped eggplants
Optional: 1 tbsp coriander seed
Optional: 1 tbsp black mustard seeds
Optional: 1 teaspoon salt (helps keep colour and flavour and lasts longer)
1 cup red wine vinegar
Cook onion in the oil till soft on a low heat. Add garlic and spices and cook for three minutes so the spices release their flavour.
Add everything else. Simmer on a very low heat till thick and shiny and going blop! blop! blop! This will take about an hour, perhaps two.
Spoon into very clean jars; seal at once while hot.
Leave for three weeks in a cool dark place before eating, to lose the fresh vinegar harshness and so flavours meld.
Keep in the fridge once opened.
Throw out if it ferments or mould develops.
A good kasundi stored well should last for months.
Pumpkin chutney
This is very good. Don't let the blandness of mashed pumpkin put you off. The longer you leave it, the better it gets.
1 kg pumpkin
500 g tomatoes
500 g chopped onions
700 g brown sugar
2 teaspoons each of black peppercorns, whole allspice and ground ginger
6 cloves chopped garlic
1 litre red wine vinegar
Slice the pumpkin in thin neat pieces. Skin the tomatoes (leave them in boiling water for a few seconds, and the skin will come off easily). Add all the ingredients together and simmer – don't boil – until thick. Stir often, as this chutney sticks easily. Bottle while hot.
Keep in the fridge once opened.
Throw out if it ferments or mould develops.
Spiced cherries, to eat like olives
1 kg cherries
1 kg sugar
half a litre of vinegar
3 cloves
Place the cherries in jars. Boil the rest of the ingredients together for 20 minutes. Pour it over the cherries and seal the jars at once. Leave them for 6 weeks before you eat them..
This recipe is good with either blood-red cherries, yellow cherries, or sour Morello cherries – but the taste differs of course depending on the cherries used. I find the small Morello cherries the best.
Keep in the fridge once opened.
Throw out if it ferments or mould develops.
Pickled Choko
Pick tiny choko the size of your fingernail. Pickle like the cherries above.
Pickled crab apples
2 kg crab apples
7 cups white or cider vinegar
7 cups brown sugar or clear honey
1 tablespoon cloves
1 tablespoon cinnamon
Leave the stalks on the crab apples. Prick each one a few times with a fork. Boil the other ingredients for ten minutes. Add a few crab apples at a time, and boil till tender. Take them out, place them in a bottle and add more to the syrup until all are cooked. Boil the remaining syrup for five minutes and pour it over the fruit. Seal at once.
The apples should be left like this for at least three months. Eat them instead of olives or add them puréed to whipped cream for a crab apple fool.
Red food-colouring improves the appearance of pickled crab apples; add a few drops if you like red food colouring.
Keep in the fridge once opened.
Throw out if it ferments or mould develops.
Plum Sauce
3 kg plums, preferably dark red
2 kg raw sugar
1 teaspoon whole black peppers
4 cups vinegar
10 cloves garlic
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 chopped onion
Boil all the ingredients until the stones separate from the plums. Bottle and seal.
Keep in the frig once opened.
Throw out if it ferments or mould develops.
Kiwi Fruit Chutney
2 kg peeled chopped kiwi fruit
6 cloves garlic, chopped
350 gms sugar
300 ml white wine vinegar
1 tsp finely chopped fresh ginger
1 small chilli, chopped
2 teaspoons allspice
Simmer till thick; stir well and often. Bottle in sterilised containers. Good with curry.
Keep in the fridge once opened.
Throw out if it ferments or mould develops.
Tomato Sauce
6 kilos tomatoes
1 litre white vinegar
1 kilo chopped onions, sautéed till soft in a little oil
150 grams sugar
10 cloves chopped garlic
1 teaspoon ground ginger
pepper and salt to taste
Boil for two hours, strain through a sieve. Bottle. A little melted clarified butter or lard (the traditional sealer) or olive oil on top before sealing will help it to keep longer and keep the colour brighter.
Keep in the fridge once opened.
Throw out if it ferments or mould develops.
Sweet and Sour Zucchini Pickles
2 kg zucchini, sliced
6 cups white vinegar
1 cup sugar
1 small red chilli
2 tbsps yellow mustard seeds
2 tbsps black mustard seeds
1 tbsp black peppercorns
1 tsp turmeric
1 very large or two medium onions, chopped
6 cloves garlic, chopped
3 whole cloves
Keep in the fridge once opened.
Throw out if it ferments or mould develops.
Boil everything except zucchini for five minutes, add the zucchini, boil for one minute and bottle at once.
Seal and keep in a cool place; eat after three days but better after a week or two; throw out of they look or smell odd or cloudy; keep the jar in the fridge when opened.
NB Make sure the zucchini are quite covered at all times in the jar by the sweet vinegar mixture.
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