A picking perspective

When you grow your own food there is never anything tastier than the first picking of a particular crop... the first strawberry in June, the freshest first pea, the tastiest new potato. This seems to be a combination between the build up of anticipation as we watch a crop mature, the fact that we have not tasted a homegrown version of it for almost a year and some physical reality that the first is always the freshest and juiciest of the bunch.

This is certainly the case with peas and mangetout where the first ones are truly delicious and the last ones are... well... full of fibre and definitely good for you... but somewhat lacking on the enjoyment front! Then there are other crops, such as courgettes, where the first ones, fried simply with a bit of garlic and ginger are delicious but three months later we are so sick of the sight of courgettes we quite frankly need a nine month break before tasting another one.

There is another similar phenomenon that comes with the quantity of a crop that is available. The first few raspberries are picked with care and each one enjoyed. But a few weeks later when you have been picking punnets of raspberries once every three days you find that if you accidentally drop one whilst picking you don't even bother to bend down to pick it up. Not so the few blueberries from my blueberry bush where each one was carefully placed in a bag and retrieved when dropped if necessary.

We have just been away on holiday for three weeks and we took with us some freshly picked peas and mangetout, a few French beans and 4 courgettes. These ran out during the first week away so then we had to buy vegetables. On our return, whilst my parents and Sue had become sick of the sight of courgettes and fairly fed up with French beans, we were back to first picking perspective and once again enjoying our crops as if they were the first of the year. My mum was telling me about all the raspberries they had picked whilst we were away and how many ways they had been eating them. "Oh, do you like raspberries?" asked Steve. "Used to," my dad replied, which sums it up really!

Gardening Club Party

After another successful year of running a gardening club at my daughters’ school, it was time to celebrate our successes by holding an end of year party. Once again I sent out an invitation to all 34 children who had done gardening club at some point during the year and of those about 22 were able to attend the party. The week before, my current gardeners came inside for the afternoon and we made strawberry ice-cream lollies and raspberry jellies with the fruit we had grown in the little school garden. They also sowed some cress onto cotton wool to make a quick catch crop for sandwiches, and printed garden designs onto paper party bags.

A few days before the party, I made vegetable samosas with our homegrown potatoes, shallots, broad beans and peas. And then some onion bhajis with our onions. This was something of a challenge as I don’t own a deep fat frier but I managed to do an oven baked version that turned out well, providing 12 bite sized bhajis, just perfect as a taster. Children are never big fans of onions so it was a challenge to find a way of making onions appeal to children. With the mild spices and no added chilli powder these morsels proved to be a tasty sweet and savoury snack that the child

ren enjoyed.

On the day of the party itself, I boiled some eggs and grated some cheese to go with the cress in sandwiches. I crushed some garlic, mixed it with butter and chopped parsley and spread it in between slices in two part baked baguettes to make garlic bread. We had grown some Yukon Gold, Rooster and Blue Danube potatoes in a stack of 3 old tyres. To preserve the beauty of the yellow, red and blue skins on the potatoes I simply washed them and sliced them into chunky wedges. They just needed a quick mix with some sunflower oil, salt and pepper before going into the oven for half an hour. The remaining potatoes (Rocket and Vales Emerret varieties) I boiled and served with melted butter. Finally, for anyone feeling unadventurous, I also brought along a pot of homemade raspberry jam.

So for half an hour, whilst I cooked and prepared the food with a couple of helpful parents, the children went outside with Sue and built up an appetite running around playing games in the garden. Then they came inside to tuck into their feast. I invited the headteacher down to join us and she too was impressed by the spread of food. “Isn’t it amazing what you were able to grow in the school garden,” she said as she tucked into a samosa.

“Isn’t it amazing what you can make with potatoes and onions,” I quipped back.

But let’s face it, if you are able to grow potatoes and onions you’ll never starve!

