We’ve been away from the vegetable garden for the last few weekends, fulfilling a slave auction promise to cook for a garden party and a weekend-long leaving party for Bernie and Jude. For the garden party, we agreed with the hostess to create a spring themed feast for her 50 guests – easy!
We lifted and adapted recipes from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Sarah Raven, and Chris at Chateau Lartigolle, where Joey and Phil’s had their gorgeous wedding last year. Here are a few of our favourite recipes from the garden party.
Recipe: Pea and Mint Falafel
500g peas (frozen work vey well)
3 eggs (thank you Charles, Dolly and Bellinda)
100g sourdough breadcrumbs
Half a dozen shallots, finely chopped
3 to 4 tablespoons of ground cumin and sesame seeds toasted
3 to 4 medium chilies finely chopped without seeds
Good olive oil to bind and vegetable oil to fry
Quickly cook the peas. Soften the shallots. Mix all the ingredients together and blitz – too coarse and they will fall apart when cooking, too fine and you’ll lose the texture. Shape the mixture with two spoons to two-bite pieces. Shallow fry in batch on a medium heat – aim for a golden finish, when you have completed that process bake all together on sheets in a hot oven. Serve warm or cold, but save some in the fridge for a midnight snack.
Recipe: Wild Salsa Verde with Spring Vegetable Crudités
1 bunch of sorrel
1 bunch of ransoms (wild garlic)
1 bunch of parsley
1 bunch of mint
3 large gherkins rinsed
A handful of salted capers well rinsed
Juice of a lemon
750 ml rapeseed/olive oil
Blitz all the ingredients together adding the oil as you go to help the mixing. Mix it to the consistency of runny pesto to ensure you get a nice even coating on the crudités. Slice and arrange you crudités as elegantly as possible – make sure they are bone dry when serving otherwise the oily Salsa Verde with not stick on dipping.
Recipe: Beetroot Relish
1kg fresh beetroot
500ml red wine vinegar
100g brown sugar
Bouquet garnet of star anise, fresh bay and thyme
A very large handful of fresh dill
Peel and dice the beetroot very finely, and add them to a large panel with the vinegar, sugar and bouquet garnet. Bring to the boil and simmer until the beetroot start to soften – 1 ½ hours should be right. Take off the heat and allow to cool. Finely chop the dill and add when cooled. We served this with smoked mackerel pate on homemade Rona Oatcakes from the River Cottage Everyday cook book.
I’ll leave it to Nicholas to tell you how it went.
Following the success of growing Runner Beans and Climbing French Beans up wigwams in containers last year, these two vegatables were high on our agenda again this year. Last summer we won a first prize for five Runner Beans. This year we want to do the same, but also win the covetted longest Runner Bean prize at the Spitalfields Show. We’ve allotted them even more space and root run by growing them at the back of the raised beds, freshly manured last winter.
I hope you had a glorious bank holiday and you managed to steal a couple of hours in the sunshine? Here in Stoke Newington one minute it was raining, the next it was sunny and then came the hail stones! Spring weather – you’ve got to love it.
We did get a good few hours in the garden on Monday and devoted some time to the Runner Beans and French Beans that we we started off early indoors in old soup pots. I think they are a truely stunning vegetable plant.
Thanks to our lovely friends Emma and Andy and their harvested bamboo canes from their garden in Highbury we created this magnificent bean support to fixed in at the back of the raised bed.
Once our Runner Beans, Achievement Merit and Polestar , are 6 to 7 foot tall I think they will look rather beautiful cascading over the raised bed, until then it’s a tin of beans on toast.
With a 95% germination rate we now have a few too many courgettes, Soleil F1 hybrid and F1 Ambassador. Drop us a note if you fancy some well looked after and loved plants lings in need of a good home.
With the winter preparation of the vegetable garden complete and the initial sowings done, we took some time off over Easter and headed to Waltham Abbey on the search for nettles. Nettle beer, nettle soup and nettle quiche were all on the menu. The trick is to get to the nettles before the grubs and dogs.
