Raw Living Sauerkraut with Caraway and Dill

 

Fermented foods scare me. I'm totally happy to eat them when prepared by other people, but I'm terrified of making them myself. What if I get it wrong? What if they go off? What if we all get botulism and end up in hospital and, you know, die?

Sure they're traditional, and 'everyone' used to make them – but my mother didn't, and nor did either of my grandmothers. In fact, I don't know anyone who has ever fermented foods, outside the usual group house refrigerator disasters. So I have no knack, no sense of how to do it, and no confidence.

But I eat mountains of living foods, particularly sauerkraut, and they're not cheap: my favourite sauerkraut costs $13.95 a jar. Worse, it comes from Byron Bay in a refrigerated truck – hardly local, sustainable eating for this Melburnian.

So the combination of my cheapness and my desire to eat locally led me to look up recipes for sauerkraut. I concluded that it isn't actually difficult – no expertise required - so I gave it a go. It took ten minutes, then five days of resting. At the end of that time, I had a slightly funky kitchen and a big jar of perfectly fermented local sauerkraut, made by me! What's not to like?

Sauerkraut is delicious with grilled chicken, sausages, or tossed through a quinoa salad. It's also fantastically healthy, but talking about nutrition bores me. If you want to learn about how eating sauerkraut tends your sacred inner garden (sigh), click here!

Sauerkraut with Caraway and Dill - 1 green cabbage - a bunch of dill - 1 tsp caraway seeds - sea salt (scant 3 tsp per kilo of cabbage) - brine made from boiling 1 tbs salt with 1 cup water and leaving to cool Slice the cabbage as thinly as possible. It's easiest to shove it through the shredding attachment of a food processor; otherwise, use a big sharp knife. Chop the dill. Combine the cabbage with the dill and caraway seeds. Gently rub the salt into the mixture. Discover any open cuts, and suck your finger. Liquid will begin to seep out of the cabbage. Firmly pack everything into a large glass or ceramic jar. Place a weight on the cabbage to hold it down. You can use a small plate with a clean stone on it, a smaller glass jar full of water, rolled cabbage leaves etc. Top up with brine, until the cabbage and the weight are submerged. Leave in a cool place for five to seven days – check it every day and watch it change. It's fascinating! If any mould appears, skim it off with a spoon. When the cabbage looks and smells right – kind of sour, but not gross – refrigerate. The longer you leave it, the softer its texture and the stronger and sourer its flavour. I prefer mine slightly crunchy and not too sour, which takes about five days of fermentation. It will keep for at least six weeks in the fridge. To use: I am reluctant to use less than the standard ratio of salt to cabbage as the salt is the preservative; however, I find it a bit salty to eat straight from the jar. Therefore, before serving the sauerkraut I place it in a colander and give it a rinse, then leave it to drain while I prepare the rest of dinner. (Local: cabbage. Garden: dill. Imported organic: caraway seeds. Northern Victoria: salt.)

Lebanese Style Chopped Salad with Sumac (and how to turn it into Fattoush)

 

Who wouldn't love living here? We've been at our new house just a few months, and already the neighbours are handing food over the fence. On a recent Saturday afternoon I was knee-deep in dirt, happily digging out couch grass. I still had bed hair. And then my reverie was interrupted by a deep 'yo!'. I looked up and saw a great hand waggling a loaf of pita at me; the pita was wrapped around a dozen kefta skewers. 'My mum said your kids like these,' said the unidentifiable eyes barely skimming the fence.

When one's neighbours have eight adult sons, all married with children, and most who come to eat at mum's at least one night a week, one tends to lose track of who has come to visit and whose eyes might be attached to the kefta-holding-hand. But the eyes grinned at me; so I smoothed down my bed hair to no effect, grinned back, and whisked the kefta out of his hands while they were still hot. They were fragrant with cinnamon and parsley, flecked with tomato, warm and juicy, and delicious. Lucky kids. They wolfed them down in seconds.

My fussy daughter – there's always one – has now added Fatima's kefta to the list of meats she will eat. This list consists, in its entirety, of plain sausages 'if they're the ones I like' (the organic GF ones from our local butcher meet her standard, thank god, but nothing too greasy or too thick or too thin or too spicy or too dry); bacon 'if it's not too crispy and not too soft, just a little bit please, and only from that farm' (yes, she can taste if the bacon is from a particular farm which will make her useful in the food industry in fifteen years' time, but makes it expensive to keep her now); sausage rolls 'but only Viv's' (Viv lives 70 miles away, somewhat inconvenient); and Fatima's kefta.

Given she also loathes eggs and fish and is not convinced about chicken (she only likes the skin, and only when roasted), and we have soy and shellfish allergies in the house (good grief!) I have latched onto kefta as a refreshing change from expensive sausages, very expensive bacon, chickpeas, and lentils. But my neighbours offers them only sporadically, and I don't know them well enough to beg for more, so I've been trying to make my own.

So far, I'm told, the results have been 'too bland, not like Fatima's'. I pointed out to my seven year old that Fatima has probably been making kefta once a week for forty years, which would mean she's practiced some 2,000 times; I've made it twice in two months. My daughter has to give me a few more goes to get it right before she can criticise. And bland? Huh.

