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. 

Celeriac Remoulade with chestnut mushrooms

Celeriac

It's the week before Christmas.  The roast is ordered, the pudding is sorted, the wines are bought. But it's the food in between the celebratory meals that interest me more and it's time to give it some thought.  I like fats and carbs as much as anyone but over the next two weeks there also need to be plenty of vegetable-based dishes and fruity puddings.  I know I will be craving lively, stimulating, bitter and tangy flavours that ingredients like anchovies, capers, mustards, pickles, ketchups, citrus, herbs and spices deliver.

This year, apart from feasting days, there will be no menus here.  There will be a list of dishes that will be 'just the thing' at some point over the holiday to jolt the tastebuds.  This is a time to enjoy being in the kitchen not to be chained to it.  There will be soft polenta with spiced-up winter greens; roasted cauliflower with anchovies and capers; a sharing pan of spicy, hot Shakshuka; escarole for a warming bowl of Caldo Verde to come home to after a long walk;  Griddled chicory with goat's curd; punchy Puttanesca sauce for the inevitable plate of pasta; and a pre-cooked octopus to serve with potatoes, mayo and smoked paprika.  There are sure to be lemons for granita or curd; maybe a 'SweetMeat Cake', a tart which gives candied citrus a starring role rather than a supporting one; frozen fruit purees for ice cream and sorbets that are a reminder of summer on the allotment; and it's very likely there'll be a stash of Hot Gingernut biscuits in the kitchen.

Chestnut mushrooms

Here's another dish that fits-the-bill.  A marriage of raw celeriac and a punchy mustard mayonnaise, here served with raw Chestnut mushrooms, toasted hazelnuts and shards of hard cheese.  It's a blatant rip-off of a dish I've enjoyed at 40 Maltby Street.  Celeriac, also known as Celery Root, is one of the best winter vegetables and is at its peak right now.  It makes a good Celeriac Soup but, for me, its flavour and texture is best appreciated raw.

Celeriac Remoulade with Chestnut mushrooms

Celeriac Remoulade with Chestnut Mushrooms
(Serves 6-8)

1 medium celeriac, trimmed, peeled and cut into julienne strips (put into a bowl of cold acidulated water until needed and dry on kitchen roll before using)
250ml (9 fl oz) mayonnaise
1-2 teaspoons Dijon mustard, according to taste
300g (12 oz) good, firm Chestnut mushrooms
50g (2 oz) toasted hazelnuts (skins rubbed off), and cut in half
75g (3 oz) Parmesan or a hard English cheese like Berkswell, peeled into strips with a potato peeler
Extra Virgin olive oil & lemon
Salt and pepper
Sprig of Parsley, finely chopped

Mix the strips of celeriac with the mayonnaise and mustard.  Pile onto plates.  Slice the Chestnut mushrooms finely, preferably on a Mandolin, and scatter over the celeriac remoulade. Top with the hazelnuts and strips of cheese.  Season with pepper and a little salt.  Add olive oil and lemon to taste.  Scatter the chopped parsley on top and serve.


I'll be baking bread to go with this.  Well that's the plan.  It's entirely possible that we'll have so many leftovers to consume that  we'll get through to New Year's Day fuelled entirely on meat and two veg and, of course, cheese.  I really hope not.

This will be my last post before Christmas.  Do have a good one - I think we all need it this year.

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...

Rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb!

Yorkshire Forced Rhubarb

When I started 'big' school, the maths teacher was less than impressed with my homework.  He would show his despair at my inability to grasp calculus by writing 'rhubarb', with a furious flourish, across my pages of painfully reached conclusions.  What he meant, of course, was that my work was nonsense, rubbish, worthless stuff.  This slang use of the name of one of my favourite fruits/vegetables (discuss) presumably dates back to the 16th century when rhubarb was grown in the UK, not for its eating possibilities, but, as a purgative.  The increasing appetite for bitter coffee led to  affordable sugar in the 1700s and opened British eyes to eating rhubarb for pleasure rather than purging.  By the early 19th century we had learned, by accident, how to manipulate rhubarb's growth to produce a very different food from the thick-stemmed, pink/green shafts topped by exuberant, non-edible, leaves that grew in our gardens.  I've written about this before so go to Rhubarb Triangle if you want to read more.

