Fruity New Ideas in the Edible Eden Garden at RHS Hampton Court

July 3, 2019February 27, 20234 Comments

Beautiful blackcurrants, deep rosy red fleshed apples, delicious patio tomatoes, and a ginger rosemary cocktail that will blow you away – all on offer at Hampton Court this week in the Edible Eden Garden, designed by Chris Smith of Pennard Plants…

Companion planting in the Edible Eden Garden. Image credit: RHS Joanna Kossak

Edible Eden combines a formal vegetable area, unusual edibles in the forest garden and a soft fruit display in a garden that is a feast for the eyes as well as the tastebuds. Chris explained that he collaborated with Burpee Europe and Lubera on the garden, two companies specializing in breeding and producing new varieties of fruit, vegetables and flowers. Initially Simon Crawford, of Burpee Europe, had the vision of a field of sunflowers and this developed into the impressive display of dwarf sunflower ‘Sunray’ which leads the visitor into the vibrant edible garden.

Field of Sunflower ‘Sunray’ glory

Passing the Riverside Shepherd’s Hut, which would be wonderful to use as a potting or writing space, the sunflower field leads to a vegetable area full of ripe tomatoes, peppers and fiery marigolds grown as companion plants to ward off unwanted insects.

The ideal writing retreat…

Of particular interest was Sweet Pepper ‘Lemon Dream’, launched at Chelsea last year as a companion to ‘Tangerine Dream’. I’m growing both for the first time this year and peppers have just started to form – I hope my plants prove as ornamental and productive as the Pennard peppers at Edible Eden!

Who could resist Sweet Pepper ‘Lemon Dream’?

The forest garden area showcases new fruit from Lubera including the Redlove apple varieties – ‘Era’, ‘Lollipop’ and ‘Calypso’. I was impressed by the amount of fruit produced on these trees in such a small space. The apples are particularly attractive with a deep rosy red colour that shows all the way through the fruit. The high levels of anthocyanins found in the skin means the apples are healthy to eat as well as being beautiful and the deep colour is retained even when they are cooked.

Redlove ‘Lollipop’. Image credit: Lubera

The apple trees have deep pink flowers in spring and beautiful autumn colour, making Redlove both ornamental and productive – an ideal tree for a small garden.

Redlove blossom – a welcome sight in spring. Image credit: Lubera

Next to the apple trees, my eye was drawn to a display of several different Szechaun peppers from the Pennard Plants collection. These hardy shrubs are easy to grow and provide different flavoured peppercorns depending on the variety. I love the range of leaf shapes and colours from the purple-leaved Japanese Sansho pepper (Zanthoxylum piperitum) with its aromatic leaves, to the lush deep green foliage of the Korean lime pepper (Zanthoxylum coreanum). Pennards have collected over 15 different Szechuan and other pepper varieties all with different flavours and preferring different garden situations, so there’s sure to be one that will thrive in every garden.

Chinese Red Pepper (Zanthoxylum bungeanum) in the Edible Eden forest garden

Inside the Alitex greenhouse, the fruit on Melon ‘Mango Mel’ (bred by Burpee to thrive in a northern climate) made my mouth water. Fortunately I had the opportunity to taste the melons later when writer and grower Mark Diacono, of Otter Farm, prepared a range of cocktails to showcase the fruit, vegetables and herbs from the garden.

Each melon resting in its own individual hammock

Mark’s Pimms with ginger ale and garden produce (cucumber, melon, lemon, strawberries, Moroccan mint and even radish) was delicious and then he prepared a ginger rosemary gin with ginger rosemary syrup (equal amounts of water and sugar, on a low heat until dissolved, add ginger rosemary or any other herb and steep until required strength, then remove), lots of lemon juice to add the sharpness and a good quantity of gin. This is one to drink at the end of a visit to the show though – not before touring the gardens!

