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…
Category: Summer 2021
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…
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…
Scarlet runners in sweet scented olive oil
In this simple dish the the fresh beans are bathed in olive oil that has been sweetened with melted red onions and garlic. Slice a red onion thinly and cook slowly in olive oil until soft and translucent, with a couple of squashed garlic cloves. Meanwhile pick and prepare your beans. Top and tail them…
Slow-cooked scarlet runners in tomato sauce
Melt in the mouth tender beans cooked in a rich tomato sauce. This is a traditional dish in mediterranean countries, and Ottelenghi has a more complicated version but I believe when your food is this fresh, simple is best. Slice a red onion and melt slowly in lots of olive oil with a couple of…
Scarlet Runners
Native to mountainous Central America where they are pollinated by hummingbirds, these are a cooler weather bean that have adapted well to our precarious early summer in the South Island. These are the BEST bean to grow. They are what got me back into gardening thirty years ago when, as a working mother of little…
food ripe from my garden 