In my kitchen: May 21

The month of April just about breezed past, let's take a peek at my food life...

In the garden...

I harvested the rest of the green beans as it is getting colder now. really enjoying getting some fresh rocket or raddichio from the garden for salads! 

I still haven't done my winter planting in the veggie patch yet because I was away the last 2 weeks on holidays, but this beetroot I planted in a large pot. I wonder how one knows when the beetroot is big enough to pull out? 

We had such a glut of purple shiso this year that I ended up making a lot of pickles..

In the kitchen...

I had a few days where I was quite obsessed with food styling. I am also obsessed with simple pastas - sauces that come together while the pasta is cooking. Here I had my spaghetti with home grown tomatoes, basil, a few beetroot greens (well I was thinning the beetroot!) and cannellini beans. Words cannot describe how delicious this was! 

We had vegan matzo ball soup for Passover. I bought the matzah meal from Woolies in Double Bay and ran into a Jewish lady who started telling me the "best" way to make the matzo balls... never mind we threw out her suggestions to make this vegan version. 

On the baking front...

I made a traditional Italian Colomba di Pasquale (Easter dove bread) - I've been experimenting more with Italian ideas the last year and I certainly had no idea that this even existed! It was a pretty complex recipe. The inside was chockablock full of dried fruit, and I decorated the dove with flaked almonds. I was pleased with how soft pull-aparty it was (really like a panettone in texture) and we demolished this in a few minutes... 

One day I was in the mood for babka so I made this sourdough chocolate babka for the medical team on that evening.   

This was one of my best babkas. The enriched dough was just offset by the slight sourdough tang. Every mouthful was full of warm melting chocolate and rich buttery bread. Heaven!

Onto the Food and Music series...

I also made this lemon tart using lemons from my friend's tree. I used a traditional Pate sucree recipe and completely invented the filling using what I had in the fridge - a bit of Greek yoghurt, some cream, 3 eggs and the juice of 2 large lemons. It was a miracle it set! We ate this along with Beethoven's Op 18 No. 1 arranged for piano 4 hands, and Ravel's Ma Mere L'Oye,

I also had leftover pastry and filling to make these little lemon tarts, which I shared with my string quartet. These were served up with Beethoven's Op 59 No 1 the first Razumovsky quartet and a tiny bit of Mozart's Dissonance quartet (sadly one of us hates Mozart...)

And who doesn't love chips? They were part of a salmon + chips dinner we had along with Dvorak's Dumky Piano Trio, one of my favourites. I've been having so many problems with my hands, I'm grateful to have any playing time at all.. 

Finally the curveball this month is my dad's current dog. My dad has been training guide dogs & therapy dogs for the last decade and he is currently hosting dogs waiting for their permanent placement. Darla has been with him for almost 2 months and she is just the sweetest, most affectionate dog. All the dogs my dad has are adorable, but this one is really special! 

I'm sending this to Sherry of Sherry's Pickings for the monthly In My Kitchen series - thanks for hosting Sherry!