Antique Choko Recipes

I have been tripping down memory lane. Check out these two little treasures I found on-line.

First is the link to a clipping of a choko recipe from The Australian Women’s Weekly Saturday 26 May 1934. It’s under the heading “Mock Pears”.  Mrs T.W. Villiers of 14 St John Street, Ashfield N.S.W. won first prize of one pound which was probably quite a lot of money in those days.

Then I found this lovely blog with the most beautiful antique look about it. It’s French Blue and Peachy Pink and she has featured another antique recipe, in this case from her Great Aunty’s recipe book. The writer has a great sense of style and you should just see how beautiful her jars of pickles look.

In comparison here is my humble collection, 12 jars I preserved yesterday. I was quite pleased with myself and my home made labels on my computer – that is until I checked out the beautiful display of pickles on French Blue and Peachy Pink. She has raised the bar in dressing up jam jars!

my (very plain) choko pickles lying about their age – but it will be June tomorrow!

And I still have three chokos left which has left me scratching my head what to do with them.

chokos ready for the pot

My friend Wendy has emailed me a recipe for choko soup, Maria commented on my blog that choko makes a great curry, and I have two Granny Smith cooking apples I was planning to stew with them. This proves you can never have too many chokos.

P.S. Nigel and Steven – urgent – send jam jars.

Happy gardening.

Foraging for chokos

There are many interpretations of the word ‘forgaging’. Generally I believe it means rummaging and searching for wild food. In the words of Costa off the television it’s just another form of gardening.

But for me it satisfies some sort of primal urge. And I satisfied the urge at the farm yesterday when I found a hidden cache of chokos beneath these leaves.

As well as rambling across the ground this huge choko plant was growing up and over our Windy Loo (truly, that is the correct name of this Australian icon – more of that on another post)

chokos growing over the windy loo

I needed a Tarzan to harvest this choko which was tantalising behind my reach.  Either I persuade someone to risk life and limb to get it – or we can wait until it drops.

The one that got away

I collected my harvest in a basket. I think they are a beautiful vegetable. I have written about chokos before, they are treated as a very humble vegetable here in Queensland as they grow so prolifically, almost like weeds, and some would say they are tasteless but I think they have a very delicate taste when steamed.

The wonderful, and I think interesting, thing about chokos is the fact that they take on the flavours of whatever they are cooked with. I am told that after the war when some foods were at a premium the choko was mixed with pears (in tins) and people couldn’t tell the difference.

But with such an abundance you need to be a bit more adventurous and use them in other ways. So today I’ll be making some choko pickles. Photographs to follow tomorrow.

In the meantime, here is the result of my labours so far.

choko harvest

Happy gardening.

A Monday morning at the allotment

It was a fine morning today at the allotment. Early mornings are a bit nippy but once the sun is up the days are really lovely at the moment. I started off with a jumper but soon hung that over my sweet-pea frame and worked in my T-shirt.

I spent quite a bit of time there yesterday watering, harvesting and drinking tea. Thank you Zu for sharing the dinky little chocolate muffins. Delicious.   Then I picked a few flowers and herbs to make a herb posy. Judith, a talented florist, put it all together for me. The big leaves are Lemon Myrtle which makes a nice tea if you add them to a cup of boiling water.

A herb posy

You can see the curly parsley, and the dark leaf poking up at the back is a fancy basil, not sure what it’s called.

A side view

So all that was left to do today was to give my veggies a liquid feed and get the camera out.  I fiddled about with the settings to try for some ‘artistic’ shots. I was quite pleased with some of the results as I tried to capture drops of water on the leaves. Bare in mind I took nearly a hundred, how the time flies, so there are a lot on the cutting room floor.

Lettuce, too pretty to eat

More pretty lettuce

Still more pretty lettuce

Some of my lush parsley

Beetroot

Young silverbeet with a new row of curly parsley. I can never have too much parsley.

Staggered planting. My follow-on lettuce crop

My vegetables are looking really healthy at the moment which is very satisfying.  However, I know there are some caterpillars just waiting in the wings ready to take centre stage. But for now I’ll just bask in my success.

Happy gardening.

Allotment update and workshops at Beelarong Community Farm

I have been a bit lazy with my blogging recently but there is plenty going on over at the allotment. Our best growing season in Brisbane starts in April as we have fewer bugs invading our vegetables and the sun is not so fierce. We are still in autumn here but with the drop in temperature you would think it was winter already. Dry and warm during the day but with the temperature down to 11c degrees tonight.

I have already harvested generous amounts of silver beet, and enough sweet potato, beetroot, rocket and lettuce from my allotment this season to keep me happy. I picked a good handful of curly parsley today to make a parsley sauce to go with fish for tea tonight. I just love that aroma when you chop freshly picked parsley.

I’ll take the camera over to the allotment tomorrow so I can post a few pics of my veggie plot. I meant to today but once I finished watering it was time for me to hot-foot it over to the covered area for a workshop.

I have mentioned before that we  hold workshops over at Beelarong Community Farm where I have my allotment. Today we held one of our regular Cob Oven Cooking workshops.

Here are a few pics I took this morning. The first thing we did was to take a walk around the farm to collect vegetables and herbs for pizza toppings and root veggies and tomatoes to roast in trays, topped with a selection of freshly picked herbs and with a big glug of olive oil.  Dessert was baked apples. Delicious.

Peter ready to load up the cob oven

Below, tomatoes, turnip, squash, aubergine, choko and herbs all picked from the community garden – food miles just a few metres.

Veggies ready for roasting in the cob oven

All grown in the community garden and tended by volunteers

Craig had prepared a yeast bread mix overnight. We each took a small handful of dough to prepare our own individual pizzas. The cheese and salami supplemented the veggies and herbs and we picked some of those tiny really hot chillies for the folk with an asbestos mouth.

An individual pizza ready for the oven

The cob oven smoking and ready to go.

The cob oven smoking and ready to go

Another workshop next Saturday

I have cut and pasted  these details below from the Beelarong website.

Preserving your fruit and/or vegetables

When: Sat, 1 June, 09:30 – 11:30

Where: Beelarong Community Farm, cnr of York and Beverley Streets, Morningside.

Description: Come to the farm and learn how to preserve your fruit and/or vegetables. Depending on what is in season you’ll be collecting the produce from the farm to make either chutney, jam or relish. Cost is $4. To book please call Beelarong Community Farm on 0401 168 657

Happy gardening.