Children of the corn

Firstly, carrying on from the last post, some sown seeds have already sprung.  After finding spinach seeds shooting, I went inside to get the camera for a pic and found it was out of charge.  I returned later in the day, camera in hand, and I found broccoli shooting too, which was exciting for me...

Harvesting from the garden this week:
Corn

The corn smells amazingly sweet, so much so we have eaten it fresh, mixed with tomato, avocado, coriander and a dash of malt vinegar, olive oil and tomato paste, served on toast.


For my son who remains highly suspicious of any vegetable, I made corn pancakes - similar to the link below, but I chucked in all the ingredients at once and blitzed them with the handheld mixer, to hide any evidence of the pesky vegetables - the result was a pleasantly sweet pancake that was gobbled down without issue by the young lion...
http://www.taste.com.au/recipes/24233/corn+ricotta+cakes+with+grilled+tomatoes


More Tomatoes (harvesting around 1/2kg a day at the moment)
Tomato sauce is cooking as I type - following a recipe along the lines of:
http://www.smh.com.au/news/recipes/homemade-tomato-sauce/2007/04/23/1177180539520.html
But I've added in the tomatoes roasted in oil from the other day - they became like sun dried tomatoes and will hopefully add to the richness of the sauce, and also added some balsamic vinegar for taste.


I thought I'd take this opportunity to share a pasta recipe that results in a great dinner for less effort than expected, in honour of my sister in law Jaclyn who recently asked for some cooking tips...  


Most of my cooking focuses on a good result for minimal effort and this is a great example. Compared to potato gnoochi, this is quick and just as yummy and is an excellent comfort food, not very summery but I'd serve it with the sauce discussed above.


Ricotta Gnoochi:
500g ricotta (I use low fat)
2 eggs
2 tablespoons grated Parmesan
4-6 tablespoons plain flour
Pinch freshly grated nutmeg
Salt and pepper to taste


Mix together to create a dough, kneeding it with floured hands.
The dough should have some spring in it - if too wet, add more flour, it should be doughy, light and soft to the touch... 
Roll it into a thin sausage and cut these into 1.5cm pieces.
These can be kept for a day, keeping the pieces separate.
Cook in boiling salted water for around 2mins (in small batches)


Strawberries
We have a few tiny strawberries that haven't been taken by the birds.
As with the last recipe, I thought I'd add in this recipe in response to Jaclyn's query - it is a simple dessert with great results:
Purse of strawberries - Dessert
(This is a variation on a recipe from Masterchef's Gary recent book with George - 'Your place or Mine'...)


Per serve:
Take a square of baking paper
Toss in 6 or 7 strawberries, all cut in half
Sprinkle with some icing sugar, cinnamon and drizzle with a touch of vanilla essence
(Depending on taste you could add cardamon or mixed spice instead of cinnamon or almond essence or rose instead of vanilla, or whatever else you feel like.)
Fold the paper up and tie it with some kitchen string, like a purse.
This can be done ahead of time, so no effort is required between dinner and dessert.
Toss the bag(s) in the oven or a hot bbq (under the hood) for about 10 mins (can be done as the oven or bbq is cooling down after the main meal has been cooked).


The strawberries will collapse and be flavoured with the sugar and spice and all things nice.
Serve in the bag with some ice cream... (Everyone likes opening a little present at the table)


For ice cream:
Shop bought is fine but for something extra special, I've mentioned before:
1 tin condensed milk plus 600mls cream whipped together, and flavoured with vanilla essence to taste, or any other flavour you like (Baileys, Kalhua, whatever is at hand.)


I made a large batch of this ice cream for my daughter's recent Christening, flavoured it with rose syrup for a turkish delight type flavour and set it in two different sized cake tins lined with foil to make a two tiered icecream cake - fancy looking but easily done.