Quinces are an interesting fruit but really need to be cooking to be able to be eaten. The usual way to cook or preserve Quince is to either bake it or simmer down to a paste and add some sugar to help preserve it.

Here I have used a traditional italian method of a simple simmer with some water, a few slices of orange and a sprinkle of sugar. I used one large Quince that was about 10-15cm in diameter.  It was sliced with the core removed and then set to a low simmer in a covered pot for about 30-45 mins.

When the quince and orange was soft and started to fall apart (when poked with a stick) I mashed it all down. You do this while still on the heat and sprinkle the sugar on to it.

The sugar I used is a demerara sugar. I added about 8 desert spoons – maybe half a cup. It helps to bind the remaining fluid as a syrup. I just used a potato masher to mix it all up.

Then you just turn off the heat and let it cool and put it in a bottle or similar preserving container and store in the fridge. Assuming you don’t eat it all in the first week it will last some time like that.

It makes a great addition to desserts or scones with a good vanilla ice-cream or just laid out on some flaky pastry and cooked quickly.

Made some more pastries today [9 April] with this quince paste… and this is what they look like. Simple small flaky pastry turnovers sealed with egg white and some dropped into some short crust mini flans.

And after 30 mins in oven at about 150…

We had a small crop of tomatillos due to the crazy wet and cold weather this year and decided to make a nice simple tasty dipping paste for use in enchiladas and such that highlighted the unique tomatillo taste and trying not to overpower it with chilli or other flavours.

The tomatillo variety we use here is a green fruit that is about 1-3 cms diameter that stays mostly inside the husk even when it grows bigger. It grew ok despite the inclement and unsuitable weather where tomatoes failed almost completely.

All up for this recipe we used about .5 kilogram [approx 1 pound old speak], 6 large cloves of garlic, half a red capsicum and 1 small red chilli.

I am unsure of the exact variety of chilli but it was a medium Thai style that ripens up to about about 4cm long that i have growing in a large pot of random mild to medium heat chilli plants I have grown for general eating without the risk of burning mouths.

The tomatillos were all washed in a colander under cold water to get rid of the weird sticky surface coating. It is a strange bitter substance but easily washes away.

Next all the components were placed on a a baking tray on alfoil under a medium top grill about 20cms below the heat and then slowly roasted with the top heat till they collapsed and browned a bit on top. This is essential to get the full unique tomatillo flavour.

Then the components were placed in a blender and blended to a slightly chunky texture but that has a nice gloss on it from the liquids involved.

We ended up with about 500 mls of paste.

It is very tasty and really brings out the unique and interesting taste of the tomatillos. That grilled tomatillo juice is quite amazing. We thought that adding other things like tomatoes or other spices would really swamp or muddy the delicate flavour.

We ate it combined with black beans, mexican style red rice, grated cheese, sour cream, chopped lettuce, and shredded BBQ’d chicken strips wrapped in simple corn and maize wraps . Spectacular!!

Apologies as the photos here are not great  due to being quick snaps on phone while it was being made.

A quick tip –  i have found it very effective to use those cheap and abundant woven fabric shopping bags for saving seeds.

In these photos I was just processing some Italian Kale seed clusters. The seeding clusters grow quite high on this kale and sit off the top of the plant and are hard to handle and dry off in any other way without losing a lot of seed.

Usually I just leave them on the plant till the first seed pods start to brown off a little and look ripe and make sure they have some viable seed in them. Then I just cut the whole fruiting spike off  the top of the plant and stick it top down into a large woven bag like this one and then hang it up in a dry space in a shed or garage space for a few weeks.

The seed heads dry out nicely in these bags and as long as there is some ok air movement they just desiccate perfectly.

You then just take them down and thrash the seed pods and old growth about inside the bag and all the seed drops to the bottom. I usually get some gloves on and just rub the dry matter till it is totally crushed and then just throw it out as I work down to the seed at the bottom.

