Autumn harvest of beans and walnuts

Wet Walnuts

Working the ground last autumn left me in no doubt that squirrels were using the badly neglected plot as a winter larder. Empty walnut shells lay scattered across the ground, crunching underfoot at almost every step.  We'd agreed to take on a nettle patch along with our existing plot.  Our heads were filled with plans for roses with scents of musk, anise-like myrrh, sherbet lemon and strong classic old rose fragrances of blackberry and damson plum.  Huge-headed peonies and fragrant, colourful sweetpea arches would feature too.  But first there were giant nettle roots to be chased, ubiquitous plastic bottles to be unearthed and ground to be levelled.

The source of the nuts, I had concluded, lay 100m metres away in one of the private gardens surrounding the allotments.  Dull green globes littered the path where its branches pierced the boundary.  I too squirrelled some away.  Back home, paring away the soft outer jacket exposed the hard brown pockmarked casing.  A nutcracker revealed the almost pliable, sweet, milky 'wet' nut within.  Be warned, that soft green jacket turns a hand-staining brown as you work - in the past this quality was harnessed for making both dye and ink - so rubber gloves are essential.  Wait long enough before harvesting and nature will peel back the green husk for you but the well-guarded kernel will be dryer and less sweet.

This autumn I took an unorthodox route onto the allotments.  There on the boundary, a mere 50 metres from my now flowering plot, I found an even more covetable walnut tree.  Small, it's true, but its boughs hung heavy with green-husked bounty, almost skimming the tall grass.  Far easier to harvest.  The squirrels and I are feasting.  Nature untended has faired better than my nurtured plot this year.  Bringing anything to the point of edibility has been challenging but right now, in this mildest of autumns, I am harvesting beans.  Borlotti and Scarlet Runners were peaking on my plot only 2 days ago.  Cropping of beans has coincided with finding a particularly delicious, nutty Ossau-Iraty, a hard sheep's milk cheese from the Pyrénées.  It was a visit to Brawn restaurant on London's Colombia Road (one of my favourite restaurants anywhere) where I ate a simple-sounding dish of fresh green and yellow French beans, dressed with a shallot vinaigrette, with sweet wet walnuts and thin shards of Ossau-Iraty.

So when I harvested Runner Beans a few days later, it was obvious what I should do with them.  No, the dish doesn't taste exactly the same, but here is my rip-off version of Brawn's beautiful dish using what I had.  Ossau-Iraty isn't essential to the recipe, a hard ewe's milk cheese like English Berkswell or Spenwood would work well.  All these cheeses have a nutty quality that goes well with the earthy beans and sweet, milky nuts.  Jane Grigson would not have approved of my beans in this dish being Scarlet Runners.  They are undoubtedly the least interesting of green beans but they are easy to grow.  She felt "early gardeners had the right idea when they kept the Scarlet Runner to decorate a trellis with its brilliant flowers ...".  I used to agree with her but found out for myself that if you pick before they get too large and slice the pods lengthways, it makes all the difference, and I note she also conceded this.  Simon Hopkinson, I think, just might eat this dish with relish (at least his Introduction to his book The Vegetarian Option leads me to hope).  Choose whichever green beans you prefer, just avoid the big stringy ones.

Runner Beans, wet walnuts and Ossau-Iraty

Salad of fresh beans, wet walnuts and sheep's milk cheese
(serves 4 for a starter or light lunch)

500g green beans, sliced lengthways if using Runner Beans (de-string if necessary)
1 good tablespoon Moscatel vinegar
3 good tablespoons walnut oil or extra-virgin olive oil
Salt and pepper
75g Ossau-Iraty (or other semi-hard sheep's milk cheese), pared into strips
10-12 shelled 'wet' walnuts, roughly broken (use matured walnuts if necessary)

Bring a pan of water to the boil, add salt and boil the beans for 3-4 minutes until tender but still with a little "bite".  Drain and plunge in a bowl of cold water before draining well again.  Combine the vinegar, oil and seasoning to an emulsion.  Toss the beans well in the vinaigrette.  Place on plates and add the cheese and walnuts. 


I hope to still be picking beans into next week, along with my ever-blooming roses and, unbelievably late-flowering sweetpeas sharing space with the squirrels' larder.  Those huge-headed peonies remain in my dreams, but next year, next year...

