Summer Table: Three Vegetable Sides 🥦🥕🌼⠀
This week on Homegrown Kitchen (and my first recipes for 2021) I share some tasty vegetable sides. These are useful to have in your repertoire for summer feasting.
The three dishes focus on a hero vegetable with simple flavour additions to make them shine. The Sesame Broccoli is a particular favourite - that tahini sauce is so good! I always make extra to use as a spread and/or dip for the days to come 😋 ⠀
www.homegrown-kitchen.co.nz/2021/01/12/summer-table-vegetable-side/
The summer garden is finally kicking into full gear. After a slow start to the season I have been busy harvesting the early fruit - figs, apricots and peaches - and the first tomatoes and cucumbers. It is cooler and wetter, which I welcome wholeheartedly after two intense years of summer drought.
I like to interplant the garden beds with lots of summer flowers along with the vegetable plants. Dahlias are one of my favourite easy care flowers - I don’t bother digging up the tubers (as recommended) for the winter and they are always the first hibernating flowers to break through the soil in spring. Sadly dahlias only last a few days in a vase. Although, this is not a huge issue as I have, ahem, planted quite a lot of them over the years so have a regular rotation on the table. What are your favourite summer flowers?
www.homegrown-kitchen.co.nz
#dahlia #growourown #flowers #blooms #summer #garden #newzealand
Wishing you all safe and happy holidays ahead ✨ Thank you for following along here and for all your lovely comments throughout the year. I do enjoy my online and social media community + gettimg to meet some of you in person at my cooking workshops. For now, it is time to take a little break with my family over the holidays and I’ll see you all on the other side.⠀
+ Almost I forgot to share the star of my festive recipe series! Mini Berry Pavlovas with Pomegranate Molasses Caramel Sauce. ⠀
These mini pavlovas have a lightly crisp crust and soft marshmallowy centre (just how I like them!) achieved by reducing the sugar content by about a third compared to other recipes. (If you like them crispy crisp see recipe notes for a variation.)⠀
And the caramel sauce is quite special. Pomegranate molasses has a unique tart and astringent flavour that works well to balance the sweetness of the pavlova. Even if you skip the pavlova and just make the sauce you will certainly be glad you did. Enjoy!⠀
www.homegrown-kitchen.co.nz/2020/12/09/mini-berry-pavlovas-pomegranate-caramel-sauce/
Today I share the final recipe in my festive series. This is a sweet little treat for gifting or having on hand to serve after a holiday meal. The caramels are super rich so I do suggest cutting into smaller pieces to share.
These florentine-inspired caramels are the result of my oven unexpectedly playing up recently. Hopefully it is an easy fix (no oven over Christmas wouldn't be fun) as it isn’t exactly the oldest oven. Although it does get used somewhat frequently to test 100+ new recipes each year. So for now, I am getting creative with the stovetop and barbecue.
Here is the recipe link for the Florentine Caramels 💜
www.homegrown-kitchen.co.nz/2020/12/16/florentine-caramels/
The bees sure love blue borage. You only need to plant borage once and it will keep self seeding for years to come. It is one of my favourite wildlings in the garden because it invites the bees in close for pollination. I purposely let the self germinated seedlings grow in the garden beds or nearby so the bees will pop over to check out the vegetables too (and fruit trees).
And once the plant is spent it is also makes excellent mulch as the hollow limbs breakdown easily into the garden or compost. Mind you, remember to use gloves when dealing to borage because it is somewhat prickly.
www.homegrown-kitchen.co.nz
#homegrownkitchen #homegrown #quarteracre #growyourown #gardentoplate #foodphotography
For your summer feasting and gatherings here are two grilled vegetable dips to add to a grazing platter. I like to highlight local products on a platter – such as cheeses, charcuterie and bread – while filling in the gaps with seasonal produce for colour and freshness.
The flavoursome grilled vegetable dips are easy to prepare, making the most of the summer barbecue. The Zucchini, Goat Cheese & Mint Dip, in particular, is one I plan to make often. It is nicely smokey from the barbecue time - even my zucchini-shy children loved it. Although in saying that the Red Capsicum and Cashew dip is also incredibly moreish. Why not make both!
Link to both the recipes on my website:
www.homegrown-kitchen.co.nz/2020/12/03/quinoa-salad-grilled-vegetable-dips/
*Update - Giveaway is now closed.
If you are still planning end of year gifts for those special people in your life I have my Homegrown Kitchen cookbook and 2021 recipe calendar available. Cut off dates to arrive in time for Christmas are Monday 21st Dec for cookbooks + Friday 18th Dec for calendars. More details here:
www.homegrown-kitchen.co.nz/
✨ Cookbook and recipe calendar giveaway ✨
Wow, we've almost made it to the end of this long and different year. I'm ever grateful to be able to share my love of cooking with you all and for your continual support for my cookbooks and workshops. As a thank you for being here I am giving away a copy of my Homegrown Kitchen cookbook and 2021 Recipe Calendar 📖📅
To enter, tell me who you love to cook with. Good luck!
*Giveaway closed at 12pm Thursday 10th December. Open to NZ residents only.
This month I will be sharing a series of weekly recipes for the festive season and summer feasting. The focus is on seasonal vegetables and fruit as the heart of the recipes. We are so incredibly lucky to have our holiday season fall at the beginning of summer with fresh berries, stone fruit and early summer vegetables. It is a celebration in itself to even have these at our fingertips. Let's make the most of them!
First up is this Jewelled Quinoa Salad + Grilled Vegetable Dips Grazing Platter. Follow the link below for the recipes:
www.homegrown-kitchen.co.nz/2020/12/03/quinoa-salad-grilled-vegetable-dips/
*These recipes were part of a festive menu I recently created and photographed for @stufflifestyle
The first ripe berries mark the beginning of summer in my southern garden. With all this rain (please stop soon for the summer fruit orchardists 🙏🏼) my strawberries are struggling, but the raspberries are loving the warm humid weather.
They make the perfect after school snack - although the berries rarely make it to the kitchen instead eaten be the handful right in the garden.
These raspberry plants are four years old. Starting as 3 spindly canes they are slowly spreading (with some encouragement) to create a purposeful patch at the bottom of the garden. They produce two harvests each year, spring and autumn, with the autumn harvest by far my favourite for flavour.
www.homegrown-kitchen.co.nz
Sunday Morning Waffles + Elderflower Cordial 🥂🌼
New Recipes // Spring 2020
We have had a lot of rain recently. Although good for the garden, I have noticed my elderflowers looking rather sodden and bedraggled. A quick sprint to the garden between rain showers to harvest a small basket of flower heads resulted in an aromatic pan of elderflower cordial on the stovetop.
The waffles are an easy Sunday morning breakfast with the batter mostly prepared ahead of time. With an option to add some sourdough starter to give the waffles a gloriously light crumb.
Find the recipes here ⤵️
www.homegrown-kitchen.co.nz/2020/11/19/elderflower-lemon-cordial-waffles/
This is a Facebook demo page created by plugin automatically. Please do not delete to make the plugin work properly.