You can then tip the remains into a large bowl of some sort and thresh it about a bit and eventually you end up with a fairly high seed content which can be labelled and bagged for next year or planted out directly in seedling trays.

Given that these bags are very cheap and plentiful and easy to handle and hang up, you can store many seed heads for a long time ready for processing till you want to. I find at the end of autumn I will have up to about 20+ of these bags hanging about drying often I just leave them hanging till spring and plant them out directly.

They are remarkably effective at drying if hung in a good spot.

I use them for the Kales, rocket, spinach, chard, carrots, parsley. mizuna, mibuna, radishes etc and also for drying out broad beans and others beans, peas and other such seeding plants.

They are also excellent for processing onions and garlic etc which need a good drying space. I just find laying the alliums all out on drying mesh etc in our unpredictable weather too space and time consuming.

The corn does not stand much chance of doing anything.

There is still hope for the tomatoes which are still healthy but have only small fruit on them.

The squash are producing a lot despite being raided by people and animals along with trying to recover from the Hail storm still. There are about 9 different heritage varieties of pumpkin and squash in the mound.

Beets [red and yellow], Spinach, Silver beet/chard, Lettuce, Radish, Rocket, Parsley, and the Kales are starting from seed now.

The Squash area is thriving and with some warmer dry weather the flowers are no longer rotting and so we have produce!. Same with the tomatoes which are now flowering and setting so we have fruit.

Some more citrus are in and hopefully will put in enough growth before winter burns them back.

Someone tried the mangel-wurzel root roasted and reported back that it’s pretty good and a lot like sweet potato.

Mibuna, mizuna, tatsoi and rocket and going well. And a new fast access raised herb garden has been made up to replace the weed infested herb area near the carpark. This will be useful for those that drop in to the gardens quickly to grab a handful of herbs like parsley, origin and thyme etc. The area around it needs wiping of weeds…

I have to add that this is possibly the most dismal growing summer for vegetables I have seen around here for many years…

They are funded by the Randwick City Council and the garden is organised along the lines of a structured Council garden space. The area is surrounded by a large storm wire fence and the gates are locked to casual visitors.

I could only get in for a few minutes as someone was going in to water their plants and let me wander for 5 minutes before they had to leave.

They have a small enclosure for chickens, a large water tank and a small building and covered area. It is all very compact and is a mixture apparently of single personal plots with a few communal planting areas – although this was hard to tell by what was growing in the limited time I had to look around.

They are particularly interesting in that they are essentially of community gardens origin and have developed over time to be a more widely supported botanic gardens structure. Started in the mid eighties they have developed somewhat randomly over the years based on peoples interests and ability to contribute as volunteers.

The collection of plants is somewhat esoteric but interesting because of that. The succulent and cactus collection is really quite nicely laid out and holds a lot of interesting plants. They have a nice passive solar tropical orchid house of some size and a number of glass and shade houses.

There are a lot of really nice fundamental structural features and ideas that are still in development. They have some really nice parkland spaces and a variety of functional features like a small bush chapel obviously setup to cater to weddings and some nice lawns. They also have a tiny volunteer run cafe.

It felt good to see what a community garden could end up like.

note – The mosquitoes were severe and savage – they have a free spray yourself down area at the entrance with natural oil repellents – make sure you use it before walking anywhere in summer especially.

My pics here are of only really the succulent area.

http://www.huntergardens.org.au/

They seem well set up with mainly free standing growing containers all with their own watering and drip systems and activity areas. This is a smart and interesting design for use in a public area like this. There is a main thoroughfare path running through the area and there was a constant stream of people wandering or cycling through while I was there.

The weather on the coast there is edging into sub-tropical and it showed with some very nice growth on some of the plants I would not even attempt to grow in my cold temperate region.

I was also mildly impressed by their ‘not ready for harvest’ and ‘ready for harvest’ signs which they were using.

http://www.fnc.org.au/community_garden.htm

Squash and Pumpkins are progressing well.