31 Aug 2014

Edible urban: Foraging / preserving the taste of summer



City fruit. There's a surprising amount of it about on trees and shrubs in the street, parks, gardens and abandoned areas, just waiting to be turned into jams, jellies, sauces, chutneys and wine. Living near Hampstead Heath, I can also add woodlands and hedgerows to that list.  Autumn abundance seems to have arrived early this year; masses of rowan berries, rose hips and haws are ripening in the streets. Large juicy blackberries lurked (past tense, the children have surprisingly long arms!) just out of reach on the nearby railway line and I was almost caught on the hop with elderberries.

I love the slightly exotic look of elderberries: red stems and glossy black fruits, they are the Morticia Adams of the hedgerow. Toxic (as in severe tummy upset) when raw but delicious and edible when cooked into cordials, jams and wine. I was after a few to make some elderberry cordial. I swear the berries weren't ripe a couple of weeks ago but suddenly I was seeing stems stripped bare. Time to start picking if I wanted some!

Last Sunday's weather was good but forecast to change within the next 24 hours so, tucking a couple of carrier bags into my pockets and my camera over my shoulder, I headed off towards the heath hedgerows.  There weren't that many elderberries to be had (I had about 300g of berries after de-stemming and picking out the green ones) but I found a long row of blackthorn bushes covered with sloes, loads of bramble berries and the motherlode of rose hips. Perfect for a Hedgerow Jelly.


The rule for hedgerow jelly is to gather only-just-ripe fruit on a dry day. Make the jam straightaway or freeze the fruit until needed. Use any mix of the fruit you find (sloes, hips, haws, bullaces, damsons, berries) and match it 50:50 with sharp apples (cooking or crab apples).  Soft fruit usually have low levels of pectin and acid, apples have high levels so the apples are needed to ensure a good set.

Back at home my gathered fruit was lightly rinsed (drop of vinegar added) and dried - I like to know that there are no critters lurking. (And there were. We're dealing with nature here. There will be life, lots of it, in the hedgerows. Some people may not like that.) Blackberries were picked over for any insects and grubs, elderberries were taken off the stalks and green berries discarded, rose hips were topped, tailed and then blitzed whole in a food processor. This gave me around a kilo of fruit which I matched with another kilo of cooking apples. Crab apples would have been my first choice but I was unable to find any … for now. Apparently crab apples add a lovely rosy glow to a jelly, something I'd like to see.

After adding water and stewing the fruit to draw out the pectin and juices, I popped the fruit into my new jelly bag to strain overnight. Previously I've faffed about with muslin cloths and ingenious methods of suspending the fruit over a bowl; a tiny accident put a stop to that - it involved some rosehips, a cloth suspended on high, a bowl filled with juice and a plank of wood over the bath followed by a bit of redecorating.  This jelly bag, for me, is progress.

I had about 1.5 litres of juice the following morning. I thought it was delicious at this stage, if ever so slightly tart. But, onwards. Into the pan it went, brought to the boil, sugar added (not quite as much as the recipe suggested) and brought to a rolling boil until setting point (104 C) was reached. I don't trust the cold saucer test so have a cook's thermometer.  About 15 minutes later (using that time to sterilise the jars and lids), I had jelly, of sorts. It still looked very liquid when I poured it into the jars despite the required temperature being reached. Oh well, I thought, it can be reboiled to thicken if needed. And, actually, as it cooled, it set. A bit on the soft side, but I quite like that. We live and learn.



A bit more:
1, I wish I'd put even less sugar in the jam but then, would it have set? Would there be less flavour? I need to better understand the science behind jam making.
2, I was able to blitz my rosehips, seeds and all, because the fruit was being strained so the pips and their surrounding hairs were filtered out. The hairs are an extreme irritant, used in making itching powder!
3, Try to use fruit growing away from the road for less of those kerbside fumes.
4, I'm convinced that jam making, like baking bread and cakes, fulfils some deeply subliminal primeval urge. Despite there being absolutely no need whatsoever to make my own preserves, there is something so satisfying in the process.
5, I haven't gone Polaroid-mad, I've been amusing myself with an app that makes photos look like polaroids. Useful for cards, labels, recipes, etc. Find Pola (for Mac) here.