Having collected over two large baskets we had to wash the nettles in the bath, separating them into two batches. The first batch was destined for cooking; the leaves were separated from the stalks, cleaned and drained. These were cooked like spinach in a dry pan until wilted. The reduced leaves were squeezed dry and finely chopped before freezing for later use; the run-off liquid saved and put to one side. These leaves were used in our Spring Brunch on Grand National day.
The remaining nettle tops, about 3 carrier backs full, plus the stalks and saved liquid from the above process were used for making beer. Nettle beer is super simple to make – ours turned out wonderfully fizzy and not unlike sweet cider. The basic recipe below is based on the one appearing on the River Cottage website.
Ingredients
3 bags of nettles (but we also added the extra liquid above)
30 litres of water
Juice of 3 lemons and 3 oranges
4.5kg of sugar
150g of cream of tartar
45g (3x bags) of brewers yeast for beer prepared as instructed
Equipment
Large sauce pans Muslin (sterilise in boiling water)
Fermentation bucket with lid (sterilised with whisky)
Funnel and jug for bottling or a pipe (sterilised with whisky)
Bottles (swing tops of with caps)
Process
Bring the water to boil on the hob in a large pan (or several)
Take of the heat and add the nettles to make a tea and allow to cool to blood temperature
Strain the cooled liquid through a clean unbleached muslin cloth into the container you intend to begin fermentation
Stir in the sugar until completely dissolved then add the orange and lemon juice and cream of tartar
Cool further and then add the brewers yeast, cover and store in an even temperature for 3 days
When ready to bottle, skim the scum off and be careful not to disturb the sediment at the bottom of the container.
Your nettle beer it should be ready to drink within a couple of weeks and should be drunk fresh within a few months. Be careful when opening – we nearly took the kitchen roof off.
Adding chickens to the vegetable garden has been a pipe dream for a long time, but this weekend we did it. We have finally been blessed with 3 girls, meet Belinda, Dolly and Charles – our new and rather wonderful chickens.
Belinda
On a glorious spring Sunday we headed down to Golden Valley Poultry just south of Guildford on the A3, thanks to Sarah and Al, their car and a van from Street Car.
Dolly (left), Charles (right), Belinda (face down)
At the farm we were greeting by the most adorable goat who took a shine to Sarah and actually ended up on her knee, there were also some young geese and a little pony playing in the field. After a look around the farm we headed to the chicken house where we had to pick our girls.
I was first and instantly knew I wanted the Speckled hen that was feisty and big (Belinda). Sarah and Al were next and went for a smaller Silverlink with beautiful white feathers (Dolly). Stephen was last to choose and after careful consultation with the very helpful staff decided on a Black Rock (Charles).
We then got fixed up with a chicken house and decided on a double height triangle shape with the nesting box at the top and the run underneath. Much like the horse we all used in PE when we were little. And the staff helped us with the feeders, food and other paraphernalia one needs for healthy happy hens.
The 3 chooks travelled in the car with Sarah and I while Stephen and Al took the house home. Here is the moment the girls landed in their new home…
So with in the region of 900 eggs a year I think I have turned my back to shop bought eggs for good.
George William Smurthwaite, my grandfather, was the man that inspired my love of gardening. He was the Verger of St Peter’s Church Elwick, a Manager at the Hartlepool steal works and served in the RAF from 1942-47. He met my grandmother Genevieve Radagon Blanche Bidot whilst serving with the RAF attaché in France in 1946 and they married in on 29 March 1947.
I grew up following him around his vegetable garden and the churchyard as he worked and spent hours with him in his sheds. He always let me have a go at any task – he had me using a hatchet to split kindling by the time I was 8 years old.
I always try to take the same care and discipline to gardening that he did – a fine tilth and straight lines for sowing, tools sparkling clean at the end of the day. I have happy memories of working next to him in the garden.