Beware Mark Diacono preparing (delicious) cocktails

Finally Chris showed me a new tomato due to be launched at RHS Tatton Park Flower Show later in the year. This tiny tomato combines a diminutive stature with a deliciously sweet taste – the holy grail of patio tomato breeding. Christened ‘Veranda Red’, this variety is ideal as a tabletop tomato and would be perfect to grow at home with children.

Tiny tomato ‘Veranda Red’

As I was leaving Edible Eden, full of new ideas for my ornamental fruit and vegetable plot back home, I noticed blackcurrant ‘Black ‘N Red’ which develops gorgeous deep burgundy leaves as the summer progresses. I’ve just removed a blackcurrant that had become unproductive, so I think the sweet fruit of ‘Black ‘N Red’ along with its ornamental foliage might just be the next edible addition to my garden.

Blackcurrant ‘Black ‘N Red’. Image credit: Lubera

Featured image credit: RHS Joanna Kossack

In Praise of the Humble Pea: The Seedlip Garden

May 25, 2018July 3, 2018Leave a comment

In 2013, in a North Lincolnshire kitchen, pea farmer Ben Branson began experimenting with a copper still after reading about the non-alcoholic remedies distilled by apothecaries in the 1600s. Ben’s family have been farming for 300 years and their peas are picked by hand by Ben and his team. His kitchen experimentation led to the world’s first non-alcoholic spirit, the Seedlip drink, which was launched in 2015. This is the second Seedlip Chelsea Garden and it views the humble pea from an unusual angle as every plant in the garden, designed by Dr Catherine MacDonald, is a member of the pea family, Fabaceae.

Ben serving his non-alcoholic cocktails at the show

Bringing together diverse plants in the same family on one garden highlights their similarities – many have papilionaceous flowers (shaped like a butterfly) with a central standard or banner petal raised above the smaller pair of wing petals, with the two keel petals forming a boat shape below. The most obvious example of this in the garden are the lupins which draw the eye across the planting as they blend from the soft yellow of Lupinus ‘Desert Sun’ to the bright purple Lupinus ‘Masterpiece’.

Lupin ‘Desert Sun’

caesalpinia_gilliesii_in_jardin_des_plantes_de_montpellier_04

Caesalpinia gilliesii (Credit: By Krzysztof Golik [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)%5D, from Wikimedia Commons)

The plants in the garden are fascinating because of the vast diversity in the family, from the ground cover clovers like Trifolium repens ‘Dragon’s Blood’ (one of my favourite plants) and the other nine clover species in the garden, to the larger specimens like the Japanese pagoda tree (Styphnolobium japonicum), Laburnum anagyroides ‘Sunspire’ and the striking crimson threadflower (Caesalpinia gilliesii) which was attracting much admiration when I looked round the garden on Monday. A large evergreen shrub from northwest Argentina and Uruguay, the crimson threadflower is unfortunately only hardy down to about -5, so only an option in colder areas of the UK if winter protection is available as it can be grown in a large pot.

Trifolium repens ‘Dragon’s Blood’ may be small but it has big impact with red-veined patches on the leaves

The garden is filled with circular structures, from the pea panels underfoot acting as grills over split pea shingle to the pools which are filled with deep blue-green water, coloured with a pea-dye.

Circles are everywhere in this garden

Even the peavilion at the back of the garden is a shrine housing a collection of articles relevant to the pea, topped with a pea-shoot green roof.

Lupins floating in the foreground and the Peavilion behind

The Seedlip Garden celebrates the work of three pea pioneers: Gregor Mendel (1822-1884) who discovered the basic principles of heredity through his work with peas, Dr Calvin Lamborn (1933-2017), the breeder of the first sugar snap pea, and Seedlip creator, Ben Branson. Many of the edible peas (Pisum sativum) in the garden are varieties bred by Dr Lamborn and there are also two of his new varieties released for the first time on the garden.