Why am I returning to the subject of rhubarb?  Because of seasonality, each year in early January slim stems of soft-pink through to ruby-red 'forced' rhubarb stems briefly appear at market.  And this year photographer Martin Parr has a perfectly timed exhibition at The Hepworth Wakefield gallery, part of which focuses on 'The Rhubarb Triangle'.

If ''Yorkshire Forced Rhubarb' is familiar to you it's likely to be for those, supermarket, small pink, plastic-wrapped, decapitated  bundles or, if you're lucky, glowing sticks laid out, untrimmed, on the shelves of your greengrocer's shop.  Martin Parr's 'The Rhubarb Triangle' project digs beyond the beauty of the candle-lit harvesting of the crop and its consumption.  When I posted a snap of what I was seeing at the exhibition, someone commented "It looks like a horror movie."  Parr's project captures the dirty, cold, labour-intensive work of moving the plants from field to shed, its back-breaking nature clearly etched on the faces of the workers in this triangle of West Yorkshire land between Wakefield, Morley and Rothwell.  It's an exhibition well worth seeing, along with the fantastic permanent collection of Barbara Hepworth's work and that of her contemporaries.

Image taken by me at The Hepworth Wakefield
The Rhubarb Triangle Exhibition by Martin Parr

On my visit, a detour into Wakefield market yielded no rhubarb and in Leeds market only a few sticks of the local speciality.  I hope this means that local people buy direct from the growers thereby getting the very freshest produce.

I'll happily use my allotment-grown rhubarb in various ways - crumbles, cakes, muffins and jams - but for me, by far the best way to enjoy 'forced rhubarb' is simply, and gently poached.  The addition of one of the following before poaching is good - a vanilla pod; a little preserved ginger; orange zest and/or juice; or a single clove.  Best of all, I think, is to add a teaspoon or two of rosewater just before serving.  Forced rhubarb is expensive - think of all that hard graft - particularly this winter when the necessary frosts have been few and far between.  But it is special and poaching it will give you a pot to keep in the fridge to be eaten by the spoonful, with yogurt or cream perhaps.  Here's how I like to poach my forced rhubarb, along with a great recipe for Hazelnut Shortbread from The Kitchen Revolution by Rosie Sykes, Polly Russell and Zoe Heron.  These biscuits add an accompanying buttery crunch.

Poached Yorkshire Forced Rhubarb
with Hazelnut Shortbread (and a dab of cream)

Poached Rhubarb

1 kg (36oz) pink forced rhubarb
175-200g (6-7oz)  caster sugar
Just before serving - add a teaspoon of rosewater to each serving

Preheat the oven to 160C (140C fan).  
Wash and top and tail the rhubarb.  Cut into 1 inch/2cm lengths.  Place in an ovenproof dish.
Sprinkle with the sugar (if you opt to use a flavouring other than rosewater - see above - now is the time to add it).  Cover with a cap of greaseproof paper and cook for 30 minutes.  If your spears are thin ones they should be soft but still holding their shape.  If they are thicker then give the dish a very gently stir, replace the paper cap and cook for a further 10-15 minutes.  
Remove from oven and leave to cool a little.  Using a slotted spoon, gently place the rhubarb in a bowl (if you have used a clove, remove it now).  
Pour the juice into a small heavy-based pan, bring it to the boil then simmer until the juice is reduced by half.  
Cool and stir the thickened juice gently into the fruit.  The compote will keep, covered, in the fridge for up to a week.

Hazelnut Shortbread
(makes 30-40 small biscuits)

125g (4½oz) softened unsalted butter (plus extra for greasing)
50g (2oz) caster sugar
100g (3½oz) skinned, toasted hazelnuts
150g (5½oz) plain flour
pinch of salt
A little caster sugar for dusting

Preheat the oven to 160C (140C fan).
Grease a baking tin, approx 26 x 16 x 2cm, with butter.  Cream the butter and sugar until pale and fluffy.  Pulse the hazelnuts in a food processor (or bash them in a tea towel) into small pieces and add them to the butter and sugar mixture.
Fold in the flour and salt to form a light crumbly mix.
Press the dough evenly into the greased tin and score into fingers without cutting all the way through.
Bake for 25-30 minutes.
Remove, dust lightly with caster sugar and allow it to cool a little before breaking the shortbread into fingers along the score lines.