As soon as I was old enough to keep up, he would take me on day-long rambles through the countryside around Elwick with his dog Vanda. He would teach me about the wildlife along the way and made sure I had a respect for the countryside. I think he took a lot of pleasure from sharing his knowledge, although he would always complain that all the noise I made, would scare off any wildlife for miles around.
I used to love helping him prepare the church for a service or wedding – setting out the hymns, hoovering and putting out the hymn books and bibles. The smell of the stable where he kept the mowers is one of my fondest childhood memories – cut grass, petrol and sweat. Every Sunday after church the vicar and friends woudl come round for teacakes and my Nana’s homemade made maids of honour and scones. Then after lunch we would go visiting their friends or for drives in the countryside. All wonderfully Church of England.
My Grandfather always found new things to occupy me with during school holidays, whether it was a trip to an airshow like Duxford or Leaming or carpet bolwes in the village, there was always something new.
Despite spending many days and weeks sitting on Hartlepool Pier fishing for mackerel or Loch Pityoulish for pike and brown trout, I don’t think we ever caught a fish worth keeping. I always had much more luck at the arcades on SeatonCarew – where he would give me counting bags laden with 1 and 2 pennies.
Most of all I will remember my grandfather being a kind man and a devoted husband that loved his family. He put them first before everything else. Throughout my life, he has been more than just a grandfather and I owe him a debt that could never be repaid.
George William Smurthwaite, known to everyone as Bill, passed away 18 March 2010. He had been married to my Nana, Genevieve for 63 years.
When the clocks change and we finally get those longer days I think it is safe to say there is a shift. More people are out and about, there is a new energy in the air and more and more people are up for drinks after work – a sure sign of the spring/summer season.. If there was every a time to get excited about your veg patch, sowing your vegetable seeds and getting started, now is the time.
We haven’t been in town for the past week so when we arrived back in London this weekend it was straight out into the garden. Due to the weather and this and that we have been slightly behind in our direct sowing, but with the raised beds prepped and seeds categorised by month (Stephen’s doing) this was the Sunday that we would sow the majority of our seeds for our summer crop.
You may remember from a previous post that we sowed our peas a few weeks ago, well sadly only two of our peas germinated from this original sowing so we decided to start afresh and sow awhole new set this time round. I am positive they will all germinaed this time and we’ll be popping peas out of thier pods in a couple of months. We also sowed our carrots, radishes, lettuce, spring onions, spinach and some more broad beans. One final note before I go – we tasted our very first purple sprouting broccoli of the season this weekend. After over a year in the ground I am very happy to report that our plants have started to produce those beautiful purple heads and for the next few weeks we will be enjoying their fabulousness. Yum Yum.
Our veg patch didn’t receive much hands-on attention this weekend as we weren’t in London tending to our seedlings but up in Yorkshire having a weekend away with my family. We were very lucky with the weather and I think Mam had a nice Mother’s day especially as we took her to the wonderful RHS Harlow Carr on Sunday.
We have heard of Harlow Carr as it has been mentioned on Garden’s Question Time a couple of times, so when my mother said she was keen to go we jumped at the chance. Mam is a member of the RHS so for 3 adults and one child it only cost us £9.50 to get in – bargain. I do wonder about the cost of these places sometimes as for a family to go on a day out entrance fee alone can cost £50 and by the time travel, food etc is included you are looking at £100+ – a lot of money for most families, so I would recommend membership to the RHS if there are a couple of you who would benefit, I think it is only £49 pounds a year and you get a ton of goodies with this annual membership. Anyway with our bargain entrance fee we had a few pennies left so spent them initially in Betty’s tea rooms on lots of yummy cakes and pies and then in the fantastic garden shop and book store, where I think all 4 of us managed to lose an hour or so wandering around.
