Buckwheat pancakes filled with autumn

Buckwheat pancakes with apple and raisin compote - add walnuts if you like

 One of the joys of taking on an allotment plot is the things you find not only on other plots but in the unworked spaces around them.  I’ve written before about the walnut tree, discovered thanks to the unearthing of a squirrel's larder, but it remains one of my favourite finds.   Clearly a young tree, untamed by any human hand, once again this spring I watched soft buds emerge from grey branches that, through winter, looked and felt iron-hard and unyielding.  Within a few weeks the lower branches began to drape into the surrounding long grass like the elegant arms of a dancer reaching for the ground.  The beauty of the tree is not only in its looks.  Those low-hanging branches make for easy harvest of its fruits.  Around the end of June, when the outer casings were a smooth, bright green and still releasing a resinous aroma.  I harvested just enough young walnuts to fill a large Kilner jar.  *Quartered, they showed themselves to be at the perfect stage - the inner sweet nut soft and not quite formed.  They relaxed in a bath of cheap vodka, some sugar, lemon peel and a few spices for six weeks on my balcony.  Passed through muslin, the deep brown liquor now sits in the deepest recess of my larder, not to be touched before Christmas arrives.  Then a rich vanilla ice cream will be calling for an anointment of luscious, sticky, bitter **Walnut Liqueur. 

Green (unripe) Walnuts

The walnut tree seems so quintessentially English, yet it’s a non-native tree.  Brought by the Romans, the tree Juglans regia is here at its most northerly reach.  The common name of 'English Walnut' for the tree is used here to distinguish it from the American 'Black Walnut' but it originated in China and south-east Europe.  Our recent warmer summers have seen the trees fruiting better than ever.  This week I took another bagful of walnuts from the tree.  Their casing now a softer, rougher green but not yet peeled back exposing the hard, brown under-layer we are more familiar with.  These are at the 'wet' stage.  Peeling back their green jackets and cracking them open now reveals a fully formed, slightly tacky nut.  We will eat some over the next couple of weeks, enjoying their sweet, almost milky taste which pairs so well with salty sheep's milk cheeses.  If there are any left I will dry them for storing by leaving the husk-less nuts spread in a single layer in a warm, dry place for two weeks.

Wet Walnuts

I promise, while I've been doing this squirrelling-away, I've made sure to leave plenty of walnuts for the birds, and the squirrels.

Here's one of the dishes I'll be using the dried nuts in:

Buckwheat pancakes with apples, raisins & walnuts

(pancake mixture makes around 12 x 20cm thin pancakes)

For the pancakes:

120g buckwheat flour
50g plain flour
pinch of salt
1 medium egg
175ml full cream milk + 175ml water
30g melted butter

For the filling:
About 500g of warm apple compote and a handful of raisins
(peeled and chopped apples cooked down with a knob of butter and sugar to taste depending on the type of apples, then add the raisins while the apple is still hot)
a handful of shelled walnuts, roughly chopped

Combine the flours and salt.  Make a well in the centre and add the egg and a little milk then start to draw in the dry ingredients to the wet, adding more of the milk and water gradually until you have a smooth batter.  Add the melted butter and mix in.
 
Lightly butter a 20cm heavy-based frying pan and heat to medium-hot.  Keep the heat at this level throughout.  Pour in enough pancake mixture to quickly swirl it around the pan and lightly coat it and cook until the underside is lightly browned. This is a sacrificial one as the first pancake is always poor so discard it.  Add just a little butter before cooking each pancake.  Pour about 2-3 tablespoons of batter into the pan and quickly swirl it around the pan to coat it thinly.  Brown lightly and turn the pancake to lightly brown the other side.  Repeat the process and when each pancake is light browned on both sides add it to a plate and keep warm in a low oven until you have used up all the mixture.

Spoon some of the warm apple and raisin compote onto each pancake and add some of the chopped walnuts folding the pancakes over.  Serve with cream.

Note:
*Always wear gloves when handling walnuts that have their green outer casings intact as the tannins are highly staining.

**David Lebovitz has a recipe on his website for Liqueur de Noix.  In Italy it is known as Nocino and my go-to recipe can be found in Kitty Travers's brilliant book on the subject of ice cream, La Grotta Ices.

Porcini, Ceps and Penny Buns

Porcini, Ceps, or Penny Buns

I love early autumn for many reasons - turning leaves on the trees, misty mornings, steamed-up windows, long walks, ankle-deep piles of fallen leaves, pub fires, thick wooly jumpers, mugs of hot chocolate.  To be honest, this year, apart from the very first hints of leaf colour, I've seen none of these yet.  Summer and autumn are battling for supremacy here, the seasons see-sawing back and forth from day to day.  Summer is reluctant to give way, which means at the end of September I'm still harvesting courgettes and runner beans from the allotment.