The Blackberry Patch Rules

Freshly churned
Blackberry Ice Cream

It's mid-August and the sun is on our backs at last.  In a summer when we've seen so little of it, it's far more welcome than it would normally be on a summer allotment visit.  Hot, unrelenting sun is not ideal when there's back-breaking work to be done.  But in truth there's been a bit of an uncharacteristic lull on Plot 45.  Though, even at this late stage, there are signs of a possible surge.

Peas and broad beans have all been harvested, their mottled stems cut down to the ground for the last residues of nitrogen to disperse into the soil.  The crop to follow on next year - Brassicas - will benefit.  The garlic planted last autumn is lifted and hangs in the cool, dry conditions it needs to be useable right into late winter with any luck.  All the early La Ratte potatoes have been eaten - a few not by us, it has to be said - as Salade Niçoise has been a constant request this summer.  We have started harvesting the Charlottes and most of the storing onions are drying on the balcony while we make successive forays into the Florence Red onion bed.  These long-necked non-keepers, grown from seed, cook to an unmatched silky smoothness and make a wonderful Onion Tart Tatin (thank you Fern Verrow) and a sweet partner to salty anchovies in Pisssladière.

Harvest of Blackberries, Raspberries
and fragrant sweet peas

This year we confidently constructed extra cane wigwams for Runner and Borlotti Beans.  Hubris met its nemesis in the form of slugs and snails, their population has exploded this year and we're still waiting for our first climbing bean crops.  Chard, spinach, beetroots, courgettes and pumpkin plants have also battled to recover from constant cropping by armies of these gastropods.  But we have had an abundance of extraordinarily fragrant roses and sweet peas to compensate.

Blackberry Ice Cream
with blackberry fruits

Strawberries, gooseberries and blackcurrants are now but a memory - though the freezer is stuffed with pots of fruit and purees for making ice creams and sorbets.  We've moved on from 'summer' to 'autumn' raspberries but the ripening blackberries are a godsend in this lean year on the allotment.   You can buy blackberry plants to cultivate, some are even thornless, but why would you when they grow so prolifically in the wild.  That said, not all 'bramble' patches are equal.  Find one with large, juicy berries and remember where it is for next year is my advice.

This day we circle 'our patch', searching for spots where the fruits are particularly wine-dark and plump.  This year, they look full of promise but taste is all so, of course, we try a few to make sure. They live up to our hopes.  Their flavour is, I think, so much more intense than the cultivated varieties and it's that intensity I want to preserve.  We try not to take too many.  They can be good until late September so there's time aplenty.

Blackberries are undeniably seedy, more noticeably when they fruit after long, dry spells.  Last year's crop was exceptionally seedy here, the year before we hardly noticed seeds, and this year the fruits fall somewhere in between.  As fond as I am of a Blackberry and Apple Crumble, sometimes it's better to sieve out the seeds and make a puree that can be used straight away or kept in the freezer. So, let's make ice cream.

Blackberry swirl

In the UK we tend to think of ice cream beginning with an egg custard base, but as Caroline and Robin Weir point out, in their invaluable book Ice Creams, Sorbets and Gelati - The Definitive Guide, egg yolks in ice cream didn't appear in England until the middle of the 18th century, probably influenced by the French who wanted to enrich the original Italian recipes.  This recipe from the book dispenses with eggs because, as the authors point out, "Blackberry is a flavour that is all too easy to lose" and in a no-cook ice cream "it comes over loud and clear".

Blackberry Ice Cream 
(makes about 1 litre/4 cups/32 fl oz)

450g (1 lb) Blackberries
150g (5 oz)unrefined granulated sugar
Juice of half a lemon, strained
2 tbsp Crème de Mûre (optional, I find)
500ml (16 fl oz) Whipping/Heavy cream (around 36% fat), chilled

Pick over the blackberries and rinse in cold water.  Drain and place them on a double thickness of kitchen paper then leave to dry off.  
Put them in a food processor or blender with the sugar and blitz for 1 minute.
Strain the pulp through a nylon sieve into a clean bowl, rubbing until all that is left are the seeds.
Add the lemon juice (and Crème de Mûre, if using) to the puree.  Taste and add a little more lemon juice if you wish.  Chill in the fridge.
When ready to make the ice cream, stir in the cream and churn according to the instructions for your ice cream machine.

If you're not eating it straight away, keep in the freezer but allow 30 minutes in the fridge to soften for serving.