For the biscuits in the photograph above, I rolled the dough into a cylinder (handling it as little as possible), chilled it, then cut coins of dough to place on two greased baking trays and baked the biscuits for about 20 minutes.

My maths may not have improved much but I do know that rhubarb is very far from being worthless stuff, particularly when it's Yorkshire Forced Rhubarb.

Spiced Courgette & Lemon Cake

Courgette plant Striato di Napoli

It's peak time for courgettes on my allotment. In order to keep everyone around the dining table interested it's necessary to pull out all the recipes I have and then look for more.  I've worked my way through risottos of diced courgette finished with their shredded flowers; fritters of grated courgette topped with a fried egg; dishes of Scapece with its vinegar and mint dressing; and courgette and onion tarts.  Courgettes make a surprisingly creamy soup; a light supper when sautéed and coloured with saffron (thank you Fern Verrow - a year of recipes from a farm and its kitchen); and their flowers, dipped in tempura batter, are delicious fried (more substantial if stuffed with soft cheese and herbs beforehand).  This year, we've had countless plates of Linguine con zucchine from Rachel Roddy's Five Quarters - Recipes and Notes from a Kitchen in Rome.  This summer my diners have never tired of that dish. We all need a recipe like that.

I vow not to let courgettes grow so large they effectively turn into marrows - the idea of stuffed marrow makes me shudder.  But when I'm bringing home armfuls of courgettes, they can find their way into cake.  I picked up a basic  recipe in the USA at least a decade ago.  Every summer since, out it comes to be tweaked a little according to what I have in the store cupboard. This year, in response to a request for the recipe, I've decided to share a version just in case you, too, are buckling under the weight of summer squashes.  It's worth mentioning that I've also successfully made this cake with crookneck squash.  If your courgettes are very watery, salt them after grating, leave them to sit for half an hour and then squeeze out the excess juice.  This recipe makes a pretty large cake but it does, quite easily, scale down to a 2-egg cake.

Spiced Courgette & Lemon Cake

Spiced Courgette & Lemon Cake
(makes a large cake 23cm x 13cm)

2 medium courgettes (about 450g/16oz), grated
180ml (6fl oz) groundnut oil
300g (10oz) caster sugar
3 eggs, lightly beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
250g (9oz) soft plain flour
1½ teaspoons bicarbonate of soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
2 teaspoons of ground allspice (or a mixture of cinnamon, nutmeg and a little clove)
a pinch of salt
Zest of 1 lemon
115g (4oz) raisins or sultanas

SYRUP:
60ml (2fl oz) lemon juice
60g (2 oz) granulated sugar

Pre-heat oven to 180C(fan 160C)/350F/Gas 4
Grease the loaf tin and line with greaseproof paper on the bottom and long sides to help with lifting out the baked cake.
Combine the oil and sugar and mix well until creamy.  Gradually beat in the eggs, mixing well between each addition.  Mix in the grated courgette and the vanilla extract.
In a separate bowl combine the flour, bicarbonate of soda, baking powder, spices, salt, lemon zest and raisins.  Stir into the creamed mixture until it is just amalgamated.  You should have a fairly loose batter.  Pour into the loaf pan and bake in the centre of the oven for about 65 minutes or until golden brown and a skewer comes out clean.  Remove from the oven and leave to stand for 5 minutes.
Gently heat the lemon juice and sugar until the sugar dissolves.
Pierce the loaf several times with a skewer. Spoon the hot syrup over the cake, covering all of the top.  Cool for 30 minutes before lifting out the cake with the help of the paper.

The cake tastes much better if you cool it completely, peel off the paper, and wrap it in fresh greaseproof paper or non-PVC food wrap  and leave overnight.  Keeps well for several days and actually becomes stickier and even better, I think.