The gardens themselves are beautiful. As the winter has been such a long and cold one up north many of the flowers and spring bulbs weren’t in full bloom yet but we did see a lovely display of crocuses, miniature irises and snowdrops. I had serious envy of their raised vegetable beds in the kitchen garden just waiting to be filled up with seedlings. One day I with have 25 perfectly formed raised beds! They had a huge bed of rhubarb too which looked like ours (nothing to write home about) so that made me feel better that we ours is actually going to be ok. There was a maze for the kids (and us) to get lost in, a bird watching sanctuary and lovely walks. I am very tempted to go back in the summer as I am sure with all their summer flowers out it will be a magical place.
Even when if it is too cold to sow seed direct there are many useful jobs you can do in the vegetable garden. Turning your compost, adding this to the raised bed, sorting out plants and planning your area is a great way to spend a sunny yet cold day.
Turning the compost, planting the flower bed and some garden visitors…What a glorious week of fine beautiful weather we have had. While the temperature has been struggling some mornings to pass freezing, when the sun is shining as fabulous as it has recently who cares if it is a bit chilly.
Saturday was a day of errands, so we didn’t get a ton of stuff done in the garden, but Sunday was a different story altogether. Stephen and I were up at the crack of dawn and straight out into our little oasis.
One job that hadn’t been done for a year was turning the compost. Unfortunately we don’t have one of those posh compost rotating bins so we just emptied the whole thing into the wheel barrow, used what we wanted for the vegetable garden and put the rest back in. One point to note while doing this exercise – those recyclable bags that you can buy from up-market grocery stores that you pop your vegetable peelings in aren’t really that bio degradable, the one I put in a year ago was still there, almost fully intact. A slightly smelly job, but well worth the effort.
As it was a bit too cold to sow some of our seeds direct, such as the radishes and seed potatoes, I opted to sow another batch of sweet peas, this time some Mr Fothergill’s Tall Mixed we got free from the Gardeners World magazine. These are not in the study/hot house and should see germination in a couple of weeks.
We bought a vast amount of summer bulbs, tubers and plants a couple of weeks ago from Homebase and took advantage of their money saving offers of 3 for 2 etc, so with a variety of dahlia’s, gladioli, red hot pokers and lupins we set about planning and planting the flower bed. The ground was a bit compact from when we last worked the earth so we dug it over again and loosened the compacted soil, and planted what I hope will be a glorious display of colour. It was lovely to see our little visitor – the robin shoot down into the garden as soon as we started working; they really are a gardeners best friend. While I was digging a hole for some alliums Stephen shouted at me to watch my step as right by my foot was Mrs Frog, who looked like she was full of spawn. We carefully put her back into the pond, but not before taking a picture – great one isn’t it. Sadly the robin didn’t hang around for a photo.
I am so sick of the cold, wet and miserable weather, bring on spring immediately if not sooner. Don’t get me wrong I have had a lovely weekend, we had a wonderful brunch at The House in Islington on Saturday relaxing and eating scrumptious food with friends, and I made a yummy marmalade cake today but what I really want is a full day in the garden not just a few moments between the passing showers.
Despite the rain we have managed to get a bit of gardening done. Today the leeks were sown in cell trays, which again have been put in the warm study for germination. Speaking of which I am very happy to report that my sweet peas have popped through (see picture) and the garden peas under the budget cloche in the raised bed have now germinated – a true sign of great things to come. We will be sowing the next batch of both the sweet peas and garden peas in just a couple of weeks.
All of our seedlings have done so well inside; germination is at 100%, wee plants are sprouting up all over the place and we have some really sturdy tomato seedlings. The worry is what will happen when they go outside. We seem to have a regular visitor to the Hackney Veg Garden restaurant – the squirrel. Everyday he comes to feed on the nuts we put out for the birds and just this weekend he devoured a very healthy portion of chard I had re-planted in an old tyre filled with compost and soil. His days are numbered, believe me.
There is more snow forecast for the week ahead, fingers crossed it will be gone by the weekend – just like that squirrel.
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