September 2005 . . .
Intro
Wombat News
Awards
Book News
September in the Garden
How to Grow Spuds
Recipes: Genuine (and almost pretty good for you) Turkish Delight
Potato Cakes
Potatoes with Peanut Sauce
Vaguely Asian Potato Salad
Interesting day so far ... have just got in from my usual morning walk, down through the orchards then up the mountain to Mary's Pinch. (Not sure who Mary was- Edward thinks she must have been a bushranger, but I suspect her buggy just overturned there- it's a pretty awesome hairpin turn.)
Anyhow, ... I was just opening the gate past the avocado trees when I noticed my hand felt cold and wet.
I looked down. Bright red blood dripping off my palm, small ridges of torn flesh. My first response was 'Oh heck, what have I done now?' The second was 'Why isn't this hurting?²
I wiped off the blood and the other, er, stuff...and there was no cut at all on my hand. I looked down at the gate. The top was dripping with blood, still all bright red and runny. Either we'd been visited by an axe murderer with a passion for gates, or the powerful owl had just had breakfast.
On closer inspection there were bird prints in the blood all along the gate. The owl must have picked itself a possum (possibly the one who's been leaving long loose bright orange droppings- it's been guzzling too many cumquats. Wonder how a cumquat fed possum tastes?) Anyhow the owl had perched on the gate while it ripped up its breakfast.
An hour later when I got back from the walk the blood was dried and blackish red- I must have just missed the owl feasting. I'm glad I didn't interrupt the meal - not so much because I might have given the owl indigestion but because if it had flown off there'd have been a half dismembered possum to deal with.
Powerful owls are Australia's biggest, with an almost unbelievably big wing span when you see them soar past you in the night. They keep the possums in check here and are probably one of the reasons we never see rabbits either, even though rabbits can be a plague nearby. They'll be starting to nest now (the owls, not the rabbits) - I did find a nest up a gully a few years ago, but not since then. They're wonderful birds, even if you do feel a bit edgy between the collar bones when they gaze at you, wondering if by any chance you could be transformed into owl size portions.
It's definitely spring here, with a vengeance. Not just the nesting owls but hundreds of others chirping and carrying bits of dry grass six times as long as they are for their nests or hunting spider's webs along the eves- there's not a single web left along our windows- outdoors, anyway. And bower birds stealing the soap again for their bowers (must be heartbreaking when it melts in the rain) or carrying off daffodils in their beaks- I've given up trying to grow blue flowers like pansies or even pinkish blue ones like anemones- they all get snatched by the bower birds before we get a chance to enjoy them
And Mothball is once again expanding her hole and Bryan is moving large rocks and barrow loads of dirt again for another garden bed, possibly motivated by exactly the same instinct, and I'm planting about 20 times too much, inspired by the first winter in four years when we've had some rain. 'Some' rain by the way is still about a sixth of the normal rainfall. But the creek is flowing and the birds are singing and so am I, and for the moment the valley is green and glorious.
Wombat News
The wombat by the gate is now officially known as Bomber the Wombat (with thanks to Bolinda PS for the name). Bomber suits him- he crashes through the blackberries like he has two small jet engines under both front feet. And Mothball either didn't have a baby in her pouch or has tossed it out early again; anyhow she is mooching around the front door by late afternoon here every day, and there's no sign of a baby.
Award news
Calloo Callay and To the Moon and Back won the 2005 CBC Eve Pownall Award for Information books! Bryan is totally thrilled an so am I. (To the Moon and Back is the story of Honeysuckle Creek and the Apollo missions to the moon. Bryan worked there all the way through, including that day when Neil Armstrong was the first human to step onto the moon surface, and the day Apollo 13 exploded.
And Gladysdale Primary School has awarded Diary of a Wombat their GABBA (Gladysville Australia Best Book Awards) Best Picture Story Book Award!!! And many many thanks to everyone at Gladysville and Liz Burke too. (Also from Mothball!) Which leaves Pete the Sheep and Hitler's Daughter short listed for the Koala awards later this year, and again, enormous thanks to every who votes for them!
