tomato Sungold 
Tomato Angele 
roast tomato on bbq
Two varieties of cherry tomatoes are ripening, can enjoy a few every day. Other than eating them raw, also like to lightly bake or roast on bbq, the depth of flavor increases with heat and a touch of seasoning.
Place cherry tomatoes in baking dish, drizzle with olive oil, season with salt and black pepper, bake or cook on bbq until skin splits, serve with a handful of fresh basil.
potato cheese basil salad
Grown a few varieties of potatoes, purple Impulse, red Roseval, pink Corne Gatte, and beige Gold Marie, for their different colours and flavor.
The Irish likes floury potatoes and that are the varieties being sold locally. I do like instead, waxy ones for the texture.
To economise cooking fuel and have cooked potatoes ready to use, I have been steaming a batch every few days, and keep them in fridge, to be used as salad potato, or baked or in soup.
I notice if I steam them and serve right away, they will be floury. But if I leave them in the steamer and rest until cool, the starch will gel and turn into wonderful waxy potatoes, hurray!
Potato cheese basil salad
Steamed waxy potato, cut into bite sizse pieces, fresh cheese, season with salt, pepper and olive oil, mix well with a handful of fresh basil.
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| Cherry tomato Sungold and Angele |
First to ripen are cherry tomatoes Sungold and Angele.
According to a local gardening guru, Sungold have won taste competition (in that colour category) time after time. Indeed it has beautiful orange yellow tone and a nice balance between sweet and sour, very easy to please and easy to eat a lot.
Angele, the seed is collected from a supermarket bought packet of cherry tomatoes from Spain. Found it very tasty and has beautiful squarish shape, kept the seed and try to grow this year. In the beginning have worried that it may be a hybrid F1 variety and may not come true to what was eaten before. However, shape and taste exactly the same, success!
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| hanger steak and cow tongue |
Such pleasant weather to enjoy dinner outside, on short sleeves and shorts, a nice change.
Grilled hanger steak and cow tongue, served with cold veg dishes.
Hanger steak is simply seasoned with salt and black pepper, it has to be served medium rare otherwise tough. It is one of my favorite cut as it is full of flavor, and good value for money.
Cow tongue is seasoned with salt, 5 spices powder, brown sugar and olive oil, love the unique texture. Very cheap here but have to order it from the butcher beforehand.
Cold spicy climbing bean Sunshine
Bake climbing beans at 170 degrees until just soft, 20 minutes.
While
hot, mix with a dressing of soy sauce, vinegar, brown sugar, White
Mausu fermented black bean chili sauce and olive oil, great powerful
flavour, served cool.
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| Mackerel sashimi |
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| grilled mackerels |
Fisherman caught 2 mackerels, one good size and one small.
Cut one fillet into sashimi, to enjoy the natural taste, actually very similar to yellow tail.
Season the fish with salt and rest for a day in the fridge, grill on bbq, the bigger one is great, oily and juicy, the smaller one is a bit dry.
Chili mala cabbage salad
Hot weather and keen on having cold dishes, turn this freshly harvested Spring cabbage (the pointy variety) into a tasty and spicy salad.
1. Use the middle more tender part of the cabbage, cut into thin pieces, season with salt, and massage to soften.
2. Mix with a dressing of chili sauce, I use White Mausu Mala peanut sauce, yogurt and honey, a sprinkle of toasted sesame and seaweed flakes before serving.
Raspberry Clafoutis
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| Raspberry Clafoutis, before baking |
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| Raspberry Clafoutis |
Very good harvest of raspberry, every other day a 2 kg bowl, ate a lot and made many jars of jam. So have to think of other ways to eat them, now making clafoutis and raspberry vinegar. Clacoutis is easy to make, light texture and low on carbohydrate.
1. Butter baking dish, line the bottom with raspberries.
2. Mix together :
3 eggs
60gm almond flour
30gm flour
60gm sugar
250gm cream
3. Pour on top of raspberries, bake at 190˚C until golden, around 25 minutes.
Planted the cloves in November, and finally, ready in early July, they are pretty big this year thanks to a wet Spring and early Summer.
Friends ask how do I use so much garlic?
-ferment them in honey for a few months, becoming crunchy and less harsh to eat.
-confit in olive oil for a soft cooked texture and mild taste, great on vegetables or toast.
-caramalise to black garlic in the special cooker, so sweet and is a lovely snack/appetiser.
-use in daily cooking
Portumna Castle
Fresh cheese preserved in rice lees 
Fresh cheese preserved in rice lees
I made another batch of fresh cow cheese (milk + rennet), this time half is preserved in rice lees, the sediment left behind after making rice wine.
Kept in the fridge for a month and is still good and becoming more creamy.
Mackerel in tomato sauce
One of my mother's way of cooking fish, sear first, then add tomato, soy sauce to make a tasty sauce.
1. Season fish for a day.
2. Sear until golden both sides, add tomato (here I used semi-dried tomatoes from last year's harvest) fresh herb like oregano, soy sauce and brown sugar to make a savory sour sauce.
Raspberry coulis 
raspberries 
raspberry bed
Everyday harvest a bowl of raspberry, the bed need to be covered with net to stop birds attack but allows pollinating insects to come through. Learned from last year, added a plastic roof on top to stop rain falling on berries, which will turn mouldy very fast.
A not very sunny
summer so far, berries are on the sour side, better to make coulis. Bring to
boil, sweeten with brown sugar, pass through Kitchenaid to remove seeds. Great on yogurt or vanilla ice cream.
3kg immature salmon
Fisherman brought back a 3kg fly line caught immature salmon, we enjoyed it in 3 ways.
sashimi wild salmon
Sashimi - wild salmon is lean, no fat white lines like farmed ones, feel good to eat.
gravlax salmon
Gravlax - marinated in 2% its weight of salt and brown sugar, some chili and white pepper, for 3 days with a weight on top, for a firmer texture than sashimi.
The best like method
is to poach in a simple broth, extremely tender juicy result, the soup is delicous too.
poached salmon fish head in daikon broth
1. Season fish for a day.
2. Make a simple broth with daikon, miso, salt, ginger and scallion.
3. When boiling lower the fish in, at least half submerged, and turn over.
4. Reduce heat so that broth is hot but not boiling, poach fish for 4 minutes each side.
等番茄成熟，真有等到頸都長的感歎！
同樣是在三月發芽，四月份把菜苗種在溫室內，不少已經在五、六月有收成，如生菜、青豆、芥蘭、紅蘿蔔、蠶豆、豆角、椰菜、西蘭花、紅菜頭等等。
tomato Apricot Salex 
cherry tomato Sungold 
tomato Atomic blue 
tomato Epivrox 
cherry tomato Angele
只有番茄，五月開始長花結果，一日一日肥大，但無論小的車釐茄，或大紅、大藍、橙色大番茄，到現在仍然硬實實的，時間未到急也急不來。
不是特別喜歡吃番茄，只是菜園內掛滿長串色彩繽紛、光潤飽滿的果子，那美麗豐收感覺，特別令人愉快，又有滿足感。
Miso baked mix beans
A steady harvest of runner bean Painted Lady, climbing bean Sunshine and mangetout Shiraz
My way to enjoy their juicy natural flavour is mix with salt, olive oil and light miso, bake at 180c for 20 minutes, super easy.
runner bean and climbing bean
mangetout Shiraz
