My idea of growing stuff to eat involves bringing only luxurious things to the table. There’s nothing wrong with maincrop potatoes… it’s just that I’d rather buy them than grow them. Here are some things I make with my home-grown morsels.

A father’s day cake

The Hunk is one of those people who appreciatively wolfs down anything you put infront of him – it’s one of the (many) things I love about him. So when I placed the pelargonium flowers on top of this cake and it looked unspeakably girly, I knew it wouldn’t matter a bit. Sure enough, when I gave it to him and harrumphed about it being a bit ‘princessy’ for a boy, he said ‘babe….it’s CAKE!’ – enough said.

Scented leaved-pelargoniums are one of my favourite plants…mostly because they appeal to my nose. You can get them in little plugs in the springtime and in rather larger pots right now, and their scents range from violet to rose to coca-cola (yes, indeed). i like to use rose-scented Pelargonium graveolens, for punch (see The Virgin Gardener) and cakes, but any scented-leaved pelargonium will add something to your baking and this time round I used a deliciously apple-rose scented pele (whose label I have, predictably, lost).

I grow all my pelargoniums in pots of John Innes No. 2 compost. I keep them outside in summer and bring them inside my kitchen window for the winter. Those I don’t have space for but don’t want to lose, I take cuttings from (incredibly easy….I will show you how very soon).

I got the recipe from the gorgeous book River Cottage Cakes by Pam Corbin. I love this book because it is pink, but ALSO, because it has a recipe for dog-biscuits in it, in which Pam begins by saying ‘I do think it’s important to keep everyone in the family happy’….Mr Pug would agree wholeheartedly.

This cake is called Scent from heaven cake and calls for lemon verbena (which I’ve already blogged about here). She uses rice flour in hers…I had none, so just used self-raising flour. It’s delicious…mostly because it’s one of those cakes that you ‘feed’ with flavoured syrup (in this case, pelargonium-flavoured), so that it gets saturated with yumminess.

Enjoy your weekend…it’s gonna be a scorcher apparently
I’m on the tellybox tonight, on ITV at 8pm for THREE WHOLE MINUTES…go me!

Chutney stuff and nonsense

I’ve been having a chutney-making fest – it’s my first time (don’t know what took me so long) – and I realise that all this time I’ve had this weird prejudice, putting home-made chutney together in my head with people like this this -very odd really, because I’ve always devoured it…

There’s a generosity about making chutney that I love.  The whole point of preserving is anything is to avoid wasting anything…it usually comes from having a glut of something – You don’t make something like this in small quantities, so there’s always a bounty of it.  It begs to be shared and given away.

I had a big pile of un-ripe tomatoes and more jalapeno chillis than even I could handle.  The chillis were bothering me badly and I briefly flirted with this idea of salsa and stuffed peppers, but In the end I got predictably lazy and decided to combine the tomatoes and the chillis so I went browsing to find out chutney secrets.  I found this wonderful recipe on the sumptuous and stylish website that is Fennel and Fern and adapted it to include my piles of jalapenos.

It couldn’t be easier:

Jalapeno and green tomato chutney

Green tomatoes (6 or 7 big ones or lots of small ones), roughly chopped

Jalapenos or mild-ish chillis (I used about 12 big ones), roughly chopped

4 red onions, sliced

4 apples, cubed

450g muscovado sugar, (I didn’t have enough so I used half muscovado and half demerara)

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

2 teaspoons ground ginger

sultanas – a couple of handfuls

400ml cheap malt vinegar

2 tablespoons good balsamic vinegar

A knob of butter

Method

Heat the butter over a medium heat and add the sugar and sliced onions.  Cook them until they’re golden and soft.  Now add everything else except the vinegar and cook it for a few minutes, just to soften, stirring occasionally.  Add the malt vinegar and simmer for half an hour.  Then add the balsamic and cook some more until the mixture is soft and thick and gloopy.  Taste and adjust, leave to cool and then put your chutney into sterilised jars.

And on the subject of jars

I bought these glass lever-arm preserving jars (rather expensively) because I fell in love with them.  Problem is I want to give away the chutney but keep the jars – such a quandry darling, but as always, there is someone out there who has blogged about it, so here, if you are agonising about such things (which I’m certain you ARE) is canning queen Marisa’s take on preserving jar ettiquete…i do so love the world wide web don’t you?

Oh, and I nearly forgot to tell you….it’s DELICIOUS!

Lemon Verbena Ice-Cream

A bowlful of summer…

I’ve been growing lemon verbena in pots from my very first year of gardening.  I love it, mostly just to brush past, having as it does the most lemony of lemon scents that exist in all the whole wide world.

It’s wonderfully obliging as a plant – you just put it in a pot and leave it alone.  Cut it down when the leaves turn brown and keep it frost-free and it will come back again in the spring.  I grow pots of it along with scented leaved pelargoniums and bring the whole thing indoors over the winter so I always have something to look at.  You can find out lots more in my book, where I extol its virtues as a herbal infusion…but now it’s September and I’m aware that change is in the air.  There’s a new, brisk freshness on the breeze, and the mornings are darker.  Consequently…

I have the urge to preserve.

Ice-cream isn’t exactly cozy, but put this with a hot fruit crumble and you’ve got the definition of comforting cut through with that amazing flavour of last summer.

