Smoked trout from Thurn's
Smoked trout with arugula, steamed green beans and left-over baked tomatoes which were really good cold.
Three colors of beets
Beautiful beets
and the finished product: 
Beets baked with baby onions, garlic and rosemary. Beet greens braised with balsamic vinegar and leeks sauteed with red onion and Thurn’s double smoked bacon (washed down with a nice Australian cab sav). The baked beets were the best part. Cooking accompanied by Columbus foodcast episode 9, which inspired the choice of Australian wine and brought back some great memories of my new year trip to the Hunter valley.
I picked 13 tomatoes from the garden today and cooked them with squash, onion garlic and fresh herbs (basil and oregano). Plus some parmesan cheese on top – Delicious. Lots more tomatoes to come and the lettuce is ready to start picking, and its raining, so no need to water.
This week I got some parcels in the mail which is always fun. A new cookbook – Super Natural Cooking by Heidi Swanson of 101 cookbooks (I am hoping there are purple potatoes in the market this weekend so I can try her purple potato hedgehogs) and a ‘sprout bag‘ which I have never seen before and am testing out (my previous method was a jam jar covered with nylon netting. It is made of hemp and was described by my Vegan friend as the hippiest thing he has ever heard of!
Also on a sprout theme – an introduction: Baby Butternut, who came from some seeds thrown into the composter which sprouted while I was on vacation. This is my second ‘baby’. The first was a watermelon seedling (rescued from a comfest garbage bag), that died (as Jackie put it) from being over-loved i.e. I watered it too much. I seem to have learned my lesson and so far, Baby Butternut is thriving.
Baby Butternut - so far alive and well.
September 5, 2008
A pesto could be used with any of these dishes and would ‘rescue’ some of those herbs from the ziplock bags.
One from Waitrose Seasons mag (June/July):
80g fresh basil, leaves only
20g fresh mint, leaves only 1 clove garlic, chopped
75g pine nuts (c. 3 oz.)
juice of half a lemon
100ml. (c. 4 fl. oz) extra virgin olive oil.
You could vary this wildly. Sunflower seeds can be used instead of pine nuts. This one is intended for lamb brochettes; cheese could be added if desired.