My kefta isn't bad, but I agree that it's nowhere near Fatima's. I'll keep practicing. In the meantime, I can report that I've come up with the perfect salad to go with it, and now is the time to make it, what with those very end of season capsicums, cucumbers and tomatoes. The vegetables are chopped small and dressed with lemon juice and sumac. Juicy, sour, fragrant: it goes down a treat. Although my seven year old would prefer it had no green capsicum.

Lebanese Style Chopped Salad with Sumac (and how to turn it into Fattoush) - 2 green capsicums (bell peppers) - 4 Lebanese cucumbers - 2 tomatoes - 2 spring onions - generous bunch of mint - a bunch of Italian flat-leaf parsley (a good 10 stalks) - 2 tbs olive oil - the juice of a lemon - 3 tsp sumac - sea salt Sprinkle a good pinch of sea salt in the base of a salad bowl, then squeeze in the lemon. The juice will dissolve the salt. Add the olive oil. If the cucumbers are Lebanese, chop them. If they're home grown and the seeds have grown a bit large, deseed them. And if you're substituting English cucumbers, peel and deseed them before chopping. Phew. Chop the other vegetables into small even dice, about a centimetre square. Throw them into the bowl. Chop the herbs coarsely; make sure you still have nice bits of mint and parsley identifiable. Throw them into the bowl, too. Sprinkle in the sumac, then toss gently but well. Serve immediately, while everything is still crunchy. You can turn this into fattoush merely by adding some stale pita bread, cut into small wedges, at the last minute. If you like your bread crisp, brush it with olive oil, sprinkle it with sumac, and toast it in a moderate oven for one to two minutes. Break it up, sprinkle it over the salad, and eat immediately. (Garden: parsley, mint. A friend of a friend's garden – thanks Jen and Raheem! – tomatoes, cucumbers. A neighbour's tree: lemons. Local veg box: green capsicum (bell peppers). Grampians: olive oil. Northern Victoria: salt. Imported, but it's small and flavourful: sumac.)

The Salad of Underutilised Greens (Borage Flower, Salad Burnet and Mallow)

 

Winter is drawing to a close and things are fairly quiet in the garden – and yet we have stars in our eyes. Small, blue, velvety stars: they are, of course, borage flowers.

Borage self-seeds around my garden; there is always some on the go. At the end of winter, the plants go to seed, erupting in grey hairy fireworks. At the end of each stem is a spray of blue stars; and the stars are alive with honeybees.

I don’t see borage much, except in my garden; and I don’t know why it is so underused. It is attractive, whether in its young green structural phase or its grey and shabby flowering, and all parts are good eating. Perhaps it does not transport well; thus it is a special delight for the home gardener. Perhaps, too, the name ‘borage’ is too earthy, and lands with too much of a thump? It certainly has none of the grace of ‘angelica’ or ‘fritillary’, whose names roll off the tongue. The leaves are strong, thick and hairy; they can hold the name – but the flowers need another, a name which evokes shooting stars, the morning sky the other side of dawn, the colour of my husband’s eyes.

 

At winter’s end, after too many long grey days, I recommend borage. It is a mediaeval cure for melancholy and will give a girl courage. Eat the leaves lightly steamed or Indian style. Float the flowers in a cup of white wine and let yourself be enchanted.

To pick the flowers, grasp a petal and gently tug; the whole flower will pop right off the plant. Gather a small bowlful and serve within an hour, before the blossoms wilt. Like the leaves, the flowers impart the mildest whiff of cucumber; and their whimsy charms all diners, whether apian, romantic, or childlike.

I like to sprinkle borage flowers over salad. I serve them with another underutilised green, salad burnet, a perennial which grows in winter shade; we have it as a groundcover under a large pear tree where it spreads quickly. I also use microgreens allowed to grow two inches tall: Siberian kale, beet leaves, mizuna and little lettuces; baby rocket leaves; and baby mallow. Tossed gently in a bowl with local lemon juice, a little Victorian flake salt, and some olive oil from the Grampians this is food which needs no recipe and gladdens the heart: it is simple, sustainable, perfect.

 

Pictures show, top to bottom, The Salad of Underutilised Greens, borage in its shabby stage, and salad burnet.

Steak with Thyme Sauce

 

When I left home at 17, my father gave me some good advice. ‘When you’re feeling melancholy,’ he said, ‘play a hard game of squash, eat a steak, and go to bed. You’ll be right as rain in the morning.’

I adopted his advice to much success; and years later, when I read The Worried Well, the Quarterly Essay by Gail Bell, found it largely vindicated. Bell is a pharmacist and writer who is concerned by the explosion in antidepressant usage in Australia. While there is no doubt in her mind that there are some people who need medication in order to cope, she raises good questions about why depression is now so common, why talk and other therapies are so rarely employed, and why traditional remedies for melancholy have all but disappeared.

She closes the essay with a cure for melancholy from a medieval text: a meal with friends eaten al fresco, with borage flowers floating in wine, followed by a long restorative sleep. Good digestion also played a part in the remedy.

I am someone who has repeatedly been offered the diagnosis of depression and, had I gone with it, I am sure a prescription for antidepressants would have followed. Each time, however, I resisted the diagnosis, believing instead that I was experiencing sadness, a natural consequence of a lifetime of moving cities, the deaths of many loved ones including the very slow and cruel death of my mother, and general growing pains.

