On air on Bay Fm 99.9, Byron Bay community radio, on January 9 2012

We have had so much rain and heat lately that everything is growing like mad.  My veggie patch is terribly neglected and yet stuff is turning by itself , lovely self seeded volunteers for the salad bowl.  Miss January even has a little lichen growing around her neck, in a little glass container.  We don’t have a recipe for that yet, but we had a big chat on the show about foraging, picking and eating things that are growing around us.  After the recent mushroom poisoning, we also stress that you should be very careful and make sure what you put in your mouth is safe.  Or at least as safe as the industrially produced ingredients in your average supermarket!

MISS JANUARY’S BEST IN SEASON

•    Apricot
•    Asparagus
•    Avocado
•    Banana
•    Blackberry
•    Blueberry
•    Capsicum

•    Celery
•    Cherry
•    Cucumber
•    Currants
•    Eggplant
•    Honeydew Melons
•    Lettuce
•    Lychee
•    Mango
•    Mangosteen
•    Okra
•    Onion
•    Peach
•    Peas
•    Pineapple
•    Plums
•    Radish
•    Rambutan
•    Raspberry
•    Rockmelon
•    Squash
•    Strawberry
•    Tamarillo
•    Tomato
•    Watermelon
•    Zucchini
•    Zucchini Flower

Forage and friends with Alison Drover “Miss January” from Fork in the Field www.forkinthefield.com

I love January time to read books from Christmas day that blur and impromptu dinners with friends with left overs from Christmas.

Start the need year foraging around your community and see what you can source growing naturally. Take time with friends to share your food skills whether they are bread making, jam making or fish smoking. Share your harvest and respect the planet and plants you pick.

TZATZIKI WITH DILL, MINT AND BORAGE FLOWERS

Ingredients
•    cucumbers
•    olive oil – Australian of course
•    goat or sheep’s yogurt
•    garlic
•    dill
•    Mint
•    lemon juice
•    salt
•    borage flowers

A Greek dish so simple yet such a star especially in summer.  Surrounded by toasted pita bread it is an economical way of accompanying pre dinner drinks or as a side for lamb bbqs or to accompany a warm potato salads it is equally as delicious.
Instruction
Peel a cucumber, cut it in half and remove the seeds. Take a grater and grate the cucumber (keep a bowl underneath it to collect the water) I drink this high in silica cucumbers are great for skin.
Leave it in a colander with a little salt until it has given up some of its juice. Take a handful of the cucumber with gloves and squeeze the water from the it. Continue to do this a few times in order to remove as much water as possible.
Pat the cucumber dry with kitchen towels then fold into a little olive oil and 250g strained yogurt. Season with a crushed clove of garlic and a little dill or chopped mint leaves and a squeeze of lemon juice.

DAVIDSON PLUM

This tree is rare in the wild, usually found in NE QLD and NE NSW. It is cultivated in certain areas of northern NSW and far north QLD. The fruit is about the size of a blood plum with a double flat seed. It is tangy and delicious but extremely sour. Davidson plums can be used in place of blood plum in any recipe but as with most of the bush fruits, the flavour is very intense. If compared to a standard plum you would use only 1 Davidson to 3 other plums.

This means they should be mixed with other fruit so that they do not overpower the dish. Half and half may be a good ratio. They will not lose their colour or break down and become mushy. Davidson plum is very well suited to sauce making, both sweet and savoury.

JAM MAKING – DAVIDSON PLUMS

Davidson plums make great jam.

I have been up early collecting Davidson plums. You have to pick them when they are ripe so in my case it was dropping everything and picking and gathering. The low hanging ones can be shook off and the higher ones will need a stick. They are delicious!

RECIPE

Wash the Davidson plums. Place them in a saucepan and then boil them up with equal parts sugar and add a cup of sugar. The plums are low in sugar so it is important to add pectin to the jam and add more sugar than usual. Jam making is very much about feeling your way around.

Tip for making jam, which is low in pectin. Take muslin like cheesecloth about the size of a handkerchief. Fill it with pips from 2-3 lemons and all the pith, which are the white insides of the lemon. You can remove this by scraping it out with a spoon.

The pith contains the pectin, which is required to set the jam. Tie a knot around the contents and then
add a  piece of string about 30 cm long around the knot and then hang it over the saucepan so it sits in the saucepan and boils with the fruit.

Continue to boil with the bag. The pectin inside the bag is released and helps the jam to set. Take a wooden spoon and squeeze the bag against the saucepan to squeeze out more pectin. Turn the heat up and boil rapidly until the jam reaches setting point – a sugar thermometer will be helpful here (start checking when it reaches 104C). but to confirm this, put a teaspoonful of the jam on to a cold saucer and put in the fridge for a minute or so. If it crinkles when you run a finger through it, and your finger leaves a clear line in the preserve, it’s ready. If not, check it every five minutes or so.
6. Allow to sit for 15 minutes then spoon into clean jars and seal immediately.