I'm off to pick more blackberries.  There must be a bit more space in the freezer to preserve this special taste of summer.  With any luck I'll need my sun hat, and, who knows, there may be beans, chard, spinach and courgettes on Plot 45 at last.

Fig Leaf Ice Cream

Brown Turkey Fig and fig leaves

The French and Italian figs which are coming to market are particularly good this year.  Here in the UK, unless you have a greenhouse or a very sheltered spot for your tree, fig growing can be a dispiriting activity for gardeners.  Varieties 'Brown Turkey', 'Brunswick' and 'Violetta' are the most reliable to try your hand at.  Even if fruiting is a hit and miss affair, they are beautiful to look at.  Their large sculptural, deeply lobed, leaves are even more beautiful on the underside with their pronounced veining.  So to be able to use these leaves in the kitchen makes up for the shyness in fruiting.

So many people have asked me for a recipe for fig leaf ice cream that I thought I ought to post one. It's based on a simple vanilla custard but even that, I realise, is not written in stone.  Some heat milk and cream, some add the cream at the end.  There is also more than one way to infuse a fig leaf.  I've seen at least one recipe where the leaves are submerged in the finished custard for a time before churning.  I like to immerse the leaves in the liquid that has been brought to a bare simmer.  As the mixture cools the leaves release their perfume just enough to add a distinctive fig flavour and, for me, coconut note to the finished ice cream.  You could, of course, make a fig ice cream but this is a frugal recipe that captures the particular fragrance of the fig.

Fig leaves infusing

I've made blackcurrant leaf ice cream in the same way and I have Kitty Travers of La Grotta Ices to thank for introducing me to the idea of fruit leaf ice creams.  She often infuses the leaves of fruit trees (after checking the leaves are not poisonous), sometimes she uses herbs like lemon verbena or thyme, to increase the depth of flavour or add another note to a fruit ice cream.  I'm not sure if Kitty uses exactly the same method as me for her Fig Leaf ice cream.  If she ever produces a book I'll be the first in line to get my hands on it.  In the meantime, I'm doing what feels right.

Blackberries and plums have been amongst my allotment hauls over the past few weeks and, last week, there were a few fig leaves too along with a single precious fig from a kind neighbour.  The fig we ate immediately, of course!  The fig leaf ice cream I made paired beautifully with a warm compote of blackberries and was delicious with a slice of just-out-of-the-oven plum pie.

Hot plum pie and cold fig leaf ice cream

Here's my ice cream recipe:

Fig Leaf Ice Cream
(Serves 8)

2-3 small-medium fig leaves, washed, patted dry and roughly chopped
350ml whole milk
250ml whipping cream (UK)/heavy cream (USA)
1 vanilla pod, split (optional)
3 egg yolks
100g caster sugar
Pinch salt

Heat the milk, cream and vanilla pod, if using (scrape out the seeds and add),  until it's barely simmering.  Take off the heat, add the fig leaves and submerge them in the liquid.  Cover and leave to infuse for at least 30 minutes .
At this point you can remove the chopped fig leaves from the pan but if the scent of figs isn't distinct (fig leaves vary)  I leave them in the mixture.   Bring the mixture back to barely a simmer
Meanwhile, whisk the yolks, sugar and salt together until thoroughly combined.
Pour the contents of the pan over the egg yolk mixture in a steady stream, whisking continuously.
Return the mixture to the pan and heat gently, stirring, until the temperature reaches 85C.
Plunge the pan into an ice bath, stir from time to time over a period of 30 minutes to cool the custard as quickly as possible.  Refrigerate, preferably overnight but for at least 4 hours.
Remove the vanilla pod, and the fig leaves if you left them in the custard, and whizz the mixture with an immersion blender or whisk to re-emulsify, then churn.

Taking the sting out of Nettles

Urtica dioica - common nettle

The nettle spread from Eurasia and now it's a weed common throughout the Northern hemisphere.  But, as Jane Grigson observed, nettles are "not to be despised, especially at a season of the year when greenery is scarce".  Revered by today's foragers, nettles have long been considered of value to "purify the blood" when eaten in April-May.  Nettles are stocked with a cocktail of irritant chemicals, including histamine.  Their tiny hairs act as effective needles to deliver a sting to unprotected flesh.

