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A corner of the veg patch

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The far corner of the veg patch has got out of control this year. This is probably a result of me being distracted with the erection of the green house and not having been assiduous enough in digging out the Jerusalem artichokes again. They were a great success the first year I grew them and the family slurped back with relish the smooth silky soup I made with them for a Saturday lunch. The soup was almost as smooth and silky as the wind that assaulted the family for the rest of the weekend bubbling gently all the way through to Monday morning.
Ever since the family has been keen to avoid artichokes but once grown they are difficult to get rid of. It only needs a few small tubers left in the ground and they are back again the following year. Although I try to keep them back before you know it they are three or four feet out of the ground and it feels a shame to pull them out. So it will probably be a windy bottom for me in September.
The nasturtiums are less invidious and almost as hard to lose. There will always be a few of the seeds that will take hold the following spring and once they have taken hold they quickly spread. But their flowers are a welcome bonus and help to brighten up salads.


We had the first of the beetroot. One of the only things that seems to have done well this year. Four neat bulbs pulled from the ground, washed, boiled for 40 minutes, then peeled and sliced into rounds. I slathered them with Greek yogurt mixed with crushed garlic and olive oil.
The rain held of so I was able to light the barbecue. As it was warming up I blackened a red pepper and onion on the grill. Once they were soft I allowed them to cool and then peeled away the charred skins and mixed them with a tin of chick peas, more olive oil and a touch of vinegar. 

The quartered chicken was from the International Store, marinated in a mixture of crushed garlic and oregano, lemon juice, olive oil, salt and pepper for an hour or so before being put on the grill. 

The salad also came from the garden, mixed with cucumber, long thin green peppers, tomatoes and half a sliced toasted pitta. Dressed in olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Decorated with nasturtium andborage flowers.

Courgette flowers

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One of the small pleasures of have your own veg plot is being able to grow courgettes and more particularly having the benefit of their flowers. I remember almost 25 years ago seeing them for sale in an Italian Market but that is never going to happen here so you have to grow your own. It is a gardner’s treat to wander to the end of the garden, pick off a flower and eat it. There is something earthy about the flavour, the petals light but rough against the tongue and some bite and crunch in the stamen. Eaten like that there is no point in worrying about what small black insects might be lurking inside but once they are brought into the kitchen it is worth soaking them in a bowl of water for twenty minutes to allow any bugs to escape.
This lunchtime we had them with courgettes and pasta. 
A large pan of water was brought to the boil and a bag of penne pasta added. Whilst that cooked a good layer of olive oil was put in the frying pan and warmed so that when the sliced courgettes were added they started to sizzle. You need to be careful because you want the courgettes to cook but they need to retain some bite.

Whilst the courgettes are cooking squash and slice about 5 cloves of garlic and a small red chilli. Stir into the pan with a good seasoning of salt and pepper. Slice the bases of the flowers and some of the petals and add to the pan. This should all be ready in the 10 or so minutes it will take the pasta to cook.
Drain the pasta. Whilst it is draining squeeze the juice  from a lemon into the pan and bring to a bubble. Stir most of the courgette mixture into the pasta with some cubed soft goat’s cheese. Stir well. 

Pour all into a wide serving bowl and slather the top with the last of the courgettes. Decorate with the rest of the courgette flowers and some finely chopped green parsley. 

Next week I will have a go deep frying the flowers in a batter made with beaten egg whites.
Listening to Bobby Womack.

Hot beef salad and sumac

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For one

A good handful of mixed salad leaves from the veg plot washed clean of slugs, bugs and soil. A couple of quartered tomatoes, some peeled diced cucumber and one of the long thin green peppers they sell in the International Store, sliced.

Dry the salad and put in a large dry bowl. Sprinkle over a teaspoon of sumac and mix well. Add the rest of the salad ingredients.

Heat up a cast iron until hot, let it get even hotter and throw in a thin layer of oil. Add the steak – I used a piece of aged rump. Add a good grinding of black pepper and a pinch of sea salt. Cook on the high heat for a few minutes then turn over. When it is done as you like it take the steak out of the pan to rest.

Whilst it is doing that crisp up some pitta bread in a toaster. Make up a quick dressing with oil and thick balsamic vinegar and mix that through the salad. Pile on a plate.

Slice up the pitta and place over the salad. Cut the steak into good chunks and lay it generously over the pitta. Nab a swirl of red wine in the pan to pick up the last of the heat and the bits of flavour that are left and pour that over the steak. Sprinkle some more sumac on top and eat with the rest of the good red wine.

Reflections on good cheese

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Someone asked me today if these are all my own posts – even the one about being on a boat in the middle of Dunmannus Bay. I explained that they were but I understood the question. There is I suspect a variance in tone and subject – interjections of music, the food I might be cooking over an evening and reflections on cheese and time spent at the Cottage. Sadly those are things I would rather be thinking about in the middle of the night when the shortcomings of the day come stealing up to keep me awake.

So reflections on cheese.

I got excited on Monday when I found on the shelves of an Oxfam shop two goods books about cheese. The first was a Dorling Kindersley book on French Cheeses by the French sounding Kazuko Masui and Tomoko Yamada. I suspect it is not the definitive book on French cheese and you would look a bit of a dork clutching it around the food stalls of a French country market but it covers at least 200 different types of cheese and there is a good colour photograph of each of them, there is along list of contributors at the back from France and as an introduction into what is there (and a bit of loo reading) it works well.

The second book was The Great British Cheese Book by Patrick Rance. A substantially more serious proposition and one that is going to take longer to get to grips with. There are no photographs and the only pictures are hand drawn maps to show the locations of the producers and drawings of the country where some of the cheeses are made, the cows that produce the milk and the equipment used in the process. I put Patrick Rance into Google and quickly came up with this obituary from the Independent in 1999:-

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/obituary-major-patrick-rance-1118828.html

I had unknowingly managed to find a book by the father of modern British cheese. I have not yet got past the opening few pages and his start on the sad diminishing and slow revival of Cheddar cheese  and have in the meantime been waylaid by the other book that I bought that day being a PSmith novel by P G Wodehouse – another character wearing a monocle. But in the meantime I thought it worth sharing a couple of short extracts from the Preface.

If human perfection truly springs from the happy coincidence of duty with pleasure, then good cheese can make momentary paragons of us all. Cheese is economical and healthy in its concentration of rich natural nourishment, and has the quality, unique amongst palatable foodstuffs, of actually protecting the teeth. By playing endless variations on the theme of texture, flavour and aroma it also has the versatility to cater for almost every palate. These virtues, combined in no other single form of food, make the eating of cheese a dietetic duty of incomparable delight.

From the 1930s, I can recall a pub garden of Rupert Brooke’s Grantchester and my first pint of hoppy beer, set off to perfection by a tangy descendant of my childhood Cheddar. I relished it then as I have relished it ever since.  


The book is more than twenty years old and I have no doubt that large parts of it will be out of date and I suspect that if he was doing it now the long list of useful addresses at the end would be shorter. But flicking through it I can pick out the same tensions between the desire for an older, better product and world’s desire for something more convenient, easier and cheaper. A conversation that can be had with anyone trying to produce good honest food today.

The book has hardly been opened and smells of good tobacco. Reading the obituary I remembered that I had lunch a few times many years ago in the Wells Stores in Abingdon with Diane Bowdler and I never really knew it was there.  

Listening to a compilation called Country Funk.