Green tomato chutney

My tomatoes are having a second season of bearing flowers and fruits. This is a total surprise to me. I always thought tomatoes like most other plants would produce fruits once and then they died.

I am only happy to be corrected. Here is a bunch of unripe green tomatoes I harvested yesterday for the chutney.

Green unripe tomatoes for the chutney

I am proud of this recipe for two reasons. Firstly, it is my grandmother's recipe and tastes like its been made from at least twenty ingredients. Secondly, two out of the four ingredients came from my garden.

This Guntur chili if left to ripe will become the gorgeous curry red but here in India we mostly use our chilies green when they are their hottest.

Guntur chili

 This one here was 8.5cm  long when I harvested it.

This chutney as mentioned above has only four ingredients. Green, firm and unripe tomatoes, chilies, onion and garlic along with some seasoning. I used one clove of garlic per tomato and one hot chili for every three tomatoes (cut into random chunks.) I also used one medium onion cut into rough chunks.

Into a pan, heat 1tbsp of vegetable oil. Add all the ingredients and stir till the tomatoes and the chili blister and cooked. Season with salt and let it cool. Add this into a mortar and pestle and bash the hell out of it. Of course you can use your food processor (it will make your life much easier,) but it will not taste half as great as it can. Bashing it in mortar and pastel will extract all the tasty goodness from all the ingredients.

Unripe tomato chutney

You end result should look like this. And this make a great side dish with almost everything.

Flowers all the way..!

Firstly, sorry for staying away from blogging. This has been the longest I have stayed from blogging. The reason is I opened an online cake store operating within Bangalore and I had no idea juggling two businesses would be so much time consuming. Don't mistake me... I am not complaining, all the stress gives me adrenalin rush and I totally enjoy it. Only thing is, it has kept me from doing anything else apart from work.

Anyway, I have such a whole load of things to share. Has it ever happened to you where suddenly all the plants in your gardens decide to flower? Its happening in my garden right now. Don't believe me? Well, read on!

The mustard have started to flower. They are such pretty yellow flowers. I have never collected mustard seeds, I have only grown them for their leaves. I am still in a dilemma if I should let the seeds fall down n produce more plants or if I should harvest them.

 The red cluster roses are once again producing flowers in bunches - this time in a bunch of six.

What is a total surprise to me is that my English Harive produces flowers. This pretty flower stays bloomed only for a couple of hours and then goes ahead to form a seed pod. Since we enjoy the leaves of this plant I am planning on collecting the seeds and drying for the next season.

English harive flower

English harive seed

Have you ever seen mint flower? I never had... until today morning I saw this basil mint put up a good show. Another big surprise for me. I don't know if they use these flowers in cooking. If it isn't edible then I will harvest seeds of course for the next season.

Basil mint flowers

Basil mint flowers

This here belongs to my fennel. I recently found out that the Italians use the fennel pollen in cooking, I should try them.

Fennel blooms

This is my dwarf red amaranthus patch. These plants are ready to harvest. How did I know that, you ask? Well, if you cant see in this image then look closely in the next image and you can see tiny flowers growing towards the stem tips and around the leaf stalks. This is the perfect time to harvest them and make South Indian spicy saag (I shall post the recipe soon.)

Dwarf red Amaranthus

Amaranthus flowers

Although there are so many flowers in the garden now, what's hard to believe is, the star of the show is not any of my flowering plants. Its the Guntur chili plant! This variety produces chilies with excellent red color. It is used in curries for its signature red color to make them red and appealing.

Guntur chili

Each day I see three new blooms on this plant and surprisingly none of the blooms are falling off. That's right... they all are setting fruit! Soon I will have a whole load of chilies to show off.

Lastly, of course the tomato plants. This year the tomatoes are being very very kind to me and they don't seem to want to stop flowering or producing fruits.

Apple tomato

Garden report

It has been a while since I posted about what is happening in my garden. So here is the report....

The french beans are doing great. Here is a snap showing two really tender beans and more flowers.

French beans

The tomato plants (beefsteak patio) are flowering and fruiting for their second set of harvest. I have to get rid of the dried and dead leaves but I have not found the time for it still.

