Category Archives: Stuff – interesting uncategorised

Fridge Pickings and a Gift of Beans makes Lunch

2015-03-07 - Mushrooms 2015-03-07 - Prep2015-03-07 - Rustic Lunch

The kids went away on holiday and we were told to remove all the perishables from their fridge. We found spring onions, mushrooms, small tomatoes and lemons. Great! That sounds like lunch already, but when we got home the neighbour had left us some freshly harvested beans.  I augmented everything with  fresh chili and a tiny garlic bulb from the garden, picked some parsley, and this was the lunch made by the Never Trow Out Anything maniac in the kitchen.  A bit of lemon went into a gin and tonic for Mrs BYF, and the rest was squeezed over the peeled apples (from the tree at the back door) for the apple  crumble which is now in the oven !  The rustic bread and salami was made by me. Wash it all down with a glass of great red home brew and ENJOY!!

HARD TIMES !!

Lunch today

2015-03-06 - Chicken Feet Pot2015-03-06 - Chicken Feet

Dairy prices are down, venison keeps falling, electricity is up and the courier companies are screwing us left, right and center, so here at Back Yard Farmer we are not wasting anything.  We have worked out using almost everything from the garden and are now working on using every part of the back yard chickens, starting with what we always discarded, the feet. I have often eaten chicken feet, mostly in some Asian restaurant, and the very best I had was on a recent business trip to Qingdao, China (along with an assortment of scorpions, tasty bugs and larvae like things – the food of the future). Strange how Chinese food does not taste as good in restaurants outside China. The same goes for Italian food, I suppose, unless one cooks oneself, so, here is Mrs BYF’s version of chicken feet – delicious although the cook was a bit squeamish to start off with.

Zampe di Gallina 

Chicken Feet Arrabiata  (Arrabiata means angry – so this is quite hot)

4 chicken wings or any other part of the chicken that is not dry white meat, skin on

6 to 8 chicken feet, nails removed (I had to do that myself, Mrs BYF baulked)

1 piece of fresh ginger just bigger than a thumb finely chopped

4 cloves of garlic finely chopped

1 large red chilli or as much as you can take, finely chopped

1 litre of chicken stock

small handful of parsley and sage finely chopped

4 table spoons of olive oil

1 cup of wine, red or white

Pre heat the oven to 200 deg

Use a cast iron pot with a close fitting lid, big enough to take all the chicken. Heat a tablespoon of oil in the pot and brown the chicken pieces well on all sides. Remove and add the feet,  cook on medium high for a few minutes. Remove the feet. Add the rest of the olive oil to the pot and add the chilli and garlic. Cook until the  garlic is soft but not coloured. deglase the pot with the wine, cook until the wine bubbles.  Add the chicken, feet and all to the pot, and cover the chicken with the stock. Bring to the boil on the stove, cover the pot with the lid and place the pot in the oven. Cook for 3 hours, twenty minutes before serving, add the parsley and sage. Eat with polenta.

Do not forget to enjoy this dish with lots of red wine!  ENJOY!

 

ABSOLUTELY SHOCKING!!

2015-02-26 - Sick Giraffe

Do yourself a favor and allocate 15 minutes of your time to read all three articles.

We are trying at all costs to stay away from purchased products.

http://www.sportsground.co.nz/Article.asp?SiteID=10563&ArticleID=3809

http://www.ewg.org/foodnews/summary.php

http://www.eco.org.nz/news/43/15/Pesticide-residues-in-most-food-samples-shows-need-for-organics.html

 

Drunken Apricots

2015-01-26 - Dronk Appelkose

We had the good fortune to be invited to pick apricots near Dunback. The day was clear and sunny and this year the trees were laden with sweet, ripe, pink cheeked fruit. The orchard is organic and amazingly free of bugs, wasps, birds and the like and the taste of the fruit was the best we had ever eaten.

Sheep roam the orchard and once we had explained the difference between sheep poo (ok) and dog poo (not ok) to the city kids, everyone got stuck in, munching and chatting as they picked in the shade of the trees. The baby grazed on whatever fruit he found on the ground until he announced “I don’t NEED apricots!” . When I commented on the meagre contents on Mrs BYF’s bucket she claimed to have eaten at least one tree’s worth and that it should be factored in to her harvest.

We had a great day out in the peaceful countryside. We met lovely hospitable people, drank great coffee and beer, and came home happy and pleased with our haul.

Back in the kitchen, we made jam, dried some, froze some, preserved some, and, with the smallest fruit, bottled them in grappa. We will need some warmth when the Dunedin winter bites so hopefully we will be able to keep our hands off these bottles until then.

Cardoon buds and yes, they should be eaten!

DSC03960DSC039522015-01-23 - Cardoon in Blompot2015-01-23 - Cardoon Flowers 2

 

Mrs BYF is fanatical about not wasting any food that the garden produces. Her attitude has resulted in many memorable dishes ranging from fantastic, better that any world class restaurant, etc. etc., to (seldom, I might add) never to be attempted again, EVER!

I was going to let the cardoon buds flower, because the bees love them, and ‘they’ say that only the stems should be eaten, but Mrs BYF commanded me to “bring them in!”.  After all the cardoons grow so well in Dunedin and my plants were well over 3 meters high with lots of flowers. They were all boiled in a big pot of water, with a squeeze of lemon and some salt, then peeled, chokes removed and the hearts put under oil.  The taste and texture of the hearts proved to be  sensational, perhaps a bit more starchy, at the same time almost creamy, than artichokes. We eat them as antipasto or on panini with  roast bell peppers (peperoni) and fried eggplant (melanzane). The real taste of Italy in Dunedin. Unbelievable !

Just to take the non wastage policy a bit further, Mrs BYF used the inedibles for  a lovely vegetable arrangement of rosemary, flowering cardoon and  fennel fronds. The cardoon flowers are beautiful and, surprisingly, sweet smelling.