leek and asparagus soup

Eating seasonally is so much easier and more satisfying when you grow the food yourself.

Asparagus spears are bountiful and leeks have been cleared to provide ground for new season potatoes.

So:

Melt unsalted butter in pan.

Add good cup full of washed and chopped leeks and good cupful of washed and chopped asparagus.


Turn heat down and 'sweat' the veg until soft, stirring frequently.


Add one pint of vegetable stock and simmer.

Remember that 'a soup boiled is a soup spoiled'.


Whizz contents of pan and pour into serving bowls.


In manly way, dollop in creme fraiche with no finesse whatsoever.


Enjoy with home made bread.

fruit compote

 Slice apples and place in oven proof bowl
Add handful of blackcurrants
(Both home organic grown and frozen since last season)
Splash of fruit juice.

Into oven 180 degrees C for ten minutes (uncovered) and allow to cool.

Whizz in blender but don't make too smooth - we aren't consuming our food through straws yet!

Into breakfast bowl and spoonful of organic Greek yoghurt with honey.

leek and squash soup

Recent readers of this blog may be forgiven for thinking that its theme is the arcane worlds of hedging and amateur forestry.

These are a slender strand of what I blog about, but today I return to one of my main interests: growing our own food and eating it.

Leeks are still growing in the allotment and Crown Prince squash are still on the shelf. A real highlight of early autumn is the uncovering of gorgeous duck egg blue squash from beneath a thick undergrowth of squash leaves. Crown Prince has a rich, nutty flavour and stores brilliantly well.

So:

wash and dice leeks and a big lump of peeled squash
heat unsalted butter in a large pan and gently saute leeks and squash with pan lid on
(but stiring frequently)

add three teaspoons of buillion stock powder
add boiling water and simmer.


When all is tender, 'whizz' it up.

Home made bread to accompany and you'll have a silky smooth soup bringing the warmth of autumn to the early spring.

green tomatoes

Growing tomatoes on the same latitude as Labrador brings certain challenges.

This has been a superb year for tomatoes grown in our greenhouse with bumper crops and a long season.

But the nights are cooler now and the hours of daylight are reducing. It is time to take the tomato plants down and to strip them of their fruit.

We have bowls of juicy red tomatoes waiting in the cool of the garage to be used. And 4lbs of green tomatoes that will not ripen.

So, we use the old gardeners' fall back: green tomato chutney. While I was out enjoying watching Nottingham Forest beat Newcastle United, Jill was making jars of green tomato chutney for use over the coming months.

doubly thrifty!

The 'Grow your own' campaign in Britain is now complemented by a progammes about cooking ther food you've grown.

One of my favourites is the current series by Nigel Slater. Here his hearty bean soup is joined by Pink Fir Apple potatoes and calabrese (broccoli).

The soup is just a mix of all that is seasonal - onions, tomatoes courgettes, garlic and delicious borlotti beans. Everything home grown!!

Nigel showed us a new trick with this one that we hadn't thought of before: flavour the soup by popping in the rind of your Parmesan cheese. This is usually hen food, but now we let it flavour the soup and then give it to the hens after the meal is cooked.

How doubly thrifty is that!

Broccoli and Blue Stilton soup

I was grumbling on about how miserable it is in the garden last time.

But I've been reminded that there is much we should be proud of when we grow and eat our own food. Like today's chunky broccoli and Blue Stilton soup.

Lurking down in the depths of the freezer is some of our produce saved and frozen from last year. Here's a small bag of broad beans, there's almost a pound of early purple sprouting broccoli that has become crushed. We still have stored onions and are still lifting carrots. And what's this...? A piece of frozen Blue Stilton cheese - the tastiest cheese in the world and produced locally!!!!

So, ready........ steady........ cook!

Onions and carrots diced and cooked slowly in butter.

In with broad beans and then the broccoli.

Stock powder and water and simmer.

Once cooked through, whizz with whizzer!

crumble a heaped teaspoon of Stilton into bowl and add soup.

Oh my - a chunky winter soup that is power packed with flavour!!!

Finish with a two hour walk in Nottinghamshire's beautiful Clumber Park.

spinach

Over on the other side I describe an unhappy encounter with Italian spinach.

But let us not disparage one of our great green leaf vegetables. Spinach is more sinned against than sinning.

