zucchini and bacon soup
March 23, 2011 § 5 Comments
Bacon is a treat for me. I rarely purchase it because I worry about how happy those little pigs might have been in their lives. But as much as the well-behaved wholesome environmentalist in me protests, I secretly love bacon. I have tried not to, but the pleasure has remained, pure bacon enjoyment when it is on my plate. So in order to overcome my internal battles, I have justified eating it every now and again, provided its happy bacon. The bacon I have used in this recipe is biodynamic and free range, which if you are in Melbourne, you can find at Belmore Biodynamic Meats in Thornbury.
Now I also happen to think that a very good place for bacon, possibly even the best, is in soup. In saying that, I have to admit I have a bit of a soup obsession. It is probably my most favourite food in the whole wide world. If I had to choose just one thing to eat for the rest of my life, it would be soup, no questions asked.
This soup came about because as usual for this time of year there are whale like zucchini’s everywhere. I think the zucchini is balanced nicely with the richness of the bacon and the freshness of the lemon and thyme. You may have begun to notice my love affair with lemon and thyme… if not, Im sure you soon will, they seem to make their way into a lot of my cooking these days.
Recipe for zucchini and bacon soup
Good splash olive oil
1 large onion diced
4 – 5 cloves garlic crushed
1 tsp paprika
zest of 1/2 a lemon
3 – 4 medium-sized potatoes (I used toolangi delights, purple and beautiful)
About 1.2 kg zucchini
1 good tsp good quality vegetable stock
couple of sprigs thyme plus more for garnish
4 free range organic bacon rashers
Juice of half a lemon
In a large saucepan saute the onions and garlic until soft. Add the paprika and lemon zest and stir until fragrant. Add the potatoes, zucchini, stock, salt and pepper. Add enough water to just cover the vegetables. Simmer until the vegetables are nice and soft. Add the thyme, simmer for a tiny bit longer and then blend with a potato masher. If you have a blender feel free to use that, I don’t have one so i work by hand but I also like the no machine approach of the potato masher because I’m a bit quaint like that.
Slice up the bacon and fry in a pan until browned. Add to the soup along with the fresh lemon juice.
Serve in nice deep bowls and top with a bit more lemon rind and fresh thyme.
Delicious!
Serves 4 big bowls with a bit left over for lunch the next day. Because soup is always better the next day!
Autumn and Chutney Red and Green
March 18, 2011 § 2 Comments
The days are whirling on by. Why is there such a fine balance between being too busy and not busy enough. I have hit too busy hard and have resorted to that all to familiar feeling that any tiny spare moment in the day must be made productive. At the same time I am trying preciously to hold onto stolen moments alone in the garden, or a walk down a quite evening street, or a good stare at the ceiling whilst lying in bed. A life without time to smell winter on its way, or missing the precise day autumn turns the leaves on the trees, or not noticing the loveliness of a miserable cold day, isn’t worth living to me.
So Autumn has snuck up and run me over. It comes with cold toes and dewy grass, turmeric days, darkening evenings, soup cravings and way too many tomatoes in the garden.
This Tomato Chutney recipe originated from a friends brother. Its evolved a bit along the way but was so damn good to start with that it would be a shame to change it too much. The recipe calls for green tomatoes but because ours are still ripening I have used red ones instead and just used a bit less salt. If you are using red ones you also don’t need to let the tomatoes sit over night in the salt as the recipe suggests.
2 kg tomatoes roughly chopped
700 g onion finely diced
700 g grated apple
1/3 of a cup salt (if using red tomatoes 1/4 cup will do)
2 cups dark brown sugar
400 g sultanas or raisins
400 g dates roughly chopped
2 and 1/2 cups apple cider vinegar
1 Tbsp turmeric
1/2 Tbsp curry powder
1 Tbsp whole cummin seeds
1 Tbsp whole coriander seeds
Pinch cayenne pepper
1 tsp mustard seeds
/2 Tbsp grated fresh ginger
1/4 tsp chilli powder
1 Tbsp whole cloves
1 Tbsp whole pepper corns
Put the tomatoes, onion and salt together in a bowl and leave to rest overnight (this is only necessary if you are using green tomatoes).
Place all ingredients in a large saucepan and bring to the boil for a couple of minutes. Simmer and stir regularly for 45 minutes.
In the meantime pre heat the oven to 140°C. Clean about 10 jars in hot water. Place the jars on their sides in the oven until they have dried. Boil the lids in a saucepan of hot water.
Pour the mixture, it must be still boiling hot, into the hot jars and tighten the lids immediately.
