Garibaldi biscuits

Apropos not much, here’s a recipe for Garibaldi Biscuits

Not an enchilada…

The plot’s looking a bit sad. I’m getting better at growing stuff, but the planning is awry as I’ve now only got garlic and beans left to harvest. When I look at the neighbours’ plots I see acres of potatoes, flowers and beans. Never mind; I’ve got ideas for the Autumn and beyond, and I’ve learned a lot from this year.

K wandered by on Sunday and gave me a bag of (stringless) runner beans. Fantastic flavour! On Sunday I made a great veggie stew and today I finished the beans off in a tortilla. I thought I was making an enchilada, but it turns out that enchilada is the past participle of enchilar – to add chile and mine didn’t have chile in. As an aside, I think that’s a cracking verb!

Veggie entomatada – no claims to authenticity

• hard vegetables: sweet potato, beetroot, half an onion, carrot.
• grated ginger
• soft vegetables: mushrooms, leek, small tomatoes (halved), runner beans.
• left-over haricot beans

Make a tomato sauce: sauté the other half an onion, add garlic and then sieved tomato. Set to one side.

In a heavy pan with a lid, sauté the hard vegetables and then put the lid on to let the veggies steam for a few minutes. Add the ginger and stir for a minute. Then add the soft vegetables and haricots, sauté and steam until all the veggies are tender. The veggies weren’t too wet.

Turn the oven on medium. Put the veggies into tortillas (from the inimitable Lupe Pintos), roll them up and into an ovenproof dish. Tomato sauce, cheese and then into the oven for a quarter hour.

Elderflower cordial update

The cordial recipe made 2 stoppered bottles and a half-full irn bru bottle. It’s a bit sweeter than I prefer and doesn’t have the full-on heady aroma, but it’s palatable and tastes of elderflowers. A success!

Summer pudding was as disappointing as the weather. Thick bread doesn’t work, there wasn’t enough juice, and there were too many strawberries relative to the other fruits. I also left it in the fridge too long and the outer layer of bread got a bit hard.

It’s not too late for elderflowers

The peak of the elderflower season’s gone but there are still a few newly-opened infloresences around, on lower branches or in sheltered spots. This year I vowed to make elderflower cordial and today is the day…

today's haul of elderflowers - about 25 heads

The first step in The River Cottage Cookbook recipe is to steep the flowers + zest of 2 lemons in just-boiled water. The recipe also calls for orange zest but I couldn’t find an unwaxed one in the supermarket.

elderflower infloresences barely covered in just-boiled water

Strain (1100 ml liquid), add sugar (775g) and lemon juice (125ml), bring to a gentle simmer, skim, leave to cool, strain again and bottle.

It’s gently cooling at the moment, and I’ll bottle it up before bed. Apparently she who knits’ mother is impressed that I’m making cordial.

Other produce today includes a few small turnips, two beetroot, a box of mixed lettuce and enough fruit (strawberries, blackcurrants and redcurrants) to make two summer puddings. Tomorrow, when the daughter is asleep for her afternoon nap, I’ll break them out for me and she who knits.

lettuce and summer fruit

Two recipes

No real reason for posting except that I’ve cooked these tasty dishes in the last couple of days. The first recipe could be made with things grown on the plot; the second couldn’t.

Patate e Carciofi (potatoes and artichoke hearts)

Ingredients: Potatoes; jar of artichoke hearts; an onion; clove garlic; oil for cooking

Cube potatoes into 2cm chunks and parboil.

When they’re nearly finished parboiling, chop the onion into small pieces and sauté. Turn the heat up and add the parboiled potatoes. Chop the artichoke and garlic roughly and, when the potatoes are showing some colour, add them to the pan. Allow the artichokes to heat through and serve.

Nuala and I had this dish in Rome, just after coming out of the Vatican Museum. We’d left the daughter with her grandparents and headed off for an afternoon together. When we came out of the Vatican we went to catch a bus but got sidetracked by some food and a coffee in a lovely wee café down a side street.

I know this should be the place for putting up some pictures of sumptuous Vatican art, but instead here’s a picture of a wall by the café.

quite a lot of vegetation for masonry

Rosemary flatbread

First time I’ve made bread…

1 and 3/4 cups flour (I used 1 cup bread flour, .75 plain)
1 tbs chopped rosemary
1 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup water
1/3 cup olive oil + more for brushing
flaky sea salt

1. Preheat oven to 230C and put a heavy baking tray in there.

2. Stir together the flour, rosemary, baking powder and salt.

3. Make a well in the centre, add water and oil, stirring into the flour with a wooden spoon until a dough forms.

4. Knead dough on a surface 4 or 5 times. Divid dough into 3 pieces and roll out 1 piece to 10 inch diameter. This is tricky when you have about 12 inches of counter space in the kitchen, but I like a challenge. Keep the other pieces under clingfilm.

