Native Plants and Spices Archives - Peppermint Ridge Farm

Fresh Honey from Lemon Myrtle Blossoms

April 17, 2017 By prfwebsite Leave a Comment

Autumn 2017 has brought our first harvest of lemon myrtle honey from our 3 hives. Many thanks to Meg Platte from the Bunyip Beekeeping Group for setting up and maintaining the hives for us. The honey does have a distinctive floral taste due to the large crop of lemon myrtle flowers that the bees have been feasting on. We plan to serve the honey in a range of dishes at the Schoolhouse Café such as drizzled over these fresh figs from our neighbour’s old tree.

Because our honey is raw and not heated it retains a long list of nutrients and enzymes said to provide a variety of health benefits and medical uses. Raw honey contains:

antioxidants to keep your cells healthy,

antibacterial and antifungal properties that can kill unwanted bacteria and fungus and has been used to treat wounds ,

phytonutrients that are anti – inflammatory and assist with gut health.

So, a couple of teaspoons a day of this nectar should keep us healthy!

Raw honey is a popular treatment for a sore throat and to treat coughs (see an earlier post here for a Lemon Myrtle and Ginger Tea recipe that would work well with some raw honey). However unpasteurized honey should not be given to babies under 1 year old as it may contain the bacteria that causes botulism.

My father had 70 hives that he managed when I was a child and I have good memories of the delicious honey, however my mother had less happy memories as Dad sometimes processed the honey in our large country kitchen leaving a sticky mess that she was often left to clean!

Have you tried honey made from lemon myrtle blossoms? Do you prefer the taste of raw honey?

Native Tamarind (Diploglottis campellii) Fruits at Peppermint Ridge

April 12, 2017 By Julie Weatherhead Leave a Comment

Our native Small Leaved Tamarind has fruited for the first time and we are excited to be able to use the fruit for the first time in the Schoolhouse for our event on April 23. The bright orange juicy flesh makes delicious sauces and jams with a tart and distinctive tangy taste. We plan to make a tamarind and ginger sauce that will complement both meats and vegetables. The flesh can be removed when the fruit is ripe and frozen until required for use in the kitchen.

We also plan to sow the fresh seed once the fruit is removed to grow these attractive plants to share with other gardeners.

The Small Leaved Tamarind (Diploglottis campellii) is a very rare tree from Queensland and is one of our success stories here in Victoria where it has grown to a shrub about 3 metres high and has been frost and drought tolerant. This plant is an attractive addition to any garden as the bright green pinnate leaves fill the mid space of a garden well. The fruits drop to the ground when ripe and look like the garden floor is strewn with bright orange lollies!

The native Tamarinds are related to the Lychee and they have similar juicy flesh surrounding a large seed that will germinate quickly if freshly sown.

Have you tried the native tamarind? What do you think about its taste?

Making Flour from Lomandra longifolia (Spiny Headed Mat Rush)

March 1, 2017 By Julie Weatherhead

Hi again!

It was a busy summer here at Peppermint Ridge as we’ve moved from monthly events to fortnightly lunches on the 2nd and 4th Sundays of the month (come visit us)!

Our native garden is flourishing and we love this time of year as the lemon myrtles are flowering, giving the bees a lovely nectar meal to feast upon. But this year has been particularly special as we are also seeing our first fruit from our Davidson’s Plums and our blue quandong has a massive fruit set that is swelling fast.

We’re also starting new projects, like this one: drying the seed heads of the Lomandra longifolia (spiny headed mat rush, basket grass). Lomandra longifolia was very useful plant to aboriginal people; they used the leaves to make fine baskets and the seeds to make flour.

We’re hoping to have a go at making flour using the seeds. The seeds are inside the yellow casing and are as large as a grain of rice–it should grind up easily!

Want to have a go at it yourself? Here are our tips for growing and harvesting the seeds.

Tip 1: Cover the seed heads with an old pillow case to catch them as the casing pops open. Will let you know how the little cakes taste when we make them.

