I think that being an even mostly self sufficient household in the suburbs is a pretty mean feat to pull off. Some friends of ours two streets away are about 70% self sufficient in fruit and veg on their ordinary-sized domestic Canberra block, but goddamit, it’s a lot of work. Although it’s true that all veg you grow yourself is going to be a lot better than something you can find in the stupormarket, some things massively over-reward you for the effort you put in. That’s what we try to focus on in our own gardening – things that aren’t easy and cheap to get fresh, and that are particularly delicious when grown organically and harvested when perfectly ripe, like globe artichokes, asparagus, berries, etc.

Clockwise from 12 o’clock – Vietnamese mint, Vietnamese Basil, a flower and common mint.

We grow at least 20 varieties of culinary herbs, and at this time of year we eat something from the garden every day. The asparagus has finished long ago, but the eggplants are just flowering, and there’s rhubarb, sorrel, celery, beetroot, Malabar spinach, gherkins to preserve and chillies. Our Jerusalem artichokes have gone completely beserk and are more than 3 metres tall, twice the maximum height given in my new gardening book.

I planted three heritage varieties of summer squash this year to defeat the “omg I fucking hate zucchini” thing that happens when you are insufficiently vigilant.

But the classic big pay-off Summer crop is of course, tomatoes.

I eat a few cherry tomatoes occasionally out of season, and I eat preserved tomatoes year round, but there is a real tomato gorging going on around here at the moment. The kitchen garden crew made bruschetta for the parent information night at my son’s school last week, and I worked out afterwards there were nine varieties of tomato in the mix (on home-made bread, with a little very good olive oil and salt). People went nuts for it, as you can imagine.

Clockwise from top left: Black Russian, golden grape, tommy toe, green zebra, tigerella, an amazing yellow oxheart variety I don’t know the name of and black krim.

This year I’ve been experimenting with different ways to support growing tomato plants, in a quest to find the One True Method of Tomato Supporting. I made one metre round towers of 100 mm square wire 120cm high, but despite my high hopes they turned out to be pissweak and unable to cope with the weight of the ripening fruit. While picking was easy from the middle of the tube up, the bottom had way too much foliage and there was fruit on the ground which meant slaters and fruit flies and the deep sadness that is homegrown heritage breed tomatoes in the chook food.

I’ve also been experimenting with tomato preserving this year, and so far I have a frozen pureed roasted tomato sauce (with beetroot, carrot, bay, butter, red wine and vinegar), one precious cup-sized jar of tomato paste cooked down from a couple of kilos of San Marzano tomatoes I grew from Digger’s seedlings and most excitingly, several jars of passata.

Last year a lovely friend gave me a manual Italian tomato press, and I am in love with it. If you have to look after an end of Summer school holidays glut from a school garden, the “passatutto” considerably speeds things up. Even things like this:

If I were telling someone how to stock their kitchen, I would tell them to get a tomato press and a potato ricer and not to get a food mill. It is so simple a child can use it.

So if anyone who lives in Canberra would like my food mill, leave a comment.

Things got on a roll, as they do, and last Saturday morning my sister’s lovely elderly Italian neighbours invited us around to see how they did their tomatoes and to do some of our own. I’d read a squillion accounts of “passata days” but was still unsure how exactly to go about it. I knew that seeing it done by experts would be really helpful, and Angelo and Jenny were happy for us to join in.

They are completely delightful people, and the mental passata pieces fell into shape as I worked out what to do with the puree to ensure it was safe and would last the family a year. Put the puree into clean (not sterile) dark glass bottles, leaving a substantial air gap and cap them with crown seals (almost all home brewers will have ths equipment, and if you don’t know a brewer it’s all easy and pretty cheap to track down and use). Pack a large stock pot, Vacola boiler or 44 gallon drum with bottles laid sideways (aha! she says! sideways! that was the missing bit of information ! HOW VERY CUNNING!) with towels tucked here and there so the bottles don’t smash or make irritating jiggly-scrape-y noies. Bring it all slowly to the boil, boil for an hour and don’t remove the bottles until everything is completely cool – that might be the next afternooon.

During this period, lucky people will be taken for a burn in a 94 year old Ceirano, one of two of that model remaining in the world, and the only one in working order.

Some more pictures from the day follow, and even more for the very keen here.

The electric machine is very sexy and cool, but they they cost exponentially more than the $40, entirely satisfactory, manual one. The manual one really comes into its own when you’re processing a couple of kilos of tomatoes each week as they become ripe rather than having a crazed tomato frenzy.

What I really noticed, apart from the smell of properly ripe tomatoes and the extreme comfiness of the backseat of a WW1 era touring car, is that there is a kind of learning that no amount of book-learnin’ will get you. You have to watch, and talk, and muck in and ask questions and then you’ll start to work out what’s going on.

Kathryn Elliot of Limes & Lycopene is running another Pantry Challenge, inviting readers to rustle up something tasty from a list of staple ingredients.

I wasn’t able to participate last time , and was happy to see the launch of round two until I noticed she’d taken vinegar off the list! No vinegar! And no lemon juice! But I decided to do it anyway, and to do it without buying anything for the meal.

A meal from the pantry can be something knocked up in a few minutes, but that’s not the only way to make something quickly. In this case, I prepared a couple of elements in the morning and assembled it all in just a few minutes at night.

