Hi Friends,
Massively busy time of year for gardeners. If I'm not watering it, feeding it, staking it up & picking it, you can be sure I'm in the kitchen peeling it, chopping it & turning it into tasty things for the months ahead. I have always turned into a sort of greedy squirrel at harvest time, never happier than when the pantry is bursting with colourful jars & bottles of yum. My Nan's old cauldron barely has time to be put away before it's out again.
I first got interested in making chutney in my teens, when my Nan used to use her unripe tomatoes to make her annual green tomato chutney. It was mild, sticky with sugar & sultanas & it went with absolutely everything savoury. Nan lived through times where no food was thrown away, & this definitely applied to green tomatoes! She gave me the recipe, but as I got more confident with preserving, experimenting with more fancy creations, I lost it. Shame, because although there are plenty of recipes for green tomato chutney, I'd have liked to have been able to share 'the One'.
No need to be peeling a ton of green ones at the moment, though. Everything is ripening up & it's red ones all the way! First wodge of the tomato glut went into the cauldron for a Smoky Tomato Chutney. I seem to have been preserving for ever, but the alchemy of it never fails to amaze me...........
You start with this......
.......you simmer it for precisely as long as it takes (no messing about with sugar thermometers & 'setting points' here!) & it turns into this........
..........all ready to be dolloped onto bacon sarnies, sausage cobs, autumn BBQs, whatever you fancy. Everyone seems to like this one. Some people (you know who you are.......I'm kind of thinking around 120 miles down the A1.......) seem almost ridiculously excited to be given a jar...................which is just as well, as if the tomatoes continue ripening at this rate, I may have to make another batch!
Will doubtless be filling more jars next time........when I also have a photo to share of Albert Whiskers being spectacularly unhelpful. Zero change there, then!
Enjoy the last of the Bank Holiday,
C x
Hello Friends,
I haven't managed much time in the greenhouse recently & with a squash now sprawling right across the door meaning I was almost having to climb in, it seemed a good day to get the big girl's pants on, venture in & hack back the jungle.
Was soon trotting back down to the house to fetch colanders & containers for harvesting all the lovely ripe tomatoes that were ready, plus courgettes, scallop squash, jalopeno & superchillies, as well as the first of the runner beans. De-leafed the tomato plants, composted anything which wasn't playing, & generally cut things back to maximise food crops rather than lots of leaf. The cucumber plants have reached that stage where they want to frizzle up & succumb to red spider mite more than they want to provide their hard-working humans with actual cucumbers. I've chopped off a bucket full of manky bits (technical term), & am intending to give them a dose of seaweed once the sun's gone down, I think they will perk up.
The rest of the veggie garden isn't doing too badly. We haven't grown sweetcorn before, but having split one of our big raised beds between that & runner beans, both seem to be doing well. The corn cobs are forming & the flowers seem to be spraying pollen around like mad. The Bigger Hairier Half of the Relationship is intending on lifting a few of his maincrop potatoes this week to see how 'ready' they are & I've got new sowings of spring onions & lettuce to extend our salad-picking for as long as possible.
Now, I promised a couple of people I'd share my recipe for garlic flat breads. I've mentioned before that we aim to be a zero food-waste household, so I like recipes which use up ingredients that sometimes lurk in the fridge till they are past their best. These flat breads are great for using up surplus milk (even if it's on the turn) & those half lemons which get carefully stored in a container only to turn up two weeks later too sad & dry to yield any juice.
Garlic flat breads
400g self-raising flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
2 garlic cloves
Half a pint of milk
Half a lemon
An hour before you want to make these, put your milk in a bowl or jug & squeeze in the juice of the half lemon. Give it a good stir, pop a saucer or something over it & leave at room temperature. By the time you want to use it, it will look thicker, a bit like yoghurt or buttermilk.
Grease a griddle or large non-stick frying pan with oil.
Sift the flour, baking powder & salt into a bowl & make a well in the middle. Crush the garlic into the milk/lemon juice mixture, then pour most of it into the dry ingredients. Mix it in until it will form into soft ball of dough. If it is too dry, add the last bit of the milk/lemon mixture, if it's too sloppy, chuck in some more flour. Turn it out onto a floured surface & divide into 8 pieces. Roll each piece into a rough oval shape. (You're aiming for something around the size of a modest pitta, not a massive naan bread).
Heat the griddle pan & cook each flat bread for around 2 to 3 mins on each side. They are easy to lift, so you can have a peep underneath to see if they're getting brown. When they are looking & smelling distinctly tempting, that's usually time to flip them over (I use Great Great Aunt Bessie's ancient palette knife!) & to cook the other side. I can fit two at a time in our frying pan, so they don't take long. Have a clean tea-towel by your side to wrap the cooked ones so that they'll stay hot while you do the rest.
Then enjoy! We like these with curry, but they'd go with pretty much anything & are a great way of stretching a meal if you suddenly have extra bodies to feed. They cost just pence to make & are very more-ish. If you are as evangelical about using up leftovers as I am, you will also experience that smug glow of virtue for having used up surplus or 'past its date' milk & the half lemon that you bought last month when you thought you might do a daily liver cleanse but then discovered the health benefits of cava & crisps!
Albert Whiskers has calmed down this month. Whatever the Cat Turf War on our street was, it seems to have sorted itself out now. He got a clean bill of health at the vet when he went for his annual check-up & boosters. He purred the whole time he was there! So far, the range of his August activities has run the whole gamut from this.........
.............. to this...........
........so thoroughly earning his keep, as usual!
Hope you're all enjoying this scrummy sunshine.
Till next time,
C x
