Summer love

May is but a distant memory.  The summer sun has been replaced by incessant rain, heavy during the week, torrential at the weekend. 

The weather has battered the garden.  First, weeks of no rain.  The ground dried, then parched.  My tender vegetable seedlings: stunted, wilted or bolted.

Next, weeks of pounding rain.  The strawberries, which were on the cusp of ripeness, are spoilt, rotten, their soft skins pummelled by the rain's heavy drops.  The roses, delphiniums, poppies, lupins, stocks and sweet williams have been stripped of their blossom and their petals, browned by the rain, are strewn, like Miss Haversham's confetti, over the garden.  The, at best, tepid temperatures are insufficient to fuel the garden's usual heady summer growth.

It is raining as I write, after a soggy cycle home.  The outlook for Wimbledon is bleak, the first day has been a wash out.  (Murray is still in but for how long?)  I am awaiting the outrage, the national shame, as Wimbledon strawberry sales run dry: are British stocks too low (the early crops accelerated by the May sun and now exhausted, the later crops waterlogged) to support Wimbledon's heavy demand for this quintessentially English fruit?

I took the opportunity, in a rare dry moment at 6.30 this morning, to sow the first of the winter seeds: cavolo nero, purple and white sprouting broccoli and curly kale.  I will bring them on in pots and plant them out in September, once the summer crops are over and space has been vacated in the vegetable beds.  Although I know that the plants need time to develop and grow strong before the winter cold sets in, I feel forlorn to be preparing for winter when it is not yet midsummer and summer's stay seems to have been altogether too short. 

The silver lining (to the threateningly dark, sometimes black, clouds that appear to have appropriated the English summer) are the peas.  Sowed improbably early (even in the greenhouse) at the end of February and planted out in April, the peas were well established before the May drought, their pods ready to swell in time with the June rains.  The plants are now weighed down with pods, ready for picking, each pod offering a taste of a long lost summer. 

I am not the only one to have enjoyed the peas.  One morning last week, whilst doing my usual early morning inspection, I was delighted to find the garden dancing with bluetits, flashes of emerald blue darting through the taller plants and trees.  My delight was however short-lived when I realised that the tits were in fact feasting on my peas, their mood as jubilant as mine after a snack on the tasty sweet green Lilliputian globes of goodness.  Dressed for the office rather than the garden, I scrambled, in my suit, for some netting with which to protect my precious crop.  A struggle ensued and lawyer, peas and sense of humour became quickly entangled, whilst the tits looked on quizzically, bemused by the gardener's new and not entirely suitable attire and confused as to why having been encouraged into the garden, they were suddenly unwelcome.  With the peas protected, my train missed, I made my late way to work, pea-ce of mind restored.

From a gardening perspective, June has had little to commend it.  My peas have provided a ray of sweet, green sunshine in this otherwise soggy summer.  They offer a burst of summer even if eaten holed up in the kitchen, the hatches battened down against against the inclement weather raging outside.

(I have used fresh peas for all the recipes below.  If you are using frozen peas, cook the peas first.) 

Snacking Peas

(These are so good that I have been serving them in individual portions in ramekins, to be eaten with a teaspoon, as part of a selection of starters or simply to whet the appetite.  They are always gobbled up before anything else.  Otherwise, simply serve as a side dish).

Fresh peas, podded

Olive oil

Basil, finely chopped

Parmesan shavings

Put the peas in a colander and pour over a kettle of boiling water (This is all the cooking they need and will ensure that the peas retain their crisp bite).

Whilst hot, drizzle over the olive oil and basil and stir through. 

Seaso with salt and pepper and scatter the parmesan shavings on top.

Pea and broad bean crostini
(courtesy of Jamie Oliver)

150g fresh peas (i.e. 150g once podded)

250g broad beans (ditto) (cook first if you are using frozen broad beans)

Mint

Salt and pepper

Olive oil

50g parmesan, finely grated

Juice of 1 lemon

1 clove of garlic

Sourdough bread

Mozzarella

Bash up the peas, broad beans and mint in a pestle and mortar (or in a saucepan with a potato masher).  You may need to do this in batches unless you have a very large pestle and mortar!  Season with salt and pepper.  Stir in the parmesan and enough olive oil to bind all the ingredients together.  Add half the lemon juice and taste.  You may need to adjust the lemon juice, olive oil or salt and pepper to taste. 

Toast slices of sourdough.  Whilst still hot, rub each slice with the garlic (just lightly, maybe two stripes on each piece, any more and the garlic will be overpowering) and spread the peas and broad beans on top.  Top with torn pieces of mozzarella.  Drizzle with olive oil and a few more mint leaves.

Pea and herb salad

(borrowed and adapted from Yottam Ottolenghi writing for The Guardian)

50g pearl barley

300g peas (or a mix of peas and broad beans)

1 crisp green lettuce, finely chopped

Mint, roughly chopped

Basil, roughly chopped

1 tbsp lemon juice

Olive oil

Salt and pepper

Goat's cheese

Cook the pearl barley (30-35 minutes in a saucepan of boiling water or 15 minutes in a pressure cooker).  Refresh in cold water and drain.

