Grand Election Week Harvest

We have been staying with my parent in-laws for several days for the grand election at East Coast Malaysia. So the garden has to fend for themselves. We don't have to worry much about watering the plants because almost every day this week the plants received some showers from mother nature almost every afternoon. Due to the rain I have to check on the mulberry plants often as some time during heavy rain the fruits fell from the tree before it turns fully ripe. But Rayyan seems to like sweet sourish fruit so he does not mind even if the mulberry has not turn blackish red in colour. One of the patch that was overgrown with weeds after clearing up salvaged some Asian greens like kailan to harvest. Basil plants are very at the overgrown stage, plenty of pestos can be made from them. We usually harvest them right before we need some basil leaves while cooking.

 This month of May will be the month for hard pruning for some big fruits trees in the garden at the back before we enter hot and dry season. Last week, hubby managed to give a hard-pruning to one very old tall mango tree. Some of the fruits are not reachable even using a long bamboo stick to poke the fruits so they fall. Hubby has to climb the mango tree using a ladder and stand on the tree to chop many branches. After most of the branches were chopped off, Ilhan and Rayyan helped his father to collect the fruits on the chopped branches before their father disposed the chopped branches. The mango tree bears small egg size mango fruits type which commonly used to make pickle when the fruits are young green. I hope my mother will be happy when she returned for a few days next week to see the mango tree has been pruned. She used to prune the mango tree until almost 2 years ago she fell from that mango tree from a high position. From the accident unfortunately she can't moved or used much of her left arm to lift things and has to meet up regularly with physiotherapist. She will celebrate her 60th birthday at the end of this year, so with age will take time to recover and doctor said she exceed her limits using her arm muscles to do stuff. Nope not listening, she still do a lot of hard-pruning (more like whacking) with her right arm each time she returned when she sees her plants competing with light again because I had to pretend not seeing them growing robustly (excuses busy with the 3 kids again). To be honest, looking after an acre land including the house, the TV is hardly switch on. We even had a period where the TV was not switch on at all more than a week. 

 Alternate days through month of May, pea eggplants, bird-eyes chillies, snake beans, calamansi limes and butterfly peas are available to harvest.

 Pattypan squashes has also started to produce. But I am so clumsy each time when I touched them to help with the pollination I broke the stem. Not just pattypan squash but also other squashes growing in the garden.

A few chicken and duck eggs.

Harvest Monday.

Pea Eggplant (Solanum Torvum)

 The pea eggplant (Solanum Torvum) as what it is familiarly called in English has the size as same as peas. In Malaysia, it is called terung pipit. Terung in Malay language is eggplant and pipit is sparrow. This eggplant grow wild here in Peninsular Malaysia and of course its neighbouring countries like Thailand courtesy of the birds. Hence, it is called terung pipit. Can be a very invasive plant. It is a weed in our garden. It can even grow in between pavement cracks.

 The pea eggplant has white blooms closely resembles to potato plant flower which is not surprising as they both belong to the nightshade or Solanum family.

 Pea eggplant fruits and its common guardian, red ants.

'Terung pipit' plant can grow about 2 metres tall at least. This one is probably a very well fed 'Terung Pipit' plant as the place it is voluntarily growing is where we always moved the compost bin around. The boy on the look out for geese and a turkey make sure they won't come near him or he runs a hundred miles.

'Terung pipit' plant branches are thorny so make sure you don't get prick.

 Terung pipit volunteer seedlings sprouting everywhere. I sowed other seeds and I get unwanted terung pipit seedlings sprouting instead.

 I usually stir-fry terung pipit with sambal olek together with peanuts and small dried anchovies. Fried the terung pipit, peanut and dried anchovies separately. Then heat some cooking oil, add sambal olek,  stir until cooked or fragrant until you feel like sneezing. Sometime I add some tomato sauce after the sambal olek is cook. Mix well and then add the fried terung pipit, peanut and dried anchovies until well-coated. Other traditional way to enjoy eggplant is in green/yellow curry. Terung Pipit fruit taste a bit bitterish. Its fun to eat them as they seem to pop in your mouth when you bite them.

