An Alphabet of Fruit - the book!

Thank you to everyone who generously shared their recipes and love of growing, experimenting and cooking fruit with me. I loved seeing the joy of grandparents, children, parents, aunties and friends had in celebrating the seasonal produce of their gardens.

I’m very grateful to the Adelaide Central Market, and the generous fruitiers, for supporting my first residency there and of course the wonderful SALA team who organized it for me. Many thanks to the City of Burnside for selecting me as Artist in Residence too. This book came out of all the marvelous conversations I had during those times.

I’m especially thankful for all those people who still grow fruit and let me photograph it fresh from the tree. (From Open Gardens to those who didn’t know me and I just knocked and their door and asked!)

There are quite a few changes from the blog to the book, but the core idea developed into a 64 page softcover book in full colour released this year.

To purchase, please email me via my contacts page and I will post you a signed copy.

Z for Zakuro

Pomegranates, Oil on canvas, 50 x 40cm

Z is for Zakuro, Japanese for pomegranate. I really could not leave out this fruit. This was one of the first paintings I ever sold, at a charity exihibition for the Independant Arts Foundation. We had local wines and cheeses paired with four different flavours of spiced quince paste I had made. It was a great one night only show that led to me being offered my first solo exhibition.

I love pomegranates bejeweling a warm salad with cumin and hot paprika roasted pumpkin, couscous, dried jujubes, dates or apple, garlic pepitas, pistachios, a squeeze of orange and all it’s zest, tossed together with chopped mint and corriander.

It’s one of those recipes that changes with whatever you have in the fridge at the time. Do you have spinach growing? Slice that up and throw it in the freshly cooked couscous, that will be enough to wilt it. Don’t have pumpkin? Use carrots, especially those lovely multicoloured heritage ones.

Absolutely delicious with lamb, tender steak or turkey.

Below is the pair to the painting at the top. I’m so glad they both went to a family who said, “Oh I remember when I picked pomegrates in my Nonna’s garden…” I have heard so many of those stories over the years and I hope this series encourages you all to continue planting fruit trees so that your grandchildren will be able to say …I remember when…..

Y for Yaban Mersini

Blueberries, Oil on linen, 36 x 36cm

Y is for Yaban Mersini, Turkish for blueberry. I always love fresh fruit, but frozen berries are so versatile! (Although I would love someone in the industry to find a non-plastic package for them)

After yesterday’s adult beverage, here’s a drink perfect for children shared by Adele who turned 8 this year. Thank you for sharing Adele!

Blueberry smoothie

Ingredients

Frozen bananas

Frozen blueberries, or other frozen berries of your choice

Milk

Cacao powder

Method

Peel and cut 2 bananas into chunks and freeze overnight.

Blitz bananas and berries together, add milk and cacao powder to taste until a thick drinking consistency is achieved. Adele advises drink with a large reusable straw.

If you would like a soft fruit ice-cream, Jeremy recommends using just the frozen bananas and berries blitzed together. Serve immediately.

X for Xigua

Xigua, Oil on canvas, 102 x 81cm

X is for Xigua, Watermelon in Chinese. Next time I might use Xylocarp or coconut, which is loosely known as a nut, seed and fruit! Actually it’s categorized as a fibrous one seeded drupe.

In the ‘80’s I thought I was the height of sophistication when I served watermelon, mint and Champagne frozen cocktails at summer parties in the garden. As a young married, the party themes were fun, elaborate, big hair, shoulder pads, lots of shiny material and the food preparation would often take days. It was so different from my family’s style of cooking which revolved around a simple mantra. “How can you feed as many people as possible, as economically as you can, with the minimum of preparation, using the food growing in the garden or currently in season?”

That’s why I love the idea of using the whole watermelon, including the rind. Visitors to the Alphabet Fruit at the Central Market told me of Chinese watermelon rind soup and pickles and I was reminded of these a few nights ago, watching reruns of Poh’s Kitchen where she shared her soup recipe. For Poh’s soup go to https://www.abc.net.au/tv/pohskitchen/stories/s3054058.htm and for pickles go to https://migrainereliefrecipes.com/watermelon-rind-pickles/

If you want to try the watermelon cocktail there are two ways to go about it. One is to mix your ingedients together and then freeze it, scraping it with a fork as you would a granita before you serve it. The other is to pop cubes of watermelon in the freezer for about 4 hours, then blitz them, spoon into a glass, pour over champagne and decorate with mint sprigs. I like it without adding extra sugar, but you could rim your glasses with it, before you start, if you like. For children, substitute lemonade or mineral water instead of champagne and I’d probable add the mint to the processore with the fruit, blitzing it all together. Very refreshing!

