Kitchen Garden

Kitchen Garden Update

On Tuesday 25th and Wednesday 26th of March, we were taken on a delicious journey to Greece. Voula (Athan and Christian’s grandmother) visited our Kitchen Garden cooking sessions and demonstrated to all the students how to make her spanakopita recipe. Our garden has been very generous of late, producing silver beet, spinach, parsley and spring onions. During our garden sessions, the students have been harvesting these greens in batches and then washing, chopping and freezing them in preparation for our spanakopita day!

Voula explained the origins of making spanakopita; how people would forage in the forests to source the ingredients and how phyllo pastry recipes originated from humble beginnings, using fresh and simple ingredients. We are extremely fortunate to also be able to harvest all our own eggs from our chickens who are generously laying two eggs per day.

We also made a tzatziki dip to accompany the spanakopita and a zesty watermelon and rockmelon salad with a twist – delicious fresh mint leaves, lime juice and lime zest. The art of melon balling was also an enormous success and I am sure everyone that has a ‘melon baller’ utensil at home and never uses it, will now have a recipe to try to make use of it!

Coming together and sharing our creations is truly the best part of our sessions. Students can be heard discussing the ingredients and I can always detect a great sense of achievement and growing confidence, as well as a willingness to try new flavours. I am always overwhelmed by the positive feedback and enthusiasm from our students, who all usually request a copy of the recipes and are so eager to go home and recreate them for their families.

Our parent, grandparent and special friend helpers were absolutely awesome and I would like to express a big thank you from all our Year 3/4 students and teachers for their assistance. Their guidance and patience, along with those handy little tips along the way, were so gratefully received. An enormous and heartfelt thank you also to Voula who helped run all three cooking sessions, making over 200 spanakopitas in total!

Happy cooking over the holidays!

Leda Semercioglu

Kitchen Garden Coordinator

Watermelon and Rockmelon Salad

Ingredients

30 pieces watermelon

30 pieces of rockmelon

Hand full of fresh mint leaves

Juice of 1 lime

Zest of 1 lime

Method

Using a melon baller, create spheres from the flesh of the watermelon and rockmelon fruits and place in a large bowl.
Add lime zest, lime juice and fresh mint leaves to the melon sphere balls.
Gently mix all ingredients together.

Voula’s Spanakopita Triangles

Ingredients

Filling:

1 packet of Phyllo pastry

2 cups of finely chopped assorted greens

(spinach, silver beet, parsley and spring onion)

1 ½ cups of grated mozzarella cheese

2 eggs

125 grams of crumbled feta cheese

Salt and pepper to taste (optional)

Sesame seeds (optinal)

Wet mixture to brush over Phyllo pastry:

1 cup of melted butter

1 cup of olive oil

Method

Preheat oven to 180 degrees.
Begin with finely chopping all mix green vegetables.
(Note: if using frozen vegetables, begin with sauteing them in a pan with olive oil and 1 diced brown onion for added flavour. Cool mixture before adding in the rest of the ingredients.)
In a bowl gently mix the green vegetables, eggs, feta cheese and grated mozzarella.
Lay out the pastry and cut in half length ways.
Cover pastry with a tea towel, to prevent it from drying out.
Brush one layer of pastry with butter/oil and lay a second layer of pastry on top, brushing with butter/oil once again.
Place a tablespoon of filling at the end of the pastry strip.
Fold the corner of the pastry with the filling to reach the opposite edge to form a triangle.
Keep folding the triangle until you have wrapped the whole strip of pastry into a triangle.
Place onto a tray lined with baking paper.
Brush over with the butter/oil mixture.
Sprinkle with sesame seeds on top of the triangle pastries (optional)
Bake until golden and crunchy, approximately 15-20min.

Tzatziki Dip