My Hallowe'en Courgette

You've seen my (first ever) Hallowe'en Pumpkin.

Now, please put your hands together for my Hallowe'en Courgette!

We grow courgettes in our back garden most years and usually choose the spherical yellow ones, just because they're a bit different.

This little guy, though much smaller than most carving pumpkins, was a little long in the tooth for eating, so Pete suggested I might like to carve him à la pumpkin!

To my surprise, he was much tougher to carve than the pumpkin – his skin was really hard to pierce and saw through. So I'm glad I went for a simple design (which I chose because of his small size).

What do you think? Will it catch on? :)

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Autumn Garden & Good News!

I haven't posted much about our garden harvests for a while, though we have been enjoying our home-grown produce over the last few months.

• Sugar snaps were as tasty as last year, though we didn't get quite as many.

• Raspberries were utterly delicious and we're looking forward to the bushes being much larger (and hence producing more fruit) next year.
• Sweetcorn was a complete failure – anonymous critters and the weather.
• So far we've only harvested the Home Guard potatoes and they've been hit and miss with half of them affected by horrible brown lesions inside. We've binned a lot.

• Tomatoes have been a mixed bag: the Super Marmande's didn't cope well with some erratic watering and many of them split. Those that didn't were woolly and yield wasn't great. The Harbinger (freebies) were OK. They didn't split but they weren't particularly tasty either. The winners by a very big margin were the gorgeous Sungold which were golden orange, sweet and utterly delicious. And reasonably high yielding too. Those will be grown again next year!
  
  Reds I roasted and blitzed into a pasta sauce and froze in portions.
  
  Green, Pete made into some spicy tomato ketchup.

• We didn't plant much lettuce but what we had has been very nice.

Courgettes added to Pete's Cheesey Potato Bake

• The One Ball courgettes have grown well, as always. Beautiful yellow globes of sweet flesh, best picked small to medium for best texture.
  
  The box of beauties in the photo above went to the lovely Oliver Rowe of Konstam (which has, alas, shut it's doors since then) and he used them in his menu over the next day or two!

• Green peppers are good and have grown pretty well in the green house this year.
• Chillis (from Wahaca seeds) have also done well (and are fiery hot, so I am told).
• Leeks and broccoli are still growing. As are parsnips and the rest of the potatoes.

Oh and the good news? It looks like we have an allotment for next year!

Although I affectionately call our kitchen garden "the lottie" we have been wanting more space for some time so we're delighted to have our own plot at the Whetstone Stray Allotments nearby. The tentative plan is to have soft fruit and vegetables – anything that needs frequent watering and harvesting regularly at it's peak – at home and slower growing and less attention-needy produce over at the allotment!

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Hix' Baked Parsnips with Lancashire Cheese

Why are we eating parsnips in the summer?

Well... we grow our own vegetables and, last year, we planted parsnips for the first time.

Early January was rainy and miserable and we left much of our winter crop in the ground for longer than we should have. So we urgently harvested a bumper crop of giant parsnips in January, just before leaving for a month in the Falklands. We froze several boxes, prepped and chopped into batons, and promptly forgot about them until a recent push to work through our freezer stock.

A couple of months ago, I was sent a review copy of Hix Oyster & Chop House. Things were a bit busy at the time and I browsed through the book, bookmarked a handful of recipes that appealed and put it to one side.

And there it stayed, on my mental list of things to get around to, until we were suddenly looking for parsnip recipes at the height of summer!

As fans of gratin dauphinois – thinly sliced and layered potatoes and cream baked in the oven, sometimes with the addition of milk, cream and garlic – it's not hard to understand the appeal of parsnips baked with cream and cheese!

Baked Parsnips with Lancashire Cheese

You can see the original ingredients, quantities and instructions here:

Our adjusted quantities (serves 4)
500 grams parsnips
150 ml double cream
200 ml milk
a pinch of grated nutmeg
2 garlic cloves
salt and freshly ground black pepper
100-150 grams Lancashire cheese

Note: we omitted the fresh white breadcrumbs

Our adjusted method

• Preheat oven to 160 degrees C.
• Cut the parsnips into rough 2-3 cm chunks.

• Pour the cream and milk into a saucepan, add the nutmeg and garlic, and season generously with salt and pepper. Bring to the boil, then turn off the heat and leave to cool slightly.
• Put the parsnips into a shallow ovenproof (gratin-type) dish and mix with the cheese.
• Pour the cream mixture over the top.

I love that this photo includes Pete's foot!

• Cook in the oven for an hour until the parsnips are cooked through.

The tang of the cheese against the sweetness of the parsnips is magical and the cream and milk make it wonderfully rich. This is definitely one of those dishes that's more than the sum of its parts, though its parts are all very good already.

