Delicious

Anchovy and chilli dressing

This recipe, from River Cottage, is a great sauce for broccoli, cauliflower or kale.

Apples: 3 ways

More recipes for your apple harvest.

Asparagus: 3 ways

Asparagus growing like wild fire? Then you'll need some tasty ideas. Here are 3 of our favourites. 

Baked apples with blueberry compote

Gabriel Gate says he was raised in a family that loved eating fruit - there were more than 20 fruit trees in the garden around his house. No surprise then, that he prefers a fruit dessert like these delicious baked apples to a rich cake or pudding at the end of a special-occasion meal.

Barbecued sweetcorn with chilli butter

Fire up the barbie for this simple way to make the most of the natural sweetness of just-picked sweetcorn.

Broad bean custard

The broad bean’s short and sweet season is celebrated by Italian home cooks, chefs and us! In this recipe Sydney restaurateur, Lucio Galletto turns the humble bean into something really special. It’s from his new book ‘Lucio’s Ligurian Kitchen’.

Broad Beans: 3 ways

Some more recipes for your broad bean harvest.

Brussels sprouts: 3 ways

More recipes for Brussels sprouts.

Caramel pineapple upside-down cake

Sweet pineapple and toasty coconut are always a happy combination and they make this cake mouth-wateringly delicious.

Cauliflower soup

Warm up with this wintery soup.

Chinese style Brussels sprouts

The European sprout gets an Asian makeover in this tasty stir fry.

Crepes Suzette

Light crepes bathed in a warm, sweet orange sauce heady with liqueur, served on a dramatically flaming dish: no wonder this is such a famous dessert!

Delicious: Carrot, fennel and thyme salad

Yes, it’s thyme for a salad!

Delicious: Garden pea risotto

One of my favourite gardens in Victoria is Picardy, a romantic French provincial style garden in the picturesque hills of Neerim. Marian and Bryce Somes had always been Francophiles - mad for French food, in love with the language - but it was a trip to France to celebrate a significant birthday year in 1986 that confirmed a passion for French style.

Delicious: How to roast a duck

When travellers on the Ross Garden Tours Victoria tour sat at Annie Smithers’ table and ate her roast duck salad there were two big questions: how did you do that; and can you do it for us again tomorrow! Here she reveals her secrets.

Delicious: Lime Posset

This ancient British dessert is a marvel of alchemy. With just four ingredients and no skill required, it sets to a sweet and tart silky softness.

Delicious: Strawberry and rhubarb jam

Rhubarb and strawberries are perfect partners – in pies, crumbles, and in this jam. Here Robin Powell shares her Strawberry and rhubarb jam recipe with us.

Delicious: Sweet potato and chickpea curry

Sweet potato and chickpea curry is comfort food of the first order - warming, satisfying and dead-simple.

Delicious: Warrigal greens with fettuccine

Make this fresh green sauce ahead of time for quick summer dinners. It will keep for a week in the fridge.

Eggplant salad with chilli and mint

Bill Granger says that grilled food with salad is still his favourite way with eating despite his father having had less than chefly barbecuing skills. “My dad had a bright orange barbecue that consistently worked miracles – every single item that came out of it was charred black on the outside but remained basically raw on the inside.”

Eggplant: 3 ways

Fennel and asparagus salad

This salad is a fresh, crunchy starter or a refreshing follow-up to a rich and hearty main meal. The combination of zingy herbs, aniseedy fennel and citrus tang offers an explosion of flavour.

Fig and raspberry crostata

Trust the Italians to come up with the world’s easiest pie.

Fish baked in paper with tomatoes and olives

These fragrant fish parcels are tasty, healthy and quick. And as a bonus, there’s no washing up!

Gazpacho

The freshness of fennel and lemon add a modern zing to our favourite cold soup for hot days.

Ginger: 3 ways

More recipes for ginger!

Homegrown: Sweet Potato

This delicious tuber is one of the least-demanding vegetables in the patch. All it wants is sun and space.

Hot and sour prawn soup, Tom yum goong

With the fragrance of kaffir lime and lemongrass, the heat of ginger and chilli, and the tang of fresh lime juice this soup is mouth-wateringly good.

How to: cook spinach pie

In Greece local cooks prefer to make their spanokopita (spinach pie) with the mix of wild greens known as horta. To do the same from you own garden pick a mix of spinach, silverbeet, sorrel, endive or other dark leafy greens

How to: cook with bayleaves

The winter cook’s herb supply is much depleted but the noble bay tree is still offering leaves to flavour savoury and sweet dishes. Robin Powell shares some favourites.