Instead, I have managed my melancholia using my father’s method and found that exercise, red meat and a good sleep were about all I needed to feel that life is tolerable. And so, although I was mostly vegetarian for many years, there were always times when a good steak was indicated.

All this comes to mind because, over the last few months, three different people have asked me how to cook a steak. It is so simple that I feel a bit silly for posting instructions; and it will be, shock horror, the first time red meat has featured on this blog. However, I always said this blog was about uncomplicated home cooking, so I will bow to popular demand.

The thyme sauce is an optional addition. It’s absolutely delicious, and I love to make it; but I also find a steak served with a bright green mixed salad, the bloody juices drizzled over the leaves, can be enormously satisfying in its simplicity.

Personally, I like my steaks disgustingly bloody, a bit of caveman raw meat on the plate, but I will give the times for a longer cooking if you prefer to eat your food like a civilized being.

Steak with Thyme Sauce The Steak - 1 steak (grass fed rump steak for best flavour, no namby pamby environmental terrorist grain fed meat here), at room temperature, about an inch thick - a teeny tiny bit of olive oil Thyme Sauce - 2 tbs thyme leaves, picked from the stems - 2 tsp freshly squeezed lemon juice - 2 tbs olive oil - a hefty pinch of sea salt Put a heavy based frying pan or, better, a grill pan, on to heat. While it is heating, ready the sauce ingredients. When the pan is smoking hot, massage your steak with a drop of olive oil and place it on the cooking surface. Do not move it, but leave it to cook on one side for the allotted time (below); then turn it and leave it to cook on the other side. Remove it to a plate or wooden board, cover it with a sheet of tinfoil and leave it to rest as specified. Rare: 2 minutes a side, then rest for 6 minutes Medium: 2 ½ minutes a side, then rest for 5 minutes Well done: (for people who only pretend to like steak): 5 minutes a side, no rest Meanwhile, make the thyme sauce. (If you are not making the sauce, the steak must still rest; it is part of the cooking process.) Pound the thyme with the salt in a mortar. Once it has formed a thick green paste, slowly drizzle in the lemon juice then the olive oil, whisking away. You will end up with a thin green gloop. Serve the steak drizzled with green gloop and a spicy green salad dressed with lemon juice and olive oil; think rocket and/or watercress. Delicious. I buy meat direct from a farm less than 100 miles from my home; if you are inclined to do the same, have a quick search on the internet. There are a few options, and you should be able to find a balance between how you want your beef to be raised versus what you’re prepared to pay. Heavy marble mortars and pestles are readily available at Asian food stores. I use the steak times from Tamasin's Kitchen Bible (out of print); and the thyme sauce is tweaked from a recipe in The River Cafe Cookbook. The Worried Well (QE18) should be available from here. Which reminds me, do you have my copy? It’s gone walkies. (Backyard: thyme, salad, lemon. Wimmera: olive oil, salt. Gippsland: steak.)

Chicken Meatballs with a Spectacular Marjoram Sauce

 

The funniest book I read last year was Lily Brett's You Gotta Have Balls (also published as Uncomfortably Close). Ruth Rothwax longs for a group of supportive women with whom she can meet regularly and talk about empowerment and mutual cooperation. Instead, she gets an ageing father, Edek; his enormously busty Lycra-clad Polish girlfriend, Zofia; and Zofia's weedy hanger-on, Walentyna. Among other skills, Zofia has an incredible knack with balls: meatballs, chicken balls, vegetable balls and, one presumes, Edek's balls.

Like so many good comic novels, You Gotta Have Balls has a serious side. Edek is a Holocaust survivor from Poland, and much of the book is about the ramifications sixty years later. Edek is determined to live exuberantly. For him, each day is a bonus and he is open to all the wonderful possibilities life holds. On the other hand, Ruth, a child of survivors, is earnest and hardworking, stifling her emotions and preferences in overcompensation for all her parents went through. Like the children of so many survivors, good fortune, and life in general, weigh heavily on her; and Brett explores the tensions between the generations gently and well.

However, she really shines in the comic passages. As I read page after page of Edek urging Ruth to try the balls (you gotta have these balls, Ruthie, these balls are unbelievable), I found myself collapsed with laughter at a cafe in Lygon Street, wiping the tears from my eyes and being looked at rather snootily by the unamused patrons at the next table. I can't be entirely sure what annoyed them most: perhaps it was my sitting alone or my grotty clothes? Or could it have been the great snorts of badly suppressed laughter that rudely punctuated their interminable boasting about their holidays?

Whatever it was, it caused a stir and the waitress came over to check that I was okay. She had never, she said, seen anyone laugh at a book like that; but somewhat unbelievably she didn't write down the title. If I saw someone guffawing in a public place over a book, especially someone who wasn't drinking, I would have run over and made sure I had the title down pat.

Maybe laughing aloud at a book is weird and the incurious waitress is more the norm, yet I know which I prefer. Anyway, it can be useful. Years ago, I had to sit in the passports office for several hours. I had with me Neal Stephenson's The Big U, also hilarious, and as I read and laughed and read some more, the section I was sitting in cleared out and I found myself alone in an otherwise crowded waiting room. For that matter, if you ever want a compartment of four seats to yourself on the tram, I can recommend reading a funny book, and laughing – or breastfeeding, of course.

