Perch steamed with Lemon Basil and Ginger for Good Friday

We have many lemon basil volunteer plants sprouted from last spring. Sometime when I pruned them to make them bushier, I bring  those pruned stems in the bathroom as they have very strong lemony scent. The lemon basil are flowering and bees really like the flowers.

How was your Good Friday day?

We bought a perch on Thursday and I saw this nice recipe from CikManggis~jom masak, jom makan-makan blog and adapted her recipe with what I have in my garden and pantry. Terima kasih (Thank you) CikManggis, we really enjoyed it, especially Rayyan who was really greedy. It was only 3 of us for dinner on Good Friday, me,hubby and Rayyan. So I thought one medium perch will be enough but next time for greedy Rayyan will have to steam 2 fish. A good protein source and a very healthy dish.

Perch steamed with Lemon Basil & Ginger

(Recipe adapted from CikManggis~jom masak, jom makan-makan blog)

It was really quick dish to prepare if you already have a cleaned fish ready. Took me less than 45 minutes to prepare this dish.

While preparing ingredients you can warm up your steamer.

Ingredient (A):

1 cleaned medium size perch (or any other suitable fish)

3 garlic cloves thinly sliced

3 shallots thinly sliced (or a quarter of red onion)

5cm of ginger - julienne

1 pepper-sliced

2 lemon grass stalk- bruised

a handful of washed lemon basil leaves (or 3 kaffir lime leaves)

1 tablespoon oyster sauce

1 or 1/2 tablespoon of soy sauce

about 3 spoon of water

(you can season it with white pepper, sugar & salt, but I did not put any seasoning for my toddler)

To make it more spicy add some chillies (did not because of our toddler).

Put the fish and all of the ingredient (A) into a suitable container and steam for 15 minutes.

While waiting prepare ingredients B.

Ingredient (B):

1 tomato-cut

lime or lemon juice from 2 fruits

1 carrot-julienne

can garnish it with coriander, chinese celery and spring onion leaves.

Add ingredients B after ingredients A steamed 15 minutes.

Steam for another 15 minutes and done.


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We found this video today and was reminded of Rayyan's cardiac surgeries in the past. Rayyan was lucky to have a gifted cardiac surgeon for his first and second surgery with Prof. Igor whom is featured in this video. He has created many miracles for us and hope. We hope that Rayyan will be 3rd lucky to have the same surgeon again for his pending 3rd surgery this coming May.

White sweet potatoes and shoots with coconut milk dish

This winter we are growing many vegetables that are new to us and we don't have any idea on what best cooking method to prepare them. Any advise are most welcome and will be deeply appreciated. We harvested our first rainbow chard and baby beets (thinnings) last Monday. Both of these vegetables are new to us and will be our first tasting experience. There were 2 rainbow chards growing in the same pot, so I harvest one because it is getting crowded. Other vegetables that were harvested was tomatoes, giant purple mustards, snow peas, capsicums, chilies and corianders. Join in and see what other gardeners are harvesting all around the world in Harvest Monday hosted by Daphne.

Rainbow chards and other vegetables were chopped. They danced in the wok for the making of salted dried mackeral fried rice dish. We like rainbow chard and will plant some more again in spring. I still don't know what suitable dish for beetroot and how to prepare it since it really bleeds. Boiled those baby beetroots together with Rayyan's porridge. It was a really bloody dish especially after using the mixer to chopped them into pieces. We tasted Rayyan red porridge and it was sweet with beetroot blend together. 

We grow dill for the first time and I keep on forgetting that I planted them. Out of curiosity, Lenay keep on reminding me of those dills because we never used dill in our cooking before. So snipped some for the kitchen. We also harvested some baby leeks, capsicums and chilies last Saturday.

