A Good Harvest - Recipes from the gardens of Rural Women New Zealand

Released: 2 March 2012

Random House NZ - RRP: $34.99

ipeextracts available

Is your garden bursting with tomatoes or overrun with pumpkins? Are your feijoa or lemon trees dripping with fruit? What on earth do you do with all this fantastic extra produce?

A Good Harvest: Recipes from the gardens of Rural Women New Zealand shows you how to make the most of an abundance of seasonal fruit and vegetables. Practical, easy to use and utterly dependable, these recipes from the collections of members of Rural Women New Zealand include chutneys, jams and pickles, marinades and pie fillings, sauces, cakes and biscuits and more. Step-by-step instructions on bottling, freezing and other preserving methods are clear and easy to follow. A Good Harvest also includes plenty of gardening information, to help readers achieve the bumper crop in the first place. Illustrated with images of rural life, A Good Harvest also includes tips and comments from rural kitchens around the country.

A fabulous follow-up to A Good Spread (2010), it’s a compendium of classic recipes, cooked by real women and handed down the generations.

I made the kumara salad (delicious) from the book last night, the recipe for which follows:

Kumara Salad

Mary Kinder, Kaikoura Branch

6 kumara

4 chopped tomatoes

½ green capsicum

½ red capsicum

2 firm bananas (squeeze a little lemon juice on them)

½ red onion or spring onions, finely chopped

finely chopped herbs to suit

salt and pepper

Peel kumara and cook until tender. Don’t overcook. Cool, then cut into chunks and add the remaining salad ingredients.

Place dressing ingredients in a small pot and blend together well over a gentle heat. Cool. Add to ½ cup good mayonnaise with the juice of an orange. Fold into the kumara mix.