If you are using fresh peas/broad beans, place in a colander and pour over a kettle of boiling water.  If you are using frozen peas/broad beans, cook in boiling water.

Put the peas, broad beans, lettuce, pearl barley, herbs, lemon juice and olive in a bowl and stir.  Season and adjust the lemon juice and olive oil to taste. 

Crumble the goat's cheese over the top.

Strawberry clouds
(I have snuck one strawberry recipe in here.  If you have any strawberries left in the garden or can get hold of some, this recipe is sure to make you smile).

300g strawberries

Mint leaves

50g caster sugar

3 egg whites

140ml double cream

Blitz the strawberries in a food processor.  Add a few mint leaves and blitz again.  Sweeten to taste. (Sugar will bring out the flavour of the strawberries.  Add it gradually, tasting as you go along.  You should be able to taste the mint but it should be subtle.  Add more mint leaves if desired and blitz again but be careful not to overpower the strawberries).  Pass the strawberry mixture through a sieve and discard the pips etc. 

Whisk the egg whites until they form stiff peaks.  Then whisk in the sugar until the mixture has a glossy sheen.

In a separate bowl, whisk the cream until thickened but not stiff. 

Fold the cream, egg whites and strawberries together (using a metal spoon).  Spoon into glasses and chill.

Maltby Street: far from the madding crowd

Muddy beets and carrots

Last Saturday I made the short journey north to Borough Market.  When I first moved to London, only six years ago, Borough Market was a favourite Saturday activity but, disillusioned by the hordes of people, the need to be there at the top or tail of the day, the congestion making it impossible to shop (and preferring to spend my Saturday mornings cultivating my own produce rather then buying other peoples'), I had not been for some time.

My ulterior motive in going to Borough Market was to compare and contrast it to stop number 2 on my Saturday food-centric agenda: Maltby Street.  I was aware of the reported tensions between the two, the rumours of rent rises forcing traders to relocate from the former to the latter and Borough Market's governance's disgruntlement at the prospect of close competition, and I was intrigued to know which traders had chosen to sell at Maltby Street, either as an alternative to or in addition to Borough Market. 

Anticipating the crowds, I arrived early.  I was immediately struck by the gentrified aspect of the market's green arches.  However, the gentrification was not purely cosmetic.  Brazenly flaunting their wares behind flash signs and flashier price tags, there was an endless array of hot and prepared food, paella, steak sandwiches, hog roast, burgers, veggie burgers, pork pies, a juice bar, tableware and Borough Market emblazoned bags.  The hardworking growers and sellers for the most part gone, and with them the atmosphere, the buzz of market trade, and the exciting culinary possibility of British seasonal produce, replaced with the smell of frying. 

The Market's demise, in my eyes, was confirmed by my attempt to buy gooseberries from Turnips, the large and long established wholeseller of fruit and vegetables.  None of the three servers who tried to sell me the small, slightly furry, little green and so very British fruits that I had picked up off Turnips' showy display knew what they were.  They could not therefore tell me the price and had to go and ask at Head Office, loftily located in a glass office box above the market in the space shared with Roast (where the average cost of a main course is a £23). 

The answer was an astronomically expensive £8 per kilo, the price no doubt commensurate with the fact that Turnips' second and only other store is in Selfridges. 

Gooseberry fool

I made to leave and exiting through the eastern triangle of the Market (the Green Market), came across a ray of real market hope amongst the otherwise tourist trade:  John from Lincolnshire selling his own grown Lincolnshire produce.  Beautifully muddy carrots and beets, cabbages, radishes, peas and broad beans, onions, chard, fennel, tomatoes, cucumbers, potatoes new and old and lots more besides.  A chat revealed that he also sells at Peckham Farmers' Market on Sundays.  I came away with a smile and a kilo of gooseberries for £5.50.

On the short walk to Maltby Street, I popped in to José Pizarro's recently opened tapas and sherry bar on Bermondsey Street.  The chef and his team were prepping but José stopped to proudly show me the beautiful wood and tiled interior of his eponymous new London seat and run through the day's specials.  The smells from the kitchen were teasingly good even though it was only 9.30am.  I made a mental note to return at the first available opportunity during opening hours. 

Maltby Street is nestled under the old brick railway arches in Bermondsey.  The arches have become home to a collection of traders with a long relationship with food.  Some are aficionados of the London food scene: Neal's Yard Dairy, Monmouth Coffee, St John Bread.  Others are smaller or less well-known but no less gem like: Fern Verrow's biodynamically grown vegetables, Kitty Travers's homemade ice creams (with taste tingling flavours such as elderflower and amalfi lemon, strawberry and tarragon, pea pod and caramel and sea salt), the Gergovie Wines warehouse selling wine at the bar, to sample, to drink or to take away and Tony Booth's, a veritable Aladdin's cave of fruit, vegetables and salad.  Then there are some surprises, like Lassco who's reclaimed treasures are a trove of nostalgia, objets d'art and functionality (rows of theatre seats, school benches, a selection of steel buckets and a gym horse were just some of the finds worthy of a perusal last Saturday). 

