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.

Syllabub & boozy cherries

Syllabub with eau-de-vie cherries

Winter's chill is not something we want to think of when market stalls are piled high with the sweetest English strawberries, peas in their pods and sharp, grassy gooseberries.  When the English cherry harvest joins the party, around the third week in June, the cold months seem a long way off. But if you are a preserver, you always have a thought for those little jars and bottles you can squirrel away at the back of a cupboard.  The bitter orange marmalades and quince jellies, glowing like stained glass when you hold them up to the light; perfumed apricot jams and black as night damson; slabs of fruit 'cheese' and sharp fruit vinegars.  The cherry harvest is short and sweet. Within 6-8 weeks the harvest has moved from white Napoleon to deep-dark Regina and the time has come to decide how best to preserve some fruits to bring out in the depths of winter.

Cherry jam is good but there is only so much jam a family can eat.  Cherries in eau-de-vie is better. Not only do you have delicious, boozy cherries to eat but there's cherry liqueur in time for Christmas too.  You can use kirsch or vodka instead of eau-d-vie, or even brandy, if you like. General guidance for the method comes from Jane Grigson.  Fill a jar almost to the top with washed and dried cherries, pricking each fruit 2 or 3 times.  Pour in enough caster sugar to come about a third of the way up the jar then fill to cover the fruit with eau-de-vie.  Close the jar and give it a shake.  Leave in a cool dark place for at least 3 months (I've done so for more than a year), shaking it from time to time to fully dissolve the sugar.

I don't ever remember eating cherries as a child growing up in northern England.  I've learned they grow best in Southern and Central England which would account for it.  My early experience of them was limited to those jars of ruby red maraschino cherries which made an appearance at Christmas time, always brought out by the Auntie who liked a cocktail.  The one who was the most fun.

With a history going back to at least the 17th century, originally syllabub was a frothy drink made by milking directly from the cow into a bowl of wine, cider or ale which caused the milk to curdle.  As you can imagine, it was intended to be consumed on the spot.  Syllabub progressed to a firmer textured cream by whipping in sharp fruit syrups or wine.  This dish was more stable than the original, so, it was possible to keep it for a day or two.  Hannah Glasse  in her book The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy, first published in 1747, describes a recipe for 'Everlasting Syllabub' which calls for  "Rehnish wine, half a pint of sack and two large Seville oranges" to join the milk.   She also stipulates the addition of calf's foot jelly.  The sturdiness of the finished dish can only be imagined.

The recipe for syllabub below is the one I always turn to since it was recommended to me years ago. I'm sure I was told it was a Katie Stewart recipe from when she wrote food columns for newspapers.  I vary the wine/liqueur depending on what I am pairing the syllabub with - sometimes I reach for white wine or sherry or, maybe, elderflower cordial instead.  This time I wanted something to match the almond quality of the cherries which comes from steeping them with their stones intact, so, Amaretto seemed right.  The toasted almonds, which provide a necessary crunch, could be replaced by an almond biscuit.

The dish is light enough to make a Christmas meal dessert and you can prepare it in advance.  I know if you want to replicate this recipe right now you'll need to buy some cherries in eau-de-vie. But next year, when the cherry season arrives, you won't!

Syllabub with eau-de-vie cherries and almonds

Syllabub with eau-de-vie Cherries
(Serves 6)

Around sweet 40 cherries (drained from the eau-de-vie)
250ml (10 fl oz) double cream
100g (4 oz) caster sugar
Grated rind and juice of 1 lemon
2 tablespoons Amaretto liqueur
25g (1 oz) toasted almonds

Cut the cherries in half and lift out the stones.  Place all but 6 pitted cherries in the serving glasses/dishes.
Whisk the cream, sugar, lemon rind and juice and the liqueur together to the consistency of mayonnaise (should happen very quickly) and divide between the 6 glasses/dishes.

Place in the fridge for at least two hours, but it will keep refrigerated for up to 24 hours.  Top with the toasted almonds before serving.

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

Quince Cheese

English Quince

Quince, a fruit of the Cydonia oblonga tree, is gritty, hard and astringent.  Only its fragrance hints at what it can become with cooking.  Bringing out the delectability of a quince takes time, effort and sugar.  These three added ingredients result in a luscious ruby coloured fruit confection.