Finally (hurrah!), passing on some useful information. I've found a brilliant website for preserving, Rosie Makes Jam.  Rosemary Jameson founder of the Guild of Jam Makers, has a plethora of inspiring recipes on her site (Beetroot and Elderberry chutney, anyone?) and links to her shop where she sells jars, etc. My favourite is the ingredient calculator that converts the recipe to the amounts available. Invaluable.




22 Aug 2014

There's still time ...

… to sow a few seeds before late summer turns into autumn.

Having planted out my winter veg and cleared the last of the peas, I really want something else to look forward to.  I remember the first year my friends and I started the veg patch: by the time we were ready to sow anything, it was mid-August. It was a warm month and, not knowing any better, we sowed what we had in our seed boxes.  As a reward for our optimism, we were helping ourselves to lettuce leaves before the year end although the beets were small and the spring onions spindly.  We protected the crops with fleece over a snowy winter and were eating fresh from the garden in early April. It was a lesson that, strangely, has not been repeated until now.


A couple of weeks ago, a quick trawl through my seed box showed what was possible.  I pulled out seeds that could be sown until late July, others that were best sown in August for a late autumn or early spring crop, and even more seeds to be sown in September to germinate ready for next year.

I've sowed ruby chard, two types of spinach, some radishes, rocket, parsley, shimonita onions, some quick growing baby carrots and several rows of lettuce - a butterhead 'Marvel of Four Seasons' and 'Salad Bowl', a cos type.  And just in case we have a nice slow decline into winter, some beetroot for baby beets.  When I checked today, the warm rain of the past few days has coaxed all of the seeds into life.  I'll keep a watch for first frosts and then have to fleece the beds but the plants will be off to a good start by then.


There's also plenty of flowers best sown in the autumn for strong early plants next year.  My photo above shows a selection of what I'll be sowing: poppies, hollyhocks, wallflowers, nigella, calendula, honesty. (As well as more tulips.) My spring-sown flowers didn't do well this year and I'm planning for better next year.

My bedtime reading at the moment is Charles Dowding's book 'How to Grow Winter Vegetables'. It's an excellent informative read from a very experienced grower and one that I would recommend for anyone wanting to keep their plot going through the winter months. (I haven't been asked to promote this! It's a book I bought last year and am only just getting round to reading.)

I'm going to prune the plum trees this weekend. Stoned fruit trees need to have any essential pruning done in the summer months, preferably after fruiting. Leaving it much later (as in I should probably have done it already) will leave the pruning wounds vulnerable to possible airborne viruses; doing it now gives the cuts time to heal over before the tree goes into dormancy. I'm going to take a few branches out of the centre to let in light and air, hopefully with better fruiting results next year. And if there's time leftover, I'll be tidying and weeding some space for my next seed sowing session.

Like I said, there's still time to sow. :)

21 Aug 2014

Edible Garden: Nasturtium capers



As we're bang in the middle of the preserving season, jars and bottles are easily bought (if you haven't been carefully storing recycled jars all year), so it's apt timing to think of how summer flavours can be saved for the winter months. Leaving aside the hedgerow harvests for a moment (elderberries, blackberries, bullaces /sloes and rose hips seen on a recent walk), I've been tackling garden produce.

Nasturtium flowers (Tropaeolum) are still growing yet this is the time that lots of fruit (aka seedpods) are dropping into the soil ready to sprout into new plants next year. There's only so many nasturtium seedlings that a garden needs so I've been picking off a few pods before they can fall, destined for the kitchen to be transformed into Tropa-capers (rather than proper capers).

True capers are the flower buds of the caper shrub (Capparis spinosa) and, once pickled, are a popular ingredient in Italian cooking, especially in pizzas, salads and pasta sauces.  Here in the UK, capers are traditionally used to make Tartare Sauce, among other things, which is commonly eaten as a garnish for fish and is particularly nice with salmon. (Although watercress sauce is even better.  But I digress.) Capers are relatively expensive to buy but I read that nasturtium seedpods develop a very similar taste and texture to capers when pickled.

And so I embarked on nasturtium experiment number two. This time my inspiration was drawn from Alex Mitchell's book 'The Rurbanite'  - and I have to mention that I'm listed in the book as Alex came over when writing it, had a chat over a cup of tea and a look round the veg patch. As this was several years ago, I'm inordinately proud of being credited in the back pages as 'Veg Grower'. 

