Sweetcorn

My favourite thing about this time of year in terms of food from
the garden:  picking corn on the cob for tea.

This year I have grown a different variety from previous years, normally I grow 'supersweet' but I couldn't find the seeds anywhere this spring), and while the taste is good, most of the plants only have one cob and are pretty small, so I'll go back to supersweet next year.

And this is the very best bit - removing the husk,dropping them in to boiling water for a couple of minutes and eating slathered with butter!

Blackberry time

Yay! its blackberry time. After last year's bumper crop I didn't think we'd have so many again but there's a whopping harvest to be had out there, so I'm making the most of the morning dog walk and picking as I go.

I had a look through the homemade jam cupboard before I started making anything and as there were still about 10 pots of blackberry jams and jellies left from 2013, it seemed silly to make more. So, having loved the blackberry cordial and syrup I made last year, and regretting that it was used up all too soon I made that again.

Its been a kitchen-y kind of day so I've also made some wild-plum jam as the tree at the bottom of the garden is heavy with them (and most of what I have used so far is windfalls, I haven't even started picking from the tree properly yet).

Blackberry cordial, blackberry syrup and wild plum jam

The Blackberry cordial recipe is here: http://poppylkitchen.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/foraging-produce-2013.html

Blackberry syrup
(from Pamela Michael's 'Edible wild plants and herbs')

Blackberries and sugar in kilner jar before heating

Put 1lb of blackberries and 1/2lb of sugar into a kilner jar and place into a pan with water around it - bring to the boil and then simmer for an hour. Sieve the contents into a pan and add a further 1/2lb of sugar, bring to the boil again, dissolve  the sugar and keep boiling for a further 5 minutes. Pour into a clean sterile bottle and cork.

Chocolate Torte for Liz

At a BBQ recently I made a couple of chocolate tortes for pudding. They didn't turn out as well as they have  in the past  - I couldn't find the recipe, and was using an unfamiliar kitchen - but I have in the past made some really brilliant chocolate torte and here is the recipe.
(This one's for you Liz!)

Chocolate torte - New Years Eve 2012

Start with 200g of good quality melted chocolate (the darker the better in theory but I always use milk chocolate). Add 200g of melted butter/margarine and mix till well combined. Then slowly beat in 4 medium sized eggs.

Mix in 200g of brown sugar  and then add 100g of a plain flour/ground almonds mix (I tend to up the almonds and decrease the flour for a richer torte)

I usually add about 25g of cocoa powder and some vanilla essence too at this point.

Pour into a greased lined cake tin and bake for about 35 mins at gas mark 4. It should be slightly squidgy inside with a nice crisp crust on top. Fab served with chantilly cream and fresh berries!

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!

The wildflower bed

One of the beds in the garden when we arrived had a horrible straggly hedge along it, and all sorts of rubbish dumped beneath it. It was completely wasted space, and I was keen to put more plants in to provide food for both us and all the animals and insects that visit the garden.
So out came the hedge, the bed was cleared of all the rubbish, and in went a wild plum hedge (with some wild pears and a few others thrown in too). I then spent the next 6 months planting wildflowers seeds and plants that will need to be in a permanent position (cardoons and jerusalem artichokes)

In all these pictures it is the hedge/bed on the very right hand side of the pictures (although you can also track the changes to other bits of the garden in these pictures)

March 2013: its unclear that there is even a bed under all the plastic rubbish, book case and the straggly hedge....

April 2013: ...yes there is a bed under there, straggly hedge still there, but most of the rubbish has been removed

May 2013: and now the hedge has been removed too

May 2013: with the wild plum hedge in and two cardoons planted too

June 2013: the wild flowers are starting to take over and the hedge is growing well

September 2013: the bed is looking very lush with lots of wildflowers getting established

May 2014: the wildflower bed -  the wild plum hedge survived the July 2013 heatwave (thanks to all the waterbutts). Lots of wildflowers are in the bed now: salsify, red campion, white nettle, poppies, forget-me-nots. Its buzzing with all sorts of insect activity now.

Foraging produce 2013

2013 was a fantastic year for berries and fruits so the larder was bursting by Christmas with jams, conserves and various alcoholic concoctions!

I've made the usual - bramble jams and jellies, crabapple jelly, wild plum jams and jellies, Apple butters, Greengage jams, and lots of blackberry and apple jams and jellies.
Sloes were also abundant so we made lots of sloe gin, and also tried our hand at sloe vodka and blackberry vodka.

But by far the best drink I made was blackberry cordial. This is a recipe in Pamela Michael's wonderful 'Edible wild plants & herbs'.

Blackberry Cordial

I made 500ml of blackberry juice by rubbing blackberries through a sieve,  then added a 500g of sugar and honey (the recipe says either so I added half of each). 8 cloves are meant to be added next, but as I'm not keen on them I only added 2, and then I included 1 teaspoon of cinnamon. This was all brought to the boil, simmered for 5 minutes then left to cool at which point I added 8 tablespoons of brandy and bottled it. Its a wonderful rich thick syrupy drink, it needed to be diluted about 1:6 and I guzzled loads when I had a really bad sore throat as it seemed to be the only thing that soothed my throat.

2013 Garden produce

Produce from the first year in the Broadway garden

Artichokes (Jerusalem) - Novembers

Aubergines - August

Beans (Cobra variety?) - October

Beetroots (Yellow and Chioggia) - September

Carrots (Purple dragon) - August

Chilli peppers - September

Courgettes (De Nice, Lebanese, Black Beauty) - Augusr

Courgettes - late September

Leeks (Bleu de solaise and Jeune Pitou)

Leeks - May (2014)

Potatoes (pink fir apple) - November

Potatoes (Vivaldi) - August

Squash (Acorn?) -  September

Squash (unsure of variety) - September

Squash (no idea of variety, has been referred to as the 'willy squash' in our family for obvious reasons - delicious flavour!) - September

Sweetcorn (Supersweet) - October

Sweetcorn (Supersweet) - October

Tomatoes (Mixed varieties) - August

Wild plums - August

Courgettes, Beans, Tomatoes -  August

Purple orache, Sunderland Kale, Purple-podded peas, Courgettes - June

Mixed courgettes and Chillis - October

Tomatoes (mixed varieties) - November

Mixed courgettes, Beans - September