Leek and Fetta Triangles

For the last few weeks, we have been harvesting leeks that were transplanted last autumn. We have harvested most of these leeks as some were showing the sign to form flower stalk. In replacement of those leeks, we are trying to grow Turkish leopard melon. Not sure whether it will go well with growing melon here as with little water and very hot soil, success rate is probably close to 0%. We did not have trouble growing carrot here in fall/winter but spring/summer grown carrot here don't look good. Leeks were starting to yellow due to hot weather. It was so green during cool season.

Today, we harvested some Musselburgh leeks growing in a container. There were some volunteered bayam (chinese spinach) harvested as well.

This is our first time using fillo pastry and fetta cheese.

There were a lot of guessing how to use the fillo pastry.

So if you have any tips on using fillo pastry please advise.

We still have many extra fillo pastry.

Leek and Fetta Triangles (The Australian Women's Weekly-Fast Vegies)

Ingredients:
100gram butter
2 cloves garlic, crushed
2 medium leeks (700gram), sliced thinly
1 tablespoon caraway seeds
150gram fetta cheese chopped coarsely
1/3cup (40gram) coarsely grated cheddar cheese
4 sheets fillo pastry (depending on the size you want to make)
2 teaspoons sesame seeds

(1) Heat half of the butter in large frying pan, add garlic and leek;cook, stirring occasionally, until leek softens. Stir in caraway seeds; cook, stirring, 2 minutes.

(2) Combine leek mixture in medium bowl with cheeses.

(3) Preheat oven to 200 Celsius/180 Celsius fan-forced. Lightly oil oven tray.

(4) Melt remaining butter in small saucepan. Brush one sheet of the fillo lightly with butter; fold in half lenthways. Place the leek mixture at bottom of one narrow edge of fillo, leaving a 1cm border. Fold opposite corner of fillo diagonally across the filling to form a triangle; continue folding to end of fillo, retaining triangular shape. Place on tray, seam-side down; repeat with remaining ingredients.

(5) Brush triangles with butter; sprinkle with sesame seeds. Bake, uncovered, about 10 minutes or until browned lightly.

Have a lovely weekend!

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.

Last End Spring Harvest

Harvest the last cauliflower and broccoli for this year. Bandicoot some Royal Blue potato. There were a few Redland Pioneer bean to harvest and thinking about leaving the rest to dry on the plant. 

Most of the cool season vegetables planted last fall/winter are completely harvested for this year, such as rainbow chards, bloomsdale spinach and florence fennel. It will be officially summer next month.

We finally started to harvest our Nero Black kale since not much is available to harvest this week. Some spring onions, beetroot and baby potatoes. We also harvested some Musselburgh leek grown in polystyrene container. Those leek were long and width at least an inch.

Visit Daphne for Harvest Monday.

First 2011 Pumpkin Harvest and Saturday Dinner

We had our first pumpkin harvest for this year yesterday. Hazel Dene had such a fantastic pumpkin harvest this year and so colourful too, very inspiring. Other vegetables that we managed to harvest on Saturday are Leeks, Lebanese eggplants, Lemon grasses, beans, corianders, snow peas, chilies, tomatoes, radish thinnings and 4 different variety of capsicum. The rain keep us indoors so I decided to cook and cook, gave me a chance to try many new recipes that I have been keeping in my favourites. Wendy's Garden to Table Challenge has also motivated me to fully appreciate our harvest and the way we used them in the kitchen.

The pumpkin that we harvested was growing vertically (photo taken in March) and in container. I almost forgot about that pumpkin because tomato foliage were covering it from view. I have to admit it is not easy to grow rambling pumpkin on a small limited space. We had to train the pumpkin veins so it won't annoyed other neighbouring plants. During rainy weeks or high humidity, have to make sure there is lot of space for air circulation so the plants are not succeptible to powdery mildew. I tried to grow bush pumpkin but birds keep on uprooting young seedlings that it was too late anymore to grow them.  In 2010, we only harvested one pumpkin. Hopefully this year will be a bit of improvement. Does anyone know the reason or how to avoid when your pumpkin is growing the size bigger than a tennis ball suddenly it become rotten and died? We have this problem every year.

Our main dishes with warm rice for Saturday night are P.F.Chang's Stir-Fried Spicy Eggplants from Joyce recipe and Cencalok Prawn from CikManggis kitchen recipe. Together with the Labanese Eggplants are beans and leeks used for P.F. Chang's Stir-Fries Spicy Eggplants. Joyce told me that snake bean is also good for this dish but I don't have any fresh snake bean in our garden substitute it with french bean.

