Mid-Winter Harvest

Two of our dragon carrot tops were almost bald so I harvested them and made it our official first harvest of dragon carrot.  Harvested the last batch of Da Cheong Chae which some were badly infested with green caterpillars. This week the garden provide us with some sweet corns, pink radishes, chillies, yellow cherry tomatoes and snow peas. This is the first winter season that we managed to have continues harvest. I am just keeping a record so I can make a note and plan for next year vegetable growing plan for continuous harvest in the cool season. Visit Daphne and watch around the world what other gardeners are harvesting at the moment on Harvest Monday.

Purple mustards.

Different colour shade and interesting looking Afghanistan carrots. The best carrot we ever tasted. In soup, this carrot tasted so creamy and different from the usual carrot taste. It does not smell like the orange colour ones compared with different variety of carrots that we grown so far. I am letting a few to bolt after this winter season to collect seeds. Lenay even put a ribbon on the biggest carrot plant at the moment so I remember not to harvest that plant.

Rainbow Chards.

Spring onions, capsicum, lemon grasses, white sweet potatoes and sweet potato shoots which we used up yesterday for cooking meals.

Cut the sweet potato into chunks and wash the sweet potato shoots to cook into coconut milk.

White Sweet potato and shoots coconut milk dish. 

Can't have enough of this dish. Rayyan favourite dish.

Mini Murtabak Day

I was browsing through Cikmanggis archive last Friday to have some ideas what to cook for the family this weekend and found this simple recipe of mini murtabak. It is simple and almost instant to make it as I don't have to prepare the roti dough the day beforehand. This recipe uses spring rolls sheets that you can get from Coles or Asian groceries in the freezer section. It was fun and easy to made. A Malaysia version of beef pie or chicken pie which is a very popular snack and you can get them at pasar malam (night market).

All the vegetables except for the onion and garlic were not from our garden. No chooks in our garden so not sure which farm the eggs came from.

Ingredients (adapted from CikManggis):
200 gm mince meat/chicken
1 Big onion (finely diced)
3 garlic cloves (finely diced)
2 Tablespoon curry powder (add just a bit of water into paste)
1/2 teaspoon white pepper powder
Coriander (coarsely chopped)
1 spring onion (coarsely chopped)
1 capsicum (diced)
corn kernels (1cup)
2 chicken eggs
spring rolls sheets
salt and sugar (to taste)

Heat oil. Saute diced onion and garlic. Then add curry powder. Stir until the heavenly aroma of curry powder is fill in the air around your kitchen. Add mince beef and mix well until cook. Add salt and sugar. Cook until dry, no more liquid. Add in corn, capsicum, spring onion, coriander and mix well. Let it cool down before breaking 2 eggs into it and mix. Put the fillings on top of the spring roll sheets and fold. Heat the pan and just brush a little cooking oil on the pan. Not too much oil as spring roll sheets absorb a lot of oil. Pan-fry till cook. Eat with curry or red onion vinegar.

The outer layer was very nice and crispy. Here is a peek of what the filling look inside the fold.

Linking in with Wendy's Garden To Table Challenge.

First Jonquil and Black Pearl Winner

This is the first time I ever grow flower from bulbs and it took some convincing to try growing from bulbs this year. To be honest, I don't know much about flowers compare to vegetables. Thanks Sue for the encouragement! Berry Gnome gave me no reason of not trying flower bulbs this year. No chance of backing away from the original plan when suddenly you are given a paper bag full of flower bulbs last autumn. I was so speechless at first because I was so happy of receiving those flower bulbs. I think I bombarded Berry Gnome with a lot of questions on how to grow them. Berry Gnome you given us some sunshine in the middle of winter! The first bulb to bloom in our garden is jonquil. I spy buds last week but was so busy to keep track on which day will it bloom.

Tadaa~ Our first jonquil bloom. I still cannot pronounce the word "jonquil' properly.

Many of you have wonder how cold is our winter is. I guess by now you will probably can estimate how our weather is here for us if you grown jonquil before. Jonquils have just started blooming in our garden. If you live in very snowy winter region, our mid-winter will probably be your early spring weather.

I have not forgotten about the black pearl give-away last month, I was just waiting for those black pearls to be polished that is the main reason. Drum roll please...and the winner is

~Lrong (Potager Y @ Japan) who has a beautiful potager and living in a neighbourhood where the people are always very generous with their produce. 

~Africanaussie  has a garden for beautiful butterflies which like to visit her place.

~CathJ, a wonderful and caring mom who always find the time to help other people in need of help. 

Our First Kohlrabi dish?

We harvested our first kohlrabi last weekend.

All of us have never eaten kohlrabi before.

So of course the first taste of our home-grown kohlrabi should be raw right?

Not even an idea how to prepare kohlrabi raw or cook.

I am very busy at school this week.

Too many presentation and reading to prepare.

You can't prepare a presentation without reading and imagine the questions your listener will ask.

I have many many many butterflies in my tummy since earlier this week.

So, 2 days ago when I was eating dinner which Lenay prepared.

I ate kohlrabi without noticing before Lenay asked have I not taste anything different.

Lenay made Green Mango and Kohlrabi Sambal Salad.

Surprisingly the combination of green mango and kohlrabi was really good with this sambal dressing.

I did noticed the different taste of green mango (sour) and kohlrabi (mild).

Although my mind was elsewhere, thinking of my presentation slides.

Sambal dressing (all crushed together in the mortar): Chillies, shrimp paste, a pinch of salt.

Jullienne green mango and kohlrabi (matchstick).

Optional: Crushed peanut, chopped coriander leaves, peeled cook prawn.

Mix all the ingredient together and squeeze some lemon or lime juice. Mix again.

Linking this simple salad to Wendy's Garden to Table Challenge.

Will be blog walking again after one of my presentation finished tomorrow.

Wish me Luck!

Yellow Teaser~Cheery Winter Wednesday

We don't have White Winter like other gardeners in higher latitude closer to arctic or antarctic experience in winter. Don't have snow here and so far micro-climate helps us escape from frost.  But with the cold weather, it is still hard for a gardener like me to go outdoors during this season. So for fun, I seek other colour than green in our mid-winter garden. Surprisingly I found many yellow colours in our mid-winter garden. This findings makes me cheerful enough to spend more time in the garden. Moreover, most of this cheerful things in the garden is edible and self-seeded. Most of these plants are commonly found in any temperate garden during summer. Although our plants are a bit weird (supposedly winter here), grown from home-saved seeds has adapted to our cold weather and become a bit cold-hardy. To make it more fun since the cold weather has kept us Australia gardeners indoors, I let you guess what these plants are with some hints.

(a)Edible

(b) Standing tall

(c)spicy salad

(d) Maintain healthy soil

(e) Popular in wok

(f) Most popular plant in summer

Answers will be in the next post.

Linking with Hazel Winter Wednesday.