W for Wisnie

White cherries, Oil on linen, 36 x 36cm

White cherries are called wisnie in Polish and there are many versions of their traditional Cherry Cake. I’ll share the quick and easy one…no surprises there!

Simple Cherry Cake

Ingredients

½ cup flour

100g sugar

30g tablespoons butter

1 cup milk

2 egg

½ tsp baking powder

Pinch of salt

400g fresh cherries, with pits removed

Powdered sugar to serve.

Method

Clean the cherries and remove pits, pat dry, arrange them in a buttered tray, not one with a quick release bottom or your mix will dribble out!

Mix the flour, eggs, sugar, salt 20g of the melted butter, add the milk and stir until you make a runny dough. Pour over the cherries, dot with remaining butter and bake in a preheated 180C oven for 60 minutes until golden and cooked through.

Once cool, dust with icing sugar and serve.

The Polish version puts the dough in first, then the cherries and a sweet crumble on top.

White currants, Oil on linen, 36 x 36cm

I was lucky enough to photograph these gorgeous white currants in the Adelaide Hills, and painted them for the Tastes of Summer series, but I’ve never really cooked with them. Does anyone have any recipes?

V for Verykokkia

Apricots, Oil on linen, 150 x 150cm

V is for Verykokkia or apricot in Greek.

Growing up we had two apricot trees, the Moorepark ripened between Christmas and New Year and this was always the time to preserve the unblemished fruit. Mum would sing and tell us stories of our family history to entertain us as our smaller hands gently pushed the halved fruit deep into the long jars.

The second tree ripened later and often had a blemished skin, but the flavour was even more intense and perfect for jamming or sun drying on old doors and trestles strewn across the lawn. It put a bit of a dampener on my brother’s cricket practise. At the end of the year there was still lots of dried fruit for Christmas treats like Apricot Balls, Apricot Nut Bars, Apricot Chocolate Fingers and Apricots in Gingersnap wraps.

There was always enough to share with neighbours and lots of ‘seconds’ to find a use for. Simple stewed fruit with cream after dinner was a staple in the summer, but in the winter the bounty stored in the pantry cupboard would be served up in apricot chicken, pies and apricot short cakes.

Short cakes were made with clean dripping or lard and were a tasty and economical dessert for a large family. They can be filled with any seasonal fruit.

Apricot  Shortcake

Ingredients

1 cup dripping, melted but not hot

1 tablespoon vinegar, or lemon juice

3 cups SR flour, sifted

½ cup milk

2 beaten eggs

½ cup sugar

2 cups well drained stewed apricots.

Method

Preheat oven to 180C

Mix dripping, vinegar and milk, add to flour and sugar, then mix in beaten eggs.

Pat 2/3rds into a greased and floured pastry tin pushing up to form the sides quite thickly, don’t make the corners too thin. Add fruit to centre and pat the reserved 1/3 into a circle for the top. This is a very soft dough so fill and top quickly so the dough base doesn’t go soggy. Pierce the top to allow steam to escape.

Cook in preheated oven for 45-60min till golden. Let stand for 10 minutes, serve with cream or icecream.

U for Uva

Tempranillo, Oil on linen, 150 x 100

I couldn’t travel to Jamaica to paint ugli fruit, which is a very knobbly citrus, so changing languages again was a great way to get around that. Uzum is Turkish for grapes and in Spanish it’s uva, so it is only right that this first painting is of the Spanish variety Tempranillo, from the Before the Wine Series. Just for balance here’s a white.

Savignon Blanc, Oil on canvas, 90 x 120cm

With wine such a perfect way to use a grape, do we even need a recipe? Just fill a glass and kick back!

Still here are a few ideas. There is the classic cheese and grapes platter at the end of a superb meal, or as the perfect picnic on a summer afternoon. Maggie B likes to press fresh grapes into focacia dough before baking, instead of using olives. Another of her ideas is a red and green grape salad with boccincino, roasted pancetta and garlic, rocket, whitlof, walnuts, capers, thyme, verjuice, oil and lemon juice.

Turning on the oven in summer is a no-no for me, so an easier swap for the salty kick is to go for a really old crumbly vintage cheddar, red and green grapes, whichever green leaves suit your fancy, lemon, basil and if you are wanting a kick, a little chilli infused oil and spicy or smokey nuts.

