Category Archives: Vegetables

Bits and pieces : kitchen and garden

This is the noonday sun on the last day in August. Today is the first of September, the beginning of the new year in my head.

In my kitchen there is a box of meringue fingers studded with toasted hazelnuts from Normandy – a gift to Brian from my sister, Brian likes them crumbled up on top of fresh fruit with yoghurt as a dessert.

And there were also some very useful indeed sachets of yoghurt starter enzymes (another thoughtful gift from my sister) for when your old home made yoghurt has gone a bit beyond being used to seed a new batch. Still wondering why no one in the UK stocks these. Lakeland stock EasiYo, all the way from the Antipodes but not these made in Europe. Funny old world….

asier gurk pickle

Pickled Danish cucumber, the asie gurk, from seed sent me by the lovely Misky, grown by me outdoors here at home in pots with local manure to help them along, peeled and brined and made according to this recipe and then lovingly waterbath processed by Brian. I don’t think I would make them without his help as I don’t like handling hot jars, damp with boiling steam from the oven.

I use the pickle juice to thin down our current salad dressing, which is a tsp of dijon mustard mixed in a little home made yoghurt and does a very good impression of a mayonnaise with no oil worked into it. The cucumbers are a joy and a delight and much nicer (variety name : the Langelands Giant) than many of the other varieties I have sampled this year. So many cucumbers are full of seeds and surprisingly bitter, these ones have always been sweet and crisp.

I left a tray of my own home saved angelica seed at the Community Garden at Blaise, where I do a bit of volunteering, hoping it would germinate and the magic of the place has made it happen already. It is supposed to need a period of cold before coming up and this has taught me that books are not always right.

I was delighted! I suspect not many people have the patience to grow it, it can take up to three years to get stems large enough to candy, or even that much interest in candying and eating it I got there this year having waited patiently for several years and felt great personal satisfaction and one of these days will make some buns or some icecream and use the angelica I candied at home.

Angelica archangelica coming into flower earlier this year.

Candied stems drying, they will keep for ages now.

If you want to know how to do it, you could pop over to my acquaintance Dan at the Apothecary’s Garden as I learnt the basics from him.

Here is my little old mushrooming basket, given to me by my dear friend Hazel, who passed away many years ago now, I remember her when I pick it up and carry it with me, as I carry her in my heart always. Here it is filled with tomatoes and herbs and some wild blackberries, calendula flowers and cucumbers, and a fairy lights chilli plant coming home from Blaise Community Garden.

Apples are falling off the tree before ripening for some reason and the pear tree has long spindly branches and too many pears so I took a whole lot off the other day and bottled them and hope the pear tree won’t break too many more of its branches. I need to get a lesson from someone in pruning.

A squirrel has had most of the nuts off the red hazel but has left me a symbolic handful

and here is the eternal game being played out by my hairy friends and companions, another good prompt to get out of the house and breathe fresh air.

Cheese and Leek Toasties

Leeks and Cheese on Kefir Toast3

Inspired by Heidi’s comment about grilled cheese sandwiches on the cheese and pickle post, I rifled through Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s Vegetable book and found a lovely simple recipe for cheese and leeks on toast which I have customized slightly to use up half a red pepper as well as my leeks. It is the sort of book that if you are an experienced cook and a vegetarian you probably know most of the methods and techniques in it already, but I like it for its simple layout and clear straightforward recipes. I think, going by this article I just found, HFW is very fond of cheese on toast. Lots more of his ideas here of things to put on toast : – Posh cheese on toast recipes.

Leeks and Cheese on Kefir Toast2

As I was making vegetable soup anyway and sweating leeks, I borrowed a couple of spoonfuls of the leeks from the early stages of the soup to make this treat. I am going to make it again today as we have lots of leeks in our vegetable box this week.

Leeks and Cheese on Kefir Toast4

Pepper and Leek Cheese on Toast for Two

1 medium leek
Half a red pepper (capiscum)
50g of favourite cheese
3 spoonfuls of half fat creme fraiche
salt and pepper
Thyme or favourite herbs
Two chunky slices of favourite bread – here I used my kefir date bread with sesame seed crust

Leeks and Cheese on Kefir Toast1

Sweat the sliced leeks and pepper in a little butter or stock on a low heat
Grate cheese and put to one side
Once leeks and peppers are soft and glistening lower the heat
Slice some bread and toast lightly and put the grill on
Add the creme fraiche and mix in
Add about three quarters of the grated cheese and stir well
Season to taste, add thyme
Pile onto warmed bread and divide the remaining cheese between the two slices
Pop under hot grill and cook till bubbly and browning
Eat!

Carrot and Rice Soup

30 November 2013

Carrot and rice soup

When I read soup recipes they are often full of cream and I try to avoid cooking with cream, wonderful unctuous stuff that it is, on account of its asthma inducing qualities.

So I was very pleased to figure out that if one includes a small quantity of rice in a soup that this gives a smooth textural quality to the soup, which if not exactly creamy, certainly comes somewhere near.

I am not anti-dairy, just this specific bit of dairy, namely fresh cream and milk. Fermented milks and creams seem to get round the asthma thing just fine. Hence my love of creme fraiche, and kefir and yoghurt and of course butter!

Carrot and Rice Soup – a winter’s dish for someone who is under the weather made by someone who had an excess of carrots building up in the vegetable department.

10 medium sized carrots, peeled and sliced
1 medium onion, peeled and sliced
2 tbsp butter melted
600-900 ml vegetable stock (about a pint to a pint and a half) – I use Marigold reduced salt vegan stock powder
salt
pepper
3 tbsp rice (about 40 grams)
2 tbsps of lemon juice or Japanese Yuzu dressing (optional)
Garnish with chopped parsley or other herbs

carrot and rice soup Method

Peel and slice onion and carrots.
Sweat in melted butter over a low to medium heat till beginning to get soft but don’t let them brown if you can – about ten minutes.
Stir frequently and add a little water if you think the vegetables are catching on the bottom of the pan. It helps if you put the lid on as this keeps the steam in the pan.
Add the vegetable stock and rice and stir well, put the lid back on and cook for about twenty minutes.
I removed some of the vegetables at this point and then return them to the soup at the end as I like texture, but this is up to you. I take out about a halfpint jug’s worth of veggies.
Blend with a wand on in a food processor.
Add back the reserved vegetables if you did.
Season to taste with salt and pepper and reheat gently.
Garnish and serve with any good bread that you like.

I garnished our soup with chopped Mustard Red Frills, a lovely and easy to grow salad green which has little yellow flowers, and is a prolific self-seeder. It is still doing its thing in the garden, even at the end of November and I found some curly parsley that is hanging on in there.

I also added some Yuzu Japanese citrus dressing which brightens up the taste of the carrots, but you can of course use lemon juice – I only have this exotic sounding dressing because it waved at me one day in the supermarket…. Other options are to swirl a little thick yoghurt in at the end, or indeed a drool of cream if that is the way you roll.

What soups do you make for comfort food? I like this one and I like pea and ham, leek and potato, and I am working up to making Chinese congee, but need to find some broken Thai rice I think….