Spring foods

While attending a permaculture design course in Central Victoria last year (October 2009) I learnt an interesting fact about seasonal eating in Spring. David Holmgren lives on a one hectare property in Hepburn Springs and  produces virtually all of the fruit or vegetables necessary to feed himself, his family and a few Woofers. David showed us some vegetable beds being prepared for Spring planting. It was then early October (in a similar climate to Canberra) and there was not very must growing at the time. David explained that Spring was the common time of famine in traditional societies. It was usually the time when the Winter stores of preserved foods were running out and yet new crops of Spring were yet producing. I found this fascinating and it made me think how our choices would change if we were to eat strictly seasonal and local.

While we are now past early October some of those life saving vegetables are available, abundant and at their best. We are spoilt for choice with all sorts of vegetables available at our local farmers market because they come from warmer climates such as coastal areas or near Sydney. But what is coming out of our own backyard? Well in the local area we are picking things like peas, broad beans, globe artichokes, fresh garlic and plenty of leafy greens. Broad beans and globe artichokes are both a bit of work to prepare but I think they are well worth the effort - even if we aren't in a famine.

I have had a few people ask me for ideas on what to do with so many broad beans so here is a couple:

Broad Bean Salad with Mountain Ham and Mint

2-3kg fresh young broad beans     
1 bulb fennel                               
few spring onions,  finely sliced        
6 slices cured ham such as jamon serrano or prosciutto
Fruity olive oil
good handful of mint
1 lemon
salt and pepper                                                  
handful young salad greens (optional)  

Remove beans from their pods. To remove their skins, blanch the beans in boiling water for 1 - 2mintues, then cool in iced cool water  (the time required will depend on the maturity of the beans - the younger they are the less cooking required).  Pop out the beans by piercing the grey-green skins with your thumbnail to free the bright green, barely cooked bean.
Trim and wash the fennel.
When ready to make the salad, slice the fennel into thin shreds (a mandoline works well for this) and put into a bowl. Add the broad beans, sliced spring onions, and a good spinklng of sea salt. Drizzle generously with fruity olive oil to coat. Coarsely chop the mint leaves and add them, then squeeze the juice of half the lemon over the salad. Toss well, taste and add more salt, oil and or lemon juice if required.

Put onto serving platter and surround with thin slices of mountain ham. You can slice the ham fine or just tear it into pieces and scatter over. Garnish with a few fresh young salad greens and serve. serves 4

Morocan broad bean dip
Try serving this with fresh or toasted pita bread and a plate of fat black olives. It is also great as a dip for raw veggies or spread on sour dough toast.

1kg broad beans, shelled (larger, starchier beans are better for this recipe)
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 teaspoon freshly chopped oregano                                      
1 teaspoon ground cummin
1/4 cup olive oil
salt and pepper
garnish
1 teaspoon paprika
1/2 teaspoon chilli powder
1/2 teaspoon ground cummin
1 tablespoon olive oil
3 spring onions, finely chopped

Boil the shelled beans for 15 minutes until quite tender. Drain through colander set over a bowl and reserve the cooking water. Tip 1/2 cup cooking water into a blender. Add beans, garlic, oregano, cumin, oil, salt and pepper and blend. If too thick, pour in a further 1/2 cup cooking water and blend again to a smooth puree, stopping and scraping the mixture once or twice. Taste and adjust the seasonings. Transfer to a flat, rustic-looking bowl. To garnish, mix paprika, chilli powder and cumin with oil, then dribble onto the puree, Scatter with spring onion. Serve with bread, toast or as a dip. 

Recipes: David Tannis and Stephane Alexander

Pale Skin

As a young man, my boss, friend and mentor was a Chef and Frenchman called Laurent. He was an amazing, creative chef, generous with his skills and knowledge of food. I worked with him at a delicious little restaurant called Collits Inn, hidden away in the Blue Mountains. The little homestead was set amongst the bush, and I fondly remember looking out of the kitchen where I worked onto the open land where my dog played with the other dogs belonging to the various staff of the establishment (I learned that many workplaces would be happier if dogs were allowed). Laurent has since moved on to South Africa, but many of his words still remain with me.