Tip 2: Lomandra longifolia is dioecious so you will need 1 male plant to several females to get any seeds.

And if you’re interested in making baskets using this amazing native plant, come along to the Basket Weaving workshop at the farm on April 1. Aboriginal artist Cassie Leatham will be using the leaves of this plant to make the baskets and share her knowledge with you.

Strawberry Gum Bliss Balls

April 12, 2016 By Julie Weatherhead 1 Comment

We have been experimenting with Strawberry Gum (Eucalyptus olida) here at Peppermint Ridge as the dried leaves make a wonderful spice. The fresh leaves are fine to use in cooking too and will keep in a ziplock bag in the fridge for weeks.

Strawberry gum tree in flower. Photo credit: Susan Gordon-Brown.

Strawberry Gum is a very rare tree from Northern New South Wales that we have been propagating here at the Farm. The tree is hardy if you can get a hold of one. Strawberry Gum leaves can be made into a spice by first drying and then grinding the leaves in a food processor – the ground leaves will last for 2 years if kept in a cool, dark place.

The best news about Strawberry Gum is that it tastes great – a bit like vanilla, strawberry, or passionfruit – but it really has a flavour all its own that is hard to describe. This unique flavour comes from an essential oil in the leaf called Methyl Cinnamate, which acts as an enhancer to any dish.

This spice will enhance and draw out flavour to anything with berries, tomato based sauces, dairy or coconut milk dishes such as custards, ice creams, or pannacotta. It also makes a wonderful hot drink when a little is added to your favourite black or green tea.

Use sparingly as the flavour can be strong, you can always add more if the taste is too subtle.

There are amazing health benefits to using the leaves in your cooking. The chemicals found in the leaves are high in antioxidants and the oil is antimicrobial against foodborne human pathogens, food spoilage bacteria, and yeasts assisting in keeping a healthy microbial balance in the human gut. Very important if you have been taking antibiotics or have been unwell.

So there are no negatives to using this plant in the kitchen!

TOP TIP:

Infuse the leaves in hot milk, sugar, and cream to make the base for custard, ice cream, or pannacotta.

Note: coconut or almond milk can be used just as effectively. We like to add a small amount of the chopped dried leaf to black tea for an extra antioxidant and flavour lift.

Here is a recipe to get you inspired–more coming later this week!

Strawberry Gum Bliss Balls

Recipe Type: Dessert

Cuisine: Australian

Author: Julie Weatherhead

Ingredients

200g 70% Cocoa Dark cooking chocolate – melted
1 tsp dried ground Strawberry Gum spice
1 cup pitted dates
2/3 cup toasted ground Macadamia nuts
½ cup desiccated coconut

Instructions

Process dates until smooth.
Add melted chocolate, Strawberry Gum and nuts.
Cool mixture in refrigerator.
Shape into walnut sized balls and roll in coconut.
Store in a clean jar in the refrigerator.
Try not to eat them all at once!!
This recipe can be made very quickly in a food processor that also heats.

Note: If you’d like to taste the wonderful flavours of Strawberry Gum and other native Australian edible plants, come to our Bush Food Flavours Lunch this Sunday, April 17. Bookings available here.

I’d love to hear from you in the comments. Have you tried Strawberry Gum? What do you think?

Illawarra Plums – Another Superfood

July 15, 2015 By Julie Weatherhead 2 Comments

We have just picked many kilos of our Illawarra plums (Podocarpus elatus). The Illawarra Plum is a small plant indigenous to New South Wales and Queensland. It is also called a Brown Pine and has a false fruit which is a fleshy sweet stalk attached to a big stone which makes it easy to harvest the delicious fruit.

