Spring seed planting

As the garden is still in need of so much work, I've started seeds in the greenhouse in a desparate attempt to feel like I'm making progress on the garden - maybe I'm trying to keep things moving by forcing myself to have to have beds ready for the plants in the near future. I've planted a number of things over the past few weeks - mainly these are veg that I love to grow or can't seem to function without.
If I was only allowed to grow five types of veg I would have to have tomatoes, sweetcorn, courgettes, sprouts and globe artichokes - all of these seem to be infinately better freshly picked from the garden and eaten within 5 minutes (especially the sweetcorn). Fortunately I can grow more, this is what I have grown so far:

 

Sunday 3rd March

Sungold F1 tomato - cherry tomatoes that taste fabulous and seem to keep cropping heavily  forever - I've been picking them in Christmas week some years. Last year I didn't grow these and regretted it daily throughout the summer while the the tomatoes I was growing yielded little and poor tasting fruit.
Spinach beet
Bright lights chard - mainly for the variety of stalk colours, but if left to go to seed, the whole plant can be uprooted and chickens love to strip the stalks bare
Peppers (chilli and sweet) - Sweet banana, Corno di torro rosso, Purple beauty, Freso, Red cherry and Jalapeno - these are all new varieties to me
Calibra peas - a petit pois variety I've not tried before

Saturday 9th March

Red ball and Bedford brussels sprouts - one red and one green variety that I've not tried before but promise a long cropping season from August to March between them
[Sweet peas: Lilac ripple, Erewhon, Old times - all grown for the fact they are meant to have a really heavy strong frangrance]
Yellow hop roots from the old house put into compost as they have started putting out shoots now

Sungold F1 tomatoes - 2 weeks after planting

Sunday 17th March

Mesclun - to go into a bed in the greenhouse for early spring salads
Nasturtiums: Alaska mixed, Peach melba, Golden jewel, Tall mixed, Mahogany gleam, Tom thumb mixed
Artichoke - Violetto di Romagna - I normally grow Green globe, this is a smaller variety
San marzano tomato (very old seed so will probably not work)
Calibra peas ( yes more!)

My new kitchen garden

Finally, after an unbelievable sale/purchase process, we are in the new house and I have a new kitchen garden - complete with a 14 x 8 foot greenhouse. I freely admit to feeling very overwhelmed by the garden as it's pretty neglected - but I also relish a challenge.

The first task has been to remove many years worth of rubbish dumped in the garden - its unclear quite why, but the previous owners kept absolutely everything. The scrap metal man has done very well out of it and the cast iron bath, four old lawnmowers, slide set, numerous metal fence posts and a random and varied assortment of other things filled half his van one weekend.  There is much still to remove.

23rd February - 8 days after moving in

There is also an abundance of glass panes all over the place - probably about 30 in all, none of which seem to be the right size to replace broken panes on the greenhouse but might make some nice coldframes?

3rd March - a developing path to the greenhouse

The plethora of paving stones in all sorts of random places around the garden has been highly beneficial - new paths are under development around the greenhouse - none have been put down properly yet, but they are keeping me off what will be the beds for now.  There are also some nice chunky pieces of wood abandoned here so I'm using them to mark the edges of beds

4th March - one clear veg bed emerging

One thing the previous owners seem to have been obsessed with is water - there are hoses, watering systems, sprinkler heads, watering cans and more hoses everywhere. The greenhouse already has two metal water tanks running off it - annoyingly they are to the side of the greenhouse taking up valuable space. Clearing the overgrown ivy behind the greenhouse added 4 foot to the end of garden and has provided space for the water tanks to be moved to. I've plumbed in two water butts onto the front of the greenhouse.

10th March -in the background is a mammoth heap of ivy that Rod pulled

 off fences and trees to double the available garden space

Other useful things that have emerged from the overgrowth include a plastic coldframe, gazebo frame (the cover was totally knackered), huge quantities of pots and tubs, two nice metal watering cans, numerous apple picking loppers and about 100 empty bags of compost.