Grigson suggests topping a slice of fried bread with nettles and a poached egg or egg mollet, or pairing them with brains and a creamy sauce.  Her suggestion of a take on that comforting dish, Champ, certainly appeals as does her nettle soup and nettle broth.  If you exclude early season European imports, right now "greenery" is still scarce in the UK. Broccoli, the last of Spring's greens, is now rapidly going to flower, spinach and chard are hardly getting going and asparagus has all but come to a stop in the return to cool weather.  I can see why the earthy mineral, quality of nettles was so valued.  Last week I harvested the remainder of my sprouting broccoli, pulled some spectacular rhubarb and then looked around for what else was available.  The strawberry patch was being over-run by a thick carpet of nettles so the answer was clear.  A bag of weeds it was.  Somewhere in the depths of my memory I remembered a recommendation to take only the top 6 leaves of the plant and these were duly, and respectfully, plucked with gloved hands.

In Honey from a Weed, Patience Gray mentions the Southern Italian taste for nettles in a dish of Pasta colle Ortiche, though it's a recipe for Nettle Soup she chose to share.  Soup is an excellent way to harness all the goodness this "weed" has to offer.  It's good plainly served, just thickened with potato, or enriched with a little cream.  The addition of a salty contrast of bacon or meaty snail is a good idea for the carnivore.

Arriving home, top of my agenda was the need to preserve the plant before it lost all rigour, so I decided on a nettle butter. This way I could buy some time to decide on a recipe.  Half the resultant verdant butter went into the fridge and the other half in the freezer.   With all of these influences floating around in my head and with little time, I decided on a pairing of potato, egg and nettle butter and created a lunch dish that worked a treat.

Baked potato, nettle butter, poached egg

Baked Potato with Nettle Butter & Poached Egg
(Serves 4)

110g (4oz) unsalted butter, softened
2 good (gloved!) handfuls of nettle tops
4 eggs
2 large (or 4 small) baking potatoes
A little olive oil
Salt and pepper

Pre-heat the oven to 180C (fan 160C)/Gas mark 4.
Wash the nettles carefully.  Cook in a covered pan with a splash of water and a pinch of salt for 2 minutes.  Drain the blanched leaves, squeeze out excess water, dry well on kitchen paper and chop roughly.  Mix the chopped nettles into the softened butter.  Turn out onto greaseproof paper and roll the nettle butter into a sausage.  Keep in the fridge until ready to use (or freeze it for another day).
Rub the potatoes with a little olive oil and salt and bake in the oven for about 45-60 minutes.
Poach the eggs and whilst they are cooking, split the potatoes and spread with the nettle butter before topping with the eggs

Nettle butter

Getting a little more up-to-date, and rather more refined, Giorgio Locatelli in his doorstop of a book, Made in Italy, offers a Risotto alle Ortiche.  In One, Florence Knight favours a Nettle Gnudi, describing Gnudi as a "stripped-back gnocchi".  Both recipes will definitely be getting an outing in this house soon.  I never thought I'd be looking forward to harvesting nettles from the allotment.

Summer to autumn by way of Fried Courgettes

Fried courgettes (Zucchini scapece)

Jane Grigson credited Elizabeth David with introducing Brits to courgettes, asserting "She was the first to relieve courgettes of their italics".  David wasn't actually the first to offer a recipe to the British market but before David wrote her book Mediterranean Food in 1950, courgettes were largely unknown of here.  The Cucurbit genus came to us mainly in the form of marrows and, if you had access to a greenhouse, there were cucumbers and melons to try growing.  It is only in the last few decades that we have also come to appreciate the merits of pumpkin and squash.  If only we hadn't been focussed on growing those large, watery marrows we wouldn't have taken so long to appreciate the courgette.  These days, there are specific seed varieties bred for courgette and marrow production although they come from the same family and a courgette can still grow to marrow proportions if you let it.

At this time of year those of use who grow our own can never get enough recipes for using courgettes.  Fruits the size of stubby pencils can swell to monstrous proportions within 2-3 days if you don't keep a close eye on them.  If growing is not your thing you'll want to skip to the end of this piece for the recipe because this is the one time of year when I have the time and opportunity to share some gardening photos taken over the past week.  If you do read on, however, you will find links to earlier recipes you might like.

