Our First Sunroot Malaysia Harvest

 We are doing a trial growing sunroot (Jerusalem artichokes) this year in this hot and humid tropical weather and one plant had died off which was planted last November. So we dig in and see what the results are from the spot we tried to grow the sunroot plant. The plant was only about 2 feet tall so I was not expecting much of it. Surprisingly the plant did yield several tubers, although not as many as we used to harvest from one plant. The location was in full sun. At the moment, I am contemplating to regrow the tubers again in different location. As I don't have much tubers to experiment on, probably most will go to re-planting them again rather than cooking the tubers.

 Our main harvest last week were sweet leaves (star gooseberry), chillies and butterfly pea flowers. I am not sure what this fruit is called but it is not a mango fruit. My mother gave most of the sweet leaves plants a hard-pruning 3 weeks ago and now new shoots are quickly growing. She pruned those sweet leaves plants to half of its original height.

 We also harvested some pattypan squashes, cape gooseberries, sweet basil leaves, cucumber tree fruits, sponge luffa, calamansi limes, soursop, nam nam fruits, purple plum radish, snake beans and pea eggplants. We made juice with the soursop fruit. I have been harvesting while doing some other gardening task and kept the harvest in the pocket. So this picture above summarise what we got to harvest from our garden last week.

 We only got a few mulberry fruits to harvest this week. Rayyan has to wait for the fruits ripening on the trees at the moment. Lemon fruits are not as many as previous to harvest since some got a hard-pruning so waiting for new shoots to grow. But we do have a few lemon trees fruiting which is still green not ready for harvesting. I think it is better to have them not ripening at once so we have a succession of harvest. We managed to prune a pamelo, calamansi lime, wax apple and nam nam tree last week. Last Saturday, my husband managed to give a hard pruning on this mango plant that we did not realised had 2 passion fruit plants climbing on it. No wonder we had ripen passion fruits under the bushy mango trees. Not only that we discovered so many orchids on the tree as well which has not seen light for some time I reckon. The passion fruit will flower much better now as they will received more lights and we can also spy whether the plants are fruiting or not.

 This is another mango tree that had a hair cut as well and we can now see the sky in any angle or corner of this tree. This is the mango that my mother pruned almost 2 years ago and she fell from it. Hopefully tomorrow when she returned she will be happy to see the mango plant had a hair cut.

 My husband in the mood to do some tree hard-pruning and has been asking me which tree next. I think it is time to give the sapodilla fruit trees a hard pruning. The sapodilla fruit trees bear fruits almost all year round. But the problem the plant is too bushy now and I can't see the fruits clearly except the ones facing outside. So I think better to give the sapodilla tree a hard pruning.

Harvest Monday at Daphne's Dandelions. 

Collecting Yellow Ruffles

The first time ever we eaten our first pattypan squash was last year and it was our own home-grown. I rarely found anyone which said that they like to eat pattypan squash. I heard complain about this vegetable a lot though. So to make sure that we know what true pattypan squash taste like, we decided to grow this vegetable last spring. Well, the cute photo of pattypan squash and it bright colours on the punnet seedlings tag were one of the main factor that made me bought it and grow the seedlings in our garden last spring. It was not in my wish lish and plan for warm season planting. I just came to know about this vegetable when we live in Australia, not a really popular vegetable I reckon since we hardly see them in market shelves unless it is in season. FYI, I don't hear any complain about pattypan squash in our house.

Pattypan squash was very prolific. It was one of the first vegetables that give us summer harvest. The blooming flowers are so big compared to the fruit waiting to be fertilised behind it. At the end of the season, we left one fruit to mature to collect seeds. When you left one gets very big and go to the stage of producing seeds, the plants will stop bearing other fruits.

We left one pattypan squash to grow on the plant for weeks until the plant died to collect seeds. We finally harvest this last pattypan squash together with other summer vegetables. Visit Daphne's Dandellion Harvest Monday to see what other gardeners all over the world is harvesting this week.

It was not easy to cut through the pattypan squash to collect the seeds as the skin has become very hard. We were happy to see many seeds to collect that we can sow for next spring. 

It will be a waste not to eat this mature pattypan squash, although usually it is collected for the kitchen used when it is young and tender to eat. CikManggis gave me an idea when I was looking at her angled luffa recipe. So I adapted her recipe, to make this pattypan squash dish and join in Wendy's Garden to Table Challenge (GTTC).

Ingredients:
One mature pattypan squash cut like an apple 1 inch thick.
4 mashed garlic cloves,
1/2 teaspoon of pepper (coarsely grind)
1 egg lightly beaten
salt
water
vegetable oil for saute
Optional: prawn, tofu, rice vercimelli or dried bean curd (pre-soak with water).

Heat oil and saute garlic. Add in water and pepper. Let it boil. Add in pattypan squash. When pattypan squash is almost tender add in egg and mix well. Then add in prawns, tofu, rice vercimelli or dried bean curd. Add salt.Cook until pattypan squash is tender. You may need to add in some water after you add rice vercimelli or dried bean curd because it soak a lot of water.


What did that pattypan squash tasted like? A bit nutty. Our 20months old family member seems to like this dish as he keep asking for more.

With the other summer vegetables that we harvested, I mix them with spicy sour dried salted fish with mango.

Any ideas how to prepare pattypan squash dish?

Happy Mellow Yellow Monday!