How do you enjoy your terung pipit?

Saturday Spotlight at Suburban Tomato.

April2013 Harvest Monday

 It has been just a few days since I returned and the garden has given many nice surprises. Mulberry trees that were just starting to fruit when I left them has provided sweet fruits which Rayyan really enjoyed as his snack while waiting for the parents to prepare lunch. I am relief to see that the butterfly pea plants keeps on providing pretty blooms everyday. Did not noticed a volunteer snake bean plant growing on one of the raised bed and suddenly found long tangling beans on the cage. Bird-eyed chillies and some juice from calamansi limes for our traditional 'sambal belacan' dipping, very nice pounded together with the fresh shrimp paste (belacan) that I brought back from my recent trip. So happy looking at our cucumber tree (tree sorrel) starting to bear fruits.

 Two of our veggie patch got invaded with volunteer Javanese ginseng plants also known as Surinam Spinach. So I pulled out most of the Javanese ginseng plants to grow other edibles. I won't be surprised if many volunteer Javanese ginseng seedlings sprouted in a couple of weeks. In a month, I will probably be pulling them out again. We harvested the roots from the Javanese Ginseng plants. The Javanese ginseng root is as potent as Korean/Chinese ginseng. Boiled Javanese Ginseng roots for my hubby almost everyday so he can work hard on the garden clearing up all the weeds to atone for his neglect.

 Like the bird-eye chillies that birds helped distributed the seeds in our garden, this pea size eggplants also grow wild in our garden. In the Malay language this eggplant is known as 'Terung pipit'. Terung in Malay is eggplant while pipit is sparrow. Therefore literal translation will be sparrow eggplant. This is due to birds that also helped distributed this eggplant. We have hundreds and hundreds of wild pea eggplant seedlings sprouting everywhere in the garden. One of the turmeric plant produce a bloom for us to enjoy in salad (chopped finely and mixed together other traditional herbs) dipping with sambal belacan. We also harvest a few lemons. Each time my mother returned she will bring back some lemons to where she reside now at Borneo Island.

 This week nam nam fruits is in season in our garden , this time is not just squirrels enjoying them but ants too. Nice Nam Nam fruit harvest week, many of the fruits were sweet. I wrote about nam nam plant life-cycle a couple weeks ago.

 A few passion fruits were also salvage under the mango tree. I did not realised a passion fruit plant is growing up on the bushy mango tree. I was very surprise when I saw many fruits under the mango tree and some were already chomped. We made passion fruit juice with this harvest.

Join in Daphne's Dandelions: Harvest Monday.

Brinjal with spicy potato

Its time to comfort myself with food.

The veggies flavour is also tasting much better now as we are having warm mild weather during the day.

Nights can be around 15 degree Celsius this week.

I have not really cook that much these days.

Many of the veggies has been left over ripe.

Not picking them as often as I should.

Brought in the last batch of garlic in the kitchen that were left curing in the shed.

'Black Beauty' brinjals (eggplants) had holes in it from admirers.

Some of the brinjals has interesting looking resident in it taking shelter from the previous heat I think.

We have "Red Romaine" lettuce volunteer around the garden.

I left some go to seed previous spring.

Thank you to Mr. H for the lettuce seeds.

I have kept a recipe from Troth Wallis ~ The Globe Vegetarian Kitchen recipe book since last year to try in my recipe file. The recipe is said to come from the Moluccas in Indonesia which is formerly known as the Spice Island. It was the source of many spices, such as cloves and nutmeg that was highly prized in Europe during the trading era. The taste of this 'brinjal with spicy potato' dish actually remind me of Indian dish rather than South East Asian dish. But this is not surprising because the old empire in Malaysia and Indonesia were first highly influence by India empire and culture before it was colonised. I think adding a handful of curry leaves will be more interesting for this dish after I tried this recipe.

