Purple Top Turnip

 I had so much fun growing purple top turnip this year after more than a year trying to grow them successfully but did not get much of a root to enjoy. But this year I got it right and the best thing was that I don't even took care of them, never water and feed them. The turnip plant grows only with rain water. What I did was only sowing the seeds. It was only the matter of sowing the seeds on the right time and season. To grow them easily will be early-mid autumn which is March and April. Later than that the turnip might not give me much root but will probably produce flower much earlier. Thank you to Mr. H owner of Subsistence Pattern for introducing me this beautiful root vegetable.

Purple Top Turnip Seedlings.

Sowing turnip seeds in spring for me is a bit tricky if it get stress out due to lack of water will bolt easily. We really have dry weather by end of spring so it hard to make sure the soil does not dry out quickly.

Its time to thin those plants.

Sometime I got confuse whether these are turnips or radish plants if the label gone missing. Yes, the small hands in our home love to collect these labels. I always wonder how in other gardens all round the corner of this humble earth their turnip roots develop rather quickly and some I read harvested the roots in two months. Ours turnip roots does take long time to develop in good size. Although I sow them early autumn, it usually in spring seasons that I can enjoy harvesting the root. The root starts develop in spring and not much in winter except for the leafy top.

Turnips rubbing shoulders because the gardener did not bother to thin them was on sick leave :P.

Can be grown in container.

Oh my that turnip is squashing a volunteer celery I see.

Slugs/Snails must have been having a taste of that turnip looking at those scratches.

The container I have been using is only about 20cm deep.

Yup yup yup had so much fun growing them this year.

Or should I said not taking care of them this year at all.

Turnip Rikyu Soup

 We harvested some purple top turnip this week. I like purple colour so I was excited to harvest these root vegetables and it is the first time I had success with this variety after  trying to grow them at second attempt. It is the gardener fault sowing in the wrong season the first time because I can't wait to grow them. I have been keeping this turnip recipe since last year and waited to try to cook it. My husband and I enjoy Japanese food very much and he is the one who cooks better Japanese food than I do. So I handed the recipe to him. I really like the simplicity of the preparation and ingredient in 'The enlightened kitchen~Fresh vegetables from the temple of Japan' recipe book by Mari Fuji for 'Turnip Rikyu Soup'.

~Turnip Rikyu Soup~

Ingredients:

4 small white kabu turnips (about 60g), peeled

2 tablespoon white sesame seeds

Turnip leaves, very finely chopped (about50g)

800ml Konbu stock

1 tablespoon soy sauce

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon sake (did not add)

finely grated yuzu rind, for garnish, optional

1> Cut the turnips lengthwise into 4 to 6 wedges.

2> Roast the sesame seeds, then grind in a food processor.

3> Blanch the finely chopped turnip leaves briefly in boiling salted water. Drain and squeeze lightly.

4> In a saucepan, combine the konbu stock, soy sauce, salt, sake and turnips, and place over medium heat for 5 to 6 minutes until the turnips are cooked through, but still crisp.

5> Add half the turnip leaves to the saucepan (my husband add tofu and spring onions too), bring very briefly to a boil, then remove from the heat and serve. Garnish with ground sesame, the remaining turnip leaves, and yuzu rind.

A very healthy and nutritious food. Sorry no photo of this dish, it is just a soup dish and I was too hungry to take a photo after feeding Abby.