You've got in mind to cook your tea and wonder what to do. Out in the garden, glossy and turgid stands a beautiful, erect bed of spinach.

A Greek oven baked tortilla or omelette comes to mind......

Bang the oven on and stick some of your homegrown potatoes in.

Quickly out and pull several fresh spinach leaves. Back inside with a wash and trim of the thicker stalks. Chop it up, wilt it with homegrown leeks and garlic in a pan. Cubes of feta cheese. Chopped fresh mint out of the garden. Beaten bantam eggs and grated Parmesan on top.

Baked in moderate oven for thirty minutes or until cooked. Spuds ready too. Beer - and 'Dinner's ready!'.

green fingers

It's that time again! The asparagus season has begun!

Asparagus 'Connovers Colossal' really lives up to its name sending up big, thick stems through the soil for harvesting for two months.

Like a still photo of the fingers of the maniacs reaching up through the subterranean grille in the film 'The Music Lovers', the shoots wait. We just need a Tchaikovsky soundtrack. They are cut off just below ground level. They will continue to yield abundantly until midsummer when they are allowed to grow on to be elegant ferns.

This weeks harvest was used immediately in a sorrel, leek and asparagus risotto. Fresh, seasonal, local and tasty!

And, presumably, a diuretic.

mellow yellow

Growing food and eating it. How primal is that? No wonder that little can compare!

Look here: fabulous leeks and abundant purple sprouting broccoli; garlic stored from the summer and fresh-picked mint. The little bantams are giving us a couple of eggs a day. Add pecorino cheese, tangy feta sheep's cheese and a handful of traditional cheddar. Baked in the oven until a rich yellow.

No only do you have years worth of pleasure growing, there's the pleasure of cooking - and then eating.

Simple pleasures, I know. But what satisfaction.

vegetarian breakfast

How do you cope without bacon?

two slices homemade organic wholemeal toast
guacamole
houmous
grilled organic mushrooms
grilled tomatoes
bantam egg

And eat!

blackberry whisky

This is a variation on sloe gin - and is better because it doesn't use sloes and doesn't use gin.
4 lbs of big juicy, organic, home grown frozen blackberries go into a washed sweet jar with 8 oz of sugar and a bottle of cheap whisky.
Shaken regularly so that the sugar is thoroughly mixed, it is then left (for up to two years) before being enjoyed.
Just imagine that combination of whisky and blackberries.
I don't think there's much chance of it lasting two years.
Cheers!

beetroot

There is one vegetable whose presence in the kitchen indicates that a gardener is close by: beetroot.
Supermarkets stock uncooked beetroot but not throughout its long season. They sometimes stock cooked, chilled beetroot.
However, when a vegetable gardener is nearby, beetroot is available from early summer until October and beyond.
Early, 'baby beets' are the small round 'thinnings' that sweeten early summer salads.
The plants remaining grow onto tennis ball size .
The modern kitchen does not welcome beetroot. The long boiling process makes steam and, shock horror, sometimes the red liquid that emerges from the boiling goes onto cookers or worktops!! It needs wiping off!! Modern kitchens, I understand, are only used for defrosting and ping cookery.
My favourite way of cooking beetroot is wrapped in foil and then oven baked. The flavour intensifies in this long slow heat and none is lost in the boiling.
The oven roasted beets are velvet in texture and deep burgandy in colour. And with a helpful purgative effect.

comfort ..........

I'll be the first to admit that pastry is not my strength.
But when a bag of cooking apples appeared on the front door handle yesterday, the mood took me. And here it is.
One of England's greatest comfort foods - apple and blackberry pie - ideally served with lovely yellow custard.
This years apple crop has been as amazing as the blackberry crop. We needed a team today to help us pick the blackberries and raspberries and the freezer is now stuffed.

Blackberry and apple crumble

The golden autumn days begin to arrive.
And with them windfall apples and gorgeous, sweet blackberries. All so abundant this year!
And what better to do than make a blackberry and apple crumble - with custard.
This is the pudding that St. Peter will have waiting for me if I've led a life of virtue.
This crumble looks slightly darker because I used muscavado sugar which is dark brown and gives a distinct, rich taste to the crumble topping. I used muscavado, not because I'm especially pretentious, but because I'm challenged in the 'finding things right in front of you in the cupboard' department. It was pointed out that the other sugar was where it always is - and in the usual container too.
Who cares - flippin' delicious!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!