Equinox Garden 22nd Sept 2012

Zeb looks for something important under the sweet cicily

Cherokee Trail of Tears Beans

Hey Doc!

A quickie garden post for you and anyone else who is interested of course. At the moment in the garden we are still eating the fabulous Cherokee Trail of Tears beans, apart from the ones at the top of the vines, which I can’t reach even if I stand on a step ladder, so those ones will have to wait to be grabbed when we get a frost and I will use the beans themselves in a stew. We had a small crop of a nice dwarf yellow bean, but it didn’t do as well as these, which despite losing all their early leaves then took off in a big way a few weeks ago and raced for the sky.

Of the four sorts of tomatoes we tried, all grown outdoors, I think I am the only person in England who hasn’t had tomato blight, for reasons that escape me completely. The only thing I can think of is that we didn’t grow any last year and I don’t grow potatoes either.

Lateh tomatoes, my entire crop of lipstick red peppers, all eight fruits, and some of the figs from my brown Turkey fig tree

I have tried Lateh, Urbikanny and a new yellow millefleur type which has been very productive and is still ripening handfuls of tiny yellow fruits each day. I am thinking that the small tomatoes are perhaps the safest bet if the summers are cool, they seem to take less time to ripen than the big ones. I have one Bulgarian one which has big fruits but they still haven’t ripened and I am not sure they will.

Flower sprouts are go ( a cross between a Brussel Sprout and a kale)

Elsewhere the flower sprouts are huge plants now and casting shadows over the rest of the raised bed. We planted a handful of celeriac plants and some root parsley which I hope will be nice, but only tiny quantities.

Peashoots in boxes

I optimistically sowed some late seed, turnip broccoli, rocket, coriander, chervil, english winter thyme, salad mustards, peas (for pea shoots) and some Asian Green seeds from Joyce my Seedy Penpal, and some little rows of radishes and everything has popped up, though what will come of it remains to be seen. I am also seeing if I can get some Italian fennel to grow to bulb.

Angelica (Year 1)

I sowed some Angelica this year and managed to get some plants to ‘go’ so maybe next year I will be able to candy their stems.

Oca!

I have oca in a couple of tubs sitting on the deck too.

Elsewhere, the everlasting sweet pea is running riot in a pink sort of a way, the fig tree is wasting its time producing more babies which won’t ripen now, but I had a few weeks of fresh fig eating bliss, no one else likes them so I don’t have to share, some of the perennial herbs and plants are having a bit of a moment, making new leaves, the oregano and marjoram are busy flowering away, they self seed all over the place, along with the weeds.

My apple tree has produced a few boxes of apples and the pear tree is sporting maybe a couple of dozen pears, nothing compared to last year so I won’t be bottling this year I think, though maybe some chutney if we don’t manage the apples.

Repotted supermarket plants

Oh yes and in the kitchen, two repotted basil plants are thriving (from the supermarket) and Brian came home with a chilli plant today so we have repotted that too.

I have bought loads of sweet pea seed which I mean to sow into modules and put in the cold frame next month and I have loads of things to try for next year, just no space. I eye up the lawn and think could we turn it into beds, but I don’t think I have the energy right now.

Cardoon head going to seed

We are letting these cardoon heads go to seed as we want to see if we can start some new plants and take the old ones out. We grow them mainly for the bees who love them.

There is glorious sunshine today and heavy rain forecast for the next three, so it goes.

kimchi

I have kefir doing its thing merrily in the kitchen, a gift from Carl Legge, and an experimental jar of kimchi too made by me, which gave me the most terrible indigestion I have ever experienced but all’s fair in love and fermentation !

Visits to Stanway Mill

As promised the other day a quick post about Stanway Mill

Stanway Mill is part of the Stanway Estate in Gloucestershire. It is a reconstructed, not a restored mill, with all new machinery. There has been a mill on Stanway Estate for centuries, though used for different purposes at various points in its long history.

I have been there twice now, one mild damp day with Gill the Painter and again with Brian on another rainy morning! Stanway is a fun place to visit – particularly on a rainy Thursday as you are warm and dry inside.

Its primary purpose, as I understand it, is to provide an educational service to the children of Gloucestershire. I am very bad at remembering facts and details about machinery but it is all clearly explained when you get there.

There is a great gadget which shows you how the runner or revolving top millstone) works with the fixed lower mill stone (the bed stone) , which makes you go slightly cross eyed while you watch it. There are two sorts of mill stones on show at the mill. The ones they use are made from French Burr, extracted in small pieces from a quarry near Paris, then fitted together like a jigsaw, cemented and bound with steel bands. The other type is known as ‘peak stone’ and was quarried in Derbyshire. These can be seen by the door in the top photo. This type of stone was more often used for making animal feed.

