Parsley with flying colours
As we cycle through the seasons, different ingredients come to the fore. In winter, it’s time for parsley, says Nicola Galloway.
One of my garden beds is currently a sea of selfseeded parsley. I purposely leave a few parsley plants to go to seed each summer and then sprinkle the seeds around the garden. I do the same with coriander and the result is a steady supply of fresh herbs all through the winter months, with the bonus that it involves very little work on my part while Mother Nature continues her seasonal magic.
Parsley therefore features quite heavily in my meals throughout the cooler months and into spring. Today I share a punchy green sauce that accompanies many main meals, and finely chopped parsley is added to scone-like dumplings to dot on top of a vegetable-rich beef stew.
Beef & ale stew with parsley dumplings
I like to use sweet swede in this stew but potato or celeriac can also be used. Be sure to choose a nice marbled cut of meat, such as chuck or rump steak, for tender cooked beef.
Preparation time: 30 minutes Cooking time: 2 hours Serves 4
Beef & ale stew
500g chuck or rump beef steak, cut into 2cm chunks
2 tbsp flour tsp salt tsp cracked black pepper
2 tbsp olive oil
1 large onion, roughly chopped Half small swede, about 300g, peeled and chopped into
2cm chunks
3 carrots, about 250g, chopped in
2cm chunks
1 tsp thyme or rosemary 250ml beer – I used a pale ale 250ml beef stock or water
1 heaped tsp wholegrain mustard
Parsley dumplings
1 34 ⁄ cups white flour
1⁄2 tsp salt
2 tsp baking powder
75g cold butter, cut into 1cm cubes Small bunch parsley, finely chopped
1⁄2 cup yoghurt
3-4 tbsp milk
In a bowl, toss the beef pieces in the flour and seasoning to evenly coat.
Heat the oil in an ovenproof skillet or shallow casserole dish. Saute the onion until softened, about 5 minutes. Add the beef and cook until browned on all sides. Add the swede, carrots and herbs and toss to combine. Add the beer, stock and mustard, and mix well. Cover and cook gently on a low heat for 11⁄2 hours.
Preheat the oven to 190C. Make the parsley dumplings. Combine the flour, salt and baking powder in a mixing bowl. Add the cubed butter and use fingers to rub into the flour until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Toss through the chopped parsley then add the yoghurt and use a butter knife to combine. Add 1 tablespoon milk at a time, mixing with the knife until the dough comes together.
Remove the stew from the heat. Use hands to quickly shape the dough into walnut-sized balls. Arrange on top of the stew, spacing them evenly and allowing room for the scone-like dumplings to spread and rise in the oven.
Place in the oven for 20 minutes until the dumplings are plump and golden. Serve immediately with green sauce and sauteed greens.
Green sauce, aka parsley salsa verde
We call this ‘‘green sauce’’ in our house and I make some variation of it throughout the year. In summer I use basil, capers and jalapeno; autumn and spring includes watercress from the clean stream nearby; and this winter version has wholegrain mustard for extra punch.
Preparation time: 10 minutes Makes about 250g
Large bunch of parsley, 80-100g 1-2 cloves of garlic, peeled and
roughly chopped
1 tsp wholegrain mustard
1 tsp capers
2 gherkins, roughly chopped 1 tbsp white wine vinegar
1 tbsp lemon juice
About 100ml extra virgin olive oil
Place all the ingredients except olive oil into a food processor and blitz into a rough paste. With the engine going, drizzle in the olive oil until a thick green sauce is achieved. Check the flavour, adding extra lemon juice, if needed. Pour into a jar and store in the fridge. Use within 1 week.
Nicola Galloway is an awardwinning food writer, cookbook author and culinary tutor. homegrown-kitchen.co.nz
Give your orchids some love
Cymbidium orchids should be throwing up flowering shoots around now. Cymbidiums are probably the easiest orchid, but they grow fast and so are heavy feeders. Give them a weekly feed during the growing period with a specialist orchid fertiliser, such as Thrive Orchid Liquid Plant Food. Cymbidiums also need good light to flower well. If yours are shy to bloom, try shifting them to a position which offers more light.
Most of the orchids for sale alongside the cut flowers at your local food store are phalaenopsis, or moth orchids. You usually buy them in bloom and the flowers should last a couple of months on the plant. But when they drop off, cut off the flower spike just above a node on the stem below the old flowers. For other orchid types, cut the spike off at the base where it turns brown.
To encourage reblooming, feed your plant with a commercial orchid fertiliser. Continue to feed year round for optimum performance.
With the right care and regular feeding, phalaenopsis can be encouraged to flower year-round. Cymbidiums, however, which you sometimes also see for sale at supermarkets, flower just once a year no matter how good a gardener you are.
Plant strawberries
Let’s be clear: it’s impossible to grow too many strawberries – at least six plants per person to get enough ripe at the same time to get a decent bowl full.
Bundles of strawberry plants should be in the garden centre now or soon and that’s usually the cheapest way to get a few plants at once to establish a new strawberry patch.
Plant strawberries in full sun, in rich, free-draining soil. Give them their own dedicated permanent bed, preferably one that can be easily netted to keep the birds out.
It’s best to mound up the soil to improve drainage, as strawberries are susceptible to fungal diseases.
Dig the soil over to a spade depth, sprinkle with strawberry fertiliser and rake it in. If you don’t have strawberry fertiliser in your garden shed, use any sort of tomato fertiliser. (It does the same job.) Space the plants 20-30cm apart, in rows 30-40cm apart.
Plant them now and they should be flowering at the start of spring, and fruiting six to eight weeks later.
Don’t let the pests get a head start
Look for the eggs of passionvine hoppers on the stems of any plants that they’ve infested and snip off and burn affected foliage. Search for the eggs of green vege bugs on the underside of the leaves of plants they target and squash or burn them too. Give your fruit trees a copper spray this month as well to prevent any overwintering infections. Remove old infected fruit still hanging on the trees. Rake up and remove any fruit on the ground.
– compiled by Barbara Smith