10 Jan 2016
by Debra Manskey
in Preserving, Produce, Urban Farming, Vegetable Gardening
Tags: Green Shiso, Oak Tasmania, online learning, Perilla, pickled shiso leaves, Shiso, summer in Tasmania, urban farming, vegetable gardening
Over the years I’ve grown quite a lot of that most wonderful annual herb, Perilla, Shiso or Beefsteak Plant. Traditionally, it’s found in Korean, Japanese and Vietnamese dishes, and Shiso is its Japanese name. In particular the green variety (Perilla frutescens) which I prefer, seems to like my greenhouse very much. The unusual aroma and flavour is a welcome addition to summer salads in my household. Flavour-wise, I think it plays a similar role to Basil in Mediterranean dishes, and it is sometimes sold as Japanese Basil. I just wash the leaves thoroughly, put them through the salad spinner and chiffonade them. We also love it as a flavouring for steamed rice and stir fries and the whole leaves for tempura.
Pickling liquid and Shiso leaves in a jar
This year I’ve had a fabulous crop and I began to wonder what else I could do with it. That got me thinking about other Japanese flavours and what would happen if I started experimenting with a pickle. In Japan, Green Shiso is salted and the whole leaves are layered in jars for use during the cooler months and the Red Shiso is used to make Umeboshi but I found a wonderful cucumber recipe at Food52 that I’ve adapted for my needs. I wanted to have pickled leaves I could use whole as wrappers or shred up as required and this looks like a winner!
I made this yesterday 🙂
Refrigerator Pickled Shiso
15-20 large Shiso leaves 1/4 cup sugar 1 tablespoon salt
3 tablespoons Mirin 1 cup Apple Cider vinegar A clean pickle jar and lid (300-400g)
Wash the Shiso leaves carefully to remove any grit, pat dry or put through a salad spinner to remove excess moisture. Lay the leaves on top of each other and very carefully roll them, feeding the entire roll into the jar. In a non-metallic mixing bowl whisk the other ingredients thoroughly until the sugar and salt are dissolved.
Pour this over the Shiso leaves, close firmly and refrigerate. This will be ready to use in a few hours but will benefit from leaving for at least a couple of days. I have no idea how long the leaves will last in the refrigerator but as I use a few and make room, I plan to add some thin slices of the little cucumbers that are starting to fruit.
I confess I took a nibble this morning and it’s as wonderful as I hoped it would be. The big factor for me is the flavour of the pickling liquid, which is very similar to a dipping sauce. Also, I used some of the vinegar I made from a failed cider about three months ago and it’s pretty special just on its own! I will write a post about processing the vinegar with details and photos soon.
I’m also planning to dehydrate some of the crop, grind it and mix with a little shredded nori and toasted sesame seeds to make my own furikake and I’m considering getting a fermenting jar and making Korean Gaennip Kimchee. There’s also an idea brewing in my mind about making Shiso oil, similar to the Basil oil I make relentlessly through summer. I’ll keep you posted on that 🙂
Meanwhile, I’ve finished and submitted my assignment and I’m back to my wonderful people at OAK Tasmania tomorrow – summer holidays are over for me. But the days are still long and luscious for gardening and cooking.
Stay well and happy friends,
Debra ❤
Beautiful Shiso
01 Dec 2015
by Debra Manskey
in Baking, Biography, Produce, Tasmania
Tags: free range eggs, gardening, raspberries, Raspberry Cheesecake, Raspberry Upside Down Cake, Tasmania, urban farming
Ok, I know that NaBloPoMo is over for another year and I was going to have a break from blogging – but I had to share this with you all.
Today I spent the morning gardening, collecting eggs and picking more raspberries and this afternoon we baked a Raspberry Cheesecake and Raspberry Upside Down Cake for my birthday tomorrow. Here’s the recipes – they’re both very easy.
Raspberry Cheesecake
Ingredients:
1 prepared biscuit base (for a 28-30cm spring form pan)
6 large eggs 3/4 cup of sugar 500g cream cheese (at room temperature)
2 cups of fresh raspberries (more if you have them) 1 tablespoon lemon juice
Method:
Break the eggs carefully into a blender jar, add the sugar and cover. Pulse until the eggs are frothy and the sugar is combined. Spoon the softened cream cheese in, cover and blend until smooth. Add the lemon juice and approximately half the raspberries and pulse. I like to do this very briefly so there are still chunks of fruit and the colour swirls through the cheesecake mix.
