Gluts and recipes

It’s that time of year (if you’re lucky) when the allotment is producing more foodstuffs than you can eat, and you start to get sick of certain things – too much lettuce, an overdose of courgettes etc. This is a rather elegant recipe which uses up little bits and pieces of those glut crops, but doesn’t taste as if it’s a catch-all: in fact, it tastes like you spent half the day in the kitchen cooking it! It is actually a very simple dish though – it works well with fish like tuna or salmon where it really turns up the posh quotient to suggest that you’ve recently taken a cordon bleu course …

Summer glut supreme

The sauce

4 cloves
8 peppercorns
8 coriander seeds
100 ml single cream
2 inch cinnamon stick
Coriander chopped
Mint chopped
Basil chopped
1 pepper seeded and chopped

The vegetables

1 onion thinly sliced
1 1/4 pounds patty pan squash cut in pieces about 1/2 inch big – or one overgrown courgette or half-grown marrow
Small can corn – or two ears of corn that have been shelled from the cob
1 large tomato peeled, seeded, chopped in 1/2in pieces (can be a semi-green one!)
1 tablespoon oil
coriander leaves for garnish

THE SAUCE: Bruise the hard spices with a pestle and add them to the cream with the cinnamon, herbs and half the chopped pepper. Slowly bring to a boil, then turn off the heat and let steep for an hour.

THE VEGETABLES: Heat the oil in a frying pan and add the onion. Fry briskly for a minute or so; add squash, corn, remaining pepper. Continue to sauté over fairly high heat for about 5 minutes. Pour the steeped cream directly into the pan through a strainer. Add the tomato and simmer for several minutes. Simmer until the sauce has reduced and thickened a little and the squash is tender. Season to taste with salt and serve garnished with coriander.

Labels: allotment-crops, allotment-recipes