'Empress of India' seedpod from a lovely deep crimson flower.

Anyway … capers. With the help of a friend and some small curious boys, I gathered 200g of seedpods and soaked them overnight (24 hrs) in a light salt solution; this gets rid of bugs and bacteria. A teaspoon of salt to 200ml of tap water will do it. Pick only the green seedpods (or, from a red flowered plant, they may have red markings as in the above photo). The older, yellower seedpods tend to be dry and past their best.  (Update: In the comments below, Michelle from Veg Plotting says that the smaller pods are best, the bigger ones having developed the texture of cardboard.)

Having soaked and drained them, I divided them into 2 sterilised jars and topped this up with cold white wine vinegar to cover them.  At this stage, you can decide whether to add herbs or not. I chose to add bay leaves round the edge (decorative and flavoursome) and a swirl of fennel and a couple of lemon verbena leaves on the top as that's what I had to hand. Tarragon leaves are also recommended. How easy is that?

Naturally, I had to go and get some more for the blog photo! ;) 


Now I just have to leave them for a couple of weeks to let the flavours develop and then I have a whole year to use the jar up. If I'm honest, the last time I bought a jar of capers, they sat at the back of the cupboard until their use by date when I kicked myself for wasting money while throwing them in the bin.  I'd needed them for a recipe which I then couldn't find again. If the same happens again, this time it will only have cost me the vinegar - a small comfort.

By the way, if you don't like the taste of vinegar, the smaller fresh seedpods can be washed and added direct to salads, pasta or pizza.  They have a peppery taste and crunchy texture.  But don't try and store them fresh as they'll quickly go soft and, left in water, will start to smell in a most off-putting way.

As a complete procrastination from doing other rather dull things this morning, I've used the top photo to create a jar label, thinking to pretty the jar up for a gift. (I have a neighbour who says she adores eating capers; I want to see what she thinks of these.) I tried tying with a ribbon but prefer the rustic look of a length of Nutscene garden twine. This is the result.



Help yourself to the label if you want, it's here as a printable pdf. (Please let me know if this doesn't work!)

Update:  Nasturtiums are genetically related to watercress.  Think of the strong peppery taste of those leaves and you'll have an approximation of the taste of nasturtium pods. Hmm, I'm now wondering if I could  make nasturtium soup (as watercress soup is one of my favourites). 

16 Aug 2014

Edible Gardens: Medicinal and edible uses for Nasturtiums

It's not so much that I love to grow nasturtiums (I do) but that they love to grow for me. Every year, around this time, they seem to take over their corner of the garden, stretching multiple stems out to sprawl among the veg, growing through netting and up poles (with help). By now the stems can be over four feet long and covered with flowers and then fat 3-part seedpods. These seedpods are so numerous that it's impossible to prevent them sinking quietly into the soil where they decompose to provide next year's flood tide of nasturtiums. It's a self-perpetuating cycle. I seem to have inadvertently ended up with quite a few prolific self-seeders in the garden (orach, fennel, linaria, aquilegia) and nasturtiums rank highly among these.



Luckily, nasturtium (Tropaeolum majus) is a bit of a wonder plant - I've been discovering that it's not just a pretty face but really earns its keep in the edible garden. Because of its antibacterial, antiseptic and antibiotic qualities, it has many medicinal uses; an infusion of the leaves can help treat respiratory tract infections such as bronchitis, flu and colds (probably best taken with honey). Additionally, because it's antiseptic, a poultice of the leaves can be applied to wounds; admittedly unlikely to be useful to urban or suburban dwellers but, well, you never know.

Back in the kitchen, I already knew that the young lilypad-like leaves can add a peppery bite to salads or be used when making pesto. The flowers, being edible, can make a tasty addition to salads, a summer fruit bowl or jug of party drinks. Or get creative and top a pizza with them for a girlie teenage sleepover party? I can't guarantee the reaction but it just might be cool enough to be acceptable.

