Kale and Celery Soup Recipe

This soup was born from trying to use up some of the veggies in the garden, which were predominantly kale and celery of course! It was refreshing to have celery as the key flavour of a soup. I know summer isn't really the season for soup but it has cooled down a bit (it is early autumn after all) and the celery flavour made it feel right somehow.

Coarsely chopped kale, celery and potatoes in the pot

Since the soup was green and tasted so healthy it felt like a bit of a detox.  We really enjoyed it with a good sprinkling of pepper.

Kale and Celery Soup Recipe

Total time to cook: 1hr 15 mins
Preparation time: 30 minutes
Cooking time: 30-40 mins
Time to blend: 5 minutes

Kale and Celery Soup Recipe Ingredients

1 tbsp olive oil
1 whole celery
1 bunch kale
2 onions
2 cloves garlic
1 x 8 cm ginger (use more if you really like ginger)
7 potatoes

Method

Chop vegetables coarsley, cut ginger finely so that it blends properly.  Add olive oil to a large saucepan and heat on high.  Add ginger, garlic and onions and fry until onions are soft and translucent.  Add the rest of the vegetables all at once.  Add pre-boiled water to just under the level of the vegetables.  Bring to the boil and then keep bubbling gently for 30-40 mins or until the vegetables are all soft.  Blend (I use a hand stick mixer) until smooth and season to taste.  Serve with crusty bread or toast.

Have you got any recipes that you have created to use up vast amounts of vegetables from the garden? Were they a success?

Kale and ricotta sausage roll recipe

This is a delicious recipe* that I have been tweaking over the past few weeks.  It is a simple and tasty way to use up leafy greens from the garden (we have a lot of kale at the moment!).  It is also a crowd pleaser since young and old tend to like sausage rolls.  You will need about 30 mins to chop the veggies (I tend to do this in advance earlier in the day and pop them in the fridge) and another 15 mins to roll the filling in pastry and put them into the oven.

Kale and ricotta sausage rolls

Ingredients

To make the kale and ricotta rolls you will need:

500g ricotta

1 onion and 2 small cloves garlic diced

4 leaves of kale finely chopped and 1 swiss char leaf (2 cups of green leafy veggies is required - use spinach or another variety if that is what you have. I remove the chunkier stems from the kale)

1/2 cup grated carrot and 1/2 cup of grated zucchini

2 tablespoons of parsley finely chopped

3 sprigs of fresh thyme - remove leaves from stems

1/2 cup bread crumbs

4 Square sheets puff pastry
Tomato chutney (optional)

Method

Grease two baking trays with butter.  Preheat your oven to 200 degrees celsius.  Fry onion and garlic in a saucepan until soft and translucent and set aside.  Add leafy greens, carrot, zucchini, parsley and thyme to a bowl and stir through ricotta and bread crumbs.  Add onion and garlic and combine through mixture.

Allow the pastry to thaw for about 10 minutes while you mix the filling, then slice each sheet in half, making two rectangles.  Add mixture in a line along the middle of each rectangle (I like to add mixture to each sheet and make sure that I have used it all up) and lift one side and roll. Turn so seam is upward facing and gently seal, possibly using water to help it stick. Roll over the sausage roll and brush the top with egg. Then sprinkle with sesame seeds.  Cut into desired roll sizes (I cut twice to make four rolls from each half of pastry).  Put into the oven for 15 mins or until cooked and golden on top.  Serve with tomato chutney or desired dipping sauce (optional).

*I adapted this recipe from a cook book that I was given at Christmas time, Something for Everyone by Louise Fulton Keats.  This recipe is quite different from the chicken sausage roll recipe by Louise but I wanted to acknowledge where the inspiration came from.

Post-holiday summer gardening with benefits

After a rather busy and bustling visit to the relatives over Christmas and the New Year we have returned to the garden and our pets with a mixture of relief, exhaustion, excitement and apprehension.  Another year begins.  

I have taken eight months off from the part-time work I returned to last June.  Therefore I have time to languish Turtle with attention and at the same time develop my own personal pursuits, such as Lizzing Lightly, my yoga practice and experimenting in the garden, kitchen and beyond.  One of the main projects I want to focus on is the vegetable garden and making it as productive as we can.  I also want to try and use all of the produce we grow in delicious meals. 

We returned to the garden looking quite lush since our house sitter made a big effort to water a lot during the heat wave that hit Perth while we were away.  The kale that I planted a week or two before we left in mid December has flourished.  The celery, which we planted in about September, has also done really well.

Radicchio, kale and celery flourished in the back garden bed while we were away

The baby eggplants are also going really well.  We planted it, along with a capsicum, in the half wine barrel in Paradise Patch at the same time the celery went in and they are a good use of the space. 

Baby eggplant and capsicum plants in the half wine barrel

Unfortunately the capsicums have been struggling a bit so I've been picking them while they are still green.  I think they either have a disease or the sun is baking them so that one side goes all thin and loses it’s structure.  While I’m home I can keep a better eye on them and pick them if they start to turn.  We eat all of the unaffected fruit.

A couple of the eggplants had sat on the plant for too long so the bottom of them was a bit brown (see pictures) but we returned to a pretty impressive crop of 10!

Our harvest of ten baby eggplants

Our heirloom tomatoes have been a disappointment unfortunately.  We have harvested only a few fruit from three of the plants in pots.  Overall I’m extremely pleased that the garden has survived our absence and that we are getting some food upon our return (we were worried that we would miss out!).

The first big summer harvest - a good reward for our efforts

It’s nice to be home again to tend to our plant babies, although the heat is definitely a challenge to work around.

How is your garden faring? Are you also in post holiday recovery mode?

Wishing you a happy start to 2015. 

Lizzing Lightly