Okay, so our garden, which I blogged about a while back, was a bit of a failure. Basically, we planted a whole bunch of stuff and then the weather went insane (2 hailstorms in the following fortnight, a whole lot of gail force wind, etc) and most of the stuff died. Sad. We still have 5 tomato plants courageously growing and while there are flowers, I don’t think we’ll actually get any tomatoes 🙁
However, the mint, parsley, silverbeet and vietnamese mint that my Mum planted from cuttings, have been doing really well. In fact, anyone experimenting with SE Asian cookery and wanting to try vietnamese mint is welcome to come over and have some. It does better if frequently harvested (Mum nabs it for her restaurant sometimes as Dad mowed theirs a bit).
Other plants that survived include a pretty happy cape gooseberry (I’m hopeful that I’ll get a few fruit), sage (planning fresh sage and onion stuffing later), rosemary and what we thought were 3 beetroot. However, when we looked closer there were multiple beetroot in each “plant” so we’ve harvested the smaller ones (the smallest is like 10cm coin diameter) to let the largest in each planting grow to a decent size. We also have 2 carrots grown from seed (more seed has been planted, we’re hopeful), some radishes growing (I thinned them last week), 8-9 garlic (probably harvest the earlier planting in the next week or so), and about 9 strawberry plants. The strawberries are all grown from friend’s runners, so they should do better next year, we have had a few fruit, (yesterday I picked 4) it’s a matter of getting them before the birds.
On Sunday I was pretty excited as I managed to use things harvested from the garden for dinner!
Silverbeet and Feta Quiche
1 onion (chopped/diced/whatever)
vegetable oil
4 handfuls of silverbeet (I also had some beetroot leaves in there, you can use them the same way)
couscous
1/2 block of feta (chopped)
4 eggs
1c milk
1c yogurt (you can use another c milk instead)
1 handful of parsley
some basil
1t (heaped) salt
1t paprika
some grated cheese (edam) optional
1) heat the oil to a low heat and put the onions in to go translucent (I put the lid to my wok on top), meanwhile rinse and chop your silverbeet. Then add it to the onion. Cover.
2) Beat the eggs (then turn the element off, but leave the silverbeet there to continue to sweat) then mix in the milk and yogurt. Now’s a good time to turn on the oven (180degC)
3) Chop up the parsley and basil, then add them along with the salt and paprika to the egg mixture.
4) Spray your quiche dish with oil then sprinkle couscous over the bottom. This makes a kind of crust for your quiche.
5) Spoon your silverbeet over the couscous then sprinkle the feta over that.
6) pour the egg mix over it all and sprinkle the cheese on top.
7) Bake for approx 60min (taking it out half way and rotating the dish to ensure even cooking).
We ate this with salad.
Point of fashion: PIN group casual
Current Obsession: Baking – Bambi’s over and we’ve made a lemon yogurt cake, chocolate cake in oven and about to start on biscotti!
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