Florally speaking, I've found that newly-opened flowers, freshly picked, will last for up to a week in a glass (or vase!) of water - make a sweet country garden arrangement by adding  herbs such as fennel, lovage or mint which also last well in water.  It helps that in the garden they're a bee magnet and I grow nasturtiums in every shade from deep red through orange to cream.  My favourites are a glamorous showstopper called 'Black Velvet' and its alter-ego 'Milkmaid'.  But it was to the orange ones that I turned when I decided to make nasturtium vinegar last month. I'm quite partial to honey and mustard dressing or, let's face it, a big dollop of mayonnaise (yes, from a jar). But, flicking through Pam-the-Jam's preserve book for the River Cottage series, I couldn't resist the lure of discovering another use for all the nasturtiums in the garden - flavoured vinegar.


Packed and ready to go ...

The method is simple enough: a wide-necked jar packed full of flowers, a small palmful of seed pods, a few peppercorns, some salt and a couple of chopped shallots. Cover with white wine vinegar (obviously, use a good one), seal and leave on a sunny windowsill for about a month, giving it a little shake every so often.

Patiently admire its translucent beauty for 30 days ...

… then strain into a clean jar and add fresh flowers.


I started a jar off in July and my vinegar project is now complete, with the now-pink vinegar strained into a clean jar with a few extra flowers added.  The taste is subtle but pleasing.  The original recipe suggests using it in a dressing made with 1 tablespoon of soy sauce, 100ml nasturtium vinegar and 200ml olive oil. Mmmm, yum - a delicious way to bring a fresh tang to your salads.

Thinking ahead:  I'm a big fan of presents with a bit of thought and effort behind them. In a beautiful bottle or jar, with a ribbon and hand-written label, I think a bottle of nasturtium vinegar would make a simple and unusual present for a keen cook.  Nasturtiums will start to slow down by the end of this month - although they won't keel over until the first frosts - so this is a project that's best started now. It's also a great project to do with children, especially if they're the ones growing the nasturtiums next year.

In the photo below, you'll see a couple of jars of 'capers' from nasturtium seed pods. Right now is an excellent time to be gathering these - and a useful way of reducing the tide of seedlings next year.  More about these in the next post.

Herbed nasturtium capers, nasturtium vinegar and a pretty vase for the kitchen windowsill.
(The physalis in the front were just picked from my Cape Gooseberry plant and are my treat to myself!)

31 Jul 2014

Busting a Glut ...

I'm seeing a lot of courgette gluts being mentioned on gardening blogs at the moment. Trust me, I've been there but this year have neatly side-stepped that trap by having slugs eat my spare courgette plant and only having one to harvest.  I'm not counting my Ikea courgette growing experiment, more of which in another post. (Which means I'm posting backwards, I think.)


When faced with a daily deluge of courgettes, it's easy to begin to feel slightly overwhelmed at the challenge of appreciating all this bounty. I have a number of recipe books in my kitchen to turn to as well as coming across some nice glut-busting ideas on the internet and in magazines.  I thought a round up might be in order.

In  my own kitchen I turn to Dr Hessayon's Garden to Kitchen Expert, Sarah Raven books, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's Veg Every Day and Nigel Slater's Tender Vol One (the veg one). Last night, I cooked the ratatouille (minus the aubergine but with lots of courgettes- fruit, baby leaves and stems) from Kitchen Garden Experts, teamed it with a Mary Berry beef mince sauce and sandwiched it all together with lasagne sheets. Delicious.

On the internet, I thought the following all sounded worth a shot:

From Faith Wallinger writing for The Atlantic:
  • Chop the male and female flowers and sauté in olive oil with finely chopped garlic for a pasta sauce or risotto flavouring. 
  • A Sicilian dish: Stew the tender young leaves with garlic, courgette chunks and courgette flowers. (I'm thinking some tomatoes would be nice with this.)
  • Courgette carpaccio recipe here.  (Thinly sliced raw, drizzled with olive oil, topped with parmesan.)
  • Stuff the flowers with ricotta, layer into a non-stick pan, drizzle with olive oil, cover with a lid and steam/fry over a medium heat for 5 minutes. The steam from the ricotta will cook the flowers. Season and serve.

From Veg Box: Lemon Butter Courgettes.  Plot to plate in less than 15 minutes. Butter, lemon, olive oil, courgette. Simples.

From the BBC Good Food website:
A courgette and caraway cake with apple flavoured cream cheese frosting and caramelised oat topping. Now, be honest, if you saw this on a stand in a café, you'd want a slice wouldn't you? I know I would! This cake is from chef Valentine Warner; It looks, and probably is, delicious. I make a fantastic pork and barley stew by this same chef; on that criteria, I'd say he knows how to make really tasty stuff.