Beefsteak patio tomatoes

More flowers on the same plant

My apple tomato plant has finally started to flower. It is a pretty local tomato you will find in the farmers' market here in Bangalore and it is called apple tomato for its shape.

My apple tomatoes plant finally flowering

Have I complained about my fennel growing slow like a snail? Yes, I have! And I am totally ready to take that statement back and apologize to the plant because it now about 2ft tall and it tastes great in my salads.

Fennel

Finally after producing about a hundred flowers the first of the chilies are forming... phew! This is the really hot bird's eye variety.

Bird's eye chili

My Ceylon spinach is bearing berries. I am planning to dry and store them for next time.

Ceylon spinach berries

So this is what is happening with the veggie plants. I have a whole load of images pertaining to my flowering plants to share and I shall do it in my next post.

The joy of sharing

When I first started blogging I only wanted to share the whole experience of gardening in India - the weather, the type of plants that are native to India, what care goes into it and finally how I use the harvest in my cooking. But eventually my interest broadened to reading the stories, joys and woes of other gardeners all over the world. Not only are the stories of my blogging friends great to read, they are informative too - I have learned how to keep certain pests away, how to increase productivity of my plants. This has also increased my desire to grow a whole new range of vegetables and plants. And just because I am growing them I now know how long it takes to produce each fruit I am now eating vegetables I otherwise would not eat.

It was exactly this time last year I started gardening with the tiny lavender and lemon balm transplants sitting on my windowsill. I found that the experience of growing the two plants were so beautiful - the growth of each new leaf was a joy to see. In the very same month I bought the first of my tomato and green bell pepper plant and started growing them. 

As my interest  grew the number of my blogging friends grew too. We all know that sometimes we make friends who last for over a life time and sometimes they are just for the very moment and through Blogger I have made a friend with whom I can share not only the gardening experience (as we live in the same climatic zone) but also great load of seeds.  

I stumbled into Jane's  blog A kitchen garden from Kahului a couple of months ago and I instantly loved her writing and the variety of plants in her garden. It reminded me of my grandmother's garden in Tamil Nadu. 

It has been an amazing couple of months of mailing each other too. We each shared a whole bunch of recipes that can be both quick and delicious to cook with our harvest. But the best of all was the seeds she shared with me. Last Saturday I received seven different types of chili seeds from her. I have seen the images of a few of those chilies on her blog and boy! Am I excited to get them started in my garden...

Chili seeds

 Just in case the image is not clear then here is the list of seeds she sent to me:

1. Agi Angelo (mildly hot red) 

2. Kaleidoscope capsicum baccatum (sweet red pepper)

3. Rosa Dolce Appendere

4. Bhut Jalokea (extremely hot)

5. Santa Fe Grande (hot red pepper)

6. Nepalese Bell (mildly hot)

7. Guyana (hot yellow pepper)

Being a huge chili addict, I am so ecstatic to receive all these seeds! In return I have mailed her a whole bunch of seeds that are native to this part of India. I hope our friendship grows deeper and and meaningful in which we share a lot more exotic seeds.

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P.S. What a great gardening year it has been and is there a better way to celebrate it than sharing seeds? So this is an invitation to all my blogging friends to feel free to ask me for the seeds of any or all the plants I have posted about in my blog so far and I will send them your way. Happy gardening!

Sarson ka saag (mustard green curry)

Sarson ka saag is one of the famous and loved Punjabi mustard greens curries. It is probably also one of the easiest Indian curries to make too. It takes only a hand full of ingredients and not more than twenty minutes of your time.

I have made the said curry with the mustard greens I harvested a few days back and stored in fridge. Since the mustard greens I had were not sufficient for the three of us at home I also added a handful of English spinach to it.

