Summer meal from the garden

Having wandered down to the veg patch to do some much needed weeding and watering, I actually ended up picking things for my tea - I couldn't resist the rumbling tummy any further. (I did a little bit of half-hearted weeding, the rest will have to wait until tomorrow now)

There were a range of things ready for the picking - purple podded peas, french beans ( cosse violeto, north eastern and norwegian dry varieties), tomatoes (small cherry varieties inc sungold), baby courgettes ( yellow zucchini and patty pan) various leaves (wild carrot, lambs lettuce, purple and green orache, baby chard, mixed lettuce, nasturtium leaves, comfrey), a small whole garlic bulb and a lemon balm plant - pulled up by accident with poor weeding technique.

From left to right: fresh garlic, nasturtium flower, cherry tomatoes, purple podded peas, baby courgettes, wild carrot leaf,  cosse violetto beans, lambs lettuce,  nasturtium leaves, norwegian dry beans, mixed lettuce, purple and green orache, northeastern beans, lemon balm

As the hens have been laying well recently, and one of my favourite ways to use our eggs is home-made pasta, I decided to make some goats cheese tortellini and have them with the veg.

From LHS: tomatoes, baby courgettes and peas, mixed salad, goat cheese and lemon balm tortellini and frazzled garlicky beans

Goats cheese and lemon balm tortellini
This was just a standard pasta mix which I stuffed with a mix of goats cheese and chopped comfrey - but I laid a lemon balm leaf onto each piece of pasta before I put the cheese stuffing in. The lemon balm was stronger in flavour than I expected, but to get a really strong lemony -goat cheese filling  I'd put an extra leaf in each tortellini. I tossed the coooked tortellini in butter, pepper and some torn tarragon leaves before serving.

Frazzled garlicky beans
Having sliced the beans diagonally into bite-sized pieces, I quickly boiled them then tossed them into melted butter with some of the fresh garlic and freshly ground black pepper and 'frazzled' them a bit.

Baby courgettes, tomatoes and peas
The courgettes and tomatoes were sliced in half and lightly cooked in olive oil for a few minutes. Towards the end of the cooking time as the tomatoes were softening slightly, I threw in the peas that had been boiled for about a minute, and some of the chopped fresh garlic.

Salad
I used the various salad leaves (not the comfrey which was used in the goat cheese and lemon balm tortellini) and added some olive oil and balsamic vinegar and mixed together to make a vinaigrette

Enjoy!