Tag Archives: salted lemons

Odd crops

Hakeke at the top with white oyster mushroom below

We are timid eaters of assorted mushrooms and fungi in this country, having been raised with a healthy fear of death cap mushrooms which look so innocent and edible. Generally we have a choice of brown Portobello mushrooms or white button mushrooms at the supermarket, so I leapt at the chance to try fresh oyster mushrooms when I saw them at the local farmers’ market.

We were a bit underwhelmed, which was disappointing. More textural than tasty, one might say. I decided to taste test the remaining ones beside the flabby brown fungus that grows freely around here and which played a very significant role in the early colonisation of Taranaki, where we live.

I am not sure that I have unravelled the complicated nomenclature of this flabby brown fungus. Mark has always known it as ‘woodear fungus’ but that is wrong. I couldn’t commit the original Maori name to my memory – hakekakeka – but it seems that is now synonymous with hakeke, which I can remember easily. It belongs to the Auricularia group, and it may be correctly identified as A. cornea but that seems to be interchanged freely with A. polytricha, which it probably shouldn’t. They are not synonymous. Anyway, it is common here and safe to eat. If you want to.

Mark found me some hakeke from the garden for my flavour experiment. I sliced both that and the oyster mushrooms into thin strips and cooked them in butter with a touch of olive oil (to stop the butter from burning) and some finely diced garlic, using separate frypans.

The verdict? Compared to the hakeke, the oyster mushroom was flavourful but it was the garlic butter that was the tastiest by a long shot. The hakeke is purely textural. The only use I could see for it in times when food is plentiful, is fried until it is crisp and then used as a garnish on, say, fried rice. I don’t think I will be adding it to our diet on a regular basis, even though we can gather it for free.

Wasabi in flower beneath the orange trees. With self-sown forget-me-nots.

We were given a small division of a wasabi plant last year. Despite the internet saying it was difficult to grow, we hit on ideal spot (fertile soil with overhead cover from a couple of orange trees) and the clump has grown. I could see some evidence of the swollen tubers that are the part that is grated to eat so I dug it up, only to find I was being a bit optimistic. It seems it is a two or three year crop in our conditions, to get big enough tubers to grate. We now have seven divisions, five replanted and two shared with others. 

You can see the tuberous parts forming which are the edible parts but I didn’t want to sacrifice too much of the plant by harvesting too early

Interestingly, I doubt that I have eaten genuine wasabi before. Outside of Japan, most of what is sold as wasabi paste is in fact horseradish, mustard and green food colouring. I did grate one little bit to try but it was too small a volume to detect subtle differences in quality and taste. It tasted wasabi-ish. I am sure that in time, freshly grated wasabi will lift my summer sushi to a new level.

Salted limes. In the past, I have done them whole but quartering them makes no difference and more fit to a jar.

In the kitchen, I am curing a jar of salted limes. I have been doing these for years to use in cooking, particularly in Middle Eastern and southern European dishes. They also add flavour when cooking grains like wheat, be it freekeh or bulgar, quinoa, rice or couscous. I dropped couscous when I realised how processed it is, but if you eat it, I can recommend adding a finely chopped salted lemon or lime to give it flavour. Limes and lemons are interchangeable when it comes to salting; I just use limes as they turn yellow because we have more and they are a better size if I am salting them whole, rather than quartered as here. The brine is so strong that they last up to a year in the fridge.

Fermented artichokes – I just looked up several recipes on line and worked out the general drift rather than keeping to one. Delicious raw in salads – and more digestible.

Salt also plays a role in fermenting foods. I have just completed a small jar of fermented Jerusalem artichokes and the reason to ferment this crop is that the process breaks down the inulin to a more easily digested form. It is the inulin that is responsible for this crop oft being referred to as  fartichokes. Fermenting means that you can eat, sweet, crispy artichokes without the unpleasant after effects. I like the taste of artichokes and they are heavy croppers for minimal to no effort but my stomach did not like them at all. Hence the fermentation. I did a big jar last year but we didn’t eat them fast enough and they don’t store as well as salted lemons. When some questionable moulds formed, I threw out the rest but I think we will get through the smaller jar.