Book News
The Secret World of Wombats has just been reprinted again, if anyone wasn't able to find a copy in the shops - it was racing out the door pretty fast there for a while. Secret World has Bruce Whately's glorious pics (including a wicked one of a wombat on the toilet) and tells you everything you didn't realise you wanted to know about wombats: why they bite each others bums, how they understand the world by how it smells, can wombats really count to six and use a lever ...
Phredde and the Haunted Underpants is out next month. It's the eighth and final in the Phredde series - find out what finally happens to Pru and Bruce (and Phredde too)! But they'll appear now and then in the new series starting this time next year- Boojum Snark and the School for Heroes.
And the latest other books are still They came in Viking Ships- an historical adventure and romance- and My Uncle Wal the Werewolf which is the latest- and maybe the funniest- of the Wacky Families, with Stephen Michael King's glorious illustrations. (He is just wicked with werewolves.) He's working on my Gran the Gorilla at the moment, due out next January (and you thought YOUR Gran had hairy legs!)
Garden News
This is the best time of year in the garden - trees bare and wintry in the morning then blossom out by lunch time, the air so thick with scent you could almost float on it, leaves bright green and silver ... not to mention perhaps the best eating time of the year ( apart from the first of the corn tomatoes and basil season) - navel oranges so good I've out on 2 kilos (and that is pure orange, I've been gutsing them) blood oranges mandarins, the best avocados I think I've ever eaten - incredibly rich and creamy this year, so rich you can only eat a few slices; cumquats, calamondins, late pears and Sturmer Pippin apples, a few tamarilloes and the first of the asparagus, limes lemons, our first really good macadamia harvest (has only taken 15 years) chilacayote melons chokos early wild strawberries cumquats calamondins grapefruit and I'm sure I've missed a few. Can't believe we'll ever get sick of eating asparagus. But it will happen.
ps One of the great joys of living where you work is that you get to spend most of your life surrounded the things you like.... gardens that smell good, flowers around you all the time, and the sound of birds. Just about everywhere else I go now seems impoverished compared to home. I'd hate to think how much of the casual richness of my life would be destroyed if I had to live my working life in an office.
Actually houses are the same ... if you know you're going to live in them for the rest of your life, not to mention work in them, you make them what you want, instead of living forever with second best. The standard 'built in bulk' house wouldn't fit us at all...we need somewhere to have long breakfasts and watch the lyrebirds ripping up the asparagus bed, and a computer workspace that is almost part of the garden...most houses are designed for people who leave them at 8am and come back at 7 pm then spend the weekend mowing the lawn, watching tv and shopping.
What to Plant in September
Frost free climates
Food garden : choko, lemon grass, sweet potato and passionfruit vines, Jerusalem artichokes, paw paw and Cape gooseberry seeds, also seeds of artichokes, asparagus, LOTS of basil (Try Thai basil and sacred basil too) beans, beetroot, capsicum, carrots, cauliflower, celery, celtuce, chicory, cucumbers, eggplant, endive, fennel, lettuce, melons, okra, parsley, peas, peanuts, pumpkin, radish, rosellas, salsify, scorzonera, sweet corn, tomatoes, turnips, salad greens like mizuna, mitsuba, spinach.
PS. Don't forget rosella seeds – they make the world's best jam and are almost impossible to buy
Plants for beauty
Seeds or seedlings of ageratum, alyssum, amaranthus, carnations, celosia, coleus, cosmos, dichondra, echinops, erigeron, gaillardia, gazania, gloxinia, gourds, hymenosporum, impatiens, nasturtiums, phlox, salvia.
Very hot and dry gardens
move a shade cloth to cover veggie and flower gardens now to shelter them from the worst of the heat, pull out tired plants that grew all winter, mulch and water twice a day if you have the energy. Concentrate on a few small bright patches of flowers rather than struggle with large areas.