This was the first time I tried making this exotic Cencalok (cincalok) prawn cuisine as we have a lot of home-grown chilies and lemon grass to use. This dish is an instant hit on the dinner table. My husband had 3rd helpings.

On Sunday morning, with the help of tomatoes, radish thinnings, capsicum, coriander, chili and leek , I made Mee Goreng (Fried Noodles) before we went off to the state museum for the kids.

No gardening this weekend due to heavy rain and strong wind.

Daikon thinnings

I was a bit worried during the second half of April whether the garden will have any fresh vegetables for the kitchen. Fortunately, daikon seeds that were sowed around middle of March were growing really fast. Daikon seeds were sowed very closely, I have been putting root vegetables seedlings thinning task at the bottom of list to do in the veggie patch. As daikon grows really big root compared with other radish, our daikon thinnings were already the same size as white icicle variety radish. Daikon thinnings have been the main fresh harvest in the kitchen together with chilies. Okra is loving the warm weather we had last week and we spied many promising pods that can be harvested this week. Once again, I forgot to harvest bittergourd growing in the front yard, some fruits have over ripen.

Glad I did not gave up on the white spine cucumber plants that have been growing since spring but were only producing male flowers. As the day is becoming shorter, it starts to produce female flower. Now, it is the main cucumber variety that is producing for us in fall. After second year of growing this cucumber variety, I now understand that this is a very sensitive day-light hours cucumber plant. Some cucumber variety don't produce female when the days are getting longer but the shortening of day-lights will trigger the female fruits to form. Some carrots that were growing in containers sowed in January were harvested.

I was clearing some veggie patches and harvested leeks that were planted in spring. Using some of this harvest (leeks, cucumbers, capsicum, chinese celery cut in bite sizes), prepared Sweet and Sour Tempura coated Salmon dish.

Different variety of capsicum plants are producing in our garden. However, it makes us wait a long time for it to ripe. I am so tempted to harvest these capsicum when there are green several times. Results of waiting until last weekend got to harvest 2 purple bell and banana capsicum. Spied some banana and golden bell capsicums which is ripening and might be ready for picking this week. Lenay fried the eggplants with tempura. Probably this was our final chance harvested 3 varieties of cucumbers (apple, green gem, white spine) in one day this fall.

We don't have much luck with melon family this year compared last year. Last year we have many big honeydew melons and watermelon to harvest. This year we only had some small melon harvest. The biggest melon this year did not even matured to the size of smallest melon harvested last year. Honeydew, Rockmelon and Turkish Leopard melon plants were fruiting but I discovered too late last week that cucumber beetles have make a grand nest on one of the veggie patch. The plants died when the fruit were half-way developing . Although the ripe melons were small this year, it tastes much sweeter than the big ones.

What is your most favourite melon?

Visit Daphne's Dandelions for Harvest Monday.

Leek Lucky Mate

My Leek confession:

1) I can't remember my first taste of leek but it must be in Japan when I buy ready-made set for nabe ryouri, ignorant that the cut veggies in the pack is leek. I must have eaten leek many times in Japan when I dine outside with friends but not paying attention on what I am eating.  My first taste of leek will be when I am already adult which is just a few years ago;-).

2) Leek is a new vocabulary to me. I know what leek is when we bought our first leek seeds through catalog last year because we wanted a new variety in the garden growing well in cool season.

3) My cousin Lenay has never known Leek until we grow them in the garden and had her first taste of leek from our home-grown.

4) I have never bought any leek since I married my husband.

Leek is very easy to grow and almost pest free. Don't need much water. Grow in full sun. Great as companion to other vegetables. Not sure about peas and beans though, I have never tried growing them together because so many companion planting referance said that allium family and beans don't like each other.

Leek grows well with pansy or viola in the garden. This combination make the garden look more ornamental. I really like growing leek in the front yard because combination of leek with any vegetables makes the garden more pretty.Pansy help cover the leek stem like blanching. At the back of leek are carrots and onion grown from sets.

Carrot and leek is a well known combination of companion planting.

This is an odd companion gardening , Europe and Asian fusion~chives, leeks and water spinach in the same pot. These allium help to reduce water spinach pest attack.

What is "Companion Week" and Seed Give-Away visit this post for more information.

Thank you for linking.