Macerating strawberries

The arches are big enough for serious activity and alongside the more frivolous shopping and tasting to which they have become home, Monmouth roast their beans on site, St John's bakery is housed in Arch 72 on Druid Street, and Neal's Yard have their main office and wholesale business. 

I sat in the sunshine outside Monmouth on chairs strewn liberally over the pavement for the purpose and enjoyed a coffee and brioche.  The atmosphere was quietly smug: everyone else enjoying their coffee and knowing that they, like me, were onto a good thing. 

I did my weekly shop in Booths and had to exercise considerable self-restraint not to buy more than I could possibly eat in a week.  I skipped out with 7 kilos of strawberries for £10, strawberries from out the back, slightly past their pristine best but perfect for the afternoon's plans for jam.

As I was leaving I bumped into José Pizarro in his chef's whites come to collect that day's supplies and talk shop with Tony Booth.  With his beautiful restaurant and a wide range of wonderful produce just around the corner, I am sure that he too knows that he is onto a good thing. 



Strawberries on a rolling boil



Strawberry jam

A mind of its own

The garden is suffering from neglect.  The summer season has arrived (think Chelsea, Ascot, Wimbledon; the reality is wedding, hen weekend, wedding, hen weekend, wedding) and I am spending glorious weekend after glorious weekend sipping champagne in other peoples' gardens, gardens which have been spruced, pruned, weeded and manicured within an inch of their lives for the Big Day.  The result is that my own garden has run amok.

Audrey II of the lettuce world?

The lettuce, spinach and chard are bolting.  The rocket and basil are in flower.  The wigwams of peas are dripping with swollen pods which I have not had time to pick.  And the strawberry plants are coloured red by their cheery cargo, now overripening in every additional day's sun .  And I do not have the time to harvest the garden's (un)seasonal bounty or provide it with the love and attention to which it has grown accustomed.    As the current plants exhaust themselves ahead of schedule, I am gripped with panic and a urgent need to re-sow in order to ensure a steady supply the whole summer long.

Peas ready for picking

This unprecedented behaviour (for June) has, I think, been caused by the warm weather.  Yet, the weather was not warm enough to ensure that the nuptial sweet peas were ready for Paul's and Ellie's nuptials on 21 May 2011.  Covered in buds, their development was halted by the cooler temperatures of the preceding ten days and the buds taunted me but refused to open.  In desperation, I considered a number of options (kindly proffered by friends and family who had been eagerly following the sweet peas' progress) including heat lamps and the suggestion made (by the bride) that I bring all eight of the enormous pots of sweet peas inside, turned my heating onto maximum and left the lights on overnight in order to create hothouse conditions.  After some discussion it was reluctantly agreed that these options were prohibitive, primarily on the grounds of cost and environmental impact but also concern that the use of heat lamps in my corner of south-east London might prompt suspicion from the authorities as to the legality of what I was growing.  So instead I (and the bride) came to terms with the disappointment of my failure and I prepared myself for the knowing comments from the smug grannies on the ensuing Saturday (http://tastebuds-kitchengarden.blogspot.com/2011/02/sweet-peas-and-moonwalkers.html). 

The sweet peas are a useful reminder that the garden's joyful development is, in most respects, out of my control (the lettuce, a reminder that it is in fact out of control?).  Although I am sometimes forced to quash the rising sense of alarm caused by the realisation that I have not done everything on my horticultural 'to do' list, the garden provides a healthy opposition to the orderliness of my full time job.  Whilst I can happily while away hours 'working' in the garden, removing offending weeds and evicting gluttonous slugs and snails (and ticking items off that list), all of which risk threatening the working order of my garden, I do not really want to tame it. 

I want the beds to be thick with flowers, not standing neatly to attention but cavorting wildly through the beds.  I want the vegetables to grow in an unbridled fashion, unfettered by the boundaries laid down by a strict planting plan (for I will only benefit from their unruly abundance).  I admired the free-spirited strawberry who last year made a bid for freedom from the confines of the strawberries' raised bed and sent a runner over the top and into the grass.  I applauded the strawberry's tenancy and joie de vivre (although I obviously could not allow him to stay there and trans-planted him to a more apt location back in the strawberries' bed).

The recipes this week are in recognition of the garden's hearty abundance. The first, pearl barley, pea and lettuce risotto, offers a refreshing and alternative use for lettuce, so often thought of in relation only to salad, its cooked qualities largely unsung (the just wilted lettuce provides the perfect complement to the crisp sweetness of the peas and the fresh bite of the lemony pearl barley). 

The second is a strawberry cheesecake cake (the original recipe is borrowed from the Hummingbird Bakery's strawberry cheesecake cupcake) which I made at the weekend for my local Big Lunch and which seemed to go down quite well. 