Split pea shingle

After admiring the plant diversity on the garden I was persuaded to try the non-alcoholic Seedlip Garden 108 drink (the average number of days it takes to sow, grow & hand-pick the peas), mixed by Ben himself. It’s a floral blend of hand-picked peas, homegrown hay, spearmint, rosemary and thyme, with no sugar or additives. I liked the absence of saccharine sweetness; it has a minty refreshing taste with a slightly sour tang in the background, reminiscent of gin. Well, it would have been rude to say no – and it is gluten-free too!

My Seedlip cocktail

If you’d like to follow the blog and read more of my coverage of RHS Chelsea Flower Show, you can follow the links below:

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Email Address:

Pumpkin and Apple Season: Two Warming Autumn Soups

October 30, 20178 Comments

Facebook has just reminded me that five years ago I spent the day at the Luton Hoo Pumpkin and Apple Day, retreating from the crowds from time to time to sit on the haystacks and feed my 6 month old daughter. Today I have been in the town square enjoying our community garden Apple Day. We’ve been selling apples, pears, quinces and our juice (made with windfalls and unwanted apples collected from local gardens and orchards), running craft workshops for the children and chatting to Hitchin shoppers about all things apple related.

Some of the varieties that have been available for shoppers to try and buy today

Within a couple of hours many of the apple varieties had sold out

Throughout October our house has had an underlying scent of apples – cooking apples stewing, crab apples boiling for jelly and cupboards full of apple boxes stored for eating or cooking later in the year. Our recently harvested quinces have added to the aroma and at the Stotfold Steam Fair last weekend we bought a mammoth pumpkin from a local grower. This has pleased the kids no end as last year I was late to the shops and we ended up celebrating Hallowe’en with a carved watermelon (on the grounds that any cucurbit was better than no cucurbit!)

You’d never have known that our Hallowe’en cat (designed by my son) was carved out of a watermelon!

There’s no doubt that October brings the excitement of the autumn harvest and related festivities, but it also brings wastage on a grand scale as much of the pumpkin flesh removed prior to carving goes straight in the bin. Sara Venn, co-founder of Incredible Edible Bristol, highlighted this waste at the beginning of the week in her article ‘Please don’t play with your food…’ with the appalling figure that 80,000 tonnes of pumpkin flesh went to landfill in 2014. She has been blogging with pumpkin recipes all week and has asked readers and fellow bloggers to add their recipes and ideas to the mix. So here are some pumpkin soup recipes with a bit of apple thrown in for good measure. The spices in the first soup and sweetness of the apple in the second help to add flavour to commercial Hallowe’en pumpkins bred for size and colour, not for taste. The soups are based on recipes in the Luton Hoo ‘Pumpkin and Apple Gala Cookbook’, bought from the Apple and Pumpkin Day five years ago and much used since…

Savoury and sweet – this cookbook has recipes for the whole family to enjoy…

Pumpkin, Prawn and Coconut Soup

Ingredients

400ml can coconut milk

1 lemongrass stalk or several leaves, bruised

2 tsps Thai green curry paste

4 Kaffir lime leaves

500ml hot chicken stock

1 tbsp nam pla fish sauce

About 500g peeled pumpkin flesh, chopped

250g pack MSC (Marine Stewardship Council) prawns

Juice of 1 lime

1 chilli, deseeded and chopped

A bunch of shredded spring onions or chopped chives

Method

Add the coconut milk, Kaffri lime leaves and lemon grass to a pan and simmer for 5 minutes. Add the Thai green curry paste and hot stock. Stir gently until the paste has dissolved.

Add the pumpkin and simmer until tender (10-12 minutes). Add the prawns and cook for a further 5 minutes. Remove the lemon grass and Kaffir lime leaves. Add lime juice and fish sauce to taste.

Serve topped with shredded spring onions/chives and chilli.