17th March - water butt already totally full!

There is plenty more to do with the beds, but I'm trying to concentrate on getting seedlings underway in the completely rearranged greenhouse. I'm going to dry a no-dig system on some of the beds - as the garden has been previously worked I think this may work nicely - or am I just trying to avoid some hard work?

Coping with the marrow glut

We've got marrows coming out of our ears! Despite the lousy weather this summer (and the overproduction of slugs in both garden and allotment) we have a glut of lovely golden yellow marrows. So it's time to experiment...

Marrow Chutney
I actually started out following a random Marrow Chutney recipe but it looked uninteresting and rather bland as it was cooking;  there was other garden produce sitting around waiting to be used so I just started chucking it in. The final recipe is something like the following:
Start with a large marrow and peel, de-seed and cube it, I left it overnight with salt scattered over it to remove water. After a good rinse it went into a jam-making pan (which I am fairly sure has a proper name that currently escapes me) and I started cooking it with white wine vinegar and sugar. In went some chopped fresh ginger, chopped apples, shallots and onions and a handful of dried mixed fruit. At this stage it looked very unchutney-like and pale so I halved some red and green cherry tomatoes and some physalis from the greenhouse and added them for the colour (and flavour??).
Once it had simmered for a while and was starting to look gloopy, I added some pickling spices in muslin to add to the flavour and simmered a while longer before bottling. Chutney tends to need a few months for the flavours to develop and intensify so this will be one for Christmas - and no doubt a useful Christmas present for people too!

As this only used one marrow and five more were waiting to be used in the kitchen I decided to try making Marrow Jam. The lack of wild plums this year because of the rubbishy weather means we need something for the toast - I wasn't convinced about this - marrow jam - really??! But its worth trying at least once.

Marrow Jam
This is one recipe I have followed properly - thanks Hugh for a nice River Cottage recipe.  I used ground ginger rather than fresh and added enough so that there was a distinctly gingery smell. I admit this is mainly because the thought of marrow jam is pretty unappealing - it sounds tasteless so the ginger was to address this.  I did try some when bottling it, and there is no taste of marrow in the final jam. I'm not sure what it tastes of but I really like it. The real test will be if the kids ask for it on their toast instead of crabapple...

Tapas-style tea

Chilli spiced potatoes

Scrub the skins of some baby new potatoes and cut into pieces a bit bigger than an inch. Heat some olive oil, chilli oil and paprika in a frying pan then toss the potatoes in and coat the potatoes thoroughly. Turn the heat down low and cook for 15 - 20 minutes until golden browned and softened.

Artichoke and asparagus salad

Snap and discard the woody ends from some asparagus spears. Boil the asparagus spears in salted water for about 3 minutes, drain and set aside. Quarter some globe artichoke hearts and mix with the asparagus spears,  Add some lemon zest, lemon juice and sesame oil into the artichoke and asparagus and season with pepper.

Comfrey, hop, courgette and chipotle tortilla

Slice up some baby courgettes and gently fry in a frying pan with olive oil and some chopped spring onions.  Chop up a chipotle chilli (a smoked halapeno chilli pepper) and add to the courgettes and spring onions. Add some chopped comprey leaves to salted boiling water and simmer for 2 minutes, throw in some hope shoots, simmer for a further 30 seconds then drain and add to the courgette mix.  Mix about 4 eggs with some cottage cheese and pour over the vegetable mix in the frying pan. If you like it, chop up some goats cheese and sprinkle that over the top with some mozzarella. Continue to warm over a low heat until most of the egg mixture has set, then put under a hot grill to finish off the top and brown the cheese.

Plate the asparagus and artichoke hearts onto a bed of mixed leaves and nasturtium flowers.  Make a mint and cucumber raita to take off the heat from the chilli potatoes, and serve with big wedges of tortilla and salad.

Chocolate and Cherry Roulade

I made this over the Jubilee Bank holiday weekend when the intermittent rain meant everyone was going nuts inside - and clearly needed a sugar fix to send them right over the top! But seriously, it had been lousy weather, chocolate was much needed, and there was a can of cherries leftover in the cupboard from Hannah's cooking classes just begging to be eaten...