Temperate
Food garden: citrus, avocado, guava and banana trees, seed potatoes, sweet potatoes, choko, strawberries. Plant seeds of artichokes, asparagus, LOTS of basil, beans, beetroot, broccoli, Brussel sprouts, burdock, cabbage, capsicum, carrots, cauliflower, celery, celtuce, chicory, collards, coriander, corn salad, cress, cucumbers, eggplant, endive, fennel, kale, kohl rabi, leeks, lettuce, melons, okra, parsley, peanuts , pumpkin, radish, rosellas, salsify. scorzonera, sweet corn, tomatoes, turnips, salad greens like mizuna, mitsuba, zucchini.
Cold
Food garden: Jerusalem artichokes, rhubarb, strawberries, go wild with spuds – red ones, blue ones, yellow fleshed ones – fresh spuds taste as good as fresh tomatoes. Plant seedlings of artichokes, asparagus, beans, beetroot, broccoli, Brussel sprouts, burdock, cabbage, capsicum, carrots, cauliflower, celery, celtuce, chicory, collards, corn salad, cress, cucumbers, eggplant, endive, fennel, kale, kohl rabi, leeks, lettuce, parsley, peas, , pumpkin, radish, salsify, scorzonera, spinach, sweet corn, tomatoes, turnips, salad greens like mizuna, mitsuba.
Flower garden (temperate and cold)
achillea, ageratum. alstromeria, alyssum amaranthus, aster, balsam bellis perennis, bells of Ireland, brachycome, calendula, candytuft, Canterbury bells, carnation, celosia, Clarkia, cleome, coleus, coreopsis, columbines, cosmos, delphinium, dichondra, echinacea, echinops, erigeron, euphorbia, foxglove, gaillardia, gazania, globe amaranth, gloxinia, godetia, gypsophila, helichrysum, heliotrope, hellebores, honesty, lavender, marigolds, nasturtium, petunia, phlox, Flanders poppy, portulaca, rudbeckia, salpiglossus, salvia, scabious, sweet William, viola, zinnia, snapdragons.
How to grow Potatoes
Spuds are easy to grow, quick to harvest - and you get kilos in a very small space. Why on earth then don't more people grow their own?
Partly I suspect it's because spuds are cheap - or cheapish. It's all too easy to grab a plastic bag of (soft, mushy, greening) spuds - then have them rot away in a dark cupboard as their shoots get longer and longer and their texture even worse
Bad spuds are a waste of money. You may as well eat rice or pasta (which many people do nowadays - spud consumption is declining every year.)
A good home grown spud on the other hand will save you money. It'll be so good you savour it - and eat less meat and other expensive items - and base your menu round your home grown spuds instead.
I love potatoes - baked in the oven, with grated cheese and beetroot and sour cream or bits of bacon or baby spuds boiled in their skins with mayonnaise and chopped apples or chopped with seafood for a hot seafood 'salad'. My grandma's spuds roasted and crisp and so good we only needed one slice of meat to go with our baked potatoes (and baked pumpkin and greens as well). The possibilities of spuds are endless. But you do need good ones - otherwise you're condemned to grainy mash.
How to Grow a Potato
You get potatoes by planting another potato - a seed potato - or a piece of potato with an 'eye' and letting it grow into a potato bush. The potatoes grow underneath - lovely fat tubers on the roots. Forget about the old laborious dig and dig again methods of growing spuds. There are much easier ways of doing it.
Spuds are warm season crops - as opposed to cold or hot. Spuds are frost sensitive - they survive light frosts but severe frosts will kill them. They also don't like wet and humid weather.
In hot areas avoid growing spuds in the wet season - though with above ground beds and a lot of acres you can grow them all year round.
In cool/temperate areas plant your spuds any time from the beginning of August onwards - or even earlier as long as the ground doesn't freeze to spud depth. (Frozen spuds will rot). They won't start to shoot though till the weather warms up. Alternatively wait till spring, when your winter spuds are shooting in the cupboard and plant them. Don't plant any that look rotten, or that have very long shoots that will either die when exposed to hot sunlight, or may be a symptom of virus disease.