Regular readers will know I am a Thai food lover. I love growing Thai veg and herbs and this soup used our lemongrass and Thai lime leaves as well as the pumpkin

Roast Pumpkin and Bramley Apple Soup

Ingredients

1 large pumpkin

2 tbsp olive oil

25g butter

1 small onion, chopped

1 small Bramley ( or other cooking) apple, peeled and chopped

700ml vegetable stock

Salt and pepper to taste

Method

Cut pumpkin into quarters, scoop out seeds (rinse and save), brush flesh with olive oil and roast for 25 minutes at 180ºc or until flesh is soft. Once cool, scoop flesh out of skin.

Melt the butter in a pan and add the onion. Soften for 10 minutes without browning. Add stock and pumpkin flesh. Simmer gently for 15 minutes. Add the apple and simmer for a further 5 minutes until tender.

Blend the soup, add salt and pepper to taste and serve with natural yoghurt and ground black pepper.

A wholesome warming soup for cold autumn evenings

As a tasty extra treat, the discarded pumpkin seeds can be toasted for 20-25 minutes at 180ºc spread out on an oiled baking tray. Remove from oven when toasted. Toss in seasoning and herbs or spices to taste (we used salt, pepper, cumin and paprika) and scoff as a pre-dinner snack.

Toasted pumpkin seeds – no waste – great taste

The pumpkin and apple harvest adds a sparkle to October meals – there are so many delicious ways to make the most of these hearty ingredients

My two little helpers enjoying the apple tunnel in a local orchard

For more apple recipes, try some tasty Apple and Cinnamon Butter, Spiced Crab Apple Jelly and Crab Apple Fruit Leathers or our family favourite – Rhubarb and Apple Sponge.

If you have other cucurbits to use up, try Stuffed Summer Squash, Courgette and Chilli Cornbread or Courgette Tea Bread.

I’d love to hear about other favourite pumpkin and apple recipes – with all that pumpkin flesh going spare in the next few weeks, every delicious recipe counts. And if you’d like to explore more recipes with me, you can follow the blog below:

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Allotment Soup Challenge: Celeriac and Blue Cheese

January 21, 20172 Comments

When we inherited our allotment last March, the only crop which had overwintered was a collection of celeriac – clearly beloved of the previous occupants if the quantity, amount and size of the plants was anything to go by. I’ve long been a fan of the nobbly, bald vegetable after having it in soups in Austria years ago and being regularly faced with it in veggie boxes since.

Last year I followed in the previous allotment holder’s footsteps and grew celeriac from seed. I suspect I didn’t lavish as much attention on it as the previous year’s incumbents had. We got a crop – the celeriac were not as rotund as those I pulled up last March – but we managed to grow enough to harvest several for winter meals. Celeriac has a milder taste than celery and is lovely grated raw in salads or boiled and mashed. But as I’m endeavouring to produce as many soups as possible from the allotment this year, here’s one I experimented with recently which was particularly tasty…

Celeriac and Blue Cheese Soup

Ingredients

1 medium celeriac (or you could use a head of celery)

75g blue cheese, eg. Saint Agur

700 ml stock

50g butter

1 large potato or 2 smaller ones

300ml milk or cream

Black pepper

Few pieces of leftover chopped up cooked ham, fried chorizo or croutons

The main ingredients

Method

Peel and chop the celeriac and potato. Melt the butter in a pan and add the celeriac and potato. Soften in the butter for a few minutes, then add the stock.

Boil in stock for 20 minutes or until the vegetables are soft. Blend the vegetables and stock. Add the cheese, milk and black pepper to taste. Reheat the soup to melt the cheese.

Serve the soup sprinkled with black pepper and chopped ham to add a salty twist, accompanied with crusty bread and butter.

