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The Royal Horticultural Society has declared this the first National Gardening Week! Of course, it’s a fitting time for it as the garden is springing into life and there’s a lot of work to be done out there. I’m badly behind, although there have been one or two results for our efforts round here, including all of our sweetcorn plants sprounting strongly and 4 broad bean plants have so far shown their heads!
This year though, for some reason, the rhubarb is already proving to be a star trooper, with some very strong stalks begging to be picked. So… we did just that, and since the weather has returned to it’s regular ‘chilly’ setting with frost overnight, a simple crumble seemed just the way to use up our first spring produce!
This crumble needs remarkably little sugar (making it a fairly healthy sweet treat!), partly because the small apples were so sweet and also because I have found our spring rhubarb to be nowhere as tart as I remember rhubarb of old! I used a good quality meusli with whole almonds and big juicy californian raisins, which produces a loose crumble, but is worth it, I think!
Rhubarb and Apple Crumble
A good handful of rhubarb stalks – about 6 or 7, chopped
2 small eating apples, peeled and finely chopped
1 large tblsp honey or maple syrup
1/4 cup butter or vegan margarine
1 cup meusli or meusli and oats mixed (use gluten free if desired)
Preheat the oven to 180˚C, 350˚F or gas mark 4.
Put the rhubarb and apple, mixed, into the bottom of a casserole or pie dish. Pour on the honey or maple syrup and stir briefly.
Melt the butter or margarine in saucepan. Add the meusli and oats and stir until coated in butter/margarine. Spoon over the fruit mix.
Cook in the oven for about half an hour, or until all the fruit is soft. Check the crumble about half way through and if the crumble has browned, but on a lid, or cover with tin foil.
We’ve been picking small handfuls of purple sprouting broccoli for a few weeks now. Most of the plants have been badly eaten by snails, but a few have survived and one plant in particular seems to resist all comers and keep on sprouting. What a trooper! Occasionally we miss the sprouts and they throw out long stalks of lovely white flowers. I guess we’re winners either way.
So how best to enjoy this harvest? I favour serving them as a side vegetable just lightly steamed with plenty of crunch left in. And a couple of days ago we had a gorgeous, warm evening, so I decided to make a salad plate with boiled new potatoes, the broccoli and a couple of other dishes. The first was a quinoa salad with grated carrot, pecan nuts and fresh herbs, while the second was this wonderful fennel salsa from Denis Cotter’s lovely book ‘Wild Garlic, Gooseberries and Me’.
The best thing about this recipe is that the flavour of the fennel really comes through, as I often find that the delicate aniseed taste of fennel is often lost in other dishes. The salsa is crunchy and summery with fantastic layers of flavour. I loved it!
Fennel Salsa
by Denis Cotter
1 fennel bulb
2 tbsp olive oil
4 plum tomatoes, peeled and diced
1 garlic clove, finely chopped
2 spring onions, thinly sliced
zest and juice of 1/2 lemon
salt
Quarter the fennel bulb and cut out the core, then remove the stalk and any tough or wrinkled parts. Chop the rest into small dice. Heat the olive oil in a shallow pan, add the fennel and cook over a low heat for 1 minute. Add the tomatoes, garlic and spring onions, and cook for 1 minute more. Off the heat, add the lemon zest and juice and a little salt and leave to stand for a few minutes. Use the salsa warm or at room temperature.
The hungry gap is the name for this time of year, when there are no fresh vegetables left growing in the fields and the stored food is used up or gone off. Not that in the modern era many people notice it, now that we can import food from all over the world, freezers keep food for years and the supermarkets are as full as ever.
But for locavores (people who eat locally grown food), those who eat their own produce, or just if you feel that seasonal produce tastes vastly superior to forced or long distance grub, how do you get through the next few weeks?
Tom Norrington Davies has some great suggestions in this article in the Guardian, using cauliflowers, leeks and rhubarb.
I’ve noticed a few spring stirrings in the garden in the last week or so, with the chives and rhubarb starting to appear, and a few leaves of parsley seem to have survived all through the frosts of winter. I also like to keep a few things growing on the windowsill and the easiest gardening you will ever do is to grow mustard and cress in tubs and a few sprouted seeds in a jar.
