The Stuff of Nightmares

When I saw the headline 'Coalition plans pensioner slug', I wondered if this was the kind of thing they had in mind:

It seemed preoccupied with devouring our lemon tree when I saw it, but I'm sure it could be persuaded to nibble at pensioners in its spare time, if asked nicely.

I am regularly amazed by the truly fantastic nature of so many creatures lurking in the most ordinary of suburban gardens. Even a fly, when you look at it closely, is a strange, strange thing.

Glamour and Anti-Glamour

I noticed this on a shampoo bottle in the shower this morning:

It made me laugh, although of course it shouldn't have. After all, if I'm setting culinary trends in my vegetable garden, who knows what they're up to out in the industrial suburb of Hume.

All the same, it seemed a ridiculous juxtaposition and made me think of my much loved, sadly missed friend Katherine, who used to point out newspaper advertisements for PAs in London which were headed 'London, Paris, New York' but on closer reading turned out to be mainly involved with booking tickets for various bosses to jet off to those and other glamorous locations (but never, for some reason, to Hume, ACT)

On Trend

Home from Sydney, I go out into the garden and pick kale:

The vegetable garden feels a long way from the glamour of the city, with its clattering cafes filled with tastefully (?) tattooed people wearing bright shiny city clothes.

I come inside and set down my harvest. I am on the point of shrugging on my usual provincial sackcloth when I notice this in the paper:

Is it possible that I'm not so far from the centre of the universe as I thought I was? Maybe all those months ago when I first planted my kale seeds, someone was watching. What if they are still? What next new wave have I already unleashed - unwittingly? Home-cut hair? Undusted furniture? Filthy ovens?

I'm going to have to be very careful from now on. It appears that I am a grade A hipster in disguise.

Community Service

At this time of year, the decision to plant not one zucchini (courgette) plant, not two, but, on the grounds that one or more might turn up their toes, three zucchini plants way back in October always comes back to haunt me. Why do I never accept that there is really never going to be a shortage of zucchinis, even with one plant? Why do I never remember that they very rarely turn up their toes and more than one plant will always produce an amount that makes the word glut an understatement?

Assuming that I am not the only Canberran foolish enough to produce for myself, year after year, an overabundance of long, green, fairly tasteless vegetables, I have decided to provide to others in the same position a recipe that has become my greatest ally in the face of this absurd and entirely avoidable annual problem.

The recipe in question is for something called a Zucchini slice. It isn't the most wildly exciting thing I've ever eaten but it can be frozen, and sometimes in the depths of winter, when you can't be bothered to cook anything that involves chopping et cetera, it can be removed from the freezer, heated in the oven, and produced miraculously, together with a salad of whatever you can find in the vegetable garden (there is always, always rocket). I have to admit that no-one in my household has ever said, 'Oooh goody, zucchini slice' or 'Oh, couldn't we have zucchini slice tonight'; on the other hand, there has never been any left at the end of a meal:

Heat oven to 170C
Beat 5 eggs, add a cup of self-raising flour and beat until smooth, add in 375g grated zucchini, a chopped onion, 200g chopped bacon or smoked ham, 1 cup grated cheddar, 1/4 cup veg oil. Combine, put into a baking dish and cook until golden. Eat or freeze and eat later.

I do also possess a recipe or two for zucchini cake and zucchini muffins, should anyone want them. If I'm absolutely honest, I actually own a copy of a publication called The Squash Cookbook which is almost entirely devoted to what to do with vegetable marrows of various kinds. Most of the recipes are very fiddly though, (who really wants to spend their time stuffing baby courgettes when the sun is shining?) whereas the one above is a trusty thing that involves no stuffing and cannot be stuffed up, unless you forget it's in the oven.

If anyone's got too much basil, incidentally, I've recently discovered that home-made pesto is just as delicious - or possibly more delicious - if you don't toast the pine nuts. Apparently they never do in Liguria (and the pesto I had there was great).

Balderdash and an Abundance of Broadbeans

Due to disorganisation,

The Other Side of the Coin

Having praised buying local and fresh and seasonal and whatnot, I should point out that it does have its drawbacks. For example, I know a woman in Hungary who had the opportunity to escape from the country in 1956. However, she had other priorities. She would go, she decided, but first she had to help her mother finish bottling the tomatoes. And, of course, yes, you guessed it, by the time that task was finished, the opportunity had evaporated.

Similarly, living in Belgrade with a young baby when Chernobyl blew up, I walked in the door one Saturday morning and heard the telephone ringing (it's not so long ago and yet it feels like ancient history - not even a whisper of the possibility of almost universal mobiles at the time).

I picked up the receiver and heard my mother, who was calling from Australia. 'You ought to come home,' she told me. She was worried about any effect there might be on my daughter of possible leaking radiation.

I'd just got home from what was known as the peasants' market (when I was talking about life in Belgrade the other day to a friend in Canberra and mentioned 'the peasants' market', she said she was going to refer to the Canberra farmers' market [very bijou and full of failed interior designers producing 'artisanal' 'niche' products] as the peasants' market from now on) and there had been tomatoes there for the first time in eight months. To my eternal shame, my only thought was, 'I can't leave; I've got tomatoes at last.'

Death and Destruction

Just lately I have been on a mission to murder some pests that have been taking over my vegetable garden. This is the one I have a special vendetta against:

SUSPECT 1

 and this is either what it emerges from or what it becomes (or both):

SUSPECT 2

 or possibly this is:

SUSPECT 3

and these are the eggs that either Suspect 1, 2 or 3 lays and from which, I think, Suspect 1 blossoms, before becoming its thoroughly unpleasant and destructive self:

Anyway as I squashed my umpteenth Suspect 1 this morning, I did have a moment's pang of compassion, even though I hate the little furry monsters. "Sorry mate," I thought, as the thing collapsed beneath my fingers. "The trouble is I've got to look after these poor, defenceless, little plants, you see".