This soup is warming, rich and delicious, especially if you’ve spent the morning digging, weeding or planting out in the cold at the allotment!! ☺

If you are after more warming soups, try my Roasted Jerusalem Artichoke and Sweet Chestnut Soup. You can check out more recipes here or follow the blog to get new recipe ideas as I add them to the blog…

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Email Address:

Planting Garlic in Containers and Oyster Mushroom Update

December 10, 2016December 11, 20169 Comments

I have a confession to make… well two really. The first is that I never manage to get my garlic in before Christmas and yet still usually get a decent crop, although I’m sure yields would be higher if I planted earlier. The second that we have a bad case of white rot in our garden (and, I suspect, in the allotment) so for the last 3 years I’ve planted in old potato sacks. I’ve been surprised at the success of container growing – it’s a great way to grow garlic in a small garden or on a patio. I’m not even sure I’d go back to growing in the ground, even after the requisite 15 years or so when the soil might be white rot free.

Some of this year’s garlic crop

This year I am determined to plant whilst the old year is still waning, so I’ve been hunting out the paper bags filled with old bulbs from this year’s harvest. I’ve been growing ‘Early Purple Wight’ and ‘Red Czech’ for several years – bought from Isle of Wight based The Garlic Farm at Hampton Court Flower Show. We are pretty much self-sufficient in garlic throughout the year and saving bulbs makes this crop a cost effective one too. Last year I swapped some produce for a few elephant garlic cloves and they work really well in meals for the kids, who are yet to develop a taste for really spicy cuisine. Most produced healthy bulbs, but a few clearly took offence at being planted late and only produced round cloves. I’m going to plant the biggest of these again this year and see what happens.

One of this year’s Elephant Garlic bulbs

In 2017, I’m adding to my collection with the new varieties ‘Persian Star’ and ‘Susan Delafield’, kindly given to me by Julieanne Porter, who grows a range of different varieties in her own garden. Julieanne’s interesting accounts of garlic growing and trialling container/ground cultivated garlic can be found on her blog – Gwenfar’s Garden and other musings. I’m looking forward to getting to know these new varieties and seeing how they perform in the pots and in the kitchen.

5 varieties of garlic ready for planting

I’m planting into a mixture of peat-free multi-purpose compost and my own garden compost, with around 6-10 cloves per pot. The pots spend the year next to the greenhouse in a sunny spot. They do have a tendency to dry out in the summer, so need regular watering, but apart from that are relatively maintenance free. This year the elephant garlic produced scapes which needed to be removed to encourage the plants to focus their energies on creating large bulbs. The discarded scapes were an added bonus, making a zingy pesto and delicious garlic bread.

Garlic scapes are a delicious spring treat

So, armed with old and new containers (some of my old ones have now entirely disintegrated after 6 valiant years of service), I’m off out into a dreary looking garden to bury treasure for next spring. The new containers are Haxnicks Vigoroot Potato/Tomato Planters, available through Suttons Seeds and kindly given to me to trial with my garlic. They stand 45cm high and hold 40 litres of compost. The planters are made of strong, stiff felt with sturdy webbed canvas handles.

Vigoroot Planters to trial

The fabric planters should last for 3-6 years and work by ‘air-pruning’ plant roots, encouraging more vigorous rooting and therefore better absorption of nutrients. This will hopefully lead to bigger bulbs in the summer. Once filled the containers seem stable and although they will need careful watering due to the porous nature of the material, the sharp drainage will be good for the garlic. I’m planning to mulch the pots to help conserve moisture and to add plenty of homemade compost to give the cloves a good start.

‘Persian Star’

So with all 5 varieties in situ, I’ll be waiting for more cold weather; a couple of cool months at temperatures of 0-10°C (32-50°F) should be sufficient for good bulb development. Once the milder spring weather returns the garlic should begin to sprout and I’ll be able to assess its vigour. Until growth begins, I’m intending to observe the garlic planters very closely from inside the warm kitchen with a glass of mulled wine and a mince pie (or two).

Garlic planted – now to wait for spring

Hot Press Mushroom News…

The Oyster Mushrooms started to show on Day 9 of the Advent-ure and are now coming on swiftly. I’ll leave you with pictures of the babies, with more growth to come over the rest of Advent and then, hopefully, good eating.