Always plant spuds deep enough so that the soil won't wash away and partially uncover them when you water or if you get an unexpected deluge. In very hot dry areas spuds can be planted about 30 cm deep (this shelters them from the extremes) but in more temperate areas measure your spud, then put about that depth of soil on top of it.
You can either plant whole small potatoes, or cut potatoes into pieces, each with an 'eye' or a shoot. Whole potatoes give the plant a better start and probably give you a bigger crop.
Potato peelings will sometimes sprout in the compost. Transplant them - or let them fill the compost with new tubers.
How to plant a spud
Conventional potato growing
Dig your ground well and deeply. Spread either hen manure or blood and bone - spuds need a fair amount of phosphorus but not too much nitrogen or you'll get all leaf and no spud. Plant the potatoes about a hand span deep. As they start to grow 'hill' them so that the stem is covered by soil. You'll get a larger crop this way, as more roots will form from the stem - and the more root, the more potatoes. It also helps stop potato moth from burrowing down.
You can also mulch potatoes with leaves or lucerne hay or well dried lawn clippings etc instead of soil. This gives better results.
Potatoes in old tyres
This is my favourite method. Pile one tyre on top of another then pile up more next to that, so you have a bed two deep. Throw a little mulch or compost into the tyres, throw in your spuds, throw in more hay, compost, wilted weeds etc. Then wait. As the green shoots poke up throw in more weeds or hay, so that only the top leaves ever show.
When the plants die down just lift the tyres and kick the mulch apart to find your potatoes. Or just wriggle your hand in and pull out what you need and let the rest regrow.
I find this an excellent method - the black absorbs heat and the potatoes grow even in cool weather, sometimes through most of winter. It does need more watering, though, in dry times.
Comfrey trench
Dig a long trench about 100 cms deep. Line it with comfrey, at least six leaves deep. Throw down your seed potatoes, cover with a little soil. As they grow keep adding soil to the trench, so only the top leaves show. When the top of the trench is reached keep mulching with wilted comfrey leaves - or any good mulch.
This trench method can of course be used without the comfrey, which just adds fertilizer. Sprinkle on soil instead. In this case give the crop a sprinkle of blood and bone or old hen manure a fortnight after the shoots have emerged. The trench method simply replaces 'hilling' - you do the hard work before planting instead of after.
Above ground potatoes
Use the method above, but omit the tyres. Throw the seed potatoes onto the ground - use a patch of lawn or weeds - then pile on hay and keep the leaves almost covered as they grow. This method means you don't have the trouble of digging - or of finding old tyres - but it gives a much smaller crop than the above two methods in dry or hot years.
At the end of the potato season you'll have a rich, soft, fairly weed free garden bed to plant your broad beans or other winter crops where there was grass or weeds before.
Potatoes in a pot
This is suitable for a doorstep or balcony. Put a couple of holes in an old bucket - or use an old fruit box. Throw in some potting mix then the seed potatoes, cover with mulch or more potting mix. Keep the potatoes covered as they grow in the way described above. When the top dies down up-end your bucket or box - it should be mostly full of potatoes.
All of these 'above ground' methods depend on good quality mulch to feed the crop. Lucerne hay is best or compost or wilted comfrey; lawn clippings can be used but they should be well wilted or they'll heat up. Wilted weeds are good too, as long as they are not too 'woody' - if they are they'll lack nutrients - add a sprinkle of blood and bone every two weeks to help them break down and keep the spuds growing well.
Potatoes in a pile of weeds
Most gardens have a pile of rotting weeds - sometimes called compost heaps, though they aren't. Compost heaps break down quickly. Try poking seed potatoes into the bottom of the pile. They'll sprout - and the added warmth of decomposing weeds will help their growth. Fish out the tubers when the tops die off.