In homage to Edek and Zofia and laughing in public places, here is my recipe for balls. What follows is a very plain chicken meatball; the ball is no more than a vehicle for the scrumptious marjoram sauce, which is not quite salsa verde and not quite salsa agresto but certainly sits in the range of both these lovely sauces. Marjoram is a sweet and delicate herb whose flavour is greatly diminished by cooking. So there is a little marjoram in the balls (think of it as a preliminary whisper), and a great deal of marjoram in the sauce (a fanfare of trumpets and a clashing of cymbals). Put them together, and you have music in your mouth.

The sauce is also good eaten with other meats and felafel; it can even be used as a strong dip. It tastes best the day you make it. The meatballs are enough for two meals for our family, so I make a half quantity of the sauce fresh for each meal. It takes about three minutes, hardly an effort.

Chicken Meatballs with Marjoram Sauce The Balls - 500g chicken mince - 1 large red onion - ⅓ cup marjoram - good pinch of salt - olive oil Chop the onion and marjoram, or pulse chop them in the food processor, until they are very fine. Do not let them go to mush as you want a little texture. Mix them with the mince and a good pinch of salt, using your hands to knead it all through. Form the mixture into small balls, 1½ to 2 tbs of mixture per ball. The balls will, if anything like mine, always resemble 3D trapezoids; clearly, I don't have the knack. You should get 16 to 20, depending on how large you make each one, of course. Place the balls onto a tray, cover with plastic film, and refrigerate until you are ready to cook. To cook the balls, warm the olive oil in a wide skillet over medium heat. When it is reasonably hot, place the balls close together in the pan; they should all fit. Cook without moving them until the bases are golden. Then using a thin egg slide or similar, gently scrape under each ball and turn it onto one side. Continue to cook and turn, cook and turn, for about 15 minutes. When all the sides are golden, cut the largest ball open (like a good tailor, I'm assuming your balls are not identical) and check that it is cooked through. Keep them in a warm oven until you are ready to serve. The Sauce - 10 to 12 sage leaves, preferably from the tips of the plant - 20 stalks flat leaf parsley - two small handfuls of sweet marjoram - 8 walnut halves - 2 fat cloves of garlic - 2 tbs balsamic vinegar - 6 tbs olive oil - a good pinch of sea salt Ensure the herbs are clean and dry. Chop off the bottom half of the parsley stalks and discard. (Keep the top ends of the stalks as these are less fibrous but very tasty; no need to pick all the leaves off.) Peel the garlic. Throw all the ingredients into the small bowl of a food processor (or chop very finely) and whizz. Check for acidity; you may need a little more oil or vinegar. Scrape the sauce into a small bowl. It will be very thick and nubbly. This is enough sauce for all the balls; halve it if you intend to eat only half the balls today. If you are making the balls for a party, form smaller balls and cook for less time; then arrange the balls in a single layer on a platter, and dot each ball with a delicious blob of sauce. The Marjoram Sauce is adapted from a recipe in the intelligent, absorbing and absolutely delicious The Original Mediterranean Cuisine: Medieval Recipes for Today by Barbara Santich, which is, sadly for you, out of print. (Local: onion, marjoram, sage, parsley, walnuts, garlic, olive oil. Mysterious provenance, but free range and chemical free: chicken mince. Not so local: balsamic vinegar, salt.)

Dolmades

 

My earliest memory is that of food. When I was a year and a half old, my parents went to Nepal for three months to have a few adventures and visit a few friends, and I tagged along. And if I let my mind slip sideways and approach the memory as I would a skittish stray cat, I can remember sitting on a stone wall, the roughness of the stones pressing into my thighs, and eating a mandarin. The mandarin is large in my baby hands, and beside me I can see the pattern of my beloved friend Gwen’s brown tweed skirt.

My second oldest memory is of swinging my legs from the neighbour’s kitchen bench and having olives popped into my mouth. My neighbours were Greek and I spent hours there every week watching George make endless tiny cups of thick black coffee and Tina cook up a storm. For a long time, my parents were puzzled by my birdlike appetite and burgeoning size until they realised quite how much the neighbours fed me.

There’s nothing like fresh Greek food. Eating it takes me right back to George and Tina’s vinyl chairs and seventies brown kitchen, and the view out to their grapevine. Behind the vine was a fire pit, dug into the lawn for the Paschal lamb; thinking of that lamb makes my mouth water even now.

Three decades later, I am drifting through old memories as I cook up a storm in my own kitchen and gaze out into our own grapevine. It’s the time of year when vines go a-roaming. New shoots sprawl abundantly, looking for something to catch on to, and so, before heat burns and fungi attack, it is time to make dolmades.

 

Dolmades are quite simply vine leaves stuffed with rice and other goodies. I fill mine with fresh herbs, and use the leaves from our vines. While you can certainly buy preserved vine leaves, fresh vine leaves are a whole ‘nother thing: they taste light and sweet and clean.

For this recipe, you need about fifty vine leaves the size of a Cornish woman’s hand, that is, my hand – or what is probably about the size of your palm. Obviously if your leaves are larger, you will need less; smaller, you will need more. Don’t strip the leaves off the vine one by one, as this will weaken the vine. Instead, remove a long unwanted shoot, then strip the leaves off that.

