Watermelon

Watermelon is a little bit affordable at the moment in Alice Springs.. .down to $2/kg.  I can buy a whole watermelon for only $9?  I can no longer recall if this is a good or a ridiculous price.

I have a special affinity with watermelon... my father was once, for a short time only, a watermelon farmer.  And he used his posse of daughters well for this venture, encouraging possibly forcing us to chip out weeds on a hot as hell day in north Queensland during an eclipse of the sun. It’s a strange memory I have, tempered by a dip in a lovely waterhole afterwards, with watermelons bobbing up in the water.   It was one of those years where there was a glut, and he filled our downstairs area with watermelon.  We had so much watermelon, he was selling them on the side of the road.

 And so I got to know watermelons well… too well.

 So, what to look for with a watermelon, and what to do with them when you have a glut.

When buying a whole watermelon I always tap them or knock them.  If they have a hollow sound, that's good.  If not, don't buy it.

For sliced watermelon, I check that it's not over-ripe or sugary and is a deep red colour. If it's pale, it's probably under-ripe.

Watermelon salad

I feel as if I have barely been home this week due to work commitments, which have also seen me eating out a few times in Alice Springs.  I am generally jaded about this activity, but I was pleasantly surprised when we were served a watermelon salad, as part of a barbecue.  The salad was so simple and delicious and consisted of cubed watermelon, with strips of fresh coriander and sliced Spanish onion.
The classic middle-eastern salad includes feta and black olives.


Watermelon, feta and olive salad 
Ingredients
1kg ripe watermelon, diced and seeds removed.
250 gm feta
25 black olives (pitted)
Bunch mint
Zest of two limes
3 tbs lime juice
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

Method
Place watermelon, feta, mint and olives in bowl.
Make a dressing from the remaining ingredients.
Gently toss, season and serve immediately.

(Moderately adapted.. not much really,  from "Feast Bazaar" by Barry Vera.)

Cold Spicy Ginger Drink

As winter draws closer, and my child starts getting runny noses and coughs, I am drawn to fresh ginger.  Currently selling for around $14/kg, it is a must for Indian cooking and sore throats.  If you want to know what ginger is, go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ginger..they know a lot more than me.
Ginger has both culinary and medicinal use.. and so this recipe tastes great and is also good for you.. apart from the sugar.
Ingredients
Fresh or green ginger, grated
Sugar
Lemon Juice
Cardomon pods
Cummin
Pepper Corns
Fresh mint.

Method

Pizza Oven

In keeping with my theme of 'food as gifts' I requested for my birthday this year a pizza oven.  Now, I have always wanted a pizza oven, ever since I built my own quasi oven out of besser bricks when I was 18... and I had this idea that it would only take one day to build a pizza oven... so, the day before my birthday, in sweltering heat, the man of my life began the pizza making process... I rang up friends (sms actually) and invited them over for the first pizza out of the oven.. I miscalculated, and there was no pizza oven that night, and 9 weeks after my birthday there is still no pizza oven, but definitely the beginning, and middle of a lovely round oven... and a beautiful metal frame it sits on that could hold several cars in addition to my pizza oven.

Roasted Capsicum

Ingredients
A whole lot of capsicum: whatever colour you want.
Olive Oil
Garlic
Salt & pepper
Red wine vinegar (optional)


Method

1. Wash capsicum and place on an oven tray with about a half to one centimetre of water in bottom.
2. Place in hot oven and cook until capsicum starts to blacken.
3. Take out of oven and place in a bowl which you can seal with a lid.  (Alternatively you can place them in a plastic bag according to Jan, but I don't quite understand this one if the capsicum are hot.) Keep sealed until cool.
4. Take capsicum out and peel off the outer skin and break into large strips.
5. Place the capsicum, and liquor from pan into a bowl with olive oil, garlic, salt and pepper. (You can add some vinegar if you want.)
6. Seal container and serve as part of antipasto or with bread.

Jan does a great continuation of this recipe where she lines a bowl with the capsicum.  She then makes a mixture of ricotta, parmesan, eggs and herbs and pours this into the bowl and covers the top with capsicum.  She then bakes this for about a half hour and serves with salad.

Capsicum

Sometimes called peppers, bell peppers... green, red or yellow? Or apparently orange, purple or white!  I believe the green are unripe red capsicums and the yellow ones, are well, just yellow!  Capsicums seem relegated to a support role:, ie they are  rarely served as a meal in themselves in the same way mushrooms, or eggplant or even potatoes can be.  I suppose capsicum are more about flavour than substance, with one or two exceptions..  My favourite recipes with capsicum are Ratatouille, paella, goulash.. and I always put a slice of green capsicum in my napoletana sauce for 'flavour'...  Back to substance.. Roasted capsicums, as part of antipasto are a great use of excess capsciums, which we rarely have in Alice Springs.  Alternatively, I tried stuffed capsicums last night... I'm not a big fan of stuffed vegetables.. these were OK, but I reckon it will be a couple of years before I venture here again.
The following recipe for roast capsicum is from my sister Jan.. and is a very Ingham (North Queensland) dish that my nonna would often have in her fridge, along with her breaded eggplant and olives which I always wished were grapes.

Second garden despatch...

Still waiting for some produce.. zucchinis are looking great, the purple tomatoes seem to be happy... 'moderately happy' might be an apt description for the okra... but everything else is... struggling.


Have dug in all the cow poo... but I don't think I'm approaching this the right way.. checked out someone else's garden yesterday and they had .. like furrows.. and straw.. and happy plants.

Olives

We own a 30+ year old olive tree. We're very fortunate. There was talk last year of chopping it down to make way for the biggest shed any man could have on a suburban block.. I was not happy, but resigned to the tree's fate, but not so others... and now Mark himself seems to have rekindled an affection for this fabulous tree. This year, thanks to the rain, we have a good (ish) crop of olives. I have harvested a small bucket of green olives, an even smaller amount of black-ish olives, and will do a final batch of whatever is left this weekend.
I have preserved my olives once before, with very limited success. I was travelling, regularly, between Alice Springs and Yuendumu, and carrying my buckets of olives with me, due to the need to change the water every day. At the point when I needed to put them in brine, I was in Yuendumu, and so they stayed out there.... quite happily, until my fastidiously clean sister Paula visited and noticed a layer of horrid scum on the top and turfed them... I managed to save one bucket, and I recall that it was good. I have since read that the scum is OK... just  take it off.  Of course!

Friends in Castlemaine have given me instructions on preserving the green olives, but I have been  little dubious at the 3-4 days only required to change the water, and after consulting one of my favourite books: Ferment and Human Nutrition by Bill Mollison, and tasting the olives every few days, I did 16 days.  They are now sitting in a brine of 1:10 ratio (salt to water), and the water will be changed every week for 4 weeks, at which point I will seal them in jars or put them in olive oil.  (Bill keeps them in brine for only one week, so at this point, I depart from his advice.).
Apparently black olives take less soaking time than green olives.  The soaking is to get rid of that really yukky taste... apparently called glucosides.
A couple of things I've discovered:

• Bought olives are not split or cut because the preserving process uses caustic soda!
• Don't preserve bruised or damaged fruits..
• Also try salted olives.. apparently they're great.

My favourite links for olives are
http://www.oliveaustralia.com.au/Pickling_your_Olives/pickling_your_olives.html
http://www.abc.net.au/gardening/stories/s1648136.htm

Best recipe with olives is one of mine:Baked gnocchi, and replace the eggplant with black olives.. sometimes I prefer the olives to the eggplant.

http://ritacattoni.blogspot.com/2010/03/focaccia-de-patata-aka-baked-gnocchi.html