Yellow courgettes

I never seem to get around to writing about the allotment in June or July.  There's far too much planting and picking to get time to write about it.  Looking back, it's May and August when I feel the urge to tell you what's happening on Plot 45.  Unlike this time last year, there's no denying there's a touch of autumn in the air.  The first sign for me is a change in light rather than temperature, but cooler nights have definitely arrived.  This time of year suits me, not least because I can sleep at night.  Growth has slowed down a bit, no more frantic picking of luscious raspberries before they tip over from perfect to spoiled in the space of 24 hours; no more trying to hide my precious blackcurrants from marauding birds; and no more livid scratches on arms earned reaching for the last of those sweet golden gooseberries... Until next year.

Raspberries 'Autumn Bliss'

Not that I'm finished with raspberries yet.  Autumn Bliss is just getting into it's stride, but it's slow-pick-pick-slow for autumn fruiters.  They may be less prolific than the high-summer berries, but their deeper flavour more than makes up for that.  It's earlier than last year but a reminder of Blueberry & Raspberry Mascarpone Pots seems appropriate now that we may be gathering the last of the berries and you need to make a little go a long way.

Borlotti Beans

And now come the borlotti beans.  Definitely a harbinger of late summer.  My favourite way of using them freshly picked is in, punchy, Borlotti Bean Bruschetta.  Dried in their pods for a couple of weeks, they store really well for re-hydrating and adding to soups and stews when the temperature really drops.  This year's crop was grown from a handful of beans squirrelled away last autumn. The wigwams of lush green growth hide long, broad green pods which turn to deep pink with white marbling maturing through to purple/red if you leave them long enough before picking.  Once you can feel fat beans inside the pods, get picking.

Changing seasons fruits

This week's haul of late raspberries, juicy wild blackberries and unknown varieties of plum and apple makes it difficult to argue summer is nearly over.  It is the perfect excuse for looking to this Almond, polenta and lemon cake with Blackberry Compote or this Plum Tart, or even Raspberry Ripple ice cream if you have enough berries.

Calendula

Growing calendula (marigold) on the allotment is the best way to hold onto summer.  It's the plant that just does not want to stop flowering.  Once planted, it will also never go away as it self-seeds prolifically.  Having to weed out new plants that come up just where you don't want them next spring is a small price to pay for the joy of having the yellow/orange blooms right through into late autumn.

Courgettes and Pumpkins

Growing biodynamically, I'm constantly on the look-out for slime trails and white dust in the cucurbit patch but courgettes and pumpkins are going strong and, incredibly, are pretty much free of slug/snail damage and powdery mildew this year.  Once courgettes get going they come thick and fast so here are a couple of favourite recipes: a surprisingly creamy Courgette Soup and Courgette, lemon & thyme linguine.

Happily for us Brits, by the time Elizabeth David was ready to publish here book French Provincial Cooking in 1960 she could write "Enterprising growers are supplying us with little courgettes as an alternative to gigantic marrows".  So, here's another recipe.  Fried courgettes or more properly Zucchini Scapece (meaning marinaded in vinegar and mint) as it is surely the Italians who are the courgette's greatest appreciators.  It's based on the the recipe in Claudia Roden's The Food of Italy.  My copy is the original 1989 version so hopefully the recipe is in the new updated version published earlier this year.  I know in Italy it would be served as a separate course but I also like it alongside roast lamb.

Fried Courgettes (Zucchini scapece)
(Serves 4)

500g (3 medium) Courgettes sliced diagonally, about 4mm thick
Salt
1 clove of garlic, whole
1 clove of garlic, very finely chopped
Extra virgin olive oil
1 small dried, deseeded, chilli crumbled
A handful of fresh mint, chopped
1 tablespoon wine vinegar (I prefer Moscato vinegar but red or white wine vinegar will do)

Salt the sliced courgettes lightly and leave them to release water for up to an hour (if the courgettes are small you won't need to salt them but do let them release their water).  Pat dry thoroughly with kitchen paper.
Use enough olive oil to just cover the bottom of a large frying pan.  Add one clove of peeled garlic and heat to soften and brown lightly before removing and discarding it.
Fry the courgette slices in batches to brown on both sides.  Drain on kitchen paper.  Layer in a serving dish with the chopped garlic, chilli, mint and vinegar.  Serve at room temperature.

England Preserves

Seasonal Specials
at England Preserves

The renewed interest in home preserving is a trend I hope will long continue.  A desire to be more self-sufficient and, hopefully, a little less wasteful has in recent years sent many more of us foraging and gleaning, reaching for the jam pan and bottling our finds.  Eliza Acton, Constance Spry, Jane Grigson and the Women's Institute were where most of us turned for guidance when faced with a hedgerow harvest or a glut on the allotment.  Often, these days, the first port of call is the internet. However, some good preserving books have hit the shelves over the past couple of years.  Diana Henry's Salt Sugar Smoke is one of the best I've found.

