Grow lime in your garden and you can eat your way around the world, from breakfast till bedtime. Here’s how:
7:00am Lime Marmalade
When I was a kid, a bottle of Rose’s Lime Marmalade gracing the breakfast table seemed the pinnacle of sophistication.
The golden jam quivered sensuously, bejewelled with the occasional wafer-thin shred of peel, and all of it catching the morning light in a fetchingly embossed glass bottle.
These days I prefer the peel with a bit more heft to it, enough, dare I say, that you can actually recognise the fruit from which the jam is made, and I do still love a bottle of homemade lime marmalade.
10:30am Lime cordial
This was always in the same camp as lime marmalade – something the grown-ups enjoyed. How unfathomable to prefer the tart, not-even-proper-lime-green cordial, mixed with (ugh) soda water, instead of a proper (sickly, sweet, garish) cordial. Now though…
1:00pm Avo
I was going to write about ceviche here, but seeing as I never pop away from my desk for a quick bite of lime-marinated fish, I thought...maybe not.
Lime-soused avo on toast might be more the ticket. Brisbane cafes are awash in avocados, haven’t you found? You really notice it when you visit another city, but here you’d be run out of town if you considered putting up a breakfast or lunch menu sans avo.
6:00pm G&T
My No 2 go-to sharpener, in case you ever need to know. It’s just really good.
8:00pm Curry
After a good ol’ ‘remember the Raj’ drinkie, why not press on with a fab curry.
Maybe chicken with some lovely dahl and a big splodge of lime pickle. Or a Thai green curry flavoured with glossy kaffir lime leaves.
9:00pm Key Lime Pie
Back where we started: lime with sugar.
Phew.
What to grow
For Thai green curry you’ll need kaffir lime. Whilst this tree does produce gnarly little fruit it’s grown for it’s beautiful fragrant leaves. Dwarf grafted versions are readily available, so they can be grown in the garden or in pots and tubs.
For your avo on toast or G&T you could splash out and use finger lime. This is a prickly Australian native species with fruit shaped like little chubby green fingers. Inside are dozens of tiny individual segments, firm and filled with delicious limey goodness.
I must admit, everyone I know who’s tried to grow a finger lime has come a cropper, so if you figure out the secret to success please let me know.
If the finger lime is not your bag then you’ll be wanting a good old Tahitian lime. This is the most commonly cultivated culinary lime: it’s easy to grow in the ground or pots, and the fruit is juicy with no seeds.
There is also a Frankenstein plant available that has a Tahitian lime grafted on one side of the rootstock, and a kaffir lime grafted on the other.
Limes like the limelight, so grown them in the sun.
Keep the water up in summer, feed them well, and they’ll keep your garden fragrant and your belly full.