Vegetable Samosas (makes 32)

1 large potato

1 medium carrot

1 handful peas

6-8 broad bean pods

2 shallots

½ teaspoon mustard seeds

½ teaspoon ground cumin

½ teaspoon ground coriander

¼ teaspoon garam masala

Salt

250g pack filo pastry

Sunflower oil

Peel the potato and cut into small chunks. Peel the carrot and cut into small pieces. Boil the potatoes and carrots until soft. Remove broad beans from their pods then boil for about 10 minutes. Drain and cool then remove the outer skin from each bean. Peel and finely chop the shallot and fry until softened. Remove the shallots from the frying pan then add the mustard seeds and fry until they start to pop. In a bowl, combine the vegetables with the spices and salt to taste (add more spices if you prefer a stronger flavour). Preheat oven to 200°C, gas 6 and grease a large baking tray. Open the pack of filo pastry and keep it covered with Clingfilm and a tea towel to stop it drying out whilst you work.

To make a samosa, cut a sheet of filo pastry in half and brush it all over with some sunflower oil. Fold it into thirds along its longest length to make a long, thin rectangle. Place a spoonful of the filling at one end of the pastry strip then fold the end of the pastry diagonally over the filling to make a triangle shape. Then fold this over and over in a triangle shape until it reaches the other end of the pastry. Brush both sides of the parcel with sunflower oil and place on the baking tray. Cover with Clingfilm to stop it drying out whilst you make the other samosas. Cook the samosas for 15-20 minutes until lightly brown. Either serve immediately or store in an airtight container until needed then reheat for 10 minutes at 200°C, gas 6 to crisp up the pastry before serving.

Onion Bhaji-Bites (makes 12)

5 oz onions

Sunflower oil

¼ teaspoon turmeric

¼ teaspoon ground coriander

Pinch ground cumin

Pinch ground ginger

2½ oz Gram flour

½ teaspoon salt

¼ teaspoon ground cumin

½ teaspoon ground coriander

1 generous teaspoon tomato puree

2 tablespoons water

Preheat oven to 180°C, gas 4 and grease a baking tray. Peel the onions and top and tail. Cut the onions in half then slice thinly. Fry the onions in a pan with a little oil until softened, stirring constantly. Add the turmeric, cumin, ginger and coriander to the onions and stir well before removing from the heat. Place the flour, salt, cumin and coriander in a bowl and mix well. Add the onions to the bowl and mix well until the onions are well coated. In a small cup, mix together the tomato puree and water. Add the tomato puree mixture to the flour and stir in to make a sticky mixture. Take teaspoonfuls of the mixture and form into small balls then place on the baking tray. Bake for 10-15 minutes until golden. Serve immediately or allow to cool. To reheat, place in an oven at 180°C,

A night to remember

As usual I’ve been extremely busy but now the summer holidays are here I have a bit of time to catch my breath and catch up on my blogs, although I'm currently away on the North coast of Scotland where the mobile broadband signal is flaky to say the least so blogging isn't too easy!

On 15th July Steve and I attended the gala awards evening for the 2010 Brit Writers Awards at the O2 in London. My Preserves book (available to buy from my ebay shop, by the way) had been nominated for the non-fiction category prize. Apparently there had been 21000 entries to the competition as a whole so reaching the top 6 in any category was a huge achievement. It is fantastic to have people read your work and to decide it is good enough to be seriously considered for such a prize. Amazing really that a recipe book can generate that much excitement in people who aren’t actively seeking a solution to a glut of fruit or veg.

As the evening was a black tie event we had to get ourselves poshed up for the event. This is not something that comes naturally to me. I’d rather be stood on the allotment in a t-shirt that has seen better days and a pair of trousers with a few holes in. It’s not to say that I neglect my appearance but with so many things to get done in a day, spending time on my hair and make-up is a low priority and my clothes need to be practical. So it was a rare treat to go to the hairdressers and have someone spend 45 minutes transforming my long red locks into a glamorous “updo”. And then slip into a long velvet dress and give myself a makeover. As an unexpected finishing touch my Business Buddy friends had buttonhole flowers delivered to our door for Steve and me.

At 3 o’clock, with my mum setting off to pick the girls up from school, Steve and I headed into London. It’s not often that I get treated like a VIP but I think I could get use to it should I ever become a famous writer! At 6 we sat down for our VIP meal and then around 8 the awards ceremony began.

I didn’t expect my humble recipe book to win, and that proved to be the case, but it was an honour to get that far and to treated like a VIP for the night. Like Cinderella, I was home and in bed for midnight but unlike Cinderella, the next morning there was the school run to do and plenty more potatoes to peel!

A tale of two cakes... and a trifle.

