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:

Oyster Mushroom Advent Calendar: A Christmas Harvest

December 25, 2016Leave a comment

We’ve been having festive fungal fun all through December in our house, thanks to the Oyster Mushroom Kit sent by the nice people at the Espresso Mushroom Company. This week it’s been the highlight of the process – harvest, cooking and scoffing them in waves of warm garlicky goodness. On Day 16 they were ready for harvesting and all 4 clusters of mushrooms came out smoothly. Here’s a short clip of how to harvest your mushrooms (I mention that it is a two-handed job and it is – my other hand is holding the container steady.)

An explosion of Oyster Mushrooms ready for the picking…

We decided to have the first batch as creamy garlic mushrooms on toast with a poached egg. Delicious comfort food. Not a complicated recipe to cook – ready for the table in 10 minutes…

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

After Christmas lunch it’s always good to have a light tea and what could be better than a comforting plate of garlic mushrooms on toast? If you haven’t grown your own this December, you can buy oyster mushrooms in good greengrocers, markets and supermarkets. Or you can wait until mid-January and grow your own – far more fun and your fresh mushrooms will be ready in around 16 days…

If you missed my post on growing your own mushrooms, you can see the beginning of the process here – Oyster Mushroom Advent Calendar: Part One.

I’d like to thank all of my readers for your support, comments and ideas during the first year of my blog and wish you all a very happy Christmas and a peaceful and prosperous New Year. 🙂 🙂 🙂

If you would like to follow my gardening adventures in 2017, you can click below to subscribe…

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 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 🙂

Hey Presto – Pesto!

August 26, 2016September 25, 201610 Comments

It was too hot tonight to spend much time in the kitchen – what was needed was a quick supper for the family to eat in the garden. Salad is plentiful at this time of year, so add a bit of pasta on the side and job done. Pesto is great to mix with speedy pasta and luckily I’d made some earlier in the week. Here’s how I made it, plus some top tips on how to grow and harvest the basil and store the pesto afterwards…

Sowing Basil

I grow basil on the top shelf of the greenhouse (away from all but the best ninja slugs) and I usually grow sweet basil (Ocimum basilicum) as it has the sweetest taste for pesto and salads. I’ve grown Thai basil in the past – I grew Ocimum x citriodorum ‘Siam Queen’ primarily for cooking Thai dishes. It has a stronger liquorice flavour which is lovely in a curry and is a more ornamental plant with its purple/red stems and pink flowers. It didn’t make such good pesto though, so I went back to sweet basil for my pasta dishes.

Seeds can be sown from February to June and take a couple of weeks to germinate in a propagator or a pot/tray inside a polythene bag. Once the seedlings are large enough, they can be pricked out into small pots. I tend to grow mine in pots (I pot them on a couple of times over the growing season into larger pots and probably would grow them in bigger pots still if I had the room.) They can also be grown on a windowsill for the duration or hardened off after the risk of frost is over and planted outside in a sunny, sheltered spot. I’ve found this to be less productive due to low temperatures in past summers, but in a hot summer this would probably be more productive than greenhouse growing if you have enough space.

If you like the idea of growing different types of basil for pesto or other recipes these seed suppliers are a good place to start. Here are a few on my seed list for next year…

Thompson and Morgan – I like the idea of Basil ‘Lemonade’ adding a ‘sherbert lemon twist’ to a bowl of summer strawberries.

Kings Seeds – Cinnamon basil sounds tasty and ripe for some culinary experimentation. Lemon basil also appeals and I like the idea of adding it to Earl Grey tea. Especially when the tea is made from bergamot from the garden.

Nicky’s Seeds – Basil ‘Floral Spires White’ and ‘Floral Spires Lavender’ combine the ornamental and culinary, with pretty flowers on a compact plant. Sounds like it has real potager potential.

Top Tip 1:

If you don’t want to raise basil from seed it is easy to buy a cheap supermarket pot of basil and divide it. I did this one year when I needed plants for the school plant sale and mine had all been gobbled by the hungry and increasingly skilled ninja slugs.

Basil in pots is overcrowded and often doesn’t last long – convincing cooks that it is a hard plant to grow. With a few extra pots and a bit of compost, all the seedlings in the pot can be pricked out, given their own space and then grown on in a greenhouse, on a windowsill or in the garden. This gave me over 30 individual plants which all matured to be stocky sizeable specimens with many leaves over the course of the summer. Bargain!

