An Ode To The Humble Plum

17 Feb 2018 Leave a comment

by Debra Manskey in Baking, Brewing, Cooking, Fruit, Preserving, Produce, Urban Farming Tags: , , , , ,

Well, it’s been another incredibly busy week! The weather – always a mixed blessing in Tasmania – has gone from the height of summer to feeling like an early autumn in a few short days. Mind you, I’m not complaining too much about the rain. Although I’m on the usual suburban mains system in the house, I only water the garden area from tanks and a small pump, with an extra line I put in to gravity feed down to the greenhouse. With a lot of mulch, it’s a pretty efficient system, but usually by mid-February, the levels are getting very low. This year, tanks are full again!

On the other hand, the accompanying wind has played havoc with some of the fruit trees, with lots one of my dwarf apples toppled in its tub Thursday. I’ve anchored it firmly back and staked it, so hopefully it will survive.

This week has also been full of plums, with most of the tree picked, dried and (for the first time) even sold and traded on. When I first came here eight years ago, there were some extremely neglected fruit trees that were mostly in a pretty woeful state. There was a lot of brush cutter damage to trunks, effectively ring barking some, brown rot in many and everything literally overrun with weeds. Some I couldn’t save but right down in the back corner, furthest from the house, was a very old plum tree, strangled by blackberries, English ivy and yet, in spite of everything, covered in small unripe fruit. The main trunk was split, it had been very poorly pruned, allowing some rot to set in but I realised it was a very old European prune plum and therefore, most definitely worth saving!

What it was – the jungle plum!

After several years of regular weeding, careful hand removal of blackberry suckers and some judicious pruning (initially with a chain saw) this tree has come back into its own. A couple of years ago we laid lots of cardboard, sand and finally pine bark to suppress weeds and it’s been a very successful makeover.

What it became – well cared for!

So much so, that I always have way too many plums for my household. They’re not the most wonderful plum to eat fresh, but I love making things with them. Some years I make a few jars of jam or sauce and one year I made a quite delicious perry from the yellow fleshed fruit – but always there’s lots of dried fruit – prunes to chop up for muesli, add to apple cobbler or even savoury dishes like Moroccan lamb stews. Best of all, as I walk past my pantry shelf on the way to the laundry and the back door, I pop a few in my pocket to have as a sweet snack on those cold winter mornings, a little memory of summer that was, and the promise of summer to come ❤

 

Visages Villages – Faces Places

17 Feb 2018 Leave a comment

by Debra Manskey in Movie Review, Writing Tags: , , , , , ,

Faces Places (originally released as Visages Villages) (2017) Directed by JR and Agnes Varda.

I saw this French language documentary a few weeks ago at the end of its run at the State Cinema in Hobart and I cannot get it out of my mind.

Agnes Varda is well known to me as the sole female director of the French New Wave but I confess I hadn’t heard of JR, Varda’s young co-director. Apparently JR is a French photographer and muralist and I must say, very engaging in front of the camera.

The documentary was shot over 18 months, with the two of them travelling around France in JR’s wonderful photo booth van, which also printed large format photographs. Their core idea was to create ephemeral black and white photographic art works that would eventually be worn away by the elements, depicting people of the area. These took the form of oversized images pasted on the exteriors of buildings, bridges, factories and even shipping containers.

I loved this film at many levels. A good deal of it was shot in rural France and there was a beauty beyond the idyllic pastoral scenery that Varda and JR managed to elicit from the people they spoke to. I confess I shed tears too when Jeanine, the last occupant of the condemned miners cottages, saw her two storey image on the outside of her home.

Perhaps the most poignant scenes for me were with Varda talking frankly with JR about growing old, losing her sight (the cornerstone of her art), and the friends and loved ones who have died. I felt these scenes are the spine of the film and despite the sombre feel, Varda has a sense of humour and clear zest for life that at times matches the much younger JR. There is also sadness, particularly when Varda talks about her husband who died some years ago and (without giving too much away) the manner in which she is treated by someone later in the film.

All in all, this is a quiet yet spectacular and very moving documentary, which addresses questions about ageing, being completely in the moment and engaging fully in a life well lived. It’s stayed with me for weeks and although it’s only early days, I think come December it’ll be in my best films of  2018. I recommend it to anyone who has a beating heart.