Brinjal/ Eggplants with Spicy Potatoes (serves 2-4)

Ingredient:

1 brinjal (diced)

2 potatoes (diced and parboiled)

1 onion (sliced)

1/2 tsp chili powder (I used chilli/sambal oelek)

1/2 tsp mustard seeds

1/2 tsp turmeric

1/2 inch piece fresh ginger root, chopped

lemon/lime juice (from 1 fruit)

oil

salt

a handful washed curry leaves (optional)

(1) Heat the oil in a pan and cook the onion until it is clear and soft.

(2) After that put in the chili, mustard seeds, turmeric, ginger, curry leaves and salt. Cook on a gentle heat, stirring to mix well. Then turn up the heat, add the brinjal and parboiled potatoes and brown them, turning to prevent them catching.

(3) Add a little water to cover the base of the pan, put the lid on and cook gently for 10 minutes or so until the vegetables are tender and the liquid is absorbed. Add lemon/lime juice mix well.

Join in Robin Thursday's Kitchen Cupboard and Wendy Garden to Table Challenge.

Summer Veggies Continue...

Oppss...who was lazy leaving the eggplant at the partial shade corner not stake?

I did.

So when I finally attempt to stake the branches that were on the ground last weekend, I found 2 bonica eggplants hiding beneath foxglove foliage. One of the eggplants were bigger than my palm and very heavy for an eggplant. We had very warm days a few days ago which causes our eggplants that were growing in sunny position has wrinkle skin and not growing much. So I have to harvest them when the fruits are tiny or they stop production/flowering. Lebanese and early long eggplants are not usually bitter but due to the weather causes them to be bitter. There were many angled luffa female flower last week but not a single male around for successful fruit.

Some alpine strawberry fruits ripening in the garden this month.

The only photo taken.

They are fresh snack in the garden so photos of them are very rare.

Our first soy bean harvest from a plant.

This is my second year attempt trying to grow them.

Not easy to grow here because of dry hot weather in summer.

Soy bean like heat and humidity I think.

I tried growing them in different season and location in the garden with not much success.

How did I get them to produce this time?

I sowed soy bean seeds in the container which I prepared for a sweet potato plant.

I think the sweet potato plant crawling veins help keep the soil moist and act as a natural mulch.

Boiled the beans in salted water for snacking.

Sweet potato shoots.

Cleared up sweet potato plants that were growing in one corner in our garden.

It has been mice sanctuary.

Most of the sweet potatoes were eaten not much left for us.

We harvested spaghetti squashes before the rain comes. Left them curing naturally outside for a long time until the whole plant has actually dried off. A very tiny watermelon and cucumber were also harvested last weekend.

Cleared up the neglected patches along our driveway shared with neighbours, got some spring onions. Some capsicum were also harvested last weekend.

Visit Daphne's Dandelions to see different kind of harvest came from different parts of garden all  around the world.

Till Valentine End Summer Harvest

The cherry tomatoes did much better than the other tomato varieties this summer season. We were lucky to  be able to harvested some round eggplants last week.

We harvested our first time home-grown potato onions. Should have reduced the watering when it was ready to be harvested. But I was relying on dear hubby with the watering so I let him do whatever he wants as long as the plants were watered during peak summer.

Brought in some garlic into the kitchen that we left curing in the shed.

Challenger tomato variety but it got scorched badly by the sun. 

I was cleaning up some part of the garden last weekend because it look so shabby after the scorching weather cause during mid-summer and I was surprised to find some cucumbers. It looks misshapen but I never expected to get any cucumbers this summer. First time we harvested a broccoli in end summer that was grown/sowed from last autumn. Another unexpected surprise that the broccoli plant manage to form a curd and not bolt in hot weather. Possibly the cool weather we had a few weeks helped. We also harvested a few root vegetables; carrots, turnip, beetroots and volunteer  potatoes. Some hot red sexy chillies for valentine were harvested as well. Will be making some sambal sauce stock this afternoon with mama after we buy some lemon/lime this afternoon.

With the love valentine theme, some red harvest; strawberries, chillies, tigerella tomato, challenger and cherry tomato.