For this one recipe alone, I'm hugely grateful to Mark Hix and his book and have gone back to the book to search out other gems I may have looked over in my initial bookmarking.

The book is Hix' first restaurant book, though his previous titles about fish and British food have been well received. Named after his first restaurant, Hix Oyster & Chop House, in London's Smithfield market, the book features recipes that appear on the menu throughout the year.

As the name of the book suggests, the two main foci are oysters and meat, although, as my chosen recipe indicates, there are also recipes for starters, sides, desserts and even cocktails.

Oyster fans will likely appreciate the chapter introducing 8 types of Oysters (all from the UK and Ireland, both native and cultivated types) along with and instructions on how to shuck them.

The Meat chapter covers beef, veal, lamb and venison, providing information (and great photographs) on different cuts and how best to cook them. Of course, it's not nearly as comprehensive as the information in Leith's Meat Bible, that I reviewed recently, but then I wouldn't expect it to be.

Oddly enough, although I'd happily order many of the mains if I were visiting the restaurant, there are not that many that appeal to cook at home. But there are some recipes I want to try in the other chapters, including cobb egg (like scotch eggs but with a fish mixture around the eggs, rather than pork), Heaven and Earth (based on the German himmel und erder), several of the salad dressings, coley with sea spinach and brown shrimps, chop house butter, shipwreck tart (which I tasted when we visited Hix Oyster and Fish House), white port and strawberry trifle, and hix oyster ale cake.

It's an attractive book, I can't help but like the simple brown paper cover and clean design. If the other recipes we try are as successful as the parnsip bake, it'll earn a place on our permanent book shelf!

With thanks to Quadrille for the review copy.

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Hix Oyster & Chop House is (currently) available at Amazon for £15.75.

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July's Garden Bounties

I always love it when the garden starts giving us the rewards of our labours and July was a good month:

As well as the gherkins I've blogged about previously, we've been enjoying lots of sugar snap peas (straight from the plants or raw in crunchy, summery salads), lots of beautiful yellow globe courgettes (a large box of which made their way to Konstam where chef Oli Rowe served them with pan-roast Waltham Abbey chicken; so sad to learn about the closure), a handful of sweet cherry tomatoes and even the odd raspberry (which is surprising as we bought an autumn fruiting variety). Oh and potatoes, we've been harvested the first of the two early varieties which have been nice served simply boiled with butter and sometimes some chocolate mint, which surges back to life every spring.

lone raspberry

gherkins

harvesting courgettes

sugar snap peas

Also growing well are sweetcorn and purple sprouting broccoli (though its leaves have been attacked, somewhat) and our new apple tree has all of two little apples growing slowly.

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Pickled Gherkins, How I Love Thee!

I have always loved pickled gherkins. Many's the time I've come to the chagrined realisation, as I munch one straight from the jar, then another and then one more, that I have eaten an entire jar in one sitting!

Over the last several years, Pete and I have gradually converted our back garden into what we refer to as our home lottie (but which should, more accurately, be called a kitchen garden). Each year we’ve added a few more vegetables and fruits to the mix.

This year, for the first time, we're growing gherkins.

It’s a confusing word, is gherkin.

The cucumber (Cucumis sativus) is thought to have originated in foothills of Himalayas, possibly from wild cucumbers (Cucumis hardwickii). Certainly, it's been cultivated in India for more than 3000 years and also known in ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome and China. of course, it's now found worldwide.

There is also the West Indian gherkin (Cucumis anguria), a related but different species.

But usually when we talk about gherkins in Europe, we’re not talking about Cucumis anguria but about a set of cultivars of Cucumis sativus (cucumber).

To make it more confusing still, as it has long been common to preserve gherkin cultivars by pickling them in vinegar, the word gherkin has become synonymous with any type of pickled cucumber – gherkin cultivar or not.

I’ve even had some people insist that there’s no such thing as a gherkin, that it’s just a term for pickled cucumbers!

So, what is a cultivar? A cultivar is simply a variety of a plant that, over time, has been deliberately selected for specific desirable characteristics – for example, there are several thousand varieties of tomatoes of all colours, shapes and sizes and varying hugely in taste, disease resistance, yield.

Cucumbers come in many shapes and sizes too, from spherical yellow ones to long, slender ones with thick dark green skins. Some are juicy and full of seeds, others are virtually seedless. Some have bumpy, ridged skins, others are smoothly lustrous. Some taste quite bitter whilst others have a mild, almost sweet flavour, similar to that of melons, which are also part of the Cucurbitaceae family (as are gourds, marrows, squashes and pumpkins).

