Jerusalem Artichoke Soup

Jerusalem Artichokes are one of the few truly seasonal vegetables still available in the shops.  I love them.  So much that when I see the first Jerusalem Artichokes in the shops (about November, usually) I actually do a little dance in the supermarket aisle.

No, really.

They are nearly finished for this year, but you CAN still get them - just.  And they make the most delicious soup!

Place the artichokes whole and unpeeled into cold water and bring to the boil.  Simmer for 30-40 minutes - until you can stick a sharp knife into them and they feel soft in the middle.

Drain and refresh in cold water, or you'll burn your fingers on the next bit.

Slit the skin of the artichoke lengthways, and peel it back - there is a layer of tough flesh about 1mm thick under the skin.  This will come away with the skin.  They should look like this:

Finely chop a medium sized onion and sautee in butter or olive oil.  Slice the artichokes into disks and add to the onions, turning up the heat to caramelise the artichokes slightly.  Add really good chicken stock and simmer until the artichokes can be mashed in the pan with a fork.

Blend in the pan with a handheld blender until perfectly smooth.  You could, if you wanted to be cheffy, push it through a sieve for a velvety texture, but - meh...  Life's too short, in this house!

Serve with a swirl of cream and some crispy lardons.

Beware the farty side-effects - you probably don't want to have this for lunch if you're meeting your prospective in-laws for the first time in the evening, for example...  I reckon it's worth it, otherwise, though!

The Devil's Guts, and other pernicious gits of the garden.

We are just now getting back to normal after last summer's raging conflagration in the garden.

Shed - razed to the ground, but good news - temporary access to next door's pool

Charred greenhouse July 2011

The new shed and greenhouse are now in place (and far tidier than the old ones), the fence is replaced (darn it) the new trampoline has finally been built, with the assistance of four very excited children, and it just remains to move the compost (complete with composted ashes of half of the old shed) from the old, burnt-out and collapsing pallet-based composters where it previously resided, into the fabulous new whizzy purpose built composter.  This is quite a task.  There is a lot of compost.  And last year, during the months of no tools (burnt to a cinder in the shed) that pernicious git Bindweed got properly established IN MY COMPOST HEAP!!!

If you're lucky enough not to be plagued by bindweed, I envy you fully and to the point of tears.  I hate the stuff.  It is known in our house, and to the glee of both daughters, as The Devil's Guts.  I know I'm a frightful heathen (although fully-respectful-of-other-peoples'-religious-beliefs-within-reason-natch) but I'm not responsible for naming it that - it's an old country name.  It IS, however, a horribly appropriate name, and it has therefore stuck.

You may, of a summer's morn, have stepped out jauntily for a quick pre- or post- breakfast jaunt, with or without a canine companion gambolling at your knee, and have spotted a swirl of bindweed, curling its way up a post, hedge, dead tree or other suitable support.  "Why, how pretty it is!" you may have thought to yourself, "with its heart-shaped leaves and pretty white trumpets of flowers - what a veritable delight to behold this fine day."  No, dear reader.  No.  It makes me weep to disabuse you of your charming misconception (assuming you are not already aware of the ghastly strangling invasive nature of this particular garden git), but I beg you, next time you see it, to firmly grasp the plant somewhere near the bottom, or the top, the middle or wherever you can reach, to pull up as much of it, including roots, as you can get your hands on, to strew its remains on a hard path and stamp merrily upon them with strains of "Riverdance" playing in your head.  Even if the blessed plant is growing on private land, there is not a householder in the country who would not emerge gratefully from behind their twitching curtains, shake you heartily by the hand, and congratulate you upon your brave actions.  You may possibly even be offered cake.  It is no exaggeration to state that there are documented cases of keen gardeners actually moving to escape their bindweed.

Meanwhile, back in my garden.

The moving of the compost from its current ghastly collapsing heap (let us, for the sake of it, call it Uriah)...

Uriah (note new fence in background)

...to the beautiful new arrangement...

PROPER job (note Hairy's tail in foreground)

...has inevitably been delayed by the necessity of removing all traces of bindweed from it.  Uriah is positively riddled with the stuff, and it would be foolhardy in the extreme to simply transfer the compost, complete with bindweed, to the new bin, and thenceforth scatter it with gay abandon all over my beloved vegetable patch.  Gardening suicide, honestly, my loves.

So yesterday saw me, crouched - nay, hunched - in front of Uriah, grubbing through the compost with my gloved hands, tablespoonsworth by tablespoonsworth, removing root after root after root of bindweed.