T for Toot

Mulberries, Oil on linen, 36 x 36cm

T is for Toot, mulberries in Persian. Yes, there are lots of other fruit I could have used tamarillos, tangerines, tao sura or tomatoes, (thank you Diana for the fabulous tomato recipe), but mulberries have wonderful memories for me.

As a small child I would climb my grandmother’s mulberry tree in knickers and a singlet and come down covered in deep purple stains, with berries in a toy bucket and my tummy full. Did you know if you rub green mulberries on your stained fingers the colour will come off?

Mum would make mulberry jam and then in the deep winter Nanna would take out the wire tart forms, whip up a quick short pastry, blind bake it, spread it with jam, pop it back in the oven and serve it with rich pouring cream. Definitely not Masterchef, Nanna was nobody’s definition of a good cook, but totally delicious if eaten hot!

The wire frames ensured lots of heat aroung the pastry and a crisp crumbly tart.

S for Strawberries

Strawberries, Oil on canvas, 90 x 90cm

This painting was part of a ‘Tastes of Summer’ series I created 10 years ago as part of a Christmas exhibition for Greenhill Galleries. The series was a celebration of berries, you will see a few more before we finish the Alphabet of Fruit, which just wouldn’t be complete without a fruit salad.

So here’s a golden oldie from the ‘South Australian Education Department’s Manual Of Domestic Art, (cookery)’, my mother’s text book from 1938. I’ve translated it from imperial to metric measurements. It’s HUGE quantities by current standards, but Mum had 11 siblings! So probably just right, if you could get the fruit.

Fruit Salad

Ingredients

1 Pineapple, peeled, eyes removed, cut into small pieces

6 bananas, peeled and cut in rings

3 oranges, peeled, cut into small pieces, remove pips

12 passionfruit, halved and pulp scooped out

6 apples, pare, core and dice

500 g strawberries, washed and hulled

castor sugar

275 ml whipped cream

Method

Mix all the fruit together, or layer in a glass bowl and sprinkle each layer with castor sugar. Let stand an hour before using. Decorate with whipped cream, sweetened and flavoured, and put it through a forcing bag with a rose pipe.

R for Raspberries

Raspberries, Oil on canvas 50 x 40cm

Raspberries are one of my favourite fruits and frankly rarely make it into a cooked form…I just gobble them up that quickly! Good friends make raspberry and white chocolate muffins and cakes and local chocolateers make the most delicious dark chocolate and dried raspberry bark.

The fruit in this painting was courtesy of Erin’s Mum’s Adelaide Hills raspberry patch. There is nothing quite like being able to photograph the fruit on the vine or just picked, the bloom, tiny connective hairs and the drying torus are lost once packaged for sale. Did you know each raspberry is actually an aggregate cluster of many tiny fruit called drupelets?

Raspberries, Oil on canvas, 75 x 150cm

My friends know I’m not a cake baker, so this muffin version is from Australian Best Recipes. Please send me your version!

Raspberry and White Chocolate Muffins

Ingredients

3 cups self-raising flour sifted

1 cup caster sugar

125 g white chocolate chips

125 g butter melted

1 egg

1 cup milk

1/2 cup cream (I would swap for buttermilk)

1 tsp vanilla essence (I’d add the zest of a lemon too)

200 g frozen raspberries

12 fresh raspberries *to decorate

Method

Pre heat oven to 200C and set out your muffin trays with cupcake liners. I like mini muffins rather than huge ones.

Sift flour, then add dry ingredients.

Melt butter, add all ingredients, except raspberries, and mix well.

Add frozen raspberries and gently fold into mixture, be careful not to over mix.

Spoon into liners, 3/4 full.

Bake at 200C for 22-25 minutes, less if you make mini ones.

Q for Quinces, part two

Last of the season, quince, Oil on canvas, 100 x 75cm

After the leaves of autumn had fallen, I was focused on capturing the winter lichen in an Adelaide Hills orchard, and there it was, the last gift of the season.

Here’s part two of my quince jelly and quince paste recipe.

Quince Paste

Cut reserved cooked quinces, from the jelly recipe, into quarters and trim off core sections. Be sure to discard the granular area around the core. If you wish the skin will easily peel off at this stage, but often I don’t bother as it will be blended.

Weigh fruit, or just measure 1 cup fruit to scant ½ cup sugar.

Puree thoroughly with a stick blender.