Pour this carefully into the prepared spring form pan and decorate with the rest of the whole fruit. Bake at 150 C (300 F) for about 45 minutes. Allow to cool completely and chill for at least two hours before eating.
Raspberry Upside Down Cake
Ingredients:
4 large eggs, separated 3/4 cup of white sugar 1 cup Self Raising flour
1/4 teas Bicarbonate of Soda 3 tabs butter 4 tabs milk 1 cup fresh raspberries
a few drops of Vanilla essence (optional)
Method:
Preheat the oven to about 200 C (400 F). In a small saucepan, gently melt the butter. Brush a Bundt pan with a little of this and put the raspberries evenly on the bottom. Put the Bundt pan aside while you prepare the cake batter. Add the milk to the butter and turn off the heat. Do not let this boil!
Mix the egg yolks in a small bowl and put aside while you prepare the egg whites. Beat the egg whites in a large mixing bowl until soft peaks are formed. Slowly add the sugar and beat back up to soft peak stage after each addition. Very slowly sift the flour and Bicarb in and mix it thoroughly, ensuring there’s no pockets of flour left.
Slowly pour in the now lukewarm milk and butter and fold it through. Pour this very carefully over the raspberries in the Bundt pan.
Turn the oven down to 150 C (300 F) and put the cake onto a shallow tray. Pour hot water into the tray to create a shallow water bath and bake the sponge for 25-35 minutes.
Allow to cool for 10 minutes or so on a cake rack before carefully turning out onto a plate. Serve slices with cream and extra fresh berries.
21 Nov 2015
by Debra Manskey
in Biography, Cooking, Produce, Urban Farming, Vegetable Gardening
Tags: basil, Chillies, family food rituals, NaBloPoMo 2015, raspberries, Tasmania, urban farming
I had a really lovely day today. It wasn’t too hot, there was a gentle breeze through the yard and there was lots of gardening to do. Who am I kidding – there’s always lots of gardening to do! Admittedly, I didn’t do a scrap of uni work today but I had such a busy week, I felt I deserved a day off.
It’s wonderful to watch everything grow and change this time of year. In the space of a few short weeks, we’ve gone from buds to flowers to fruit forming on the cherry, apricot, plum and nectarine trees. The strawberries have been delicious and reasonably plentiful despite having only a handful of plants. But this morning we picked and ate the first raspberries of the season.
It was quite a momentous occasion, I think it always is for people who grow their own fruit. When I was a child in South Australia (a far more Mediterranean climate than here in Tasmania), we would pick the first stone fruit – usually early apricots – and my mother would cut it into equal pieces for us all to share and she insisted we make a wish on the first of the harvest. It’s a ritual I’ve continued to this day with my family and whoever happens to be with us when it happens.
This afternoon I started cleaning out the other side of the greenhouse in preparation of the main Basil and Chilli crops. Because the climate here in Hobart is on the cool side, I always grow these in plastic pots in the warmest spot I can find. So far I have all the common Sweet Basil (Ocimiun basilicum) potted up, about 40 plants this year. But there’s Thai, Mammoth and Lettuce Leaf (my favourite for pesto) plus more varieties of chillies ready to go now and nowhere to put them at the moment!
I’ll get it finished tomorrow. Meanwhile, tonight we had the first of the free range pork that arrived yesterday with a salad from the garden, featuring home made feta cheese I made about a month ago. It was a winner all round 😉
What are your favourite family rituals? Leave a comment below.