Courgette and caraway cake. Image courtesy of BBC Good Food website.
Roasted vegetables (including courgettes or whatever else you may have lurking) from that queen of the kitchen, Mary Berry. Actually, this is a great end of week meal to throw over couscous or rice and to use up all the veg in the fridge before a Saturday shop.

Sweet stuffed courgette flowers.  Initially this looks like a right faff but, oh my goodness, I bet these are beyond yummy! A recipe by John Torode (the grumpy one from Masterchef), wherein he stuffs courgette flowers with a crème pâtissière, coats with a light batter, fries them, then rolls them in cinnamon sugar. A bit like 'healthy' custard doughnuts, eh?  Recipe also includes a boozy raspberry syrup - I'm not sure these fritters would last that long in my kitchen.

Sauté potato and courgette.  Quick and a delicious side, or a meal in itself with an egg on top, but note this recipe serves only one. Personally, and I don't know what this says about me, I could easily eat three times this. You'll need potato, courgette, garlic, oil, a few herbs, seasoning … and a fork. This is my kind of food.

Citrus and courgette ribbon salad.  Garden ingredients are salad onions, courgettes, parsley plus lemon, walnuts and olive oil. Add a glass of chilled Prosecco, some warm evening sunshine, a table in the garden and who needs to go on holiday?

Courgette pancakes with spiced greek yogurt.  Goodness, is there no end to the versatility of this vegetable! This is lovely finger food - roll them up and dip away! I guess any children might have to get over not finding chocolate and banana in their pancakes but would soon get over it if a variety of dips and toppings were on offer.

There's heaps more to inspire on the BBC website.

And if the blighters do start to get the better of you, there's always Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's River Cottage Glutney, a fantastic way to preserve and eke out those delicious summer flavours.  That link also has Slow-cooked courgettes on toast and a courgette moussaka. Unsurprisingly, my thoughts are veering towards snacking on courgettes and toast for lunch tomorrow.

There, that should keep us all going. Actually, I'm beginning to wish I'd grown a couple more plants… I could do with a glut after reading all those recipes.


Edited to add:  Sue at Green Lane Allotments has a page of delicious courgette recipes that can be found on her blog here

28 Jul 2014

Kitchen Garden Experts - Inspiration from plot to plate!

I'm not one to rush into things but I have excelled myself this time by only just writing about a book I received a goodly while back, 'The Kitchen Garden Experts'. I'm aware it's been reviewed elsewhere but let's look again, shall we?



It's a rather nice book about the collaboration between twenty UK-based restaurant chefs and the chosen ones on whom they rely to grow their veg. It's hard to categorise this book; after an introduction to each restaurant, it's part biography, part garden inspiration, part cookbook. It explores those restaurants that have thrown their weight behind the idea of home-grown/local, sustainable and seasonal food for their kitchens and how they achieve that throughout the year. The author, Cinead McTiernan, has obviously had unparalleled access to both gardeners and chefs alike as each chapter is full of their expertise, with the balance tipping slightly towards where it all starts - in the garden.

It's beautifully written with more than a passing glance into the reality of life in a large kitchen garden. It has particular relevance now, in the summer, as the garden starts to produce plenty of food for the kitchen but I'd not be unhappy to get this book for a bit of autumn or winter reading, at a time when we're all deciding what to do with our various plots in the following year.




Propagating geraniums to ensure plenty of plants for making Rose Geranium Panna Cotta with Blackcurrant Sorbet

The concept of plot to plate food of the freshest quality is not new - my grandfather grew all the veg for the kitchen in his enormously long back garden - but it wasn't a trend then, it was how you fed your family.  Of real interest in this book, for me, is the way that the chefs and gardeners work together to put seasonal, no-to-low miles food on the menu of their various gaffs; they listen to each other's ideas, growing and creating food with a modern combination of flavours.

My typed extract from the book

Putting the end product aside for a moment, I was fascinated to read the methods that the gardeners use to get the best from their gardens and how to get the quantities right. That's real talent, keeping enough seasonal salad leaves on the go to provide for meal after meal. Sounds a nightmare to me but there are golden nuggets of information to be gleaned here.