Pearl barley, pea and lettuce risotto
(I ate this just as it is but it would also be delicious with white fish or roast chicken)

60g pearl barley

1 clove of garlic, crushed

Olive oil

Frozen peas

1 courgette, diced

Vegetable stock

1 lemon

Lettuce, roughly chopped

Cook the pearl barley according to the instructions (or approximately 15 minutes in a pressure cooker).  Rinse in cold water.

Heat the olive oil gently in a frying pan and add the peas, courgette and garlic.  Fry gently until the vegetables are just beginning to colour.  Add the pearl barley and a couple of ladles of stock.  Simmer and as the stock evaporates, add another ladle of stock making sure that it does not dry out. 
Once the vegetables are cooked al dente, add a squeeze of lemon and stir through the chopped lettuce.  Season with salt and pepper. 

Strawberry cheesecake cake

240g plain flour

280g caster sugar

3 tsp baking powder

a pinch of salt

80g unsalted butter (at room temperature)

240ml whole milk

1 tsp vanilla extract

2 eggs

Strawberries, chopped into small pieces

For the icing

150g icing sugar

25g unsalted butter (at room temperature)

75g cream cheese

4 digestive biscuits

Preheat the oven to 170 degrees C.
Beat the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt and butter until combined.  Pour in the milk and vanilla extract and beat until smooth.  Add the egg and beat until combined. 
Line the cake tin with baking parchment (I used a 25cm square tin) and grease the sides with butter.  Cover the base of the tin with the strawberry pieces.  Spoon the cake mixture over the top.  Bake in the pre-heated oven for 30-40 minutes until light golden and a skewer comes out clean. 
Leave the cake to cool in the tin for 10 minutes and then turn out onto a wire rack (sponge side down).  Gently peel off the baking parchment and allow to cool.

To make the icing, beat the icing sugar and butter until well mixed.  Add the cream cheese and beat until combined (be careful not to overbeat or the mixture will become runny).  Blitz the digestive biscuits in food processor (or in a sandwich bag with a rolling pin) until finely ground.

Once cool, place the cake on a plate, sponge side up.  Spoon the icing over the top of the cake and spread to cover the cake.  Arrange extra pieces of strawberry on top.  Finish with a sprinkling of crushed digestive biscuits. 

Enjoy x

The sweet peas burst into pastel scented flower on the Wednesday following the wedding and are now liberally adorned around my garden and my house...

Street food suppers

This week my feet have barely touched the ground, or the inside of my flat.  Last week was the same.  With court hearings looming and understandably anxious clients, I have had a string of long days and late nights (and even two nine and a half hour meetings on consecutive days).  By the time I have reached the comfort of my front door at the end of the day, breakfast but a distant memory, I have needed dinner within minutes.

In weeks like these (they do not happen that often thank goodness), I sometimes make the mistake of substituting supper for cereal.  But even a bowl of my homemade, packed with nuts and fruit, muesli leaves me feeling dissatisfied, cheated of dinner and adds to the general malaise caused by long hours, stress of the work and lack of sleep (a feeling quite at odds with the satisfaction of an early morning bowl of the same muesli).

So this week, despite the long hours and tiredness levels hitting high on the lack of sleep scale (and a social life resigned to the shredder when the week began), I determined to cook properly.  Which is not to say I was expecting anything fancy, just fresh, homecooked food each night, in order to keep my spirits raised and prevent myself plunging into the depths of despair generally caused when deprived of dinner (or anything that can legitimately be called dinner) for an extended period of time (by which I mean more than one night). 

The answer was street food.  Food that could be put together quickly and easily with the minimum of fuss, but was packed with fresh ingredients and mouthfuls of flavour.  My recipes took me from south-east London to the streets of Ho Chi Minh City, Marrakech and back to London again.  Stuffed pitta breads, a Thai noodle and prawn salad and the final recipe, which is my version of English street food, slow roast tomato pesto and poached egg on toast. 

The English do not have a strong culture of street food (unless you count hotdogs and they're American...).  We play host to a fine array of street food from all four corners of the globe (as is in evidence at The Rye pub on Peckham Rye Common this week and next, which is showcasing 16 days of fantastic street food courtesy of Eat Street.  I popped by on by way home on Wednesday when I was too speechlessly tired to cook and was treated to a delicious dinner of tacos laden with tender, juicy, sweet pork marinated in orange and achiote with tomato and chilli sauce, followed by the most wickedly wonderful chocolate brownie sundae - with nutella ice cream- thanks to Buen Provecho and Choc Star respectively) but we do not have our own signature brand of street food.  Below are the recipes I've cooked this week, including my inspiration for English street food - a big hunk of English bread, topped with slow roast tomato pesto and finished off with a poached egg (a sort of posh English breakfast adapted for street eating).  All of the recipes can be put together in minutes and will brighten even the hardest of working days. 

Enjoy x

Carrot, beetroot, radicchio and feta salad with a coriander and cumin dressing

1 carrot
1 beetroot, cooked

Radicchio leaves

Feta

1 lemon

1 tsp coriander seeds

1 tsp cumin seeds

1 tbsp sesame seeds

Olive oil

2 pitta breads

Grate the carrot and the beetroot and chop the radicchio finely.  Chop the feta into small chunks.