Enjoy on toast, on cereal or over a cake or just on a spoon
x  Alison Drover

A FEW FORAGING LINKS

There is plenty of information available on the net about foraging, even though nothing beats a wise local for safe and tasty roadside snacking.  Check out this video to get inspired – it looks like Brissie is a little piece of paradise for foragers.

http://permaculture.com.au/online/campus-blogs/urban-food-foraging-%E2%80%93-coming-to-a-city-near-you – this is  a great article about foraging, with lots of links to more info and tools, and guidelines for ethical – or simply polite – foraging.  In our area, make sure you think about food plants’ potential for becoming invasive weeds in bushland.

http://www.thegourmetforager.com/2010/11/diary-of-an-amateur-mushroom-forager/ – this blog is mostly about foraging in restaurants, but it describes 2 very thorough sessions of mushroom searching

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/lifematters/not-just-a-weed21-the-rise-of-foraging/3783248 – I think someone at the ABC listens to belly – this is a podcast of a program they did  – about 2 weeks after us – on foraging.   But we did talk about it because it is growing greatly in popularity, from chefs to us curious, or just poor, or environmentally aware home cooks.  And it gives you an excuse for being slack at weeding!

BELLY BULLETIN

First – good news about garlic. About 10 year ago our garlic industry was almost crushed by cheap Chinese imports. 90% of garlic in Australia came from China. According to the SMH, consumers have gone back to Australian garlic. Producers say the local product is not bleached with clorine or fumigated and is juicier. You may remember a series of letters in the Echo a few years ago, about how hard it was to find flavourful garlic in shops. Now luckily there is plenty of properly stinky local stuff in our shops and markets at most times of year. Around Australia, many individual consumers and restaurants are getting their garlic by post from the internet. It means more small producers can survive. One producer, Patrice Newell, estimates garlic production has quadrupled in Australia in the last 5 years, and we grow more than 300 varieties. But you’ve got to feel a bit sorry for Australia Post employees. Only a few weeks ago a Sydney mail centre was evacuated because a packet of extra strong curry powder caused an outbreak of sore throats, coughing and wheezing and fears of a chemical attack. I wonder what other food travels through the mail these days.

January is the time many of us try to start a new diet. The Dietitians of Australia association has found that about 60% of young women tried to lose weight last year, and one quarter of those dieters used what the dietitians consider ineffective fad diets. More than 50 nutrition experts took part in an online survey, which asked them to list their three worst diets. Most thought the lemon juice detox diet, based on drinking lots of lemon juice with cayenne pepper, was the worst, followed by the blood-type diet, and the acid and alkaline diet. DAA spokesman Trent Watson said in a statement.”Women often think they are failures when they can’t sustain such strict and unrealistic diets, The truth is, it is the diets that are failing young women.” Dr Watson said people should ditch the fad diets and focus on regular exercise and healthy eating. His diet advice is simple : eat breakfast every day, limit take-away meals to once a week, choose water as a drink and exercise most days.

If you have small kids you may have the opposite problem, how to get them to eat up. An interesting study has just come out that may help, although it seems based on a very small group of people, but maybe you could experiment on your own kids. Researchers at London Metropolitan University showed 23 preteen children and 46 adults full-size photos of 48 different combinations of food on plates. They found that there are definite differences between adults and kids when it comes to plate appeal. The kids in the study liked more colourful food, more elements on the plate, and the main item towards them on the plate rather than in the centre. Food plates with seven different items and six different colours are particularly appealing to children, while adults tend to prefer only three items and three colours. Kids also like food that makes a picture or a pattern on the plate.

If you are thinking of publishing your own recipes you may want to keep this story in mind. A Chilean newspaper has been ordered to compensate 13 readers who suffered burns while trying out a published recipe for churros, a popular Spanish and Latin American snack of fried sugared dough. People who followed the recipe published by La Tercera newspaper were splattered with hot oil as the frying batter exploded. Most of the victims suffered burns to the arms or face. Chile’s supreme court has found that injury was almost unavoidable for anyone who tried to follow the recipe as printed. The court ordered La Tercera to pay more than $160,000 in damages to the 13 victims.

MUSIC

Oka, Gorilla Villa

Dirtgirl, Chicken Jam

Skipping Girl Vinegar, You Can

Iluka, Eyes Closed

Cumbia Cosmonauts, Our journey to the moon

Love and chocolate coated weeds, Sister T    (mmm, if only cocoa would go feral…)