Archive for the ‘Kitchen’ Category
Very fine cut marmalade
It seems to come around so quickly, but it’s that time of year again to make the marmalade. The event is triggered by a call from our neighbour to tell us that the greengrocer has got in this year’s consignment of Seville oranges. Spanish Seville oranges are the preferred oranges for marmalade making as they have more pectin in than sweet oranges, so they’re perfect for preserves. You can make marmalade out of normal oranges, but you would have to add a lot more pectin (from lemons) or accept runnier marmalade. Read the rest of this entry »
A bountiful harvest!
The first frost of the autumn has been forecast for this week, so to avoid a repeat of last year we decided to pick all the peppers now. We didn’t realise quite how many we had, as pepper plants have a surprising amount of foliage that disguise all the green peppers. The sweet peppers I’m cutting up and putting straight in the freezer, and they can be used directly in stews and soups. The chilli peppers we freeze whole and then cut them up as we need them. I’m also on the hunt for a recipe for a chilli sauce, as this would probably use up a large quantity at once. Read the rest of this entry »
Sloely releasing its flavour
The hedges are starting to fill with berries, and for the first time we’ve got some of our own sloe berries from the blackthorn bushes that we let grow up in the hedge. Sloes aren’t much good for anything except of course sloe gin, but that’s as good a use as any. It’s so easy to make it seems silly not to give it a go. The recipe I use is very straightforward, and as you are flavouring the gin with the sloes we just buy the cheapest gin we can find (Tesco Value gin in our case). Read the rest of this entry »
Pickling time
This year’s glut is in full swing, with French beans, peppers (sweet and chilli), tomatoes, cucumbers and courgettes (now marrows) currently overwhelming us. There’s only so much you can eat while they’re in season, so to preserve them over the winter I’m turning some of the produce into chutneys and pickles. I’m not a big fan of pickles, but Simon is, so for his sake I’ve decided to have a go at making piccalilli. Read the rest of this entry »
Something's not quite right!
The hedgerows are full of life at the moment, and this autumn is meant to be one of the best in many years for collecting fruit such as blackberries. We have quite a lot of hedges of our own, and we decided when we bought the place we would let the hedges revert back to their natural state. The local way seems to be to cut the hedges as early and as savagely as you can on an annual basis, and our hedges had been given this treatment every year. This is understandable, to some extent, when you’re using the fields for crops and pasture, and the hedges would start to encroach on the land, but it’s a shame you very rarely see a wild hedgerow around these parts. Landowners are only meant to cut their hedges between September and March, so that birds can nest without being disturbed, and the plants are dormant, although with spring starting earlier this seems a bit late in the year to me. Read the rest of this entry »
Just out of the oven!
The Cape Gooseberries are being so prolific that I wanted to try and use a large quantity at once. The only recipes I could find on the internet are for cape gooseberry jam, which I didn’t fancy making, so I came up with this instead to use up a few at a time. It’s a simple upside-down cake, and you could use whatever is your normal sponge cake recipe. Enjoy! Read the rest of this entry »
A "glut" of beans
One of the benefits (or maybe an issue for some) is that growing fruit & veg often brings gluts. August is a prime time for gluts, as the warm (and often wet) weather makes everything grow at a phenomenal rate. For those of us wanting to become more self-sufficient this is a bonus. Fruit and vegetables are of course eaten at their best when freshly picked, but to enjoy a bit of summer in the dark winter months, storing your produce is an important task in the gardening calendar. We bought a chest freezer last year in anticipation of a bountiful harvest (a must for anyone wanting to eat their own produce throughout the year) and we did enjoy a few runner beans in the winter last year. However, this year I’ve planted a lot more of everything, so that we can regularly dip into the freezer and hopefully fill some of the so-called “hungry-gap” with our own produce. Read the rest of this entry »
If you like carrot cake you’ll like this.. and it uses up courgettes. You can probably ice it with a cream cheese icing, but just as nice without. Enjoy! Read the rest of this entry »
This recipe came from a neighbour as a way of using up marrows (and cooking apples). It can be eaten straight after making, rather than waiting a few months to mature – although the longer its left the better the taste. It makes about 3lb of chutney. Enjoy! Read the rest of this entry »
…you’d be sure of a big surprise. 
After last year’s disaster with the courgettes (i.e. none), and now armed with the polytunnel I planted 3 plants inside the tunnel and 4 outside. The ones in the polytunnel we started eating in June and the ones outside a month later, and they haven’t stopped since. Unfortunately the outside plants had been forgotten, until a few days ago when I found the courgettes were now large marrows. Read the rest of this entry »