Spring = Wild Garlic: Nettle and wild garlic soup.

Last spring i discovered wild garlic leaves, for the first time, after selling them at the farmer’s market.  It is one of the few things we do not need to plant on the farm, along with nettles. Our farm is bordered by woodland, and also a river, and wild garlic grows not only in the woodland around the farm, but all over England (and Europe i believe) this time of year. It is coming to the end of the season for wild garlic; and just like last year i thought i would venture out into the woods myself and pick some for the pot before it is all gone.

And here it is: i found a patch. The white flowers are wild garlic flowers.

 

And these are the garlic leaves, which i picked.

 

And here is enough Garlic leaves and nettles for my soup, just washed – before heading for the kitchen. (Washing the nettles under a cold tap completely removes the sting from the tops of the leaves.)

 

This is the end result (recipe to follow), with a tablespoon of yoghurt, and two halves of boiled egg, which have sunk out of sight. Very tasty, and very healthy.

 

I used this  recipe:

http://www.viktoriastable.com/nettle-and-green-garlic-soup/

 

Ingredients:

For two servings:

A bunch of nettles

A bunch of wild garlic leaves

one tbsp butter or olive oil

one onion chopped

1/4 cup fresh dill chopped

2-3 cups of liquid from boiled nettles

one tbsp lemon  juice

one egg yolk

To serve: two boiled eggs, halved, two tbsp of yoghurt

 

Instructions:

1. Bring a pot of (3/4 litre) salted water to boil
2. Add the bunch of washed nettles, biol for 5 minutes. remove nettles from pot, reserve liquid.
3. Lightly fry chopped onions in butter/oil, for 5 minutes.
4. Discard thick stems of nettles, and return soft leaves and soft stems, back to pot – along with 2-3 cups of the reserved liquid,  in which the nettles were boiled.
5. Bring to boil, and then simmer soup for 15-20 minutes.
6. Mix the egg yolk  with the lemon juice. If the soup is cold, add this mixture to pot. If the soup is hot, temper with few tbsp of the hot soup before adding to pot.
7. Puree soup in (or with) a blender.
8. Top soup with a few halves of hard boiled egg, a couple tbsp of yoghurt, and a garnish of whole dill.

Many people at my market, ask for suggestions,  on how to use nettle tips (stinging nettles) and also wild garlic. This recipe combines both, in a seasonal sensation.

Tesco: 1 Farmers’ Market: 0

Yesterday, Christmas Eve, was my last working day. I worked, for the first time Teddington Farmers’ market ( https://www.lfm.org.uk/markets/teddington/ ), a new and very promising market it seems, normally around 20 stalls with everything you need for your weekly – organic/locally and lovingly produced – shop.

Today there were stalls, but the customers stayed away – it was empty. I served one man at the end of the day, and he told me the nearby supermarkets (tesco especially)  were packed, the isles had long queues of people grabbing their last minute shopping.

It is sad, that farmers markets are still not a way of life in this country like they might have been generations ago, and like they are still on the continent. Only the savy, and health conscious (and people from the continent) seem to regularly buy their food from quality local producers in this country. We have lost the art of buying food, cooking with natural ingredients, and the whole art of living it seems in this country, to me.

I am thinking of the many people i have spoken with from countries such as: France, Germany, Portugal, Poland etc… where their traditions are still alive and well along with the modern consumer culture that has spread the world over, and we in the UK are so enamoured with (and have more money than sense at times, to know any alternative way of life).

Today just goes to remind me of how much, we in the UK, “The First Industrialized Nation”, can learn from other countries of the world, about culture and how to live.

How to buy, how to cook, how to eat and live and drink sociably, how to celebrate our holidays, to remember how fortunate we are, to live in one of the richest countries in the world, and what traditions we have lost, and why we should be thinking about reclaiming or starting new, better ones.

Autumn = Pumpkins and Squash: Pumpkin and squash soup with sour cream.

I always look forward to the autumn, although it baffles me why we don’t call the season ‘fall’ like we used to, many years ago ( and took the word with us to the Americas, before we stopped using it ourselves over time), it seems so more descriptive of the season.
One of the reasons autumn is such a nice time, apart from the satisfaction of finishing the harvests, and watching the surrounding countryside change from stable green, to 40 shades of  gold, is: it’s pumpkin and squash season. And as the leaves change colour, so do the squashes in my kitchen veg box. I drool at the thought of hearty, earthy, thick warming soups, chocked full of fresh harvested squash. And here is my all time favourite, from Nigel Slater, who Jamie Oliver called “a genius”, and after cooking some of his recipes, you might likely agree.

