Kale

When you have a vegetable patch in the garden or an allotment you're going, from time to time, get a surplus of something or other. Hopefully it's something that can be frozen or pickled or turned into jam, but occasionally it isn't - or, as is the case at the moment due to tomatoes and runner beans, there just isn't space in the freezer. 

So, I'm working my way through a seemingly never-ending supply of kale. I'm not fond of it just boiled, as you might cook cabbage or broccoli, which leads to some interesting experiments.

I like to add it, much the way I would spinach, to dishes with strong flavour, such as stir fries, chillies, curry, goulash, tomato dishes for pasta, with bacon chops in an apple juice sauce, and both in and shredded on top of enchiladas.  

My favourite way though is none of these but roasted - with oil and spices - to make Chinese 'crispy seaweed'.

 

Raspberry Vodka

After a fortnight of soaking raspberries and sugar in vodka, it's time for straining and decanting back into the original bottle.

There was just a little too much to fit, so I had to sample some - and very nice it was. The colour's gorgeous too. It's definitely more of a success than my rhubarb gin which smells strangely of olive oil.

I just wish I'd thought to steam off the original labels!

When life gives you raspberries ...

 They say 'when life gives you lemons, make gin and tonic'. Well, life (or the allotment) is right now giving me raspberries - far too many of them.

Some have gone into the freezer to turn into jam at a later date but this autumn's crop has been so bounteous that I'd thought I'd experiment with some of it.


So, raspberry vodka.









4 ounces raspberries, the same of sugar and not quite the whole of a 35cl bottle of vodka - letting it sit, shake frequently, and wait for two weeks.
I've made blackberry vodka before, which was lovely, and rhubarb gin which was less so and needed interesting mixers. Hopefully this will fall into the 'lovely' category.
Fingers crossed for two weeks

Clearing the freezer and coping with gluts

My huge chest freezer has reached crisis point. The ice has built up and up, and unless the baskets are replaced in exactly the correct position the lid won't close. Like much of my house it's due for a declutter.


There are two main problems - all the allotment surplus that I freeze before it goes 'off' (and then forget about), and half-used bags of shop-bought things lurking right at the bottom.

So ... I decided that last month, I would make a real effort to buy no more frozen food. We'd eat the broad beans that have been sitting in there for years. Finish up the fish in sauce that we aren't really fond of. Put together all the half-used packs of bacon, prawns, and peas - and discover there actually IS enough for a meal.


I took out tomatoes and made passata, gooseberries for chutney, plums for jam, lemons to add to marrow and rhubarb marmalade.

Things were going well but then, just as the freezer looked clear enough to defrost, the allotment went into 'glut' mode. A few days of rain, followed by a few days holiday, meant it wasn't checked for a while, and the courgettes had grown into marrows. The greenhouse tomatoes started to ripen; the outdoor ones developed blight and had to be cleared.

Blackberries and autumn raspberries were ready to pick; as were the runner and French beans. Rhubarb decided to grow again, and apples started to fall from the trees. It's time to lift onions and potatoes, and possibly think about early pumpkins.

If only allotment produce would come along at a reasonable rate, as and when needed!




It's been time for a lot of inventive recipes - fruit with every breakfast, lazy trifle made from cold custard, blackberries, and yogurt, and cranachan made with yogurt (not cream).

And with this huge pile of marrows/courgettes to use more invention was called for. Marrow seems like an odd ingredient for jam but actually works well. Combined with an equal weight of rhubarb, and lots of frozen lemon skins it makes a tasty preserve somewhere between a marmalade and a jam.








In more traditional ways of using it we've had it roasted in lemon,  added to curry, pasta sauce, omelettes, goulash, and, last and definitely worst, stuffed. I still want to try a battered, fried recipe I was given, and the courgettes keep cropping so I may get the chance.

Beans, tomatoes (even the green ones) and surplus fruit have ended up in the freezer - it's completely full again but at least it's with this year's fruit and veg. Onions are hanging from the garage ceiling; potatoes are in bags in the cupboard under the stairs. People keep talking about stocking up for Brexit - I don't need to :)

Bread and butter pickle - with courgettes

 Last year I tried making bread and butter pickle for the first time - the proper way with cucumber. Now though I'm faced with a glut of courgettes. I don't really like to freeze them as no matter what I do with them afterwards they turn out soggy and tasteless, so.... thinking they're not very different to cucumbers I'm trying to pickle them in the same way.