Potatoes in the grass
Dig a hole just big enough for the potato. Cover it. Surround the hole with newspaper, throw mulch on top. Keep the plant mulched to the top leaves as it grows.
Feeding your spuds, so they can feed you
Potatoes can be fed by:
. a green manure crop (this is a nitrogen fixing crop like peas or beans that is slashed as soon as it flowers, so the nitrogen returns to the soil), either before the potato crop or grown between the rows and slashed as it grows for instant mulch.
. mulch.
. adding fertilisers while the plants are growing.
The first probably gives the best results unless you are using a no dig method. Nitrogen fixing green manure makes the best fertiliser. Peas, beans, broad beans or lupins should be planted the autumn before and slashed in late winter just as they start to flower, then dusted with old hen manure or blood and bone or any of the quick fix fertiliser (as a last resort) to help decomposition.
Potatoes grow best with plenty of decomposed organic matter in the soil, but as potatoes don't start growing and taking up nutrients for some weeks there is time for the green manure to break down and some of its nutrients to become available for the start of the crop. On the other hand potatoes take up nutrients fastest in their early growing stages and may need some liquid manure 'starter' to get the best results while you are waiting for the green manure to break down.
Never dig in undecomposed organic matter while the potatoes are growing or for several months before hand. It can cause the potatoes to rot or become diseased. Always leave it on top of the soil to decompose naturally.
Green manuring can be combined with above ground growing methods. Slash down your crop of, say, peas, place the potatoes on top of the slash and cover with old stable tailings, compost or even straw liberally watered with home made liquid manure. Water again with liquid manure every week till the potatoes start to flower.
Potatoes need slightly acid soil - they are more prone to scab and other diseases in alkaline soils. The vigorous growth in acid soil also means they are slightly less prone to various viruses. If eelworm are a problem try rye, wheat and oats and eelworm resistant green manure crops. Potatoes are far less susceptible to potato scab if they are fed with compost.
ALWAYS mulch well - potato stalks grow more roots if they are covered - and the more roots the more spuds and the better the plant is able to feed itself. Lucerne hay and seaweed are excellent potato mulches, but any of the high nitrogen mulches are good. With some early extra feeding potatoes can get all the rest of the feeding they need from mulch.
If you aren't using mulch, hill the potatoes with soil and give a good sprinkle of blood and bone or old hen manure at planting, and again every three weeks till after flowering.
Potatoes grown in highly nitrogen rich soil are watery, often grainy and don't store well. Potatoes need adequate potash for a good long keeping mealy potato.
Never dig in manure or green manure around potatoes - this will make them more prone to potato scab and rotting. Never fertilise with fresh manure. This will also encourage scab.
Which variety to grow
Perhaps a thousand varieties of potato have been grown at some time or other - black potatoes, blue potatoes, knobbly or egg shaped, far removed from the neat white fleshed smooth brown or pink skinned ones we're familiar with. Over four hundred potato varieties are still grown by specialist growers. Unfortunately only a few of these are grown commercially, and those are the ones that travel best, store best, are highly coloured like Pontiacs or are nice and long for commercial chip making.
Even fifty years ago there were dozens of commercial varieties in Australia, some like Brown's River, a purple skinned variety grown mostly in Tasmania, or the Vicar of Laleham, in Victoria, or Duchess of Buccleuch, Early Puritan, General Kitchener, Royal Kidney and other names now disappeared. Each district grew potatoes that were suited to it, each cook chose them according to the season and the purpose for which they were to be used. Potatoes have become standardised - and not for the better.
If you can get hold of rare varieties, try them. There's as much variation in potatoes as there is in apples - but who can tell when they're mashed to a pulp with milk and butter.
New potatoes are just small potatoes, picked before the plants die off. Unless specified they can be any variety at all.
Common Shop Varieties
Coliban
Very white fleshed; a good chipper; not so good for salads unless baked.