Some of the basil after its first mini haircut

Growing Basil

Basil likes warm conditions and plenty of water. It should also be fertilised once a month over the summer.

Top Tip 2:

I grow my greenhouse basil in pots placed in gravel trays. Although the plants shouldn’t be sitting in water, I do find they are happier in a more moist environment than many of my greenhouse plants. Without a gravel tray the water quickly drains away, but with it they can absorb more of the moisture and then any excess can be tipped away. (Although in practice I’ve found an occasional few days here or there sitting in water doesn’t seem to do them any damage.)

Even managed to squeeze some basil into the tomato hanging baskets

Harvesting Basil

Basil can be harvested throughout the growing season and is lovely in salads and well as in pesto. I particularly love it at this time of year in a basil, tomato and mozzarella salad with a mix of our red, purple, orange and yellow tomatoes.

Top Tip 3:

I generally harvest basil for pesto twice in the season. Pinching the plant out stimulates side growth, leading to a sturdier, more productive plant. I use the pinched out leaves for salad early in the season and then leave them for a few weeks to grow back. I then take most of my plants back to the lowest set of leaves and make pesto. Finally towards the end of the growing season I pinch the plants back to the lowest leaves again. This set of leaves usually makes the largest amount of pesto.

This plant has been pinched back hard twice and is branching enthusiastically

Making Pesto

I collect a basketful of leaves from about 20 plants and then pick off and wash the leaves. These are blended with 50-100g of pine nuts, 1-3 cloves of garlic, 1/4 teaspoon salt, 100g grated Parmesan cheese and enough oil to blend to a fairly smooth paste. I generally try the pesto when it’s blended and add more garlic, salt and/or nuts to taste.

Late summer pickings

Top Tip 4:

This week I discovered I only had half a pack of pine nuts in the cupboard – disaster! I read about using other nuts in pesto so I added cashews to make it up to the right amount. The pesto was delicious and I’ll be trying different types of nuts in the future (pistachios and walnuts for starters) to see what works.

Pesto ingredients with a mix of pine and cashew nuts

Top Tip 5:

The second batch of pesto invariably makes more than we can eat fresh, even in a particularly pesto-loving household. I have frozen it in little pots before which is a bit of a nuisance as it ties up all my containers for months, so this year I froze it in ice cube trays and then popped the pesto ice cubes into a bag when frozen. Leave out the cheese if freezing and add when you defrost. The pesto ice cube can just be stirred into hot, cooked pasta and it will melt with the cheese to create perfect easy tea.

Pesto ice cubes

What have you made pesto with and how successful was it? I’d love to try other greens in the future as well as different types of nuts…

Pesto pasta for all the family with a colourful garden salad

More delicious recipes from the garden to come in later posts. Follow the blog to get tasty updates…

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Scones with raspberry jam and clotted cream – perfect for a summer afternoon tea

August 5, 2016September 25, 201611 Comments

The best thing about scones with raspberry jam and clotted cream is that you get two bites of the raspberry. You can make the jam in July with a glut of summer raspberries as we did, or wait until the autumn fruits begin and then start jamming. Or even make jam all summer long with both types. Our summer canes haven’t stopped producing yet although they have passed the glut stage and the autumn canes are already producing fruit – mostly the lovely yellow ‘All Gold’ raspberries.

A mix of summer raspberries ‘Glen Moy’ and ‘Glen Ample’ and autumn raspberries ‘All Gold’

All the rain in June and early July suited the summer raspberries perfectly, swelling the fruit and providing us with baskets of delicious berries for adults, children and jam pan alike. We didn’t have many autumn fruiting canes, but the allotment we took on in March has two 6m rows of autumn raspberries, so I think we’ll have our first year with not one, but two raspberry gluts.

At the allotment the raspberry canes go on and on…

I’ve always loved raspberries best – there is an intensity about their flavour which can’t be matched by even the best strawberries or blueberries. I collected them from the hedgerows as a child foraging in Welsh lanes and then planted them as soon as I had my own garden. I love their long season, their varied colours and their cheerful, robust nature.

