I’ve just dug kilos and kilos of purple potatoes out of the kitchen garden.
Now I have to cook them in as many ways as I can think of.
I’m going to start with gnocchi, purple potato gnocchi, that is.
Gnocchi is easier than you think to make.
Best of all, it can be made ahead of when you would like to eat it.
I like to eat my gnocchi triple cooked – blanched in boiling water to cook through, pan-fried in butter, then finished off under the grill.
Ingredients
1-kilogram purple gem potatoes - cleaned
1 egg
250 grams plain flour
1 pinch of salt
Method
1. Place potatoes in a saucepan of cold water. Bring to the boil, then simmer until cooked.
2. Strain the potatoes. You could peel when still hot but move straight onto step 3.
3. Place the potatoes in a mouli and process the potatoes straight onto the bench into a mound. You may need to do this in steps, as the weight of one kilo of cooked potatoes may be too heavy to hold.
4. Make a well in the centre of your mound and shift over the flour. Add the egg and a pinch of salt to taste.
5. Using your hands, gently bring the dough together until just combined and the dough is slightly springy. Divide the dough into 4.
6. Roll each piece of dough into a long cigar shape. Cut into 3 cm lengths, using a pastry scraper or knife. Roll each piece on a gnocchi pad or press with a fork to create sauce groves in your gnocchi.
7. Line an oven tray with a clean tea towel. Put this aside until you cook your gnocchi.
8. Bring a large pot of salted boiling water to the boil. Add the gnocchi and return to the boil. The gnocchi will be cooked when it floats to the top of the water.
9. Remove the gnocchi from the water using a slotted spoon and place it on your clean tea towel-lined tray.
At this point, you can add your cooked gnocchi to your chosen sauce. I like my gnocchi finished in butter, with garlic and thyme.
… I mean make musk sticks.
I don’t call musk sticks, musk sticks as they come in all the flavours including, but not limited to, musk. To me, they are Jacican sticks.
Lately, I’ve made musk, peppermint, bubble gum and lime flavours. Experimenting with Lemon, Lime and bitter, as well as Gin and Tonic flavours.
Like you like your Jacican sticks with no artificial colours or flavours, they now come in natural raspberry!
Because lately, we all have time, here’s the recipe for you to make at home if you need something to do. This is a great recipe to do with the kids.
Musk stick recipe
Ingredients
640 grams of icing sugar
1 teaspoon of glucose
1 teaspoon of gelatine
75 ml of water
1 ml of musk flavouring
1 ml of pink food colouring
Remember you can make any colour or flavour of musk sticks you want!
Method
In a small saucepan combine glucose, gelatine and water. Gently heat until glucose and gelatine have dissolved. Mix slowly to combine.
Shift icing sugar into a large bowl. Pour in water mixer in three parts, mixing between each addition.
Add flavour and colouring. Mix well combine.
Using a 5 mm star nozzle, fill a piping bag with your mixture. Pipe onto baking-paper lined trays. Leave in a dry place to dry out and harden up. This could take anywhere from a couple of hours to a couple of days. It will depend on the weather – the warmer it is, the quicker they will dry.
If you can't be bothered to make your own Musk Sticks, there may be Jacican sticks for sale in my shop. You will have to be quick, they normally sell out!
I grew up on a dairy farm in the Gippsland outside the town of Loch. As a young girl, I would read the cookbooks that mum kept in the bottom kitchen drawer. As there was always flour, butter, milk, and eggs in the house, I was continuously searching for new recipes for baking.
As a girl, I would make spend my weekend baking puff pastry to make tarts, creating new versions of candies and baking all the colour rainbow cakes. Not much has changed; I’m still searching for recipes that I can cook using what I have on hand or growing in the kitchen garden.
Now that I am grownup, I can cook what I want, using any type of milk. How happy was I when Gippsland Jersey started producing buttermilk? I now use that in everything I bake.
But I am going to start you off with a simple buttermilk recipe, pancakes.
We all need to know how to make pancakes from scratch. This recipe will be with you forever.
This recipe will make a dozen 10 cm fluffy pancakes
Buttermilk Pancakes recipe
- 2 cups of Oak & Swan stone ground wholemeal flour
- 2 teaspoons of baking powder
- 2 eggs
- 2 cups of GJ buttermilk
- 2 tablespoons of GJ butter
Method
If you haven’t noticed its same measurement of all the ingredients in this recipe, hence it is easy to remember forever; 1 part to 1 part to 1 part to 1 part.
