Gravadlax

Last year, just before Christmas, we bought a whole salmon, turned some of it into gravadlax and poached the rest.  The cold poached salmon makes a great standby, excellent with a little mayonnaise: in sandwiches, with salad and hot potatoes and many other veg.  It worked so well that we did the same again this year.

The gravadlax takes 5 days maturing in the fridge, under weights, turning daily.  This is an easy dish to make, but this latest version was good and worthy of noting the method.  Unfortunately I didn't make a note of the exact quantities but: 2 packets of fresh dill, twice as much sugar as salt, (around 100g sugar and 50g salt) and lots of ground black pepper.  I chopped the dill very finely in the food processor and gave a final whizz with the other ingredients, just to mix them.  Cut the tail into two fillets, leaving the skin on.  Press half the dill mixture onto one fillet and the rest onto the other half.  Put the two fillets together to make a sandwich with the dill in the middle.  Wrap well in clingfilm and place in a dish at least as deep as the salmon parcel, as it gives off a lot of liquid while it is maturing.  Weigh the salmon down and refrigerate.  Turn daily, do not discard the expressed liquor until the 5 days are up.  This recipe gives a higher proportion of sugar to salt than I have previously used and I liked the less salty, sweeter flavour of this gravadlax.

We like to serve this with a mixed leaf salad that has been lightly dressed with a dill and mustard dressing and more dressing either served separately or drizzled over the gravadlax.  The dressing is simply made.  Put a large dollop of Dijon mustard into a bowl, add a teaspoon of sugar and a tablespoon of chopped dill.  Whisk in olive oil until a good consistency/quantity is achieved.  Whisk in lemon juice or white wine vinegar to taste.  The sauce should be slightly sweet and very mustardy.

Chilli Jam

Andrea suggested Chilli Jam might be an interesting way to use some of the excellent chilli harvest.  Brilliant.  Perfect.  What a great idea, I love sweet and savoury and especially something with a kick.  Found a recipe on the BBC good food site www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/8257/sweet-chilli-jam The recipe page recommends it as an accompaniment for cold meats and pies, I just love it with cheese.  Sharing the plate with the jam are: Gorgonzola, Berkswell - a local ewe's milk cheese and a mature Red Leicester.

Italian Sausages in Red Wine Sauce

We love french and italian cooking sausages: coarser grind, lots of garlic and of course 100% meat.  If you've never tried them I can't recommend them highly enough.  Unfortunately they are not always easy to find as English butchers don't even attempt them and the ones sold in supermarkets are just poor.  A good french or italian deli is a must.

I fried these sufficiently to give them a good colour, then removed them from the pan before sauteeing finely diced onions, garlic, carrot, celery and sliced mushrooms.  Add a good sized glass of red wine and stock (or more red wine) to cover.  Return the sausages to the pan and simmer gently until the sausages are cooked all the way through and the sauce has reduced to a good consistency.

Deep freeze

 Apologies for the quality of these photos of asparagus fern and the allotment, these were taken with my phone as the light was fading.

The whole country has been in the grip of a cold spell for a  couple of weeks now.  In Warwick we've managed to escape any substantial snowfall, but over the last couple of days we've experienced the most amazing hoar frost.  Any foliage has attracted incredibly dense formations of ice crystals.


Seen through the freezing fog the landscape has a ghostly black and white quality of unusual beauty.  When the sun does break through the effect is magical.  The photo below was taken with the usual camera.

Braised Oxtail

The weather has been crisp and cold with yesterday's temperature not rising above freezing. Traditional brown stews with slow cooked cuts are the best answer. When I saw an oxtail on display at the butcher's I couldn't resist it. Oxtail is fatty and full of connective tissue, but properly handled becomes tender and wonderfully unctuous (wiki definition: rich, lush, intense with layers of velvety flavours).

Gentle, slow cooking (c. 4 hours) enables the meat to be easily slipped from the bones and any fat still clinging to the meat to be discarded. Strain the cooking liquor and carefully remove all fat from it. Throw away the mirepoix (onions, carrots, leeks and celery) that has been flavouring the braise as it will have absorbed fat and lost nearly all of its texture and flavour. Cut some carrots and celery and put these in a pot with the cooking liquor and the meat and simmer until tender. Thicken the liquor with some cornflour and serve.

The Chilli Harvest

These are powerful little blighters and suitably dried will probably last us until we start cropping next year.

Comfort eating

The list of dishes that constitute comfort eating, for me, has got to include: Spag bol, chilli con carne and Lasagne.