Ingredients:
A handful of mustard greens roughly chopped
A handful of English spinach roughly chopped
2 green chilies slit length wise
1 large onion finely chopped
1 tbsp ghee
1 tbsp garlic finely chopped
1 tbsp ginger finely chopped
1 tsp coriander powder
1 tsp cumin powder
1 tsp garam masala powder
1 cup water
1 tsp chickpea flour
Salt to season


Method:

1. Bring a cup of water up to the boil in a pan. To this add the mustard greens, English spinach and the green chilies. Season with salt and let cook.
2. Meanwhile, heat ghee into another pan. Fry the onions till translucent. To this add the ginger, garlic, coriander powder, cumin powder and garam masala powder and cook till the ghee separates from the onion.
3. To this add the cooked leaves along with the cooking water. Mash roughly with a masher, add the chickpea flour and stir. Check for seasoning. You can add a bit of red chili powder if you want your saag to be more spicy. 
4. Once this comes up to a simmer the saag is ready.

Sarson ka saag (Mustard greens curry)

You can also serve it with a dollop of yogurt or cream on top but it tastes great as it is. This saag is farily strong and makes an excellent side dish with rotis made of maze flour (lacha parotha.) Having said that, we ate it with rice last night and it still tasted great.

I hope you enjoy the curry as much as we did.

Green harvest!

I harvested some more greens today! I just love it when my garden finally matures and I can literally eat the fruits of my hard work (not that I am working too hard, but still...)

The mustard plants were showing signs of bolting so they had to be harvested. This is a great harvest as I got a whole bag of the leaves. Time to make the saag I guess.

Mustard greens

The first batch of red cos lettuce have grown sufficiently big too. It is finally time to a successive sowing.

Red cos lettuce

I only harvested the outer leaves to make a simple salad.

Red cos lettuce

Here is a picture of the red amaranthus seedlings. They are growing beautifully well. Give it a few weeks and I can harvest them to make a saag curry enough to feed six people.

Red amaranthus

I made a lettuce, tomato and egg salad for lunch - both the lettuce and tomato are from my very garden. It is a very simple salad and it generally fills me up pretty well.

lettuce, tomato and egg salad

To make the salad, I tore the lettuce leaves into bite size chunks, cut the tomatoes roughly into bite size pieces and did the same with two hard boiled eggs. I dressed them with three portion olive oil and one portion balsamic vinegar. Season with salt and pepper and it is ready to eat.

The only thing I would do differently next time is take the seeds off the tomatoes because I found the juice of the tomato had diluted the dressing when there were only a few last bites of the salad left.

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P.S. The french beans are finally producing beans... Yay! I hope I get a descent size harvest.

French beans

  

Spaghetti with spinach

Those of you who have read my last post will know that my tomatoes are doing wonders in garden. I harvested a couple of more tomatoes today. They are all blemish free, lovely and juicy.

More tomato harvest

My greens are doing exceptionally great too. The English spinach is being the fasted growing amongst all the other greens. I only cut the bigger leaves and let the plant  produce more foliage for next harvest.

English Spinach

I got a handful of spinach leaves plucked freshly.

The harvest.

And I used this fresh green spinach to make my simple Sunday brunch of spaghetti with spinach. I know that the spinach harvest is not sufficient to make a big meal but today as I am alone at home this is more than enough to make one portion.

Spaghetti with spinach

Ingredients:

1 portion spaghetti.

1 tsp chili flakes

2-3 cloves of garlic

1 tsp oregano 

1 tsp freshly chopped basil

2 tbsp olive oil

1 handful of fresh spinach

salt and pepper for seasoning.

Method:

1. Into a large pot of boiling water, add a heaped tablespoon of salt. To this add the spaghetti sticks and cook till al dente while stirring occasionally. Save some spaghetti cooking water before draining.
2. Meanwhile, into a frying pan, heat some olive oil. To this add the garlic and chili flakes and cook till the garlic and chili imparts its flavor to the oil. At this stage add the spinach and cook till it slightly wilts.
3. Now add the spaghetti to the pan along with the spaghetti water. Add some more seasoning, freshly chopped basil and oregano.

Spaghetti nest

Pinch the spaghetti with tongs and place it gently on the plate while rotating the plate to make a nest of spaghetti. Sprinkle some parmigiana cheese and serve hot or eat as a cold pasta salad.