19 Nov 2015
by Debra Manskey
in Biography, Produce, Urban Farming, Vegetable Gardening
Tags: berry fruit, Boysenberries, Corn Salad, edible flowers, NaBloPoMo 2015, organic gardening, Sage, Scarlet Runner Beans, Tasmania, urban farming, vegetable gardening, Wasabi Greens
Hi everyone,
I’ve got a really busy day/night ahead (it’s gig night with Cassie O’Keefe tonight) so I’m going to offer you all some photographs from my garden this week. All these gorgeous flowers are edible or the precursors to edible fruit. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do 😀
I particularly love salad greens and grow a large variety throughout the year. One of the most cold tolerant plants I’ve ever come across is Corn Salad (Valerianella locusta aka Lamb’s Lettuce or Mache) and it grows particularly well here in Tasmania as a winter green. In fact, I think (like Kale) it tastes better for a good frost! It’s one of those plants that’s been in cultivation for hundreds of years that is coming back in fashion again and it really is quite delicious and very mineral and vitamin rich.
As soon as spring comes, it produces lovely, tiny flowers followed by masses of seed! It self-seeds now throughout my garden but it doesn’t transplant well. Fortunately, the chickens love it and I weed out any unwanted plants for them.
Beautiful and delicious Wasabi Greens
During winter, I bought a random punnet of vegetables to fill a spot in the salad garden. It’s been a real winner in every respect. Wasabi Green (Brassica juncea aka Wasabi-na) is an Asian mustard, bred for its hot, wasabi-like flavour. It spiked up my winter salads and even the flowers were lovely addition to the bowl. An added bonus was they were flowering when the bees first came out at the very end of winter.
I also managed to save seed from it in early spring before the other Brassicas started to bolt, and I’ll certainly be planting more in the autumn.
Speaking of bees, one of my favourite edible flowers is also a favourite of the bees, Common Sage (Salvia officinalis). Although the flowers are starting to look a little shabby now, I pick stems to brighten up a vase in the kitchen – as well as brightening up salads and marinades.
Recently, we had a roast leg of lamb and I placed a long stem of Rosemary and Sage (both in flower) underneath the joint. Delicious and very pretty when pieces of the flowers appeared in the sauce we made from the pan juices!
Last year I planted Scarlet Runner Beans (Phaseolus coccineus) quite late but still managed to get a quite reasonable
crop of beans from them. A couple survived our unusually harsh winter and they are already in full flower. Unlike ordinary beans, Scarlet Runners are a perennial vine and are also called Seven Year Beans by some gardeners.
These gorgeous flowers are not only bee attracting but also bring native birds into my garden – absolute bonus! The beans are lovely to eat whole when they’re young but get very fibrous very quickly and are then only good for the beautiful multicoloured beans that I love to dry and use in soups and stews through winter.
And finally there’s the flowers that are the heralds of spring and summer fruit. My family are especially fond of Boysenberries and currently it’s a mass of quite large, white flowers, which the bees also adore!
Boysenberry
What are your favourite edible flowers? Please leave a comment!
13 Nov 2015
by Debra Manskey
in Baking, Brewing, Produce, Rabbits, Urban Farming, Vegetable Gardening, Writing
Tags: baby rabbits, food glut, mushrooms on sourdough toast, NaBloPoMo 2015, rhubarb, spring, Tasmania, urban farming
So, Friday again – where did the week go? I had to take the day off work today, my back is not behaving itself and I’m going pretty slow at the moment.
Still, I managed to feed the hungry beasts this morning, check that everything survived the rain and enjoy a little bit of sunshine. In the midst of my “go slow”, I had some gentle exercise, pulled a few weeds and picked some rhubarb. I have six plants of “Victoria” – the green variety – that get fed heavily a couple of times a year and give back a load of wonderful, tart stalks from the end of winter until the end of autumn.
I tend to roast bite-size pieces coated in brown sugar instead of stewing these days but I’ve got so much I’m thinking of making sparkling wine and syrup with some, as well as the usual crumble and Rhubarb Fool. (Any unusual suggestions or recipes would be appreciated!)
Rhubarb (Rheum rhabarbarum) is actually a vegetable rather than a fruit but it’s generally used for sweet dishes and drinks. Just make sure to remove the leaves before preparing and never let your chickens have any part of the plant – the oxalic acid make it lethal for poultry or rabbits.
And speaking of rabbits, I checked the babies this morning too. All are thriving, getting chubbier and growing fur 🙂
I found fresh mushrooms last night from the compost bags so had a filling breakfast of mushrooms on sourdough toast. I’m heading to my local plant nursery for some more mushroom compost next week!
Do you have any favourite recipes or bright ideas for using rhubarb? Please leave a comment below.