Research and testing into the fruit by the CSIRO and Food Science Australia as recently as 2013 (Published in the British Journal of Nutrition June 28) have proven that compared to the blueberry it has more than 3 times the antioxidant activity. The study is exciting because the plums were shown reduce the growth of colon cancer cells and could be very useful in cancer treatments. Other studies at the CSIRO in Adelaide are looking into the ability of the plums to slow the growth & replication of fat cells in our bodies to help with maintaining bodyweight. Add to this that the fruit tastes great fresh and is very juicy!

I plan to make some delicious savoury and sweet sauces to go with the meat and desserts we are planning for our regular monthly lunches here at Peppermint Ridge Farm. The plant is very easy to grow in Victoria as well and has proven to be beautiful garden addition with glossy green leaves and prolific fruit in winter.

So get going and plant some for yourselves. To get fruit you will need to plant both a male and female plant as they are dioecious. You can plant many females to the one male plant. our plum is about 4 metres tall after 8 years.

Recipes using Illawarra Plums:

Jam – just use your favourite berry recipe and replace the berries with the Illawarra Plums.
Pickling – the fruit can be pickled and used on platters and to preserve it for later use.
Strawberry Gum and Port Poached Illawarra Plums – Place 4 Strawberry Gum leaves and 100gm Illawarra Plums in half cup Port, 1/4 cup water, half teaspoon cinnamon, 2 cloves and 1/2 cup brown sugar in a pot. Bring to boil and stir. Reduce heat, and simmer until plums are soft. Serve with Anise Myrtle ice cream/panna cotta, yoghurt or cream.

And here’s my favourite: an Illawarra Plum Sauce. Enjoy!

Illawarra Plum Sauce

Recipe Type: Sauces

Cuisine: Australian

Author: Julie Weatherhead

A delicious sauce to use with any meat or steamed vegetables.

Ingredients

200g Illawarra plums
100g sugar
200ml water
10 chopped leaves or Mountain Pepper or 10 crushed berries or 1 red chilli, sliced
1 Tsp crushed garlic
1/2 onion, diced
1 Tsp brown sugar
3 Tbs macadamia nut oil
1/4 cup white wine vinegar

Instructions

In a small saucepan, add plums, sugar and water.
Bring to the boil and allow to simmer for 20 minutes.
Pour into a blender and puree.
For the sauce, heat macadamia oil in a pan, add diced onion, garlic and pepper/chilli.
Saute until transparent, add plum puree and vinegar and allow mixture to simmer for 15 minutes.
Cool.
Press through sieve for a smooth sauce.

Autumn bush food cropping at Peppermint Ridge Farm

April 29, 2015 By Julie Weatherhead Leave a Comment

Autumn is my favourite time of year at the farm as the days are mild with light soaking rain and the weather very settled. The light seems different and the slanting afternoon light is wonderful viewed from the terrace. The bush food garden is looking its best and with all three layers now well grown and lush.

Cropping has been good so far – we have started to pick the red finger limes and the green ones will follow when they are fat enough. I plan to use these wonderful fruits in a variety of ways. Some of my favourites are to make a finger lime curd with our fresh eggs – we will team this with maybe some lemon myrtle pannacotta or freshly baked meringues with a marshmallow centre or use it as filling for fresh vanilla cupcakes – all delicious. Fingerlime cheesecake is also wonderful – the red zest gives a very interesting addition to the dishes.

Mt Pepper berries just harvested

The Mountain Pepper berry crop is ready for harvest too and each year the number of berries increases. A good thing too because their flavour is quite unique. We dry them slowly and then grind them in a pepper grinder fresh for each dish or use them whole in a sauce to steep the pepper flavour. The leaves are also full of that hot pepper taste all year round. I like to grind them with lemon myrtle leaves to create a lovely herb crumb. Tonight I rubbed that mix into a leg of lamb and slow roasted it for a few hours – quite delicious. The berries will keep in a jar for a long time – that doesn’t happen here as we like to use them in dishes too often. Be creative in your own kitchen with these wonderful plants.

Having your bush food garden and eating it too!

