July is bursting out all allotment

We’ve got more potatoes than we know what to do with plus beetroot, onions, garlic and rhubarb going into the freezer. Not bad for a first year. What we don’t have are some of the lovely rarities that other people have managed to establish – see picture!

I really want a vine that we can harvest for grapes – dessert grapes might be pushing it a bit, but we could grow wine grapes I reckon. Of course, to succeed we’d need to have a greenhouse (and we don’t even have a shed yet!) so I’m overreaching myself more than a little bit, but the idea’s been planted and now I am browsing catalogues to see which would be the best variety.

Of course you can make wine from anything (the rhubarb in the freezer for example) and now my mind is also running over what crops might be convertible to a cheeky little vintage in a few year’s time. Do you make wine from allotment crops? If so, what’s your best recipe?

Labels: allotment-potatoes, allotment-recipes, allotment-wine

Back to the slow cooker

I’ve been watching with interest as Fiona, over at The Cottage Smallholder gets to grips with her slow cooker. I swear by mine! One of the easiest, and money-savingist recipes I make in it is breakfast cereal. The Americans call this granola (pshaw!) and we’d probably call it muesli, if we called it anything, but we tend to just keep it in a big airtight box and call it breakfast!

What’s it got to do with allotments?

Well quite a lot really. When I first made it, I used this recipe, which is American, and because I had no idea that a ‘cup’ was a metal or glass receptacle, something like a funnel, that has hundreds of markings on the side to allow Americans to measure ingredients accurately, I just grabbed a mug and measured my stuff that way. It worked just perfectly, and although I do now have a real measuring cup for American recipes, I still make this with a mug.

4 cups rolled oats
2/3 cup honey
1 cup bran
1 cup wheatgerm
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 cup sesame seeds
1/4 cup sunflower oil

Combine all ingredients in the slow cooker. Cook on low heat with lid slightly ajar about 4 hours, stirring occasionally. Cool and store in airtight jar. Use within 1 to 2 weeks.

Hmm. Good, but not perfect.

What we do now is all the above, cook for five hours with the wooden spoon left in the pot to keep the lid ajar and the timer set to remind me to stir it every hour and a half or so. But we also tend to add to the cooking mix, any of the following:

--dried blueberries from the allotment
--dried apple slices from the allotment
--chopped walnuts (okay, not exactly from the allotment, but from the walnut trees in a local park, which nobody else seems to harvest)
--hazelnuts, from Bert’s allotment hedge, when he can spare some

Which turns a good cereal into an absolute delight. Great with yoghurt in summer, or hot milk in winter. Mixed with some melted butter and golden syrup it makes flapjacks, and with some butter and flour rubbed together with a bit of sugar, makes a healthy crumble mix for pulpy apple gluts if I can’t be bothered to make apple butter.

We don’t dry much fruit, but I once owned a big mesh thingummibob that was supposed to be used to dry cashmere sweaters flat by being laid over a bath. When I gave up wearing cashmere, we realised that we could use the thingummy to dry fruit by cutting it into small even sized portions, laying it on the mesh and drying it in the airing cupboard.

So we eat this luxury breakfast cereal, which is salt-free and made exactly to our own taste, for the price of a few pence, and every few weeks I make up another batch, varying the additions according to what’s in the jars above the sink, and I feel very virtuous about it.

Labels: allotment-cooking, allotment-recipes, allotment-slow-cooker

Parsnip Paradise

All around our site, people are pulling their prize parsnips from clamps to take home for their Christmas dinner. Roast parsnips, roast potatoes and brussels sprouts, all from the allotment - gorgeous!

But simply roasting your parsnips is not exactly imaginative. Why not try this favourite in our house, which works just as well with leftover parsnips on Boxing Day...

Ingredients


4 small parsnips, peeled and cut into lengths (or larger ones with the woody core cut out)
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon honey
Seasonings
1 bag or two good handfuls of fresh allotment rocket (grow it in a cold frame, it's wonderful in winter)
2 dessert pears sliced into wedges with the skin still on
A handful of hazel or pecan nuts, lightly toasted


Dressing

5-1/2 oz. Gorgonzola or other strong blue cheese
3 tablespoons white wine vinegar
150 ml olive oil

Put parsnips and oil in a roasting pan, pour honey over and season to taste. Roast until golden (about 20-25 minutes) and allow to cool.

While that's going on, mash the Gorgonzola in a bowl. Stir in the vinegar and whisk in the olive oil until slightly textured.

Put the rocket on plates and top with the pears and parsnips arranged in alternate slices to make a fan shape, lightly chop nuts and sprinkle over, followed by dressing.