Baby Oyster Mushrooms appearing on Days 9 and 10

If you want to grow your own Oyster Mushrooms, you can buy kits from The Espresso Mushroom Company. If you’d like to see how it all starts, take a look at my vlogs on the kits, on soaking the coffee grounds and on setting up the soaked growing kit.

If you’d like to follow my garlic and mushroom growing, I’ll be posting more details of both on the blog and day by day mushroom images over December on my Facebook page. You can follow my blog by clicking below. Thanks 🙂

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Allotment Soup Challenge: Roasted Jerusalem Artichoke and Sweet Chestnut

November 24, 2016November 25, 20163 Comments

I love making soup. Homemade soup was a big part of family lunchtime when I was a child and I’ve carried on the tradition, making soups out of everything I can get my hands on. My favourite soup cookbook is a faded copy of ‘Soup and Beyond’ which I’ve had since I was a student. I really like the way it broadens traditional soup horizons, with combinations such as ‘Potato, Leek and Lavender Soup’ and ‘Prince and Pedlar Soup’ (quince and medlar). This recipe book, alongside a keen interest in more unusual crops, has led me to play with all sorts of soupy concoctions – most of which have tickled enough taste buds that they’ve been reprised multiple times, for example, our family favourite cream of kohl rabi soup (which alas has not been possible from the allotment this year for molluscular reasons – see Taking Stock: The Three Worst Crops of 2016).

Love this book

Allotment Soup Challenge

So I decided I’d set myself challenge for the next few months – to make as many different soups with produce from allotment 96B as I can – to trial new flavour combinations and to make the most of our homegrown produce. There’s nothing better than soup to use up leftover vegetables and to warm your cockles when your heart is feeling rather chilly, for whatever reason. So here goes… the first soup is with the leftover Jerusalem artichokes, harvested last week, mostly used in stir-fries, but with some sorry specimens (not a problem in soup) hiding at the back of the veggie drawer. It’s a good job the soup is nourishing and tasty as there’s an awful lot more artichokes where these came from – whoever had our allotment before us really liked the knobbly tubers and we could currently supply the majority of Hertfordshire until Christmas and beyond…

Our first plant produced this sizeable pile – only 20 more plants to go!

Roasted Jerusalem artichoke and sweet chestnut soup 🌰

Ingredients

500g Jerusalem artichokes

150g sweet chestnuts

250g potato

1 onion

200ml stock

200ml milk

100ml single cream

1 tsp winter savoury (could use thyme but it might have a less protective effect on your digestive system – see below!)

Salt/black pepper to taste

We’ve been happily adding these seasonal treats to gravy, soups and casseroles for the past couple of weeks

Method

Roast the chestnuts (with a cross slit in their shells) and the scrubbed artichokes in the oven at 180ºc for 30 minutes or until the vegetables are soft (don’t need to add oil). Meanwhile, boil the peeled, chopped potatoes, winter savoury leaves and halved onion in the stock and milk until the vegetables are soft. When cooled, combine the stock, milk, onion, winter savoury and potatoes with the artichokes (which can be skinned at this point, or as I did, squeezed out of their skins – messy but fun!)

Blend the soup and when it is smooth add the chopped chestnuts and salt and pepper to taste. The soup can then be blended again until there are only small nuggets of chestnut to add a bit of bite to the soft soup. Heat in a pan and serve with crusty bread. It really is pretty simple… and delicious.

You might want to eat fairly sparingly to begin with as the effects of Jerusalem artichokes can be rather potent on the unwary digestive system, but the winter savoury should help take the wind out of the Jerusalem artichokes’ sails, so to speak. 😉

Fresh, nutty and delicious soup

Please leave me a comment – especially if you have any suggestions about other ways of cooking with Jerusalem artichokes – or producing power with them, or any other ideas as I’m not convinced our collective digestion systems will cope with eating all of them over winter, so we need to dream up some alternative uses!! 🙂

Pumpkin and Apple Season: Two Warming Autumn Soups

October 15, 201620 Comments

Some of the varieties that have been available for shoppers to try and buy today

Within a couple of hours many of the apple varieties had sold out

You’d never have known that our Hallowe’en cat (designed by my son) was carved out of a watermelon!