If you don’t have a grapevine of your own, there are plenty throwing two and three metre long shoots into the laneways. If you decide to glean such shoots, respect the vine and the owner. Take clippers, and cut a couple of good long stems to the fence line – don’t just shred the leaves off, don’t go over the fence line, and take only what you can use. When I'm out walking, I carry a stout pair of scissors in my bag to collect herbs and greens and no one has ever done anything but smile and nod as they see me carefully snipping fennel tops, parsley, bay leaves and all the other goodies that grow for free.

I may not be Greek, but George and Tina gave me an early education in food and I have taken on the mantle of gleaning and eating great quantities of herbs and bitter greens, vine leaves and fennel tops. And as I do so, I think of my old neighbours with gratitude.

Dolmades - about 50 fresh vine leaves - 150g long grain white rice - about 350g brown onions - ½ cup fennel tops - ⅓ cup parsley, about 10 – 12 stalks - ¼ cup mint - 150ml olive oil - a lemon - salt First, select your vine leaves. For the rolls, choose those which are whole. Reserve any torn leaves for lining the pan. With your thumbnail and forefinger, snip the stem from the base of the leaf. Wash well. Bring a pan of lightly salted water to the boil. (I use the same wide frypan that I will later use to cook the dolmades). In batches, drop in the leaves and hold them under the water for a bare minute, then fish them out and let them drain in a colander. They will change from bright green to khaki in that time. Place the rice in a medium sized bowl and cover with cold water. Let it soak for fifteen minutes, then drain it in a sieve and rinse well. While the rice is soaking, chop the onions very finely. The onions hold the rice grains apart and give the dolmades a delicate lightness, so keep them small but do not grate them or pulverize them in a food processor. You do not want a mush! Chop the fennel, mint and parsley. Mix the rice with the onions, the herbs, 75ml olive oil and half the lemon juice. Line the base of a wide heavy based frypan – you may as well use the same pan as was used for blanching – with vine leaves. Start with the holey ones. Now take a blanched vine leaf and lay it flat. Place a heaped teaspoon of filling at the base of the leaf – and use a bit of common sense here: a large leaf may need more filling; a small one, less – and then form it into a rough tube. Roll the vine leaf once, fold in either side, and continue rolling to the end. Place it in the frypan.   Pack the dolmades tightly together. When you have run out of filling, drizzle the rest of the olive oil and lemon juice over the dolmades. Gently place a plate upside down on top of the dolmades to hold them in place, then pour 250ml hot water into the pan. Cover and cook over very low heat. After 40 minutes, fish one out and test it. If it’s a bit crunchy, give it another five minutes, otherwise turn off the heat. Let them cool a little in the pan. Take the dolmades out and arrange them on a plate. Serve warm or cold with slices of lemon. While they keep in the fridge for several days, they do lose some of their delicate texture and herbal sprightliness. They are best the same day – although even two days later they are far and away better than any commercial dolmades I’ve eaten! Adapted from a recipe in the wonderful book, Greek Food, by Rena Salaman. Every recipe is preceded by a history of the dish and her fond memories of growing up in Greece. This is a lovely read, and the recipes are scrumptious! Sadly, it is out of print – but her later cookbooks may be worth a look. (Backyard or gleaned locally: vine leaves, mint, fennel tops, parsley, lemon. Local: onions, olive oil. Somewhere in Australia: rice, salt.)

 

Grilled Chicken with Lavender Herbs

 

Our across-the-road neighbour is good Wimmera stock. As a little girl, she rode five miles every morning with her siblings to the neighbour's house. He drove them another ten miles to meet the town taxi; and the taxi took them the last leg to school. In the afternoon they'd do it all in reverse. She tells the story with a twinkle and a grin; to her credit, she has never used it against me and my soft daughters when we grizzle about the walk to school.

As an adult, she trained as a midwife and spent years delivering babies under palm trees in the Middle East. After that, she came back to work as a nurse on the children's hospital helicopter ambulance. Nothing fazes her.

Now actively retired, she lives in urban Brunswick and loves it. But every now and then, even after so many years and adventures, the country girl peeps out.

The other night she was leaning against the doorjamb, gazing at our pet hens and reminiscing about the taste of roast chicken. 'It's been years,' she said, 'since I had a proper roast chicken. Let me know when one of them stops laying and I'll show you how to kill it properly.'

My daughters looked at her, eyes and mouths rounded in shock, as she went on to explain how to chop right through the neck and hold the body down until it had stopped twitching, how to gut and pluck it, and how to let it rest a day before roasting. 'There's nothing like it,' she said. 'Except maybe rabbit – have you ever thought of keeping rabbits in your front garden? They're easy to keep, good breeders of course, and absolutely delicious.'

I thought of her lush green lawn across the street, untouched by rabbits or chickens or any other livestock except the multitude of young children who come to visit, and thought to myself, You keep rabbits, then! – and I grinned as I reflected how my grumpier neighbours would respond if I turned the garden into a slaughterhouse. Tempting, yes.