The Devil's Guts are hardy and fast growing, but incredibly brittle.  While this may sound a good thing in theory, in practise it means that when you tug them, they break.  So if you pull a bit of root and break it, you have to go digging and grubbing and prospecting for the rest.  Because bindweed (the very typing of the word makes me gnash my teeth, stamp my feet and shake my fists) can propagate itself from a mere inch of root left in the soil.  Indeed, some gardeners claim that you don't even need to leave so much as an inch.  It can propagate itself out of thin air - or rather, out of any soil where it has ever been present.

The one good thing to be said for it is that the roots are very white and show up nicely against the soil, making it easy to find them (with patience and a bit of sifting).  I think it's fair to say that I got a good 50 feet of the stuff.  Some of it came up by the joyful yard (about two bits, if I'm honest).  The vast majority, however, came away inch by hard-won inch. 

I've had a bloody good go at it, though.  It'll come back, I know it will, but maybe it'll take a few extra weeks before it swamps everything.  And now, I'm going to burn the b*****d.

Hats off to it for survival and everything, but I do wish it would just wither off and die.

Having fully mined the depths of my rage against the weed, I now realise that the other pernicious gits du jardin are as nothing compared with The Devil's Guts.  I would, however, like to warn you at this point and briefly against two trees which you may be considering putting in your garden.

First.  The basic willow.  Don't do it.  Yes, it grows quickly and and provides good cover from overlooking properties, but it will also spend the summer dropping furry seeds all over your garden - no, really, ALL OVER your garden, and those of your neighbours.  It's like living in a world of clouds and candyfloss (not in a good way) for a month or more as the stuff drifts in through open windows and doors, coating everything in sight with its hideous fuzz.  It will catch in your hair, stick in your socks, and play havoc with your keyboard.  And it proliferates.

Second.  While we're on the subject of proliferating.  The Stags Horn.  It looks pretty.  It makes a lovely shaped tree reaching only a couple of metres in height.  It has very attractive foliage, delightful fuzzy bark like young antlers and flame red seed heads which provide a lovely show throughout the winter months.  NO.  Do not be tempted.  These same seed heads house some of the most efficient tree seeds known to mankind.  Within seconds of them appearing, new Stags Horn trees will start pushing their way up through your lawn, your flower beds, in your rockeries - you name it.  You will have a forest in no time.  I'm not exaggerating.  Each stick in the picture on the right is a whole sapling.  These were pulled up by my lovely husband yesterday.

Just a few of the ones wot got away.

Finally, the Poplar.  It's a noble looking tree, and some Poplars have lovely green, pink and white variegated foliage.  Ours does.  It will grow up and stand proud, as you admire it's strength and beauty.  Meanwhile, under your feet, it is sending out roots and suckers, and before you know it, new Poplars will be popping up in places where you don't want them, where you never dreamt of having them, and where no decent, honest tree has any business to be.  You will call in a tree surgeon in desperation, who will suck his teeth and inform you that disturbing the Host Poplar in anyway, such as cutting it back or trying to kill off some of the larger suckers, is likely to have the unPoplar result of making The Host believe its existence is threatened (which it is, to be fair) and sending it into a frenzy of productivity resulting in ever more Poplars.  It is best left alone.  Doing as it pleases.  Creating its own little forest of Poplars.

What with vigorous ornamental grasses, teasels, old man's beard, chickweed, ground elder, stickyweed and dandelions, to name but a few of the others, whatever's a girl to DO?!

Hell's Bells, Save the Bees

A bumble bee, pollinating the Tulip Tree in our back garden - photo from 2009

I think all gardeners love bees, don't they?  There are few things more pleasant than sitting in a warm spot in a sunny garden, with a long, cool drink, and the sound of bees going about their business, pollinating everything in sight.  We used to have some lovely, tall pink foxgloves outside the kitchen window, and I'd happily while away the time watching the bees work their ways methodically up the plant, from flower to flower, looking like busy little postmen delivering welcome parcels in flowery blocks of flats.

They are so very important, too.  There is a quote, attributed to Einstein (while presumably taking a break between coming up with the Theory of Relativity and the Quantum Theory of Light), that if the bees go, all life on earth will end within four years.  Even the cockroaches.  Now, it turns out that Einstein probably didn't say this - at least, there is no evidence that he did and the quote first came up several decades after his death if memory serves - but clever people with large grants have calculated that there is more than a grain of truth in the saying, so the recent significant decline in the bee population is more than a little alarming.