I started by whisking 6 egg yolks and 150g of caster sugar together, then adding 50g of cocoa powder and about 25g of plain flour. I then folded in 6 egg whites which had already been whisked (no that's not true - I was not that organised.  I had already mixed the egg yolks, sugar, cocoa and flour when I realised I still had to do the egg whites so had to wash up the whisking blades first which was very annoying - but writing it in the right order might help someone else avoid this mistake. But just in case not: you should start by whisking the egg whites!). This was baked in a square tin on greaseproof paper for about 20 mins on gas mark 4, taken out of the oven and left to cool.

Once it had cooled down enough - and its never fast enough where chocolate cake is concerned - I peeled it off the paper and slathered the 'wrong side' very generously with the canned cherry pie filling. I then chucked a load of whipped cream on top of this for good measure and began to roll it up.

You can see how generous I was with the filling - it oozed out of the end, but I think this makes the cake taste all the better.  I then sprinkled with a little icing sugar.  I would love to try this out with a bit of cherry kirsch or brandy in the mix too - it might cut across the sweetness quite well.

Milkshake Cake

Not really... it's just some smells and tastes transport you very vividly back to certain times in your childhood; when I tasted the raw mix of this cake it was like being a kid again drinking  raspberry-flavoured Crusha milkshake. I'm not even sure Crusha existed back then - but it made me feel like a child.

So we had a packet of those frozen berries you can get in supermarkets - bought to serve with some homemade meringues but as they were a bit of a disaster there was about 300g of fruit and they were steadily going softer and soggier in the fridge. There was also an absolute need for more cake as the weather was so lousy - BUT it needed to be a light(ish) cake as it is supposed to be summer - or at least late spring.

I mixed up (and apologies here but I rarely if ever actually measure out cake recipes nowadays - just bung it in a bowl, mix and hope - so all these weights are estimates) about 150g margarine, with a similar quantity of sugar, then beat in a couple of eggs. I then added the remainder of the fruit and all the juice at the bottom of the container and whisked it until all the fruit bits broke up and the mix went a very vivid bright pink colour.  I then added about 300g flour, baking powder, vanilla essence and a splash of milk so it was a good consistency. That went in the over for about half an hour.

I think I have now finally got the hang of the buttercream icing. This was taken directly from the Hummingbird Bakery cookbook - I have previously not managed to get it to go fluffy, but it did this time! I mixed 250g sifted icing sugar with 80g margarine until it resembled breadcrumbs (not that that is in the proper instructions for this) I then added 25ml of milk, but 5ml at a time with lots of whisking between additions, Once all the milk was added I also added a few drops of vanilla essence then whisked the whole lot for about 3 more minutes - it did go a bit fluffier than it previously has.  I then used some of it to sandwich the two halves together and used the rest to cover the top which was finished off with some blueberries.

The finished cake was a delicate pink colour inside.It didn't taste of milkshake at all, but as the raw mix did, and as everyone knows eating the mix is the best bit about making a cake - well it had to be called Milkshake Cake.

Yet more pasta

Six mouths in the house to feed so pasta was definitely in order.  But my favourite is what happens to the leftover pasta dough once I have made enough ravioli...read on

Goat cheese and tomato ravioli
A simple ravioli made with a stuffing of goat cheese, mozzarella and tomato puree.  Tossed in cream and cracked black pepper to serve

Broad bean tortellini
A puree of shelled broad beans mixed with cream cheese and a little mozzarella. Tossed in butter, hop shoots and basil leaves to serve.

...and finally the leftover dough. I roll this very thin then place a load of basil leaves on one half of it, fold the other half of the dough over it and then put it through the roller a few more times to the desired thickness. The leaves slowly flatten out and fragment, but leave a very clear leaf outline that looks really good as the pasta dries out.
I think these pieces will look really nice in a soup - but failing that will taste great tossed in some butter, pepper and lemon zest.