The Urban Patch

I've been staying at my parents' house in Adelaide for the weekend and today spent a lovely, lazy morning soaking up the autumn colours and dreaming about the giant country garden I one day hope to have. 

This is one of my absolute favourite recipes and I made it the other night with beans freshly picked from the patch! The recipe can be found in Vegie Food (Murdoch Books 2009 ed).

3 tablespoons sesame oil

500g (2 1/2 cups jasmin rice

1 long red chilli, seeded and finely chopped

2cm piece ginger, peeled and grated

2 garlic cloves, crushed

375g green beans cut into 5cm lengths

125ml hoisin sauce

1 tablespoon brown sugar

2 tablespoons mirin

125g tamari roasted almonds roughly chopped (if you can't find tamari roasted almonds, soak regular almonds in tamari for 30mins then drain and dry with paper towels. Heat a non-stick frying pan with 1 tablespoon oil. Toss the almonds for 2-3 minutes and drain again).

Method

Preheat oven to 200 (celsius) Heat 1 tablespoon of oil in a 1.5 litre (six cup) oven proof dish, add the rice and stir until well coated. Stir in 1 litre (four cups) boiling water. Cover and bake for 20 minutes, or until all the water is absorbed. Keep warm.

Meanwhile, heat the remaining oil in a wok or large frying pan and cook the chilli, ginger and garlic for 1 minute, or until lightly browned. Add the beans, hoisin sauce and sugar and stir-fry for 2 minutes. Stir in the mirin and cook for 1 minute, or until the beans are tender but still crunchy.

This morning I picked my first crop of beans!!! Aside from the mountains of cherry tomatoes we enjoyed around Christmas this is the only time I've been able to pick the main ingredient for a meal from the garden. 

Things have been very quiet in the patch of late. No blooming success stories, but no major disasters either - except for my poor cyclamen which I may have over watered and is now mouldering on the window sill (I'm going to let it dry out for a little while and I'm sure it'll be fine. It's damn resilient).

Things are slowly growing though. My tomato bushes are groaning under the weight of ripening fruit, which is pretty surprising seeing as the cold is starting to get a nasty bite to it, and my bean plants are going nuts.

My poor roquette haven't been growing much, I suspect because they've been hiding behind the monster strawberry bushes at the back of the planter box and aren't getting enough light. 

My sweet peas (with the exception of one) are also looking pretty sick. I'm not sure if they're even salvageable at this point. So I've done a swap and relegated them to the shady depths of the planter box and popped the roquette seedlings out in the sun because dammit I'm sick of paying for second rate salad!

It's hard rubbish in Elwood and the other day I found dozens of pots thrown out by one of the neighbours, so while I was planting up all my Heronswood finds I also replanted some of the silverbeet to give them a bit more space.