Desirée
These are pink skinned, with a pale yellow flesh. They are originally from Holland. They don't mash well, but boil or steam wonderfully, though a lot of the colour fades from the skin. They make excellent salads, either as new potatoes or as old ones.
King Edward.
A large white potato, best for baking. King Edwards disintegrate when boiled, so don't. If you must use them for a salad, bake them instead - though they are a bit too grainy for best results.
Brownell
A red skinned Tasmanian variety.
Pontiac
The main pink skinned potato grown. Beware though - some are artificially coloured to get better prices. Pontiacs boil and steam well, and are excellent for salads.
Sebago
One of the main types grown. I find commercial ones make an awful salad - too soft and grainy. Home grown ones are firmer and good. They are best used reasonably fresh.
Potato Seed
'Seed potatoes' are small, disease free potatoes. True 'potato seed', picked after the potato flowers have set, may not be viable and ,if it does grow, will take two years to produce good sized spuds. Potato seed is fun to play around with though - you may find that cross pollination gives you a new variety.
It is illegal to plant potatoes that have sprouted in your cupboard - you should use registered disease-free seed to prevent disease spreading - usually via aphids that can travel long distances. In reality this law is frequently broken and is impossible to police. Don't grow non-certified ones in a potato growing area - you may spread disease - aphids can carry potato virus for many kilometres. Never use potatoes that may have come from diseased plants; don't use them either if the shoots are long and thin - this is a symptom of a virus infection.
Choosing your seed potato from the supermarket, however, gives you access to gourmet varieties, most of which aren't sold in garden centres as seed potatoes and have to be ordered in bulk if you want them - and even then are hard to get hold of. Look for waxy yellow potatoes, or white fleshed perfect baking Colibans, pink Desirées, red Pontiacs or even blue-fleshed Peruvian potatoes - look weird, taste great. Go potato hunting. It's worth it once you taste your own.
If you want to grow a new potato variety, you can try growing the true seed. Pick the fruit when it is ripe, about 6 - 8 weeks from 'setting' , squeeze the seed out of the fruit into a bowl and cover with water, leave for a week to ferment, then wash the seeds clean. Keep them in an old envelope till next spring.
Even if you have only one sort of potato growing, you may find considerable variation in the potatoes produced. Save the best and keep growing them - or grow several varieties and see what crosses you produce.
Have fun.
Harvesting potatoes
Harvest potatoes when all the potato vegetation has died down. Put them in hessian bags or wooden boxes covered in newspaper straight away. Potatoes turn green very fast when first dug and exposed to sunlight. Green potatoes are poisonous.
Potato bandicooting
We have a wild patch of potatoes - it keeps growing, as we never entirely harvest the crop. I just wriggle my hand down and pull out what we need. Any weeds in that part of the garden, old corn stalks, prunings etc are tossed onto the potatoes - the only mulch and feeding they get.
They've been feeding us for ten years.
Note: This doesn't work where lots of people are growing potatoes and aphids may spread disease from one crop to another. In this case you need to buy in fresh seed potatoes every year and plant in a different part of the garden.
Potatoes for storage
Potatoes for storage should be harvested when the tops wither. The skins are tougher and will stay firm longer. Always bag your potatoes as soon as you bring them above ground - they are most prone to 'greening' when just dug.
Leaving potatoes in the ground
I never store potatoes - not above ground anyway. Potatoes can be left in the ground till you need them. If they start to grow again you'll just have a new crop of spuds.
Potatoes won't start to grow anyway for at least six weeks after the tops die back and often not till the next season.
Potatoes will survive heavy frosts above them, but won't tolerate frozen ground. If your ground freezes during winter dig them up before it does, or cover the ground thickly with mulch or sand for insulation.
Potato storage
Store potatoes in a dark, airy place where they won't sweat. A vegetable rack is best. Damp potatoes rot. Never store potatoes in plastic bags.
Don't store them near apples or citrus either - most fruit releases ethylene which promotes ripening - and your potatoes will start to sprout prematurely and turn soft.