Treasure Hunting

 My mental health is recovering slowly than my impatient side would like too. But it is a positive thing and something I should be grateful that I did not seem at the moment succumbing to postnatal depression while I am having mental depression and trying to overcome it.  Some days are good that I wake up and feel motivated instead of lying on the bed and not looking forward to anything. Its still a fragile thing and could be a false feeling so I am taking tentative baby steps not to be overdoing myself with too much planning or multitasking. There is still many unsettled things which worries me so I need to remind myself to not set unrealistic goal or dealing with high expectation. Sigh, one step at a time. I need to learn how to enjoy doing one thing at a time instead of doing so many things at once. For example, on my good days I can cook while washing dishes, clean the counter top, laundry and I can also do some weeding or sowing seeds in between waiting for the dish to cook or stirring. But my husband he does one task at a time even though he have some breaks in between. It is no wonder I make myself crazy while doing tasks at hand my brain also seems to be planning what to do ahead running into different direction planning non-stop, can't control and it goes chaotic. It made me think that I have some kind of mental disorder. I struggle to focus on one thing at a time. Physically I feel much better and more energetic after postnatal birth from last week. I am urged and advise to go out and socialise a bit to prevent me being isolated and fall to depression by professional help. Yet, I don't feel like going out at all. The only place I will go out to is the garden. Since I feel physically better now, we have been clearing up the garden bits by bits and found lots of treasures or basically free food last week. 

 A small spot in the garden was sprawled with autumn self-seeded tomato plants overlapping each other. These tomato plants flower during winter but I don't think with the cold temperature it will set fruit. However, after I made an effort to stake these tomato plant last weekend and gave some pruning found some ripened tomatoes and there are already producing fruits. I guess the warming temperature has able those flowers to set fruit. One of the plants has actually grown more than 5 feet tall when I pull it upright and tied it on the emergency support. I was not sure how many tomato plants before and now it is 3 tomato plants on that spot. Some of the cape gooseberries fruits has also matured and drop to the weeds underneath hiding these golden fruits. If my boys are here with me, I don't think mama and papa will have their fair share of these delicious golden fruits. I think they would certainly enjoy these golden 'berries' very much. I did not realised how many self-seeded tall red celery have grown among our backyard container gardens in between other plants and they sure have grown. The celery stalk surprisingly juicy when relying on rain water only. We also harvested some peas and broccoli shoots last week. We harvested all of our Early Horn carrots last week grown in container.

 Here is half of the patch in front of the kitchen window that I have cleared on the weekend. Everything on this patch are self-seeded plants except for 2 foxglove plant which has been completely   hidden. Most of these volunteers are celery and chervil.

Celery from the patch above.

I remembered we had several self-sprouted potato plant on the front yard in different places. However with weed competition and pest attacking the plant many plants got lost while they were growing around 20cm tall. Last weekend while my husband cleared up the front yard and pulling out all the weeds he found several small sizes of potatoes from the potatoes that perished early and lost in sight. Surprisingly, one self-sprouted Royal Blue potato that got lost under sunflower and rose geranium plant has produced decent harvest. The Royal Blue potato plant was not there anymore but somehow I remembered there was a potato plant growing on that spot. So lucky we blindly dug around that area an hit a jackpot.

We are blessed with many volunteer rainbow chards plants  last autumn and this spring I found several new seedlings as well while clearing up and left them undisturbed. Hopefully these seedlings will provide us harvest during summer. Summer month is actually the season which we don't really have much to harvest compared to other season. Lettuce are also plenty still to pick around the garden. But it will be time to say goodbye to lettuce by next month if I don't sow a new batch of lettuce this week.

We also harvested some florence fennels, beetroots, top purple turnips and kohlrabi this week.

There are still many spots to clear up.

Join in Harvest Monday at Daphne's Dandellion.

Begedil Beetroot (Beetroot Croquettes)

We entered the mid-spring season now here in Adelaide. Our fall-sowed beetroot has already starting to bolt. So this week I had to harvest most of our beetroot.  Parsnips were growing on the same patch with beetroot. So I decided to harvest everything on that veggie patch and in replacement direct-sowed some summer vegetable and flower there. 

So what to do with these beetroots?

I would like to thank Shaheen author of Allotment 2 Kitchen Blog who has kindly give me suggestion and link to her beetroot archive when she commented on my previous beetroot harvest post about how to enjoy beetroot since this is a very new vegetable in our kitchen. We like croquettes very much and I can trick my eldest to eat it because it does not have the form of vegetables anymore. All the vegetables nicely hidden inside. I really enjoyed Shaheen's beetroot croquette recipe and just change a bit of the ingredients to suit for my kids. I bet Shaheen's version is much more tasty.