More of my courgette recipes:
Scapece
Courgette Soup
Courgette, lemon & thyme linguine

Pissaladière

Red over-wintered onion

This was the first over-wintered onion I lifted this year.  Its beauty transfixed me.  I took it home and placed it on the old wooden crate I keep on my little balcony and, of course, excitedly photographed it.  Out the shot went into the ether because, surely, everyone who saw it would admire it as much as I did.  I doubt anyone appreciated it quite so much, but this is what growing does to you.  You become ridiculously overwhelmed with your successes and their magnificence.  I harvested the onion early because of its immense size - well it was the biggest onion I'd ever grown - and monster veg is not my thing.  The need to grow for girth rather than taste - the biggest parsnip, the heaviest pumpkin, the plumpest gooseberry - is beyond my comprehension.  I think I was even a little scared by how big it had grown.  It was a meal in itself.

There the onion sat for 4 weeks, 'drying', even though I knew perfectly well it was a red overwintered onion; moist and perishable, they are most definitely not for keeping.  Bit by bit, the rest of the late-autumn planted sets have been brought into the kitchen and cooked enthusiastically, but this one remained on the box ageing with grace.  It could not go on.  So, today I took another 'still life with onion' (above) and chose a dish I hoped would do it justice.

In most cuisines the onion is reached for with astonishing regularity.  It's the vegetable that was top of my list to grow when I first took on my allotment.  Their ubiquity means they are cheap to buy but the satisfaction in harvesting a bed of onions, to be dried and squirrelled away for future use, is high.  All forms of allium are invaluable to my growing year: chives for delicacy; shallots for sweet pungency; leeks for a mild sweetness; garlic for punch; and onions for their fantastic versatility.

The Chilean poet, Pablo Neruda wrote a number of 'odes to common things', including:

Ode to the Onion

Onion, luminous flask, your beauty formed petal by petal ....." Read more 

Thank you Comeconella for the reminder.

It's easy to take the onion for granted but there are some dishes where it commands a starring role. Onion Soup, Roast Stuffed Onions, Onions a la Grecque and Onion Marmalade, to name a few.  For me, Simon Hopkinson's Onion Tart with Lancashire Cheese is a fine example; the Provençal onion tart, Pissaladière, another notable one.  But should a Pissaladière  include tomato or not?  Jane Grigson and Elizabeth David say yes; Alice Waters and Elizabeth Luard say No.  Waters specifies yellow onions; Grigson leaves the choice of strength to the cook.  Then there's the question of the base - bread dough or pastry?  And, if pastry, what kind?  No one seems to agree, least of all the French.

Pissaladière

Personally, I don't want to stray into Italian Pizza territory, much as I like Pizza, so tomatoes are out along with the bread dough base.  Pissaladière gets its name from pissalat niçoise, a paste made of salt-cured anchovies pounded with olive oil, thyme and bay.  For me, it needs to be a rough-puff pastry base, spread with sweet onion perfumed with bay and thyme to contrast with salty anchovies and olives.  I prepare my onions the Alice Waters way, stewed slowly, the cooking juices drained off and used to pour over the tart just before serving.  

Pissaladière
(Serves 4)

300g rough-puff pastry
4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
6 medium sized onions, thinly sliced
2 plump cloves garlic, thinly sliced
1 bayleaf
a few sprigs thyme
100g salted anchovies
A handful of black olives, preferably Niçoise, de-stoned
Salt and pepper

Roll the pastry to a rectangle, roughly 30cm x 20cm.  Place on a baking tray and create a narrow border to the pastry by cutting half-way into it all the way around. about 1cm from the edge (this allows the border to rise a little more than the centre)   Prick the base a few times with a fork.  Chill in the fridge.
Heat the olive oil in a large, heavy-bottomed pan over a medium heat.  Add the onions, garlic and herbs, a pinch of salt and a grinding of pepper.  Stir then cover and stew for about 1 hour until they are completely soft (they should not brown). Strain and reserve the liquid.
Rinse and fillet the anchovies.  Halve the olives or leave whole if very small. 
Pre-heat the oven to 180C (Fan 16oC)/Gas 4.
Spread the onion mixture over the base of the pastry within the cut edge.  Top with the strips of anchovy and the olives.  Bake for 45 minutes.  Remove from the oven. Just before serving, use the reserved liquid from cooking the onions to pour over the filling.
Serve just warm or at room temperature.


