Summer

We are in the midst of what can only be described as a very odd summer.  January was cool and very windy, which makes for good farming and working weather....not so good for beaching and holidays.  Now that the kids are back at school it hot and still and beautiful, which is typical.  I really miss them, but I do like being able to choose my own radio station in the car....

There has been lots of fun and frivolity over the holidays and I did have a not insignificant birthday in the midst of it all.  It was duly celebrated in many locations thanks to wonderful friends who, it has to be said, do love a party.   Needless to say, there is now a pressing need for some Alcohol Free Days so some quiet home time is very welcome.  

The garden is looking so dry at the moment, even though we had 40mls of rain in the middle of January.  It greened up for a while but now it seems we are back to where we started.

 I harvested my garlic and now it is drying out:

There are apples and pears ripening:

There are berries on the hawthorns, always a sign that autumn is around the corner..

Over the holidays we have had three backpackers here to work on the farm.  They are staying with us rather than in the cottage because one of them is the son of an old friend.  Fortunately they are hard working and very helpful around the house, but eat!  They go through an alarming amount of food so I have been cooking and cooking and making great inroads on all the meat in the deep freeze.  Also fortunately it has been relatively cool, so I can get away with casseroles and lasagne, spag bol and roasts.  I pulled out yet another bag of forequarter chops and thought that I really needed to do something a bit different.   I spotted a recipe for "Tasmanian Apple Casserole" in a Weekly Times cookbook and here is my version.

LAMB AND APPLE CASSEROLE  Serves 4

1 tblsp olive oil

2 tblsp flour

4 forequarter lamb chops , trimmed.  

1 onion, chopped

1 stick celery, chopped

1 clove garlic, chopped

1 green apple, diced

1 1/2 cups unsweetened apple juice (stay with me)

1 tblsp worcestershire sauce

1 sprig rosemary

Preheat the oven to 150c.

Dust the chops with flour and season with salt and pepper.

Heat the olive oil in a large casserole and brown the chops over a medium heat.  Remove and set aside.

Put a slosh more olive oil in the pan and add the onion and cook gently for five minutes.  Add the celery, garlic and apple.  Cook for a further five minutes until softened.

Put the lamb back in the pan and pour over the apple juice, add the worcester sauce and the rosemary, cover and cook for 1 1/2 - 2 hours or until the lamb is very tender.  Taste and season accordingly, and sprinkle with parsley.

Delicious with mashed potatoes and the first of the beans....

More spring

Spring might be pretty, but it is also fickle.  Last week  it rained, blew and hailed and we were back in the woollen jumpers and lighting the fire.  I so love the lilacs in the garden, the scent is heavenly...

We had a lot of fun in the school holidays.  There was the Melbourne Show,

some farm work,

friends to stay,

billy tea and marshmallows.

I love finding new ways to cook our lamb.  Last night I made a marinade that I used on some mini roasts that I rescued from the depths of the freezer.

Olive and almond paste for lamb

This amount made enough for 3 mini roasts, and would be enough for a small leg or 8-10 chops.

3 tblsp pitted olives (black, green or a mixture of the two)

2 heaped tblsp ground almonds

1 clove garlic, chopped

1 dessp of balsamic vinegar to taste

1 teasp rosemary leaves, chopped

salt and pepper.

Roughly chop the olives and put them in a container suitable for a stick blender.  Add the rest of the ingredients and whizz to form a paste.  You could do this in a food processor.  Taste the mix and adjust according to your preference, you may prefer more or less balsamic, and it does depend on how salty the olives are.  The almonds give it a good texture.

Spread the mixture over the lamb and refrigerate for a few hours if you can.  

Take the meat out of the fridge an hour before you want to cook it to get it back to room temperature.

Cook to your liking, either in the oven (start it off at 220c for 15 minutes then turn it down to 180c to finish) or on the BBQ.  It doesn't look much below, but it tasted great.

A fig or two and some lamb

I have had a couple of figs on my small tree that I planted a couple of years ago.  I am always pleased when I can get a new tree through the summer without it dying of thirst or heat exhaustion.  There are lots of things in the veggie garden at the moment..

Garlic shooting

Baby brussel sprouts

I think it is time for the tomatoes to come out..

I planted some horseradish a few months ago so I dug some up to see how it was going..

Once peeled you can put them in the food processor and chop finely with a couple of tablespoons of water before adding some vinegar and a teaspoon of sugar to make a sauce consistency.  I honestly do not know how anyone did this before the advent of the food processor because when you whizz it it is so pungent that it stings your eyes.  It seems to settle down when you add the vinegar.  Can't wait to have some roast beef to try it.

As you can see it is still pretty dry here.  We really need another rain before winter sets in.

