The Whole Five Acres

Pretty mades all in a row

By popular request, I'm now going to bow to pressure and start posting photos. Problem is, these days when I take photos it is for clients who supply me with really crappy product, and the joy of photography has well and truly drained away. Van - you'll know the sort of stuff I mean!

Above is the top shelf of my preserves cabinet. There are plain bottled tomatoes, various tomato purees which are perfect for pasta, or quick sauces when you are tired, apricot puree, peach puree, and marmalade courtesy of my mum. The next shelf down houses more variations on pasta sauce, lots of different cherry preserves and gherkins and other purees.

You may think that sounds like a lot of pasta sauce, but this stuff is gold. I somehow found this recipe, Summer Roasted Tomato Puree, and with a few tweaks it has now become a favourite*. I don't bother with a lot of the faffing, especially the juice draining, as I've found it doesn't matter how long I cook this it still tastes a heck of a lot fresher than anything I can buy at the shops. I also don't bother with herbs, because who knows what you may want to do with the mix.

Since the first batch, and its success, I've fiddled with the vegie quantities and also make a roast capsicum variation. This wasn't my favourite as is. Strangely I'm not a lover of capsicum so who knows what I was thinking when I thought to use it as the dominant flavour - oh yeah! that's right - that was the week Happy provided me with 8 kilos of deseeded capsicum to deal with. This capsicum puree has proved to have a mind of its own, and when mixed up with the sort of spices and flavourings you would get in BBQ sauce it is the perfect base to a fantastic marinade. My Memphis Style Ribs are testament to that. As dear Happy loves to have his own cookfest during the day on the farm, we bundled up quantities of this with ribs and froze them in convenient kilo packs for his lunch. Yep, I said KILO packs. He's not a big eater or anything.

As for the plain preserved tomatoes, my mother is the inventor of these. So incredibly easy, and yet so delish compared to tin tomatoes. These are just chopped up into convenient pieces depending on your tomato variety, packed firmly into sterilised jars (and I mean FIRM), then covered with boiling water. Preseved in the vacola, they should keep for months.

One year we did have a batch that went off which was a bit disturbing, but my mum refuses to let me add citric acid to the mix. Looks like we'll just continue playing Botulism Roulette for a while yet. It's a bit of a giveaway when your jar starts fizzing and bubbling over just after opening - this is when I suggest you toss the whole lot out.

What surprises me the most about preserving is how relatively easy it is to do. There is an element of fiddliness however. Once you conquer your first batch, the routine is quite soothing, and I find I can get things happening while I'm in the office working. Apart from a a batch of burnt mango puree, most often it turns out well. If it doesn't, then I look for an alternative use before binning the whole lot.

The best part is in the eating. Happy and I have had several meals that have come together in a few minutes, especially appreciated when we have been incredibly tired, and often these meals are as good as what you would get at a local restaurant. One night, dragged some fish fillets out of the freezer (we buy fresh leather jacket when cheap at the market and Happy tirelessly fillets for me - God bless his little cotton sox), poured a tomato puree over the top, covered with cheese and cooked for about half an hour in the oven. Some steamed potatoes from the yard, a few herbs thrown in, and in no time we were dining like kings. All I need now is to perfect a good gluten free bread that's a cinch to make and the leftover sauce will be taken care of too.

Mmmmmmmm...what's for dinner?

*Cook's Note
When I make anything savoury for preserving or packing away, I find it best to either forget the salt altogether or use only the slightest amount. Saltiness has a tendency to increase with age, and there is nothing worse than an overly salty meal. For my tomato and capsicum purees, I tend to put a dessertspoon of sugar and a slosh of vinegar into the mix though, as both of these aid in bringing out the sweetness of the vegies. I'm also very anti-salt. Not for any reason except for the fact that I am really sensitive to it in food and can bear only the smallest amounts on most foods. Weirdly though, I love my hot fat crispy chips from Austinmer Anne's well smothered in salt.

GadZukes, what a day!

Today there were 6 kilos of zucchini lying in wait. There was nothing for it. I had to rise to the challenge and see what I could find that would mark the end of the current zucchini glut, for there is at least another 100 kilos to work with.

Four recipes later, with only one near failure, I think I can call the day a success.

First zucchini recipe up to bat was the Lebanese Stuffed zucchini from discoverlebanon.com

I puzzled over scooping these out for hours, then when I was shopping found some long handled cocktail spoons that worked a treat. The thin long handle was just the right size to drill into the zukes and fish out the innards. A dozen or so were ready for stuffing in no time at all.