Here's a tip from Jane Grigson for the frugal cook: "When your onions sprout towards the end of the winter, use the green shoots as if they were chives."

Spring into Summer with peas, beans and garlic

Broad beans, garlic and Florence Red onions

Every potato has sprouted into a canopy providing much needed shade to the tubers you just know are growing abundantly.  Bright spots of luscious red mark the strawberry bed where healthy plants poke through weed-suppressing cover and are guarded by a mesh-covered frame.  Evenly-spaced raspberry canes are already fruiting nearby and rows of broad beans stand to attention,  straight-backed  and regimented.  Sadly, not my plot but my east-side allotment neighbour.  Ex-army? There's something about Ray's disciplined plot that makes me think so.  Every area seems to be organised and considered, from the raised nursery bed to the onions, which, needless to say, are enormous.  Ex-Royal Engineers?  Whatever, clearly I need to make friends.

How different from my own plot.  I am a stranger to straight lines, instinctive in my practices, a firefighter rather than a planner.  Sometimes things work out, sometimes they don't.  One year the courgette crop will be fantastic, the next a disaster.  Onions will sulk their way through one spring and grow to the size of cricket balls the next.  I am a philosophical gardener and I try not to let size matter.  Yet I keep straying over to check on Ray's plot.  There must, I reasoned, be something that's not quite working out.  Then I spotted the blackfly, thickly massed around the growing tips of those uniform broad beans.  At last, a chink in Ray's armour.

I couldn't get back to my own broad beans quickly enough to check them.  Sure enough, there the blackfly squatted, farmer-ants keeping them in their place and milking them for their sweet honeydew secretions.  Normally, pinching out the growing tip is sufficient to stop the colony in its tracks.  But not this year.  Onward they have marched, shepherded by their guardians, down the length of the stem and onto the bean pods.  And it hasn't stopped their, barely germinated runner beans are being ambushed, even spinach and chard have been blitzed.  Each visit, battle is joined here on plot 45.  My weapon of choice the soap-spray, has been enhanced with a garlic brew and success, I'm convinced, will be mine.

Ray, on the other hand, is not a firefighter.  Those stately broad bean plants now stand stunted, their crop overwhelmed.  The strawberry plants he gave me are doing well in their ramshackle housing on plot 45.  I think I need to offer him some broad beans in exchange.  I'll try not to be triumphalist, honestly I will.

Peas in the pod

Lifting my first garlic in early summer coincides with the pea and broad bean harvest.  Here's a dish I always make at this time of year to celebrate the real start to harvesting.  If the peas and beans are cropping earlier, I'll also add a few asparagus tips from the market.

Pappardelle with peas, broad beans & new season garlic
(serves 4)

200g (8oz) 'OO' flour
2 large eggs
pinch of salt
A little extra flour or polenta to help prevent sticking to the worktop 
60g (2oz) unsalted butter
About 1kg mix of broad beans and peas in their pods
1-2 cloves of fresh garlic, thinly sliced
150ml (5 fl oz) vegetable stock
A small handful of mint, roughly torn or chopped

Put the flour and salt in a bowl.  Maker a well and add the eggs.  Mix to bring the ingredients together. Either knead in a mixer with a dough hook for 2 minutes or on a work surface, by hand, for 10 minutes.  If you use a machine, knead the dough by hand on the worktop for a further half minute (the warmth of your hands finishes it off perfectly). You will now have a smooth firm dough. Wrap it in cling film and allow to rest in the fridge for at least half an hour.

Pod the beans and peas and cook in boiling, salted water for 30 seconds.  Plunge them into cold water, drain and pop the broad beans out of their skins.  Keep the peas and beans to one side.