January 6, 2015 By Julie Weatherhead Leave a Comment

The bush food garden here at Peppermint Ridge Farm continues to thrive and we are

Anise Myrtle

enjoying watching all of the fruits fatten and the edible leaves glowing. The anise myrtle has a particular secret. If you eat the the new red leaves you will discover they taste like a soft sweet licorice lolly but without the sugar – bonus. The mature leaves are high in antioxidants, vitamins and minerals so perhaps the immature ones have some of these properties too.

The mature leaves make a wonderfully refreshing tea as well as great ice cream.

One of my interests is in encouraging gardeners to add bush foods to their flower and vegetable gardens. This year we have watched the growth of the finger limes, native blueberries, midyim berries, native currants and pepper berries and continue to propagate these in our bush food nursery.

Some of these fruits have very high nutritional qualities – the currant has very high levels of vitamin C, the pepper berries are high in antioxidants, vitamins and minerals. Not all of the fruits have been tested by food scientists, but anecdotal evidence of the native blueberry discusses upset stomachs from eating too many of them. This could be due to a high level of nutrients or a presence of toxins, so caution in eating untested plants is always advised and never go eating fruits or leaves on forest walks as some plants are proven to be toxic (always buy your edible native plants from a reliable and knowledgeable source).

Not only do the tested fruits taste wonderful, the plants are very attractive additions to garden design. These plants are easily grown organically as they are not susceptible to attack by fungus, bacteria or insects – this is from 16 years of trials here. Some plants need a little protection from strong hot & cold winds and dry soil such as the Mountain Pepper and Lemon Myrtle, bit most are tolerant of tough conditions.

It is a lot of fun making up new recipes for these wonderful plants, and over the Christmas break we made up a new recipe for our macadamia, salted caramel and chocolate tarts. The new base is a bit softer and has a lovely chewy texture which we think is a great improvement on the original recipe. The whole eating experience is one of a toasted macadamia biscuit base, a soft gooey salted caramel centre and a crisp dark chocolate topping. This recipe will feature at our next cooking school class next month.

At Peppermint Ridge Farm we are passionate about Australian native foods and spices. We run bush food cooking classes, tours of our Australian Spice Garden, and foodie events on site in Tynong North, Victoria. We are also available for private functions. Find us on our website: www.peppermintridgefarm.com.au.

Finger Limes and Mountain Pepper growing well at Peppermint Ridge

December 10, 2014 By Julie Weatherhead Leave a Comment

This new summer rain has given a great growth boost to our bush food plants. We will have a great crop of finger limes and mountain pepper and the new anise myrtle plants are growing fast in their pots. I have been experimenting with grinding up the fresh leaves of our native herbs with salt and garlic, ginger would be good too – even better to use the native ginger. These ‘herb crumbs’ spice up any dish.

Anise myrtle with strawberries and rhubarb poached in pomegranate juice

We are doing a lot of experimenting and love anise myrtle – have made an amazing ice cream with it that we teamed with our own strawberries and rhubarb poached in pomegranate juice. Last week we marinated pork belly with anise myrtle before slow cooking it – the result was amazing – it creates quite a different flavour.

That’s the thing about bush foods, the flavours they produce are hard to describe because there is often nothing to compare them to. Strawberry gum is a good example – the oil in the leaf smells a bit of strawberry, passionfruit and vanilla – quite unique. But when you team it with your favourite dishes it creates whole new wonderful flavours that defy description. Try it and let me know if you agree.

Here at Peppermint Ridge we are thinking about how to create a Christmas lunch for our family that is spiced with Australian flavours, we will then carry that on to creating a truly different Australia Day lunch on Monday Jan 26 as our first event for 2015.

I think the finger limes should be great marinating fresh salmon and we love creating fresh sorbets with them. Have a look at some shots I have just taken of some of our crops that are growing fast – finger lime and mountain pepper. I have added a pic of our kangaroo family that doesn’t mind coming up close to the house.

