Tuck into these great recipes from ingredients you can grow at home.
What to feed vegans, vegos and raw foodies at Christmas? Well, these raw wraps were truly stunning. And most popular with the carnivores too. I came across delicious wraps like these at the 'Its Rawsome Cafe' 522 Petrie Creek Road Rosemount. I searched high and low for a recipe that sounded good enough to eat and came up with the combination of wraps, filling and sauces from the book entitled 'Art of Raw Living' by Doreen Virtue and Jenny Ross.
Because the food is raw, organic and fresh, you feel a million dollars after eating it. It doesn't weigh you down, make you feel bloated or even overfull. Just enlivened...
Hope you enjoy this recipe. There are a few steps to it, with the wraps, filling and sauces, but you'll have enough for 8 wraps and if you don't eat them all on one day,it keeps well for the next day or thereafter.
The sauces are delicious on other foods as well. And that avocado sauce...it feels so smooth you could perhaps use it as a body sauce if you felt a bit sensual! Just being cheeky!! Make it and you'll know what I mean.
Rosellas, (not the feathered type) are really delicious to eat once cooked or preserved. A couple of bushes of these hibiscus relatives provides so many of them that they keep us going all year with frozen, preserved and dried pieces.
I served this recipe at a workshop and received rave reviews. It's a smooth, creamy,
and decadent dessert.
My recipe for rosella preserves follows too.
In the picture my model Emma devoured the props shortly afterwards!
'Liquid Ice Blocks' - that's what the Sous Chef at Tukka restaurant and the manager David call this cordial. Yes, I am famous for it, but it is a knock out. And, because lemon myrtle is in leaf all year, you can make it all year too. It will take about 10 minutes including the time it takes to go out and cut some leaves off the tree in your pot or garden...
Yummy Strawberry Fruit Leather
When strawberries are prolific and cheap like the ones I bought at the market in October, put them to good use.
If you are not ‘jammy’ type of person, there are a myriad other things you can do with them to preserve the harvest. I’ve pureed them, frozen them whole and made strawberry sorbet and lots more.
Here is my recipe for fruit leather aka fruit roll ups. An old fashioned sport of English thing, but oh so good...
Garden Workshop Dukka
Dukka is a middle eastern dry dip made from a nut and seed base, flavored with herbs and spices. To make it will take you two minutes with a blender or food processor – significantly longer if you chop the nuts by hand.
My own recipe diverges form traditional a little as it has Lemon Myrtle from our own tree. We love it as do the participants at the workshops...
Pink Apple and Jaboticaba Crisp
When the jaboticaba (Tree grape or Myrciaria cauliflora) bush fruits, it produces kilos of fruit and there’s a rush to get it all juiced, jellied and preserved for later. This year our spring crop produced over 45 kilos of fruit!
This delicious dish is just a treat.
Eggplants are a can't kill 'em plant. They thrive in a hot spot.
Ours produce mountains of firm purple or white or striped eggplants every year. Dips are one thing to make, but this dish when I first made it, induced a family member to bang the table and exclaim, "WOW" it was sooooo good.
You may have these star-shaped fruit falling in bucketloads from your tree in summer. What can you do with them?
Try this exotic cake, simply cooked like an upside down cake and truly delectable as a dessert or an afternoon tea treat.
I tried to recreate a dip I tasted and loved at the Ottoman restaurant in West End Brisbane. Here t is, though not quite the identical.
Whip up this quick vegetarian dip for family and friends. A few handy items from the pantry and it's done in 5 minutes while your boiling the kettle or opening the beers.
It's not only tasty, it's downright delicious.
Our small suburban garden is brim full of edible plants, both native and exotic. About 170 at the most recent count in fact. I’m one of those who’ll only grow a plant if it has an edible or useful aspect to it.
After growing Warrigal Greens for the first time a many years ago, I no longer have to buy and sow the seed. It happily self seeds over the garden. I just curtail its wanderings to a different section of the vegie patch each year.
This is a lovely spicy, but not hot, vegetarian dish using our native greens that grow prolifically in the garden and protein-packed paneer cheese .
A delicately flavoured biscuit that reminds me of English afternoon teas. Use some of your lavender flowers in this delicate biscuit. I don't have lavender growing, so take a walk around the neighbourhood and surreptitiously pick the flower heads when I think no-one is looking!
Do your body a favour and juice up a fresh liquid brekky from the garden. Here's a favourite recipe of mine that has the anti-infammatory benefits of tumeric plus the protection of kale.
I am seriously into the joys of eating raw food at the moment, and loving the fresh flavours and healthy meals, straight from the garden. It’s especially good fun experimenting with raw food as some recipes require dehydrating to achieve a ‘cooked’ texture. We are able to dehydrate the bounty from our garden and make delicious raw breads, crackers and pie crusts as well as wraps and lots more. At first we enjoyed kale chips, now it’s onto flax crackers, bread and bikkies. Oh yes, the raw raspberry cheesecake was wonderful too. Thanks for that Imogen. Now the excellent green breakky juice...
With Christmas comes the promise of lots of lillypillies coverd in bright pink fruit. Thee little fruit on the Syzygium leuhmanii are quite tasty. I use them in all sorts of things but love the candied ones best. Here is a method for making candied lillypilies that you can use in cheesecakes, bikkies, drinks, and cheese platters...
We love the mediterranean flavours and I love making dolmades (stuffed vine leaves. They are great in a slad for summer , eaten with a barbecue and well, even warm for winter.
The problem is, it's a bit tricky growing your own vine leaves if your garden is prone to powdery mildew. My solution is to grow and use edible hibiscus leaves instead. They don't complain about our hot and humid summers and see the leaves above? The wide ones are the best to stuff. The narrow ones, while edible, are just not stuffing material!
I nip out the back door and pick off some leaves, blanch lightly then away we go.
I have a few recipes for stuffed vine leaves, but this one with an Asian influence is a favourite.