To make the dressing, crush the cumin seeds in a pestle and mortar and lightly dry fry them.  Crush the coriander seeds.  In a jar/jug/mug mix the cumin and coriander seeds with a squeeze of lemon juice and approximately three times as much olive oil.  Season.

Dry fry the sesame seeds.  Arrange the carrot, beetroot, radicchio and feta on a plate.  Pour over the dressing and top with the toasted sesame seeds.  Toast the pittas and serve.

Prawn and glass noodle salad

1 bundle glass noodles

1 carrot

Handful of baby spinach leaves

Cucumber

Mint

Coriander

Handful of raw prawns

Zest and juice of 2 limes
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1/2 tsp sugar
1/2 clove of garlic, crushed
1 red chilli, deseeded and finely sliced
A dribble of fish sauce

Zest and juice the limes.  Marinate the prawns in the zest and a tablespoon of juice (just while you are preparing the salad).
To make the dressing, mix 2 tablespons of lime juice with 2 tablespoons of olive oil, 1 tablespoon of soy sauce, the sugar, garlic, chilli and a dribble of fish sauce.  Adjust the lime juice and olive oil to taste.

Slice the carrot into thin ribbons using a vegetable peeler.  Chop the cucumber into thin strips.  Finely chop the mint and coriander.

Cook the noodles according to the instructions.  Fry the prawns for a couple of minutes until pink.
Arrange the spinach, carrot, noodles and cucumber in a bowl.  Pour over the dressing.  Top with the cooked prawns, mint and coriander.

Slow roast tomato pesto and poached egg on toast
This recipe uses slow roasted tomatoes, which are best cooked in the oven on a very low heat for several hours.  This is obviously not practical after a long day so cook the tomatoes the weekend before.  They will keep in the fridge for a couple of weeks. 

20 cherry tomatoes

Dried oregano

Olive oil

Parmesan, grated
1 garlic clove
Basil leaves
Olive oil
2 eggs
Bread for toast

Preheat the oven to 90 degrees C.  Half the cherry tomatoes and place, cut side up, on a baking tray lined with baking parchment.  Sprinkle over some dried oregano, a drizzle of olive oil, salt and pepper.  Cook for 4-5 hours until the tomatoes have dried and shrunk and have an intense and sweet tomatoey flavour.  Leave to cool and store in the fridge until needed.

To make the pesto blitz the tomatoes with a small handful of grated parmesan, 1 crushed clove of garlic and a few glugs of olive oil.  Season with salt and pepper and stir in some finely chopped basil. 

Bring a pan of water to the boil and add a splash of white wine vinegar.  Reduce the heat to the lowest possible setting so the water is calm.  Break an egg into a ladle and then holding the ladle just above the surface of the water tip the egg very gently into the water.  Repeat with the second egg.  Leave the eggs until the white is set.

Toast the bread.  Top with the pesto and a poached egg.  Season.  Smile.  Sleep.

Zzz zzz zzz

Here comes the sun, little darling?

Tulips in bloom

With a spring in its step, summer strode into our gardens weeks ahead of schedule at the beginning of April.  The daffodils were barely over, the tulips were still fresh faced, filling the garden with a spring song after winter's long lament.  And then overnight spring became summer.

And whilst there have been significant national and international events gracing the front pages in recent weeks - the Royal wedding, the death of Osama bin Laden, the referendum on the Alternative Vote to name but a few - the unseasonal sunshine has given us the excuse to indulge in that perenially British preoccupation of talking about the weather.  And rightly so.

For whilst the sunny weather has been gleefully soaked up by beachgoers, picnicers, street party organisers and Waitrose shareholders over the glut of Bank Holiday weekends for which this period shall no doubt be first and foremost remembered (Waitrose sales were up 23.1% as compared to last year's Easter break, with the sale of plastic spoons(!) up 900% on last year), it also prompts uncomfortable questions about climate change which affect us all.  Are the soaring April temperatures yet another manifestation of the impact global warming is having on our precious planet?  And the lack of rain?  Presumably we are on course for a hosepipe ban long before most of us would have normally even thought about getting our shorts out of the cupboard?  Farmers too have voiced concern that the lack of rain (the south east has been hardest hit receiving only 10% of the rainfall usually expected at this time of year) risks dramatically reducing harvests and may cause a shortage of crops needed to feed livestock.

The first sweet pea

On a more micro level, the sunny weather and lack of rain has caused confusion in my corner of south-east London (where temperatures reached a staggering 27.8 degrees celcius on 23 April 2011): my white sprouting broccoli bolted at the first sign of summer's early arrival; the nuptial sweet peas (which I offered to grow for my friends', Paul and Ellie's, very English wedding on 21 May) have reached the tops of their wigwams and against all the odds (and everyone else's pessimistic predictions) I picked their first flower yesterday (the task of producing flowering sweet peas by 21 May seeming much less ambitious/unrealistic after the sunshine of the last few weeks) (admittedly I have picked the first and only flower but with 2 weeks still to go I am hopeful that I will still be vindicated); and whilst mowing has already become a regular weekend commitment, the grass is looking parched, its ragged, browning leaves more usually associated with August rather than April.

