I guess I could be self-sufficient in vegetables all year round but I don't think I could stand the lack of variety at this time of year. I do still take pride in putting homegrown veg on the table but I'm glad I'm not limited to just leeks, cabbage and parsnips every night. Still, with spring now definitely in the air it is a bit of a race to eat up the winter vegetables before they start growing again and become inedible.
You know, there are certain food combinations that are so perfect they just trip off the tongue - like apple and blackberry, or strawberries and cream. One such combination has got to be leek and potato. Leek and potato soup is my husband's favourite but last Saturday, with a little piece of puff pastry left in the fridge, I fancied making a leek and potato pastie for my lunch. So I nipped out to the allotment shortly after breakfast and harvested 4 or so leeks then made the pastie in time for lunch. Yummy!
After lunch Steve decided to go to the allotment to dig over a few beds ready for planting. I asked him whether he could dig up some parsnips whilst he was there. He returned shortly before dinner time. "Did you remember the parsnips?" I asked. "Parsnips," he said, "I thought you wanted leeks." He proudly held up a fine bunch of leeks. Oh well, I only wanted the parsnips from Sunday's dinner so there was still time. Instead I decided we could eat the leeks for dinner and what could be more perfect than leek and potato... er... potato? A leek filling in a twice baked potato.
Twice baked leek and potato (per serving)
1 baking sized potato
A little oil
A pinch of salt
Half a medium leek
Grated Cheddar
Preheat oven to 200 °C, gas 6. Prick the skin of the potato then rub with a little oil and some salt. Place the potato directly on the oven shelf and bake for 1 hour. Chop the leek into short lengths then cut each length into quarters. Fry the leek in a little oil until soft. Take the potato out of the oven and cut it in half. Carefully scoop out the flesh of the potato, leaving the skins intact, and place it in a bowl. Add the leek and some grated cheese and mix well. Then return the mixture into the skins of the potato and put the potato back in the oven for 10 minutes. Serve hot.
So on Sunday when Steve set off for the allotment again I reminded him it was parsnips and not leeks that I needed to go with the roast dinner. He remembered this time but unfortunately he got himself so engrossed in the drastic pruning of overhanging hedgerow that he didn't return home until half an hour before the roast was due out of the oven. So instead of roast parsnips we had boiled leek!
Later in the week I decided use the parsnips to make some potato and parsnip rostis. These were made simply by grating together some potato and parsnip, adding seasoning and a bit of fresh thyme then frying for 10 or so minutes on each side until brown.
We continued to use up the leeks all week by adding them to stir fries and stuffed mushrooms. Then this morning I used up the last of Steve's leeks in a delicious leek and bacon quiche.
Leek and Bacon Quiche
4 oz butter
4 oz plain flour
4 oz wholemeal flour
1 leek
2 rashers smoked bacon
3 eggs
300 ml single cream
Grated Cheddar cheese
Freshly ground black pepper
Preheat oven to 190 °C, gas 5 and grease a 20cm circular tin. Put the butter in a bowl and sift over the flour. Use finger tips to rub the flour and butter together until it has the consistency of breadcrumbs. Use a little cold water to bind it into a pastry. Roll out the pastry and line the tin with it. Blind bake the pastry for 15 minutes. In the meantime, finely chop the leek and bacon and fry together until just cooked. Once cooked, put the leek and bacon into the bottom of the pastry case. Beat together the eggs and the cream and pour it over the leek and bacon. Grate over some cheese and grind on some black pepper. Bake for 30-40 minutes until the filling is set. Eat hot or cold.
Steve needs to go out to the allotment tomorrow to plant the new asparagus crowns that arrived in the post yesterday. Maybe whilst he's there he could harvest a leek or two!
Showing posts with label Parsnips. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Parsnips. Show all posts
Saturday, 13 March 2010
Saturday, 18 April 2009
Sowing root crops
After a gloomy morning doing housework, the sun came out and out we went to the allotment. I started by sowing some carrot seeds. We, like so many others, suffer to some degree with carrot root fly damage. I was reading about ways to tackle the problem in the April edition of the Kitchen Garden magazine but none of the answers seemed satisfactory. It suggested fine netting completely covering the crop as one solution but this brings other problems such as inability to weed or deal with other pests. And if you miss-time the netting then you could trap the maggots inside, free to do their damage without attack from their predators. Last year I tried sowing my carrots with a row of onions for every row of carrots. It mentioned such companion planting in the article but suggest that far more onions were needed to make it work. Well, socks to that, I'm sure it helped.
Anyway, this year I have decided to repeat the carrot/onion planting. It certainly didn't do any harm last year and I want to grow both anyway. I've also decided to sow flowers around the outer border of the bed too. This may add to the confusion of perfumes but mainly it is because I seem to have accumulated a load of flower seed packets and it would be nice to have some flowers somewhere on the allotment for the pollinators.
