Category Archives: Recipes – Vegetables

Giant Puffball Mushroom prepared and fried – YUM

We had the marvelous mushroom as an antipasto on Saturday. The weather was perfect and we had a barbecue on our deck overlooking the mountain. We peeled the mushroom and sliced it in to ‘steaks’ about 2 cm thick. It was pure white all the way through. We  fried some of it in butter and garlic and dipped the rest in egg and breadcrumbs. I added a bit of olive oil to the butter and garlic in the pan and fried the mushroom slices. The batches of mushroom disappeared as soon as it hit the table and got rave reviews from every one. Thanks to our neighbour for one of the most exiting foodie gifts of the year!

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Sunday Lunch from my garden

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Just out of the oven: beetroot, turnip, whole garlic and rosemary, drizzled with a bit of olive oil, covered with foil and baked at 200 degrees for about 40 minutes.

Sunday lunch from the veg patch. I harvested several beetroots and (accidentally) one turnip. I cut the leaves from the bulbs but left about 1cm to stop the bulb from bleeding, washed the leaves well and put them in the fridge . The leaves will make another dish some time during the week. It took a bit of scrubbing to get the grit out of the beetroot without damaging the skin too much but that is one of the joys of backyard farming – the supermarkets stock things that have been cleaned/preserved/chemically bombed and one does not have to spend so much time on washing!  I put everything in the pan and in to the oven. The taste was wonderful and the thick, rich beetroot juice mixed with the garlic and rosemary flavours on the bottom of the pan was sopped up with a bit of bread. The garlic is soft and spreadable and can be eaten with bread or squeezed out of the skins to eat on its own.  What have I missed? The glass of red, of course!

Starter platter with quick tasty raw broad bean spread

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Raw Broad bean spread (can also be used as pasta sauce), pickled quail eggs and home made focaccia bread to start the meal. Great to nibble at while the barbecue gets going. I have already posted the recipe for the pickled eggs. The recipe for the spread is based on one of Marcella Hazan’s dishes from the region of Liguria in Italy:

Broadbean Spread (Maro)

about 200 g beans out of the pod and skinned

2 tablespoons of grated Romano cheese. Pecorino will also do

1/2 teaspoon very finely chopped garlic

4 tablespoons best quality extra virgin olive oil. I use a few more because I live olive oil

7 large mint leaves

fresh ground black pepper

1 tablespoon fresh squeezed lemon juice

Put all the ingredients in to the blender and process to a creamy consistency. Taste and add salt if needed. Should you use Romano cheese you may not need salt at all.

To serve spread thickly on strips of toast or fresh bread, use as a nutritious dip for biscuits and chips, or put a few spoon fulls on fresh cooked hot pasta.

Deep Fried Sage Leaves

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Fresh Sage Leaves from the Garden dipped into a batter of Flour and Water, then deep fried in oil. Can be done on the barbecue or on the stove. Even the Toddlers could not get enough. YUM!!!

EGGS FIORENTINA

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We had similar breakfasts yesterday and today. Everything out of the spring garden apart from the flour, olive oil and salt – with an extended back yard I could sow wheat, keep a cow etc! 😉 The picture on the left is a Fiorentina with Quail Eggs made with radish leaves. The challenge is to gather enough leaves and I find that the leaves keep well in a plastic bag in the fridge, until I have enough leaves saved.  The right hand picture is of the same dish but using chard. The chard has a sweeter taste especially when the onion is replaced by leek.

The small buns I bake to entice my grand kids to eat. I mix grated cheese in to my usual bread recipe and bake the buns in muffin pans for 14 minutes.