But one day of dampness and another of warm sun seems to be perfect for the growth of wild mushrooms this year.  I don't forage for them because I really don't know my mushrooms from my toadstools.  Only a few mushroom varieties have been successfully cultivated and none of those can match the flavour of uncultivated ones.  They lack the predictability of cultured mushrooms so are expensive, but a little goes a long way.  If you dehydrate them, the flavour goes even further.

In Scotland, conditions have been perfect for Chanterelle mushrooms with their delicate brown caps and spindly yellow stems and the stockier yellow Girolles (of the same family as Chanterelles and, so, sometimes also offered as 'Chanterelles') whose flesh is white when cut and smells faintly of apricots.  The earthy flavour of uncultivated mushrooms, redolent of bosky, mossy woodland is the essence of autumn in the kitchen.  But its the strapping Boletus edulis - Porcini, Cep, Penny Bun - which have a symbiotic relationship with oak, beech, birch and coniferous trees, that I'm focusing on here.  Although they do grow in the UK, they are much more prolific in Italy and France and, having just returned from Piedmont I can tell you they are all over the market stalls there right now.  They can range hugely in size and the small ones are good sliced and eaten raw.  They have a cap that looks like a crusty bread roll - hence their English name, Penny Bun - and a stem that is thick and swollen.  Underneath the cap, the fine pores are white but age to yellow before becoming green and spongy.  The stem should be thick and firm but it becomes yielding with age and/or the attention of worms, who like them as much as we do.  With proper cooking this fungi's firm texture and earthy, mildly-meaty flavour takes on a caramelic quality.

It's generally agreed that frying is the best way to cook mushrooms.  The oil or butter, or mixture of both, should be heated highly enough to sear the mushrooms rather than stew them.  I always season mine at the end of cooking as salt draws out their water content in the pan affecting caramelisation.  The simpler the treatment in the kitchen the better.  Garlic and parsley are essential, I think.  You could stop right there for me and just pile the contents of the pan on a slice of toast.  But I am fond of this recipe which introduces its carbohydrate in the form of potatoes.  Not just any potato but a firm, waxy variety like La Ratte, Anya, Charlotte or Pink Fir Apple.  It's based on Simon Hopkinson's 'Persillade of ceps & potatoes' from his book The Vegetarian Option.  A book which is on and off my bookcase with remarkable frequency, as it is packed with dishes which appeal whether you are vegetarian or not.

Persillade of Ceps & Potatoes

Persillade of Ceps & Potatoes
(Serves 2)

2-3 medium-sized waxy potatoes (like La Ratte, Anya, Charlotte or Pink Fir Apple), peeled
4 medium sized Ceps, brushed clean of soil and trimmed
A good handful of fresh flat-leaved parsley
2 garlic cloves, crushed
3-4 tablespoons olive oil
Salt and pepper

Finely shred the potatoes and wash in several changes of cold water until the water is clear.
Drain and dry well.
Slice the ceps thinly.
*Chop together the crushed garlic and parsley leaves.
Heat 2 tablespoons of the olive oil in a large frying pan.  Fry the ceps until lightly coloured, season with salt and pepper, then transfer to a plate and put aside.
Add the rest of the oil to the pan and sauté the shredded potatoes until beginning to colour.  Season with salt and pepper.
Add the cooked ceps and the mixture of chopped garlic and parsley and cook on a medium high heat for another minute or two.

Eat immediately!

* Simon Hopkinson is insistent that garlic and parsley should  be chopped together, not separately, for the particular aroma and flavour this produces - I think he's right.

Gooseberry and hazelnut frangipane tart

Gooseberry and hazelnut frangipane tart

I'd like to say this 'rustic' look was deliberate but, in truth, I overfilled the tart case and just got away without a Vesuvius-like eruption all over the oven floor.  As it turned out, it was definitely worth the risk.

For the first year I can remember the start of the gooseberry harvest didn't coincide with the blossoming of the Elder trees, at least not on my allotment.  Gooseberries and Elderflowers are linked so intrinsically in my mind that when one appears I look, and expect to find, the other. There is no arguing with some seasonal pairings.  The pulling of the first garden rhubarb calls for the leaves of Sweet Cicely which I grow alongside the rhubarb; the arrival of the first peaches makes me look for sherbetty Lemon Verbena which each year sprout from the most unpromising looking stems, and the best high-summer tomatoes co-incide with the short time, in our climate, when we can grow basil outside.