I had to do some work in the field we grew our squashes, they have all been harvested weeks ago, but some lone squashes were still hiding out, and here is some of the handful i brought back that day. The orange ones are onion squash, the  round stripy ones like the one bottom right, are festival squash, (these ones changed colour before my eyes in my kitchen. The  long yellow squash on the left is delicata, and the perfectly round dark green one next to it is a kabocha squash:

Here is Nigel Slater’s recipe:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/pumpkin_stew_with_sour_06174

And i’ll copy and paste it here, in case that link goes offline:

Ingredients

• 40g/1½oz butter
• 2 onions, chopped
• 1 carrot, chopped
• 1 stick celery, chopped
• 3 sprigs rosemary
• 2 bay leaves
• 1 clove garlic, chopped
• 400g/14oz lentils
• 1.2litres/2pints 2fl oz vegetable stock
• 600g/1lb 5oz assorted pumpkin or squash (total chopped weight)
• small bunch parsley, chopped
• 2 tbsp red wine vinegar
• 4 tbsp sour cream

Method

1. In a large pan melt the butter and then add chopped onions, carrot and celery. Tear in the rosemary and a couple of bay leaves and after a few minutes add the chopped garlic. When all have nicely softened, tip in the lentils and pour over 1litre/1¾ pints of vegetable stock. Bring to the boil and then leave to simmer whilst you tend to the pumpkin.

2. Using a variety of pumpkins and squashes gives the stew a more complex flavour. Here I use acorn squash and Cinderella, but you want to end up with about 600g/1lb 5oz of peeled pumpkin in large chunks. Add them to the stew, season and then pour over enough water to just cover all the ingredients. Put a lid on the pan and leave to simmer for 30-40 minutes.

3. When the stew is almost ready, add the chopped parsley.

4. To make the stew creamier, remove a small bowlful to a food processor and blitz it with 200ml/2fl oz of stock. Pour it back in and the stew becomes instantly more velvety.

5. Serve the stew in bowls, finishing each helping off with a cooling spoonful of sour cream.

Here is my ingredients. I used an onion squash, and a delicata this time. Any variety of pumpkin and squash work well, including butternut on it’s own even, but two varieties are better, and Nigel’s choice of pumpkin and acorn squash is excellent, so i suggest using these if you can get them.

After 40 minutes, i sat down to one of my favourite lentil soups, a simple masterpiece; one of my favourite things:

(i have to add, that i missed one crucial detail in the above recipe, which is to take out a small portion of the soup, liquidize in a blender, and add back to the pot, at the end of the cooking process. It really does make for a smoother textured soup. The above is a bit  chunky compared to normal, and i didn’t add fresh chopped parsley till afterwards either in the above. Chunky or smooth, it still tastes delicious!)

Ham Hock Soup: rare breed, and organic.

Today i worked in London on my usual ‘farmer’s market‘. One of the stallholders, is a family run farm selling organic certified meat poultry and eggs. They have chickens and geese, sheep, cows, rare breed pigs and more. I sometimes buy a ‘hock of ham‘, usually smoked, which is a cheap cut of meat, but when well cooked is very tasty – like a good joint of gammon at a fraction of the cost. And as i have just had a bowl of soup topped with ham hock, and cooked with a stock made with the hock itself, i will post the recipe i use here: it is one of my favourite soup recipes. This soup is a classic, and just what i need on a chilly autumn (fall 🙂 ) evening.

