No vampires here

This is our garlic harvest, which is currently drying out in a box on the sunny lawn.  It has been drying for a fortnight and the cloves are semi-papery now; impatiently, I have already used three whole heads.  Garlic-roasted potatoes, garlicky hummous, lamb roasted with garlic and rosemary, lemon and garlic mayonnaise.  (The mayo is good with paprika-roast squash chunks.)  At the moment, I have no idea where these heads are going after they depart the box.  Hmm.

Eating, this past week:
Broad beans (possibly for ever)
New potatoes
Beet greens
Peas
Strawberries
Salad
Summer carrots

Sowing, last and this week:
Autumn carrots
Parsnips (late, I know)
Swede
Spring onion
Radish
Mangetout

Pray for peas

We ate the first peas last week and there is a good crop now.  These are ‘Meteor’ which we sowed in January.  The later (spring) sowings had very poor germination, which might be due to mice or birds.  We have both, I think (and whoever thinks it’s funny to unearth shallots on a daily basis, PACK IT IN!).

The mulch around the base of these plants has kept them pretty weed-free, and the pea seedlings didn’t mind.  I think mulching peas and onions is a good plan, generally.  We didn’t really feed these peas – they were almost ready when the heatwave started and they’d already enjoyed plenty of rain in the growing period.  I think that we will concentrate on autumn/winter-sown peas next year, since they have been much less hassle than the spring ones.

We ate the first bumper crop of peas last night – I made Sarah Raven’s Pea and Ricotta Tart with Thyme Pastry.  It is a time-consuming recipe because you have to make the pastry in advance, then cook it twice (with and without the filling) and cool a bit before eating.  But it’s lovely – individual ones would be nice for a summer lunch.  I halved the recipe (for 4) and it made quite a lot. The picture is rubbish.  I took loads so I don’t know how come they all turned out so badly. I am not a photographer.  But I am good at eating.

 

Butter me and feed me to the potatoes

I had heard that new potatoes fresh from the ground are way, way better than supermarket newbies.  I’d heard it, but I hadn’t really believed it.  I thought this was probably a grower’s saying – not a cook’s.  I have come to appreciate the fact that vegetables you’ve grown yourself make a way better supper than shop-bought ones.  You take more care in scrubbing them, gently lowering them into a pan, standing beside the cooker to catch them at the just-right moment.  And it feels more, hm, true, I suppose.  The miracle of growing your own food, right?

So with this in mind, I was nervous about our first crop of potatoes (last Friday).  I thought they would be an anticlimax.  And even now, I am not going to climb on my chair and shout about them, even though maybe I should.  Have we grown the world’s most fabulous potatoes?  I mean, is there a prize for these things, because I think we would win?

Because they were s-t-u-p-e-n-d-o-u-s.  Please grow some to taste this love for yourself (and send some by first class post to me as thanks).  The end.

 Oh hang on.  That’s not the end.  I also wanted to tell you about Jane Grigson’s way for delicious Stoved Potatoes.  This sounds the same as boiling and buttering, but it REALLY isn’t.  Try it out and you’ll want to buy her Vegetable Book to find out what other secrets she has.

‘Stoved’ from the French etuve, meaning stewed, in this case potatoes stewed in their own juices, with only a tiny amount of water and butter to prevent them sticking in the first stages.  With gas or asbestos cookers, an asbestos mat helps to keep the temperature evenly low [Note: I just use the lowest heat, and it works fine.  Definitely not asbestos].  Keep the lid of the pan, which should be aluminium, jammed on tightly with foil.  They must be good potatoes to begin with.  Peel them [no need with new potatoes] and put them in a pan with about 2 tablespoonfuls of water.  Sprinkle them with salt and add a tiny bit of butter here and there.  Cover close and simmer til soft and melted [keep a VERY close eye on the potatoes at this point - they could take anything from around 15-30 minutes].”