Urban Agriculture: A Beautiful Reality
March 8, 2011 § 3 Comments
Imagine a city where streets are lined with citrus trees, strawberries abound in the centre of roundabouts, window boxes are laden with fresh herbs and roof tops are heavy with food-producing gardens. Continue imaging compact residential and business areas broken up with community gardens and small farms where all organic household waste gets recycled. An environment fostering a sense of place and belonging where people linger together in the green of their parks munching apples that they foraged from their urban surrounds. This is the dream of Urban Agriculture, an agricultural method that sustains and enhances as well as nourishes urban life.
Food growing in urban environments has a long history all over the world. In Australia for example, the first half of the 20th century saw the food industry very much producer driven and backyard ‘veggie’ gardens and fruit trees were a common part of the Australian urban environment. What people could not produce themselves they obtained from the local dairy and corner store (Mason & Knowd 2010). Indeed, before refrigerators and refrigerated transport, agricultural production was required to be near the area of consumption meaning that farms and farmers markets were an important part of the urban and peri urban environment. At this time, the urban boundary gave way to small highly productive farms on 1-10 acre blocks. They received a high return for their produce taking advantage of the city market and infrastructure. Land use beyond this was mainly large acre agriculture (Waterhouse 2005).
With refrigeration and transport technology, food production moved further and further away from cities (Budge 2009). At the same time food became more and more processed, subject to globalised food arrangements, dominated by large agricultural businesses and multinational corporations, and heavily dependent on fossil fuels for transportation and chemical fertiliser and pesticides (Myers 2008).
Over this period our world has also continued to become more and more urban. For the first time in history, more people live in cities than in rural areas. As a result, cities have huge and unsustainable demands on the world’s recourses with their social and environmental impacts reaching far beyond their boundaries. It is increasingly apparent that cities need to change rapidly in order to respond to forces such as population growth, climate change and resource depletion.
As cities become bigger, food and transport chains become more and more complex and costly, outsourcing their produce from far and wide. More than ever, we need a food system that protects land-based assets and the whole life system that depends on it (Pearson 2010).
But urbanisation does not have to be a bad thing. As Condon et al. (2010, p. 117) notes, urbanisation has the potential to promote ‘interactivity, education, social advances, and global human awareness and equity’ if applied appropriately. However, he goes on to say that without serious innovation it has tended to do the opposite providing significant environmental and social challenges (Condon et al. 2010).
Today we see the re-emergence of Urban Agriculture as a worldwide community initiated, social values based phenomenon. This is largely in recognition of its benefits socially, environmentally and economically and because people have become disillusioned with the current food system. People increasingly want direct contact with the food they eat (Christensen 2007) and there is a growing demand for local and regional food (Mason & Knowd 2010). The re-emergence of farmers markets, backyard gardens and community gardens is testimony to this.
Urban Agriculture does much more than just feed cities and is increasingly recognised as a possible solution to many of the problems associated with urbanisation and current agricultural practices. Growing food in urban areas entrenches food production into the community and in so doing tackles a number of societal needs including ‘healthy food, healthy land and healthy social relationships’ (Kakaliouras 1995 cited in Sumner et al. 2010, p. 58). Environmentally it benefits, air, water, land and aesthetics (Pearson 2010), especially if organic growing techniques are applied. Socially it builds community and a sense of belonging, serves an educational purpose, improves health and increases food security (Sumner et al. 2010). Economically it creates jobs, affordable food, builds local small-scale economies, and cushions fiscal markets from potential future challenges such as climate change, recourse depletion and economic downturns (Pearson 2010).
Unfortunately, within Australia there is a lack of political will in policy and planning strategies that promote Urban Agriculture and it largely remains community initiated and implemented (Merson et al. 2010). Perhaps this is a result of land use conflict, economic driven urban development, the urban rural divide, policy barriers, profit driven food industries, neoliberal reforms, privatisation, globalisation, and societal misconceptions. And what about society, do people care enough about these issues to resist the convenience of the supermarket or indeed to make them a political issue (Merson et al. 2010)?
If the challenge is to come up with an urban paradigm that is healthy, protects land-based assets provides secure access to fresh food and builds equality, community and sense of belonging, than urban agriculture, if applied appropriately, may very well provide the solution as it promotes both ecological and social sustainability. In this way, streets and boulevards lined with fruit trees could provide food corridors that link larger intensive neighbourhood food hubs at the same time recycling water and organic waste.
Oh wouldn’t that be lovely.
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the invisible cookbook 