Here is the stock pot, before adding water and boiling for two to three hours:

And later the soup, made with the stock water from the above ingredients, and a sprinkle off the cooked ham hock; ontop:

Here is the link to the recipe, i use, and below a cut n paste of the ingredients and method, just in case that page goes offline:

Ham hock soup

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/jan/30/easy-ham-hock-soup-recipes-keep-it-simple-stupid

 

Cooking time: 2-3 hours plus soaking of lentils
Prep time: 15 minutes

Serves 6
For the stock
1 onion
1 carrot
1 celery stick
4 leeks, green parts only, roughly chopped (keep the white parts for later)
1 bay leaf
1 tbsp black peppercorns

For the soup
100g split yellow peas, soaked overnight
1 ham hock
4 carrots
4 leeks, white parts only (see above)
1 small swede, peeled
1 tbsp olive oil
100g red lentils
2 tbsp chopped parsley
Salt and black pepper

1 Rinse the ham hock in cold running water. Place it in a pan that it fits into comfortably.

2 Now prepare the vegetables for the stock, throwing them into the same pan as you go. Chop the top and the root off the onion. Chop it in half and peel it. Then chop it roughly. Peel the carrot and chop it up roughly, discarding the ends. Wash the celery and chop it roughly – you can use the leaves in the stock as well as the stalks, but discard the root. Wash the leeks. Chop off the root and the green parts at the top. Put the outer leaves and the green parts into the pan. Keep the white parts for later.
3 Add the bay leaf and peppercorns, cover with cold water and place over a high heat until it comes up to the boil. Turn the heat down to a low simmer and cook gently for about 2-3 hours, or until the meat is pulling away from the ham bone. Keep topping up the pan with water so the ham hock is always covered. Strain off the stock and set aside.

4 Now prepare the vegetables for the soup. You can chop them roughly if you are in a hurry or if you plan to blend the soup, but with a dish as simple as this it can be satisfying to spend some time making them look pretty. If you want to do this, follow these instruction: Peel the carrots and chop off the top and tail. Cut them into four strips lengthways – this can be tricky; be careful not to cut yourself. Then cut these strips lengthways to make batons. Finally cut them across into little cubes. Slice the whites of the leeks into two halves lengthways, then slice each half into strips lengthwise and finally cut them across to make little dice. Peel the swede. Chop it horizontally into rounds. Then slice across these to make batons and finally across again to make little squares.

5 In a large heavy-based pan, heat up the olive oil and add the diced vegetables. Stir well, season and cook covered over a low heat for 5 minutes. Drain the split peas and add to the veg along with the lentils. Cook for a minute and stir well. Add about 1 litre of the reserved ham stock and bring up to a simmer. Cook gently for about 1 hour or until the vegetables and pulses are tender. Add extra stock or water if the soup is getting too thick.

6 When the soup is cooked you can add water to make it thinner if you prefer. At this stage you can keep it as a chunky veg soup or blend until smooth. We like to blend a cupful of the soup mix and return it to the unblended soup. Season the soup well – do this in stages, tasting between each addition of salt and pepper – and add the chopped parsley.

• The meat from the ham hock can be shredded and added to the soup, as it has been in the picture to the left. Alternatively, it can be reserved for another dish such as a ham hock salad or sandwich.

• This is delicious with a blob of cold yoghurt on top. This provides richness, a contrast of temperatures and an acidic twang.

Recipe by Jane Baxter.

 

Nutty sweet mushroom omlette:

While out in the field two days ago, i came across a beautiful mushroom, standing erect by the side of the field (the most impressive of many). It was a pale brown parasol mushroom, and a fine specimen: 7 inches tall, with a 5 inch cap. (a bit like this one : here ) I wish i had taken a picture of it.

I am making stock for soup this evening, and had some leftover leeks (green parts only, about one meduim leek’s worth), so i chopped up the leeks, the parasol mushroom cap (stalk discarded), and added them to a pan of hot olive oil. Five minutes after stir frying on a high heat, i turned the heat to medium and added three eggs. Less than ten minutes after adding the eggs, i divided the omelette/frittata (i never turned it) after seasoning with salt and pepper. It was divine! The mushroom was nutty sweet, and i still have a sweet taste in the back of my mouth, half an hour after i finished it.

One of the joys of living in the countryside, is there is an abundance of wild food just waiting to be harvested. I rarely do forage for wild food, as i work on a fruit an veg farm, and have access to plenty of good shops in the local area. But mushroom season is here and that was the tastiest mushroom i have eaten in a very very long time.

Farm Tales: A small plot, and a slightly bigger plot.

My last post, was about my plans to plant a very small plot of land, next to where i live on the farm – mainly with salad leaves or herbs. I took a picture, before i weeded and dug the soil. I am happy to say, i have just planted my very first salad leaves and herbs. And a picture paints a thousand words, which is about how many seeds i have sown actually. So here it is in all it’s glory, my plot revisited:

Top right: My friend’s parsley which is all that is left of the herbs he planted – parsley, along with being very tasty – is a very hardy plant.