I was reminded of some of these words recently when my wife gave me a surprise gift of attending a Raw Food workshop. Laurent used to say (imagine a thick French accent): "The Vegetarians are the ones who look pale". Of course, he was only half-joking, but referring to the fact that most chefs - myself included - love to make use of whatever fresh, quality produce is available to us - including meat. This also applies to cooking our food. Other than a great salad, the idea of eating raw food is something that I had never understood. 

Kemi Nekvapil demonstrates a Raw Food recipe



Armed with my preconceptions of learning how to make carrot sticks and...well...not much else I begrudgingly gave up my Saturday to head off to the beautiful grounds of the Orana School kindergarten.



Within a few minutes, I realised that this workshop was going to be about anything but carrot sticks. Kemi Nekvapil, a chef from Melbourne and who has worked in some of the finest restaurants in England and abroad, ran the workshop - weaving story-telling, demonstration, and "hands-on", introducing us to the concept of raw food.



Some of the delicious Raw Food ingredients



Story telling is an essential ingredient of all nutritious meals

I learned that many people come to a raw food diet for health reasons and stay because it offers a sense of vitality, empowerment, richness and joy in eating. We learned how to make an amazing raw food curry (seriously, it was good), a sweet chocolate avocado mousse, cashew cream, and some "naughty" sweet treats. My favourite though was the "Green Smoothie" - a sweet recipe given to Kemi by a woman who wanted to make changes in her diet but found she could not give up all of her processed foods, coffee, and other "vices". She began having a Green Smoothie once a day and made no other deliberate changes in her diet, yet found her health improved radically. I immediately came home and made the Green Smoothie for my family, sharing the story of its discovery. Since the workshop we have started each day with one of these amazing drinks. I can't say we have given up our coffee or other cooked foods, but I do know that it has reduced our cravings for processed food across the board.



As well as an incredible, fulfilling raw food lunch and delicious recipes to "take home", the other valuable thing I took away from this workshop was the realisation how interconnected story-telling and food are. Each time I have made one of the recipes I learned  at the workshop, I think of the person behind the recipe and in some small way feel connected to them. As we use (mostly) local ingredients and know where most of our food comes from, I feel a stronger sense of community and belonging every time we sit down at our kitchen table. This is something sadly missing from much of the food available on the mass-market today. When we eat a packet of chips, or a frozen meal we have no idea who prepared it, or in what soil the original ingredients were grown.

Imagine how much stronger, and more peaceful, our society would be if we could have just one "story meal" a week - one meal where we knew the person and the tale behind the recipe and the ingredients that we eat.



Lilly now supplements her diet of toothpaste and
blue crayons with a Raw Food Green Smoothie each morning.



Green Smoothie Pear Joy - from Kemi Nekvapil

2 oranges (zest removed, but leave the white pith)

2 pears (cored)

2 Handfuls of greens (spinach, silverbeat, kale, lettuce, parsley, celery, whatever is available)

Water (as much as you require for desired thickness)

Blend all the ingredients in a blender & en-joy. Will keep in the fridge for 2-3 days

The Doula's Garden



A neglected spot in Vickie's garden



The word "doula" , I am reliably told by my wife, literally means "a woman who serves". Far from the connotations of oppression, however, my impression of a doula is one of wisdom, strength and empowerment.

This impression comes from having known Vickie - a local Doula from Canberra who was our "support person" during my wife's pregnancy and throughout her labour and childbirth. Vickie is an amazing woman who provided us with friendship, encouragement, information, education, support and tenderness during an amazing period in the life of our family.



Restored into a fully-functioning vegetable garden complete with a Bay Tree.



So, for me it was a great privilage to recently be asked by Vickie to turn an neglected corner of her garden into a source of food and fun for her family. Although it can, a kitchen garden does not need to have a massive scale, immaculate landscaping, or a complex system of crop rotation. It can simply be a humble patch of dirt that provides a few extra vegetables to supplement the kitchen table. A garden like Vickie’s was relatively low-cost to set up, and is manageable even by the busiest of families. The benefits are not only from the food itself, but as Vickie herself says, simply from the joy that comes from walking out the back door and picking your own bunch of stuff and from adding and changing the variety as the seasons come and go.