11 Nov 2015
by Debra Manskey
in Baking, Biography, Creative Writing, Produce, Urban Farming, Writing
Tags: asparagus, egg glut, eggplant, Lemon Meringue Pie, study, Tasmania, urban farming
I consider myself a very lucky woman.
I’m surrounded by loving friends and family; I have ready access to good, clean food; I’m studying things that move and inspire me and I get paid to do things I love.
This was driven home yesterday when He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Listened-To made his first ever Lemon Meringue Pie. I made the pie crust and stepped him through the process of separating eggs (something he’d never done before), making the curd, getting the meringue the right consistency and so on. He is a very accomplished cook but hasn’t much experience with baking. We used a recipe from and old CWA (Country Women’s Association) cookbook and reduced the sugar to suit our tastes. It was good for me as I realised that as bullet proof as the CWA recipes are, there’s a lot of assumed knowledge in them about technique.
The lemons came from my friend Sara, so we knew they were clean and chemical free and it was another way to deal with the ongoing egg glut. It was a very fun afternoon, with my son turning up halfway through to make everyone cups of tea, poke fun and offer suggestions. We had a great time 😀
The result was delicious, though we’ll reduce the sugar even further next time.
Smiley Meringue
Healthy new Eggplant growth
This morning I had a brainwave in the garden about my uni assignment – that I confess I haven’t fully written up yet but I’ll get there! And there were two delightful surprises that any gardener will recognise and understand.
Firstly, a well established finger eggplant in the greenhouse I thought was beyond hope has started shooting again. I grew three from seed about four years ago and because of the unpredictable weather we can get in southern Tasmania, I kept them in the greenhouse. All three overwintered quite well the first year but I lost two this last, very hard winter. At least there’s one left to gather seed from at the end of summer.
Secondly, and to my absolute delight, I discovered a punnet of very healthy asparagus seedlings at the back of a tray. Asparagus is probably my favourite vegetable, but I really can’t come at the shop bought article. It’s one of those things I only ever want to eat fresh from my own garden. It’s a slow process growing from seed, the viability is usually best in the first year and it takes 2-3 years to get plants to maturity. Then, you have asparagus for years!
I’ll be pricking these out into home made grow tubes in a couple of weeks and putting into a permanent bed in
Delicate Asparagus seedlings
December. The bed will be very heavily dug over and filled with as much old chicken poo and rabbit straw as I can lay my hands on. At the moment it’s full of potatoes that are in full flower and due to be dug in the next few weeks. Potatoes grow very well here and have been my “go to” crop for reclaiming lawn areas ever since I moved in but they do strip the soil of nutrients and asparagus are notoriously hungry feeders!
I’m incredibly grateful for all the good things in my life, it’s something that tends to get overlooked in the fast pace of the modern world. There never seems to be enough hours to do it all! Meanwhile, I’m hoping to get some more uni work done, some music rehearsal and just an hour or two of gardening later…….. 😉
What are you passionate about? Let me know in the comments – I love to hear from you all!
09 Nov 2015
by Debra Manskey
in Biography, Chickens, Music, Performance, Tasmania, Urban Farming, Vegetable Gardening
Tags: chickens, good neighbours, NaBloPoMo 2015, Tasmania, urban farming, vegetable gardening
Further to yesterday’s post about the advertisement that labelled people who grow their own food as freaks, thank you so much for all your private (and universally positive) responses on social media. It means a tremendous amount to know that people are actually reading what I’m writing – as anyone who’s got a blog will know! I think where and how we source our food is an increasingly important issue – and obviously you folks do too.
I went to Oak Tasmania to play music today and as always, got there early to have lunch with my friends. And this is what I took…….
Freak Feast
In my lunchbox were two chopped hard boiled eggs, some torn English spinach and wild rocket, shredded baby kale, home grown alfalfa sprouts and a few fresh strawberries, all picked this morning. The only thing I didn’t grow was a half an avocado I cubed and tossed through it. A few drops of sesame oil and a sprinkle of rice wine vinegar made a lunch fit for any gardening freak 😉
And I have to share this with you all. I have the best neighbours ever! Yesterday Karen asked if I had a large square cake tin she could borrow for her daughter Georgia, who at 11 is getting very interested in baking. I found my old big tin at the back of the cupboard and apologised for it being so dusty – I don’t bake much now my son’s living independently.