The gherkins we are growing are a cultivar of cucumber (Cucumis sativus) called 'Diamant' F1 Hybrid.

Gherkins are well suited for pickling.

And the first four picked just had to be pickled, didn't they? Oh, yes!

But which recipe to use? There are so many variations, from sharp to sweet, with dill or without, nothing but gherkin or with some onion and garlic thrown in, not to mention the choice of spices…

The majority of the recipes I found use a ready-bought pickling spice but I decided to make my own.

I simply combined a few whole spices, crushed them a little to let the flavours escape more readily, popped them into one of those make-your-own-teabags pouches before steeping them in malt vinegar. (Malt vinegar because I have lots left over from when I made lemon pickle).

The gherkins I sliced into halves or quarters and salted overnight in the fridge, before pouring off the resulting liquid, washing them gently and patting them dry.

Into my pickling vinegar I dissolved sugar (to taste) before pouring it into my (sterilised) jar full of gherkins (and a couple of garlic cloves).

I made these on the 18 June and want to leave them at least a couple of months before I crack open the jar.

I made a second batch on the 11 July. This time, instead of salting the gherkins on a plate, I poured lightly salted boiling water over them in a bowl, let it cool down and then put it into the fridge overnight. I also added a higher volume of sugar to the vinegar (which I'd steeped with the same pickling spice teabag for several hours). The cucumber pieces were put into hot sterilised jars and the hot vinegar poured over.

I'll let you know how they turn out!

Recipe for Pickling Spice Mix

1 teaspoon yellow mustard seeds
1/2 teaspoon powdered allspice
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 teaspoon whole cloves
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon cardamom seeds (measure after removing from pods)
1-2 bay leaves
1-2 small pieces cassia bark

• Crush whole spices, leaves and bark and combine with the ground spices.

Addendum: We opened the jars of gherkins in May/June 2011. Both worked well, but I preferred the texture and higher sugar content of the second batch. I shall be making these again if we get a decent yield of cucumbers in coming months!

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Urban Farming with Celia Brooks Brown

Books on growing your own fruit and vegetables seem to be ten a penny at the moment, as publishers leap onto the latest bandwagon, keen to milk the home farming phenomenon. Often dull and weighty tomes, they add little to the existing excellent literature already available.

Celia Brook Brown's New Urban Farmer makes a refreshing change, steering clear of the temptation to reinvent the wheel and offering instead a well-balanced mix of engaging, personal narrative about her own urban farming awakening, lots of easy-to-digest practical advice and a selection of recipes for the resulting tasty fresh produce too.

For me, it's a joy to read because it echoes what we have found (my husband and I) and much of how we have felt during our own urban farming journey.

We started growing vegetables in our back garden, gosh it must be over ten years ago now. Gradually, year on year, we'd grow more and more different kinds of vegetables and more and more volume until we finally decided to convert the whole of our back garden into what should rightly be called a kitchen garden, but I more commonly think of as a home allotment. A few years back we even invested in a beautiful big greenhouse and new shed; very exciting! And this year we've finally introduced some fruit with a new apple tree, some raspberry canes, wild strawberries and a rhubarb plant. Whilst we do have a few fruit and vegetable gardening bibles, which are invaluable reference, we've learned a great deal by trial and error plus lots of welcome advice from more experienced friends and family.

And both of us have strong memories of helping green-fingered parents. Pete's dad worked hard on his allotment and produced a good part of the (large) family's diet, roping the kids in to help with many of the gardening chores. My mum loves gardening and I have vivid recollections of the little plots she assigned to my sister and I, in which we grew whatever flowers and vegetables we wanted, arranged in our own haphazard designs. Her garden today, even in winter, is an oasis of greenery, enlivened by riotous colour and scent during the warmer months. And, to my envy (no question in my mind as to why the colour of envy is green!) she can grow coriander; something I just can't seem to keep alive!

The beauty of growing your own fruit and vegetables is that you can do as much or little as you wish. Whether it's growing a few tomato plants and herbs in a window box or in a few pots in the garden or giving over a small patch of an otherwise leisure-focused garden to tomatoes, beans, strawberries and lettuces or going the whole hog and getting an allotment (or converting the entire garden as we have done) - it's hugely satisfying and addictive to eat what you have sown, nurtured and brought to fruition.

And with her injection of personal experiences – she has clearly learned by trial and error, success and failure – Celia makes it clear that urban farming is not only possible but readily achievable for anyone who wants to give it a go. As she points out in her introduction, roughly half the population of the earth are city-dwellers. Urban farming not only provides us access to the freshest possible produce, it also gives us the chance to reconnect to nature and improve the quality of our lives.