Middle: A bottomless bucket, containing a little mint plant from my local supermarket. A bit of an experiment; i am not sure if it will survive — so fingers crossed.

Bottom Right: Lettuce, and a mix of peppery salad leaves (– due in 7 days)

Bottom left: Spring onions (– due in the New year)

Middle left: (above the onions) Spinach (–due in 7 days)

Talking of Spinach; we have just planted some fresh spinach on the farm. So to contrast with my little plot, i will show you what we do at work, to sell to the public at markets and in the shops:

This is one of our salad tunnels. You can see the soil already has been prepared, and we are making the beds to plant the salad leaves. The beds have been formed already and we now lay the drip irrigation lines (pipes), on top, and cover with a sheet of biodegradable plastic (which keeps the moisture in the soft raised beds). As you can see the beds are much larger than the little beds i made in my plot, and will hold 3 or 4 rows of spinach plants. Actually they were planted yesterday, this was taken the day before, so now the little spinach plants which are bought from the nursery, are nice and cosy and have been covered with large sheets of white fleece material to keep the warmth and moisture inside. My plot: food for a me – maybe a few others. My boss’s plot: food for a good few hundred – or more.

If my seeds do not germinate, all is not lost – i suppose.

 

Market Tales: a plot to grow your own.

Yesterday, at Parson’s green Farmer’s Market, i chatted with a few of the customers – and as usual, learnt a few  things in the process.

I chatted with a regular customer, a girl from Russia, who told me, their growing season was over for strawberries, in her part of Russia (situated near the dividing line between Europe and Asia). My own farm, which is slap bang in the middle of Kent- will be selling fresh grown strawberries for many weeks to come, before the cold of autumn sends them to sleep. I was also told, how every household would have their own plot of land to grow food, which seems a good idea. Throughout the year,  people would be selling the fruits and vegetables from their gardens, so wherever you went you could pick up some fresh grown carrots here – salad leaves there. This also reminded me of one of the Polish guys i work with, telling me of how, when he was growing up, instead of being sent to the local shop to buy a few bits for supper, he would be sent down the country road where they lived, where one of the households would be selling – from their vegetable plot – maybe carrots, the next house, maybe potatoes, and together with what they would have grown in their own garden, my friend could do all the weeks fresh shopping without going into town or anywhere near a local shop.  In England, almost nobody i know grows their own food,  but a generation before, everyone with any available small plot would have to grow something to supplement their diet. Someone did tell me only the other day, that in London, lots of the Italian people they knew,  still grew food on all the available spaces they had – which seems like a good idea. Veg – and not only organic veg, is pricey in the shops, but you can grow your own organic, with a bit of care.

One of my next customers, was a lady who is at the market most weeks, and is passionate about eating only organic produce – also she has her own allotment nearby, where she grows some of the food for her, and her friends, table. She was telling me of her glut of courgettes at the moment. Plots to grow food, are sought after in the city, and so the rules (for this site at any rate) are very strict: you have to actually grow ‘food’, no mucking about – if you don’t your out, and your plot will be up for grabs by people eager to grow fresh fruit and vegetables, and especially families, who i am told bring their children, to show them where the food they eat comes from, and how it is grown (one of the organic vegetable stalls at the market, actually teach school children about growing food, in exchange for the use of some of the school’s land for growing some of their crop – i am told) — we would all do well to know how food is grown, in this plastic age of ours .

I met a few other interesting people today at the market. One guy i served, used to work for the Soil Association, which is one of the certification bodies (companies licensed by the government to uphold the standards that the government has set out for ‘Organic’ food growing, and selling) here in the UK.

Another guy i met bought some damsons, which are just in season now-those bitter small blue plum-like fruit (they are actually a type of plum) – which many people thought were blueberries. He told me he was using the damsons to flavour gin. Soak fruit in the gin, for however long – i forget how long he said, overnight maybe(?). When the gin has absorbed the damson’s flavour, the resulting mushy-soft fruit would be used to flavour a game bird (pheasant i think?). What a lovely idea! Actually our farm is next to a great castle and estate, which rears pheasants for hunting. The adjoining woodland rings out with gunshot from smart tweed clad hunters, starting around this time of year.