As delicious as roast chicken and rabbit casserole may be, we rarely cook meat; and when we do, it's on the grill alongside slabs of marinated tofu for the vegetarians. A cast-iron grill is a fantastic piece of kitchen equipment and should be at the top of your Christmas list. There is a certain sort of man who buys fancy kitchen equipment for his wife to emphasise that she should continue to cook for him. Well, I turned that one on its head: I bought a grill for my husband's birthday several years ago. He loves the taste of grilled fish and sourdough, and it was a promise that I would make them at home for him – and so I have.

A grill is very easy to use. Heat it over a medium flame until it is evenly hot (sudden high heat can crack it). Brush your food with a little oil and pop it on. Don't fiddle, but leave the food to develop those no doubt carcinogenic char lines. If you fancy neat diagonals, rotate it 90° once and once only; any more, and you'll just have a brown mess. When the food looks halfway cooked, flip it and let it cook through. The time it takes will of course depend on the thickness and type of food and how hot you have set the burners under the grill – use your eyes, your nose and your brain.

Serve bruschetta or grilled cheese sandwiches as soon as they are cooked. Grilled vegetables are best tepid; and meat particularly benefits from a short rest so place it on a board, wipe down the grill with a paper towel or a more sustainable alternative, then serve.

Don't ever scrub the grill. The blackening seasons the metal and stops food from sticking. If you feel you absolutely must clean it – say, you cooked salmon on it then didn't wipe it down properly and you don't want your grilled cheese sandwich to taste of fish – wash the grill gently, not vigorously, in hot soapy water to remove the smell, replace it on the stove, warm it until it is absolutely dry, then rub it with a little oil before putting it away.

It may not be freshly slaughtered and roasted, but chicken on the grill is very good: tender, juicy and richly flavoured. It's one of our simple standbys when we have visitors. The easiest way is to marinate it with lemon juice, garlic, marjoram and olive oil, but I also love to herb it up.

The second marinade, with lavender, rosemary and lemon thyme, is spectacularly good. The lavender gives it a floral sweetness, the thyme provides an earthy base note, and the lemon zest sings. One bite of this is like a little party in your mouth: absolutely delicious.

Grilled Chicken with Lavender Herbs - some boned chicken pieces. Thigh fillets are my preference as they are much thinner than the breast, so they absorb the marinade better; also, they are slightly and deliciously fattier. However, breast pieces grill well, look prettier and may be sliced very elegantly along the grain which makes it easy to serve small people who want only a sliver or two. - olive oil - good salt And either: - a squeeze of lemon juice - a few cloves of garlic, bashed with the side of a knife and the papery bits flicked off - a handful of fresh marjoram or thyme or whichever herb that takes your fancy, leaves picked and coarsely chopped Or: - equal quantities of lavender blossoms, rosemary needles and thyme (lemon thyme for preference but any thyme is good), about 1 tablespoon of each - the zest and juice of a lemon - ¼ cup olive oil - a good pinch of salt If you are using the first marinade, just toss the ingredients in with the chicken pieces, cover and refrigerate. If you are using the lavender herbs, chop the lavender, rosemary, thyme and lemon zest, then combine them with the salt, the olive oil, and 2 tablespoons of lemon juice. Remove a tablespoon of the marinade, squeeze in an extra tablespoon of lemon juice, and reserve. Toss the rest of the marinade with the chicken pieces and refrigerate for many hours. I usually put this together after breakfast, so it sits all day; the longer the meat marinates, the better it tastes. Close to dinnertime, heat the grill. Place the chicken on the grill and cook for five minutes or so, then rotate it by 90°; chicken looks best with diagonals. Cook without fiddling again until the flesh has whitened halfway up the piece. Flip the chicken and repeat the process until it's cooked, which can take up to 15 minutes. To check, slip a knife into the thickest part and ensure there is no sign of pink. Place the meat on a board to rest while you wipe down the grill. Drizzle the reserved marinade – or some extra herbs – over the chicken, and serve. You might continue the floral theme and serve it alongside a blossom salad, sans tuna! Adapted from a recipe by Jerry Traunfeld in The Herbal Kitchen. (Local: olive oil, all the herbs, and occasionally even the chicken. Not so local: salt.)

Drink your garden

Every sustainability expert says to eat your garden, but on wintry days, I mostly drink it. As much as we're all supposed to consume endless glasses of water, I can't stand that greasy cold lump sitting sluggishly in my stomach, so I turn to herbal teas. Yet most commercial preparations taste like stale grass; and anyway, the packaging gets me down. It's an exercise in how not to be sustainable: first, strip off the plastic wrap, then open the cardboard box, then unwrap the paper cover and only then will you get to the tea – which is in a bag. How ridiculous.

But a while ago I worked out that I can drink my garden. Food miles: zero. Packaging: nil. Even better, unlike even the fanciest dried herbal teas, my garden really does taste fresh. When I want a hot caffeine-free drink, I put on the kettle and head outside with a pair of scissors; it's ready in minutes.

Here are my four favourite infusions. All are very simple, and none have more than one ingredient. Think of them not so much as recipes as reminders that even in the depths of winter, good things grow.

Cumquat Infusion

The problem with cumquats is that their skins are delicious and their insides, horrid. One way to get around this is to ignore the insides altogether. This is our favourite after-dinner drink: it's delicious, soothing, and aids digestion.

Take five or six whole cumquats and place them in a pot. (Do not prick them, as you want to extract the flavour from the oils in the skin, not the from the bitter insides.) Cover them with boiling water and leave to infuse for five or six minutes, then pour.

