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.