But getting back to growing your own, and having a plot to do so. Here is my plot on the farm. It’s next to my humble dwelling, where my neighbour fenced off this little bit of Kent to keep the rabbits off his salad leaves. It is wild right now, but still, in one corner grows some very tasty parsley, which he planted here.

I will post a picture, when i have cleared the weeds and turned over the soil. It will be plenty big enough to plant a few choice vegetables and herbs for my kitchen, and some of my friends.

 

 

Redcurrant Jelly.

Last year i sold a couple of kilos of redcurrants to a delightful Polish lady, who was going to make redcurrant jelly with them. She kindly brought me a jar of the jelly she made, and it was very good.  This year, i finally got around to making some redcurrant jelly, myself, and it is good.  Armed with a kilo of redcurrants from my farm, a kilo of sugar, and a bit of peace and quiet this evening, for a change – i finally made this precious preserve.

I was told all i needed was a 1:1 ratio of currants and sugar, boil and sieve/strain.

I followed Delia’s recipe from her site and used the large stainless steel sieve i have, and a regular cotton kitchen towel – to strain into the sieve, instead of muslin cloth: it worked a treat.

Here is Delia’s recipe: http://www.deliaonline.com/recipes/type-of-dish/preserves/redcurrant-jelly

Here is my, just washed, kilo of currants:

…and after making the jelly and straining into a bowl:

… and filling my jars (including the one i received from the Polish lady at my market:

… and sealing the (steralised) jars, to leave over a litre of pure-red-nectar:

I hope the lady in question, will be at the market this Sunday. 🙂

 

Cherry clafoutis

We finished picking cherries from our orchard last week, it has been a bumper harvest this year. Before all the new season cherries are gone (cherry season only lasts a matter of weeks/a month), i want to make  clafoutis.

On the Sunday farmer’s market i work at ( https://www.lfm.org.uk/markets/parsons-green/ ), i asked one of my many French customers what they would be doing with the cherries i was selling, and this is one classic French dish to use up all those cherries while we have them. I have been told many other things work well as a clafoutis, including savoury clafoutis also.

Here is the recipe i used, taken from the BBC recipes, by Raymond Blanc: ( http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/cherry_clafoutis_18623 )

And here is my clafoutis after 3 bites:

 

Spidermite and friends.

One of the hard parts about growing food naturally/organically, is dealing with pests and diseases when they arise. last week, there was an independent crop inspector on the farm. He went through the whole farm listing any problems he found, and the main problem was spidermite infestation on our raspberry, and aubergine leaves.  

Spidermite are very hard to spot in their very early stages, but are visible within a few days – if you know what to look for. Here we can see, healthy leaves directly behind the raspberries, below – the paler green leaf has the very early tell-tale lines/patches of white, where spidermites have been attacking the leaf (you can see the, small perfectly round, insects on the underside of the leaf: with a magnifying glass). Finally to the right we see leaves that have advanced evidence of spidermite infestation; the whole leaves clearly yellow/brown (and spidermites will be clearly visable, on the underside – with the naked eye).

There are two main options for us, to treat these pesky pests: 1) spray them, with organically certified compounds (which are natural based- and not harmful to crop or soil). 2) Use a natural predator that eats the insect, and so keep the population growth in check. We also plant different types of flowers that are a natural deterrent to some insect pests. In our case, the crop advisor recommended using a natural predator insect to keep the spidermites in check (the foliage was quite dense, so spraying would not reach the inner leaves). Also, as we have had this problem before – and used predator insects – there is an existing population of predator insects present on the raspberry leaves (clearly visible on the undersides of leaves: large white insects) , they just need some reinforcements, to help in their battle with the spidermites – and with a little luck should devour the pests, before the pests devour our raspberry leaves.

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Our second problem of the week, is in one of our cucumber tunnels. The cucumber leaves have developed leaf mould, which in this case is mildew – with round patches of mould covering the leaves. Our solution here is to use sulphur crystals, melted in ‘hotboxes’ as a non-toxic (sulphur: think volcanic activity – or maybe some brands of household matches) airborn treatment.  Fingers crossed this will cure our problem.

Growing food without using harmful pesticides, is difficult; but by catching any problems, in their early stages – we can use a variety of natural based weapons to help win each battle. The extra effort is worth it, to bring healthy, great tasting food, to our tables.