Summer in the City – Home Made Tempeh

10 Feb 2018 Leave a comment

by Debra Manskey in Preserving, Produce, Urban Farming, Writing Tags: , , , , ,

It’s been hot and steamy the last few weeks in Hobart – well, hot by the standards of the most southerly capital city in Australia. Many mainland Australians think Tasmania is just cold all the time but (as a South Australian who has lived and worked in desert conditions) I rather think we have proper seasons (sometimes all in one day) and because this is an island, when the temperature rises as it did here today to 31 C (88 F) it’s the equivalent of 36 C (97 F) anywhere else on the mainland.

As I type (early on a sticky Saturday evening), the rain has finally come after days of teasing, topping up the water tanks and bringing much needed relief to my vegetables and fruit. In my tiny kitchen the dehydrator’s been running all week and I’ve dried nearly all of the nectarine crop and made a start on the prune plums.

Dried, home grown nectarines

Consequently, it’s been very warm in there and I took the opportunity to try out something I can only do this time of year – make my own tempeh. Although I’m not a vegetarian or vegan, I love tempeh sliced, marinated and fried. I then use it in stir fry or just on its own with a fresh garden salad. My friend Heather says it’s fabulous fried and used in veggie burgers, so I’m going to be trying that very soon!

There’s heaps of YouTube tutorials available but when I was researching this I really liked this from Veganlovlie and took her advice to buy a reliable starter from her source, Top Cultures in Belgium – oh the joy of online shopping!

Two important things to note before we start (so I’ll put them in bold)

  1. Like any food preparation, cleanliness is paramount. In the case of working with a specific ferment, this becomes critical. Make sure everything that comes in contact with your precious beans/tempeh is scrupulously clean.
  2. I haven’t pasteurised my tempeh, so for all intents and purposes it is a raw product and must be cooked before eating.

Anyway, this is what I did.

Home Made Tempeh (makes 4 blocks)

2 cups soy beans (washed and soaked)

5 tabs apple cider vinegar

1 teas dried rhizopus starter culture

Bags or moulds with drainage holes for the tempeh

Method:

Wash the beans thoroughly, rinse and repeat. Soak them in clean water for at least 8 hours (or even overnight).

At this stage, while the beans are soaking, I suggest prepping the bags or containers you intend to use for processing the tempeh. I opted for zip-lock plastic sandwich bags because I had some on hand and I can reuse them but I’ve been making vegetable bags out of baby muslin and I’d like to try something like that as a more sustainable option. Bags are easy to clean and afford a great view of the process but the problem with plastic (apart from the waste issue) is potential sweating, turning your lovely soy beans into a smelly mess, so I used a skewer and poked holes every couple of centimetres (about 1 inch) all over four bags.

After soaking, drain the beans, wash and cover them with clean water. Cook in a large pot over medium heat until they’re nearly done. (This took about 30 minutes) Add the vinegar and stir it through. Continue cooking and when the beans are cooked to your taste, (about another 10 minutes for me) drain most of the water off. Return the pan and beans to a low heat to cook off the rest of the water. Stir continually at this step to stop any sticking. Your beans should be moist but with no residual water in the bottom of the pan.

Allow to cool to about 35 C (95 F) and add the teaspoon of starter. I suggest take your time and mix this through very carefully. I’ve made quite a bit of cheese over the years and found out the hard way that ensuring the starter is evenly distributed is a really critical step.

Next, evenly distribute the beans into the bags (mine made just under 500g cooked beans per bag) and working as fast as possible, carefully shape them into small rectangular cakes, expel excess air and zip-lock them. Finally, put the cakes on a clean board or non-metallic tray and weigh them down with another board, keeping them somewhere warm and draught free for at least the first 12 hours. After that, the fermentation will generate enough heat to keep it going.

I put a scrupulously clean wooden board on top of my monster dehydrator (to take advantage of the escaping heat) and placed the bags on the board, weighing them down with my old and very heavy ceramic lasagne dish.

Within 12 hours, it was clear there was fermentation and the bags were quite warm, a great sign!

By 24 hours the fungus was clearly visible and looked very clean, white and with no discolouration – more great signs!

 

By 36 hours I called it as a successful experiment and carefully removed the first cake from the plastic bag and sliced it up.

It worked out incredibly well and it was a very easy way to make one of my favourite foods. I’ll certainly be making more of this while the weather stays warm and freezing it for use in the cooler months. Next, I want to try making chickpea tempeh.

But tomorrow night, Tempeh Stir Fry for dinner!