Experimenting with Bush Food at Peppermint Ridge Farm’s Native Creative Cooking School

November 12, 2014 By Julie Weatherhead Leave a Comment

We are always thinking up new ideas here at Peppermint Ridge for using bush foods to encourage others to put these wonderful plants in their gardens. We know that as soon as we increased the diversity of plants in our gardens the diversity of native animals and insects increased too. We now have an exciting array of native birds and animals that visit every day.
The dishes that can be prepared from these plants seem to have no end and we have put together some new ideas for the cooking school here on Saturday November 15. I hope that these ideas will encourage you to have a go yourself.
As we have many people visiting who cannot have gluten we have been experimenting with that issue and found that bush foods accommodate very easily into gluten free dishes.
The dishes we plan to teach people on Saturday are:

Morning tea of Strawberry Gum and fresh apple muffins
Warrigal Greens Pesto – great as a dip or in a wide range of dishes (GF)
Lunch of Chicken San Choy Bao with Lemon Myrtle, Mt Pepper and pickled carrot & garden vegetables (GF)
Native Herb Spice rub and marinade – very versatile (GF)
Garden salad with Lemon Myrtle Dressing (GF)
Desserts will be Native Finger Lime Curd tart and our very popular Anise Myrtle Ice Cream (GF) with rhubarb and strawberries poached in Anise Myrtle leaves and pomegranate juice (GF).

flowers of the native Finger Limes, soon to turn into fruit

What we really enjoy is growing most of the ingredients for these dishes in our gardens and we will pick them at the start of the class- you can’t get any fresher food! The Finger Limes have finished flowering and the tiny fruits are starting to swell. see the pic attached of them in flower. They are a unique Australian Microcitrus and very delicious.

Salted Caramel and Macadamia Tarts

We mustn’t forget that one of the tastiest nuts is the Australian Macadamia – the trees will fruit in Victoria even though it is a tropical zone tree.

Another wonderful sweet treat is the crunchy Macadamia, salted caramel and chocolate tarts that we have been making for visitors.
Happy cooking everyone!

Great new bushfood mushroom sauce

September 9, 2014 By Julie Weatherhead Leave a Comment

My aim is to encourage foodies and gardeners to plant Australian herbs and spice plants into their own gardens and have them ready to harvest every day. I have been using Lemon Myrtle and Mountain Pepper in a wide range of dishes to great effect. I have found the best way is to grind both of the leaves together in a food processor and they are ready to use in many dishes.

Mountain Pepper is an interesting plant. Like many plants they have male and female plants. The flowers on each are quite different. The picture shows the male flowers, they have the stamens that provide the pollen to fertilise the female flowers (which have the stigma to receive the pollen) – these flowers then develop the peppercorns that are dried and used for cooking. However, both male and female plants have lovely green leaves and red stems – all of which have a spicy peppery oil that is delicious in cooking.

Mountain Pepper prefers some protection from frosts and hot winds – provide some summer watering. This recipe uses the pepper leaves. I used it on top of a perfectly cooked steak, but you can use it on chicken and it is great with stir fries, curries, soups, risotto, pasta, fritters and frittatas.

Bushfood Mushroom Sauce

Recipe Type: Sauces

Cuisine: Australian

Author: Julie Weatherhead

Ingredients

2 tbsp ground fresh Lemon Myrtle & Mt Pepper leaves (add more for extra flavour) (if using dried leaves use 1/2 tbsp)
1 clove garlic – crushed
1 white onion – finely chopped
1/2 cup vegetable or chicken stock or white wine
2 cups chopped mixed fresh mushrooms
Salt
Ground Mountain Pepperberries

Instructions

Add a splash of olive oil to a pan and sweat the onion & garlic.
Add mushrooms and cook till slightly softened.
Add stock or wine – bring to simmer and cook until mushrooms are softened, reduce liquid by half.
Add salt & pepper to taste, stir in the Lemon Myrtle & Mt Pepper mix.
Pour onto steak or chicken or vegetable fritters.