Another way with new potatoes

In ‘Arabesque’, Claudia Roden gives a Lebanese recipe for lemon-and-coriander spiked potatoes.  This is quite a sharp taste, and would suit something mild or sweet to accompany it – for example a chickpea & yoghurt salad (pictured, bottom): soften a clove minced garlic in a pan with a handful pine nuts, and stir half of this mixture into plain yoghurt with salt, pepper, and a good tbsp chopped mint.  Pour over cooked chickpeas and top with the remaining pine nuts.

For the potatoes, boil 1kg in salted water for about 10 minutes, drain, and put into a baking dish.  Cut into 1″ chunks and pour over 5tbsp olive oil, salt and pepper, and 4 cloves garlic (crushed).  Roast in a hot oven until golden and crispy, then toss with the juice of 1/2 lemon and a handful of chopped coriander; adjust seasoning, and serve immediately.

By the way, I am putting a sunny face on it, but all is not entirely well at the plot; potatoes have been struck down with blight.  We are kicking ourselves for not taking the advice of the drunk man in the pub (milk spray to keep off blight), foolishly thinking that the summer has been dry enough not to need it.  Apparently, our potatoes got damp and hot – or they just did it to blight us.

It was difficult to get advice whether to cut down the potato foliage, or dig up the whole plants, or what.  Different websites say different things, so we made up our own minds.  We have just cut the foliage right down to the ground, and removed all the dead brown leaves, and put them away from the plot.  We are leaving the tubers in the ground to develop skins and hopefully the blight will not have spread to them.  And this is supposed to be a blight-resistant variety!  Oh well.  I guess at worst we could always just try to eat them all super-fast.  Not such a bad thing.

Still, the winter veg has gone in – parsnips, swedes, broccoli, and a trial of 4 kinds of carrots (let’s see if I can remember): Mokum, Autumn King, Nantes, and damn!  that is going to annoy me.  Flyaway!!  Hah!  They all went in at the same time so I am interested to see how they do, although they now have a week before I net them, so good luck against those carrot flies, chaps.

PSB is proving a very tasty snack for the slugs, who are also partial to green kale (but not red).  Frogs have been sighted on the strawbs which explains why those are doing so beautifully (thanks, kermy).  And I’m signing off now… here’s to the plot looking after itself for a week!

Fresh summer lettuce

I know I have been singing the praises of saladini, but there is a lot to be said for a plain old iceberg – if it’s fresh from the plot, and not shrink-wrapped.  I do like a bit of crunch in my salad.  The only problem is that all 12 icebergs have matured at once, so we will have to eat a lot of them in the next three days.

On the weekend we leave for a week in France, but I am having trouble with the idea of giving away our precious crops, instead wondering vainly if they would maybe cope for a week on their own?

A recent post at My Tiny plot raised the issue of giving away surplus.  Having never grown ANY of these crops before this year, I am reluctant to consider giving away ANYTHING.  But perhaps that’ll come in time.  And you can have a parsnip at Christmas, if you want.

But you might have to trample me to the ground to get them.