It was my youngest daughter's 6th birthday on Friday. Of course for her it was a very important and special day and rightly so, so it was only proper that I helped to make it a special day too despite the timing of it being smack bang in the middle of the busiest fortnight since the week before Christmas!

Her birthday also happened to share the day with the school's sports day and summer fete. From her point of view it just helped to make her day even more special. For me, it meant squeezing her birthday around fete preparations and spending a couple of hours standing in a field watching her throwing bean bags about. As well was the usual jobs of sticking tombola tickets on donated prizes, this year I was running a fruit kebab stall with the members of my after school cooking club. This required some last minute shopping for fresh fruit as well as organising equipment and so on. So from dropping the girls off in the morning I remained in school until 11.30. Then it was time to nip home, have lunch, slap on sun block and rush out again for the sports day at 1pm, followed directly by the fete at 3 until 5pm. So when exactly was I going to make her a birthday cake?

I had made arrangements to visit Gulliver's Land for her birthday treat on the Saturday, followed by dinner at my parents' house. For this I had planned a white chocolate raspberry ripple cheesecake as her "birthday cake". My daughter absolutely loves soft fruit so she welcomed the idea of this cheesecake with enthusiasm. With no cooking involved I managed to make the base and the raspberry sauce bits on Thursday in between other jobs and I just needed to assemble the thing at some point on Friday. So in my lunch break I blended the creamy bit together, swirled in the raspberry sauce and returned it to the fridge before dumping the messy bowls in the sink and dashing out again.

White Chocolate Raspberry Ripple Cheesecake

For the base

75g digestive biscuits, crushed

75g gingernut biscuits, crushed

75g butter, melted

For the topping

200g white chocolate

30g butter

1/4 vanilla pod

250g cream cheese

90ml whipping cream

100g raspberries

25g caster sugar

For the biscuit base combine the crushed biscuits and the melted butter in a bowl then press into the greased base of a 20cm circular tin or dish. Place in the refrigerator for at least half an hour to solidify. Next, melt the chocolate, butter and the seeds from the vanilla pod in a bowl over a pan of simmering water. Leave to cool. In another bowl, mix together the cream and cheese and beat until smooth. Once the chocolate mix is suitably cool add it to the cream mix and stir thoroughly. Spoon onto the biscuit base. Reserve a few raspberries and place the rest in a saucepan with a couple of tablespoons of water and the caster sugar. Heat gently, squashing the raspberries with a spoon to break them down. After about 5 minutes remove from the heat and strain through a sieve to remove the seeds. Spoon the raspberry sauce over the cheesecake then gently swirl it through the upper surface of the creamy layer with a skewer or spoon handle. Chill over night then place the reserved raspberries on top before serving.

It slowly dawned on me that it was her birthday that day and she didn't have a birthday cake to stick candles in whilst we sung happy birthday to her. So back at school as the final preparations were being made for the fete I scanned the pile of donated cakes for the cake stall and under a piece of foil I found a homemade sponge ring cake. Perfect! I threw a donation into the pot and stashed it away at the back of the fruit kebab stall.

Several long and hot hours later, tired and stuffed with ice-creams, sweets and hot dogs we returned home. I grabbed the remaining whipping cream left over from making the cheesecake and whipped it until it was thick. Then I spooned it into the centre of the sponge ring cake, topped it with a selection of our soft fruit and decorated the ring with sugar flowers and six candles. Wow! It felt like I'd performed some sort of miracle!

Needless to say that with bellies full of fete food there wasn't much appetite for the cake, although the candles and song were greatly appreciated. So today with half the sponge ring left over I used it as the base for a raspberry trifle. I don't know who made that delicious sponge cake but whoever it was I am hugely grateful to them!

Gradually getting there

On Monday we had homegrown mangetout with our dinner.

On Tuesday we had homegrown mangetout and broad beans with our dinner.

On Wednesday we had homegrown mangetout and broad beans with our dinner and strawberry cheesecake for afters.

On Thursday we had homegrown mangetout, broad beans and new potatoes with our dinner, strawberry cheesecake for afters and elderflower cordial to drink...

It sounds a bit like a game like "I packed my bag", doesn't it? But what a satisfying meal we had on Thursday night.