Strawberries and flowers

And in my vegetable garden, the warm weather has given rise to unreasonable expectations.  We are in fact on the brink between winter and summer when the winter crops are over and the summer ones are yet to fill their space.  And yet I feel disappointed that I cannot subsist entirely from what I grow.  I have to remind myself that it is only April (now May) and I have to give the garden a chance to grow.

And the early signs are looking good (subject to getting rain): I have a steady supply of rocket, lettuce, mizuna, spinach and chard, sown inside in window boxes at the beginning of the year and planted out as soon as the seedlings were big enough to handle the still cold nights; my basil and parsley are thriving in the greenhouse and are a very welcome summery addition to the hardier herbs in the garden (oregano, thyme, sage, chives, marjoram and rosemary) and to my cooking; the peas are looking promising and are already in flower; the french beans germinated indoors and are now outside enjoying steady growth (so long as they are protected from the nightly ravages of the marauding snails from my neighbour's garden who march across our border under cover of darkness); the rhubarb continues to keep me in compote and cake; the strawberries are pert and showy wth a tantalising display of flowers and green fruit; and the beetroot, tomatoes and chicory all seem to be en route to summer glory.

Pea flowers

Lettuce and chard

The other unparalled joy of this time of year, for gardeners lucky enough to have the space for a bed and for the rest of us who are lucky enough to get our hands of some of their tender, green spears, is the arrival of British asparagus.  With only a few short weeks to indulge in its divine goodness (the season only lasts from May to mid-June), I have been taking every opportunity I can to cook with it.  Equally good steamed, boiled, grilled, fried or roasted, below are a couple of the recipes I have been cooking, using what's in the garden to complement this wonderfully British vegetable (there are lots more fantastic recipes ideas at http://www.british-asparagus.co.uk/).

Soft boiled egg with asparagus soldiers
(makes a cheeky starter or a wonderfully easy week night supper)

Eggs

Asparagus

Toast

Place the eggs in a pan of boiling water (use eggs at room temperature if possible to prevent their shells from cracking in the hot water) and simmer for 6 minutes. 

Trim the woody ends off the asparagus.  Steam the stems for 2-3 minutes until just tender. 

 Place the eggs in egg cups.  Take off the tops and season the yolk.  Dunk your asparagus spears!

Use buttered (sourdough) toast to mop up any leftover eggy, asparagus mess.

Grilled asparagus with olive oil, lemon juice and parmesan shavings

Mix 1 part lemon juice to 3 parts olive oil.

Griddle or fry the asparagus spears until tender.  Whilst warm pour over the dressing and season with salt and pepper.  Top with parmesan shavings.

Summer couscous

Asparagus

Rocket, roughly chopped.

Broad beans

Mint, finely chopped

Parsley, finely chopped

Lemon juice

Olive oil

Couscous

Zest the lemons with a lemon zester (so you have curled strips of zest).  Juice the lemons and mix 1 part lemon juice and 3 parts olive oil (you will need quite a lot of dressing for this recipe as the couscous will absorb it).  Add the strips of zest and season.

Trim the woody ends of the aspargus and discard.  Remove the tips (about 5cm) and put to one side.  Chop the remaining section of the spears into 1cm pieces.  Boil or steam until just tender.  Drain and refresh in cold water (to stop the cooking process). 

Cook the broad beans in boiling water.  Drain and refresh under cold water.  Pod the beans (if you can't be bothered or have not got time, it will taste equally good with unpodded beans).

Cook the couscous according to the instructions.

In a bowl, mix the couscous, rocket, cooked asparagus, broad beans mint and parsley and pour over the dressing. 

Griddle or fry the asparagus tips in olive oil until just tender and serve on top of the couscous.

3 of the 8 pots of nuptial sweet peas

Food to share

Last Friday I cooked dinner for friends.  Twelve friends in fact.  The number only striking in relation to the size of my kitchen (it is afterall a one bedroom flat) rather than the amount of food required for twelve hungry friends on a Friday night. 

I have not cooked for friends enough recently.  Maybe for one or two, or my nearest and dearest local three, but not supper for that indescribably important group of people that make up my London family.  And Friday evening lends itself so well to a long and late supper, the promise of the whole weekend ahead, to recover, to catch up on sleep and to feel lucky to have had the good company, good (and bad) chat of that wonderful group of people who put the world to rights around my kitchen table on Friday night.   

I made sharing salads to start: purple sprouting broccoli with orange and anchovy dressing; mozzarella with roasted red chilli, lemon, basil and olive oil; new potato, rocket, anchovy and chilli salad; and artichoke hearts wrapped in prosciutto.

Big plates to share are my favourite way to cook.  Food to be passed around, drawing people into conversation and away from their working weeks.  It enables friends who have not met before to chat over a large plate of (hopefully) something tasty, to serve each other and sets a wonderfully informal tone to the evening (important when dinner guests are often initially still dealing with the aftermath of the London working week).  Sharing plates provide the perfect excuse to serve an excitement of flavours, complementary, and seasonal, the possibilities are endlessly adaptable.