I put a lot of effort into my lasagne including: fresh homemade pasta, finely diced sformato, homegrown tomatoes, bacon and top quality mince or hand diced cooked beef. Anyone who makes their own pasta will confirm what a labour of love this is. Having spent time making pasta I always put as much as possible into the lasagne, 7 or 8 layers at least; it should cut like a gateau and not land on the plate like a spoonful of mince with only 2 layers of pasta.

I recently read the suggestion for a chilli lasagne (chillagne or lasaglli) and thought "what a great idea to combine 2 out of the 3 top comfort food dishes?". We baked it and it looked the business, but unfortunately it didn't quite reach the heights of the perfect chilli or the best lasagne. Can't win them all.

Cuisine Grand Mere

I recently cooked two dishes full of nostalgia for my early childhood. One successful, the other not quite so.

This baked apple was a common dish at home and on school and canteen menus. We were lucky, recently, to be invited to Sunday lunch with the Jones. Mrs J is the master of the traditional roast and provided a superb roast chicken with all the trimmings, followed by a baked apple. Hers was a handsome puffed up masterpiece, sitting on the plate like Mr Creosote (see Monty Pythons' Meaning of Life). Mine captures the more homely aspect of this tasty and nourishing classic. OK, OK; I admit it Jacqui's was better.


The squeamish and faint-hearted (no pun intended) should turn away now.

My grandmother died when I was only about 8 years old but I have many memories of her food and with hindsight I believe she was an exceptional cook. Standing over her stove with a cigarette hanging out of her mouth and the risk of a touch of ash to season the food, fantastic roast lunches and great puddings. Something that stands out in the memory is braised stuffed lamb hearts.

I have cooked these before, but not for many years, so I was a bit rusty. As can be seen the heart itself is lean muscle, braised for an hour and a half it was beautifully tender and had a full flavour, more like good braising steak than lamb. I should have trimmed some of the clinging external fat and probably discarded the braising vegetables before taking more care to remove more fat from the sauce as unfortunately it all ended up as being way too greasy.

Nonetheless, this was a true taste of the 1950s and early 60s, conjuring strong images of post war austerity Britain.

Corn Pudding

My charming sister Ruth, enjoying a slab of corn pudding. But hang on a moment; is that a surreptitious 2 finger salute she is proffering. Shame on you Ruthie.

I am grateful to Clark Adams, a true epicure, for the recipe.  Although I suspect that he might be slightly aghast at the lack of precision in my translation of the recipe into English. This is delicious.

Corn Pudding Ingredients for 6-8
500ml Single Cream
3 or 4 Eggs depending on size
3 Corn cobs (or 500g kernels)
3 – 6 Spring Onions
3 – 6 Rashers of Streaky bacon
30g Polenta
100g Grated Gruyere
Chilli or Cayenne pepper to taste
Salt and Pepper, grated nutmeg

Method

Beat the eggs and cream together

Shuck the corn if using corn on the cob and add to the cream. Use a hand blender to cream some of the corn but don’t overdo it, leave a lot of the kernels whole.

Finely chop the onion, bacon and chilli and sweat in a little oil, then add to the cream mixture.

Add the polenta and gruyere then season.

Grease a baking dish with butter and coat with polenta, shaking out any excess.

Bake in a moderate oven (170º) for about 50 minutes until the custard is set and the top is turning golden.

Like many egg custard type dishes, this is better served warm rather than red hot from the oven.

Advertising Feature

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Tomatoes - Heading for the freezer

This pan of tomatoes will reduce down to about a half a kilo and then be frozen in 2 x 250g blocks. A little salt, sugar and olive oil are the only additions. These are great whenever a recipe calls for cooked tomatoes. We have some 30 blocks in the freezer which will keep us going until next summer.

Ham update

The pork leg has now been salting for over 2 weeks. I have used 660g of salt, that is to say 10% of original weight. Most of the salt has been absorbed or thrown away in the liquid that has been released. The skin is pale where it has been lying on its side, but has got a better colour on the edges which have been drying out.

I have coated the cut side with black pepper. I've not tried this before but I am hoping for an improvement in flavour and appearance. Touch wood, it has never been a problem but I expect the pepper will also deter any insects that might be tempted to nibble.

Ham

Bought this leg of pork today for turning into an air dried ham. I asked the butcher to remove the topside joint and leave the trotter on. Previously I've used the whole leg (without the trotter), but this is an attempt to produce a spanish style ham. The ham weighs 6.5kg (last year's with the topside muscle weighed over 8kg). It is my intention to rub the leg daily with a mix of the fine and course sea salts, until it feels right. Hmmm. I'd like to be a bit more scientific so I'm trying to record times and amounts of salt. When it is salted to my, best guess of, satisfaction, then I'll smoke it briefly and hang it in the kitchen until ready, eight months minimum.