I enjoy our blueberries, but I’m still a raspberry lover at heart

So here’s my (or actually my husband’s) recipe for raspberry jam and gluten free scones. He’s the preserve enthusiast in the family and makes excellent desserts too, whilst I tend to make the cakes and biscuits (once you have lots of jam you have to use it up in jam tarts and Victoria sponge cakes!) We run a gluten free kitchen because of the severity of my coeliac disease and we’ve both enjoyed getting to grips with new recipes over the past 5 years. I avoided scones for a couple of years as the shop bought gluten free ones were dry and crumbly, so this recipe allows me to indulge in a spot of clotted cream and jam all over again. The jam can, of course, be spread on whatever type of scone comes to hand.

Raspberry jam also turns homemade rice pudding into an indulgent supper

Raspberry Jam

Ingredients

450g raspberries (make sure some of the raspberries are slightly under-ripe as this ensures there is enough pectin)

Approx. 450g granulated sugar (or weigh the raspberries you have and add an equal weight of sugar)

Method

Put the washed fruit in a jam pan or other large pan and gently crush it with a wooden spoon to release some of the juices. Gently heat to boiling point.

Simmer for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Let the mixture cool a little, then push it through a stainless steel sieve to remove the seeds and create a puree.

Measure the puree and pour it into the clean jam pan. Add 450g sugar for each 600ml of puree (450g of raspberries should make about 600ml of puree.)

Gently heat, stirring, until the sugar has dissolved. Boil rapidly until it reaches setting point. (Stick a small plate in the fridge until it is cool, then remove and test jam after 10/15 minutes of boiling by putting a teaspoon of the jam on the cold plate. Leave for a minute, then slide finger across jam on plate to see if it wrinkles. If it wrinkles only a little, boil for another 2 minutes and try again.)

When setting point is reached, skim any froth off the surface with a slotted spoon and pour into sterilised jars. Seal and leave to cool.

This year’s glut reincarnated

Gluten Free Scones

Ingredients

115g gluten free plain flour

115g rice flour

60g caster sugar

4 tsps. gluten free baking powder

1½ tsps. xanthan gum

75g unsalted butter (cubed)

200ml buttermilk

80g sultanas

Method

Preheat the oven to 220ºC (200ºC fan). Sift flours, sugar, baking powder and xanthan gum into a large bowl. Add the butter and rub with fingertips until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs.

Stir the buttermilk into the mixture. Add the sultanas. Mix with a round bladed knife to make a soft dough. You may need to add a little more plain flour at this point if the dough is too sticky.

Kneed the dough a few times, then roll out onto a floured surface to around 15mm thick. Using a round cutter of any size, cut out scones and place on lightly greased baking sheet on a baking tray. (We don’t have a cutter of the size we like, so we use a child’s plastic cup to cut out the scones!) Rubbing the top of the cutter/cup with flour stops it sticking to the dough.

Make sure the scones aren’t too close together on the baking tray. Bake for about 15 minutes. Serve warm or cold with jam and cream.

Don’t mind if I do…

I suspect these scones are probably at their best in the first couple of days, but to be honest they’ve never made it to day 3 for empirical testing! They can also be frozen – but why would you want to??

Teatime…

If you’ve enjoyed reading about our crops and recipes, you can subscribe to the blog here:

Subscribe to Blog via Email

and read more of my recipes for Thai Curry, Elderflower Cordial, Rhubarb Recipes and Nettle Soup.

It’s uncanny how similar scones with jam and clotted cream are to Gladioli ‘Flevo Sylvia’ which I think should be renamed Gladioli ‘Scone’!

8 Delicious Recipes for Surviving a Rhubarb Glut…

June 25, 2016September 25, 20167 Comments

It’s June, the weather is warming, there’s been plenty of rain (!) and the rhubarb is looking on top of the world. From the small knuckles of underground potential, huge forests have grown in a few short weeks and now, in a Jurassic corner of the fruit cage, garden or allotment a jungle threatens to swamp any passing gardeners.

If this sounds familiar then maybe you, like me, need some new ways to turn your rhubarb riot into snacks, puddings and store-cupboard treasures. Here’s my old favourites and some new twists to help you turn excess into success…

1. Rhubarb and Ginger Compote

This is one of my favourite ways of cooking rhubarb. It’s so simple and can be used as the basis for many other recipes and meals.

Ingredients:

4/5 stems of rhubarb, washed and chopped

3 pieces of stem ginger and some of the ginger syrup from the jar

: Our utility sink is usually full of some Jurassic vegetable or other… usually with its very own ecosystem!