All sorts of theories have been posited for why this decline may not only have come to pass, but to be giving no sign of slowing down or reversing.  Theories from tiny parasites to atmospheric conditions, from astroturf lawns to aircraft increases have all been put forward, then filed in a deep dark archive somewhere on the lower levels.  The latest theory, which has been tested and seems to be bearing some serious fruit, however, is that the bees are confused and disturbed by the electronic pulses given off by mobile phones, to the extent that they will abandon their hives, disband, and die.

The evidence is not yet conclusive, but it is looking pretty damning.  

I find this incredibly alarming.  Mobile phones have become such a fundamental part of all of our lives that I really cannot see enough people abandoning their phone to make any kind of a difference to this problem.  Quite simply, many people will not care at all, others will not care enough, still more will care but their busy lives will make it incredibly difficult if not impossible for them to bin the phone.  There will of course be a band of people sufficiently committed to the wellbeing of the planet to ditch their technology and campaign for us all to do the same.  I fear, however, that the usual will happen.  Despite the fact that we know in our hearts that they are right, and even deeper down we realise that on some level they are better and less selfish than the rest of us, we will mock them, denigrate them, and generally call them Swampies.

Meanwhile, the bees will continue to decline, and what shall become of us all?

Original Sin 1. Sloth.

This week’s feat of startling ineptitude is the emptying of three quarters of a brand new large pot of Tropical fish food directly into the fish tank.  I then spent an entertaining total of three hours trying to sieve it out without either killing the fish by sieving them out along with the increasingly slimy, gunky flakes, or allowing them to commit a gluttonous suicide by giving them time to gorge themselves into a watery early grave.

AFTER the cleaning yesterday night...

The blame for all of this lies squarely, I firmly believe, with the slovenly act of Sitting On The Sofa...  I never ever just sit and do nothing in the day, and I am beginning to see why.

This week, however, I had to read two scripts in quick succession so I could pass them on to the next reader for consideration for our summer production at the Village Hall.  Major fundraiser for the hall – important decision and hence not to be taken lightly!  Anyway, due to this, I very excitedly settled in on the sofa with a blanket and the scripts, feeling very self-indulgent indeed and positively debauched, darling, not to be up to my effing elbows in mud or soup or bleach or felt or SOMETHING. Having finished script 1 and got bored with script 2 (probably won't be recommending that one, then...), I was ambling past the fish tank considering some lunch, when I noticed the fish tank was still in darkness.  Hmm, I thought to myself, rather a long night for the fishies - still, it IS winter.  So, anyway, I switched the light on (VERY quick sunrises and sunsets in Fishland) and opened the LARGE tub of food.  I then noticed that the glass felt a little cold.  It IS a cold room, having no radiator and a fireplace, resulting in quite some draughtiness.  I stuck my finger in the water, which also felt cold, so I checked the heater thingy (that would be "the heater", in English) and tried to turn it up, forgetting that the large open tub of fishfood was still in my hand.  Whoosh.  Fish banquet.  Human nightmare.  

Slowly clearing...

I may have somewhat strayed from the original point, here, but I feel that if I had not been sitting on the sofa, I would not have noticed the fish tank at all, which would not now resemble more closely a bouillabesse than a tank of nice clean water. The hours of cleaning which followed were no more nor less than I deserved.  So I shall not be sitting on the sofa during the day again. It is clearly the root of all evil.

Evil!

Pea & Ham Soup

I'd made some pork stock, and had no idea what to do with it.  Had a quick look through the fridge, larder and freezer, and this is what happened...

Boil the leftover bones and any extra gravy from a Sunday Roast Pork until you get a good rich stock going.  Don't assume this will happen within an hour or so.  Keep at it.  Sometimes for days (turning it off when you go out or to sleep, natch!).

Heat some olive oil in a pan large enough to take the final amount of soup.  Fry up a handful or so of cubed pancetta, bacon, lardons - whatever you have - with a finely chopped onion and a clove or three of garlic (to taste, etc!), until the onions are soft and the lardons are nicely browned.

Add the stock and bring to the boil.  

Add "some potatoes" - useful instructions, no?!  I discovered at this point that I had no spuds.  I grubbed around in the cupboard to no avail, but a swift dash up to the top of the garden and a desperate rummage produced a handful of beautiful little King Edwards in a molten planter - bizarrely, and against all odds, the potatoes survived last year's conflagration!  So that makes this the first veg patch meal of the year!  Yay!

Aren't they beautiful?

Scrubbed up well, too....

Anyway, on with the recipe!

So, as many spuds as you like (or can find) depending on whether you fancy a thicker or lighter soup.  Chop them up into 1cm cubes, because you don't want them to take forever to cook.

Simmer until the potatoes are cooked, then add a big whoosh of frozen peas.  Bring back to the boil until the peas are cooked.