Basically, slice them and an onion.




Sprinkle with salt and leave for an hour

Pour over the hot vinegar with sugar and turmeric added ......and wait a few days before tasting.

Now just crossing my fingers and hoping the experiment's worked!

Using up some of the glut

It's been another good week at the allotment -which means far too many cucumbers again.

Time to get out the preserving pan!

First my standard cucumber preserve - jam, or marmalade, maybe, as it's heavily flavoured

with lemon bits and pieces hoarded in the freezer after using the juice or zest (I hate to throw anything away!)

 

That didn't use up enough of the cucumbers though, so I decided to try something new, that would also help me use up other bits and pieces from the allotment - piccalilli.

This didn't go according to plan though...

I got all the veg prepared and ready; small onions not big enough for anything else, runner beans (I already seem to have a freezer-full), cucumber of course, some surplus courgette and a tiny cauliflower barely bigger than a piece of sprouting broccoli.



 All the veg has to soak in brine for 24 hours.....so while it did that, I popped to the shop to get some turmeric, a necessary ingredient for the next bit.




When the time was up, I drained the veg and started making the mustardy sauce - at which point I discovered there wasn't enough mustard powder in the cupboard!!!
Off to the shop again, only to find they didn't sell mustard powder - all I could buy was the ready-made paste. To hopefully get round this, I made the sauce with the full amount of turmeric and about half the mustard, and when it was cooked added a couple of teaspoons of the mustard paste. I've no idea whether this will work, only tasting will tell.

For now, it looks ok though there does seem to be a lot of sauce to comparatively few vegetables. Now it needs to stand for three weeks before the great taste test.....

Post-holiday glut

I've only been away for a few days, but things carried on growing and growing for those few days so I found a surplus of tomatoes and cucumbers waiting for me.


I often deal with tomatoes by just throwing them in the freezer and hoping I find time to do something with them later, but as the freezer is full to over-flowing, I decided to plunge straight in and make my 'lazy passata'. It's lazy because I don't bother to sieve it all - just skin the tomatoes, chop them up and cook them before bottling. It takes a lot less time!

Cucumbers are trickier to deal with - no popping them in the freezer!
As I already have a stock-pile of frozen lemon pieces (left from recipes which require only juice or zest), I went for my unusual cucumber and lemon jam/marmalade. Basically the cucumbers stretch the lemons and add bulk to the preserve so it's a good way to use them.

After boiling, an over-night soak is best to soften up the lemon peel - and this time, due to other things happening, it ended up with 2 nights soaking!








The finished preserve tastes rather sharp and marmalade-like, and looks a far better colour than in this pic.

Courgette chutney

 I've got a surplus of courgettes and cucumbers at the moment so decided to adapt my favourite chutney recipe to make use of 3 lbs of them. 

 At first, it didn't look too appealing as the courgette didn't mash down in the way pumpkin does..

but with the addition of demerara sugar, it turned into a proper gungy brown chutney colour.

From tasting the spillages while bottling, it doesn't taste the same - the courgettes have remained chunkier and a the moment their taste is distinctive through the vinegar and spices. With time though, this should mellow. Fingers crossed!

Strawberries with everything...

I've got an awkward amount of strawberries ripening at the moment - too many to just scoff down with yogurt, too few for jam - and not enough sunshine to try last year's air-drying idea

So, I'm looking for different ways to eat them up..


My favourite accompanying yogurt is peach and apricot - somehow it brings the taste of the strawberries out better than plain or strawberry-flavoured. Blueberry can be good too but sometimes it's a little overwhelming.





Breakfast - nothing improves my morning cornflakes like strawberries!





..well, unless there's a couple of mini croissants and some leftover whipped cream going spare....

But this is where most of my strawberries are going - into salads.  At first I added feta cheese - not too heavy or spicy - but I've since discovered they go surprisingly well with chorizo.

I thought this seemed a strange idea when I first encountered it but having tried them in a variety of combinations it works well. Blander salad leaves like spinach go better than hotter mustard-y ones, though a bit of rocket or basil is good.

Mangetout peas are a better mix than sharp allotment radishes,and I've decided onion should definitely be avoided.

Anyone got any more ideas to share?