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.


Join in Wendy's Garden To Table Challenge.

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.

Stock (astral) Life-Cycle

I was really amazed this year that our astral stock flower seems not to mind the hot summer we had and living right through it. We still had a few plants flowering here and there in the garden at the moment that were planted last fall. A good month for sowing astral stock seeds here in Adelaide.

Astral stock newly germinated seeds.

Astral stock seedlings.

Hoping for volunteers this year and picture as a reminder for not weeding it.

End of winter last year, astral stock growing among our Italian sprouting broccoli plants.

Oh! The white cabbage butterfly seems fond of the flower stock.

Got the pest distracted a bit so it won't bother the brassica that much.

Gone are the broccoli plants.

Astral stock seed pods left to dry.

Astral stock seed pods resembles a mini version of stink bean (petai).

Astral stock flower seeds.

Psstt...my garden clock indicates that it is a good time to sow larkspur seeds now at Adelaide plain. This week we have so many larkspur volunteers popping in the garden.

Have a nice long weekend holiday!

Verona Purple Savoy Cabbage

I like purple colour very much. So when I was making decision to try a new variety for winter last year the verona purple savoy cabbage caught my interest. The first time I saw a savoy cabbage was here in Adelaide. Found very fascinating that there are cabbage with wrinkle leaves (Savoy~ A cabbage of hardy variety with densely wrinkled leaves). I like the sweetness of savoy cabbage. This is the first savoy cabbage variety  we grown and it was an interesting experience with trial and error. The first error I made was the sowing time. The first batch that I transplanted bolted. Sometime you just have to try your own sowing time instead of following the instruction. Followed the instruction at first did not get favourable result with the first sowing batch in winter bolted. Because I can be very stubborn at times, I sowed some seeds in winter~early spring which was not recommended in the seed packet instruction which at the end gave us some harvest.

Verona Purple Savoy Cabbage Seedlings.

Purple veins on the cabbage leaves.

Inter-planted with radish for productivity.

This is how 100% organic and neglected growing cabbage look like.

Amazingly, a well-established verona purple savoy cabbage can withstand more than 40 degree Celsius and our extreme hot summer here in Adelaide. There were also few days when it did not get any water during mid-summer. We were lucky to harvest several of this cabbage during summer. A heat-tolerant variety cabbage.

One of the cabbages that we harvest last mid-summer.

Aduh sakit pinggang belakang minggu ni nak berkebun pun tak boleh. Gara-gara lama sangat duduk depan mikroskop dari minggu lepas nak pulun habis kerja.

Early Autumn Fresh Veggies Picking

What's available in March for the kitchen from Kebun (garden) Malay-Kadazan Girls?

Not much but these are some that filled our tummy this month.

I lost my patience with the mice because they were digging holes in the newly prepared containers. So I cleared one of the sweet potato container so they don' have much place to hide and I don't think I will get any decent size of tubers because the mice were eating them as well. As I thought many of the tubers were badly eaten and thrown them in the compost. Tubers that were not touch were growing under the container  in the ground soil. It is still early to harvest them. Since I cleared this one container, the digging has lessen so I am leaving the rest of sweet potatoes to grow.

Sweet potato new vein shoots.

Baby beets, beans, carrots and pak chois.

I need to remember to sow some beans or peas this weekend.

Harvested several cucumber this month but did not took photos of it because we were too excited and sliced quickly for meals. I pull out a chard grown from last fall in shade. It took a long time to grow but good emergency food. Rather than leaving the shade unproductive, sometime we grow excess seedlings there.  In summer, did not received direct light from the sun but still have indirect light for its growth.

Onions are still in curing stage but we been taking some for cooking.

This basket feels closer to home~brinjal (eggplants/aubergine), lady's fingers (okra), bitter gourd, angled luffa and beans.

Kangkung (water spinach) loves the March weather. They have quick growth after we cut them. We have at least one bunch of kangkung to harvest each week for this month. Its been a long time since we had dragon carrot harvest and finally a few made an appearance in the kitchen.

Visit other's gardeners sharing their harvest in Daphne's Dandelions: Harvest Monday.

First Quarter 2012 Harvested Seeds (Jual-jual benih)

The first 3 months of year 2012, we did managed to harvest some seeds for future planting. Collecting our own seeds has able us to buy different variety of seeds and each year we have chance to add new varieties in the garden. For example, for peppers the first year we only have one variety and the second year we have 3-4 varieties growing, then the 3rd year maybe 7-8 varieties. The number of pepper varieties in our collection each year keep adding up. Its fun to harvest these different variety of fruit from the same family growing with different shape, colour and flavour.

Like human, seeds need to adapt to a new environment as well. The process of saving seeds with each new generation will make the variety or genetic strain you are growing more and more suitable and easier to grow in your garden. When I bought seeds, some seeds can be a challenge to germinate it. But when I collect the seeds later generation after generation, the seeds germination rate gets better and better while the plants become hardier in our own garden environment. 

We collected some 'Clemson spineless' okra seeds this month. It was main priority in the seed list to stock up because I finished the seeds last year. Lucky we managed to stock up more this year than last year.

From the capsicum family, so far we managed to save sweet cherrytime and banana capsicum seeds. The other varieties has just started to bloom and fruit. Hopefully, I will remember to save some seeds for the other type.

Our new collection of sunflower seed this year ~ Giant Russian Sunflower.

This is the first time we are collecting Rainbow Chard seeds.

At the moment many volunteers are popping out.

We probably don't need to sow the seeds, they did the job for us voluntarily.

All we need to do is transplanting.

For fun I did sow some of them, and germination was fast.

Several tomato seeds varieties has also been safely collected. For example, yellow pear cherry tomato, tigerella tomato and joy's yellow cherry. But I have not achieved my target for them yet. 

We also have new pumpkin/squash seeds variety in our home-grown seeds collection like Thelma Sanders Sweet Potato Pumpkin. 

We grow bush bean 'Redland Pioneer' for two years already, but this is the first time we collected the seeds. This bean suits really well in our garden, a reliable crop. We usually planted them in Spring and Autumn to fill in the gap as they produce really fast.

What seeds have you been collecting recently?

Saya telah menerima banyak perminataan semenjak saya menulis blog ini mengenai benih-benih yang saya kumpul seperti adakah boleh saya menjual benih-benih ini. Saya minta maaf kadang-kadang tidak dapat memenuhi permintaan atas kesibukan atau bilangan benih yang saya kumpul kekadang terhad untuk keperluan sendiri. Tetapi mulai minggu ini sampai hujung bulan ini sahaja saya akan cuba membuat senarai benih-benih apa yang boleh saya jual di ebay tanahairku jika ada luangan masa. Sebagai penjual di laman itu, saya pakai nama penjual tukangkebunkmg (link disertakan) kepada siapa yang sudi melawat laman tersebut. Saya juga ada sertakan barangan keperluan bayi atau ibu mengandung. Setiap pembeli akan menerima percuma 10 biji mammoth hybrid sunflower apabila meninggalkan mesej nama blog kami 'Kebun Malay-Kadazan Girl'.

Have a lovely weekend!