Rams resting from active duty

The Humble Shepherd (husband...self-titled) says I don't have enough lamb recipes on here.  It was the purpose of the blog in the first place, but I seem to get distracted with other things.  I needed to use the last of the quince harvest so I did this:
I marinated a well seasoned and butterflied leg of lamb in
2 tblsp pomegranate molasses
2 tblsp olive oil
1 teasp ground cumin
a crushed clove of garlic

for a couple of hours.  Peeled and cored a quince and cut it into eighths.  Put that in the baking dish and placed the lamb on top.

I  roasted it in the roasting oven of the Aga (about 200c)  for about 1 1/4 hours.  The pomegranate molasses can get a bit scorched so it would be best to turn the oven down to 180c after about 15 minutes.  If it is getting dark you can cover it with some foil.   After spooning off the fat, I deglazed the pan with a spoonful of quince jelly.  Serve the quinces on top of the lamb.

December

The Christmas Lillies are out a bit early.

Good grief...we are not only already in December, we are well into December.. where has the time gone? Christmas is looming and I am deeply ashamed to report that our tree is not yet up.  I need a man and a chainsaw with half an hour spare and that seems to be an impossibility at the moment.

The thing is, we are shearing and weighing and trucking lambs and it is all a bit manic because it has not rained here for ages.  This puts us into panic mode because we need the rain to freshen up the feed to keep the weight in the lambs.  The rain seems to be all going to the north, or to Melbourne and missing us altogether.  There are of course other farmers who are doing hay or harvesting who don't want it to rain...fussy bunch, aren't we?

Otherwise there have been races and school plays, a wedding in Perth, the kitchen garden at school, many trips to Melbourne and a couple to SA and loads to do in the garden.  I harvested my garlic the other day..

and now its hanging in the shed drying out.  I was, according to Stephanie Alexander's Kitchen Garden  book, supposed to leave it until the summer solstice, but I was worried that it was rotting.  It is so nice to have your own garlic, as the imported stuff is sprayed with some nasty chemicals to preserve it.

There has been lots going on in the kitchen, just no time to blog about it.  I have made the bread that I saw on A Wee Bit of Cooking a couple of weeks ago, it is dangerously delicious, especially with strawberry jam...

We have had a great crop of broad beans this year.  I always blanch them and slip off the outer skin before using.  

Mostly I simply dress them in olive oil and a squeeze of lemon juice and scatter with some chopped mint leaves...

or add some crispy pancetta and some shavings of parmesan, or even some marinated goat's cheese.

We have had quite a few double yolker eggs this spring....look how big they are compared to a normal egg.

The other thing I have been experimenting with is resting marinades for meat.  I found a recipe for a lamb resting marinade in Maggie Beer's Cooking with Verjuice book and have been trying it out with lamb.  It is easiest with a boned out leg, but can be used with one on the bone as I have done here:

So if you have time you marinate the lamb in olive oil, garlic, rosemary, salt & pepper for a few hours before cooking it as usual.  Then as it comes out of the oven you pour the resting marinade over the lamb, cover and rest in a warm place for 15-20 minutes, turning it over a couple of times.  

Resting Marinade (loosely based on Maggie's version)

1/4 cup olive oil, 3 tablespoons verjuice, a couple of sliced shallots, roughly chopped parsley &  oregano,  s & p.    Mix together.  Maggie had preserved lemon in hers too, which adds a great flavour.

It occurred to me that you could do this with smaller cuts of meat, like steaks or lamb loins and just alter your marinade to suit your taste.

Holiday entertainments and cooking

While the weather was good last week we planted some fruit trees in the new veggie garden.  Two plums, a cherry, an apricot, a nectarine and two heritage apples that had been grafted by our local primary school.

The  weather has fallen in a bit of a heap this week.  Howling winds and a lot of rain. We have been busy collecting kindling.  I find the best kindling is collected from underneath all the English trees in the garden, not the natives.

We had a weekend at the beach with some friends, the sun came out briefly..

And we managed some wine tasting..

I have been cooking lots of lamb, here are some chops I brushed with honey, grainy mustard and a little olive oil before grilling in the oven.  

It is just too cold to be outside with the barbeque at the moment

Sometimes in the winter I crave lighter food.  Fennel is beautiful at the moment and I am loving shaved fennel and orange in a salad, with some rocket and greens from the garden.  All it needs is a drizzle of olive oil and lemon juice or verjuice, plus lots of salt and pepper.  It's even better after it has sat for a while.  

Sang choy bow has made an appearance too.  

If anyone is interested in purchasing some heritage apples trees, please contact Anton Boyd at Woolsthorpe Primary School:  03 5569 2241 (when school goes back).  He has hundreds of varieties available and it is a great fundraiser for our school.