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Archive for May, 2011

Marvellous Marrickville

Posted in Food & Friends, tagged , , , , , , , on May 13, 2011| 44 Comments »

Marrickville, in Sydney’s inner-west, is a suburb known and loved by local foodies for both its interesting restaurants and fabulous food wholesalers.

A quest for Ben Furney Mills’ flour, which I mentioned in a previous post, led me there again this week.

For Sydney bakers, Southern Cross Supplies offers a huge range of wholesale food and grocery items at reasonable prices.  There is a small showroom you can wander through, but most of the items are stored in a large warehouse which is off-limits to the general public.  You can, however, walk in and purchase single items over the counter.

The bakers (bread) flour was very reasonably priced – $22.50 per 25kg bag, and the 5kg bag of dark rye flour below was $11.  They also had chocolate, grains, an assortment of packaging, dried fruit, some great muffin pan liners and a large range of condiments.  If you ring them, they’ll happily email you their product list (it’s also available on their website), although pricing of items is only given out on enquiry.

. . . . .

While we were in Marrickville, we made a stop at Chef Express to pick up frozen berries – the mixed berries were $9/kg, the blackberries $10/kg, and the raspberries are currently on special for a tiny $6/kg.  Ever since Lorraine put us onto this supplier, we’ve bought all our frozen berries from them.

. . . . .

The highlight of the trip was a visit to Faros Brothers!

Whenever I’m in Marrickville, I try to stop at this fabulous fishmonger – the produce is always fresh, and the prices are ludicrously cheap compared to seafood at the Sydney Fish Market.

On Tuesday, $60 bought us:

  • Two small Atlantic salmon (about two kilos in total)

  • 300g local calamari rings

  • 6 large Australian green prawns

  • a half kilo red snapper fillet

  • a kilo of Portuguese sardine fillets, and

  • an Australian smoked trout.

We made sardine alla beccafico  following this recipe…

…and the snapper, calamari and prawns went into a tomato-based paella (we’re still infatuated with our new pan).

It was a great finale to a fabulous day’s shopping!

. . . . .

Southern Cross Supplies
6B Rich Street
Marrickville NSW  2204
Tel: 02 9572 7888

. . . . .

Chef Express
17-19 Buckley St
Marrickville  NSW  2204
Tel: 02 9519 3488

 . . . . .

Faros Brothers
34 Buckley Street
Marrickville  NSW  2204
Tel: 02 9519 3785

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Verdure

Posted in Frugal Living, tagged , , , , on May 11, 2011| 67 Comments »

Sydney has been drenched for weeks, so when the sun peaked through for a couple of days last week, we raced outside to see how the garden had fared.

Leeks are the garden success story of the moment – the large annual ones in the top photo were transplanted from a previous bed and have continued to fatten up.  They’re just about ready to be eaten.

The true marvels though have been these perennial leeks.  Bless you Christine for putting us onto these – I know I keep saying that, but they’re such a wonderful plant!  All the ones in the photo above are self-seeded – we planted a single leek in that spot last year, and this year dozens have appeared from nowhere.

If you’re in Australia, you can usually buy them from Cornucopia Seeds – and if anyone knows where to find them in the UK, please let us know, as my friends over there have had trouble tracking them down.

Also, as I mentioned in a previous post, Ian gave me a small sample of his wild rocket seed.  Here’s my happy little patch growing…

All these broccoli plants are self-sown.  We’re overjoyed at how well our “let them go to seed” approach has worked…

Some hardy potatoes are pushing their way through – both the ones we’ve planted, as well as some that have self-seeded…

Pete’s beloved chickweed – growing like a weed!

Our crazy bed of nasturtium triffids, all self-seeded from last year…

On the herb front, oregano is thriving…

…as is the impossible to kill continental parsley…

…and the rosemary is doing fine too.  The sage, however, seems to be dead, possibly because of all the rain.

The rhubarb has survived its first year…

…and the sorrell is growing happily in its little corner.  Both the chickens and I love it!

Can someone please tell me what the trick is to growing strawberries?  We can raise beautiful plants, but every berry seems to be eaten by slugs before they’re ripe.  We even caught Bob the dog having a nibble recently!

Finally, I bought an expensive Italian sweet onion from the fruiterer and let it sprout – hopefully we’ll get some seed for next season!

What’s growing in your garden at the moment?

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Mother’s Day Paella

Posted in Food & Friends, tagged , on May 9, 2011| 37 Comments »

Inspired by one of Anna’s recent posts, I bought myself a paella pan during our visit to Chefs’ Warehouse last week.