Celia catching up at the allotment after a couple of months away

Keen to meet with Celia in person and talk more about her urban farming experiences, I met her at her allotment on a very, very, very hot and sunny day, where I filmed a short interview. As you'll see, I'm an appalling interviewer and an even less skilled cameraman (so used to shooting stills that I forgot not to turn the little point and shoot I used into portrait orientation) but I hope the videos will still be of interest. Apologies for the strange semi-black-and-white effect in the last video – I managed to switch into some odd mode and couldn't work out how to switch out of it!

So what about the book – what does it contain?

In the Introduction, Celia tells us how she came to have an allotment before going on to share vegetable plot basics from location to tools to composting to protection to hardening off and more. There are tips on growing in an allotment, a home garden and in containers. And then the book is presented in monthly chapters, running through what needs to be done when, and the many tips Celia has learned along the way.

Even as an experienced vegetable gardener, there were plenty of useful tips for me – from using the spring shoots of winter brassicas to growing only one variety of sweet corn (cross pollination of more than one leads to ill-formed kernels) to using old, tough leeks to make a leek stock to enjoying bolting rocket flowers in salads to keeping supermarket herbs alive longer by gently separating the numerous plants crammed into the tiny container… each page had me scribbling notes to myself.

And there were also many tips which had me shaking my head in agreement – we too use takeaway containers (plus foil catering trays rescued from party events and the plastic punnets in which we buy strawberries and mushrooms) as seed trays; we've had huge success sprinkling broken egg shells around plants to create a physical barrier against slugs and snails; we also like to plant marigolds and nasturtiums as companion plants and we also leave a little patch of wild flowering weeds, all of which attract pollinating insects.

Lastly, there are the recipes – Celia is an experienced food writer and cook and shares many of her favourite ways to use her allotment bounty. I'm looking forward to trying pea and feta egg cups, parmesan potato cakes with summer herbs, warm courgette salad with parmesan crackling and apple and thyme tart with boozy toffee, amongst many others!

Although it's June now, by the time I'm posting this, I would still recommend you pick up a copy of this if you'd like encouragement, inspiration and a final push to join the ranks of urban farmers. There are still fruit and vegetables you can grow this year if you're quick, and you can certainly start planning and preparing for next year already!

Many thanks to Quadrille for my review copy and to Celia Brooks Brown for welcoming me to her allotment (and for her gift of rocket seeds).

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New Urban Farmer by Celia Brook Brown is currently available from Amazon for just £8.24 (normal cover price £14.99).

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Late April in the Kitchen Garden

On the last Sunday in April, the sun was shining, it felt like summer had come early, and Pete did mammoth amounts in the garden. And we oohed and aahed over new growth!

The raspberry canes were showing good growth with lovely bright foliage.

Previously, we'd planted our early crop seed potatoes in trenches. These were just starting to push through the soil.

Our savoy cabbages never really hearted up during the winter so we left them in. Most bolted, like these, into tall, willowy cabbage "trees" with pretty, flowery heads.

I harvested the leaves from the stems from several of them (a week or two previously) and chopped and froze them for later use. But the freezer is now full so these ones become fodder for the compost bin.

Apart from one exception, which somehow managed to heart up. And we enjoyed him fresh, chopped and boiled as a very simple side dish.

The rhubarb plant was growing, yes, but taking it's sweet time about it. Pete weeded all around it, after I took the photo.

Sweet corn seedlings were planted out, and a protective cover assembled.

Pete planted companion marigolds in various spots around the garden, to attract pollinating insects and munch garden pests. Some went beneath the new apple tree, which has a few tiny buds appearing!

My chocolate mint, in a pot, resurrected itself, after dying away during the winter.

Again, the fig tree, in a large pot, is showing lots of tiny fruit, but these have never yet grown into proper ripe fruit. This is the tree's last chance. No fruit this year = banishment! (I said that last year too, so this year's already a reprieve and it better perform or else!)

Pete potted my three varieties of tomatoes into grow bags in the greenhouse. The rest of the seedlings will go outside, not just yet though.

Greenhouse seedlings are doing well. Above centre and right are purple sprouting broccoli.

Those big silver trays are what a range of Indian dishes were delivered in, when I got outside catering to provide food for a garden party for our wedding anniversary last year - in my parents' garden, not here! They make great seed trays!

These are lettuce seedlings.

The gherkin seedlings were planted into a large window box, to live in the greenhouse.

The area to back, in the middle strip, has sugar snaps at the very back. The covered and grassy bit will be home to the main crop potatoes soon. On the right, Pete's emptied the old grow bags and dug them in. And most of those cabbage "trees" are now gone.

These pretty weeds will soon be gone too, but for now they provide a burst of lovely colour and the insects like them.

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