Method:

Put the chopped rhubarb in an ovenproof dish. Add the stem ginger chopped into small pieces and 1-2 tbsps of syrup (to taste).

Roast in the oven at 180 °C until the rhubarb is soft (usually around 30 minutes).

The compote can be added to porridge, natural yoghurt and used as the base for crumble. We have also been known to add it to heated leftover homemade chocolate birthday cake to make chocolate fudge cake and rhubarb (a particularly fine pudding).

Compote with natural yoghurt and a little ginger syrup on top

2. Rhubarb and Mint Jam

We first made this jam last year for the school plant stall as we were selling food (alongside the plants) with herbs as the theme. The idea was to include herbs in the produce and then for the fete-goers to guess what the herb was (part of my attempt to get people smelling, tasting and growing all things herbal.) The jam was so successful that all the jars went at the beginning of the day, with only the tasting jar left for samples!

Ingredients:

1kg rhubarb, chopped

1kg granulated sugar

Large bunch of mint leaves

2 tbsp finely chopped mint

Method:

Leave chopped rhubarb layered with the sugar in a bowl overnight. Next day, add the rhubarb and sugar mixture to a preserving pan and add the mint leaves tied together in a bunch. Cook gently until the rhubarb is softened (about 30 minutes).

Remove the mint and bring the mixture to the boil. Cook over a high heat until it reaches setting point (105°C). Leave to stand for 10 minutes, stir in the chopped mint, pour into sterilized jars and seal. Enjoy on toast or scones with jam and cream.

Toast and jam? Don’t mind if I do...

3. Rhubarb Cupcakes with Cinnamon Frosting

I love baking cupcakes for the kids – especially when we can fold treasures from the garden into them, like tiny alpine strawberries, blueberries, Chilean guavas or, in this case, rhubarb.

All the recipes in this blog are gluten free (I live in a Coeliac/gluten free household), but the cake mix would work just as well with ordinary self-raising flour.

Ingredients:

12 pieces of rhubarb, roasted until soft (recipe makes 12 cupcakes)

3 eggs, weighed

Equal weight gluten-free self-raising flour as the eggs

Equal weight golden caster sugar

Equal weight softened butter

A few drops of vanilla extract

250g icing sugar

125g butter at room temperature

2-4 tsp milk

My little helper carrying half filled cupcakes with rhubarb chunk

Method:

Mix the equal weight of eggs, caster sugar, flour and butter in a blender or with a hand whisk. Spoon into cupcake cases, adding a piece of roasted rhubarb to the centre of each cake. Bake at 180°C for 15-20 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the edge comes out clean (rather than the middle as then the skewer will hit the rhubarb.)

Top with swirls of cinnamon buttercream icing (whisk the butter and icing sugar together with 1/2 tsp of ground cinnamon mixed in and add 2-4 tsp of milk to soften to desired consistency) as a sweet contrast with the tart rhubarb in the centre. Sit down with a cup of tea and enjoy!

It’s cupcake time…

4. Rhubarb and Apple Sponge

This one is a family favourite with whatever fruit happens to be in supply from the garden or allotment. (I secretly even prefer it to rhubarb crumble.)

Ingredients:

4 stems of rhubarb, chopped

2 cooking apples, cored, peeled and chopped

A handful of raisins or sultanas

Splash of water

2 eggs

115g unsalted butter

115g golden caster sugar

115g ground almonds

Stewing the fruit

Method:

Gently stew the apples, rhubarb and raisins in a little water, stirring as they cook (takes abut 30 minutes). I don’t tend to add sugar as the topping is sweet, but additional sugar can be added to the stewing fruit to taste.

Cream the butter and sugar. Beat in the eggs one at a time. Fold in the ground almonds. When the fruit is soft, put it in an ovenproof dish and cover gently with the sponge mix. Cook at 170°C for 35 minutes or until the top is golden brown. Serve with yoghurt, cream or ice cream.

The way to my family’s hearts – a good pudding

5. Rhubarb, Strawberry and Elderflower Sorbet

I love recipes which celebrate seasonal produce. This one uses produce from the garden, allotment and hedgerows, and epitomises the taste of summer.