Add a splash of milk - all of these amounts are entirely flexible and dependent on how potatoey/peaey/milky you'd like your soup to be.  Whizz it up in the pan with a hand-held blender and season.  Then I challenge you to try to get it into a bowl with a swirl of creme fraiche and a sprig of mint rather than standing there eating it out of the pan with a big spoon!

Dig On For Victory

There are of course many definitions of heaven, but I believe that at this moment, my favourite would involve a greenhouse, a laptop, a very handsome mongrel and a not-so-large-that-it-can’t-be-ignored-for-the-time-being list of things I ought to be doing.  Sling in some birdsong, and we’re in business.

This morning’s ghastly weather (raging storm complete with whirling winds and nasty ploppy-type rain) has been replaced by a delightful wintry day, and although it can hardly be described as warm, sitting in the greenhouse with my feet up and a light fleece on whilst the hairy dog investigates what’s buried under the greenhouse gravel with much snorting and huffing is certainly a lovely place to be.

Recycled newspaper pots have been made, filled with soil and planted up with the very first seeds of the year – we have (drumroll, please!)….


Broad Beans (Aquadulce)
Peas (Kelvedon Wonder)
Tomatoes (Golden Sunrise, Red Cherry and Tigerella)

It seems wildly early to start planting, but I have been reading a book (always dangerous) which I bought a couple of years ago but which has until now lain pretty much unopened.  It is Dig On For Victory – the vegetable gardener’s guide written and published toward the end of WW2.  As my lovely elder daughter is currently studying evacuees, Victory Gardens and Anderson Shelters, we thought the time had probably come to dig out the book (ho ho) and see what it has to say.  It says plant peas, lettuces and tomatoes.  It says I should have planted broad beans before Christmas, but that can’t be helped – they’ll just have to catch up.  And the lettuces will have to wait until next week.

In any case – it seems to me that although this book could be accused of being sixty – lord, no, seventy! – years out of date, it was bloody important back then for veg patches to yield a decent amount of food that you could actually live off all the year ‘round, rather than a glut of one thing after another, followed by lengthy bald patches, which is what I have tended to achieve thus far.  I have to admit that my winter veg gardening is sporadic to non-existent.  There are months on end where I don’t set foot beyond the herb patch.  But in the summer, I’m happily engaged up here all day long, and terribly bad tempered when wrenched away from my beloved veg to – eg – eat or, worse, clean the house!

So, Dig On For Victory, it is.  We shall see how it goes.  I have high hopes.  Now I must go and eat.  And.  Worse.  Clean the house.




NOTE!  Wild Garlic spotted this morning while walking Hairy.  Two months earlier than last year.  I feel some cookin' comin' onnnnn......

Violet Jelly

This post was actually from 5th April 2011 - last retrospective post!

Well, I was quite desperate to make some of this.  I thought of it a month or so back.  I was musing over what to do with a large bowl of Bramleys while strolling past a little crop of wild violets, and had a bit of a eureka moment.  So I hurried home and went a-googlin’, only to find that there is a multitude of methods and approaches.

As I said before, the scent of violets, although strong and quite beautiful, is fleeting.  It turns out that this is because there is something in the smell which actually anaesthetises your olfactory organs, and prevents you from being able to smell it after the first whiff.  Amazing.  Anyway.  I was a little worried that the flavour would be equally ephemeral, so decided not to make an apple-based jelly as I had originally intended.  Further research was not terribly helpful - the amount of pectin required to set a jelly varies according to the amount of pectin naturally present in the fruit.  As I think it’s safe to assume that there’s no pectin in violets, I wasn’t sure how much to add.  Lots of panicking and brain-wracking later, and this is what I did.  Oh, and it worked.  Oh, and wash the violets first...

YOU WILL NEED:

Enough wild violets - preferable violet ones, not white - to fill a pint pot when tightly packed

Water

Preserving sugar

Bottle of Certo liquid pectin

Lemons

Place the violets in a large jug and cover with two pints of boiling water.  Allow to steep overnight.

In the morning, strain the violet tisane through a sieve lined with kitchen paper, coffee filter or similar.  Add lemon juice and watch the colour change - magic!  Bring the violetty lemony water and the pectin to the boil in a large saucepan then add two pints of preserving sugar (just pour into a measuring jug - basically, you need the same amount of sugar as liquid, and this amount was perfect for a whole bottle of Certo.  You could halve or double it etc) and boil for two minutes on a full rolling boil.

Pour into sterilised jars and seal.

Only allow your daughters to see one jar at a time or the lot will be gone within a week!