Next, I served homemade papardelle, with a broad bean sauce and topped with podded broad beans, rocket and pecorino.  It was not a recipe I had cooked before (rash and foolhardy to embark on a new recipe when cooking for twelve on a Friday night...).  Whilst the result was satisfactory, the preparation was overly involved and not my usual genre of cooking (albeit not helped by my limited access to the hob once everyone was seated around my kitchen table) and I cannot see myself making it again in a hurry (there are so many other simple and delicious broad bean recipes which are far more edibly appealing).   I have not therefore included it below but instead have included a recipe for summer linguine which I made last week and which has ample opportunity for improvisation depending on what you have growing in the garden.

For pudding, I revisited an old family favourite: rhubarb and orange meringue.  Last enjoyed when my sisters and I were still young enough to care keenly as to who would get to lick the bowl and who would have the treat of twisting their tongue around the spokes of our mother's Kenwood whisk, this recipe is an 1980s design that tastes as good today as it did to our childish palates then.  Grateful to Sami Tamimi and Yotam Ottolenghi for making meringues acceptable again, this was the perfect dish to showcase my homegrown rhubarb.

I meant to take photographs of each dish but my good intentions were lost amongst the conversation, wine and general high spirits.  So I have left in the slideshow from last week, showing my garden one year on from the planting of its first plants this time last year.

Happy Easter x

P.S. Did I mention the rhubarb and campari bellinis we had to start...add a splash (or more) of campari to the rhubarb syrup in February's 'Rhubarb really recommended' post and serve with processco/cava etc.

Purple sprouting broccoli with anchovy and orange dressing

675g purple (or white) sprouting broccoli
4 tablespoons olive oil
5 tinned anchovy fillets, chopped
2 cloves of garlic, sliced
Zest and juice of half an orange
Juice of half a lemon
Black pepper

Warm the olive oil in a pan.  Add the anchovy and garlic and fry very gently, mashing in the anhovy until it has dissolved and the garlic is lightly coloured. Take off the heat and stir in the orange zest and juice and the lemon juice. Season with lots of black pepper (no salt as the anchovies are salty enough).

Steam the broccoli.  Pour over the dressing whilst the broccoli is still warm.

This recipe is borrowed from Sophie Grigson whose seasonal recipes never fail to please.  The broccoli would be equally tasty tossed in the lemon, anchovy and mustard dressing in March's 'Broccoli at last' post.

Mozzarella, roasted red chill, basil, lemon and olive oil

4 red chillis (the long ones not the little fiery birds' eye ones)
2 lemons
A big handful of basil
4 balls of mozzarella
Olive oil

Pierce the chillies and place under the grill until blackened all over.  Remove from the grill and place in a bowl with a plate on top (the steam will make the chillies shrink and the skins come easily away).  Remove the seeds and skins and tearibbonsr or cut the chillies into fine strips.

Tear the mozzarella into pieces and arrange on a plate.  Dress with the ribbons of chilli, basil leaves, lemon zest, a squeeze of lemon juice, olive oil and salt and pepper.

New potato, anchocy, rocket and chilli salad
(courtesy of River Cafe)

750g new potatoes, cut into halves
3 tablespoons capers
12 anchovy fillets
4 tablespoons of rocket
Juice of 2 lemons
2 red chillies, deseeded and finely sliced
Olive oil

Marinate the anchovies in the juice of 1 lemon and sprinkle with black pepper.
Cook the potatoes and add the capers, chillies, anchovy mixture and lots of olive oil.  When ready to serve stir in the rocket and season to taste.

Artichoke hearts wrapped in prosciutto

Slice each piece of prosciutoo length-ways. Chop the artichoke hearts into quarters and wrap each quarter with a piece of prosciutto.

Summer linguine

115g pinenuts
Zest and juice of 2 lemons
1 large bunch of fresh parsley or basil, half finely chopped
215ml olive oil
150 parmesan, finely grated
50g pecorino, finely grated
500g linguine
Salt and pepper

Smash up half the pinenuts until smooth and place in a heatproof bowl with the remaining pinenuts, lemon zest and juice, chopped parsley, olive oil, pecorino and parmesan. Season with black pepper and stir to combine.

Cook the linguine in salted boiling water.
Whilst the linguine is cooking, heat the sauce gently over a pan of boiling water.  Add a ladleful of the pasta water to the sauce to loosen it.
Drain the pasta (reserving a cupful of the water) and stir through the sauce (add a little more of the pasta water if the sauce is too think).  Serve with extra shavings of parmesan and the remaining parsley.

This is a Jamie Oliver recipe and, as is often Jamie's style, it is helpfully open to variation.  You could use a mixture of herbs for this recipe: parsley, basil, oregano, marjoram, sorrel.  You can also use any combination of parmesan and pecorino or 200g of one.