The elderflower being over before the gooseberries were ready meant reaching for the Elderflower cordial for a flavour of flowery muscat in syrup form this year - arguably even better!  Right now we can't pick gooseberries quickly enough.  Containers of green to honey-coloured globes are being passed to friends to feed a need for the unique, grassy, tartness.

I've posted a few recipes for gooseberries before but here's a new one inspired by some particularly delicious frangipane tarts recently eaten, but cooked by others.  I often pair hazelnuts with gooseberries - sprinkled on a compote topped with a creamy syllabub, or with hazelnut meringue and cream so the frangipane here is made with ground hazelnuts rather than the more usual almonds. 

Gooseberry and hazelnut frangipane tart slice

Pre-bake the tart case really well and, if the compote is very loose, sieve out excessive juice before adding the elderflower cordial to prevent  too liquid a bottom layer.  You could, instead, use gooseberry jam if you have it.  Out of Gooseberry season you could dispense with the whole gooseberries and use compote or jam for your base.  You'll get the flavour of gooseberries but without the sharp tang of the unsweetened whole berries which does add an extra dimension.  I've adjusted the recipe since that first attempt and these quantities perfectly fill a 20cm x 3.5cm deep tin.  The following photo is from my last bake.

Gooseberry and hazelnut frangipane tart

Gooseberry and hazelnut frangipane tart

(Serves 6-8)

PASTRY (makes 2 x 20cm x 3.5cm deep tart cases – you’ll need one for this recipe, but raw pastry freezes well):

250g (10oz) plain flour
25g (1oz) ground almonds
Pinch of salt
150g(6oz) cold butter
75g (3oz) icing sugar
Grated rind of half a lemon
1 egg yolk
3 tablespoons milk

FRANGIPANE:
100g room temperature unsalted butter 
100g caster sugar
1 large or 2 small eggs (you want close to 100g shelled weight)
100g ground hazelnuts 

GOOSEBERRY COMPOTE:
150g gooseberries, topped and tailed
20g butter 
30g caster sugar
1tbsp elderflower cordial (optional)

WHOLE FRUIT: 100-150g whole gooseberries, topped and tailed

Make the compote by melting the butter and adding the berries.  Place a lid on the pan and cook for about 5 minutes until the berries turn yellow.  Remove from the heat, mash lightly with a fork and add the sugar and elderflower cordial (if using). Put aside to cool.

Sift the flour into a mixing bowl and add the ground almonds and salt. Add the butter and rub in with fingertips. Sift in icing sugar and add grated lemon rind and mix. Lightly beat the egg yolk and milk together and stir it into the dry ingredients. Mix just until the dough just comes together then turn out and knead gently to smooth the surface.  Wrap half of the pastry and rest in fridge for just 30 minutes (wrap and freeze the other half for another time).  

Pre-heat the oven to 200C (180C fan oven) Lightly butter a 20cm x 3.5cm deep loose-bottomed tart tin.   Roll out the pastry thinly and line the tin, smoothing off the top and pricking the base. Rest in the fridge for a further 15-30 minutes.  Line with greasproof paper and dried beans and bake the tart blind for 12 minutes.  Remove the lining and beans and return the tart to the oven for a further 5 minutes or so to make sure the base is cooked and lightly browned.  Remove from the oven and put to one side. 

Turn the oven temperature down to 180C (160C fan oven).  
Mix the butter then add the caster sugar and mix really well.  Mix the egg(s) and add gradually to the mixture beating really well.  Gently fold in the ground hazelnuts.  
Spread the gooseberry compote over the base of the tart.  Spread the frangipane right to the edges of the tart.  Push the whole gooseberries into the frangipane.  
Bake in the centre of the oven for 30 minutes then check to see if it's browning too much - if it is, place a piece of foil over the tart and continue cooking for a further 10-15 minutes.  The filling should be set almost to the centre of the tart.

Links to other Gooseberry recipes:

Gooseberry Elderflower Syllabub
Gooseberry Polenta Cake
Gooseberry Meringue Pie

In praise of warm salads

A Warm Salad of Broad Beans

I'm writing about salad.  Risky, I know.  Who needs to be told how to make a salad?  But I like to cook with the seasons and this is the kind of thing I put on the table at this time of year so here we are.