Winter Squash

Our selection of winter squash, from left to right: Becky Pumpkin, Blue Banana, Uchiki Kuri, Butternut, Burgess Buttercup and another Becky.

Fish and Chips

The only thing missing from this picture is a couple of pickled onions (see below), although my old cookery school master would have rapped my knuckles for not including a nice pluche of parsley on the plate.

The chips are from our Picasso potatoes and the fish is fresh Haddock. The tartare sauce is Rosemary's low fat take on an old favourite. In addition to mayonnaise, capers, gherkins and parsley, she includes fresh cucumber and yoghurt for a lighter fresher flavour.

Raspberries and Pancakes

The autumn raspberries are in full swing. Rosemary has already made the year's supply of raspberry vinegar and winter warming raspberry vodka. We are eating raspberries for breakfast with yoghurt every morning. Just for a change I thought we'd try them with some wholewheat pancakes. Absolutely delicious.

Onions

We've lifted all of the onions now. Very disappointing. After last year's bumper crop we thought that we had the growing of onions licked. This year's crop has produced a few decent sized onions, but I don't expect them to keep us going for much more than a month. However every cloud has a silver lining and I've now got a good shelf of pickled onions. The red onions usually lose their colour when pickled so I've tried putting them into red wine vinegar. The chillies you can see are our homegrown 'Ring o Fire'. The poor joke incorporated into the name does, however, indicate the potency.

Beans

We love beans and grow plenty of them. During late July, August and September we eat mountains of runner beans and french beans. We have tried many ways of preserving fresh green beans, but apart from small amounts used in Piccalli and similar chutneys, we haven't found a satisfactory way of freezing or bottling them.

Our solution is to grow varieties with seeds suitable for drying. The picture on the left shows the dried beans. The green ones are a variety called Soisson and the others are Berlotti. Both are great in soups, stews and dressed with vinaigrette for a salad. The picture on the right shows the Berlotti still in the pod.

Tomatoes

Unfortunately the weather is not providing the warmth, sunshine and dry weather that is the ideal for ripening the tomatoes. But even so the plucky little blighters are struggling to maturity. Lets be honest this weather is not unusual, but we have learnt a trick or two to hasten ripeness. We gather the fruit when it is fully grown and ripen it indoors. Putting the green tomatoes into a trug along with some ripe tomatoes encourages them to ripen. Apparently a ripe banana will have a similar effect. All to do with the gases given off by the ripe fruit apparently.

The picture shows a selection of most of the tomatoes we are growing: Costoluto, Black Russian, Tigarella, Yellow and Red Santini and a couple of Purple Calabash at the top right of the picture.

The Costoluto seem to be the most prolific this year. Their ridged appearance is very attractive but the flavour is a little insipid, lacking acidity. But they are a good tomato for a sauce as they readily reduce to a pulp and have a low water content.

The Black Russians are a favourite, great flavour and heavy yield of perfect round tomatoes.

The Santini are cherry tomatoes grown from seeds saved from commercial fruit (these are sold by Marks and Spencer, I couldn't find the seed anywhere). Lovely sweet flavour and the yellow ones give a nice colour contrast.

The Tigarella are an old favourite. A good salad tomato, good yield and very pretty with the bronze stripe on the red fruit.

Purple Calabash sounded great in the seed brochure but turn out to be less attractive version of the Costoluto. We probably won't bother growing these again.

Allotment

A reader (oh yeah) has requested more photos of the allotment! Here is one taken toward the end of July. Did you know that if you click on the photo you can make it larger; and larger still with another click. Press the back button on your browser to get back to here.

The foreground shows a row of Autumn raspberries that were planted by the previous carer. Beyond these you can see the asparagus ferns. Once harvesting is finished in mid-June these are allowed to grow in order to replenish the roots for next springs harvest. On the right are the sweetcorn, these are now over and have been dug up and replaced with a green manure. You can see many of the supporting canes have small plastic bottles on top, these are to prevent accidental spearing of eyeballs when bending over.

The tall plants on the left are runner beans growing up cane supports. These are still cropping well. In front of them you can make out a few globe artichoke heads.

In front of the sunflowers at the end of the allotment are a couple of composter bins and a glimpse of the water butt that is under the standpipe. Our shed is the pale green one and there are sweetpeas growing up one side of it.