Return to large saucepan and mix in sugar stirring constantly until dissolved. If necessary add a very little liquid (1/4 cup) of your choice, could be brandy, red wine or boiled water. Bring to a simmer. Make sure to use a long handled spoon to stir!

Simmer slowly for about 10-15 minutes, stirring constantly until sugar is completely dissolved and puree is very thick. You should not hear the scratch of sugar on the bottom of the pan and you should be able to see the trail of your spoon on the base of the pan. Mix should ‘plop’ thickly.

Line a large roasting pan with wax paper and pour in the mix, level with a spatula to about 2-3 cm thick.

Let dry for 2-3 days, you can set it in the sun and turn it over so both sides dry. Wrap in wax paper and put in airtight container in a cool dark place. Do not refrigerate as this may cause crystalization. This will last for at least 2-3 years. The flavour gets even better as it matures, if you can wait that long!

Other options

Just serve the fruit from the jelly recipe with icecream.

Make a rustic tart with the sliced fruit.

Blend and dehydrate to make quince leather.

Q for Quinces

Quinces, afternoon light, Oil on canvas, 90 x 90cm, Advertiser Contemporary Art Award finalist 2007

Now don’t believe anyone who wants you to cut up quinces, cook and strain through muslin, before making jelly or quince paste (sorry Maggie!). There’s a much easier process and you end up with beautiful jars of clear ruby jelly and a tray of delicious quince paste, almost no waste and all you need is quinces, sugar and water. Today is part one of a two day ‘Q’ blog.

Quince Jelly

See how many quinces will fit whole into your largest jamming pan in a single layer without jamming them in. If they have a little room to move they won’t stick & burn.

Take out the quinces, wash and rub to remove their down and weigh them.

Sugar is 75% the weight of fruit

Fruit weight is 75% of the water in litres

Example 2ltrs water, 1.5k fruit, 1.125k sugar.

Put water & sugar into pan and stir until sugar is totally dissolved over low heat.

Add whole quinces and bring to gentle simmer.

Cook for 2-3 hours without stirring, occasionally gently turn quinces to ensure even cooking. Time is totally dependent on the variety and freshness of your quinces and the time of the season. Early pineapple quinces may only need 2 hours and late varieties, that have been picked for a while may need closer to 4.

Test for set on a china plate, when it wrinkles it’s ready. Take jam off the heat as you test. Believe it or not it’s easy to overcook in the last 15 minutes.

Lift out whole quinces carefully. Skim any impurities from the surface.

Pour jelly into warm sterile jars, seal with cellophane jam tops & set aside to cool.

Tomorrow I’ll share how to make quince paste from the cooked fruit.

P for Peaches

Xian tao, peach of immortality, Oil on linen, 122 x 92cm

It’s hard to beat peaches, sweet white or golden yellow, warm from the sun and juice dripping down your chin, but canned or home preserved peaches enable us to enjoy season’s bounty all year long. This is a super easy recipe you can make with the youngest child and staples easily found in most pantries.

Anne’s Peach Dump Cake

Ingredients

470g pkt butter or vanilla cake

440g can peaches in juice

125g butter melted

½ cup milk

1 teaspoon of vanilla paste

Icing sugar to dust

Cream or vanilla custard to serve, optional

Method

Preheat oven to 180C Grease a 6 cup ovenproof dish.

Spread the peaches and juice evenly over the base of the prepared pan.

Spread the dry cake mix evenly over the peaches.

Combine butter, milk and vanilla paste and pour evenly over the top.

Bake for 45 minutes or until the top is golden brown and cooked through.

Set aside to cool slightly, dust with icing sugar and serve.

O for Orange

‘In the midst of winter..’ Oil on on canvas, 90 x 120cm Best in Show recipient Walkerville Art Show 2019

The full title for this painting is a quote by I have held close in some blue times “In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invinsible summer” Albert Camus.

Mental health, good nutrition and a connectedness to the food you consume have been linked in my life, with one being an indicator of the other. So I ask you all, are you ok? Spoil yourself a little and do some slow cooking. Maybe store up some of winter’s citrus abundance for a future, summer morning, breakfast.

Yes, I’m talking marmalade! My marmalade making days were changed forever by a book called ‘A Year in a Bottle’ by Sally Wise. The old ‘slice thinly, cover with sugar and water, and leave overnight method ‘ went out. Sally’s method is faster and can be adapted to any combination of citrus you have in your garden. I usually have a lot of fruit to process and double up on the recipe below, but I have a very large jam pot!