Bring a large pan of water to the boil and salt the water (correctly it should be 1 litre of water to 10g of salt and for this quantity of pasta you should use at least 2 litres/20g).  As the water comes to the boil, feed the pasta dough through the pasta machine on its lowest setting. Fold the dough and repeat 3 more times. Increasing the setting by one mark each time, feed the dough through the machine once until you reach the penultimate setting (if you are as short of kitchen space as I am you'll want to cut your rolled pasta in half, or into thirds, part way through the rolling to make it more manageable, so you end up with 2 or 3 sheets of pasta).   Lay the sheets on the floured work surface and cut into wide pappardelle strips (1.5-2cm).  

Heat 30g of the butter gently in a large pan and add the garlic.  Cook until just softened.  Add the stock and boil to reduce a little.  Turn down the heat to a simmer and add the broad beans and peas to heat through for a couple of minutes while you cook the pasta in the salted water for 2 minutes.  

Season the vegetables and add the rest of the butter, cut into dice, shaking the pan to emulsify. Take off the heat.  Add the drained pasta and 2-3 tablespoon of cooking water to loosen if necessary.  Add the mint and serve with lots of parmesan.


NB.  The excellent book, Five Quarters by Rachel Roddy has a section on pasta which has changed my own pasta-making habits.  I highly recommend it.

Rhubarb Grapefruit Preserve

Rhubarb & grapefruit

I've previously mentioned Jane Grigson's declaration that only "pink" rhubarb is worth eating. She was, of course, referring to the 'forced' kind where the plant is grown under cover of a pot or in the gloom of a candlelit forcing shed.  Forced rhubarb is very different from outdoor grown rhubarb and, generally, I have agreed with Jane Grigson's sentiments.  Certainly if you are looking for a beautifully evenly coloured compote with delicate flavour it's worth buying the early, forced, kind. However, this growing-year has made me appreciate the merits of the more robust and vigorous form of the plant.

A member of the Rheum genus of plants, rhubarb is related to both sorrel and buckwheat.  We add sugar to rhubarb to make its natural astringency more palatable and it's easy to forget it's actually a vegetable.  In Persian cooking, rhubarb is used in lamb dishes as a tenderiser.  In Europe, barely sweetened, it's used as a foil for oily fish like mackerel or fatty meats like pork.  In the UK in particular, rhubarb is enjoyed in compotes, crumbles and pies, in much the same way as we use gooseberries.  Both share a mouth-puckering sourness before tempering with sugars and flavourings.    

Rhubarb Grapefruit Preserve
Batch 1

I felt like the laughing-stock of the allotment group, as the only person unable to get a decent crop of rhubarb.  Then, last year, I split the crown of my plant into four sections.  Replanting each in a new location has rewarded me this year with a spectacularly good crop.  There's nothing so guaranteed to make you appreciate a vegetable as a bumper harvest.  So what to do with all that bounty?  Personally I find rhubarb releases far too much water to ever make a good pie but, thanks to the Fern Verrow - A year of recipes from a farm and its kitchen, we've been enjoying bowls of Rhubarb custard fool and bottling up Rhubarb cordial for summer's promise of glasses of Rhubarb gin fizz, Pink lemonade and Rhubarb Bellini.

But it's a recipe for jam I want to share with you here.  A recipe for Rhubarb Grapefruit Preserve from Alice Waters' Chez Panisse Fruit book (no, not the Chez Panisse Vegetable book).  It's not a combination that would normally have caught my attention.  Maybe it was because I'm in the midst of reading Bitter by Jennifer McLagan, which goes into the subject of bitter foods in forensic detail.  Though grapefruit is clearly a "bitter" food in her view, indeed the fruit was the starting point for her taking on the subject, opinions she sought were divided as to whether the flavour is bitter or merely sour.  Personally, I go with bitter and the idea of pairing grapefruit with sour rhubarb seemed a bit of a leap of faith.  Maybe it's something about the British palate, as inhabitants of the North American continent seem to have a taste for citrus with their rhubarb.  And then I looked at Grigson again - "... with citrus fruits it makes a delightful jam".  Sugar can transform the bitterest citrus into delectable marmalade, and the sourest rhubarb into luscious compote, so I swallowed my scepticism and I'm so glad I did.

