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

We need more frost!

Or at least I do! The snails, and particularly the slugs, who sailed through last winter’s wet but not particularly cold weather, are out in force this October. My winter chard is suffering, not least because I was away for the weekend and once all the first wave of gastropods had eaten my organic slug pellets, the second wave crawled in and ate the chard, the swines!

Did you know snails can have hundreds to thousands of teeth! Most mollusc groups, including snails, have a set of teeth that is shaped like a wavy ribbon called a radula. There can be hundreds of rows of teeth and several different tooth types in one snail or very few rows with a single tooth in each. As the teeth get worn they are continuously replaced by developing teeth, much in the same way that a shark's teeth are. These teeth can be used for scraping food such as algae or tugging away small amounts of leaf material.

I’m not a very ruthless pest killer, sadly – I wish I was brave enough to go out and cut slugs in half with a pair of scissors like Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall, but I’m not. I can’t do beer traps either, as the whole thing is disgusting the next morning when you have to empty it.

There is a bit of a plus side, which is that if you can get your chard to a reasonable size, the snails tend to give up – they don’t like the thickness of the leaves, but given that my chard is still baby chard, they are simply destroying the plants. A damn good frost would sort them out without me having to do anything about it, so I’m hoping for clear nights and low temperatures, otherwise I shall have to get ruthless.

Labels: allotment-crops, allotment_pests, winter-allotment

Winter cauliflower

Not a lot of people know this, but there are actually two sorts of cauli – Winter cauliflowers used to be called ‘heading broccoli’ which explains the difference, they weren’t developed from summer cauliflower but from hardy sprouting broccoli. There are many crosses between the two which give curds (or heads) like summer broccoli but will survive a moderate British winter. The way to tell the difference by eye (and it takes practice) is that they hybrids and winter cauli will probably rise to more of a point, while the true or summer cauliflower is a perfect hemisphere or half-ball shape.

To grow winter cauliflower you need to either protect them or live in a mild climate in the UK. There are advantages to growing them in winter, notably that the don’t get the caterpillar and slug infestations that happens with the summer varieties unless you’re very lucky. The bad news is that cauliflower can be bloody difficult beasts – they will only form heads in a deep rich soil, they need regular feeding and definitely watering and if they get a frost that slows their growth then they may not set heads at all.

Sow seeds in drills, six inches apart, and if there is any risk of a frost, protect by covering them.

When the seedlings have five or six leaves you can transplant them to their permanent homes, giving them a good watering the night before so they lift easily. Set them thirty inches apart and protect them from autumn birds which are more of a pest than you’d believe on seedling cauliflower (at least they are round here!). Use canes and string or a bit of mesh to foil their evil ways.

Cover the plants if there is a frost risk. When you have harvested a curd, lift the stem and dispose of it, do not compost because brassica diseases do not get destroyed in composting.

Labels: allotment-crops, winter-allotment, winter-cauliflower