I was clearing up some containers and areas in the veggie patch. From that we got some onion leaves which did not bulb last year, ginger rhizomes and our last beans. Our wong bok were looking really bad with caterpillars and snail attack that we harvest some of it. It took a lot of washing to get rid of snail and slug hiding in between these wong bok leaves. We have not enjoyed any wong bok since last year and Lenay was really missing it. After she experience growing brassicas especially wong bok and cabbage and know they are so difficult to grow 100% organically due to pest, we keep on reminding each other never to buy brassicas again in the market. When we passed by organic market, we still see sign of minimal spray used on those cute cabbages. Ours might not be a beauty but at least it does not contain hazardous chemicals. Cut some of wong bok and onion leaves to make a vegetarian fried rice noodles for Saturday breakfast.

With the newly fresh harvested ginger and dill, I made stir-fried ginger chicken for Saturday dinner. Usually we used boneless chicken meat for this dish but they were only chicken wings in the freezer so we had to improvise.

Last weekend we harvested all of our daikons. The ones which is not forky or broken due to digging it out were shared with other generous gardeners. I did not preserved any daikons this time.  Hopefully there will be another empty space in our veggie patch this month to sow another small batch of daikon. We also harvested some chilies, peas and sweet potato shoots.

We harvested some white sweet potatoes this month and I wasn't sure how to prepare it since I never tasted one before. Cikmanggis my cooking guru gave me some nice tips. So with her help I cook the sweet potato and sweet potato shoots with coconut milk. In Malaysia, this kind of dish is commonly known as masak lemak putih.

Ingredients (this is roughly what I did)

White sweet potato (one bowl cut into chunks)

Sweet potato shoots (one bowl-washed)

4 medium size garfish (boil in 1 litre water with just a little bit of slice ginger, keep the boiled water)

Red onion/shallots (I used 1 Red onion)

Black pepper

150ml coconut milk

Salt

Take only the meat from the boiled fish and in a mortar mash it with red onion and black pepper.

Heat the boiled water again and add in coconut milk, the mashed fish with red onion and black pepper and white sweet potatoes. Frequent stirring.

When the sweet potato is almost tender, add sweet potato shoots and stir well. Add salt to taste. Done.

It was really delicious, I had many servings and I was a satisfied cat.This will be my comfort food. White sweet potato has the sweetness that I like and it is a bit starchy. It reminds me of young tapioca that I had in my childhood. Hopefully with our next white sweet potato if we have good harvest, I would like to try Cat-in-Sydney suggestion of making pengat (Malaysia traditional cake). But I need some lesson on how to make it. I think mama showed several time how to make banana pengat a long long time ago but I forgot. My knowledge in making traditional cake is very limited.

Join in Wendy's Garden To Table Challenge.

Ginger gone wrong again

My second attempt at growing ginger in temperate region did not succeed again. The growing condition was against a brick wall and received only morning sun. I was hoping that this ginger plant survive through winter but the plants has turned yellow last week. I don't want to leave the roots there, it will possibly rot. I have stop watering this plant from middle of autumn so it only received water from rain.

2 weeks ago, this ginger plant look like this.

So did any root growth happened?

Just a bit since I can see a portion of young ginger.

Well, it was slightly better than previous year which no root growth occur at all.

This is ginger rhizome bought from Green Harvest.

Any advice on growing ginger in temperate region (mediteranean like climate)?

I have another plant which is still surviving winter under tomatoes plants and surrounded by different plants like spring onion and leaf amaranth. Hopefully it grows much better than the other one.

