Summer's bounty

Late summer is a wonderful time for fresh produce – tomatoes, grapes, figs, apples – all the wonders of summer are at their best as summer rolls into autumn.

This summer has been odd, largely missing in action. Everyone knows that the weather patterns have been deranged by a CIA plot. They are testing a death ray in the skies over southeast Oz.

What we are getting of summer is now, finally, here at Easter time. So summer produce has been little and late.

I returned from Canberra last weekend with wonderful backyard produce from friends – eggs and tomatoes from Helen and Sean, and heady fresh basil; from Ali. Thank you all!

So, tonight, I made one of my favourite summer dishes – spaghetti al estate. Summer spaghetti. It’s so simple, capturing the natural flavour combination of really ripe tomatoes and basil. Peel and chop a few tomatoes, add some garlic, olives, capers, and basil, and let it sit and think for a few hours.

Serve over hot spaghetti. No need to cook! Light, delicious, and a touch of summer in a bowl.

National Wog Day

Kitchen Stadium is full of late summer bounty - two big boxes
of sauce tomatoes. I love getting these in late February or March and cooking
them down to tomato sauce, to be kept for later. To bring a little touch of
sunshine to meals in the depths of winter.



Hands up if you remember “Looking for Alibrandi” – the Melina Marchetta novel that everyone was reading at high schools in the ‘90s. It became a film as well, with Greta Scacchi, Anthony La Paglia, and Pia Miranda. My clearest memory of that book was what they called “National Wog Day” – when the whole family got together to process and preserve the tomato crop. Well, I don’t have much Italian heritage (one great great grandmother), but it’s a tradition I like.


So, here I am on the last weekend in February, with two boxes of Roma tomatoes to convert into tomato passato. That’s 32 kg of tomatoes. Yikes! Better get on with it. At least, I know how to peel a tomato. After a while I have a regular production line going.


Cooked up with just some butter, oil, salt, pepper.


I have an ancient Mouli mill I bought for $1 decades ago from the Salvos at Tempe Tip, and it works a treat to pulp the toms and remove the seeds.





However, by National Wog day standards, it’s not entirely authentic. I’m not doing it in the backyard. I don’t have a line of nonne e zie helping to process the tomatoes. I haven’t improvised a vast Folwer’s Vacola from a 44 gallon drum with a fire underneath. And I’m not bottling them in recycled Resch’s Pilsener longnecks. But it is still fun, with a bunch of tomato passato to freeze as the reward

And, the next day, I found this online:



Clearly, I wasn’t the only one doing National Wog Day! Now,
for a plate of spaghetti al pomodoro ...