5. Put a piece of baking parchment on the tray, lightly brush the top with oil and sprinkle with sea salt. Cook for 8-10 minutes, then repeat for the other two pieces and use new baking parchment each time.

Eaten with humous and then a big bowl of minestrone soup…

Good news and good food

Received word from the RBGE that I’ve passed the Certificate of Practical Horticulture with merit. Not only that, but because that was the first year the course was run and there were some teething problems with the course handbook etc., all the students have been offered a free place on a one-day course next year.

The course was enjoyable, the assessment day was fun and I’ve got something to show from it. However I won’t be able to make the award ceremony since I’m at Typography: thinking with type on that day.

This evening I headed to the allotment via Waitrose. I wanted to make Summer Pudding, so wanted to get some cream. The thought of the ride from Shandon to Morningside, through Craiglockhart Woods and to the allotment was also enticing. At the plot I picked redcurrants, raspberries, strawberries and blackcurrants and then headed home, getting there just before the rain came on.

Summer Pudding adapted from Nigel Slater’s Appetite

Put the fruits in a pan with enough water to cover them, then boil for a couple of minutes. This will burst the skin and release the juice. Into a suitable receptacle (I used a glass tumbler), layer sliced white bread and the fruit mixture, keeping the bread very moist. Then pop it in the fridge for an hour, turn out and serve with goat cream.

tasty Summer Pudding with cream

In other news: I’ve signed up for the four week long beginners course in Italian at IALS starting at the end of this month.

Feeding guests from the allotment

Sat 14: a couple of hours, weeding and picking fruit. Inordinately happy to be picking fruit form the plot, although I’m learning how to do things for next year. Fed houseguests this weekend with a Scottish dessert consisting of raspberries and blackcurrants from the allotment, strawberries from Fife and ice cream from Orkney.

Tried to get rid of some slugs that were hanging round the courgettes. Still a bit squeamish about killing them, although I have a new-found respect as they’re tough to drown, with one particularly big one which kept climbing out of the plastic water container. I eventually chucked them in the river.

And there’s one French bean which is holding out. A small tendril is curling up the bamboo, so there may be a few beans this year.

Urticaceae!

Sounds like a sneeze but tastes good: I have been cooking cream of nettle and potato soup. It’s extreme cooking where one has to clear up fastidiously, and I’m minded not to go barefoot when cooking with nettles again. Wore gardening gloves at the allotment to put them into a bag; wore marigolds in the kitchen when preparing them.

Chopped the potatoes into large chunks and started to sautée them in olive oil; chopped garlic and caraway seeds and put to one side. On opening the bag of nettles there was a fresh smell, like cut grass, with an astringent immediacy. Handled them very carefully, removed the leaves from the stalks which were quite tough (it is quite late in the year for culinary nettles), and washed them. Then chopped handfuls into strips. Once all were cut, I popped the garlic and seeds into the pan, stirred for a few seconds and threw in the nettles. Cleaned up carefully, and took the gloves off.

Sautéed them for a few minutes. Was very reminiscent of spinach, and looks like a dahl sag with them would work OK. Then poured in stock and left to simmer until the potatoes softened. Liquidised and then poured in the cream.

Perhaps I put too many caraway seeds in because I could only notice a faint vegetable taste when I started eating the soup. After some spoonfuls I could pick up an aftertaste, metallic and minty, but not much. Will see how I get on.

The Scot’s Herbal by Tess Darwin (ISBN 1873644604) has a couple of pages on nettles. Apparently they have laxative and diuretic properties so I’d better make this second bowl my last. They’re certainly fibrous but no more so than kale. She notes that they’re usually picked when 15-25cm high, and that repeated cutting keeps the plants in a juvenile state for much of the summer. She recounts an 1898 recipe from Islay to take a large apronful of nettles, two handfuls of meal, two gallons of water and a piece of salt beef or braxty.

A helping hand is very welcome

I’m almost delirious with tiredness after spending the best part of today down the allotment. Add a vodka and Barr’s cola and I’m in serious danger of wobbling …