There is one variety of quince, the Mulvian which was mentioned by Pliny the Elder, that can be eaten without cooking but it's not one most of us are likely to encounter.  Sugar is the key to palatability.  Tasted by the English during the first Crusades of the 11th century, most sugar later arrived here in the form of conical sugar loaves.  Sugars boiled and mixed with finely powered flower petals were considered to be good for colds and other ailments.  Mostly sugar was reserved for the royal table or the greatest households to produce spiced and sweetened confections for close of dinner digestives.  This, as Peter Brears in Cooking and Dining in Medieval England reminds us, is a practice we still indulge in with after dinner chocolates and liqueurs and other sweet morsels.

By the 15^th century, Brears tells us, the confectionary served to end a meal centred around sweetened apples, quinces, wardens (an old variety of cooking pear) in dishes like Pears in Syrup.  Honey as a sweetener was also employed and Brears gives recipes for Chardequince, Chardedate and Erbowle – employing cooking quince, dates and pears respectively.  All three recipes bearing, to my mind, a very close affinity to what in England we’d now term a fruit 'cheese' or paste.  Of these fruits the quince transformed into a paste is a love shared with other nations.  In France they have their pate de coing, Italy has cotognata, Spain is well-known for its membrillo and Portugal has marmalada.  Recipes are all very similar, though the Portuguese paste is made looser than others and was the original marmalade. 

Quince Cheese

Some quince fruits are more fragrant than others.  I have no science to back up my preference but personally, when I buy, if it's not fragrant it doesn't go in the bag.  As I write, two English-grown quince are perfuming my workspace.  How to describe the scent?  Sensual, almost musky with rose and tropical fruit notes.  Apple and pear fragrances are in there too.  It almost breaks my heart to think of taking them to the kitchen to be cooked - almost. 

Quince Cheese is simple to make but does require constant attention in the puree stage of cooking as it burns easily.  With basically only two ingredients, the recipe is straightforward.  Some like to cook the quince whole but I prefer to chop it up.  The 'cheese' is a thick paste which sets to a firm consistency.  It's good paired with many cheeses but particularly goat and blue cheeses, melted into a lamb or game stew or tagine, or cubed and rolled in granulated sugar to serve as that end of meal digestive.  Moro restaurant uses membrillo instead of egg yolk to make the 'quince aioli', serving it with their delicious roast pork.  The recipe can be found in Moro the Cookbook by Sam and Sam Clark.  

Quince Cheese

1.5 kg (3 lb) quince
Around 1.1 kg (2 lb 4 oz) caster or granulated sugar (see method)
Lemon juice as desired

Line with greaseproof paper whatever dishes you want to use as moulds  - I use 2 loaf tins so I have slabs of 'cheese' which I can slice as needed and end up with around 1.8 kg (3 lb 12 oz) of 'cheese' in total from the quantities above.

Wash the quince well and cut into chunks, peel, core and pips included, and place in a large pan.  Cover with cold water and bring to the boil. Simmer until the fruit is soft. Strain and put the fruit through a mouli or mash then press through a sieve.

Weigh the puree and put in a large pan with the same weight in sugar.  Cook on a low heat, stirring almost constantly for the whole cooking time as it can 'catch' and burn easily.  Allow the mixture to bubble slowly until it turns a deep amber colour.  This will take at least 45 minutes.  When you drag a spoon through and the puree doesn't close up straight away, it's ready.  Taste and add a little lemon juice if you find it too sweet.

Pour the mixture into your lined loaf tins or dishes to a depth of about 5 cm (2 inches). Leave to stand in a dry place, at room temperature, for about 24 hours to cool and set.

Turn out and wrap tightly in fresh greaseproof paper, baking parchment or, even better, waxed paper.

The 'cheese' should keep in the fridge in a container for at least 6 months but check it from time to time as the more moist the mixture is, the less well it will keep.  I have been able to keep mine for longer with no noticeable deterioration to it at all.

You might also like:

Quince
Poached Quince
Quince and Ginger sponge pudding

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.

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...