I promise you, it's delicious.

Labels: allotment-recipes, christmas-allotment, winter-allotment

Pumpkin recipes

Autumn vegetable roast

Using up that pumpkin flesh? Here’s our favourite recipe – dead easy – very autumnal and equally as good with butternut squash, large courgettes and peppers, or even parsnips!

1 medium squash or 1/2 pumpkin – skinned and cut into bite-size chunks if you’re not using the stuff you carved from a Halloween pumpkin
10-12 small shallots or two small red onions (quarter these)
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
Fresh sage, thyme and rosemary.


Now it’s really simple. Pre-heat the oven to 180 C. Peel the shallots and cut off the stalks and roots. Put the oil in an oven-proof dish and heat for a couple of minutes in the oven before adding the shallots/onions and squash. Stir with a spoon to coat the ingredients with oil. Roast for 30 minutes, until the squash or pumpkin is tender. Add the thyme and rosemary and roast for another 5 – 10 minutes then Roughly chop the sage into the vinegar and pour over the roasted vegetables just before serving.

Labels: allotment-recipes, pumpkin-recipe, roast-pumpkin

Squash recipe

I've already mentioned that people are either marrow lovers, or they are marrow haters, you don't get people who can take marrow or leave it, just as you don't get people who are happy either way about rhubarb. Some foods inspire strong emotions. Squashes though, don't. Most people are relaxed about their pumpkins, acorn squash or butternut squash, they don't enthuse madly, nor do they run away in panic at the sight. So, given that this is the time when squashes are at their peak, here's a favourite recipe in our house.


Hot Autumn pasta salad

200g pasta
1 butternut squash, skin removed, de-seeded and cut into roughly one inch dice
1 red chilli, de-seeded and finely chopped, or dried chilli to taste
1 garlic clove, minced
1 courgette, halved, de-seeded and cut into one inch slices or chunks
40 g pinenuts or sunflower seeds
juice of half a lemon
olive oil
parmesan
fresh basil

Preheat your oven to 200 degrees Celsius and oil a roasting pan, spread the butternut squash out in it and sprinkle it with the chilli and garlic. Season and drizzle with more olive oil. Now cover with tin foil and cook for thirty minutes or until the squash is soft when you squeeze it

Cook the pasta as per the packet (we used spiralli, but any short pasta works for this recipe)

Toast the pinenuts or sunflower seeds in a frying pan over a medium heat. Set them aside and use the same pan with some olive oil to fry the courgettes for a few minutes so they remain slightly firm.

When everything is ready, add the pasta, all the ingredients from the oven tray, the courgette and the pinenuts to the serving bowl. Squeeze the lemon over the salad followed by a good drizzle of olive oil and roughly torn basil leaves and give it a good stir. Slice some parmesan over the dish, followed by freshly ground black pepper and serve.

Labels: allotment-recipes, autumn-allotment, butternut-squash

The end of the season ...

Tiny little peppers like these, that turn up at the end of the season when the parent plant is about to head into death or dormancy, don’t seem to be good for a lot – in fact I see gardeners and allotment holders tear up pepper plants at this time of year and throw them away, baby peppers and all, and it’s such a waste! My favourite recipe for using up miniature peppers is this hearty Italian soup.


500 g minced beef
1 clove fresh garlic
2 tins of chopped tomatoes
2 large or a good handful of little green peppers, chopped
1 large chopped red onion
A good handful of green beans, cut into short lengths
1 really good stock beef stock cube in 600 ml water or home-made stock
200 g cooked rice (preferably wholegrain)
Freshly ground pepper, fresh basil leaves if you’ve got them, dried mixed Mediterranean herbs if not, a bay leaf and whatever other fresh herbs particularly appeal to you …

Brown the beef in a frying pan with the (minced) garlic and onion. Now simply add the remaining ingredients, except the rice. Bring to boil, reduce heat and simmer for around minutes, or until peppers and onions are tender - you might feel you need to add some more water towards the end of the cooking time. Add rice. Heat thoroughly and serve.

Labels: allotment-crops, allotment-recipes

Having grown your cauliflower - what do you do with it?

Cauliflower cheese of course, and cauliflower as a side vegetable, but if you’re running out of ideas by now, and having a bit of a cauli glut, here’s a recipe I can highly recommend. Cauliflower soup.

