Limey goodness, part two

I'm one net-savvy bunny, I can tell you, and I must admit that, quite often these days, the internet is my cookbook.

Y'all remember I made some lime marmalade and lime curd recently? I've had (ahem!) limited success with marmalades in the past, so I did my research on how to get a good set and came up with a gem of advice from Dan Lepard of The Guardian. Apparently it's the acidity levels that are the usual suspect when your marmalade won't gel, and a good way to tweak this at home is with good old baking soda. Who knew? (Well, he did, apparently.)

Marmalade's a bit of a kerfuffle but this one was worth the fuss - and no, you can't taste the bicarb.

The lime curd recipe I used was a bit of a bunny original. I've always rather liked the local habit of referring to this stuff as lime honey, and I was curious (a bunny, curious? Quelle surprise!) about whether I could actually add some truth to the name. So I subbed-out some of the sugar for honey in my usual recipe, and I think you can taste it in the result.

Lime Honey (Lime Curd)

4 egg yolks
1/3 cup sugar
2 tablespoons honey
zest of 6 limes
1/3 cup lime juice
80g of room temperature butter, cut into cubes. If your butter is unsalted, add a wee pinch of salt.

1. First find a saucepan and a heatproof bowl that you can plunk in it, which will allow enough room for about 6cm of water to simmer away under it without touching the bowl. If you have a double boiler, lucky you!
2. Pop the saucepan and its water on the heat and bring it to a simmer.
3. Put everything except the butter in your chosen bowl, and whisk to combine.
4. Put the bowl into the saucepan, double-checking that the simmering water isn't touching the bottom.
5. Whisk your mixture constantly until it thickens (this takes up to ten minutes). Make sure your water doesn't decide to boil during this time!
6. Remove the bowl from the saucepan and whisk the butter into your curd, a couple of cubes at a time. Wait until each piece is melted before adding the next lot.
7. Now strain your curd, gently pressing on the zesty bits to make sure you get the most out of it.
8. Bottle in sterilised jars. Don't keep it for more than about a month (because of the egg yolks) and refrigerate once it's opened. I find it tends to disappear rather fast anyway...

Enjoy! I love to nibble mine on toast, scones or pikelets. You can also use it as a dessert topping or, if you want some zesty party treats, bake spoonfuls in little short pastry cases. Just keep an eye on them - the curd burns quickly!

You put the lime in the coconut and drink it all up

I have limes! And, no, I don't need to go to the doctor for that.

I'm quite ridiculously proud of this. Christchurch, you see, isn't exactly the best place to grow citrus. I'm a bunny who likes cooler weather, but unfortunately some of my favourite fruits don't.

However, I've had a certain amount of success on the lime front - I have a standardised Tahitian lime in a pot on my burrow's porch, which is north-facing and very sunny (and beautifully dug if I do say so myself), with an eave to protect my lovely limes from frosts. This year it had a stupendous twenty-five limes on it - on one tiny tree! I'm so happy I could skip.

I also have a kaffir lime on the same porch which is doing equally well, so this bunny might be dabbling in Thai cuisine soon - vege stir fry I think!

My favourite way to consume limes is a simple splash of juice in cool soda water, but I've been making use of the bounty in other ways too. I couldn't resist making some lime curd (or lime honey as we tend to call it around here) and some lovely jars of lime marmalade. Such a productive bunny, I am!

Nibble of toast, anyone?

Get yer garlic in!

I love garlic. I sometimes wonder if there's an Italian bunny in my (of course enormous) family tree.

Garlic is easy to grow, but it does have a couple of foibles. It doesn't like wet feet (who does?) and it likes a nip or two (of frost, that is). It thrives in well-drained, well-fed (but not too rich) soil, with a good dose of winter freeze - and sun - thrown in.

It's pretty easy to remember the basics - tradition has it that you plant on the shortest day, and harvest on the longest. That's because the bulb development of garlic is triggered by the length of the daylight hours. Personally, I harvest my garlic a bit after midsummer as I think it benefits from a bit longer in the soil in my garden conditions, particularly if I'm going to store it.

In reality you can plant garlic anything up to a couple of months either side of midwinter - but you probably should get your garlic-planting skates on soon.

So, first catch your garlic! It's best to buy seed garlic or organic garlic from a local supplier. Imported garlic, which is most of the stuff you'll see in the supermarket, is usually treated to stop it from sprouting - so it's not much use if you want to grow it. Break your bulb into cloves, and select the nicest, biggest, fattest cloves from around the outside of the bulb - these will give you your best, healthiest plants. (Don't waste the rest - you can of course cook with those!)

Plant the cloves into your prepared beds, pointy end up, at about a finger's depth and 20-30cm apart. Then wait! My first lot, planted in May, has been up for a couple of weeks now:

I've got some New Zealand purple garlic in (my favourite) and, for the first time, some enormous cloves of mild elephant garlic (which is actually more closely related to leeks than garlic - go figure). I'm very excited about them!

You can consume garlic as "wet garlic" once the bulbs develop but before the outer layers dry out and become papery. It's gorgeous roasted whole. (At this end of the world that's around late November to early December.) If you want to store them you'll need to leave them be until after Christmas (I usually wait for some nice dry weather in mid January) and then lift them gently (don't just pull the top, it'll probably break off!) and leave them to dry in the sun for a few hours. Clean them up by gently rubbing off the outer layer.

Then you can eat them, store them, save some to replant next winter or even plait them! Just try not to breathe on anyone after a garlic-fest. :-)

Nor'wester

I poked my nose out of the burrow in the pre-dawn this morning to find very different results to my exploratory sniff than I've had recently. It's warm (by that I mean twelve degrees celsius, compared to the minus threes and fours we were having last week). No frost, no ice.

Here in Christchurch our temperatures are very dependent on wind direction. Last week we had southerlies. They don't have to be howlin' a gale to make things pretty icy. This week the wind has turned nor'west, and it's enough to make me start shedding my winter coat. I know better though - this won't last forever.

So I shall enjoy it while it does last, and keep my paws busy doing some of that garden tidying I mentioned. Beautiful days like these in winter are there to be enjoyed, and I'll make the most of the sun in my sleepy winter plot.

On winter and hibernation

Bunnies, of course, don't hibernate. I will admit, however, to a certain lack of energy in the winter months. I've come to recognise over the years that my energy levels are very much in tune with my garden - when it slows and sleeps, so do I. How Zen-bunny is that?

It used to bother me: why didn't I feel like leaping out there and getting those waiting garden jobs done? Had I suddenly morphed into the world's laziest lagomorph?

These days I know that very soon after mid-winter I start to feel the energy waking in my paws - and by early spring you can't stop me from getting out there and digging.

So I don't worry about it any more. After all, there really isn't any other time in the garden year when you can just let things be for a while and know that it's all resting, just like you.

I can make sure I pop out and plant my garlic and broad beans on a sunny day. I know the brassicas won't go over the top if I don't eat them today, because they're chillin' with me and doing what they do slowly in my "natural fridge." If I don't clean the bean frames off, or if I leave the corn stalks standing in a fallow bed, it's not a problem: it may not look the neatest but it's protecting the soil and providing homes for some of the wee overwintering bugs that share my world. Best of all, I can enjoy the warmth of my burrow while plotting and dreaming about the spring and summer months.

By the time it's prudent to start thinking about early crops like peas, spring onions and carrots (mmmm, carrots) , my enthusiasm for getting my paws into the soil is well up and growing.

Thumpthumpthump!

I'm so excited to welcome you to Big Bunny's Garden! I'm really looking forward to the coming garden year and all the great garden goodies I'll be growing.

I can almost taste the spring carrots already...