Kohlrabi - "cabbage turnip"

Kohlrabi

Compost-fuelled spacecraft (hovering)
A leafy shot-put (for hurling)
Kohlrabi
Exotic-sounding
Worthy of a rolled "r"
A leader among vegetables
Kohlrabi
Purple inner-tube skin
Water-resistant
A bobbing bouy
Kohlrabi
Tastes like turnip.

- EW

The most interesting-looking vegetable in the garden at the moment is the kohlrabi, which is a member of the brassica family.

You mostly eat the big purple bit, but the leaves are pretty good too - I'd say sweeter than kale, and just as well.

The inside of the bulb is light green and quite juicy. It's very much like a turnip, but maybe a bit more fibrous. Although the earlier you pick them the less stringy they are. The stalks are strangely translucent inside, but good to munch on when you're cutting up the rest.

This season's the first time I've grown kohlrabi, so I'm still experimenting with it in the kitchen. Ideas very welcome!

So far the best thing has been kohlrabi rosti, with some chilli and ground ginger in it - this idea came from Farmer John's Cookbook - The Real Dirt on Vegetables, by US farmer John Peterson who runs a community supported agriculture farm.

I've also made kohlrabi and potato mash, and eaten lots raw. Fortunately it doesn't seem to have the same impact on the bodily functions as raw turnip.

But I suppose if you ate enough of it...

The Highlands have arrived

After many months of gentle (and not-so-gentle) persuasion, Eliza's mum has allowed Guy to borrow her Highland cattle to breed with.

Maggie, Linnhe, Morag and Isabelle arrived this morning, and as I look out the window now they're settling down eating some hay in the laneway.

Highlands are a rare breed, according to the Rare Breeds Trust of Australia, so we're hoping we can help build their numbers up. We're borrowing a bull in the next week ... so it's all go!

Linnhe and Isabelle

Maggie and Morag

Neither of us have eaten Highland beef before, but a Scottish chef - who just happened to be visiting this morning while the cattle were being delivered - told us it's tender, marbled meat with egg-shell coloured fat.

It'll be a little while till we have any at eating stage, but we're looking forward to having our own rare-breed beef to go with our rare-breed pork, chicken and duck.

Got any garden surplus?

There's a great new project starting on the north-west coast that's going to link backyard gardeners with families who struggle to buy fruit and veggies.

It's based on something that's happening in the US, Produce to the People, and it'll involve volunteers collecting surplus produce from gardeners, and then taking it to a central distribution point.

That point's probably going to be just down the road from our place, at the Penguin Organic Growing Centre...a patch of ground that's being revitalised at the moment to turn it into a bustling community base for learning about living sustainably.

There's actually a festival coming up at the centre on March 27 and 28 that Guy's helping organise. It's all about growing food, biodiversity and reducing our impact on the environment, and includes tours of local gardens.

We think the new project Produce to the People has got fantastic potential on the coast, and we congratulate the North West Environment Centre for getting funding from the state government to get it started.

Visitors and Escapees

We've got a visitor staying at the farm at the moment. "Monty" is having a working holiday at our place, and he was working even on his first night here!

He's a young boar and he's come from further up the coast from our friends Kerryn and Don to see what the ladies are like in the Penguin area.

He appears to have settled in well, so they must be quite welcoming.

But while one animal comes in the gates, others are going out.














Everyday the ducks disappear out the driveway and walk into the forest reserve, where they spend the day pottering.

They come back at bedtime, and I just love seeing the dusk light on their footprints.

Testing out the Trotters

Offal: the parts of an animal butchered that are unfit for use (Webster).

What a great start.

The past few weeks we’ve been collecting our offal from the abattoir. It comes in a plastic bag within a plastic bag: ears, trotters, tails, cheeks, and jowls all together. The tails still have the fluffy whip-like bits on the end of them and the ears are old-man hairy. Our red dirt is still between their toes.

I feel an obligation to at least try all the parts. It must go back to the single brussels sprout Mum used to put on my plate. Sometimes we have to do things we don’t want to, even if it involves stuffing it in our mouths and chewing really fast. If an animal has to die for us to eat meat we’ve got to make the most of it.

The trotters felt a bit like a dead person’s hand. Cold and clammy, bloodless. I ran some hot water and with a sharp knife scraped away the dirt and callused skin. I got a lighter and singed the black hairs…although it didn’t really work, so I pulled them out by hand.

The recipe I found on the net “Chinese-style pigs’ trotters” (Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, of course) asked me to brown the trotters in a pan. If someone had walked in the door and sniffed they would have thought I was cooking up brawn for dogs. But I was determined.

I added apple juice, soy sauce, caster sugar, chillies, garlic and ginger, then put it all in the crock pot for eight hours.

When I came home that night I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t even spoon out the sauce to try. I told myself it would be better in the morning after it’d had time to sit, anyway. I did notice that the trotters didn’t look like trotters anymore. A good sign.

Day two: couldn’t face it for breakfast, so put the pot in the fridge (a chance for the fat to rise and set). But throughout the day, I worked on convincing myself I had a wonderful meal waiting for me at night.

I picked pak choi, snow peas and coriander from the garden and cooked noodles. Then I heated up the trotters and put it all together. It was a bit like an Asian soup, with lots of bones and bits of skin. I didn’t come across any hooves or claws. I did find a couple of tiny slivers of meat, two for each trotter.

The end product was no where near as traumatic to eat as it was to prepare. And I think I would happily serve it up as an entrée for visitors, it was pretty rich as a main meal. They just might not find out exactly where the meat came from till after the washing up.