I started the week by picking a small sandwich bag of mangetout and a few strawberries. Well, it was my daughters who picked the strawberries. Off they went in their enthusiastic way with their plastic mushroom trays to put their harvests in whilst in the meantime I picked the mangetout. They appeared at my side a few minutes later and as I raised my eyes from the plants I caught sight of my eldest's tray, half full of lovely ripe strawberries already. "Oh, well done," I said, raising my eyes further to see how my youngest had done. Her tray was empty and her mouth stained red. "I was peckish," she said with a grin.

On returning home I asked my daughters what I should do with the strawberries that had made it as far as the kitchen. As it happened a few weeks ago there had been a deal in Tescos where you could buy a meal for 4 people consisting of a main course, side and dessert for £5 so I gave it a go, choosing a raspberry swirl cheesecake as the dessert. My eldest had always been suspicious of cheesecake (as I had been at her age) so had never felt adventurous enough to try it before but this one was so pretty she decided to brave it. And she loved it so when I asked about the strawberries she asked if I could make a strawberry swirl cheesecake. Well, I'm always up for a challenge but I needed to buy some ingredients first.

I went to the supermarket on Tuesday and along with the cheesecake ingredients I also went in search of some potatoes to tide us over until our own were ready to harvest. As I have said many times before I hate old potatoes and supermarket potatoes at this time of year are rubbish. They were harvested sometime in 2009 and stored for months so when you get them home they immediately start sprouting and when you fry them they are so full of sugar that they burn and taste sweet. So I spent several minutes in the vegetable department scrutinizing the potatoes looking for something that was harvested in 2010. Eventually I found a bag labelled "Organic new potatoes" so I went for those. At dinner time I chopped them into chips and fried them and then it became obvious that these potatoes weren't new at all. They browned and turned soggy and were completely horrible. Surely, they meant "boiling" rather than "new" potatoes. Isn't there some kind of rule about the use of such a word?

On Wednesday, as I tackled the strawberry swirl cheesecake challenge I sent Steve out to the allotment to investigate our own potatoes. He returned with a little pot of small potatoes just as I was removing the cheesecake from the oven. Success on two accounts.

Strawberry Swirl Cheesecake

Base:

6 oz crushed digestive biscuits

2 oz melted butter

Filling:

7 oz soft cheese

3 oz caster sugar

1 egg

4 fl oz whipping cream

4 oz strawberries

2 tablespoons icing sugar

1-2 tsp lemon juice

To make the base: Put the biscuits in a bag and crush them with the end of a rolling pin until finely crushed. Melt the butter and mix it with the biscuit crumbs. Press the mix firmly into the bottom of a flan dish and chill for about 1 hour.

To make the filling: Preheat oven to 180 °C, gas mark 4. Cream together the cheese and the sugar until light and fluffy. Add the egg and cream and whisk until thick. Place the strawberries in a blender with the icing sugar and lemon juice and blend until smooth then sieve to remove the seeds. Dollop the creamy filling onto the biscuit base and spread out evenly. Drop teaspoonfuls of the strawberry puree onto the cream mixture then use a chopstick or skewer to carefully swirl the strawberry puree through the cream mixture. Place in the oven and bake for 20 minutes then turn out the oven and leave it in the oven for another 10 minutes. After that open the oven door and leave the cheesecake inside to continue its slow cooling so that it doesn't crack. Serve chilled.

By Thursday my little bag of mangetout had all been eaten so I went back to the allotment to see if there were any more. I was amazed that in those few days everything had shot up several inches. The potato plants seemed to have put on about a foot of growth and the peas had not only grown upwards but had grown numerous pods. The mangetout plants had been busy too so once again I set to work picking them as my daughters went on their strawberry hunt. We came home with 1lb of mangetout, a bag of broad beans, a punnet to strawberries and a lettuce. A pound of mangetout!! In the shops that would have cost £4. And so to cook the tastiest meal of the year so far. Forget gravy and put away the ketchup... time to taste fresh vegetables at their absolute best.

Reasons to be cheerful!

One of the major drawbacks of having an allotment is the amount of time and effort it takes to do it well. I happen to love every minute of it and would probably dedicate more time to it if I could but life has other obligations. Some people say to me things like, "I don't know how you manage to do so much, where do you find the time." Well, come to my house and I'll tell you, or rather my house will tell you. I do try to keep things clean and tidy but when there is always so much going on it is difficult to keep on top of it. My kitchen, particularly, as the hub of everything I do, is always a little choatic. It would be unusual, for example, to find the draining board clear rather than stacked with the last batch of washing up or a few jars of cooling jam. And in the corner you may find a bowlful of something steeping for a few hours before being transformed into something amazing.