Surprisingly you can only see about a third of what is growing on the allotment as much is hidden by the tall foliage of the asparagus, beans and sweetcorn. In the background are more of the allotment gardens leading up to the railway embankment and the new council offices behind.

'Scuse me while I kiss the sky ...

This carrot variety is called Purple Haze. Presumably this is a pun on the name of a popular brand of LSD that was available in the 1960's. Purple Haze was made widely known by Mr Jimi Hendrix with his song of that name. I have taken the liberty of quoting from the lyrics in my title.

These carrots are beautiful, but despite being a bundle of excellent nutritional properties, will presumably disappointment aficianados of the original. Despite extensive inquiries the original Purple Haze seems to be no longer available and has gone the way of Fry's Five Boys, original Tizer and Lucky Numbers chocolates.

Sunflowers

No allotment is complete without a big splash of colour and you don't get much bigger or splashier than sunflowers. We grew some spindly half-hearted ones last year and these have self-seeded from those. They are all strong plants, having withstood some very windy conditions and the tallest is about 2.4m.

Amaranth

Until I read of this plant in the Real Seeds catalogue, I hadn't heard of or tasted Amaranth. The purple amaranth that I grow is one of a large family of plants grown variously: for the leaves, which are a super spinach alternative, the seeds (quinoa) and as a decorative plant. Both the leaves and seed are highly nutritious, with many health benefits claimed. The seed provide a good quality protein that is popular with vegetarians.

We grow our amaranth for the leaves, picking out the tender shoots for cooking. The plants are very productive producing more side shoots for picking 3 or 4 days later. It is also very easy to grow, self seeding freely and very decorative with drooping flower heads that become full of seeds.

We cook this in a similar way to spinach: Wash well, cook the wet leaves without adding any extra water in a covered pot until tender. Finish with butter, salt, pepper and nutmeg. This is one of the few bright red vegetables that retains its colour during cooking.

Allotment

This is such a great time at the allotment with no need to buy any vegetables. Even our onions which have been poor this year are now providing us with all we need.

We have even had a couple of small tomatoes, but the promised crop is massive. So far the weather has not been conducive to blight so fingers crossed for a great crop. These in the picture are an unknown variety with seed taken from a tomato a friend gave us. Searching on the web, the nearest looking variety I can find is Pomodoro Costuluto Genovese seeds supplied by Thompson & Morgan.


These artichokes are exceptionally beautiful but beware the needles on the tips of every leaf. They are extremely sharp and as strong as steel. As a result we keep clear of this particular plant and admire the flowers without attempting to cut and cook them.



From time to time we come across frogs and toads, which we encourage as at worst harmless and hopefully they will take the odd slug out. This one was discovered living inside the hollow stem of an old swiss chard plant.

Beetroot

A favourite vegetable; the sweet taste and the vivid colour of red beetroot cannot be beaten. Anything that looks so luscious and has such a dramatic effect on your outputs must be doing you good.

The picture shows a 'yellow' beetroot (Burpees Golden) as well. I must say we've had better coloured ones from the same, alleged, variety.

Our allotment neighbour Jacqui recalled a favourite meal that her mother cooked: Boiled ham served with beetroot fritters. Sounded good so I had a go. Boiled the beets first before rolling in flour, dipping in the batter and then deep frying. These went down well with a glass of wine whilst the rest of dinner (not boiled ham) was cooking. I think the otherwise bland looking 'yellow' beetroot came into their own cooked like this.

Courgettes

Is it possible to grow courgettes without producing too many? I think not. If you take your car to the allotment at this time of year, it is important to keep it locked if unattended, for even the shortest time. A moment's carelessness and you may return to find that some generous soul has dumped a load of courgettes in your car when you weren't looking.

My problem is made worse because I love the look of them and the variety available, so this year I am growing 6 different ones. The photograph shows them all: Summer crookneck, de Nice, Trieste White Half Long, Lebanese and Summer Ball.

Artichokes

The artichokes were badly affected by the bad winter and at one stage looked as if they were all dead. But I am pleased to report a pheonix like recovery.

Every year the early artichokes suffer from aphid infestation that can make the flowering heads unsightly and difficult to clean. This year they have been particularly badly hit. So I decided to crop the lot, trim them close to the heart and then pickle them.

After cooking them (see picture) I removed any tough material and the chokes. They were then put into jars with a few cloves of garlic, covered with sunflower oil, sealed and then boiled for 25 minutes. We look forward to trying them in a couple of weeks time.

Hopefully the plants will put up more flower stalks and we will have a bumper crop.

Felafel

We have now harvested all of the broad beans. What we haven't eaten has gone into the freezer as they freeze well.