Clean your potato storage area after every crop - that way any spores from past rotting won't affect the next lot.
A few recipes
Turkish Delight
Genuine Turkish Delight (not the chocolate covered wobbly jelly you get in boxes of chocolate) is absolutely wonderful - wobbly and flesh coloured and probably the most sensuous sweet on earth. You need to eat it lying on a bed of silk cushions with a breeze wafting through the fountains and probably a rose garden somewhere perfuming the air.
It's even reasonably good for you- not much sugar compared to other sweets, high in antioxidants and ultra high in good, natural flavour.
Turkish delight originally comes from ancient Persia. The ancient Persians loved all sorts of jellies. The ancestor of what we now know as Turkish delight was one of these, 'rahat lokum', meaning 'giving rest to the throat'.
Turkish delight isn't the easiest sweet in the world to make. It's fairly simple if you follow the directions, and not nearly as complicated as you might think once you start making it, but it does take a lot of time. Not as much as you might think when you first read the recipe, because you can watch TV or read while the stuff bubbles. But it's not exactly a recipe you knock up between getting home from work and putting the kids to bed.
Don't let any oft his turn you off. Genuine Turkish delight is so extraordinarily stunning that all the effort is worth it- and it will be quite different from any other sweet you've ever tasted.
Make Turkish delight on Saturday afternoon. That way you can spend the rest of the weekend eating it or doing anything else that lovely, perfumed, flesh-coloured delight inspires you to do.
Ingredients
4 cups caster sugar
4 cups dark grape juice
juice of 1 lemon
1 cup cornflour
2 tbsps rosewater
three quarters of a cup of icing sugar (not icing mixture)
a quarter cup cornflour, extra.
Take two saucepans.
In the first one place the caster sugar, one and a half cups dark grape juice and the lemon juice.
Boil till a little sets into a soft ball in a saucer of water.
Take off the heat.
In the next pan place one cup of cornflour and half a cup of grape juice. Stir to a paste then add two more cups of grape juice. Simmer on a low heat till thick, stirring all the time, then pour the hot syrup into the thick cornflour mixture, stirring all the time.
Simmer the mix on a very, very low heat for about an hour. Stir every now and then. You don't need to stir it all that often till near the end of the operation.
It'll get thickerŠ and thickerŠyou really have to stir all the time nowŠ. and very, very, very thick... but don't give in. It'll be almost solid by the time it's ready.
When it's really, really, REALLY thick and you are quite sure it can't get any thicker and anyway your arm is about to break take it off the heat and add the rose water.
Pour onto a greased tray. Leave uncovered for about three hours. Lightly oil a knife and cut into squares.
Now mix three quarters of a cup of icing sugar and a quarter of a cup of cornflour and roll each piece in this. Store in an airtight container.
Potato Cakes
For every cup of grated potato add 1 dessertspoon chopped parsley, 2 chopped cloves garlic, 1 dessertspoon chopped onion, 1 egg, 1 tablespoon plain flour. Mix well. Drop spoonsful on a hot pan with plenty of olive oil or butter. Cook till brown on one side then turn.
If the cake sticks the pan wasn't hot enough, or clean enough. If the potatoes are very liquid you may need to add a little more flour.
Potatoes with Peanut Sauce
1 kilo sliced cooked potatoes
Dressing:
half a cup peanut butter
1 tablespoon soy sauce
2 chopped chillies (can be omitted)
5 tablespoons tomato purée
4 tablespoons oil
half a cup lemon juice
brown sugar to taste
Mix the dressing well, pour over the potatoes. If it is too thick a little more tomato purée or water can be added - you should be able to scoop it easily with a spoon.
Serve hot or cold.
Vaguely Asian Potato Salad
1 kilo sliced cooked potatoes
1 teaspoon ground cardamom
1 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1 cup natural yogurt
chopped coriander
Heat all ingredients except the potatoes; pour over the potatoes and leave till cool. Serve chilled.