Delicious

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 cucumbers

When cucumbers are on, you may find you have more than enough for salads, sandwiches and crudite platters. The secret - pickles. Our favourite recipe is from Cornersmith: Recipes from the Cafe and Picklery by Alex Elliott-Howery and James Grant.

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.

How to: use edible flowers

Eating flowers sounds exotic but in fact we do it all the time. Some are disguised, like saffron, which is the dried stigma of the crocus flower; others are obvious, like the gold flowers of zucchini.

How to: use lemon verbena

This herb is loved by cooks for the fragrant citrus scent of its leaves, which at this time of year are fresh and soft. One bonus of adding lemon verbena to everything you can think of – the more you use the better it looks! Robin Powell shares a few ideas.

How to: use your herb harvest

As the growing season draws to a close, our herb gardens are blousy with late summer growth.

How to: use your pea harvest

Peas are one of those crops that can make the home gardener feel smugly self-satisfied because they taste so good fresh from the garden.

In my kitchen garden: Camden, NSW

Mickey Robertson’s kitchen garden at Glenmore House is as beautiful as it is productive, experimental and instructive.

Kale pesto

This tasty paste is a winter standby in the Ross family kitchen. It’s packed full of healthy nutrients, is endlessly versatile and simply delicious.

Lamb and kumara tagine with macademias

Macadamia nuts add a luxurious touch to an easy, slow-cooked winter stew, fragrant with spice.

Lemon and yoghurt cake

We have declared it the Year of the Cake, so are keen to try this lemon cake. It’s from our editor, Robin Powell, who moonlights as food writer.

Lemon Delicious

Self-saucing puddings are a dessert staple at my place through winter, and the tangy, silky lushness of an old-fashioned lemon delicious is a favourite. I like it with icing sugar sprinkled on top and whipped cream on the side, but my kids always vote for the hot/cold thrill of vanilla ice cream as an accompaniment. If you like, instead of serving from a pudding dish, you can cook the puddings in six individual one-cup ovenproof dishes.

Lemons: 3 ways

3 delicious ways to use up your lemons.

Lobster Russian salad

A variety of vegetables, including peas, are mixed with a touch of dill, and folded into home-made mayonnaise to become the perfect partner for seafood, especially shellfish such as lobster or prawns.

Long live the crowns

Now is the time to plant asparagus and rhubarb.

Macadamia nuts: 3 ways

Some ideas to use your macadamias.

Mango, papaya and watermelon salad

Tom Kime says he was first served this vibrant fruit salad in south Vietnam. He loved the combination of spicy ginger, cooling mint, mouth-tingling citrus and sweet ripe tropical fruit.

Mangoes: 3 more ways

More ways to use mango.

Meet: Alex Elliott-Howery

Meet Alex Elliott-Howery, pickler and community builder.To say that Alex Elliott-Howery and her husband James Grant have a café doesn’t begin to tell the story. Cornersmith is not just a café, but a pickling and preserving business and school, and a trading hub for the produce gardeners of Marrickville.

Meet: Matt Purbrick, village life enthusiast

The happiest healthiest people in the world are those who live in simple agricultural communities where life is shared. It’s a way of life that Matt Purbrick and his partner Lentil enjoy in regional Victoria and extoll through their business, Grown and Gathered.

Melon sago with soy milk

Chewy pearls of sago and sweet balls of melon floating in a sweetened sea of soy milk makes for a fresh and easy summer dessert.

Melon: 3 ways

More of our favourite melon recipes.

Mulberries: 3 ways

Mulberries flooding in to the kitchen? Here are some quick and tasty ways to use them.

Olives: 3 ways

Olive glut? Make the most from your harvest with 3 simple ideas.

Orange and whisky self-saucing pudding

What’s not to love about a self-saucing pudding? There’s the magic trick of pouring liquid over batter and having it transform, a short time later, to become a thick, luscious sauce under a fluffy, crisp-topped cake.

Oranges: 3 ways

Glut of oranges? Here's some ways to churn through your bounty.

Papaya and coconut muffins

Here’s a healthy morning tea treat or after-school snack. Muffins with the sweet goodness of fresh papaya. It’s too easy!

Passionfruit sponge

A summery afternoon tea treat to make your grandmother proud.

Passionfruit: 3 ways

Pasta alla norma

 This classic Sicilian vegetarian pasta celebrates the best of late summer’s vegetable harvest. 

Pasta with asparagus and peas

Quite simply this is spring's freshest flavours on a plate!

Pineapple: 3 more ways

Bumper pineapple harvest? Here's 3 simple recipes.

Plum clafoutis

This easy batter pudding, fragrant with late-summer fruit, is delicious warm from the oven, and any leftovers are just as good served cold for a breakfast treat with a dollop of thick yoghurt.

Plums: 3 more ways

Plum tree loaded? Here are our favourite plum recipes.

Pumpkin soup with sherry chantilly

This sweet and fragrant soup has a creamy texture courtesy of potato, and is topped with the luxurious surprise of whipped cream flavoured with cream sherry!

Roasted cauliflower salad

Match our cauliflower salad with roast chicken or barbecued lamb. This will become a winter stalwart - trust us - you have NEVER tasted cauliflower this good!

Salad greens: 3 ways

Salad greens going gang-busters? This is how we eat them.

Spiced lamb on spring greens

Juicy lamb backstraps, rolled in fragrant cumin, barbecued, and sliced over fresh salad. It’s a celebration of spring!

Strawberries: 3 ways

Bumper strawberry plot? This is how we like to eat them!

Strawberry ice cream

The only thing better than fresh strawberries with cream is fresh strawberries turned into ice cream.

Summer pudding

This classic pudding is a simply delicious taste of summer. This is the kind of recipe that reminds us how inventive the cooks of previous generations were in turning leftovers into dinner or dessert, especially bread. 

Sweetcorn: 3 ways

Our recipes to use up that homegrown sweetcorn.

Tomatoes

Wherever you live it’s time to think tomatoes: plan for a summer crop in cool areas, and grow now in warm areas.

Tomatoes al horno

Greg Duncan Powell includes this recipe for tasty baked tomatoes in his book on all things edible in the morning, ‘Breakfast: Food worth getting out of bed for’. 

Tomatoes: 3 ways

Some more recipes for ripe homegrown tomatoes.

Triple Ginger Loaf

Jo Wright is a keen baker (she’s notched up several wins the Royal Easter Show for her cakes!) an avid gardener, a treasured member of Garden Clinic, and for the last three years, has been the trusted baker of goodies for our garden classes. She wowed attendees at our recent Bees and Butterflies workshop with this delicious ginger cake. As we said our goodbyes everyone begged for the recipe. So here it is. Thanks for sharing it Jo!