- Into a bowl, sift together flour and baking powder.
- Make a hole in the middle of the flour and crack in the eggs. Pour over the buttermilk.
- Beat together until smooth.
- Heat a little of the butter until foaming in a frying pan. Add two spoonful of pancake batter. Swirl around into a round shape.
- Cook for 2 to 3 minutes until firm enough to flip. Then cook for 1 to 2 minutes.
- Serve warm
I had mine with topped with berries I saved frozen from the summer, warmed homemade berry jam and whipped Gippsland Jersey Crème Fraiche. #yum
Over the last few months, I have spent many hours in the kitchen garden weeding, planting and mulching. The one thing is though, the weeds never seem to go away. So, I have come up with a way to deal with them – Eat them!
There is always an assortment of greens growing wild in my kitchen garden – kale, nasturtiums, rocket and this year self-seeded red leaf lettuce has lined the patch around the citrus tree all by itself. I am always cooking blanched and braised green. I do love mine braised with white wine, seasoned with a little salt and pepper and finished with some cream.
I'm going to get back out in the garden and see what weediness I can find.
Braised Warrigal greens with Oyster Sauce
Warrigal greens (Tetragonia Tetragonioides) is a native ground cover found in Australia, New Zealand, and eastern Asia. A little while ago, I visited an urban farm in Melbourne, their nursery was selling very small plants for $20.00 each. Mine just grows wild from a cutting someone gave me and has a spread of about two square metres.
We pick this leafy green in my harvest lunches and serve alongside beef dishes. It turns out I like it boiled and dressed with oyster sauce - just like you would find greens served at the local Chinese restaurant.
To cook your Warrigal greens
- Pick as many as you would like to serve. Warrigal greens will not shrink down like spinach so only take what you will need.
- Pluck leaves away from stems and wash very well.
- Bring a large saucepan of salted water to the boil. Add Warrigal Green and boil for two minutes. Drain.
- Place in serving dish and drizzle over the oyster sauce.
Always on the lookout for things to grow to cook, this year, I tried tomatillos for the first time.
Tomatillos need to cross-pollinate with each other, so I pick up four plants from the farmers market.
From the four plants, I ended up with a haul of about 5 cups.
Not enough to made jam, but enough to come up with a cake recipe.
Recipe - Tomatillo upside-down cake
Gluten-free, made with tomatillos fresh from the kitchen garden, stone-ground cornmeal and Gippsland buttermilk.
Ingredients
2 cups of tomatillos
1 pinch of vanilla seeds
330 grams of caster sugar
4 eggs
2 egg whites
160 MLS of buttermilk
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
110 grams of cornmeal
90 grams of almond meal
1 teaspoon of baking powder
0.25 teaspoon cream of tartar
Method
- Preheat the oven to 180C
- Weigh out sugar into 165-grams, 110-gram and 55-gram portions
- Grease and line a 23 cm springform pan. Place the springform onto a sheet of aluminium foil and bring up the sides of the pan to prevent the syrup from leaking during cooking.
- Random place the tomatillos in the lined springform pan.
- Place the 165-gram portion of sugar in a small saucepan with 80 MLS of water and a pinch of vanilla seeds. Bring to the boil over medium heat. Cook until thickened, but not golden. Pour over the tomatillos.
- Separated eggs. Place egg whites, with extra egg white in the bowl of the mix master. Whisk to soft peak. Add cream of tartar and the 55-gram portion of sugar. Whisk until you have stiff peaks
- If you only have one bowl for the mix master, scarp out the egg whites and put in a spare bowl. Put aside until needed. Wipe out the mix master bowl, you may want to rise out the whisk.
- Combine egg yolks with the 110-gram portion of sugar in the bowl of the mix master. Whisk until egg yolks combine to a ribbon.
- Fold the cornmeal, almond meal and baking powder into the whipped egg yolks. Stir in the buttermilk.
- Fold in the egg whites. Pour the cake batter over the tomatillo.
- Place in the oven and bake for 50 minutes.
- To serve, invert on to a plate.
