Salmon Kedgeree with Fennel and A Malaysia Twist Salad

This week, we harvested nice size of leeks. Those leek seedlings were born in Gnomesville given to us by Veggie Gnome last fall. We harvested as well a Florence fennel, purple kohlrabi, some yellow cherry tomatoes from 2 plants and some baby potatoes. Did you noticed our November cooking are speedy and simple. The cook is getting lazy in the kitchen as she is getting busy with writing up her thesis. Have to do lots of reading before you can think and write something for a thesis. I found another interesting fast to prepare dish and less cleaning up to do in the kitchen with this recipe. If you have left-over cooked plain rice this is a good recipe for it as well. This dish is to said originate from Britain.

Salmon Kedgeree with Fennel (adapted from The Australian's Women Weekly-World Table)

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups white long grain rice (We used basmathi or leftover cooked rice about 5 cups)

400 gram canned red salmon

75 gram butter

1/3 cup coarsely chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley

1 cup sliced florence fennel

2 teaspoons lemon juice

3 hard-boiled eggs, chopped coarsely

(1) Cook rice

(2) Drain salmon, discard skin and bones. Flake flesh.

(3) Melt butter in large frying pan; add rice, fennel, parsley and juice. Cook stirring until heated through. Add salmon and eggs; cook stirring gently until heated through. Serve with lemon wedges.
Note: I mixed in some Pak choi together.

Yup fennel and lemon goes well together.

Simple!

Another new experiment prepared in our kitchen.

If you don't have green mangoes or other vegetables that usually mix together for a Malaysia typical sambal salad, you can use slice red onion, florence fennel, kohlrabi mix together with pounded shrimp paste and chilli. Season well with lime/lemon juice, salt and sugar. You can also add in some crushed roasted peanuts. It taste so good that I took the picture only when it is left this much. It really taste like Malaysia typical sambal salad. A good appetiser.

Canned red salmon will be stock in the pantry now for busy days.

Mid-Spring 2011 Harvest

After going through winter, many of our plants are starting to flower. So the ones that shows the sign to flower will have to be pick first. Italian sprouting broccoli still producing many side-shoot sprouts, although the size are getting smaller. Our bloomsdale spinach is not bolt resistance this year. Spring-sowed daikon shows no mercy to me as it wants to join spring flower by giving us flower as well when the roots are still small.

Pest do like kohlrabi, can see the obvious sign of being eaten with many scars on it. Funny-looking parsnips. No beginner luck with purple savoy cabbage this year. Most of them produce small head or bolts. Planted too much rainbow chard last fall. Many of them I left flower in the garden. We harvested some red russian kale last week.

How do you enjoy your Florence fennel?

Harvested most of our over-wintered dragon carrot grown in container inter-planted with garlic and shallots. Bandicoot baby potatoes.

Funny-looking kohlrabi. We sliced them and fried it together with noodles.

Someone was busy again and left the cauliflower and brassica too mature with loose head.

Daikon and Topweight carrot thinnings.

Visit Daphne's Dandelion and share your harvest on Harvest Monday.

Hope to see whats going in your place after I finished my annual review report.

Wish I can finish it before I fall asleep though.

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!

Beginning of cool season veggies...hopefully

We started to harvest cool season vegetables this week. A lot of first harvest for this year! Harvested our first Italian sprouting broccoli for this year.  We just steamed the broccoli and season it with salt and pepper, even the big stem under the broccoli curd was sweet and tender. First baby lettuce of 2011 which is not pretty because we had to share it with slugs but was welcome since we have not eaten any since last year. Our first home-grown purple vienna kohlrabi, never tasted one but I have not eaten it yet to comment about it. We harvested our first home-grown beetroot which is medium size and not baby beet size anymore. Steamed the beetroot and I was so surprise by how sweet it was. My first thought was it taste almost as sweet as sweet corn. We also harvested some chillies and capsicums.

We finally harvested some Ilhan first-grown sweet corns. It takes a long time for Ilhan sweet corn to mature in winter compare to summer weather. But it was worth the wait.  I was thinning some Afghanistan carrot variety that we are trying for the first time to give more space for some to grow. I was surprise that some of the roots has already grown long and fat. I did not expect that it can grow that big since the soil is hard to break still and in this cold weather. One carrot was almost as big as the sweet corn size. Some roots were deformed but I don't mind as long as it is fresh and organically home-grown. We are lucky that some of the carrots were determined enough to grow bigger in our hard clay soil. Afghanistan carrots are a colourful mix of root.

I ate them fresh straight away like that after washing them. So sweet and crunchy. This is how the burgundy colour carrot root look inside.

I was clearing out one container that were growing okra burgundy plants for garlic planting. In that container I found a self-sowed leek, one leaf amaranth plant and 2 parsnips which the seeds that I did not sowed. I must have been careless and drop some parsnip seeds into this container. I never expected to get any roots when I pull out those parsnip tops. A nice surprise that in 3 months growing in this container, it has actually develop a root size that I can use to cook. So this make it official as our first home-grown parsnip harvest. Gardening is mysterious, the ones that you did not plan to grow on purpose always work much better than the ones you anticipated.

We also harvested some pink radish, yellow cherry tomatoes, snow peas and peas. Cut some rainbow chard stems and all were give-away to friends.

It took a bit longer to harvest last week. Not because I have that many harvest. But Tom the cat constantly wants my attention. He gets annoyed if I ignored him, he will walk over all my seedlings unless I stop and play with him. To my surprise when I turn to fill in my basket with veggies, Tom were in it and sitting on our chillies and tomato harvest. Not my cat but my neighbour's. It is a bit tricky with one hand patting and stroking the cat and the other hand weeds until Tom is satisfied and don't walk on the veggie patch. Tom is a very clever cat and keep rodents away from our garden since he visits frequently now. He only ask a little bit of love from us.

Visit Daphne our wonderful host for Harvest Monday and see other gardens all over the world is harvesting at the moment.