Orange Marmalade

Ingredients

500g oranges, freshly picked

1 lemon, freshly picked

2 cups freshly squeezed orange juice (from real oranges not out of a bottle)

4 cups water

1.5kg sugar

Method

Cut fruit and remove seeds, put through a mincer, food processor or chop very finely.

Place in a large saucepan with water and orange juice. Bring to the boil, turn down to a slow boil, and cook till the fruit is soft. Add sugar off the heat and stir until totally dissolved. Bring back to the heat and boil hard for about 25 minutes.

Test for set by placing a teaspoonful on a galss or china plate, rest a minute and push with a finger from the side into the centre. If the marmalade wrinkles, it will set.

Allow to stand for 10 minutes before pouring into warm sterilised jars. Seal immediately.

Makes aproximately 1.5kg marmalade, ready to eat at once.

Variation

Swap oranges for cumquats and orange juice for mandarin juice. This results in a marmalade so delicious is was labled Heavenly Marmalade by children I know and became a fundraising bake sale favourite.

N for Nectarine

Wrong time rain, Oil on canvas, 60 x 76cm Finalist Advertiser Contemporary Artists, 2007

Thirteen years ago I participated in my first SALA (if I recall correctly) and two pieces were nominated as finalists in the Advertiser Contemporary Art Award. I was so excited. My first selection as a finalist, it gave me such a boost! Thank you SALA for encouraging me and so many others over the years.

As children we grew up with white nectarines in the backyard, but these gold fleshed beauties are from my sister’s tree. She had been watching them ripen with delight, but one day a summer rain came at just the wrong time and the fruit began to split before our dismayed eyes.

My brother was the first to serve me roasted stone fruit. Normally we just stewed, preserved, jammed or ate them fresh. These firm yellow fleshed nectarines are perfect for baking at 180C, halved, stone removed, cut side up. Sprinkle them with brown sugar, herbs of your choice and a squeeze of juice, orange or mandarine, lemon, cumquat. Nestle in your old vanilla pods and maybe cinnamon quills. I love thyme and a bit of black pepper, or pepperberry.

Serve with your favourite icecream, sorbet, yogurt, a splash of liqueur, flame it in brandy….the options are endless…..experiment next summer and let me know your favourite combinations.

M for Mango

Mangoes, Oil on canvas, 100 x 100cm

If there ever was a fruit that tasted like summer on a plate, it’s the mango. This dish has become a tradition at Christmas, so refreshing and light!

Chilli Prawns in Syrup with Mango

Ingredients Syrup

500g white sugar

250ml water

100g chopped ginger

1 stalk of lemon grass, bruised and chopped

3 cloves garlic, chopped

3 red chillies, chopped

1 tblsp fish sauce

1/2 tblsp sesame oil

Place all ingredients except fish sauce and sesame oil in saucepan, gently heat to a simmer and reduce till syrupy. Remove from heat and add fish sauce and sesame oil. This can be made ahead and stored in the fridge until needed.

Salad ingredients

4-6 peeled green prawns per person

Red capsicum, deseeded and cut in thin strips

Mango, peeled and cut in thin strips

Bunch of coriander, picked leaves

Light olive oil

Salad greens of your choice

Warm oil in pan and gently cook prawns. Combine prawns, mango, capsicum, and coriander. Add syrup to taste and toss lightly.

Serve on a bed of salad greens.

L for lemon

Le mons, Oil on wooden board, 20 x 20cm

This is one fruit I can’t cook without. So many recipes need the juice, zest, fresh or preserved of lemons. Drinks, salads, dark green vegies, stir fries, marinades, cakes, biscuits and sweets … almost everything is better with lemon!

My Mum is once again ahead of the trends in healthy foods, and every morning has the juice of 1/2 a lemon is warm water half an hour before breakfast every day. This is now often advised as promoting gut health.

Tangy lemon curd in little tarts are a favourite treat. Many recipes have more eggs, sugar and butter and less lemon. As someone who is often cooking for large family events or fundraisers I like a much more cost effective, less rich and zingier product which packs a punch in a small bite-size serve.

Lemon Curd

Ingredients

Juice of 2 lemons

Very finely grated zest of 1 ½ lemons

2 eggs, whisked lightly

¾ cup of sugar

125 g butter, cubed

1 tsp cornflour

Method

Make a slurry with the cornflour and lemon juice.