Last night Karen knocked on the door to return the pan (cleaner than when I gave it to her!) and a plate with two huge slabs of fruit cake on it. Apparently, Georgia’s was given a recipe for fruit cake made with ginger ale and it’s a total winner, full of fruit, moist and not too sweet. I’ll have to see if she’s willing to share the recipe……. 😀
Georgia’s Fruit Cake
07 Nov 2015
by Debra Manskey
in Chickens, Rabbits, Urban Farming, Vegetable Gardening
Tags: integrating chickens into an existing flock, meat rabbits, Tasmania, urban farming
Let’s start with a disclaimer. Apart from writing, performing, teaching and gardening, I keep chickens for eggs and breed rabbits as an ethical meat supply for my family. If this isn’t your thing, don’t bother reading any further – I don’t want to cause anyone any distress.
I had a wonderful day today – I spent most of it in the garden and the rest of it with my adult son, who’s recently returned from overseas 😀
This morning when I fed all the hungry beasts (six chickens and three rabbits) I had a talk to my gorgeous British Giant doe, Boudica. She had a “date” with my buck Beelzebun about a month ago and she was singularly unimpressed with his romantic advances – to the point where she drew blood on the poor boy! I really wasn’t sure if she was pregnant (she is a big girl!) and concerned that I’d have to rethink my breeding strategy for this season. My neighbour Karen was feeding her two pet bunnies and came with me to see Boudica in the nursery hutch.
Boudica, Queen of Rabbits
To our tremendous delight, we discovered seven little baby buns, wrapped in some of Boudica’s super soft belly fur in the nesting box. It was really lovely to share this with Karen, she is another person who is very dear to me and loves bunnies. No matter how often it happens, I always get a thrill from seeing new life in the yard.
Occasionally I sell a litter, some to other breeders and some as pets. Full grown, they are as big as a large cat and very placid and gentle creatures. But primarily I breed to provide an ethical meat supply to my family. I have a buck and two does and all three are much loved pets and with an average of nine kits per litter, I’m careful not to over service the girls.
The rest of the day I spent pricking out seedlings into home made grow tubes, giving Boudica raspberry leaves, collecting rhubarb seed and cutting back the kale flowers, a regular task this time of year which has become a bit of a weekly event.
My chickens adore kale, so every week I take a big bunch into their yard and chop it up for them. It made me realise how well the two new Isa Brown hens, B1 and B2 have integrated into the flock. They came from a local egg farmer about three months ago, who lets his chickens free range during the day and roost and lay in a barn at night. When the girls arrived, they were looking a little shabby and thin but they were extremely interested in food. There were a few weeks of pecking and chasing by the other hens, establishing the new pecking order, which really didn’t help. B1 in particular went through a full moult and was especially timid.
Today I was very conscious of how healthy they are now, fully feathered and with bright red crops – and how well they’ve assimilated into their new home. It’s taken time and quite a bit of patience, but the work has paid off and the hens are happy, very well fed and laying. B1 is still timid but a very sweet little hen, who likes to sit in my lap and peck my mobile phone when I try to take her picture ❤
B1 with Mephisto the Beautiful Barnevelder
28 Oct 2015
by Debra Manskey
in Baking, Biography, Brewing, Business, Chickens, Composition, Inspiration, Inspiration, Inspiration, Lyrics, Music, Performance, Produce, Singing, Urban Farming, Vegetable Gardening, Writing
Tags: Australian music, Australian original music, baking, brewing, Cassie O'Keefe, creative writing, Debra Manskey, egg glut, Griffith University, Inspiration, Kevin Gleeson, live music, Matt Dean, mentoring, performance, professional musician, singer/songwriter, spring, Tasmania, Tasmanian music, Tasmanian original music, Tasmanian songwriters, The Brunswick Hotel, The Globe Hotel, The Homestead Tasmania, The Yard, urban farming, Writing
Hello friends,
I love spring. The cycle of the seasons visibly turns and every day brings new things in the garden, the chickens are laying more eggs than we can keep up with, and here in Hobart we’re coming out of the hibernation of winter and starting to go out again.