Allotment harvest

Having an old tried and tested recipe for strawberry jam is a wonderful thing, but, in the pages of these more recent books lies inspiration for preserving the less obvious pickings.  These recipes are also more likely to retain the flavour of the prime ingredient at the forefront.  This may mean the preserve won't keep so long.  Times change and our tastes change too.  

Bergeron Apricot Jam
from England Preserves

Preserving is not all about jams.  However, as the fruit:sugar ratio of that preserve has excited so much debate recently, I will come off that particularly sticky fence and declare myself in favour of using less sugar.  I'm more interested in tasting the fruit than having jars of sweet unidentifiable spreads lining my larder.  My level of preserving is modest so I'm no expert and I'm always on the look-out to see who's doing it well.  It's a crowded market and I've tried and tested aplenty before settling on a personal favourite.

Sky Cracknell and Kai Knutsen began making jams in their home kitchen in 2001.  Selling initially on Farmers' Markets, their England Preserves are now stocked by an impressive list of food shops, cafes and restaurants.  Fruits are sourced as close to their Bermondsey base as possible.  At this time the focus of their attention is the apple, pear and quince harvest.  They take full advantage of the fantastic crops from Brogdale in Kent.  Fruit butters such as 'Salcott Pippin & Cinnamon' and 'Beurre de Beugny Pear butter with Vanilla' are favourites in our house right now.  We are also just coming to the end of our stock of Bergeron Apricot Jam.  The vibrant colour and stunning apricot taste of this jam convinced me I'd found my favourite preserve-maker.  Jams, fruit-butters and fruit-cheeses (Damson, first this season, and now Quince) are made in small batches, cooking the fruit gently to retain "flavour and colour" and using as little sugar as possible.  It's a sympathetic approach which I can relate to.  When my own fruit harvests are exhausted, England Preserves is my larder.

England Preserves
See website for list of stockists.
Also open Saturdays for direct retail sales from their production unit at:
Arch 4 Spa North
London SE16 4EJ

Almond, Polenta and Lemon Cake with blackberry compote

Almond, Polenta and Lemon Cake
with blackberry compote

Blackberries, or brambles, are probably the most widely foraged foodstuff in the UK.  This is probably a dangerous claim as we seem to have rediscovered our passion for "foraging", but during their season it's hard to take a country walk and not come across someone picking blackberries.  Speak to any seasoned blackberry picker and they'll tell you they have a favourite spot they return to year after year.  That's not to say they'll tell you where it is - blackberry patches are jealously guarded - but it is the spot they will head for each year to try their luck.  That first picking is invested with more hope than expectation.  Will the fruit be plump or seedy?  Fit for a blackberry and apple pie or destined to be sieved for a fruit jelly?

Wild Blackberries

A late, wet start to spring has turned out to be perfect for fruit growing in the UK.  From gooseberries through berries, cherries and currants, all have cropped well this year.  Now plums and gages are starting to arrive and tasting sweet as nectar.  Apples and pears are expected to produce bumper crops too.  Right now it's the turn of wild blackberries, so much better than cultivated ones and they're free.  Foraging is by its nature anarchic but my own written rules are 'leave some for somebody else'.

Almond,  Polenta and Lemon Cake

Blackberry is a fruit I would never plant on my allotment.  It's a bit of a thug and will take over if you let it. Besides, wherever there is a bit of uncultivated land, there is likely to be a bramble patch.  Birds disperse the seeds very efficiently.  If you want a better behaved option, go for loganberry which is a cross between a blackberry and a raspberry.  If you do pick wild blackberries, folklore has it that you shouldn't take them after Michaelmas (29 September) as the Devil will have spat on them.  Superstitious or not, by the end of September in the UK you're unlikely to find berries you'd actually want to eat.

Almond, Polenta and Lemon Cake
with blackberry compote

My first pickings this year proved to be packed with juice, making the seeds barely noticeable.  Half of the berries were the basis for a classic apple and blackberry crumble.  The rest I warmed with a little sugar to enjoy as a compote which would be good, I thought, with a little almond 'something'.  I had almonds; I had polenta; and I had lemons.  With those ingredients, The River Cafe Cookbook was the first book I reached for. Their recipe for Torta di Polenta, Mandorle e Limone is the basis for the recipe below.  I know it's sacrilege, but I did change a few things.