But every now and then I just have to stop, take a deep breath and do a proper tidy up. Not the sort of tidy up that happens the day before visitors arrive where things get put into cupboards out of sight and then forgotten. No, a proper, throwing things out, organising and rearranging sort of tidy up. It is six weeks until the beginning of the summer holidays and this is how long I have given myself to sort the house out. So at the weekend the allotment was given just 2 hours of attention on Saturday afternoon and the rest of the time was spent indoors sorting. Well, actually, I did take off about an hour on Sunday to make a batch of rhubarb and elderflower jam...

Rhubarb & Elder Flower Jam

Makes 1 jar

1lb (454g) rhubarb

1 oz (25g) elder flowers

1 lemon, rind and juice

1lb sugar

NB: Every pound of rhubarb requires 1 lb (454g) sugar, 1 lemon and 1 oz (25g) elder flowers.

Chop the rhubarb into inch long sections. Mix all the ingredients together in an non-metallic bowl, cover and leave to stand overnight. Decant the mixture into a preserving pan and bring to the boil. Simmer for a few minutes, stirring occasionally to dissolve the sugar, and cook until the rhubarb is pulpy. Bring to a vigorous boil until the setting point is reached. Ladle into warmed jars and seal immediately.

Whilst I was picking elderflowers for the jam I picked a few more and put them in my freezer. For the last two years I have wanted to make gooseberry and elderflower jam but have failed to manage it. The first year I somehow missed the elderflowers and the second year the elderflowers I froze for the job were still in my freezer when I stupidly accidentally turned my freezer off before going on holiday! This year I am determined.

Although there is a certain satisfaction to be gained from cleaning and tidying it generally makes me grumpy. I do like the smell of a freshly cleaned bathroom and there is something pleasing about a dust-free surface but I would rather be doing something else. So come Monday I was feeling a little cheesed off. By Tuesday afternoon I was desperate to get out into the garden again so after school I took the girls round to the allotment with me. There is something special about this time of year - the strawberry and mangetout season I call it. As the girls raced around looking for ripe strawberries I picked a bagful of mangetout. When the girls had had their fill there were still enough strawberries to bring a handful home to start a collection in the freezer. Eventually I'll gather enough in this way to make some jam. We had half the mangetout with dinner. I just love being able to cook a large portion of mangetout without forking out £1 on them and knowing that there will be the same amount ready to pick again in 3 days.

As always when we came in from the allotment I checked my answering phone for messages and was more than somewhat surprised to hear a message from a lady from the British Writers Awards 2010 telling me I needed to ring her urgently. That got my heart fluttering as I had only read the day before that this was to be the day they announced the finalists in the non-fiction category, to which I had entered 4 of my books. You can imagine my excitement when later that evening I read an email telling me that I was indeed one of the 6 finalists for the non-fiction award for my "Preserves" book. It was one of those emails you read over and over again just to check there hasn't been some sort of mistake. So now I have been invited to attend the gala black-tie awards evening at the O2 in London on 15th July! How exciting is that? But how pleasing too to have a book that is considered so good that it should be short-listed for such a thing!

So I started the week feeling a little grumpy and ended it feeling elated and to top it all the cherries are ripening too!

The Glory of Strawberries

I went away last weekend for the Bank holiday to visit relatives. It was only for 3 nights but I was anxious to get as many of the seedlings in pots out of their pots and into the ground as possible before going away. With a bit of time/task juggling I managed to get everything except the pumpkin and tomato plants in the ground before I left. It was, therefore, something of a relief that it rained on the Saturday and gave everything a good watering.

On return from the relatives on Monday afternoon I went round to check everything had survived their unsupervised transplantation. I was pleased to see that the brassicas had settled in well, that the sweetcorn was thickening up nicely and the cucumbers were still intact. I was surprised, however, that the asparagus had grown so much in the meantime. The stems were so long that I hated the idea of cutting them back so I decided it was time to let it grow on. Usually asparagus can be cut until mid June so it was a bit early and it did mean that for once we had no veg to harvest from the allotment. At times like that I'm glad there are shops to fall back on.