Okay, it doesn’t thrill on first reading and – to be perfectly honest – most cauliflower soup recipes smell like something dreamt up by the worst school dinner lady ever, and taste quite revolting. This one though, is a real winter warmer; it’s filling and luxurious and while it can smell pretty horrible while cooking, the answer to this is to grab a handful of parsley and throw it in a little pan of water, bringing it to a fast boil for three or four minutes after the soup has finished cooking – just as parsley purifies the breath, so it purifies the air …

Ingredients

50g butter
Bay leaf
1 medium onion, finely chopped
1 clove garlic, crushed
1 large cauliflower
900ml water or low salt vegetable stock
50g mature Cheddar or Wensleydale cheese grated
50ml double cream

Rosemary oil for decoration

1 - Heat the butter in a large pan. Add the bay leaf onion and garlic and leave to cook on a medium heat until translucent.
2 - Whilst they are cooking, chop the cauliflower as finely as possible – I slice it with a knife and then use a curved herb blade - then add it to the onions and pour in the water or stock Bring to a boil and then reduce the heat and simmer for about thirty minutes.
3 - When the cauliflower is tender, stir the mixture, then taste the soup and sprinkle in your cheese, giving it a few moments to combine before tasting and adjusting the seasoning if necessary.
4 - Now pour the soup and the cream into a liquidiser and process it until it is velvety smooth – a food processor will leave it grainy so if a food processor is all you have, just process and then put the soup through a large sieve to remove all the bits – it’s not quite as good but nearly. Reheat gently if required and serve with a splash of rosemary oil in the middle (if you don’t infuse your own herb oils you can buy them in posh cookshops!)

Labels: allotment-crops, allotment-recipes

Back to the kitchen …

It’s that time of year; windowsills full of tomatoes, bags full of windfall plums, pears threatening to fall from the trees like hailstones, courgettes turning to marrows here there and everywhere, and apples … always and everywhere, apples.

And this is the superlatively good Tarte Tatin that I’ve adapted from a recipe by fellow blogger Clotilde Desoulier whose excellent recipes can be found at the blog Chocolate & Zucchini.

You need:

Pastry

60g fine (caster for preference) sugar
170g plain flour
85g unsalted butter (yes, you can make it with margarine, but it won’t taste as good)
2 tablespoons milk

Filling

70g brown sugar
35 g butter
1k any old apples (as long as they don’t go mushy when cooked – we use the generic apples we pick in hedges for this, or the rather bland ones that grow on the allotments, doesn’t matter, they all come out tasting great)

Mix the flour and sugar, cut the butter into the mix and then rub in with your fingers until its like breadcrumbs, add half the milk and then knead the dough. If it doesn’t form a smooth dough, add the rest of the milk and knead again. Wrap in clingfilm and put in the fridge for half an hour.

Grease a 22 or 25 cm cake pan or quiche dish.

Put the brown sugar with 1 tablespoon water in small heavy pan and melt over a medium heat until it caramelises. As soon as it becomes a golden/light coffee colour, remove from the heat. Beat in the butter and pour the result beige paste into the bottom of your dish, allowing it to spread out.

Remove dough from fridge and roll out – this is rather tricky as it can be very crumbly and fragile but don’t worry about small cracks in the dough as you can repair them as you go. Peel, core and slice apples into thick slices – arrange them in a spiral on top of the caramel. Prick the dough all over with a fork, then lift it and lay it over the apples, tucking the edges in around them like a blanket. If it breaks or tears, just pinch it back together gently with your fingers.

Cook for around 45 minutes at 180 degrees C and then run a knife around the pastry edges to loosen it before setting a plate on top of the cooking dish and inverting them together to get the pastry where it belongs (on the bottom) and the apples where you want them (on the top!) – if any stay in the dish, just hoik them out with a fork and put them back in the pattern.

Believe me, this is the BEST apple pie you’ll ever taste.

Labels: allotment-recipes, apples, gluts allotment-fruit, windfalls

Growing up gorgeous – artichokes again!

Loads of comments suddenly appeared on the last globe artichoke article, so I thought I’d pick up the threads before I move onto one of the great joys of this time of year, the leaf beets.

So, Barrie wants a photo of the globe artichoke when it’s been put to bed for the winter and I will certainly provide that when the time comes, and Merenda wonders why she can’t harvest globe artichokes in their first year from seed or offset, and I’ve explained all that in detail as a response to her comment, so you’ll have to go and hunt it down in the archives if you’ve been wondering why your globe artichokes seem to be carved out of balsa wood!

But back to the plot, in both senses of the word. Just about now, we’re getting organised for a rare treat that we’ll enjoy in a few weeks – artichoke stems. Here’s how to get a second crop from your plants.

1 – when the flower buds cease to appear, cut down the foliage of the plants, taking off about two foot from the top of the plant and quite a few leaves. Between now and the end of the month you should start to see some new shoots appearing at ground level.