Savoury and sweet – this cookbook has recipes for the whole family to enjoy…

Pumpkin, Prawn and Coconut Soup

Ingredients

400ml can coconut milk

1 lemongrass stalk or several leaves, bruised

2 tsps Thai green curry paste

4 Kaffir lime leaves

500ml hot chicken stock

1 tbsp nam pla fish sauce

About 500g peeled pumpkin flesh, chopped

250g pack MSC (Marine Stewardship Council) prawns

Juice of 1 lime

1 chilli, deseeded and chopped

A bunch of shredded spring onions or chopped chives

Method

Add the coconut milk, Kaffri lime leaves and lemon grass to a pan and simmer for 5 minutes. Add the Thai green curry paste and hot stock. Stir gently until the paste has dissolved.

Add the pumpkin and simmer until tender (10-12 minutes). Add the prawns and cook for a further 5 minutes. Remove the lemon grass and Kaffir lime leaves. Add lime juice and fish sauce to taste.

Serve topped with shredded spring onions/chives and chilli.

Regular readers will know I am a Thai food lover. I love growing Thai veg and herbs and this soup used our lemongrass and Thai lime leaves as well as the pumpkin

Roast Pumpkin and Bramley Apple Soup

Ingredients

1 large pumpkin

2 tbsp olive oil

25g butter

1 small onion, chopped

1 small Bramley ( or other cooking) apple, peeled and chopped

700ml vegetable stock

Salt and pepper to taste

Method

Cut pumpkin into quarters, scoop out seeds (rinse and save), brush flesh with olive oil and roast for 25 minutes at 180ºc or until flesh is soft. Once cool, scoop flesh out of skin.

Blend the soup, add salt and pepper to taste and serve with natural yoghurt and ground black pepper.

A wholesome warming soup for cold autumn evenings

Toasted pumpkin seeds – no waste – great taste

The pumpkin and apple harvest adds a sparkle to October meals – there are so many delicious ways to make the most of these hearty ingredients

My two little helpers enjoying the apple tunnel in a local orchard

For more apple recipes, try some tasty Apple and Cinnamon Butter, Spiced Crab Apple Jelly and Crab Apple Fruit Leathers or our family favourite – Rhubarb and Apple Sponge.

If you have other cucurbits to use up, try Stuffed Summer Squash, Courgette and Chilli Cornbread or Courgette Tea Bread.

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Plot to Plate: Courgette Tea Bread

October 3, 2016October 3, 20167 Comments

Last week the courgettes were destined for savoury fare in my courgette and chilli cornbread. This week’s courgette production shows no let up, so I’ve been experimenting with sweet uses of courgettes. First I tried a courgette chocolate cake using a recipe from the Delemere Farm Goat’s Milk carton. It was meant to be avocado and chocolate, but ended up with grated courgettes in too (as with so many things in our house…) It tasted good, but I need to work on the moisture levels as it was a little dry – probably due to my substitution of gluten-free flour for ordinary flour.

First attempt at a sweet courgette recipe – the homemade blackcurrant jam between the layers of the cake worked particularly well

So then I embarked on an old favourite – tea bread, but substituting some of the dried fruits for grated courgette. This worked a treat – the loaf was moist with no distinct taste of courgette – just a general fruity deliciousness.

Courgette Tea Bread

Ingredients

300g mixed dried fruit

150g grated courgette

200ml cold tea

250g gluten free self-raising flour (or could use ordinary wholemeal self-raising flour)

170g soft brown sugar

30g melted butter

1 egg

Dried fruit and grated courgette soaking in the tea

Method

Soak the dried fruit and grated courgette in the tea for several hours or overnight. Add the flour, sugar, butter and egg to the soaked mixture and combine thoroughly.

