Allotment skills - using stuff up

This is one of the rare bones of contention in our allotment life. I mentioned it in my last post, and it’s the horrible fact of the glut. There’s nothing you can do about a glut – try as you might to avoid one, if you have seven kilos of courgettes to use up, you can bet that there are another seven waiting in the wings, and that your neighbours will be moaning about the tendency of the average courgette to hide under the leaves and turn itself into a thin-skinned marrow, regardless of your desire to never see another marrow or courgette again.

Marrow jam, courgette bake, marrow rum, courgette chutney, stuffed marrow, stuffed courgette, marrow bread, courgette flower fritters (a brilliant idea, stops the plants growing any more courgettes, for one thing!), marrow stew … it just goes on and on and life can become insufferable when tomatoes, or strawberries, or rhubarb or whatever suddenly go into glut production. And that’s why I rely on Grow Organic, Cook Organic to kick-start my kitchen creativity. I found it useful when last year’s rhubarb glut overwhelmed me – the recipe for Rhubarb and Ginger Ice-cream was a revelation because ‘the boy’ who has never knowingly eaten rhubarb, actually consumed gallons of the stuff and brought home his teenage friends to consume it too! Some of the recipes might seem a bit high-falutin’ such as Red Onion and Mushroom Tartlets with Goat’s Cheese, but it’s worth giving them a try because they really are designed to work with home grown fruit and veg.

Labels: allotment-cooking, allotment-fruit, allotment-glut