Over a low heat combine, eggs, sugar, butter and lemon zest in a small saucepan until butter is melted. Add lemon juice slurry and whisk until the mixture thickens.

Pour into sterilised jars, seal and keep in the fridge. Use within a fortnight.

Makes about 2 cups.

The lemon zest is optional, but I love the extra tang it gives. If you need a super smooth curd, pass the thickened mixture through a fine sieve prior to pouring it into jars.

Friends also shared a lovely recipe for Lemon Butter Cookies found on the delish.com site Try it! It will quickly become a family favourite.

K is for Kiwi

Kiwiberries with kiwi fruit, Oil on wood panel, 20 x 20cm

Kiwiberries are about the size of a gooseberry or large grape and have a deep purple hue under their bronze skin. They make a delightful contrast to their larger cousins when decorating the classic kiwi dessert - a pavlova.

Now have to make a confession, I come from a large family with many aunties and when we all got together for family celebrations each sister or sister inlaw would make their party-plate to bring and share and heaven help you should you step on your auntie’s cooking turf! Pavlovas and upsidedown cakes were Aunty Penny’s forte, but my Mum made lemon meringue pie, so that’s what I learnt. Even among my sisters, we each had specialities, one sister made fancy cakes, another pikelets and I made biscuits. So I have never made a pavlova!

I was lucky enough to have a close friend who was the pavlova queen and now her nephew has stepped up to the plate, so this is Joe’s favourite pavlova recipe.

Ingredients Pavlova base

4 egg whites, room temperature

250 g castor sugar

2 tsp cornflour

1 tsp white vinegar

1 tsp vanilla extract, optional

Pinch salt

Ingredients Filling

300 mls thickened cream

1 Tsp vanilla extract

1 tblsp sugar, optional

Plus 3-4 kiwi fruit, peeled and sliced

Method

Preheat oven to 180C fan forced. Surprising, but he assures me it works!

Line a flat baking tray with baking paper, mark out a 20cm circle and turn over the paper.

In a scrupulously clean glass or metal bowl, whip egg whites with a pinch of salt into soft peaks on low speed. Slowly add sugar, a tablespoon at a time and turn to medium speed to finish beating to glossy stiff peaks. Rub a little mixture between your fingers to check that sugar is fully dissolved.

Make a slurry with cornflour and vinegar, fold into egg whites with vanilla, (optional)

Carefully transfer egg whites to tray and quickly, gently form into a circle using your premarked guide, creating a higher rim around the sides as you go. Place in the centre of the oven and immediately turn the temperature down to 150C. Cook for 75 minutes, turn the oven off and crack open the oven door. Leave the base to cool down completely in the oven.

Filling

Transfer the base to your serving plate. Whip cream, with vanilla and sugar to soft peaks. Mound into the centre of the base and top with rounds of fresh kiwi fruit.

On the other hand, if you are like me, you’ll just take the kiwi fruit, cut it in half and eat it with a teaspoon!

J for JuJube

A Balanced Diet, JuJube, Oil on wooden panel, 20 x 15cm

JuJubes are also known as a red date, and in their dried form are very similar, although with a lighter, more delicate, flavour. They have a crisp texture when raw, like a firm apple, with a similar flavour. Jujubes have a largish central seed and a gorgeous burnished copper skin when ripe.

You could swap in dried Jujubes in recipies using dates, a great base for a healthy snack ball. Swap fresh JuJubes for apples if you have access to enough.

I roasted diced fresh jujubes with pumpkin sprinkled with cumin and hot paprika and included mixed them into wild rice, added pistachios and chopped mint and served with roast turkey or pork.

Best place to find them? The farmer’s market at Wayville Show Grounds on a Sunday morning. (No disclaimer required!)

I for Igo

Igo, Spanish for figs.

I’ve never eaten an imbe, the subtropical African mangotseen, the rind is quite delicate so it’s not usually grown commercially. So I decided ‘I’ is for igo, Spanish for fig.

In 2017 while I was artist in residence at the Adelaide Central Markets a young girl, maybe seven years old, approached me with her family’s way of eating figs. “I don’t know if it’s really a recipe” she said, “it’s really easy. My favourite thing is what my Grandma taught me, smashed figs on hot crumpets, drizzled with honey.”

Perfect, simple and delicious. My mum taught me you needed to smoosh figs together to increase the sweetness. Yes I know figs are technically flowers not fruit, but it’s my blog and I’m making up the rules as I go! This was such a lovely memory I really wanted to include it. Thank you mystery child!