Ingredients:

200g strawberries, halved

500g rhubarb

5 tbsp. elderflower cordial (I used my homemade cordial, but any undiluted elderflower cordial would work well)

50g sugar (could add more if preferred – we like fairly sharp sorbets)

Homegrown rhubarb and strawberries ready for roasting

Method:

Roast the rhubarb and strawberries in the cordial at 180°C until the fruit is soft (about 30 minutes). Remove from the oven, cool and blend to a smooth paste. Put in the freezer for at least 2 hours (until the mix has partly frozen). Take out and mash the sorbet with a fork to break it up or mix in a food processor. Repeat process 2/3 times and then the sorbet is ready to serve in a gluten-free cone, on its own or as an accompaniment to other desserts.

A refreshing summer treat

6. Green Rhubarb Salsa with Mackerel Paté on Toast

This is a lovely summery lunch or snack, packed full of omega 3. The tartness of the salsa complements the salty fish paté perfectly.

Ingredients:

4 smoked mackerel fillets

250 cream cheese

1 tbsp lemon juice

50g rhubarb (1/2 stem)

50g cucumber

1/2 shallot

1 chilli (I used the first chilli of the season – a ‘Hungarian Hot Wax’ which has a medium heat, but any chilli or amount of chilli can be used depending on tastes)

2 tsp lime juice

1/2 tsp sugar

pinch salt and pepper

Green rhubarb salsa

Method:

Mix the finely diced rhubarb, cucumber, shallot and chilli. Add the sugar, lime juice, salt and black pepper. Mix together. Leave for an hour to marinate.

Put the flaked mackerel, cream cheese and lemon juice in a food processor and mix until smooth.

Serve the pate on toast with salsa on the side.

Tasty lunchtime treat

7. Spicy Rhubarb Relish

Cheese and crackers with relish or pickles is a favourite supper of mine. So I’m always after tasty recipes to liven up pre-bedtime snacks.

Ingredients:

200g rhubarb (about 2 stems)

1 small onion

1 chilli

1 clove garlic

50g muscavado sugar

50ml white wine vinegar

1 tbsp sunflower oil

1 tsp fenugreek seeds

1 tsp mustard seeds

1 tsp ground cumin

½ tsp ground black pepper

½ tsp turmeric

Large pinch salt

Small jar: big taste

Method:

Fry spices in oil, stirring well until the mustard seeds begin to pop. Add crushed garlic and chopped chilli and fry gently for a few minutes.

Add chopped rhubarb, diced onion, vinegar, salt and sugar to a pan with the fried spices. Cook over a low heat until the rhubarb is soft and the relish thickens (about 30 minutes). Bottle in sterilized jar (makes one small jar.) Store in the fridge for up to a month.

Going to bed happy tonight…

8. Rhubarb and Banana Smoothie

The kids love smoothies and they are a great way to use up left over fruit and old bananas. I use our rhubarb ‘Champagne’ rather than our ‘Timperley Early’ for this recipe as the stems tend to be thinner, less fibrous and sweeter.

Ingredients:

3 very ripe bananas

1 large stalk of young rhubarb, with the skin peeled off

4 dessertspoons of natural yoghurt (we used our homemade yoghurt which we’ve been making for a year or so, but any natural yoghurt would be fine)

A great way to use up excess and over ripe fruit

Method:

Chop the rhubarb into 5cm pieces and add to a blender with the yoghurt and bananas broken into 2/3 pieces. Blend until smooth. We didn’t need to strain ours, but if there are any fibrous strands in the mix then strain before serving.

Generally the smoothie is sweet enough to please the kids because of the ripe bananas, but if it needs further sweetening, runny honey can be added to taste.

Smoothie never lasts long in our house

These recipes will hopefully help you deal with some surplus rhubarb and then, when you’ve given so much away that your friends hide when they see you coming, maybe it’s time to line up the jam, relish and smoothie in the fridge and admit defeat until next year 😉

I really enjoy trying out new recipes and inventing meals with ingredients from the garden, allotment and from foraging trips. If you have enjoyed reading this post, please subscribe to get more recipes in later posts. If you have other lovely ways to use lots of rhubarb do leave me a comment. My rhubarb just keeps on coming, so I need as many recipes as possible!

Subscribe to Blog via Email

After all that cooking, I’m off for a cup of tea and a cupcake

Dogwooddays does not take any responsibility for any adverse effects from the use of plants. Always seek advice from a professional before using a plant medicinally.