Rhubarb Fool
Vanilla Ice Cream
Wee Beastie Sourdough
And I’ve been busy! In the kitchen I’ve been making Vanilla Ice Cream and Baked Coffee Cheesecake with the excess eggs, brewing and bottling cider, making Rhubarb Fool from the mass of spring rhubarb and my weekly “Wee Beastie” Sourdough. It’s been absolutely wonderful to eat so well, with so much produce coming directly out of the garden.
The garden is always a work in progress but I’ve started planting out climbing beans this week, there’s basil in the 
greenhouse and too many vegetable seedlings coming on to mention.
And there’s music happening too! I’m in the middle of a unit in Creative Writing for my second major through Griffith University. For my final assessment I’m planning to write a portfolio of new pieces that will become new songs. Depending how it goes, perhaps the core of another album.
Meanwhile, there’s gigs coming up too.
This Sunday at The Brunswick Hotel in Hobart, I’m playing a short set out in The Yard (the beer garden) with a bunch of other local musicians, including the incredibly talented Cassie O’Keefe and my friend Matt Dean. Very pleased also that this is a family friendly show, so feel free to bring your young music-lovers 🙂
Thursday 19th November, I’m sharing a night with Cassie at The Homestead in Elizabeth Street, one of my favourite places to go and hang out with friends. No idea what’s going to happen that one – we might even work out some songs to play together!
Friday 20th November, I’ll be doing the early spot at The Globe Hotel in Davey Street. If you haven’t caught this weekly event yet, I really recommend it. It’s organised by Kevin Gleeson who basically loves all kinds of music and is good friends with so many of us. It’s a great excuse to hang out and have a good time with mates.
And there’s more on the horizon! If you want to keep up to date with my shenanigans, hook up with me on Facebook here.
Yep, it’s spring and it’s busy – just how I like it.
Wherever you are, be well friends ❤
05 Aug 2015
by Debra Manskey
in Biography, Chickens, Urban Farming
Tags: chickens, southern hemisphere, Tasmania, urban farming, White Leghorn, winter
L – R: Hipster, Mephisto, Emo and Henrietta
Hi everyone,
As I write the sun is struggling to come out after another arctic (or should that be antarctic?) blast hits Tasmania and south eastern Australia. Don’t get me wrong, I really love winter and the crisp, clear winter days we usually get. They’re wonderful for working outside, pruning and preparing beds for spring, but this is wearing a little thin now even for me! There are signs that spring is just about to happen, blossom starting to appear on early flowering cherries and spring bulbs popping up.
And yesterday morning, I found one of my beautiful old White Leghorn hens had died during the night. I thought she was older than the rest when I got her about three years ago and she’d never been a great layer, but she was affectionately known as Emo and we all loved her ❤ The funny thing is, Emo had been looking increasingly shabby despite having moulted in autumn, the same time as my other White Leghorn, Hipster. I even said to her on Monday (doesn’t everyone talk to their chickens?) that it was probably time to say goodbye before she started to suffer. I was planning to do it this weekend, when the weather is supposed to improve. Perhaps she knew.
Nevertheless, I felt bad about her passing and checked her over before burying her in a sunny spot in the garden. There were no obvious signs of disease or any parasites, such as mites and I think she just stopped wanting to be. After digging a decently deep hole, I laid her carefully at the bottom and said goodbye. Emo will eventually become raspberries, which will be great if I manage to transplant any runners this winter! I feel I’m very behind in this winter’s work.
Admittedly, I did have a very cold and long weekend away playing shows (more about that in my next post – with pictures!) and study has been taking up a fair bit of my time, but I feel I’ve done very little in the garden this winter. I have taken out a diseased cherry tree and planted a new apricot and dealt with the annual rhubarb clean up, feeding and mulching but there is a huge list of jobs that I really should attend to. So, this weekend I’m finally going to dig some of the raspberry runners, plant out some snow peas and spread some much needed mulch around the winter vegetables and fruit trees. And of course, there will be weeds for the chickens and playpen time for the rabbits 🙂
Take care wherever you are,
Debra ❤
What do you do in your garden in winter? What are your top tips for getting the most out of the short days?
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Debra Manskey 