For gardeners like me, always keen to experiment and get the most from the space I garden, it certainly provides a good read; by choosing restaurant gardens located throughout the UK, from Perthshire to Padstow, there's a range of climates and situations that will surely offer inspiration and insight to a wide range of growers. There's even a map if you want to explore the restaurants and their gardens for real. There are tips throughout from gardeners speaking of their experience, advice on growing specific ingredients and an additional page per chapter devoted to 'kitchen garden secrets'.  A good index at the back will take you straight to a featured plant - either gardening or recipe, although the range is limited. (This is not an allotment how-to book.)



By showcasing both the head gardeners and the chefs together, with the restaurant that they work for (or own!), there is a nice continuum from plot to plate. Not all the recipes appealed to me but then I don't cook dinner party fare, just hearty fill-your-boots food for teenagers.  That doesn't mean that I wouldn't like to try raspberry cranachan or rose geranium panna cotta. There's a delicious recipe for a classic summer stew of ratatouille (what to do with that courgette glut!) and I quite fancy the rainbow chard and bean soup as well.

On the flip side, I could leave recipes such as the plate of 'Beetroot textures'; undoubtedly eye-pleasing, it's firmly in the fancy restaurant dish category - a meal of style over substance.  But that's just me - someone else might need a menu to impress and find this perfect.

Although my training is taking me towards garden design, I'm plot to plate obsessed and will always be first and foremost a food grower. I'm fascinated by every aspect of it, from foraging to unusual edibles to the benefits of growing your own and hunt out and save recipes using food that I grow.  A garden visit is made so much more appealing if there's a kitchen garden included and I'm curious to know how such food growing spaces are managed for effective production.  For all of these reasons, I found 'Kitchen Garden Experts' an absorbing read; it's a definite bonus that the book is visually beautiful* and engagingly written. I'm more than pleased to add this to my gardening bookshelf.



Here's a little taster of the 40 recipes to be found within:

Yorkshire pudding with puréed parsnips and roasted vegetables
Scorched onion with crispy rocket and pesto (with details of growing wild rocket)
Baked gooseberries with lemon verbena ice cream and flapjack
Baby courgettes with a garden herb mayo
Poached rhubarb with buttermilk pudding, honeycomb and ginger wine
Rosehip syrup (to serve with cheese and salad leaves)
Plum and almond flan
Leeks vinaigrette
Ratatouille
Two way runner beans
Fig Mozzarella and basil salad
Sorrell frittata

Hopefully, this black box below will work as a slideshow of a few recipe photos to whet your appetites!


There are many more recipes, of the type that you might find on Masterchef, eg Whitby lobster with quail's eggs and garden beans, and all the recipes have detailed instructions on how to prepare the food.  An opportunity to brush up on dinner party skills perhaps?


* photos by Jason Ingram who won the Garden Media Guild Photographer of the Year award last year.

Disclaimer: My thanks go to the publisher, Frances Lincoln, who sent me the book to review; it is available through their website or the usual online retailers.

24 Jul 2014

Thoroughly {purple} Thursday

I bet the kids can't believe their luck, all this hot weather to kick off the end of term holidays.  Not so for us poor gardeners though, struggling to protect our plants from this mediterranean-like heat.  To cap it all, there's been a good stiff breeze running across the garden for the past couple of days wicking any moisture away from the leaves and encouraging transpiration which means that roots need more water otherwise the plants bolt, set seed and generally just keel over.

My purple globe artichoke flowerhead has fast-forwarded from last weekend's pink scales with yellow fluff centre to burst into a show-stopping thistle-head within the past two days.  I can't get my photos to replicate the purple of the flower fronds, it's almost electric blue in its intensity. I've tried different settings on my camera and a bit of tweaking in photoshop; I even got up earlier* to photograph it in a bluer morning light because yesterday's setting sun threw a warm orange cast over the garden. It made a slight difference but apparently the 'wow' factor can only be viewed in real life. As I grew this from a seed, I'm now wondering if I could fit a few more of these into the garden…. maybe in the Hot Border**, under the 'palm' tree, next to the lavender and perovskia? Hmm, sounds good; I think I might just tootle off and have a little internet search for seeds… :)




*not that early judging by the shadows creeping over the path!
** The Hot Border is a part of the garden that I'll do a post on soon as it's an ongoing renovation.