Check out what’s new in the Food Orbit marketplace this week!

Darling Mills Farm

Growing premium quality vegetables, herbs, micro herbs and edible flowers for some of Sydney’s top restaurants

Trunkey Bacon and Pork

Beautiful free range bacon and pork products

Murray View Organics

Selling certified organic dried fruits - perfect for baking!

Orangeville Pastoral

Friday night’s Local Produce Dinner at the Bucket List Bondi beautifully showcased some of the best produce the area has to offer. It was one of a series dinners that aims to put the spotlight back on where our food is sourced and the quality of our local farmers and producers with Head Chef Tom Walton creating a wholesome three course share-style meal.

The star of the evening was the spit roast Melanda Park free range pork served with organic winter vegetables, cauliflower puree and crushed apple sauce. Diners also enjoyed Pepe Saya cultured butter with beetroot and Willowbrae goats curd and home-made bread. And dessert was a scrumptious Koshi Hikari rice pudding using Randell Organic Rice with honeycomb, rhubarb and orange.

The homely, casual dinner welcomed diners who appreciated the freshness of locally sourced produce. “When produce is not from Coles or Woothworths it just tastes better. It tends to have a notably richer flavour” Marni, student at Sydney University. Many others loved the simplicity of the food and trying unusual vegetables varieties, like the Jerusalem artichokes for the first time.

The local produce dinners are a series of events that demonstrate the need for local farmers and producers to be better connected with chefs and restaurateurs. By chefs sourcing their produce direct from the local farmers and producers they’re able to have greater transparency over quality, and farmers and producers are able to receive fairer prices for their goods. This will happen online in the coming weeks with the launch of Food Orbit, an online market place for chefs and farmers and producers to buy and sell quality local produce. For more information, go to foodorbit.com

How fun are the farmers markets?! Whether your stocking up on the just-picked-produce straight from the farmers, or tucking into a tasty breakfast/brunch from of some of Sydney’s iconic chefs and restaurateurs, farmers markets really are a crowd pleaser!

But the fun doesn’t stop there. In fact, I think I have even more fun post farmers markets, when I go home and get creative with all the beautiful produce I’ve just bought.

This week, when I got home I decided to make a hearty no fuss pumpkin soup. Now I’m no chef but I reckon this was one fo the best pumpkin soups I’ve ever had (my boyfriend even said it was the best he’d ever had and that’s not the sort of thing he just says willy nilly!).

So what made it so delicious I hear you ask? Well there were a few things: the pumpkin for starters - fresh from the markets picked a day or two before by Champion’s Mountain Organics; slow roasting the pumpkin and whole cloves of garlic with olive oil, salt and peper; toasted pine nuts; and fresh good quality cottage cheese.

And the method is super easy! In a nutshell:

You’ll need:

1 x whole pumpkin

1 x onion (chopped into quarters)

4 x cloves of garlic

Olive oil (enough for baking the pumpkin)

Pine nuts (a small hand full)

1 tbsp Tahini (optional)

2-3tbsp heaped fresh good quality cottage cheese

350-600mL vegetable stock

Method:

Preheat your oven to around 170C

Chop up one whole pumpkin (you can leave the skin on and remove later) and spread out on a lightly oiled tray

Add whole cloves of garlic and onion

Drizzle with olive oil and season with salt and pepper

Bake until the pumpkin looks golden and is tender (approx. 30 mins)

Once the pumpkin has cooled (remove the skin if you left it on) add it to a large mixing bowl along with the cottage cheese, the garlic (just squeeze them out of their skin), some vegetable stock (home-made is perfect, otherwise use a good quality organic stock cube and some boiling water), and some pine nuts that have been lightly toasted (do this in a fry pan on a low heat for just a few minutes beforehand)

Start blending all these ingredients with a hand mixer/blender (or you could alternatively put into a food processor/blender) and mix until all the ingredients are combined

Add more water as you go to get your desired consistency

Add salt and pepper to taste

If you want to serve immediately then you may need to heat slightly on the stove top (or microwave), otherwise pop it in a container and you’ve got pumpkin soup for the week ready to go!

The thing I love the most about making a big patch of soup like this is using it as the base for a curry later in the week. Yes a curry! Tonight I made a pumpkin curry by adding some ginger, curry powder, tamari and vegetables such as eggplant, mushrooms and broccoli. It was gorgeous!

Make sure you take a photo of your pumpkin soup and send it in! Or if you think you have a better pumpkin soup recipe then please do share it with us all.

Happy cooking.

Photography and editorial by Melissa Foster