Here’s the ingredients list, with the ones I used in bold:

Mograbieh Dinner Salad

1. Olive oil
2. Tinned tomatoes
3. Tinned legumes or beans
4. Soy sauce
5. Frozen vegetables
6. Flour
7. Pasta or rice
8. Tinned fish
9. Eggs
10. Bread
11. Olives
12. Meat from the freezer
13. Fresh onions
14. One spice or spice mix
15. One dried herb or herb mix

Notes

I used a good plain olive oil, red onions and frozen edamame (soy beans). In the “pasta or rice” category, I used mograbieh. It’s also sold as “Israeli couscous”, but the grains are much bigger than couscous. Although it looks a bit like a grain, it’s a wheat-and-water pasta. When I lived in the inner west of Sydney I’d sometimes buy fresh mograbieh (with a few chickpeas in the packet) in Lakemba. The advice was to sweat a finely sliced onion, turn the mograbieh in the oil and add hot stock, bring to a boil and then cover and simmer for a bit less than 15 minutes. When it’s for a salad such as this, you might want to drain (and maybe even rinse) the mograbieh to stop it being too unctuous. I didn’t use frozen meat, but only because I had some fresh meat in the fridge. Defrosted meat would be fine.

If you’re only allowed one spice blend, go straight to the “top of the shop”, ras el hanout. The name indicates that it’s the most superior blend by the big boss of the particular establishment you’re buying it from. I can remember reading in Christine Manfield’s 1995 Paramount Cooking that it was divine but unavailable in Australia. It’s now available at lots of places, including online from Herbie’s Spices in Sydney. The one I used was from Peter Watson, bought at a Portuguese deli here in Canberra, and comprising bay leaves, thyme, black peppercorns, nutmeg, ground cloves, cinnamon, coriander seeds, mace, cardamom, ginger, cumin seeds, allspice, turmeric, aniseed and cayenne. If you can’t find it, or can’t be stuffed looking, you could follow Manfield’s substitution suggestion of “a mild, yellow, spicy curry powder”.

Ingredients

Quantities are for three adults or two adults and two smallish kids.

2 Tbsp olive oil plus extra
2-3 onions, red if you have them on hand
3 free range chicken thighs
ras el hanout or a sweet and spicy yellow curry powder
1 cup mograbieh/Israeli cous cous
375 g packet of frozen edamame
1/2 cup black olives

Method

Generously rub ras el hanout into chicken thighs and leave them on a rack or in one of those tupperware thingies with the plastic rack inside. Don’t be stingy with the ras el hanout because this is the only seasoning in the dish and it’s got a lot of weight to carry. Leaving the chicken for five minutes is good, overnight is great. If you don’t want meat, it can also be used with tempeh or drained and pressed firm tofu. The process (and a brilliant recipe) is at Lucy’s Nourish Me. I find the fresh local tofu I get (from Shanghai Yulin at Choku Bai Jo or the EPIC Farmer’s Market) doesn’t need draining, but tofu from the supermarket or Asian grocery probably will.

Slice two or three purple onions thinly and cook them very slowly in some olive oil until they are “the colour of amber and soft enough to crush between thumb and finger“. (I ♥ Nigel Slater bad.) Of course if it’s a work night, you can just add a pinch of brown sugar and use a slightly higher heat. You’ll have fried onions rather than caramelised ones, but you’ll have dinner on the table before 9 pm which I find aids digestion and also domestic harmony. If you have time on the weekend, make a big batch and you can use them in things all through the week – in pastas, on sandwiches and pizzas, on top of grains and so on. There’s a recipe from Skye Gyngell’s A Year in My Kitchen, although you might want to read these cautionary words first ( I had the same problems that Joanna describes when I made them.)

Add measured mograbieh into a saucepan with a pinch of salt and a cup and a half of boiling water from the kettle. Cook hard for about 10 – 12 minutes, rinse and drain well.

Cook the edamame in boiling water for about 6 – 7 minutes and drain. If you’ve bought edamame in the pod, shell it and make a mental note to buy the podded sort next time.

Combine the mograbieh and edamame in a serving bowl. I like a low, wide one best. You can leave the dish in the fridge until dinner if that suits. When you’re ready, cook the chicken under the grill or in a cast iron pan in a little olive oil, rest it and slice thinly. Combine the mograbieh, edamame, caramelised onions and chicken. If there isn’t enough oil from the onions, add a little more then grind over some black pepper and serve.

If you’re not doing a “pantry challenge” in the formal sense, just making dinner out of what’s at home, you can get a bit more elaborate.

I added all the shooting tops of a coriander plant I don’t want to go to seed yet – you can use whichever of your leafy green herbs is bolting. I also added some thinly sliced radish and blanched asparagus; pretty much any veg you have in the crisper will do, but make sure the pieces are small enough to make sense with the rest of the ingredients. This time I forgot the olives, but next time will use the small semi-dried black ones we get from nearby Homeleigh Grove.

The caramelised onions mean this salad doesn’t need a dressing, particularly if you’ve remembered the olives. But I mixed a clove of garlic, a pinch of salt and the juice and rind of half a lemon into about half a cup of thick yoghurt anyway. If I’d had a ripe pomegranate, I would have sprinkled some juicy seeds over the top.