Pineapple Sage Tisane

Pineapple sage is a delightful herb. It has the grace to flower in the winter, when things are bleak, and sends great sprays of hot pink flowers into the air. The flowers, when sucked, have a small drop of sweet nectar which children (and I) love; my daughters all spend long minutes at the bush plucking and sucking, sucking and plucking, savouring the experience of drinking flowers as much as the rush of nectar. Even the leaves are highly scented, and they make a refreshing tisane. The drink is fragrant with a light, sweet flavour and the faint aroma of pineapple; this is not a savoury sage.

Take a small stem of leaves, about 15cm long; if there are flowers attached, so much the better. Shake it well to dislodge any insects from the flowers, then pop the stem into a pot and cover with boiling water. Leave it to draw for five minutes. If there are flowers in the pot and your pot is glass, you can watch them leach colour, a quietly meditative activity. Serve.

Canary Tea

Canarino tea is served in Florence; canarino means 'canary', and when you make this tea you will see why it has this name. The cynical among us might call it something else – wee tea comes to mind – but the yellow really is so bright, so clear, and so strongly reminiscent of canaries, that the cynics can go make themselves a cup of coffee and keep their mouths shut for once. This lovely idea comes from Lora Zarubin's luxurious book I am Almost Always Hungry.

Zarubin's book is a great favourite in our household for its oyster shooters; and yet, of course, I don't follow even that recipe. Zarubin recommends infusing vodka with ginger, then making oyster shooters from the flavoured vodka. We, however, have a passion for cucumber vodka – it's so crisp! and so cold! – so we infuse our vodka thus; and several years ago, at my husband's 40^th birthday party, we threw a party featuring an outrageous number of cucumber oyster shooters. Lucky guests finished off with a highly alcoholic slice of cucumber, and I was followed around the kitchen by desperate adults begging for more vegetables. It was a memorable event. Or unable to be remembered, depending, of course, on how many oysters one consumed.

Canary tea is a whole different kettle of fish. Unlike vodka shooters, it won't give you a headache the next day, and won't be talked about years later. In fact, it is non-alcoholic, caffeine free, organic, vegan, non-GMO and fair trade: my across-the-street neighbour gives me lemons and we give her eggs, which seems a fair enough trade to me!

Using a veggie peeler, peel away the skins of two lemons, taking as little pith as possible. Place the peel into a teapot, cover it with boiling water, and let it steep for five minutes. Serve immediately. You can add herbs if you like, but I enjoy the pure taste of lemon.

(Many people drink lemon juice in hot water these days. My dentist goes pale when I say such things: the lemon juice strips tooth enamel. This infusion has a gentler flavour and lacks the acidity of lemon juice; it's a lovely and less damaging alternative.)

Rosemary Tisane

Many years ago, when my mother was slowly dying and I was frantic, my husband and I went to a conference. We wound up in a fancy hotel, and I felt trapped by the plane ride, the hotel, the city; I just wanted to go home. I couldn't eat or rest, so we went for a walk while I raged and wept – and then we came across a godsend: great swathes of rosemary in an urban planting scheme. Long tendrils sprawled out of planter boxes, and the air was filled with its healing scent. I picked several long branches and took them back to the hotel. There I switched on the kettle, laid the sprigs in a basin, poured boiling water over them and inhaled. Finally, I relaxed; finally I felt hungry. We left the rosemary to steep while we went out for dinner at last. When we came back, the room smelled safe and I was, just for a little while, whole again.

I have always found rosemary to be a great healing herb when it comes to matters of the heart; more practically, it aids digestion after a heavy meal. Take a good sprig of fresh rosemary, maybe 15cm long, and place it in the pot; you will, of course, need to snip it into a few pieces to fit. Cover with boiling water and leave to infuse for five minutes, then serve.

There are many other herbs you can drink with more or less success – for example, lemon verbena is delicious, while lemon balm tastes soapy – but always check an herbal to ensure that it is safe to drink. The Complete Book of Herbs and Herb Gardening, while not exhaustive, is fairly comprehensive. My next project is to plant out Greek Mountain Tea, also known as ironwort; it is said that a cup a day will chase away all ills and with three sicky snotty kids in the house who mostly give their ills to me, I could use any sort of immune boost I can find! With any luck – that is, if the chickens don't escape and dig it up – I'll be able to report back in the spring.

No teapots were harmed during the writing of this post.

Couscous and Chickpea Salad

When I was a kid, I hated school lunches. I vividly remember the exotic food my friend Marion used to bring to high school: leftover pasta, jaffles filled with beans, doorstop sandwiches made with sourdough, and other interesting food. I'd sit beside her on the cold concrete step chewing on a flabby pressed chicken sandwich and look on enviously while she opened little tubs with interesting smells and attacked them with spoon or fork.

Now I have schoolkids of my own, I want them to have the Marion lunch experience – but bizarrely, they are reluctant. Despite my efforts, the philistines insist on nothing more than a Vegemite sandwich or perhaps ham with, as my seven year old says, 'just the barest scraping of mustard'. Good grief.