A note about sterilising jars:  worrying about this stopped me from making preserves for ages.  I don’t know why.  These days I either put jars and lids in a big saucepan, pour boiling water over them and simmer for ten minutes, or, if I’ve had the oven on for something anyway, put them in the oven at about 120 for about the same length of time, and that’s it.  No drama.

Wild Garlic Butter

Another disclaimer - this is also from 2011.  25th March, to be precise!

Wild garlic, or Ransomes, grows like the weed it is, proliferates all over the shop, and fills the air with the most gorgeous, pungent, garlickly deliciousness.  Heaven for garlic lovers, hell for vampires.  Wild garlic is one of the first properly useful plants to come up in the spring, so it’s a real treat for the forager.  I’m quite new to the joys of foraging, so I’ve not quite got to the stage of gnawing on twigs and eating stuff so bitter it sucks all the moisture out of your mouth but doesn’t quite kill you.  But oh!  How I love to forage for tasty stuff!

Wild garlic bulbs are small and fiddly, so it’s the leaves you want - which is rather handy, ecologically speaking, as you can pick more or less as many as you want without harming the colony.  Whereas digging up bulbs - always a major no-no.  Wild garlic is a really easy “in” into foraging for bits and bobs.  It’s easily identifiable by eye and nose, and it’s a completely familiar flavour.

You can do all sorts of things with the leaves.  You can slice them lengthways into ribbons and use them in a stir-fry, or crossways to use as a herb in salads or any dish requiring garlic.  A lovely thing to do is take a fillet of sea-bass or loin of cod and wrap it, together with a slice of lemon and a bit of seasoning, in whole garlic leaves then bake in the oven.  You get a lovely subtle garlic flavour.  A great thing to do, however, when you’ve gone berserk and picked loads and are not sure what to do with it (the Forager’s Conundrum), is make it into garlic butter.

For 250g of butter (I’d always use salted, but that’s just me) take 20-25 garlic leaves.  Wash and thoroughly dry the leaves then roll into cigars and slice across the grain.  If you haven’t got a garlic leaf in front of you, that may sound confusing, but don’t worry, it’ll make sense when you do!

Place butter, at room temperature, into a large bowl and mash in about 1/4 of the garlic leaves, using a fork.  Once it’s all moving about nicely and has a nice texture, mash in the rest.  You don’t want to obliterate the leaves, so don’t be too heavy handed, but it does need to be nicely mixed together.

Once it’s all evenly mixed, take a sheet of clingfilm and place on a cool surface.  Spoon the butter onto the clingfilm, in a line just above the bottom edge.  Bring the bottom edge of clingfilm up over the butter and roll into a rough cylinder.  Roll to and fro to get a good shape going, then take hold of the loose clingfilm at each end and roll the butter away from you, so that the ends roll up like a sweetie wrapper, and you’re left with a nice fat sausage of garlic butter.

You can store this in the fridge for a few weeks.

It is delicious tossed into freshly cooked pasta and topped with crispy lardons and toasted pine-nuts, stuffed into chicken breasts, or just spread on hot toast.   

Crikey!

Well, I wrote something last year about how I had been meaning to get started blogging, and nine months later, I have finally done it.  Rather than reiterate, I'm thinking I might copy and paste - so what follows is from April 2011!

Well, I guess I’ve got to start somewhere - no pressure!  If a blank page is scary, a blank website is terrifying!  I had planned to start this a couple of weeks ago, when the plants woke up and the sap started rising in the trees (WHAM!) but my laptop took a fatal lemming-esque plunge off the kitchen work-surface and onto the granite floor below, so I have been sans Mac for some time.  However, I am now typing this on the beautiful replacement (note to self:  computers do not bounce - make this one a nice nest in a room with carpets), and trying to whittle down all the things I’ve wanted to write while I was forced into luddite-like suspended animation.  

Frogs seem as good a place to start as any...  

It’s THAT time of the year, and the frogs in the top pond are at it like rabbits.  They are shameless, and thoroughly enjoying scenes so orgiastic that a seasoned porn star would avert her gaze, blushing like a virgin.  The billowing pillows of spawn they’ve produced double as bouncy castles for twice the fun, and the whole pond is basically a seething mass of frog sex.  Fair play to them, I say.  They’ll have to wait another year for another go.

Plans for today - well, after I’ve done the usual breakfast/school run/dog walk start to the day, I’m planning on making wild violet jelly.  I’ve had a bit of a bee in my bonnet about it for a couple of weeks, now, and today’s the day.  The violets are picked and steeped, and now I just have to study the multitude of recipes in various books and various websites, and come up with something which works!