Now, when days can be sunny and warm and full of promise of summer to come, temperatures can still plummet at night.  We growers eye our early spring sowings nervously and hope Jack Frost stays away.  In the shops there are early new potatoes from Jersey and France.  Our own broad beans are just beginning to sprout but the Italians have sent over a welcome taste of their early crops.  The organised have salad leaves growing undercover.  It's the perfect time to move on to what I think of as 'warm salads'.  The basics are an ever-changing succession of leaves with warm, waxy potatoes, vinaigrette dressings, sometimes with the addition of herbs or mustards.  Broad beans or Asparagus kick off the season, moving on to peas, French beans and Runner Beans.  A little protein comes in the form of bacon, pancetta, chorizo, smoked trout or anchovy.  Seasonal food with still a little warmth in it, the salad leaf wilting slightly in the agreeable embrace of the other ingredients.  And now we've started, we'll be eating warm salads right through to autumn.

Broad Bean Plant illustration by Patricia Curtan
in my copy of Chez Panisse Vegetables by Alice Waters

The Broad Bean, Vicia faba, also known as the Fava bean, has been cultivated and eaten in Europe for at least 5,000 years.  It was the original 'bean' until other varieties arrived from the New World causing it to be then known as the 'Broad Bean' for its distinctive shape.  Broad Beans grow well in cool damp climates so the English spring offers perfect growing conditions for them.  When the pods grow to around 5cm they can be cooked and eaten whole.  Any larger and the casing needs to be discarded and the beans eaten either raw or cooked.  When the beans get bigger than a thumb nail the pale grey-green outer casing can become tough and indigestible so they need to be cooked and slipped out of their coats to reveal their pea-green inner.  At the end of their season they become mealy but are still good cooked, mashed to a puree and seasoned with lemon, herbs, olive oil and salt. Good herbs to use with Broad Beans are chervil, mint, dill or tarragon.

In Italy and France at this time very small, young broad beans are cooked whole in their pods and tossed in butter and herbs.  In Italy in Spring, raw broad beans are podded at the table and served with a salty local cheese - in Rome a pungent Pecorino, in Sardinia a ewe's milk ricotta called Marzotica.  In Spain, The Catalans have Fabes a la Catalana, a dish that marries broad beans (fabes) with black pudding, or other sausage or slices of pork fat. The Portuguese cook Favas Guisadas, a stew of Broad Beans and Chourico sausage.  

Having picked up Patience Gray's Honey from a Weed in search of wise words on Beans, I'm thankful I chose to write about fresh, not dried, Beans.  A reading of her chapter on Beans, Peas and Rustic Soups is rewarding on the subject of 'beans make you fart'  I'm sorry, but this appeals to the English sense of humour so, having found it, I have to offer you this sentence  "... every cook will recall his/her favourite fartiste .... but I would like to put in a word for Papa Galeazzo, the 17th century priest who once stole the 'stopper' used by the Baroness of Lucugnano in the Salento on festive occasions, replacing it artfully with a bird whistle to startling effect in the country dance."

That gem alone justifies this posting, I think!  So here comes a fresh Broad Bean version of a warm salad - Italian beans for me right now as my own plants stand a mere 12cm high.  Broad Beans have a particular affinity with bacon so that's my choice with a peppery rocket.  It's worth knowing that 1 kg of pods yields around 300g of beans, but salads don't require exactitude, which is another reason to like them.

A warm salad of Broad Beans
(serves 4)

1 kg Broad Bean Pods (around 300g podded beans)
800g waxy potatoes
200g streaky bacon or pancetta
2 good handfuls of rocket (or other salad leaf)
2 tablespoons lemon juice or Moscatel vinegar
Salt and pepper
1 good teaspoon of Dijon mustard, if using
6-7 tablespoons Olive Oil

Wash the potatoes (skin on or off, as you prefer) and boil for c. 20 minutes until cooked
Pod the broad beans, wash and boil in salted water until just cooked - 1-2 mins for small beans.  Drain and plunge into cold water to retain the colour.
Cut the bacon into small pieces and fry in a hot pan until crisp.
Mix your vinaigrette in a large serving bowl.
Drain and slice the potatoes thickly before adding them to the dressing.  Add the cooked broad beans, the bacon (including the cooking fat), and the rocket/salad leaf.  Stir gently but well and serve.


If you grow your own Broad Beans, remember to nip out the top few centimetres once they are fully in flower.  This will discourage black fly from colonising the fleshy top-growth and encourage the plant to put its energy into the beans rather than growing taller.  You can cook and eat the pinched-out tops just as you would spinach. 

White bean and chicory soup

White bean and chicory soup

When the chill air of late autumn arrives, so too does my craving for the bitter qualities of chicories.  And this is their season.  Descended from wild greens, sometimes considered weeds, they add a colour and flavour punch to the diet just when the harvesting options for us gardeners have otherwise shrunk to mainly root crops.