Line a long loaf tin with greaseproof paper and pour cake mixture into the tin. Bake at 170ºc for 1-1.5 hours until the tea bread is firm to the touch.

Hard to leave it to cool before slicing as it smelled so good…

Enjoy with a cup of tea, preferably in the sunshine.

And relax…

Plot to Plate: Courgette and Chilli Cornbread

September 26, 2016September 28, 20164 Comments

Everywhere you look at in my house at the moment there are courgettes of different shapes and sizes. In the sinks, the fridge and on the worktops. It’s a lovely problem to have and I’m intending to conquer it by including courgette in every meal and snack for the next few weeks. I might just let the kids off having it grated into their breakfast cereals if I’m feeling generous 🙂

So I’m starting a series of courgette recipes in Plot to Plate, beginning with this delicious cornbread which we’ve been enjoying for years and moving on to other ideas including some yummy courgette Earl Grey tea bread which I’ve been experimenting with this week.

This beauty has been split between the cornbread and the teabread

And this monster is lurking in the utility room sink…

Ingredients:

1 onion

1 red pepper

2 medium courgettes (I used 2/3 of this big one)

1 egg

4 tbsp olive oil

1 chilli (vary heat levels of the chilli to taste)

2 small sweetcorn cobs with kernels removed or 1 cup frozen sweetcorn

125ml crème fraiche

125g polenta

1/2 tsp sea salt

1 tsp baking powder

250g grated cheddar cheese

1/2 tsp paprika

Cooking the vegetables – the courgette, onion and chilli in the cornbread were all from the garden or allotment

Method:

Chop the onion and red pepper and grate the courgette. Add to a frying pan with 2 tbsp of olive oil and cook until soft. Cool in a bowl.

Ready to be baked – I didn’t put the chilli in the bread because the kids don’t like it spicy, so I sprinkled it on top of one half and put paprika on the other half to show which was which

Beat the egg with remaining olive oil and add chopped chilli and cooled veg. Stir in the rest of the ingredients (except the paprika and 50g of grated cheese). Pour into a 21 cm diameter shallow cake tin and sprinkle the cheese and paprika over the top.

Cooked and ready for action

Bake at 180ºc for 40 mins. I usually serve warm with salad, vegetables or soup.

Courgette and chilli cornbread with olive and beetroot from the allotment – nourishing and tasty

Plot to Plate: Stuffed Summer Squash

September 12, 2016October 3, 20161 Comment

I’ve sometimes grown fruit and veg in the garden and then had insufficient time, in the whirl of hectic family life, to harvest and/or cook it, which rather defeats the object of growing it in the first place. Now my youngest is at school I’m resolved to make more time to enjoy the fruits (and veg) of my labours and to share some of the recipes that have proved popular on the blog.

So here’s one I made last week with summer squashes I swapped locally for some of my excess chilli peppers…

Stuffed Summer Squash

Ingredients

1 summer squash

Approx. 50g soft goat’s cheese

1/2 red pepper

Handful of mint leaves

Method

Cut out the top of the squash and scoop out the seeds and membrane, discard

Roast the squash in the oven at 180ºc until just soft – around 40 minutes depending on size

Cut the pepper and cheese into chunks

Finely cut the mint

Mix pepper, cheese and mint together

When the squash is soft, stuff the centre with the pepper, cheese and mint mixture (the amounts will depend on the size of the squash) and put back in the oven for around 15 minutes until the cheese is melted and the peppers are soft

Serve as a vegetarian supper for 2 with buttered crusty bread or a vegetable accompaniment to a meal for 4

Like a cake, it looked rather too good to eat

We’ve also enjoyed a tasty alternative squash supper where we stuffed the cooked squash with chopped, fried chorizo and mushrooms mixed with cooked quinoa. Great for a complete gluten free supper in one delicious vegetable bowl.

Bon appetite 🙂