The stuffing, well it definitely needs some seasoning, way more than the recipe calls for.

Overall though, a stunning dish in the making.

Second recipe, utilising the leftover zuke innards were the zucchini fritters - again from discoverlebanon.com

I made these gluten free with a premixed flour, and I can only assume that the zucchini in the mix helped to keep them light and fluffy rather than my usual rubber discs. These would be delightful with a tzatziki dip, and there is the chance that it cooked work with grated zucchini rather than cucumber. I'll let you know.

After these two successful cooking attempts, I was ready to tackle my third dish, chocolate and zucchini cake. The recipe is here.

It all started out good, but when my butter and sugar wouldn't fluff up I began to panic. This new year though, I vowed to follow my first attempt at a recipe almost to the letter, and then improvise on my second go. So follow along I did, with great success.

This cake is the most deliciously, moist, chocolately, unctuous cake I think I have ever made without using two dozen eggs and no flour. Again I used my gluten free flour, which often leads to cake cooking disaster. An amazing recipe, and an amazing cake.

Even if you don't bake, bake this cake. If you do bake this cake though, I make these suggestions. Don't follow the recipe and don't use the food processor for the butter and sugar step. It doesn't fluff, it does nothing more than mix the two ingredients together and then that's it. Next time I'll use my mixer to get the cake started, and possibly follow it all through in the one bowl. With the food processor my other problem was having ingredients all over the place and having to move them from on bowl to another and back again. Also, press the topping down into the cake before you bake it. Nothing worse than your topping ending up all over the bench when you turn the cake out.

Three home runs, and then I was out. Next on the agenda was a grilled zucchini, mint, chilli and mozzarella salad to accompany our lamb roast slow cooking on the weber. The weber is my new best friend, as I can cook the dinner without having to fuss, while I'm in the kitchen faffing with everything else on the bench. Stupidly I didn't read the salad recipe properly, and didn't realise that I was to make 2 cups of salad dressing to cover only 1 lone grilled zucchini and a few other ingredients. Sadly this recipe came from one of the magazines that homecooks in Australia can easily buy at the checkout, supposedly to make their lives more adventurous in the kitchen. The dressing was a cunning mix of ingredients set to make your mouth water, yet not deliver on flavour. Sad really.

And so...by the time Happy made it home there was not an uncooked zuke in the house. Now he's home, I'm on the hunt or more recipes to deal with the next lot he's brought home and in the process of deseeding.

Orders for the cake are welcome!

News from the farm.

This week has been a massive learning curve as we deal with soil problems affecting about 2000 tomato plants. Being novice farmers we thought as the people before us had been successful on this plot of land we would be too. Uh oh...how stupid are we?

Turns out the soil is incredibly acidic with a ph fluctuating around 4 to 4.5. This is not good news for growing anything but nothing. The herbs that they grew may well have managed as herbs are known for being robust and able to thrive in harsh conditions.

On investigation it seems that their soil management practices could well have added to the ongoing acidity problem. The drought too, that we have been experiencing, is another contributing factor.

We're researching madly and trying to learn as much as we can about soil and crop rotation, hoping that this hiccup won't see us without a crop for too many months. Looks like we'll have to tackle the dam as well, as this may well be tainted and as we water the crops we keep throwing the problem back into the cycle, and we certainly want to get out of this soon!

Whilst I love google, sometimes it is really hard to find the simple answer you need for these problems.
A bit here, a little snippet there, a wild assumption or two and then we go back around for another dose of research. If we can save some of the tomatoes we'll be happy though.

On another note entirely, we are off to research the local markets tomorrow. The local fruit and veg don't want to buy a meagre 100kg of zukes, so we need to look for other avenues to get rid of them. This is the real reason for today's cookfest. To see if we can make value-add products to sell alongside our fresh veg which will all help to turn a profit when all seems lost.

It's all good though - we were preapproved on a loan the other day, and fingers crossed we'll soon own our own home which will be fabulous. I'm putting my foot down and demanding gas cooking and a great kitchen. Otherwise market day will be a nightmare.

Peach fizz, or the day the eggplant stole the show

With a 10 kilo box of fresh from the orchard peaches, I thought I was in peach preserving heaven. Fooled into believing my skills at preserving were better than they in fact are, I sallied forth into the kitchen with grand ideas and artistic visions.

