Category Archives: Alliums – Garlic, Onions and Leeks

Red Onion Marmalade Recipe

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Well, not quite a recipe here but a link to a delicious one! If you’re looking for recipes for onions then this one from the Good Food team for red onion marmalade comes highly recommended.

Red onion marmalade recipe

We grew a decent amount of red onions in the garden this year as well as a couple of white varieties, so using some of them for a delicious preserve means we can enjoy some of our harvest in marmalade form over the coming winter months with cheese, meats and pâté, as well as a tasty accompaniment for Christmas lunches.

This seasonal recipe, which you can find here, was such a good one and discovered on the excellent Good Food website where it was explained so well, it seemed wrong not to just give you the direct link.

The ingredients list includes a full bottle of red wine (I used a Merlot) as well as 200ml of Port (so the kitchen wasn’t just full of the strongly scented vinegar aroma for the day). I swopped the red wine vinegar for balsamic when I was recreating it as it was the only ingredient missing in my cupboards.

I hope you enjoy it as much as we are. Do you have a tried and tested favourite chutney or preserve?

Harvesting the garlic

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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?

Gadzooks! Giant onions!

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Just posting a quick update on the onions that I planted back in October. They were the first overwintering varieties grown in the Greenside Up garden (we usually plant sets out in the early springtime) and they have, without doubt, been a major success.

The only care they’ve needed was for the bed to be weeded regularly and that’s it. They survived the snow, ice, wind and rain and just kept growing and growing.

To give you an idea of their size my index finger is just over 7cm long (just over 3 1/2″). Only three bolted (went to seed and tried to flower) and their stems were removed as soon as they were spotted.

I lifted them today as their tops were brown and falling over. The next step is to move them inside to dry out fully before stringing them up as it’s not dry enough to leave them out. We used to do this process in the shed but last year the polytunnel proved even more useful and they dried out very quickly draped over a wire rack. The trick is to keep them as far apart as possible so the bulbs aren’t touching.

We’ve eaten a few fresh ones already and they taste good. 

So will I be recommending anyone plants overwintering onions, and will we be doing it this year? Absolutely!

Leek Gratin and Leek & Potato Soup

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If you look around vegetable gardens at this time of year, they can look bereft of veg apart from a few lanky looking winter greens; however anybody who grew winter varieties of leeks will be reaping their reward now, as they’re very much in season.
I wrote a blog about growing leeks last year and here are two more recipes we made this week that are quick and easy (I made them both at the same time as the stove was on, and half the preparations were complete).
Leek Gratin
(Serves 4)
Ingredients
2 large leeks with thick leaves removed and saved
20g butter
20g flour
1 tsp. Dijon mustard
250ml. milk
Grated cheese
Freshly grated nutmeg
Method
Chop the dark leaves off the leeks and save. Slice the remainder in half lengthways through to the middle and wash under cold running water. Steam gently for about five minutes.
Meanwhile make a white sauce by melting the butter in a saucepan, then adding the flour and mustard, mix until combined then add the milk, stirring until it boils. (If it’s too thick add a little more milk, too runny add more flour.) Simmer for a few minutes.
Grease a gratin dish lightly and place the steamed leeks into it. Pour over the sauce then add grated cheese and freshly grated nutmeg to the top.
Place in a pre-heated oven at 200oC for about 20 minutes or until the gratin is golden.

An optional extra for this is to wrap the leeks in ham after they’ve steamed and before the white sauce has been poured on top.

Leek and Potato Soup
Ingredients
Remaining leaf tops from the leeks above
20g butter
4 potatoes, peeled and roughly chopped
Garlic
1 litre stock
Seasoning
Method
Melt the butter in a saucepan, add the roughly chopped leek and garlic put on a lid and cook gently until softened.
Add the potatoes, stock and seasoning and cook until the vegetables are soft.  Remove from the heat and allow to cool for a few minutes before liquidising.
Once blended return to the saucepan, check seasoning and stir in crème fresh or cream (optional).
This is a handy way of using up leek tops that are often discarded and makes a deep green soup that’s packed full of vitamins.

Leeks – not a ‘tricky’ veg to grow afterall…. why not give them a go?

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I avoided growing leeks for years because I thought they looked difficult in all the books – a tricky vegetable, involving more than sticking a seed into the soil.  So, taking my own advice (for a change), I avoided growing them and anything else that looked remotely challenging.

However, after a time, I felt a bit braver and had a go. Surprise…. leeks really are very easy to grow and they’re great for filling in the so-called hungry gap that gardening books often refer to – the time of year when nothing much is growing outside.

They make delicious soups and stir fries and children often prefer the more delicate flavour. They’re also full of vitamins:  folates, B vitamins, calcium, iron, potassium and magnesium.

Depending upon which variety you choose, you may have to dig them up before the first severe frost as they can freeze solid, then go soggy and slimy as they defrost in the ground.

So, unless you’ve grown a variety you know is particularly hardy, harvest them if they’re mature enough - heel them in if you have the space, or slice, blanch and freeze them, ready to use whenever you need them.

So how do you grow them?

Varieties are available that can be harvested from late summer onwards, known as early, mid or late type. That just means that some take longer to mature than others. Living where we do I’ve tended to sow the hardier, later maturing varieties such as Siegfried, Musselburgh and Atlanta as they can all be overwintered.

Seeds can be sown directly into the soil, but I find it easier to plant them into modules and transplant them – as they sprout they resemble fresh grass and can easily be mistaken for weeds. You can plant three or four seeds in each module about 1cm deep, either in fresh multipurpose compost or in special seed compost.

Unless you have a propagator when you can start them off earlier, sow them around March to April. Word of advice – sow lots! We never seem to have enough.



Young leeks

 If you like large leeks, leave them in the modules until they’re pencil thickness – about 20cm (or 8in) tall (this can take 10-15 weeks) before you transplant them.

Make sure the soil they’ll be planted in is fertile and well cultivated. (That means that you’ve worked in some manure or compost preferable in the autumn or as soon as the soil is workable.)

How far apart they’ll be spaced will also determine their size – the closer they are the smaller they’ll be, so if you like them big, plant them around 23cm (9in) apart each way.


1st woodwork project!


Now for the unusual bit…….. make a hole with a dibber (or I used to use a broken broom handle until I made one) about 15-20cm deep (6-8in). Drop the leek into the hole trying to avoid any earth falling into it (not always easy – depends upon soil type). Fill the hole up with water. The earth will fall naturally around the stem. If dry weather follows your planting, water every day until the leeks have settled. Once they’re established leave them to grow, just keeping the weeds away from them, only watering if there’s a particular dry spell.

Where do you grow them?

Leeks are part of the onion family so you could rotate them around the beds with the onions. However, the onions will be harvested long before the leeks so I usually grow them with the brassica family (the cabbages), as they take almost as long to mature!
　

I’ve never had any problems with leeks (touch wood) but have been asked about leek rust (where rust-coloured dots appear on the leaves – usually in hot summers). Nothing can be done about this but there are resistant varieties. Look out for Walton Mammoth, Verina and Leek Apollo.

Then just watch them grow and enjoy!

The leek is one of the national emblems of Wales, worn along with the daffodil on St David’s Day. According to one of the legends, King Cadwaladr of Gwynedd ordered his soldiers to identify themselves by wearing the vegetable on their helmets in an ancient battle against the Saxons that took place in a leek field.  To this day the leek is still an emblem worn as a cap badge by the Welsh Guards.