Visit Daphne's Dandelions to share and enjoy together what other gardeners has been harvesting all over the world.

Spicy Sardine and Spaghetti Bake

We harvested our first Lebanese zucchini for this summer. This is our first time growing 'Lebanese zucchini', so I was not sure what size is perfect to harvest this variety. Did not want it to get too mature or it will stop other fruits to develop. A few leeks and another one kohlrabi harvested this week. 

Our Lebanese brinjal plant that has now experience 3 summers did not disappoint us. We just enter summer and that old brinjal plant has given us roughly 10 eggplants for us. We had endless supply of yellow currant cherry tomatoes last week.

What did we do with the cherry tomatoes?

The second recipe that I enjoyed from this recipe book.

 Spicy Sardine and Spaghetti Bake (The Australian Women's Weekly~Gratins & Bake recipe book)

Ingredients:
250g spaghetti
1 cup (70g) stale breadcrumbs
1/3 finely chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley (used curly ones)
1/3 cup (80ml) olive oil
318g canned sardines in oil, drained
250g cherry tomatoes, chopped coarsely (did not chopped)
4 cloves garlic, crushed
2 teaspoon dried chilli flakes

(1) Cook pasta in large saucepan of boiling water until tender; drain and reserved 1/3 cup (80ml) cooking liquid.
(2) Preheat oven to 220 degree Celsius.
(3) Combine breadcrumbs, parsley and 1 tablespoon of the oil in medium bowl.
(4) Heat remaining oil in same pan; cook sardines, tomato, garlic and chilli, stirring, until tomato begins to soften. Stir in pasta; season to taste.
(5) Spoon mixture into 1litre (8cup) ovenproof dish; pour reserved cooking liquid. Sprinkle with breadcrumb mixture. Bake, uncovered, about 10 minutes or until browned lightly.

Sardines and this yellow cherry tomatoes goes well together.

Rayyan enjoying the pasta.

One funny-looking purple savoy cabbage was harvested.

Two of our 3.5 months grown Royal Blue potato plant were all dried up due to the hot weather. It was a trial to plant potato on our most sunny patch at the end of winter. It grows really fast but the soil is too hot now. Touching the soil on that area is very hot during mid-day. I won't be able to walk on it barefoot. So I have to reluctantly dig the spud out early cause it was supposed to be medium-late variety. There still supposingly  in their baby stage. The trial is half-successful since there were at least 12 medium~large size spuds from each plants. Not bad considering it just been 3.5 months since I planted the seed potatoes. I probably grow this potato variety again because the yield is good even on shorter growing time.

Harvest Monday at Daphne's Dandelions.

Brinjal Brrrr....

Brinjal are treated as perennials in our garden. 

They take a long time to grow and impatient that I am to wait until late summer to harvest them if grown from seeds. So if I give the chance for the brinjal to survive over winter, I would have fresh brinjal again before summer comes. Last year spring I bought a seedling of bonica eggplant and left them growing over winter in the garden. What surprised us that early spring I found some fruits on it while I was cleaning up that area. Although it should be dark purple, the skin colour somewhat turn stripey and whitish. But the taste was good and sweet.

Who will expect that there are fruit on this bonica eggplant when it look dreadful like this.

I found snail hiding place on this brinjal plant.

Curiously, there were many snail but my greens were left untouched.

At the bottom of this plants new shoot appears.

Holes courtesy of those snails.

This is our Lebanese brinjal plant that has experience 2 winter seasons. In winter, this brinjal plant snuggle together with broccoli plants and dills. It does look a bit sad but it has started producing flowers.

Nice surprise this week.

We found a few baby brinjals on this plants.

Hope blossom on this plants will bear fruit successfully this spring.