You can go up and down the stairs and see how it all connects up and peek through at the water rushing down from the pond on its way to the waterwheel.

There is a little handmill to play with and you can see how hard it is to grind even a small quantity that way and understand why we had so many mills at one point, powered by wind and water all over the country in the days when we all ate a lot more bread.

If you are in tourist mode in the Cotswolds and visiting Stanway House and Gardens, the lavender fields or Snowshill Manor it is worth a visit.

The noise when the mill is working at full pelt is deafening, reminiscent of steam engine fairs and maybe that is why I always end up a bit befuddled when I come out.

Zeb Bakes at Stanway

The water is held in the Mill Pond until it is needed to power the wheel and generate the energy to make the milling machinery work.

Stanway Mill produces a good quality bread flour from wheat grown on the Stanway Estate and I have been baking very happily with it for a few months. I find the flour easy to work with both for yeasted and sourdough. The dough holds its shape well without cracking in unwanted places on baking – and I get nice oven spring. It has a wonderful fresh flavour, I think maybe it has been sieved more finely than some stoneground flours I have used. Stanway have built all their equipment themselves as I understand it – but whatever the reason it suits my style of baking well. Sometimes I have problems getting good results with stoneground homegrown flour, and it is nice to find a flour that ticks so many of my boxes that is also relatively inexpensive. I recently took advantage of an offer from Big Barn and ordered loads (3 x12 kg bags) so as to achieve an economy of scale and it worked out at under 80 p a kilo with the postage. I am yet to receive my order as I write, so can’t comment on how well the ordering system works. I wouldn’t advise ordering flour like this unless you have already tried it out and seen whether it suits you and your baking either!

Apart from using it to bake my regular breads as in the previous post, I had a go at a sourdough Tomato Bread which is flavoured with tomatoes and spice, recipe from How to Bake Bread by Emmanuel Hadjiandreou. It went very well with these splendid spicy sausages!

I am not usually a fan of vegetable flavoured breads, I would rather have plain breads that taste of the grain and I often find them a bit overwhelming, getting fed up with them long before we have eaten the whole loaf, but this one looks so pretty that I am glad I had a crack at it. I was enticed into making it by Ray’s lovely bread photos on his blog garlicbuddha. Hmm, maybe I should try that beetroot bread too, Ray, it looks awesome!

Bread and Dukka

This is one of my favourite months, I vividly remember going back to school each September and the hum of activity after the long quiet days of August, so September always feels like the starting point, one of the moments when you kick off from the side of the pool, extending your arms hopefully into the future, thinking that this will be the perfect glide, no water up the nose, just a smooth and here-in-the-now rush of sensation and rightness.

Zeb Bakes spelt and rye sourdough

So September I embrace you, I love the light you bring into the kitchen in the morning, conveniently illuminating the bread board so I can take photos to show you.; the warm days and the cool nights, the changing colours, ripening fruits, making small plans to see friends, thinking about bigger plans. I love the possibilities of this time of year, not tied to any calendar festivities, the pressures of Christmas and Easter, the demands of holiday seasons.

I have made some glorious bread from my favourite flour from Stanway Mill in Gloucestershire, (I am going to write a little post about the mill next) combined with French spelt from the Moulin de Cotentin in Normandy, which was a gift from my Dad.

I also keep making the Dan Lepard BBQ semolina buns (above) for my neighbour to take to her mother, who is still enjoying home made sandwiches filled with garden tomatoes and other goodness.

The formula for the loaf is the Weekly Sourdough, using the spelt for the additional flour part. This time I mixed the dough in the evening and left the whole lot in the fridge overnight, shaped it when it was cold in the morning and left it to rise before baking. Dough is remarkably flexible. Brian baked these off and did the slashing so they look a bit different from usual.

Zeb Bakes Bread and makes Dukka I also made some dukka from the recipe in Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall’s book River Cottage Everyday. You can find it and some of his recipes that go with it here in this old Guardian article of his online – (see how I make it easy for you!)

Dukka (or duqqa) is a dry Egyptian mix of coarsely ground toasted hazelnuts, toasted sesame, coriander and cumin seeds, salt, chili and torn up fresh mint leaves. There are recipes for this traditional blend all over the net. Here is another one by Nikki Duffy, which is very similar and there are variations using pumpkin seeds and other nuts if you have a quick google.

Anyway I have become addicted and have been eating it with bread and good olive oil, sprinkled on my salads and over fried eggs. If you are trying to eat less sugar, this is a good thing to replace jams and preserves with on your breakfast table.