Give Peas a Chance

In our home, the first vegetables or fruits of the season are typically eaten in the garden. Young, tender and sparse, the new foods are greeted like old friends who we haven't seen since the last time they were in town. They rarely survive long enough to the kitchen before being devoured. It isn't until the middle of the season, or towards its end, that our kitchen invariably becomes over-run with the masses as we cook, and experiement with new ways to preserve in an attempt to extend the season a little longer.

Today we picked the first peas of the season. According to Stephanie Alexander, peas are one of the world's oldest cultivated foods and have up until very recently mainly been dried before eating. For my taste, however, there is nothing like a fresh pea picked straight from the vine.

Peas are a kind plant, and will survive in just about any kind of soil. We planted ours when we first moved moved into our house, in May this year though in Canberra you can plant them just about any time during winter.They need a sunny spot, and depending on the variety, some sort of support as they are a vigours vine. One of the great things about peas is that they "give back" to the soil by helping to fix nitrogen, stabilising and replenishing the earth. As a result, after the peas have finished, vegetables that are heavy feeders (such as broccoli) can be planted.

Lilly enjoys the first pea off the vine

Peas are a wonderful vegetable to use in your garden to entice young (and older!) kids outside. Delicate flowers and tiny tendrils create a mystical feel, and the creeping vines a "hidden world" away from it all. And, as Lilly discovered today, a fresh pea is a totally different experience from the bland, frozen variety we are so used to eating. The tendrils & shoots will also add an exotic touch to any spring salad.

Why I love to share food.

Food is a wonderful way to communicate........

I recently found myself with an abundance of salad greens so I decided to share it around. We have been pretty flat out since we moved into our house and I had not got around to meeting our neighbours. This was my opportunity to meet someone new.

I had my bucket of greens and I could see there was someone gardening across the street so Lilly and I went over. We started talking and it turns out they are one of the orginal residents of the street. I learnt about the history suburb and who lives here in my street.

It doesn't take long to discover that our neighbours are also growing food in their backyard. Sveta and Val are Macadonian and have an amazingly productive backyard. Sveta is from a family of farmers and clearly knows her stuff. She is growing everything from tomatoes, eggplant and capsicum from seed. There is even a mini poly tunnel specially for raising seedlings.

It was really interesting to see their backyard and chat about how they do things. Lilly was shown around by Sveta's daughter and had a wonderful time. They were very happy for the greens and I went home with some fresh onions. No doubt we will be sharing plenty more food.

Why Fresh Food?

Tabloid TV has possibly - in one instance anyway - done something good. A couple of nights ago on Today Tonight we were introduced to Sally Davies, a New York-based artisit who decided to take a photograph of a McDonalds Happy Meal every day, for 180 days, after she purchased it. Known as the McDonalds Photography Project, the photograph of the hamburger, bun and chips on the 180th day shows virtually no change, decomposition, mould or any of the other changes that would normally be seen on "old food".

Contrast this to my kitchen table, where I am fortunate enough to be looking out my back door onto our small kitchen garden - planted with an assortment of herbs, greens and flowers. Most of our meals are supplemented with at least one ingredient from this garden that I threw together with a few rocks and a bit of soil. Getting away from the TV is not a problem here: my one-year old daughter loves this part of the garden and eagerly stands at the back door each morning, waiting for us to take her outside where she promptly sets about exploring the garden with all her senses.

I wonder when we became tricked into believe "fast food" is more convenient? Is it really more convenient to spend the money, petrol and time that it takes to get all this fast food, or simply to step outside our back doors (or reach over our neighbour's fence) to delight in real produce on our kitchen tables?

I have always loved food - food is (after my wife and daughter) my life's passion. Michael Polan (In Defence of Food) writes: "...historically, people have eaten for a great many reasons other than biological necessity. Food is also about pleasure, about community, about family and spirituality, about our relationship to the natural world, about expressing our identity".

In this blog, and through my work, I can't wait to share this journey of re-claiming our pleasure, our community, our relationships, our children and our identity back for ourselves. I believe we can do this through rediscovering our relationship with real food, in our own backyards.

Please join me.