Beetroot Croquettes (adapted from Allotment 2 Kitchen)

Ingredients:
500gram mashed potatoes
300gram beetroot (peeled and grated)
1 Tablespoon Sweet paprika
Small handful of fresh parsley( or coriander), minced
1/2 teaspoon salt,
1 egg, beaten,
Breadcrumb
Vegetable Oil

Combine well mashed potatoes, grated beetroot, sweet paprika, parsley and salt.
Adjust seasoning according to your liking.
Make a shape of croquette that you prefer from the mixture.
To firm up, place it on a tray and keep in fridge for at least 30 minutes.

Dip it into the beaten egg and coat it well with breadcrumbs.
Heat oil (quantity for shallow frying) at low heat.
Shallow-fry those croquettes and gently turn them for all side until golden.
Ready to serve.

Linking with Wendy's Garden To Table Challenge
&
Just Another Meatless Monday

This is the first time we try growing purple top turnip thanks to Mr. H (Subsistence Pattern) for the seeds. Our Ruby chards also needed to be harvest as quickly as possible this month before it bolts.

This year is a very good year of Italian sprouting broccoli for us, so many side-shoots that keep on coming since last August. However, peas were not as generous as last year. But our kids still happy with the amount or peas they can have everyday. Not enough to freeze though.

Opps...Some of the cauliflowers and broccoli were harvested too late made them loose instead compact heads.

Happy Harvest Monday!

A Little Dish of Sweet Turnip

I always thought turnip was one of the easiest vegetables to grow for a novice to begin with. Unfortunately after having my own experience at growing turnip, not that easy if you don't have enough water or not much rain at our small garden. The seeds germinate easily and grow fast.

I thought that turnip form globe root very fast almost like radish pace. But ours seems not to want forming globe root. Our turnips just do nothing but grow lush leaves. Then after long anticipation, most of the time our turnips seems to be more fond of growing long woody root rather than globe root.

So when I spy some of those turnip roots look like the size of S size chicken eggs after waiting for more than 3 months, I am most determined to harvest them quickly before it becomes woody. Is it normal for turnip to form roots after 3 months or it should be much much much earlier? This is 'snowball' variety.

The first time that I known that in this world a vegetable called "turnip" exist was when I was studying in Japan. I was teaching Malaysia language part-time at Japan and one of my student said that it is kabu season now (kabu is turnip in Japanese). So of course my students will want to know what turnip is called in Malaysia language. It made me sweat a little, after a very detailed description from my beloved students I knew that it is turnip. However, until now I still don't know whether we have any specific name for turnip in Bahasa Malaysia (does anyone know?). I tried to translate it in google translator but resulted as "orang bodoh" meaning idiot. 

Harvested those tiny turnips and I don't have any ideas to prepare it.Nigel Slater came to the rescue again with his simple ' A little Dish of sweet turnip" recipe from his book Tender.I like simple dishes because with food that comes fresh from the garden we don't have to worry about the taste that much. Just enjoy as much of its original flavour to really enjoy the food that we grow. Saying that, I have to be honest that I still avoid eating raw vegetables (Still in learning process to get used of eating raw vegetables).

I think it takes less than 30 minutes to prepare this simple dish to enjoy with roast bird which we did. Quoting Nigel " The contrast between the sweet outer shell and slightly bitter turnip is astonishing with roast game birds".

Drop tiny turnips into lightly salted boiling water and cook for 10 minutes or so until tender.Drain.

Melt a thick slice of butter in a shallow pan and add the turnips and a spoonful of sugar.

Cook over medium heat, shaking the pan from time to time, until the little orbs are glossy and sweet.

I decided to pop in uncooked pink radish together too. I am still avoiding raw radish. 

Not sure how the end process of the dish suppose to look like because there were no photos.

However, it was a nice dish.

Linking with Wendy's Garden To Table Challenge.

Selamat Berpuasa.