The peaches were a dismal failure. For the life of me, I couldn't remove the skins without having to resort to the peeler. No matter how long the peaches sat in the boiling water, the skins would not budge. This meant the gorgeous pink colour never seeped through the skins into the flesh, and the final syrup never took on that enchanting rosy glow.

After ditching the water method for skin removal, I peeled my way through the rest of the 10 kilos. These then were boiled until ready to be placed in the large preserving jars. At least I thought I would still have rows of whole peaches on my shelves. Uh huh, you guessed it, my plans were thwarted once again. As the peaches were gently lowered into the jars, they squashed against each other and become fudgy blobs.

This is when I gave up on beauty, and just plonked the peaches in, then swilled the syrup over the top.

The final straw came when I preserved the bottle with a few small bottles of parsley walnut pesto. The large jar proved too hard to remove from the preserver, and fell into the water, which now was scented with oil and parsley. Hopefully the aroma won't make it into the peaches when we finally open them up. Urgghhh!

Thankfully Happy's egpplant was a winner. A simple, yet very handsome dish indeed, the idea stolen from Lidia of Lidia's Italy fame.

Roasted Eggplant and Tomato Salad

Skin and chunk a couple of eggplants, then salt in a colander to drain.

Lidia left these until the flesh became spongey, indicating they were ready to rinse and pat dry.

Prick 2 cups of small grape or cherry tomatoes several times with the point of a sharp knife.

Put both eggplant cubes and tomatoes on a baking tray. Douse with good olive oil and a bit of salt.

Put in a hot oven for around half an hour until the tomatoes are cooked and giving up juice. The eggplant should look crisp and cooked too.

Toss this into a large bowl.

At this point I couldn't remember Lidia's recipe so invented my own.

Splash over some balsamic vinegar and stir. Shred some fresh basil and some green shallots and add to the mix, along with some garlic and sliced baby bonconcini. Toss again, and set aside, covered until ready to eat.

Glorious when warm, and still lovely after refrigeration.

We ate this last night with the biggest beef cutlets in the world, some straight-out-of-the-garden roast potatoes, horseradish cream and a balsamic jus made from the rendered beef juices. All in all, a very successful meal. Now I must go and tend to the live lobster residing in the garage.

Raining cats, dogs, prawns and chorizo

It's late Sunday and all farming activities have been aborted due to the thunderstorms. It's still crazy humid, but the ground is now so saturated that it's impossible to walk on it without being kneedeep in your own personal mud mask. Happy came home mid afternoon, and from then on it has been lazy Sunday arvo in front of the television.

In keeping with the summer feel, and also maintaining the lazy feel of the day we dined on an interpretation of a quesadilla recipe I found online the other day. All of the ingredients were pretty easy to source, except a swap was required for the tortillas and Monterey Jack Cheese. One day, soon I hope, I'll get to find out what this cheese tastes like.

Try as I might, I can never stay on track with a recipe. If the technique is a bit foreign to me then my brain whirrs into action until I can find a simpler, more-me way of coming out with the desired result. Today was no exception.

Good lebanese bread was subbed for the tortillas. These were laid flat on the bench, smothered with sour cream, drizzled with green chilli sauce, then the rest of the fillings layered on top. One good smattering of cheese, a tomato thrown in for good measure, then wrapped up into a doner kebab type roll.

Finally this was then squashed flat and crisped up in my squash-ya-maker flat toaster.

A few minutes later, done! And perfectly done at that. Crisp, meltingly good and with some lovely flavours to start the next trend in our cooking simplicity.

There is however, a baby cos lettuce sitting on the sink that was to be the spinach subsitution. Perhaps a little Aussie hamburger like, but still, the thought of crunchy leaves in the midst of all that gooiness made my mouth water. Not enough though to remind me to use it, it's still sitting there on the sink all perky and fresh! Some farmer's wife I'll make.

The farming caper begins...

Only hours after coming back from Tonga, and having spent the good part of a month thinking about the five acres we saw for lease in Catherine Field, we were back in the car and checking it out. Ten foot high in grass, a small creek to traverse, and a small dam at the back and we were in love. This was to be our new adventure.

That was 4 months ago now. Since then, we have moved from that property (yet to tell that owner) and now have a five acre plot that is ready to go. Bit of a shame after all the hard work Happy put into the first plot, but then again, you can't sneeze at rows upon rows of perfectly built market garden beds, complete with power, water, a large dam and a windowless tin shack that the previous asians once lived in.