Last year I tried sowing some parsnip seeds in 4 of the carrot rows. Parsnips are notoriously temperamental germinators so if you sow them on their own, firstly you struggle to remember where the row is whilst the parsnips get round to germinating, and, secondly, the germination is usually patchy and you end up wasting a row for 3 or 4 plants. The idea behind sowing with the carrots is that you know where the row is because the carrots germinate fairly quickly, secondly you don't waste a row because the carrots are there to fill the spaces, and thirdly, once you have harvested all your carrots you have a lovely thinned row of parsnips for the winter. Anyway, this worked so well last year that I have decided to sow parsnips in every carrot row this year. That could result in a lot of parsnips but they are a brilliant winter crop and I love roasted parsnips with a roast dinner.
Carrot seeds are very fine and need a fine "tilth" to germinate well. To help us achieve this in our heavy clay, Steve rotavated the bed for me earlier in the week. Having pulled out "drills" with my hoe, I then sprinkled in potting compost and sharp sand to give a lovely surface for the seeds. If the soil had been dry I would have watered the bottom of each drill at this point but having had 10cm of rain (according to my daughter's rain gauge) in the last two day watering wasn't needed.
Finally it was time to sow the carrot seeds - 8 different varieties - I like variety! This included some purple and some red carrots because novelties like this amuse my girls as much as they do me. There were also the old reliables such as Early Nantes, James Intermediate and Autumn King, as well as a variety I'd not tried before and have now forgotten the name of.
I often sow beetroot seeds in the same bed as the carrots but with room taken up with the flower seeds and onion sets I'd run out of space and I had to sow the beetroot elsewhere. We love beetroot and it stands well until it gets very frosted. The year before last I really struggled to get beetroot to germinate and we had very little to harvest so last year I decided to see what would happen if I sowed some in modules and planted them out as plug plants. They took ages to germinate but it was useful to plant them out well spaced rather than having some bunched together and then large gaps elsewhere as you get from sowing seeds. This year I didn't get round to sowing them in trays so I needed to sow direct. I read recently that soaking the seed for half an hour before hand can aid germination so I have tried this. We'll have to see what happens.
In the same bed as the beetroot I also sowed a couple of rows of spring onions, some rocket, spinach and two types of lettuce. I've also left some space so I can successionally sow more salad leaves over the next few weeks to help avoid a glut at one time and then nothing.
Having done all that I still had quite a lot of onion sets left and it really is getting a bit late to get these in so I needed to get on with it. A quick survey of the plot told me that the best place to plant these would in the bed next to the carrots. On the other side of the carrots I had already planted shallots and a few red onion sets so if I put onions on the other side the carrots would be flanked with onion as well as interplanted with them, surely some help against carrot root fly! Does that sound like a lot of onions? Well, they store well and we use them all the time but they are also an essential chutney ingredient.
The only problem with my assessment was that the bed on the other side of the carrots still had the remains of some brassica plants in as well as a good scattering of weeds. Brassicas, you should know, like a firm soil and I didn't much fancy having to dig over firm soil. Still, it needed doing and as it happened the soil was remarkably soft thanks to the recent rain. So it didn't take long to dig over and then I filled it up with rows and rows of brown and red onion sets.
Time to stand back and admire my handwork I'd say! Things are beginning to take shape!
Anyway, this year I have decided to repeat the carrot/onion planting. It certainly didn't do any harm last year and I want to grow both anyway. I've also decided to sow flowers around the outer border of the bed too. This may add to the confusion of perfumes but mainly it is because I seem to have accumulated a load of flower seed packets and it would be nice to have some flowers somewhere on the allotment for the pollinators.
Last year I tried sowing some parsnip seeds in 4 of the carrot rows. Parsnips are notoriously temperamental germinators so if you sow them on their own, firstly you struggle to remember where the row is whilst the parsnips get round to germinating, and, secondly, the germination is usually patchy and you end up wasting a row for 3 or 4 plants. The idea behind sowing with the carrots is that you know where the row is because the carrots germinate fairly quickly, secondly you don't waste a row because the carrots are there to fill the spaces, and thirdly, once you have harvested all your carrots you have a lovely thinned row of parsnips for the winter. Anyway, this worked so well last year that I have decided to sow parsnips in every carrot row this year. That could result in a lot of parsnips but they are a brilliant winter crop and I love roasted parsnips with a roast dinner.
Carrot seeds are very fine and need a fine "tilth" to germinate well. To help us achieve this in our heavy clay, Steve rotavated the bed for me earlier in the week. Having pulled out "drills" with my hoe, I then sprinkled in potting compost and sharp sand to give a lovely surface for the seeds. If the soil had been dry I would have watered the bottom of each drill at this point but having had 10cm of rain (according to my daughter's rain gauge) in the last two day watering wasn't needed.
Finally it was time to sow the carrot seeds - 8 different varieties - I like variety! This included some purple and some red carrots because novelties like this amuse my girls as much as they do me. There were also the old reliables such as Early Nantes, James Intermediate and Autumn King, as well as a variety I'd not tried before and have now forgotten the name of.