Rhubarb Grapefruit Preserve
Batch 2

The first time I made this preserve, I took it a degree or two over jam set-point.  The colour changed from jewel-like to reddish-brown in the blink of an eye.  If this happens to you, what you lose in colour you'll gain in a delicious marmalade quality to the taste.  Stopping the cooking at exactly jam set point will give you a ruby-red preserve with the rhubarb flavour to the fore.  I'm still not sure which batch I prefer, so really you can't go wrong in my view.

Rhubarb Grapefruit Preserve (adapted from Chez Panisse Fruit by Alice Waters)
(makes 40 oz/1.125 kg)

2 lbs (900g) Rhubarb, washed, dried and cut into 1cm dice
2 grapefruit (I use red)
4 cups (900g) granulated sugar

Place the rhubarb in a large heavy-based stainless steel pan.
Peel the grapefruits, slice the peel thinly and juice the flesh.  Add the zest and juice to the pan of rhubarb along with the sugar.
Let the mixture stand for at least 30 minutes for the rhubarb to release its juices and the sugar to dissolve.
Sterilise your jars and lids.  Put a small plate in the freezer for testing the jam.
Over a high heat, bring the pan of mixture to the boil, stirring to make sure it doesn't stick.  The mixture will bubble high up the pan.  Skim off any foam around the edges.  Soon the mixture will subside and bubble thickly.  Stir frequently and start testing with a sugar thermometer and/or by using the cold plate for the 'wrinkle' test.  When it has reached set point, take the pan off the heat and pot up the jam.  Will keep for up to 1 year in properly sterilised jars.

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.

John and Elena Fruit & Veg, Bermondsey

Romanesco

I wrote recently about my favourite biodynamic farm, the very special Fern Verrow, and promised to tell you about more independent greengrocers.  For me, it would be wonderful to eat biodynamic produce all the time but for most of us it's just not possible financially or geographically.  Here's a London greengrocer that works hard to find the best produce available. Some of it will be organic, some not.  Some will have been sourced direct from the farm, and close to London, perhaps  grown without the use of pesticides, not certified organic but simply farmed responsibly.  Advice changes but there seems to be a consensus that apples, celery, grapes, spinach and strawberries retain residues; but, asparagus, aubergine, cabbage, onions and sweet potatoes don't or, at least, are less affected.  Most of us take a judgment, I think, and if you shop with an independent you trust it's easier to make that call.

Vegetable staples

John & Elena Fruit & Veg Company run a wholesale business in Bermondsey but from 8-2pm on Saturdays they welcome in a steady stream of shoppers to fill their baskets.  I wrote about them briefly back in April this year when they were lifting the shutters for the first time.  I've been shopping there very happily for eight months now.  The Saturday crates are filled with produce bought on Friday and Saturday morning.  You can expect to find mostly seasonal, quality, fruit and veg along with store cupboard essentials such as Cicchetti, dried borlotti beans and lentils, olive oils, salts, rices and dried pasta.

Kale

The excitement of all that spring and summer produce has passed and colours have changed from pale greens, pinks and reds to dark greens, orange and luscious purples.  Last week, along with the cabbages and carrots, sat British Chanterelle mushrooms and English pumpkins; vibrant green Romanesco alongside grizzled Celeriac Root; parsnip-shaped Purple Radishes with Purple Sprouting Broccoli; wonderfully fresh heads of Italian Puntarella and Cime di Rapa; and the  new citrus season was evident in a basket of vibrant Sicilian oranges.

Sicilian Oranges

John & Elena are putting their heart and soul into this business.  Formerly employed by fruit and veg legend Tony Booth at Borough Market and Druid Street before he closed his business, they have between them some 40 years of experience in the trade.  In the past few weeks Jacob's Ladder Farms and KäseSwiss have moved into the next door space at Spa Terminus, so on Saturdays you can buy groceries, meat and Swiss and Dutch cheeses from their shared retail space.

Celeriac

John & Elena
Fruit & Veg Company
5 Voyager Estate South
Spa Road/Rouel Road
Bermondsey
London SE16 4RP
Spa Terminus Map