One of the things I really hate about buying fruit and vegetables from the shops is the way you can buy anything at anytime regardless of whether or not it is in season. Not only are there issues about food miles and so forth but it takes away some of the variety and excitement associated with eating with the seasons. I have a rule never to buy strawberries so that when they are in season and growing on the allotment they are really a very exciting treat. My girls, particularly, look forward to June when the first strawberries ripen.

Well, I broke my rule this week and bought 2 punnets of strawberries - they were at least new season British strawberries, so fairly close to being homegrown. The reason being I needed to trial a strawberry knickerbocker glory recipe before the World Cup starts next week. The recipe, "Knickbocker World Cup Glory" uses the classic combo of strawberries and cream to create a red and white recipe to represent the England flag. As I'll be making the recipe next week with six seven year olds in after school cooking club, I decided it would make sense on many levels to try it out when my youngest had her best friend over for the day. I'm pleased to say it worked well - the 3 girls had a great time making it and an even better time eating it!

Knickerbocker World Cup Glory

(Serves 2 to 4)

1 tin of strawberries in juice

1 sachet of gelatine

400g strawberries

125ml apple juice

80g icing sugar

50ml whipping cream

50ml Greek yoghurt

Glace cherries

Open the tin of strawberries and pour the contents into a pan. Bring to the boil and simmer gently for 2-3 minutes. In the meantime, put 2 tablespoons of water into a small pan and sprinkle the gelatine over then set aside. Drain the strawberries over a bowl then push through a sieve into the bowl. Gently heat the gelatine until melted then pour into the strawberry liquid. Leave to cool for a while then pour into a rectangular container and refrigerate for at least 2 hours until set.

Weigh out 200g of fresh strawberries and place in a blender with the apple juice and blend until smooth. Add the icing sugar and mix thoroughly until dissolved. Pour the strawberry sauce into a jug. Place the cream into a small bowl and whisk until it forms soft peaks then gently fold in the Greek yoghurt. Finally cut the jelly into small cubes. Now assemble the kickerbocker glory by layering together the remaining strawberries with the jelly, cream and strawberry sauce in tall glasses. Finish with a cherry on top.

When I did this I gave the girls plastic tumblers with an England flag on the side and then made mini England flags from pieces of paper and cocktail sticks. Great fun!

After walking my daughter's friend back home we stopped off at the local hedgerow and picked some lovely elderflower heads then later that afternoon I put them into a bowl to steep with the sugar water and citrus fruit. The kitchen was soon filled with the unmistakable summery smell of elderflower and lemons. The next evening I strained and bottled it and Steve had the first try, making it up with fizzy water and a good dash of gin. He declared it a definite hit!

Elderflower Cordial

2lb 4 oz (1kg) sugar

1½ pints (900ml) boiling water

1 tablespoon lemon juice

1 tablespoon lime juice

about 15 large elder flower heads

1 lemon, sliced

1 lime, sliced

Put the sugar in a non-metallic bowl with the boiling water and stir until the sugar has dissolved. Add the lemon and lime juices. Wash and flick dry the elder flower heads then snip off the flowers into the bowl. Add the sliced lemon and lime. Stir then cover the bowl with Clingfilm and leave to stand for 24 hours. Scald a jelly bag and drain the mixture through it into a clean bowl. Funnel into sterile bottles then refrigerate.

Dilute to taste.

This weekend when we went out to the allotment what did we find? The first 3 ripe strawberries! Despite their Knickerbocker Glories earlier in the week the girls were still very excited about this and pulled each strawberry in half to share before running off to see if they could find anymore... a fruitless search (ho ho)!

Whilst they amused themselves in their strawberry hunt I pulled the autumn planted onions out of the ground. They have all bolted now so they aren't going to be particularly great onions and the ground can be better used for something else. I had just tossed the last of last year's stored onions in the compost bin so these new onions will at least fill the gap before the main crop ones are ready.

During the hunt for strawberries, the girls discovered the radishes were ready to pick. Not quite the juicy delights of strawberries but a useful crop nonetheless. So there I was thinking it was going to be a second week without fresh food from the allotment but instead we had 3 new things plus elderflowers from the hedgerow. And with the mangetout, peas and broad beans all flowering their socks off hopefully it is just the beginning of many weeks of homegrown food to come.