Purple’s the colour in the Greenside Up household so I had to plant some Scarlet Curly Kale (which isn’t scarlet at all)…
We’re real fans of this hardy veg and I’ve written several posts on growing and cooking kale. Once steamed the colour dims but the flavour is mild enough that even the fussy eaters will eat a leaf or two.
Do you have any favourite colourful vegetables?
We were talking about pickles and chutneys at Goresbridge Community Garden this morning and I was reminded of this delicious chutney recipe that I made last year. It was passed on to me by Yvonne Carty from Hey Pesto .
Easy to throw together, it makes a great accompaniment to salads, eaten with crackers or even on the side with a chilli or curry.
Because we had/have so many courgettes the quantities given below will make up around 3kg of chutney so make sure you have lots of sterilised jars ready or reduce the amount of ingredients.
Put all the following into a large pan:
2 onions, chopped
500g tomatoes, chopped
500g courgettes, diced
200ml white wine vinegar
2 apples, peeled, cored and diced
250g brown sugar
2 tsp mixed spice
1 tbsp mustard seeds
2.5cm piece ginger, grated
4 garlic cloves, crushed
Bring everything slowly to simmer, stirring occasionally to stop it sticking. Simmer uncovered for two hours until thick and ‘chutney’ like.
Pour into sterilised jars and leave for 2-3 weeks to mature before serving.
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| Harvesting Garlic Arno in August |
Back in October last year I wrote a post on how to plant garlic. Today I harvested the bulbs.
They do have a long growing season but once planted, all you have to do is keep the bed weeded, and that’s it! They’re hardy (remember last winter) and survived our fluctuating temperatures and rain throughout the spring and summer without bolting.
I’m delighted with the results, loving the big bulbs and looking forward to eating home grown tasty garlic over the coming months.
Having dug them up, the plants are now on a rack drying out thoroughly before I plait and store them. In the meantime, we’ll be cooking some of the bulbs as we need them and keeping a few aside to split and plant this autumn.
Does anybody else grow garlic and do you have any favourite varieties?
Plums are currently in season so what better way to cook them than a delicious crumble… this is one of our favourite recipes.
Ingredients (serves 4):
8 ripe plums
4 tbsp maple syrup
50g butter cut into pieces
50g plain flour
50g rolled oats
25g golden caster sugar
half teaspoon ground cinnamon
25g flaked almonds (may be toasted)
Method
Heat the oven to 200oC (or equivalent). Place the plum halves skin side down in the base of an ovenproof dish. Drizzle over half the maple syrup and roast for 10 mins.
Whilst the plums are in the oven place the butter, flour, oats, sugar and cinnamon into a bowl and rub the butter into the mixture until it resembles rough crumbs. Stir in the almonds, then sprinkle over the softened plums. Drizzle the top with the remaining maple syrup and bake for 15 mins until the top is golden, sprinkling extra almonds on the top if desired (or if like me you forgot to add them earlier!). Serve with custard, cream or ice cream.
Hope you enjoy it. Have you a favourite recipe for using up your plums?
Several months ago I set up a Facebook questionnaire asking everyone to list the fruit and veg they were growing at home, primarily to help me design workshops and gear my advice in the right direction. Although interesting, (I was surprised how few people answered garlic), it’s difficult to really determine the chart’s accuracy. My original questions covered the (I thought) most common veg but over the week they were added to resulting in over 40 different fruit or veg categories. Some people may have got bored (3 people ticked the newly added ‘weiry with all these questions’) and a couple of people commented the questionnaire was causing their computer to stall, which is enough to stop even the most dedicated from answering!
So, for anyone else who likes facts & figures, here are the results:-
and a much bigger chart for the vegetables:
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| (Struggled to fit them all in there were so many! The last one is celeriac) |
The charts incidentally were created by a very handy online chart tool that was linked by Spiderworking.com. Thanks to everyone who took the time to answer.