First peas with Beurre Blanc

We ate our first crop of peas (Meteor, planted in January) on Friday night, and I decided to do something special with them (instead of throwing them into a curry where they would be swamped).  I have been reading ‘Made in Italy’ by Giorgio Locatelli and he has a very complicated and delicious recipe for egg pasta with broad beans and potatoes.  He keeps some of the beans and potatoes whole, blends a few to make a puree/sauce, adds freshly-rolled egg pasta, and tosses the veg in butter sauce.  Sounded pretty hard, right?

So I decided to disregard most of it, and just make the Beurre Blanc.  This turned out to be a stroke of genius, although (if the wonder of this was anything to go by) I think it might be worth having a bash at the entire recipe one day.   Like, when I am reeeeeaaaaaally bored.

Here’s how I made it, and I hope you will enjoy it with your green peas (also some shelled broad beans) – pasta is really optional.  I think this would be even better just with green peas and bread on the side.  It’s horribly bad for you.  But it’s a nice Friday treat, if you have been super-good for the week.  And those peas really deserve a nice dressing.

2 spring onions (white parts), finely sliced
2 black peppercorns
100ml white wine
2tbsp double cream (plus more to loosen)
100g unsalted butter

Cut the butter into pieces, put one in a saucepan, and use it to soften the spring onions. Add the peppercorns (and I think a bay leaf or two would be nice) and soften very gently, not allowing anything to brown.  Add the wine and turn up the heat a little bit, to reduce it all by about half.  Add the cream and bubble for another minute.  Turn the heat to low and whisk in the butter, a little at a time, until it’s all incorporated.  Strain the sauce into a warm bowl (throw out the onion/peppercorns) until the peas/beans are ready, then return to the pan, and toss together gently.

Sorry there’s no picture, but we gobbled before we remembered.

Harvesting: gooseberries and garlic

Mm, what a combination.  First: gooseberries.  All we did was plant the young bush (autumn), fed with plenty of manure at the roots, and netted it once the berries appeared (not sure it’s necessary).  You are supposed to prune to maintain a ‘goblet’ shape, with a space in the middle so you can reach in without getting scratched.

In total, they came to 4oz – enough for 2 crumbles in ramekins.  I cooked the berries very gently with 3tbsp homemade elderflower cordial (more on that soon) and topped with Delia’s standard crumble mixture (something like 1tbsp butter, 1tbsp sugar, 2-3 tbsp flour), into hot oven for 15-20 mins.  Not much of a crop!  But according to the T&M website, ‘Invicta’ should yield 5-6lb (20 times what we picked) when mature.  Jam could be a long wait… Still, we won’t go hungry with all this garlic….

It’s not supposed to be ready, really, but it is – look at those yellow old leaves.  I lifted one and it was beautifully plump and cloved, so they all came out – replaced with a line of leek seed (horribly, horribly late).  (In The Good Life, Tom and Barbara planted 96 leeks.  We have about 15, so we need all the leek space we can get.)  I think we might actually have enough garlic for the year, now.  I planted just one pack (two heads) of garlic and every single blessed clove has fattified and delicified over the cold winter.  Aren’t they clever?  I continue to be amazed at the magic of growing.  I suppose it will wear off soon enough…

A few more things we got done on the weekend:
- Planted courgette plants
- Covered the fruit cage with netting (£30ish from garden centre)
- Watered Nematodes onto the potato, strawberry, salad and runner beds
- Strew straw around the strawberries
- Transplanted squash plants between the runners (1m apart)
- Planted sweetcorn plants (in a block, not a line)
- Planted tomato plantlets in the fruit cage (behind raspberries)
- Built a pond!  About 2mx1m with plenty of interesting tubes, shelters and nooks around the edges (for frogs, newts and hedgehogs).  This should reverse the bad karma we got for upsetting frogs on the plot.  We’re waiting for rain to fill it – pictures to follow.
- Cut back the saladini, hard, and harvested more broad beans.