And as I felt the revolting squish of the little invertebrate's body and saw the resulting squirt of brilliant yellow, (quite possibly chrome yellow, for all I know, [and yes, I am aware that the Huxley one is actually Crome Yellow, named after a place and blah blah blah, but I thought I'd shove the reference in anyway, partly to add a touch of class amid the horror, Mr Kurtz, the horror]) goo splatter across my cucumber plant's leaves, it crossed my mind that, when people point to unexpected, pointless suffering as a reason for dismissing the existence of a deity, when they suggest that sudden accidents and senseless deaths are an argument against the likelihood of there being a divine being, they may actually be looking at things from the wrong perspective.

Maybe humanity is not the focal point of anything. Perhaps there is a deity, but one whose main priority isn't in fact us.

A Bumper Crop

You know you've grown too many beans when you start using them as bookmarks:

And don't get met started on zucchini (courgettes, to English readers). The annual glut is upon us, and their charm appears to be lost upon my husband, who can spot them, no matter how carefully concealed, in any dish, but particularly objects to them turning up in chocolate ice cream.

Oh Boy

My father had many endearing affectations. One, picked up, I suspect, during a posting in Washington, was to say, very emphatically, almost yearningly, 'Oh boy,' when he tasted something he liked that you'd cooked. 'Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy.' A pause. 'That IS good.' Or sometimes, 'That is GOOD.' Rather like the German waiter's cry of 'sofort' and 'gleich', I was never sure what finely nuanced differences in meaning there were between these two variants. Probably none. As he wasn't actually particularly keen on eating anyway, the whole performance was largely insincere - but that didn't make it less charming.

Anyway, after appealing for recipes for my home-grown eggplant the other day, I got lots of suggestions, mostly to do with grilling the things. One recipe though that someone kindly gave me and, I'm sorry to say, I at first thought was going to be rather disgusting, (partly because I thought it would be a waste to peel the eggplant - but then I realised that, as long as I peeled them thickly, I could grill the peel bits and so get two dishes for the price of one) turned out, in fact, to be a bit of an 'Oh boy' dish.

It qualified for 'Oh boy', status, I felt, by being unusual, surprising and, most importantly, of course, delicious. In addition, it had a special allure because it came from the 'original' Russian Tea Room in New York - not the nasty modern incarnation, which boasts rather oddly (but in a manner that makes me suspect that there is Russian new money somewhere in the background) that it is the 'second home for boldface names' (???) but the authentic 1920s establishment. I would very much like to have visited the Russian Tea Room in its earlier incarnation, but that is no longer possible. Armed with this recipe though, I can close my eyes, take a spoonful of eggplant a la russe and pretend that I am there:

Eggplant a la Russe

1 kg eggplant
45 g butter
2 tbsps finely chopped onion
1/2 cup flour
1 cup milk
1 cup cream
1/4 teaspoon ground coriander
1 teaspoon french mustard
1/2 teaspoon paprika
salt and pepper
1/2 cup thick sour cream
6 tbsps finely grated parmesan cheese

Peel the eggplant. This is vital, otherwise the inside becomes too soft by the time the skin is tender. Dice into medium-sized cubes, each about 2.5 centimetres. Put into a saucepan of boiling, lightly salted water. Bring back to boil and cook two minutes. Drain well and let stand for 10 minutes in a colander.
Melt butter, add onion and cook until softened. Add flour, stirring until cooked and then stir in milk and cream. Bring to boil, stirring all the time until thickened.
Mix in coriander, mustard, paprika, salt and pepper. Finally add sour cream. Taste. It should be quite well seasoned with the spices.
Put the eggplant into a shallow ovenproof dish - or individual ones. Spread sauce over the top. Scatter with cheese. Bake in a moderate oven until edges are bubbling and the top is glazed and golden.

(And, yes, it is very rich.)

Too Much of a Good Thing

In the streets around our house, good neighbourliness is nearing its annual zenith - the backyard vegetable crops have reached what politicians like to describe as 'the top of their game'. We are showering each other daily with 'nature's bounty'. Most of us do this by sneaking over and leaving things on unmanned doorsteps, thus avoiding the possibility of having our offerings turned down. Shockingly, those of us in possession of small, hard-to-refuse children have resorted to using them as veg mules, without a single qualm.

Until recently, beans and zucchini (or, if you prefer, courgettes) were dominating proceedings, but in the last couple of days cucumbers have shouldered their way to the fore. I have managed to rid myself of fifteen this morning, but there are still a dozen sunning themselves in my back garden, with many more on the way.

Which is why, in search of something new to do with the things (other than engage in hand-to-hand combat - the longer ones make quite good rapiers), I pulled down  Jane Grigson's Vegetable Book. As you might expect, she offers plenty of cucumber recipes. Unfortunately, few of them demand more than half of one cucumber, which makes for a fairly labour intensive solution to the glut.

Never mind - as always, Grigson provides interesting and amusing reading. Tiberius, she tells us, loved cucumbers so much that he wanted to have them served every single day. To service his appetite, 'the imperial cucumbers were raised in beds mounted on wheels. Like hospital patients they were rolled out into the sun. When the day turned chilly, they were moved back under frames glazed with transparent stone.'

It's a lovely image, the recumbent vegetables being rolled about like invalids. And who could have predicted that one day I might wish for the resurrection of poor old Tiberius? But enough of this - I have to go. I can hear next door's seven-year-old knocking at the door.