Not wanting a cake as large as 30cm, I cut down the recipe to suit a 17cm x 6cm round tin.  It produced a beautifully light cake which is also gluten-free.  I found the lemon didn't come through quite enough for me so I increased the amount of lemon zest recommended.  I should mention the finished cake is fairly fragile so take extra care to prepare the tin.  The cake keeps well for a couple of days but it will lose its crunch.

Almond, Polenta and Lemon Cake
with blackberry compote
(Serves 4-6)

150g (6oz) unsalted butter, softened
150g (6oz) caster sugar
2 medium eggs
150g (6oz) almonds, skinned and ground fairly finely (or use ready-ground almonds)
Half a tsp of vanilla extract (or qtr tsp of vanilla powder - Ndali brand is very good)
Zest of 2 lemons
Juice of half a lemon
75g (3oz) polenta
Half a teaspoon baking powder
Pinch of salt

For the compote:
300g (12oz) blackberries
25-50g (1-2oz) icing sugar (depending on sweetness of berries)


Preheat oven 170C (fan 150C)/Gas 3.
Lightly butter a 17cm x 6cm round tin and dust with polenta.
Cream the butter well with the caster sugar.  Add the ground almonds and vanilla and mix briefly.  Gradually beat in the eggs. 
Gently fold in the lemon zest and juice, followed by the polenta, baking powder and salt.
Spoon the mixture into the prepared tin and bake for about 30 minutes or until a skewer comes out fairly clean (under-cooked is better than over-cooked).  Leave to cool in the tin before turning out.

While the cake is cooking, put the blackberries in a heavy-bottomed pan with no more than 1 tablespoon of water.  Heat until the juices flow.  Remove from the heat and mix in 30g of icing sugar, adding more if the compote is too tart.  

Spoon a little compote alongside a slice of cake.  I don't think it needs the addition of cream but it's up to you.

Cherries with almonds & Sabayon sauce

Cherries & green almonds

The first English cherries have arrived with early varieties Inga and Merchant making an appearance at market over the weekend.  Warmed in the last few days by a sun we had almost forgotten existed, the Ingas are slightly tarter and firmer than the Merchants.  So, while we're feasting on handfuls of the latter, I decided to make a dessert of the Inga cherries.  With temperatures hovering around 30C in London I had no wish to heat up the kitchen any further, so it had to be something easy and cooling.

Cherries, green almonds, Sabayon

Having picked up a handul of the last of the fresh velour-overcoated green almonds at market and with some elderflower cordial in the larder, I had a head start.  Mature almonds will work fine but if the cherries and the green almonds happen to overlap, it's a nice way of using the early nuts which are milky and fresh tasting.

So far, so easy; but what to add to make it look like I'd made an effort without expending much time or energy at all?  A thin cooled custard perhaps?  Then I thought how long it had been since I'd made a sabayon or zabaglione, whichever you prefer to call it.  Dairy-free and cloud-like, it seemed just right for a hot summer's day.

Cherries, green almonds, Sabayon sauce

Sabayon is so easy to make and I find Jane Grigson's advice the best.  It takes only 2 minutes whisking with an electric whisk if you want a warm frothy sauce to eat immediately, 5 minutes to produce a 'creamier' one. If you want to make it up to an hour ahead (the one in the photographs above), you just need to keep whisking it off the heat until it has cooled.  This stops it separating before you get to eat it.

Cherries with almonds & Sabayon sauce
(Serves 4)

300g cherries
2 tablespoons elderflower cordial
1-2 teaspoons caster sugar
4-5 almonds

For the Sabayon:
1 large egg yolk
1 tablespoon caster sugar
2 tablespoons sweet white wine, Marsala or elderflower cordial

Wash, halve and de-stone the cherries over a bowl.  Add the Elderflower cordial and sugar.  Allow to macerate for at least 30 minutes.

For the Sabayon, put all three ingredients in a heatproof bowl.  Place over a pan of just simmering water so that the bowl is not touching the water.  Whisk for about 2 minutes until pale and uniformly frothy - at this point you could serve it immediately as a warm sauce. 
For a 'lightly-whipped single cream' consistency for immediate serving, continue whisking over the pan for another 4-5 minutes.
If you want the sauce to stand for an hour without separating, take the bowl off the heat and continue whisking for a further 4-5 minutes until the mixture has cooled and thickened a little more. 
Drain the fruit and serve - sauce or fruit first is up to you.  Top with slivers of almond and a sprig or two of mint.