Rhubarb and orange meringue

300g rhubarb, cut into 2cm pieces
150g sponge fingers, halved
50g caster sugar
2 tablespoons water
Zest and juice of 1 orange
A pinch of cinammon

For the meringue
2 egg whites
100g caster sugar

Preheat the oven to 180C.
Layer the sponge fingers then the rhubarb in an ovenproof dish.  Sprinkle over half the sugar, cinnamon, orange juice and zest.  Layer again with the remaining sponge fingers, rhubarb, sugar, cinnamon, juice and zest.  Add the water.
Cover and bake for 40 minutes until the rhubarb is soft.
Whisk the egg whites until they form stiff peaks.  Whisk in the sugar, one spoonful at a time.  Spoon the egg whie mix (with a metal spoon) over the fruit and cook for a further 10-12 minutes until the meringue has formed a shell and is light golden brown.

In the beginning or Never give up

At the end of 2009 I bought a small but perfectly formed flat in south east London with a small but not yet perfectly formed garden.  The garden was dominated by a large and delapidated shed, a vast expanse of decking and a monotony of shale (it had presumably been designed as a low maintenance urban space but it was not a space I could imagine anyone wanting to sit in).  The garden had potential but that potential was well-hidden and would clearly take some unearthing.



In the beginning...

The shed had known better days.  Once the pride and joy of a former owner, it had been lovingly fitted out with workbenches, toolracks, electric lighting and shelves hosting an antiquated collection of rusty tools and half-used pots of paint.  Whilst the outside had little to commend it, inside it smelled of sunshine on wood, the warm, comfortable, musty smell of your Grandad's toolshed.  However, long neglected, the shed had aged and a large hole in the roof let in the rain where it was absorbed by the chipboard walls and collected in pools in the electric lighting.  Beyond repair, it was only a matter of time before the shed would be little more than a crumbly heap at the bottom of the garden.

The removal of the shed heralded the beginning of my gardening adventure.  It was start of a chain reaction that marked my transformation from novice windowbox grower to garden devotee with aspirations of self-sufficiency, ideas bigger than my garden, a willing slave to the sowing, planting and watering demands of the season. 

The garden's transformation has been more eventful.  The shed, a 70s relic, turned out to be built from asbestos.  I unfortunately did not discover this until I tried to take it down with the help of some (very good) friends.  Our enthusiasm for the task was terminally hampered by the sight of the little silver fibres glinting menacingly in the morning sun.  The shed had to be professionally removed and disposed of (at horrible expense) by men in white coats, face masks etc. 

Shed gone but still a lot of work to do

The removal of the shed created a space, but a space still filled with concrete posts, metal piping, shale and corrugated iron.  I wanted to create a garden.  However, at 5ft 2" and with only a bicycle for transport, the task of transforming my urban jungle into a verdant oasis at times seemed overwhelming.  Each weekend provided a new challenge as my small patch of London inched its way towards becoming a garden.  Some of the highs and lows of the developmental process included:

The hateful trolley

- pushing a trolley twice the length and three times the weight of a supermarket trolley and laden with 3m long wooden planks (for raised beds) the one kilometer home from the timber merchant.  The trolley had a mule-like will of its own and once set on its chosen trajectory, the combined weight of the trolley plus wood made it almost impossible to stop.  Lurching from pavement to road, it was a hazard to pedestrians and parked cars alike.  Once home, tearful, my arms spent, I unloaded the wood and had to push the hateful trolley the long kilometer back to the timber merchant;

- filling rubble sack after rubble sack after rubble sack with handful after handful after handful of shale (fifty-eight sacks in total);

- carrying a 3m x 1.5m sheet of plywood home from the timber merchant (the trolley was unavailable...).  A man stopped in his car and offered to help, an offer I think he regretted his offer when he realised how far I still had to go.  We struggled with it between us.  At the front door I struggled to hold back tears, overwhelmed by the unexpected kindness of strangers;

- a battle between my hacksaw and the television aerial.  The aerial was atop an 18 foot high metal mast positioned half way down the garden.  The bottom half of the mast had been thoughtfully painted green to blend in with the (non-existent) grass, whilst the top half was blue...  The colour scheme was, unsurprisingly, insufficient to disguise the fact that there was a 18 foot high metal mast in the middle of the garden.  On Easter Sunday, in a rash moment of determination to rid my garden of the final ties to its industrial past, I hacksawed down the mast's supporting structure (more metal piping) and, using my body weight as lever, pulled the mast down, narrowly missing the house.  Encouraged by my foolish success, I hacksawed up the mast and aerial, only afterwards pausing to question the likely risk of electrocution by television aerial.

I dug up concrete posts, refenced one side of the garden (replacing the existing fence which it transpired was also built from asbestos panels...), rotivated, raked, tilled and turfed, built raised beds and a greenhouse, glazed the greenhouse (never again) and carried innumerable bags of compost and manure from the garden centre to the garden in a rucksack on my bicycle.

And then it was summer.

And the garden blossomed and bore fruit (and vegetables) and I cooked for friends from whatever the garden offered and we sat outside and marvelled at how lucky we were to have our very own patch of earth in London.

June 2010