I don’t bother with ice-cream makers, or eggs, or churning, or anything like that.  Instead I adapt the recipe for lemon ice-cream from the fabulous Nigella Lawson’s ‘How to Eat’ and keep the ice-cream in small-ish quantities (the sort of quantities that will never make it back into the freezer).  I also make sure I soften it inside the fridge rather than outside of it, as lack of churning etc makes it less obliging in terms of keeping its texture during harsh changes in temperature….In other words, if you want it silky-soft (which you DO) then defrost in the fridge for a good hour.

Lemon Verbena Ice-Cream

You need:

1 loosely packed cup of lemon verbena leaves (or more if you want it extra-lemon verbena-esque)

The juice of one lemon

170g icing sugar

420ml double cream (yup, you read that right)

Method:

Put the leaves, lemon juice and sugar in a food processor and wizz up until they are chopped very finely.  Leave this mixture alone for half an hour or so for the flavours to deepen.

Now whip the cream with 3 tablespoons of icy water until you get sumptuous soft peaks.  Add in the lemon verbena mixture and whisk it in.

Then just turn the whole lot into a suitable piece of tupperware.  I find that these, 1.1l boxes, very satisfyingly, are the perfect size (with enough left over in the bowl, of course, for lickage) – and just bung it in the freezer.  That is literally it.  I have scattered some lemon verbena leaves, and pelargonium petals on top to make it gorgeous-er.

This is just to say…

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast.

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

William Carlos Williams

We have an embarrassment of plums.

They are juicy and sweet…

and after eating far too many, I immediately wanted more, but baked, and with custard…Here’s a clafoutis, together with instructions if you fancy it.

Scald some 150ml milk and 150ml whipping cream with a vanilla pod and leave to infuse.

Whisk up four eggs with five tbsp of sugar until paleNow add the infused creamy milk as you whisk

…straining out the vanilla pod

Preheat the oven to 150 and butter an oven-proof dish very generously, sprinkling it with sugar too

Tumble in your plums (I don’t bother to take the stones out…too lazy) – and pour over your frothy custard

Put it in the oven for about half an hour (or until it’s stopped being wobbly (you want the custard to set)…and you’ll get this gorgeousness:

I think this would be good with some ground almonds added to the custard too.

In terms of growing plums – I’m reading up on it now – my tree is VAST, and I quite fancy experimenting with getting a different variety (I don’t know what my plum is) and fan-training it against a wall to see if you can grow them in a much smaller space…more of this soon.

Sweet Cicely for Custard

beautiful lovely custardy-wustardy

Shhhh! – The Hunk absolutely hates custard so I’ve had to do this in secret – It won’t be difficult to keep it a secret because I think it’ll all be gone soon (this stuff is sluttily drinkable).

I inherited two large clumps of Sweet cicely when I moved here in February this year.  Its latin name is Myrrhis odorata and it’s of European origin.  This is one of the first herbs to appear in springtime, and it lasts for yonks.  It has gorgeously pretty fern-like foliage and lovely white flowers that smell like seriously posh, delicate honey.

The taproot can be eaten raw or steamed and tastes of an aniseedy parsnip (hmmm)…The leaves have a sweet aniseedy flavour and they can be used as a sugar substitute.  The seeds are also lovely and sweet…I’m going to be experimenting with all that later, but today I just wanted to get my head around the flavour of it, so I made custard and infused the milk with a few leaves and some flowers.

The recipe is from the fantastic Prue Leith whom I utterly revere (and not only because she owns Elizabeth David’s actual kitchen table…heart flutters).  Her book is indeed a cookery bible.  I had got myself all geared up to be beating madly in a double-boiler but found, with a sigh of relief, this recipe for quick, easy custard which doesn’t require any of that faffing:

It’s really easy, just one egg yolk, whisked with one ounce of caster sugar until pale and interesting:

Then one ounce of plain flour gets beaten in vigorously.  Meanwhile I’d scalded eight fluid ounces of milk with a few Sweet cicely leaves and half a flower-head:

I strained it, poured it into the egg yolks, whisking all the time, and then put the whisked mixture back into the saucepan, heating until it boiled, at which point it thickened perfectly, coating the back of the spoon (and my finger, and my tongue…etc).

mmmmmmmm

It tastes divine – slightly liquoricey (but NOT in a horrid, hectic, fishermans-friend-type-way)  I purposefully didn’t use a vanilla pod because I wanted to taste the plant, and I’m glad, because although it’s distinct, it is delicate.  It’s not overly sweet either.  I think that’s because this was just an infusion.  I think this would be yummy with rhubarb, and I’d probably add a good generous handful of sweet cicely leaves into the stewing liquid, as they are renowned for their usefulness in sweetening tart fruit.  You’re supposed to be able to reduce the amount of sugar you use by half…good news.  This little jug though, won’t wait that long…it has ‘drink me’ written all over it.

To grow Sweet cicely, you need light, well-drained soil.  It spreads itself around in a rather naughty manner if it’s happy in your soil, both by self-seeding and via its very long tap-root that, if broken, will produce another plant.  It wants some light shade but other than that, requires absolutely no TLC whatsoever.  I’m completely in love with it and I think if I didn’t have a garden, I’d want to grow one in a pot.  You’d need a deep pot, because the taproot is long, and you’ll need to keep it properly watered.

Do let me know if you’ve got any recipes – I’d love to try them out.