After my mom came back to Malaysia after staying with me to give emotional and caring support for Rayyan in February this year, she was excited to grow new things with seeds that she brought back. So she selected an area to make a new veggie patch. She said every time she dig on that area she keeps on digging many fresh big ginger rhizomes. She forgot that she planted ginger on that area after leaving her garden for so long to stay with me. Mom said cooking a dish with fresh ginger is delicious and for weeks I hope I have some fresh ginger to harvest.  Alas, it seems not I have to keep on dreaming. I was heartbroken with our ginger harvest last weekend that my mind went blank with no ideas to use them. The happiness of harvesting our first jicama has been shadowed. I am being a drama queen here. We ate the jicama raw slice like an apple. It was so crisp, sweet and juicy. Ginger is very expensive here in Adelaide and we frequently use them in cooking. Vegetable items that we still have to buy are ginger, garlic, onion and potatoes. Occasionally, we have to buy turmeric, pumpkin and sweet potatoes. We are aiming to plant more garlic, onion and potatoes this year so at least one of these item we don't have to depend much on the store. Trying our best to eat food that is in the season. So endure we must with those daikons. Daikon is not that bad really, fresh home-grown is always good. It is not that we don't like it, after many weeks eating daikon you wish you have other stuff as well.

Fall Container Gardening clean up time

It is really difficult to decide which container has to be clear up now as everything look so messy. There are several containers that warm season plants were not producing much or dying. Now making way for new plants. I have replenish the soil with some manure. For deep containers I have direct-sowed cool season root vegetable seeds and shallow container with Asian greens.

This area which I grow vegetables in containers have been totally taken over by sweet potatoes vines that were actually planted in one container. The sweet potato plants are choking leeks, bush bean and capsicum. But sweet potato foliage made a good ground cover during summer to retain the soil moisture for other plants to survive extreme weather for them. Not sure whether it is the right time to start harvest sweet potatoes or not. Sweet potatoes nodes have already grown some roots in other plant containers. I was thinking of harvesting sweet potatoes from the main plant pots maybe end of this month or early next month depending on the weather. Then tidy up some of the foliage and left some of the new-rooted nodes from the sweet potato vein in other containers. Some of the beans on the plant are left to dry to collect seeds from it. I did not intend to collect any bush bean seeds initially but I accidently left some too mature as I cannot see it amidst those sweet potato vines. The JAP pumpkin that were experimentally plant in container have to make a long walk to grow around the container area and it has grown more than 7 metres. So far, we are only confidant on getting one harvest from this plant. Not about to give up hope yet waiting for some more please.

A chili plant that is fruiting sharing a pot with ginger and spring onions. I hope we get lucky with the chili plant harvesting some chili through winter as I have position it near the brick wall that will absorb some heat. Waiting for Bayam (Chinese Spinach/ Leaf Amaranth) to complete it life cycle and I can harvest some seeds for it. It does make the area less boring with their red flowers. Two jicama plants which is getting entangle with bayam.

Okra burgundy plants does not look green and healthy but they still produce some pods.  They were under attack by aphids at one stage but I have been collecting lady bird or grasshopper and made them live on these okra plants. Aphids disapeared few weeks later. We have trained jicama plants on okra plants.

Rayyan tasted cauliflower & broccoli for the 1st time

 

Our first cauliflower harvest for this season. This is the first time Rayyan tasted cauliflower and broccoli. Well almost all cool season crop is his first anyway like peas. He was still in my tummy same month last year.

 We have cut some of our broccoli (Italian sprouting) plants central head. But we can still have some broccoli produce from side shoots like picture above. Unlike, cauliflower where it only produce one head and you have no more produce from them anymore. We wonder how long we could continue harvesting our broccoli plants

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Ordered some seed packets online for spring planting from Green Harvest last week and arrived yesterday morning together with galangal, turmeric and ginger rhizomes. It is still too early to plant the rhizomes yet so I am keeping them in dry place. I am thinking what should I do with the galangal as it need immediate planting. I ordered the rhizome earlier this year because last year I could not get my hand on ginger because they sold out. I could buy ginger at the market but I noticed that during spring/summer the ginger price is most expensive compare with other season in Adelaide. It is more than AUD20perkg for ginger in spring-summer!!!

My theory is that ginger is harvest in the cool month (ginger takes about 8 month to mature and have many big fat roots). For example, if a farmer plant ginger in September  that means it is ready to harvest in May or June.  So when the weather is warming up, farmers are busy planting new ginger plants.So, only limited supply of ginger to shops or markets in spring and summer. Up goes the price!!!