GTTC:Stir-Fried Baby Kailan with salted dried mackeral

Previous week harvest were white winter coloured-harvest theme. However, last week there is a dramatic change of colour theme harvest.  Last week we got more purple produce harvest. Last week we harvested our most probably last batch of Lebanese eggplants which we deep-fried coated with tempura flour. We also harvested some Giant Purple Mustard, beans, carrots, snow peas, chilies, yellow cherry tomatoes, chinese celery and volunteer nicola potatoes. This year the weather is unusually cooler so I must have sowed our kailan (Chinese broccoli) late than it is supposed to be. So our kailan has shown the sign of bolting and we harvested them as baby kailan. Every Monday, Daphne host Harvest Monday where gardeners all around the world shows what they have harvested each week.

We usually like to stir-fry baby kailan with salted dried mackeral. This is a popular dish in Malaysia and has a place in every restaurant menu. Linking with Wendy's Garden To Table Challenge.

Stir-Fried Baby Kailan with salted dried mackeral

Ingredient:

Kailan/Baby Kailan (separated the hard stem and leaves)

Minced Garlic

Small cut pieces of salted dried mackeral (fried)

Cooking oil

Fish sauce

Oyster Sauce

Chili (optional)

Heat oil in wok. Saute Garlic. Add in kailan hard stem, chili and fried salted dried mackeral. When the stem is half tender, add in the leaves and stir-fry. Put in a bit of fish sauce and oyster sauce and stir well. Enjoy.

Other recipe and ideas to prepare kailan visit this fab blog:

Baby Kailan Ikan Masin ~CikManggis Kitchen

Black Pepper Salmon with Baby Gai Lan ~ Joyce Kitchen

Terung 2011 (2011年の茄子)

Last warm season we grow 3 varieties of eggplant which are Early Long Purple, Lebanese and Bonica. Most of the plants were perennials as this was their second summer not first. Eggplants in our garden has this habit of starting to produce in December and then they will have about 2 months break when the weather is too hot for them to produce proper bloom. Our eggplants will start to produce again end of March. Surprisingly, we have harvest of eggplants up till middle of June (early winter) two years consecutively. Our eggplants and peppers are a bit weird likes to grow in cool weather, maybe the sun is more kinder to them? The only problem with this habit is it takes a long time to wait for the fruit to mature.

Early Long Purple

Early producer and prolific. Tolerates cooler condition good for cooler region. Long and medium size fruit. Cold hardy ( no frost) and can be treated as perennial in temperate region. A nice harvest on its second year although yield is slightly reduce. Since eggplants need a long time to grow and produce, the perennials will be the ones to produce earlier. If the weather permits by end October~ November. Can grow more than 1 metre tall. Need a very deep container to grow but won't give much produce compare to the one on the patch. If growing the plant in the container first year, can be transplanted on the patch in spring when the soil is warm. When the fruits is maturing or old the skin colour will become paler. Can be a bit bitter sometime depend on the fruit maturity stage during harvest. We had too much of this eggplants when we grow them for the first time (7plants), many times we share it with neighbour and friends. Photo taken from the eggplant second summer.

Lebanese

We only have one plant and this is the plant second summer. It was growing in a small pot during its first summer and through winter near the house wall. I know I treated it badly on its first year and I still remember it gave us only 3 eggplants. Very drought-hardy, can you imagine with a small pot and the sun blazing with the temperature 40+ degree Celsius for a week many times in summer it can survive. To make amends, I transplanted this eggplant on the most sunny spot in the veggie patch in spring. This eggplant grow twice its previous height and has given us at least 20 eggplants. At the moment it still have fruits on it and more blooms this week. I am thinking of pulling up this plant to make space for cool season veggies but I reckon I should be patient and wait until it stop fruiting. Especially now when I can't be very picky as they are not much veggies to be harvested at the moment. It will at least fill in the gap. Lebanese eggplant skin are more deep purple and much more firmer when it is cooked compared with Early Long Purple. Not bitter.

Bonica

Seedling that we bought from Bunnings last spring, I wanted to try growing this big oval shape eggplant. I must admit I still like the long finger shape ones rather than the big oval shape eggplant. I am going to keep this plant for next summer and see how it will fare through winter. Hopefully the geranium plant growing next to it will be a good wind break. A very big plant.

Eggplants grow well together with capsicum.

What is your favourite eggplant variety?