New recipes

Ah the Internet. Where were we without it? I remember the days of having to wait until the library opened to go and find something out. Or using telephones - to talk not write. Really showing my age here - I remember the old analogue dial phones. Anyway I digress...

I've been hunting out new recipes to use the food I have. That pumpkin that grew 'for us' made several containers of pumpkin soup and I had half left! So I did a little searching and my new favourite thing is - Pumpkin Scones!

For anyone not raised in North America or South East Asia the idea of pumpkin being used as a sweet is a bit foreign. Heck, in England it's considered only fit for pigs! But I encourage you to give it a try. Not only does it come out a beautiful golden colour, its consistency means that you use less butter and sugar.

I started with this basic recipe from Graham Weir (Published in the Australian Women's Weekly and sourced on the taste.co.nz website) and have since made variations with coconut, and ginger and dates.

Ingredients

60g butter

¼ cup (55g) caster sugar

1 egg yolk

1 cup cooked (440g) mashed pumpkin

2½ cups (375g) self-raising flour

pinch of salt

pinch bi-carb soda

milk, for glazing

Method

Preheat oven to 220°C fan-forced and line a baking tray with baking paper.

Beat butter, sugar and egg yolk together until combined; stir in mashed pumpkin.

Add self-raising flour, salt and bi-carb soda; mix until just combined.

Place dough onto a floured surface and knead lightly.

Roll or pat dough out to about 2cm thick.

Cut scones out using a 5cm cookie cutter and place onto tray.

Brush tops of scones lightly with a little milk.

Bake 12-15 minutes or until golden brown.

There are heaps of pumpkin scone recipes out there though - I chose this one simply because it had a cup measurement for the pumpkin rather than a pre-cooked weight and I had already cooked an pureed mine.

The other new project currently occupying (most of) my preserves shelf is Feijoa Chutney. I have several friends with feijoa trees and at this time of year they plead with anyone (even complete strangers I imagine) to take the damned things off their hands.

I already made a less than successful foray into Feijoa Jam - far too sweet and ended up more like Feijoa Honey, so this time I was determined to try something new and a little bit different.

The recipe below I found on a message board so hopefully they don't mind me reposting it here.

Ingredients

2kg feijoas, peeled and cut into chunks

600g sultanas

1kg pitted dates

1kg onions, peeled and cut into chunks

1kg brown sugar

50g ground ginger

50g curry powder

50g fresh red chillies, deseeded and finally chopped

20g salt

500ml water

Method

Dump all of the ingredients into a huge pot, mix, then bring slowly to the boil. Simmer for 2 hours, then spoon into hot sterilised jars and seal according to your preferred method.

This makes a LOT of chutney but it is good!

And finally an update from the garden. More beetroot has gone in as well as brocollini and curly kale. The eggplant has fruit but I'm not sure if it will get bigger so I'm adopting a wait and see approach. My brussel sprouts were being attacked by cabbage white butterflies but my mother found a great solution via a gardening mag. Butterfly decoys. Apparently Cabbage Whites are quite territorial so a couple of decoys made out of plastic scraps and staked in the garden keeps them away. So far so good!

The capsicum are at the end of their days. Some very sad mutant fruit is still on the vine but gone are the huge capsicums we had when they were in their prime. The dwarf beans have started to flower but still no beans.

The carrots - the rows and rows of carrot seed tape I planted - have produced a few straggly seedlings half of which the cats have dug up while toileting (gggrrrr!). I will keep planting them but I don't hold much hope of a good crop.