food ripe from my garden

Scarlet runners with sweet onion vinaigrette

A welcome new recipe now we are well into the fourth month of runner beans. My mum passed away recently, and I while I was sorting through her things, I found a clearfile of recipe cuttings going back decades. In it is an article on scarlet runners by Martin Bosley from the Feb 23 2008…

Peppers, smoked fish, potatoes and red pepper cream sauce

These stuffed peppers have all the smoked fishy, creamy potato comfort of a fish pie but with the added smooth, luxurious sweetness of red peppers. I have adapted this recipe from Julie Buiso’s beautiful book Take a vine ripened tomato. I switched it from being a Spanish tapas style dish, that uses multiple small red…

Minestrone

minestrone Our autumn garden is on the cusp of summer and winter. The runner beans are finally on their last legs (they have been pumping out beans since mid-December). I picked the last of them this morning ahead of heavy rain, along with the ripening tomatoes which would have split in the rain. The rainy…

Ratatouille

ratatouille This fragrant and velvety late summer autumn vegetable stew has a knack to it. If you aren’t careful you end up with a uniform vegetable mush, or else a collection of vegetables floating in a watery liquid. The knack is to get rid of all the moisture from the tomatoes and other veg without…

Sweet basil pesto

Sweet basil pesto with seeeds Redolent with sun drenched summer days, I love sweet basil! Traditional genoese pesto includes pinenuts, but I’m certain the peasants who first tossed this together would have found them lying around in the pine forest and would not have used them if they had to pay $10 for a tiny…

The BEST roast vege salad ever

How to make the BEST roast vege salad ever So delicious and colourful and such a hit with everyone! Mix and match according to the seasons and flavours. After years of wedding catering and close to a hundred roast vege salads behind me I figured out how to avoid a soggy mushy mess, and instead…

Baked zucchini and feta

Baked zucchini and feta I love making a meal out of vegetables from the garden. This is a simple but tasty vegetarian main to serve with a green salad. Cut the zucchini in half lengthways . With a small pairing knife score round the inside, a couple of centimeters from the skin, so they hold…

Mixed summer salad

I resisted the urge to call this a salade nicoise after I read in my provencale cookbook that nothing should be cooked in one of those. Sometimes when you go to the garden and pick your dinner you end up with a variety of random small amounts of vegetables which do equally as well in…

Beetroot salad with runner beans, greens and soft cheese

Beetroot salad with runner beans, greens and soft cheese Sweet ruby beetroot and runner beans with salty soft cheese over beetroot greens – I found this in a French cookbook and love that everything is ready in the garden all at same time. I have used Kervella Blanc, a soft, sweet curd bought locally, but…

Dahl with lemon and scarlet runner beans

Dahl with lemon and scarlet runner beans Comfort food at its best made special by the addition of fragrant lemon and sweet beans. This is adapted from a recipe in The New Zealand Indian Cookbook (Godwit 1997) written by Linley Scott who ran the Indian Mutiny Cafe in Auckland in the 1990s. She recommends using…