This salad is one of the delicious things that I can't quite believe my daughters disdain. One eats only the chickpeas, picking them out individually; while another eats only the couscous, leaving the chickpeas for the first – at least, like the Sprats, between the two of them they lick the platter clean. As for my four year old, she won't eat it at all without tears; 'I hate the texture,' she says.

A good judge of texture she is not. Perfect grains of couscous cling to grilled vegetables; the chickpeas are deliciously mealy; spinach adds a gentle crunch. Normal children would like it – adults certainly do. It's one of those perfectly satisfying meals in a bowl. We eat it warm for dinner, and cold the next day for lunch, either by itself or tucked into a pita wrap. Yesterday I staggered in from the gym, a little woozy; collapsed into a chair with a container of leftover salad; demolished it in minutes; and felt instantly restored in body and soul. So I at least got a good lunch out of it, even if nobody else did.

The recipe builds on a suggestion by Jamie Oliver to soak couscous in cold water and use it as the base of a vegetable salad. This week, I added a couple of zucchini; other weeks, depending on what's in season, I might add or substitute grilled eggplant, grilled red peppers or even grilled asparagus. The herbs, too, can be played around with; for much of the year I make it with mint and parsley so that it resembles a tabbouli made with couscous not burghul; but when we have an abundance of basil I make it with that, instead. Use whatever's fresh and tastes good to you.

Couscous and Chickpea Salad - 1 cup dried chickpeas (canned chickpeas taste like glue, but use them if you must) - 250g couscous - 280ml water - juice of 1 or 2 lemons - 2 tbs olive oil - 2 or 3 moderately sized zucchini (I had one yellow, one green, very pretty) - 1 generous handful mint - 1 generous handful basil - 2 or 3 handfuls baby spinach leaves Boil the kettle. Place the chickpeas into a large bowl, and cover them with a generous quantity of boiling water. Leave to soak for several hours. Drain and rinse the chickpeas, and place them into a large pot. Cover them generously with cold water this time, and bring to the boil. Turn down to a simmer, and let cook for 45 minutes or until they are soft but haven't lost their shape. Throw in 1 to 2 tsp salt, and leave to simmer for another 15 or so minutes. Turn off the heat. Drain just before adding to the salad. Place the couscous into a large serving bowl. Cover with 280ml water, and leave for 15 to 20 minutes. While the couscous is soaking, slice the zucchini crossways into thin discs. Grill or sauté the discs with a bit of olive oil until they are soft. Finely chop the herbs. Using a fork, separate the couscous into individual grains. Add the juice of 1 to 2 lemons (I like it sharp), and drizzle in the olive oil. Mix well. Add the herbs, the zucchini, the spinach and the chickpeas, and stir to combine. Serve immediately while the chickpeas are still warm; it's also tasty cold. Adapted from a recipe in The Naked Chef by Jamie Oliver. (Local: zucchini, mint, basil, olive oil, lemon juice. Not local: chickpeas, couscous, salt. No idea, but I live in hope that it's local: spinach.)

Broad beans and chicory

 

Each year I plant broad beans. Each year I realise with dismay that yet again I haven't planted a quarter the plants I need to feed a family, and have to top up our harvest with store bought beans.

Broad beans are ready to pick just when the mint goes ballistic. For all the dire warnings I received about mint – that it would invade our garden and I'd never be able to contain it – I lost a dozen plants before I hit on the outlandish idea of growing it in an old bathtub filled with potting mix and compost. The tub provides room for their roots to go deep. I can dump in a bucket of water from time to time to keep it moist. When it's looking seedy I throw in a handful of desiccated chook poo and it takes off again. And, because every mint plant I've ever grown naked has been quite literally munched to death, the lot is draped over with small gauge bird netting, so small that no butterfly or cabbage moth can get in and lay their dratted eggs.

For the last few years we've had the biggest mint harvest in Brunswick, I am sure – a bathtubful. We eat it in tabouleh, we use it in drinks, we toss it through salads. And, of course, we use it to flavour broad beans.

This broad bean and chicory mix is delicious served atop bruschetta: thick sourdough bread brushed with olive oil and grilled on a hot cast iron ridge pan until criss-crossed with char lines. In the absence of a cast iron griddle, you can also serve it atop a nice thick piece of toast.

Broad beans with chicory - 1 kg broad beans in their pods - 500g chicory or other strong green, washed and chopped coarsely - 8 to 10 stalks mint - 2 cloves garlic, peeled and sliced - 6 to 8 anchovies - a lemon - olive oil - salt, pepper Pod the broad beans. Bring a pot of water to the boil. Cook the broad beans and mint for 5 or so minutes – less for very young beans, more for very old ones. Drain. If the beans are very large, pop them out of their grey skins. Otherwise, leave them as they are. Drizzle with olive oil. Warm a good swirl of olive oil over medium heat in a wide skillet. Add the anchovies and garlic, and sprinkle with salt. Stir constantly until you have a paste; but take care not to scorch the garlic. Add the chicory, and stir. Clap the lid on, and leave it to wilt. When the chicory has wilted, add the broad beans. Stir well to combine. Dress with lemon juice, and a drizzle with a little more olive oil if you wish. Serve. Simplified and adapted from a recipe in The River Cafe Green Cook Book. (Local: broad beans, chicory, mint, garlic, olive oil, lemon. Not local: anchovies, salt, pepper.) Photo shows chicory with borlotti beans, another good option!