2 -When they are about a foot to eighteen inches tall, bundle them together (we normally have four clumps around the base of a plant) and surround them with brown paper, corrugated cardboard or drainpipe – the first two you have to tie loosely around the stems with string, the last one you slide over the top of the clump.

3 – After five weeks or so, take off the blanching material and you should find you have some pale, rather bendy stems. Cut them and cook them like celery; we braise ours with finely chopped onion, some celery seed and good vegetable stock with a dash of sherry added.

If you’ve had woody artichokes this year, you can still get a decent blanched shoot crop by following these instructions … but keep a couple of those offshoots out of the blanching, pot them up in November and use them for next year’s plants and DON’T FORGET to pinch out every flowering bud or you’ll have rock-hard artichokes again.

Labels: allotment-crops, allotment-recipes, allotment-secrets, globe-artichoke

Marrows

Oh sigh. Sigh and moan. Not only is it raining (again) but for some incomprehensible reason, blogger won’t let me upload the photograph I wanted to share with you today. So instead – in the blog equivalent of the music that TV stations used to play when the signal went off the air – marrows.

Whatever the weather does, there are marrows in summertime. Sometimes they are real marrows, and sometimes they are courgettes that got away from their owner and turned into a lurking monster. In either case, they’re not my favourite vegetable. I try, I really try, but I just can’t get enthused about marrows. I do have one recipe, two versions, that makes the marrow into a good meal, and I am about to share it with you.

The meaty version

Pre-heat the oven to 200C, 400F, Gas Mark 6.

Wash the marrow and wipe dry. Cut into eight slices, and scoop out the seeds from the centres of each slice to leave a ring and sprinkle with salt – leave for half an hour to draw out the bitterness. Wash and pat dry and then place in a large greased baking tin.

Fry some mince, a chopped onion and a grated carrot until the meat browns and the vegetables soften. Drain off excess fat and stir in a tablespoon of flour, a good squirt of Worcestershire sauce, garlic and your favourite herbs - simmer for 15 minutes. Fill the marrow rings with the mince mixture, place a tomato slice on top of each and cook, uncovered, for about half an hour.


The veggie version

Pre-heat the oven to 200C, 400F, Gas Mark 6.

Wash the marrow and wipe dry. Cut into eight slices, and scoop out the seeds from the centres of each slice to leave a ring and sprinkle with salt – leave for half an hour to draw out the bitterness. Wash and pat dry and then place in a large greased baking tin.

Cook some small green lentils in vegetarian stock until they are tender, drain and place in a bowl. Add a chopped fried onion, or several spring onions that have been thinly sliced, two slices of bread turned into crumbs, and lots of nice fresh chopped herbs. You can add some strong grated cheese for vegetarians, or chopped nuts for vegans and a squirt of soy sauce for both. Cook, covered with a loose layer of foil, for half an hour.

Labels: allotment-crops, allotment-recipes, marrows

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

Allotment Recipes – Globe Artichokes

There can't be an allotment in the UK that isn't waterlogged. On Sunday we gathered in the allotment office, moaning about wet plots, rust of biblical proportions on both plants and metalwork and the promised gales to come. A couple of novice allotment holders were retying their peas to canes, but the old hands shook their heads 'No point,' they said. 'With an offshore wind here, it'll be worse by nightfall, might as well wait till morning and put things right then.'

I stored up this bit of local horticultural wisdom and headed off home, thinking, when you can't grow, cook!

This is a great recipe that will please both vegetarians and meat eaters – the former will be happy it’s meat free and the latter won’t even notices as the rich flavours will fool them into thinking there’s an animal in there somewhere!

Artichoke Mushroom Richness

Ingredients

Four artichoke hearts
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 medium finely chopped onion
2 finely chopped cloves garlic
8 oz sliced mushrooms
1 teaspoon dried basil – or a good bunch of fresh leaves, torn rather than cut
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 tablespoon dry white wine – or white martini which gives a richer flavour
1 tablespoon bread crumbs with mixed herbs, 1 teaspoon grated Parmesan cheese and freshly ground black pepper mixed in

Method

Lightly oil a baking dish, then blanch the artichoke hearts before slicing them in half, draining them and laying them in the bottom of the dish, cut side down.
Heat the oil in a frying pan over medium heat and add onion and garlic, cook, stirring for 3 minutes then add mushrooms and spices.
Add lemon juice and wine.
Cook, stirring frequently, for 3 – 5 minutes more.
Remove from heat and stir in bread crumbs.
Spoon mushroom mixture evenly over artichokes.
Bake uncovered in a medium oven for 30 minutes.

Labels: allotment-recipes, artichoke-hearts