It’s quite large – 42cm in diameter – and made of black steel, which meant we had to season and blacken it before cooking.

We gave it a test run today for Mother’s Day lunch, and made a paella with duck pieces, chorizo, broadbeans, San Marzano tomatoes and parsley. I adopted Anna’s approach of starting it on the cooktop and finishing it in the oven.  The pan just fits in the oven – the door closes with millimetres to spare!

It was a delicious lunch, and best of all, Pete’s found a spot for me to hang the pan in the pantry.

Have you been celebrating Mother’s Day?  It’s a low key affair at our house, although both my sons made a big effort to be home today, which was very nice.  They’ve been stacking the dishwasher, cleaning the bathroom and vacuuming – and letting me play in the kitchen. Much better gifts than anything they could have bought!

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Chook Update

Posted in Frugal Living, tagged , on May 7, 2011| 27 Comments »

It’s been a while since I’ve posted about the ladies!

We recently moved them onto a bed of dedicated chook fodder.  As we’re a bit behind with the garden, one of the beds wasn’t planted out after the last rotation.  It was full of crops grown from the scattered grain mix the girls hadn’t eaten (millet, wheat, sunflower), as well as an assortment of green weeds.

The hens were in seventh heaven!  They were skipping over the greenery – I’d never seen a chicken skip before – scampering over mountains of plants aided by their flapping wings.

They’re all doing very well – the sudden shortening of days means they’re laying less, and we’re now getting three to five eggs a day.  I’m delighted about this – I don’t want them to wear themselves out, and we  really don’t need that many eggs all the time.

I tried to take some updated portrait shots so you could see how big they’ve all grown.  It took me a couple of days to get them all – the first lot were taken just after the dome rotation, and the second batch the following morning.

Francesca was doing a little dance…

Harriet is the fairest in colour, and sits right in the middle of the pecking order.  She was busy contemplating what her next mouthful was going to be…

Our little Maggie, formerly the most pecked and persecuted member of the flock, has grown into the largest hen of all.  When she was younger, she had all the feathers in her head pecked off by the others, which distressed me enormously.  Now she’s huge and has risen in the social order, and everyone leaves her alone…

Lovely Rosemary sat on Pete’s lap and posed for a closeup.  Hasn’t she grown up to be a big girl!

. . . . .

The following morning I went out again with my camera.  Bertie and Queenie had been moving too quickly to photograph the previous day, and I didn’t want to put up a post without them.

Don’t let the subdued morning light fool you – these two are tough, smart and seriously bossy.  Queenie sits at the top of the pecking order and has since the very beginning; Bertie is her right hand hen.

Bertha rarely stands still, and it took nearly 30 photos to get two good shots of her. Our wild, crooked chicken is still ornery and cantankerous, but Pete loves her to death. She only lifted her head for a photo because he was calling to her…

As you can see, she still has her very distinctive crooked comb.  Steve the vet once described her as matronly, and Steve the brother thinks she might have been stepped on as a chick, which would explain why she’s so lopsided…

Queenie was settled into the nesting box, making little purring noises in her throat.  She continues to rule the roost with an iron claw…

And Harriet was playing ostrich, with her head almost fully buried as she tried to dig grubs out of the soil.  Chickens really do have the fluffiest bottoms!

If you’d like to catch up on all our previous posts about the girls, please have a look at our chicken page, or at our  Cheerful Chickens blog!

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Autumn Greens

Posted in Frugal Living on May 6, 2011| 35 Comments »

Inspired by our recent garden forage, Pete went out hunting for greens again for the salad bowl.  It was a dark, stormy day, but he still managed to find a colander of treasure. He asked me to show you what our almost-winter garden is still providing us with.

There’s a little mesclun lettuce…

Pete’s current favourite – chickweed!   It’s not a weed in our garden though – Pete has deliberately planted it and is carefully cultivating the little patch to ensure we have a supply of winter greens.  As I don’t have any nettles, I’ve been thinking of using these to make a version of Joanna’s gnocchi…

The basil plants are still producing happily, although I suspect the recent cold weather might do them in soon…

A little purslane – the plants took a bit of a beating recently when Bob the dog gamboled over them…

Our sea of nasturtiums has returned, just as the other greens in the garden are disappearing.  Below is a photo of the patch from last year – it looks almost exactly the same again now!

My lovely friend Ian gave me some of his wild rocket seeds, and I can now go outside with a pair of scissors and snip off leaves as needed…

And finally, an assortment of herbs – young spearmint, continental parsley, with a few garlic chives hidden in there as well!

It all made for a delicious bowl of salad!

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