The excess juice from the macerated cherries makes a lovely drink topped up with water.
   

Elderflower Cordial

Elderflower Lemon & Lime

It's the scent of muscat grapes which attracts me to elderflower.  Leave it too late in the season to pick the blooms and the aroma will be closer to cat's pee - and no one wants that.  It's not just when you pick elderflowers but where also matters; well it does to me.  I know how lucky I am to have an allotment and to have access to elders growing well into the centre of the plots so I'm not about to lecture you on harvesting.  All I will say is, I'd think carefully about where I picked blossom and wouldn't gather from trees close to the pollution contamination of busy roads.

Elderflower  is one of those cordials made for generations in family kitchens.  Like 'blackberrying' it connects us to a time when foraging was the norm.  Then, knowledge of free food was widespread and its harvesting, often, necessary.  The flowers and the berries of the Elder are high in vitamin C so were a valuable addition to the diet.  There is a C17th reference to the drink by John Milton, and the blessed Mrs Beeton offered recipes for cordial and wine.  It wasn't until the mid-80's that commercial brands of Elderflower Cordial began appearing on supermarket shelves.  I have to say, there are some good brands out there, but I love to 'cook' the seasons so, for me, at this time of year it has to be home-made.

This year I managed to harvest elderflowers early in the season when the white flowers were just beginning to open and their scent was fresh and sweet with none of the mustiness which develops later in their flowering.  So, don't delay.  Picked just before yet another deluge and wrapped carefully in an improvised cone of newspaper, I raced home with my free booty.  Fresh muslin-wrapped elderflowers added to soft fruit during cooking can be lovely but, to preserve your harvest of blossoms for weeks to come, you can't beat elderflower cordial.  Last year I left it far too late to make mine.  Although I did grab a fistful of overblown blossom heads, and managed to make a couple of bottles, the taste really wasn't up to the mark.  The proof of the wisdom of picking early is in the drinking.  This year's cordial is sweetly aromatic, fresh-tasting and vibrant and bears little resemblance to last summer's drink.

There are plenty of recipes for elderflower cordial around but it's simply water, sugar, elderflowers and citrus so you can't go too far wrong.  I don't like it too sweet as I find it detracts from the flavour so you'll find this recipe uses less sugar than most, but there's no reason why you shouldn't add a bit extra for a more syrupy result.  I know a lot of people add oranges and lemons but I love limes and much prefer to use them in place of orange.  If you want the cordial to keep beyond a few weeks, add a heaped teaspoon of citric acid (available from shops that sell home-brew kits) at the end and sterilise the bottles in a water bath after filling and sealing.  Alternatively, pour your cold cordial into small plastic bottles, freeze it and defrost a bottle when you want it.

To drink; a ratio of 1:5 cordial to sparkling or still water is about right.  To flavour fruit; add 2 tablespoons to around 500g of fruit.  Elderflower goes particularly well with gooseberries, apricots, cherries, strawberries and raspberries.

Elderflower Cordial
(makes about 2.5 litres)

20-25 just-open Elderflower heads
2 large unwaxed lemons (pour boiling water over and scrub well if not unwaxed)
2 unwaxed limes (pour boiling water over and scrub well if not unwaxed)
1.75 litres water
1kg granulated sugar

Cut any excess stem from the flower heads, shake well to release the inevitable bugs.  Put the heads in a large bowl and grate the zest from all the lemons and limes over the top. Bring the water to the boil  and pour over.  Ensure the flowers are submerged and leave to steep overnight. Keep all your fruits in the fridge to juice the next day.  

Next day, line  a sieve with muslin.  Sterilise the muslin by pouring boiling water over it. Strain  the flower head infusion through it into a stainless steel pan.  Add the reserved citrus juice and the sugar.  Bring slowly to the boil, stirring occasionally to ensure the sugar dissolves fully.  Bring to the boil then simmer for 2-3 minutes.  Use a funnel to pour into hot sterilised swing-top bottles.  

The cordial can be used straight way but the flavour develops more after a week or two kept in a dark cupboard.  It will keeps for about 6 weeks.  Poured, cold, into plastic bottles and frozen it will keep for several months.

More recipes using elderflowers:
Gooseberry Elderflower Syllabub