To hazard a guess at what Happy has been up to, I would have to say there are probably about 20,000 little plants making their way skyward at this present moment. We've invested in heirloom tomatoes, chillis and other luscious lovelies, along with some more commercial plantings of zucchini, pumpkin, watermelon, watermelon, watermelon and watermelon. Say what? What's with all the watermelon? Put a Tongan within coo-ee of a foot of soil and he plants three things. Watermelon, taro and yam. At this stage we have about 100 taro plants in the backyard, so the market garden is given over to a quick harvest of watermelon - two types.

The investment so far has been quite high, and whilst Happy is excited about our future prospects, I'm rubbing the lining of my purse to see if a few coins will materialise. So while he toils away at his digs, I'm pushing the keys still making the wheels of industry turn. Hopefully this equation may be overturned soon. I quite fancy being the lady of farming leisure.

Looking further to the future, I've also started bottling and cooking like mad, seeing what is achievable with gluts of produce and how hard it is to convert to something we may wish to eat later on. I remember when my Uncle Chrissie used to make preserves in his back shed and pass on the jars to tempt our appetites. To be honest, I'm not a fan of cooking for cooking's sake. Year's on, and I could still probably find a jar of his chutney lurking in the fridge.

No...my preserves are meant to be delectable. And so far so good. We have rows upon rows of my roasted tomato purees. Perfectly easy to produce, and perfectly great so far in our cooking ventures. There is another shelf full of the cherry preserves, chutnies and spreads my mum and I attempted a few weeks back. Hundreds of bottles of cordial, in a variety of colour...no hold on...I lie. We HAD hundreds of bottles of cordial, the farmer in the house has drunk them all.

The freezer too is brimming. Coriander pesto, cod brandade, lemon butter, strawberry marmalade and bags upon bags of garlic cloves.

All a success so far, with only one iffy moment.

The glut of capsicum proved a bit of a headache. I didn't just feel like making roast capsicum in oil. NO. Too simple for my superior talents (ahem!). So it was roasted with some tomatoes and made into a puree. Too long in the oven, and the burnt bits went bitter-ish. Could it be that I had made 8 jars of tortured capsicum puree and would have to throw it all out?

Luckily we bought pork ribs one night, and the next brainwave hit. The puree brilliantly adapts to a Memphis Style BBQ Rib Sauce/Marinade and now the 8 jars don't appear to be enough.

If you happen to be a preserver too, then here is the recipe. If not, then substitute the red pepper puree for a tomato puree and see how it turns out. I'm sure it will be delish.

Memphis Style BBQ Ribs courtesy of 8 kilos of capsicum purchased to harvest seeds
1 tablespoon butter
1/4 cup finely chopped onion
4 cloves fresh garlic chopped

1 1/2 cups ketchup
1/4 cup chili sauce
(Replaced above with 1 size 20 jar of 1/2 and 1/2 roasted capsicum and tomatoe puree)

4 tablespoons brown sugar
3 tablespoons treacle
2 tablespoons prepared yellow mustard
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
2 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1 tablespoon liquid hickory smoke flavoring (which I didn’t use)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
2 teaspoon chili powder
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper, or to taste

PREPARATION:
In a saucepan, slowly sauté the chopped onion and garlic in butter until soft and just beginning to turn yellow.

Add remaining ingredients.

Simmer for about 5 minutes.

Taste and adjust seasonings.

Add prepared ribs and leave to marinate at least overnight.

Put all into baking dish, covered with foil and cook in a slow oven for a couple of hours. Go long and slow at this point, and don't be scared if the oven doesn't feel like it's even on. The moisture, steam and low temp help to make these FALL OFF THE BONE GORGEOUS.

Take foil off towards end and allow sugars to caramalise in a higher oven. The ribs should get sticky and have little burnt corners

Result: Soft, unctuous with a slow chilli kick. If you aren't into burn, then reduce the spices to suit.
A definite do-again meal.

Prior to this brainwave, we had tried a different kick-arse rib sauce and successfully packaged ribs in marinade in the freezer for future use. Future use only last a few weeks, as the farmer gets hungry. Suffice to say it was a good idea and one we'll be working on in the future. A wee pointer though...the hot stuff calms down once it is frozen and the flavours tend to even out.