How to: cook with broad beans

Cast yourself back a thousand years and the humble broad bean could have made you king of France for the day! 

How to: cook with cherries

Even though only gardeners in cold climates will be picking their own cherries over the summer, we’ll all find ways to celebrate Christmas with a fruit that is still stubbornly, deliciously seasonal.

How to: cook with lavender

Lavender’s flatmate from the hot dry rocky spots of the Mediterranean is rosemary. Both share a fabulous fragrance that scents the garden, especially when summer’s heat draws out the essential oils in the foliage. And both can be thugs in the kitchen: cooks must proceed with caution.

How to: cook with wattleseed

It’s said that there is a wattle in flower somewhere in Australia every day of the year. Not all of the seed of these 1000-odd species are edible, indeed some a slightly toxic, but there is evidence that aborigines ate the seeds from at least 120 of them. Wattleseed has a unique fragrance and flavour – mocha-chocolateyy, smoky and nutty all at once.

How to: deal with zucchini overflow

What we love about growing zucchini – it is so generous you need to harvest every day all through the summer – is what drives us crazy about growing zucchini - you have to harvest every day all through the summer! Around about now gardeners are on the lookout for some clever new ways with zucchini.

How to: herb feast

Skye, Eden and Isla love to collect fresh herbs from the garden to add to dinner. Herbs are easy to grow: a perfectly delicious project for the summer holidays.

How to: make a garden-grown smoothie

How do we get through all the greens we grow in the garden? We drink armfuls of them – as a green smoothie for lunch a few times a week. Call it a Ross family secret for more energy and verve! 

How to: make comfrey tea

This home-grown fertiliser contains more potash, and more nitrogen, than commercial feeds, and costs only the price of a bucket and its water. Your vegetables will love it, especially your tomatoes.

How to: make fruit ice-blocks

When it’s sweltering outside and the kids need some cool relief, homemade fruity ice-blocks are the answer. When they’ve been demolished, ask the children to help make a new batch, ready for the next hot afternoon.

How to: make pistou

The difference between a pistou and a pesto is pine nuts. The Italians use them, and the French (who took up the basil and garlic paste when Italian migrants moved into Provence in the 19th century) don’t. Typically a pistou is served with a soup made from summer vegetables and white beans.

How to: make rose petal jam

Life’s good when we stop to smell the roses; and even better when we stop to eat them! Scones fresh from the oven, spread with fragrant rose petal jam and cream, and shared with friends in the garden: what could be finer! 

How to: make rosella jam

Rosella is a fascinating member of the hibiscus family grown for its delicious calyx which makes irresistible jam. Linda Ross tells how it’s done.

How to: make sweet chilli jam

This recipe is easy to increase to meet your chilli surplus. Every year I team up with my father-in-law for our Chilli Jam Day - We turn six kilograms of chilli into 25 jars of delicious ruby-red sticky jam. 

How to: make tabouli

I like a tabouli that is mostly green with herbs, not beige with grains, but you can adjust the balance to suit your own palate. Serve it with lamb backstraps that have been rubbed with ground cumin, olive oil and salt then barbecued. Add a dollop of yoghurt or baba ganoush for a sensational late summer meal.

How to: make the most of mint

The zingy freshness of mint smells of summer. It adds life and lightness to salads, both sweet and savoury and is indispensable in any number of summer cocktails and mocktails.

How to: make tomato ketchup

Try this ketchup just once and you and the kids will never go back to shop-bought again. Spice it up with chilli or smoked paprika if you like. The recipe makes six 250ml jars.If you are cooking to share with friends and consume within weeks there is no need to heat process the sauce, but if you’d like to store the ketchup for up to two years, you need to protect against bacterial growth by heat-processing

How to: make vegetable stock

If you planted out root vegetables in early autumn you’ll be harvesting them now. While roots make great side dishes for whatever you’re cooking for dinner, your home-grown produce also makes the best stock. 

How to: mix the best salad dressings

Dress summer salads fresh from the garden in something new. We asked three of our favourite cooks to share their best-ever dressing.

How to: pickle olives

Olives are one of those foods that conjure a sense of awe about the culinary curiosity of our forebears. Now is the time to make like the ancients and soak down olives for enjoying over winter. 

How to: preserve lemons

Winter’s gorgeous harvest of lemons offers steaming lemon delicious puddings, and zesty additions to juices, stews, and salad dressings. But to really extend the glory of the harvest, try preserving the lemons in salt to use for the rest of the year.