I often sow beetroot seeds in the same bed as the carrots but with room taken up with the flower seeds and onion sets I'd run out of space and I had to sow the beetroot elsewhere. We love beetroot and it stands well until it gets very frosted. The year before last I really struggled to get beetroot to germinate and we had very little to harvest so last year I decided to see what would happen if I sowed some in modules and planted them out as plug plants. They took ages to germinate but it was useful to plant them out well spaced rather than having some bunched together and then large gaps elsewhere as you get from sowing seeds. This year I didn't get round to sowing them in trays so I needed to sow direct. I read recently that soaking the seed for half an hour before hand can aid germination so I have tried this. We'll have to see what happens.
In the same bed as the beetroot I also sowed a couple of rows of spring onions, some rocket, spinach and two types of lettuce. I've also left some space so I can successionally sow more salad leaves over the next few weeks to help avoid a glut at one time and then nothing.
Having done all that I still had quite a lot of onion sets left and it really is getting a bit late to get these in so I needed to get on with it. A quick survey of the plot told me that the best place to plant these would in the bed next to the carrots. On the other side of the carrots I had already planted shallots and a few red onion sets so if I put onions on the other side the carrots would be flanked with onion as well as interplanted with them, surely some help against carrot root fly! Does that sound like a lot of onions? Well, they store well and we use them all the time but they are also an essential chutney ingredient.
The only problem with my assessment was that the bed on the other side of the carrots still had the remains of some brassica plants in as well as a good scattering of weeds. Brassicas, you should know, like a firm soil and I didn't much fancy having to dig over firm soil. Still, it needed doing and as it happened the soil was remarkably soft thanks to the recent rain. So it didn't take long to dig over and then I filled it up with rows and rows of brown and red onion sets.
Time to stand back and admire my handwork I'd say! Things are beginning to take shape!
Sunday, 25 January 2009
Excavating parsnips
Parsnips are fairly tricky to grow. The hardest part is getting them to germinate. Firstly, you need very fresh seeds (not left over seeds from last year) but even then germinating is likely to be patchy at best. Still, I put quite a lot of effort into getting my parsnips and carrots to germinate last spring time and I was rewarded with a fair crop of both.
Apparently, some of the starch in parsnips turns to sugar if the roots get frosted and this improves the flavour so I always wait until December before I start harvesting them. What I wasn't expecting was parsnips 18 inches long! And of course you can't tell how long they are when you start digging them out. You just dig and pull and dig and pull some more and wonder why the root isn't coming out. And the clay soil is troublesome. It sticks to everything, the root, the spade/fork, and my boots. Everytime I lift my foot I have to carry twice my boots weight in soil too. And all the time I try desperately not to damage the parsnip.
After a while the whole thing becomes like an archaeological dig, painstakingly removing the soil bit by bit and gradually excavating a trench around the precious object. Every now and then I stop and grab the thing with two gloved hands and heave, my hands slipping on the clay. It reminds me of the Enormous Turnip except there are no farm animals available to lend a hand and the mice are hibernating!
Still, eventually I got the thing out, although the hole I left behind looks like I used dynamite to do it! At home, I scrubbed it, peeled it and cut it into large chunks then par boiled it with some potatoes. Then both the potatoes and the parsnips were drained and tipped into preheated duck fat and roasted for an hour. Yummy and I can definitely taste the sugars.
I didn't mean to grow 18 inch parsnips - they are certainly difficult to get out of sticky clay soil. I mentioned this to some fellow kitchen gardeners the other day and asked the best way to get them out of the ground. They obviously didn't know the answer to this because instead they gave me advice on how to avoid the problem next year. They suggested preparing the ground with lots of sand so that they are easier to pull out. But I figure that this would just encourage the roots to grow even longer!
Apparently, some of the starch in parsnips turns to sugar if the roots get frosted and this improves the flavour so I always wait until December before I start harvesting them. What I wasn't expecting was parsnips 18 inches long! And of course you can't tell how long they are when you start digging them out. You just dig and pull and dig and pull some more and wonder why the root isn't coming out. And the clay soil is troublesome. It sticks to everything, the root, the spade/fork, and my boots. Everytime I lift my foot I have to carry twice my boots weight in soil too. And all the time I try desperately not to damage the parsnip.
After a while the whole thing becomes like an archaeological dig, painstakingly removing the soil bit by bit and gradually excavating a trench around the precious object. Every now and then I stop and grab the thing with two gloved hands and heave, my hands slipping on the clay. It reminds me of the Enormous Turnip except there are no farm animals available to lend a hand and the mice are hibernating!
Still, eventually I got the thing out, although the hole I left behind looks like I used dynamite to do it! At home, I scrubbed it, peeled it and cut it into large chunks then par boiled it with some potatoes. Then both the potatoes and the parsnips were drained and tipped into preheated duck fat and roasted for an hour. Yummy and I can definitely taste the sugars.
I didn't mean to grow 18 inch parsnips - they are certainly difficult to get out of sticky clay soil. I mentioned this to some fellow kitchen gardeners the other day and asked the best way to get them out of the ground. They obviously didn't know the answer to this because instead they gave me advice on how to avoid the problem next year. They suggested preparing the ground with lots of sand so that they are easier to pull out. But I figure that this would just encourage the roots to grow even longer!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