Mustard and cress
For mustard and cress, just line a couple of plastic tubs with some kitchen paper, soak the paper in water and sprinkle a fairly thick layer of the seeds over it. Keep the paper watered at all times, leave the tubs in daylight, then you’ll have some gorgeous, fresh sprouted greens in 1 – 2 weeks. I love the peppery flavour of the mustard and cress shoots and they’re surprisingly nutritious, with good amounts of vitamins A and C as well as B vitamins, magnesium, calcium and potassium. Add them to sandwiches of hummous or pate, sprinkle them on salads or use as a garnish on stir fries. Or try them as a simple salad with this lovely Honey Mustard Dressing.
Ingredients
1 tbsp wholegrain mustard
1 tbsp honey
3 tbsp white wine / cider vinegar
6 tbsp sunflower oil
salt and pepper to taste
Put the mustard, honey oil and vinegar in a jar and shake until well mixed. Season with salt and pepper, sprinkle over the mustard cress salad and serve at once.
Winter Mustard and Cress Salad
fresh picked tomatoes - green and red
A couple of weeks ago, it was time to cut down the tomato vines and bring in all the remaining tomatoes, ripe or unripe. Fortunately the weather was gorgeous, so there was a happy hour or so spent in the garden, and then it was time for even more happy hours spent in the kitchen! First of all I made up a big(ish!) batch of a simple tomato pasta sauce, half of which was eaten straight away and the other half went into the freezer. Then it was time to get started on the green tomato chutney. I make a lot of chutney, but this is one of my favourites. I think it is the combination of the bitter taste of the tomatoes with the sweet of the sugar and the sultanas, and it is perfect on cheese on toast!
the tomatoes are ready!
Green Tomato Chutney
1lb / 400g Green tomatoes
3/4lb / 300g cooking apples
1/2lb / 200g Onions
2 Cloves garlic, crushed
1 1/2 level tsp salt
3/4 pint / 0.5 litres Malt vinegar
4 oz / 100g Sultanas
2 level tsp freshly grated ginger
2 level tsp caraway seeds
2 level tsp nutmeg
10oz / 250g Demarara sugar
Prepare the tomatoes, apples, onions and garlic by chopping them finely or mincing them in a food processor. Put them into a heavy bottomed pan with all the other ingredients except the sugar. Bring to the boil and simmer for around 20 minutes to allow the tomatoes to soften, then add the sugar.
Leaving the pan uncovered, simmer the chutney until it thickens. This should take 1 to 1 1/2 hours.
Meanwhile heat some clean jars in an oven set at 100C for at least 10 minutes to sterilise them.
Pour the chutney into the jars and seal straight away. Leave the chutney for at least 2 weeks before eating, to allow the flavours to fully develop.
Green Tomato Chutney
We are now coming to the end of the tomato season in the garden. I love not having to buy tomatoes for weeks on end, and I especially love that virtually every bite of tomato over that time is full of delicious, rich flavour.
We’ve discovered that growing tomatoes outside in Britain, means growing cherry tomatoes if you want to be sure of them ripening. Don’t get me wrong, I love green tomato chutney and even fried green tomatoes, but nothing beats the taste of ripe red tomato fresh off the vine.
However, we had so many tomatoes this year, that it became necessary to find some way of storing them for less abundant times, and one of my favourites is Slow Roast Tomatoes, topped with olive oil and stored in jars.
I’m not providing measurements with this recipe, as it depends on how many tomatoes you have, but I was using about 3lb.
Slow Roast Cherry Tomatoes
Cherry or larger varieties of tomato
Olive Oil
Dried basil and oregano
Fresh Basil Leaves
1 tsp sugar
Salt and black pepper
Pre-heat the oven on a very low setting 140C/275F/gas mark 1. If using cherry tomatoes, pierce a hole in the skin, or cut larger tomatoes in half or into quarters.
Place all the tomatoes onto a large roasting pan and pour over enough olive oil to coat them. Sprinkle with the herbs, sugar and salt and pepper and stir around to mix.
Place in the oven for 3-4 hours. You can cook the tomatoes at a slightly higher temperature for a shorter time, but the slower roasting really brings out the flavour. Also I like to raise the heat for the last half hour of cooking.
To store the tomatoes, wash some jars and put them in the oven to sterilise for at least ten minutes. Take them out and put 1 – 2 tablespoons of lemon juice in each jar to preserve the tomatoes. Add the tomatoes when they have finished cooking and add more oil so that the tomatoes are completely covered. Put the lid on tightly and store in a cool, dark place.
These make a wonderful pasta sauce, a delicious addition to a salad, or served as an alternative to ketchup with burgers!
Slow Roast Cherry Tomatoes