Huhu grubs – reputed to taste a little like peanut butter

I have my limits. I know that huhu grubs, as we know them, were eaten in earlier times but I could not bring myself to gather these, even when I discovered a plentiful supply in a rotting stump. Huhu are a long horned beetle endemic to this country. We were often faced with a plate of cooked insects in the elaborate meals we were served in China and I did try a few. I think it is a cultural thing and it would take me a while to get over my gag reflex and to normalise eating insects, even while I know that they could be a valuable protein source and more environmentally sustainable than animal farming. If I am going to eat insects, I would rather start with them in a more anonymous form – cricket flour, perhaps – rather than launching straight into foraging at home and putting live, squirming bugs into a hot frying pan. I fed them to the birds.

The food we were served in China often included a plate of insects.

Tikorangi Notes: Flowers great and small. With added lemons.

Doryanthes palmeri or giant spear lily. Certainly shaping up to be giant

Behold Doryanthes palmeri! The giant spear lily from eastern Australia. It has never flowered for us before so the three metre, sturdy flower spike is a thrill even though it has yet to open. This particular plant is a nursery relic, by which I mean that it was not planted in this position. More, cast aside from nursery crops (we once produced a few to sell) and left to its own devices. Now the grass garden is planted beside it and it looks quite at home. This is just as well; each pleated leaf is about one and a half metres long and I don’t fancy moving it. I am hoping the flowers will open in the next week or so.

Snowdrop season! Galanthus S. Arnott

From the massive to the tiny, it is snowdrop season here. We are not really-o truly-o good snowdrop territory and Galanthus ‘S. Arnott’ and G. elwesii are the two main varieties that perform consistently well and multiply for us. Mark would dearly love some later flowering ones to extend the rather short season but while he went through a stage of gathering various different varieties, none of the later ones have thrived. Undeterred, he is trying some hybridising to see if he can get some variety but these projects, you understand, never yield instant results. It is more like a ten or twenty year plan, all to get the extended snowdrop season.

Luculia Fragrant Cloud keeps on flowering this season

It was a full month ago that I wrote about luculias. The bright pink ‘Early Dawn’ is well finished, white ‘Fragrant Pearl’ still has a few blooms but the main specimen plant needs some attention (a bit more judicious pruning and more light – it has flowered better in the past). But ‘Fragrant Cloud’ has been in full flight ever since and still looks good. This is the very best I have ever seen it and the scent is divine.

Daphne Perfume Princess

Equally fragrant are the daphnes in full bloom. We grow a number of different daphnes but a fair amount of them are our own ‘Perfume Princess’. Mark has bred other plants that are showier and more spectacular (especially the magnolias), but this obliging daphne represents a breeding breakthrough in some aspects and may well end up as the one he is best known for internationally. It is certainly the one that enabled us to retire early. Given that, we are deeply relieved as each year it proves itself again as a garden plant and a superior daphne which will stand the test of time.

I admit that as this post goes live, we are far from Tikorangi. Well, not that far. Just ‘across the ditch’, as we say, in Australia. While we need passports to travel to Australia it never feels overseas as further, oft more exotic, destinations do. It is just that all three of our children live in Australia these days and we are all joining the celebration of the second birthday of our only grandchild. So not a garden or plants-focused visit but I am sure we will find matters botanical of interest on the way. While I love the place we live, I have been missing the stimulus of travel this year. I need to find somewhere interesting and new for a trip next winter. By the time we arrive home, we should have the first colour showing on Magnolia Vulcan and M. campbellii should be in full bloom in the park. Winter will feel as though it is on the wane.

Preserved lemons – the liquid is opaque because some of the salt has yet to fully dissolve

Before we left, I made another jar of salted lemons, having noticed a heavy crop and smaller fruit on our main tree. Smaller fruit fit in the jar better. I prefer to make salted limes but the lime tree is having a year (or two) off fruiting. They are dead easy to do, store for many months in the fridge and are very tasty as a flavour addition. They can make couscous flavourful (though I have gone off couscous since I realised how highly processed this product is), add taste to rice and all manner of stuffings or savoury dishes. I resorted to buying lemons one year, in the absence of a good lemon crop at home, but if you are buying fruit, pour boiling water over them and stand them for a few minutes first. Some are, I read, coated (in wax?) to help their storage life and you need to get rid of any coating or spray residues before preserving them.

Just looking at the jar is like looking at a ray of Italian sunshine on a winter’s day in Tikorangi.