Broad beans are one of my favourites for flavour and being the first of the new season's legume crop. Home grown broad beans cannot be beaten as invariably shop bought ones are way too old, starchy and tough.

Rosemary isn't fond of the flavour of these beans, except when they have been knocked up into felafel. We just love these and consider them far superior to felafel made with dried beans or chick peas. Take about 100g of beans per person whizz up with the usual felafel seasonings: onion, garlic, cumin, coriander, salt, chilli, parsley, etc. Roll into small walnut size balls and chill for 30 minutes. Deep fry until brown. I usually do this 5 or 6 at a time in the wok to minimise the amount of oil. We serve this with minted yoghurt and salad.

Building up a head of steam ....

This is a great time for an allotment gardener as more and more summer veg come on stream.

We've been digging the potatoes for about a month now and have used up all of the 1st early Lady Christl. Due to a cock-up in the labelling department when the potatoes were planted I wasn't sure about which varieties were which. Imagine the delight when I dug up these fantastic looking Edzell Blue potatoes that I didn't even remember planting. Apart from the fabulous colour (that doesn't survive cooking) these were a good yield, free from slug damage and tasted good.

I planted out a row of cucumber with a favourite variety Wautoma (seeds from The Real Seed Co.) but slug damage caused an unsightly gap in the row. So I filled it with a plant bought from a nursery White Wonder and this is it. The ghostly pale colour and smooth skin made this a very handsome fruit. The skin was a little tough so I peeled it and then it was good eating.

We have also been eating the first courgettes, globe artichokes, gooseberries, blueberries and raspberries.

Ham

The ham has been curing since October. It was first dry salted, then hung to dry, before being lightly smoked and then hung to mature in a corner of the kitchen. The surface of the ham is dry and hard and it looks ready. The picture shows me removing the aitch bone, which I think is the hip socket, before dividing the ham into more convenient sized pieces.

Fortunately I have access to a professional meat slicer as the ham must be cut into the thinnest of slices for best eating.

The flavour is good, but I suspect it would have improved with more hanging.

First Earlies

This is the year's first crop of new potatoes, the variety is Lady Christl. The joy of growing potatoes is often incomprehensible to the non-gardener/cook, but I'll try to explain.

The flavour of good quality, small, early potatoes is incomparable, needing only a little butter to turn them into fudgy nuggets of lusciousness. The method of cultivation leaves the soil free of weeds and ready for re-planting. On dry summer evenings the potatoes come up clean and ready for the pot. Last but not least, the first potatoes are the harbingers of summer plenty. Globe artichokes and broad beans will follow soon with the rest of the summer vegetables now well established.

We enjoyed these with veal chops and asparagus.

Asparagus, Ham and Cheese

Part cooked Asparagus and crumbled goat's cheese wrapped in Parma ham and then grilled.

Beans

We sowed all of our beans, for planting out, about a week ago and they are just starting to sprout. The timing seems to be good as it too early to put them out as the weather is, literally at times, freezing and by the time they are ready it should be warmer. We sowed: Soisson, Runners, Berlotti and Haricot Vert. The runners and the Haricot Vert are for eating fresh and the Soisson and Berlotti make great drying or freezing beans.

The picture is of the Haricot and shows the peculiar early growth of all of the French beans where the bean seed splits and takes the place of the first leaves.

Asparagus

Our asparagus is now in its 4th year and we already have 8 or so crowns that are promising to deliver a bumper crop with half-a-dozen or more fat spears showing. Many of the plants aren't so far advanced but I'm very optimistic of, that which every allotmenter loves, a glut. Leastways we are looking forward to 8 weeks of frequent trips to the allotment to cut this most luscious of vegetable crops.

Seen here with salt, pepper and lashings of butter.

Fruit Platter

This was quick to make and was very eye grabbing with the big chunks of strong colours. I now regret the strawberrys as being a bit of a cliché as well as going against my principal of avoiding them when out of season. It was very appealing with its fresh flavours and easy to eat either picking with fingers or a fork. We served it with whipped cream that had meringue crumbled into it. Don't know where Rosemary got the idea from, but it was well lush.

For the first time we've 'forced' the rhubarb by covering it with a large bucket. We pulled the first sticks on 26 March, maybe a week or two before the uncovered rhubarb will be ready. Rosemary sprinkled it with white sugar and baked it, covered, for 30 minutes.

The flavour was exceptional and the delicate pink colour was very attractive. The juice tasted of a fine dessert wine with a good balance of acidity and sweetness. Absolutely knock-out.