As Jennifer McLagan points out in her book Bitter - a taste of the world's most dangerous flavor, with recipes, we have a natural wariness to 'bitter'.  Many poisons are bitter so it's an understandable inherited aversion developed for our own protection.  The reaction is strongest in babies but with age comes a loss in taste buds and the learning that not all bitter foods are bad but can be enjoyable and good for our health.  We can even develop a craving for bitter - chocolate, coffee and tea being the most obvious examples.  It's known that bitter flavours can stimulate the appetite and if our early food experiences exposed us to them we are more likely to enjoy the qualities of bitter - Bee Wilson's book First Bite - How We Learn to Eat is excellent on the subject of our likes and dislikes.

The list of 'bitter' foods is subjective as not everyone experiences bitterness in the same way.  Seville oranges and beer surely are, but what about turnips and swedes?  It's an interesting subject, tackled well by Jennifer McLagan who goes so far as to suggest that "food without bitterness lacks depth and complexity".  If we consider the wide range of foods that have a bitter quality, it's an interesting theory.

The first fog of autumn has arrived today and with it has come requests for soup.  Not the first bowl we've had this autumn but the first call for its warming, soothing virtues.  This one demands a little thinking ahead so is not for today but it is ideal for countering the late autumn/winter gloom stretching ahead of us.  It takes dried beans for its structure and bitter chicory to wake up the taste buds.

Cicoria Catalogna Pugliese

My recommendation to use 'chicory' here is loose as chicory, endive and radicchio are all members of the broad chicorium family but local names vary.  It's the dark green chicories that work best in soup, for me.  For the soup I photographed at the top of this page, I used an Italian Cicoria Catalogna Pugliese, a large upright chicory with long serrated leaves.  I wish I could say I grew it but it's not a variety I've tried on my patch of ground.  I suspect heavy clay is not ideal.  You could use the outer leaves of either Cicoria Puntarella or Escarole.  The milder hearts of both are good in a salad, particularly with bacon or anchovies.  All of these are not too difficult to find in a good greengrocers. If you use a red variety of chicorium, bear in mind it will turn a khaki-brown when subjected to heat.

I favour white Cannellini beans for this recipe.  Also known as haricot, go for the the longer of the two main varieties of this white bean (rather than the more rounded one which is favoured for baked beans).  It has a creamier consistency, I think, which works better in soups.  Butter beans would be a good alternative, or the white bean typical to your area.  You could use pre-cooked tinned beans too, but they won't absorb flavours in the same way.  The longer you store dried beans the more time they will take to cook.  I try not to buy them too far in advance but we've all found a forgotten bag of beans in the larder.  Here is a good tip from Monika Linton's book Brindisa - the True Food of Spain for beans that are being slow to absorb liquid: "you need to 'frighten' or blast the beans, so once they break into their first boil, throw in some cold water to halt it" then bring the pan back to the boil.  Never add salt until they are fully cooked as it hardens the beans.


White bean and chicory soup
(serves 4)

250g dried cannellini beans (500g cooked) or other white beans, soaked in plenty of cold water for 12 hours
1 small carrot/1 small onion, halved/1 small stick of celery (for cooking the dried beans)
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 large onion, diced
1 large carrot, diced
1 stick of celery, diced
2 cloves of garlic, chopped
A small dried chilli, crumbled (optional)
A large handful of chicory leaves and stems
Salt and pepper
Parmesan and olive oil to serve

Drain the beans.  Put in a pan with the small carrot/onion and celery and cover well with fresh water.  Bring to a fast boil and cook for 10 minutes before turning the heat down to a simmer.  Cook about an hour or until the beans are soft (time will vary according to freshness), topping up the water to ensure the beans are well covered.  Discard the vegetables but not the cooking liquor.  Season with salt and pepper.  

In a large pan, heat the olive oil gently, add the diced onion, carrot and celery.  Cook for 10 minutes.  Add the garlic and cook to soften but not brown.  Add the dried chilli now, if using, and cook for 1 minute more.  Add the beans and their liquor and bring the soup to the boil before turning down and simmering for 20 minutes.  Blitz briefly with a hand whisk, just enough to turn the consistency a little creamy.

Chop the chicory leaves and stems roughly and add to the pan.  Simmer for a further 10 minutes, adding more fresh water if you feel the consistency is too thick.  Taste and adjust seasoning. 

Serve in bowls with grated parmesan and a slick of good olive oil for an extra kick of bitter.