Tag Archives: Vegetables

Unfurl

06 Thursday Apr 2017

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Tulips, daffs, forget-me-nots, garlic. Wildly flowering blossom. It is so exciting to be at the allotment. Everything is happening. And yet I am still alone there. It won’t be until mid April that the regulars will come and so in the meantime I am here and it’s all mine. There are rat droppings in the shed and forgotten potatoes from last year have sprouted into the space where I have sown carrots, there is a carpet of grass in the greenhouse, the windows are filthy, couch grass pushes its roots underneath everything, it is everywhere, every day there are fresh sightings. Weeds flourishing is always the sign that it is time to start broadcasting seed. I can’t bring myself to start clearing and washing the greenhouse glass because there is no water yet, it would be a case of me a cloth and a jar of vinegar.

I like the mat of grass in there anyway. It gives off a dry rustling heat as I drag the greenhouse door along its clapped out runner and walk inside. I like it derelict because it reminds me of finding abandoned houses and setting up camp in them as a child far away from parental interference. Why does everything have to be clean? I imagine gardening in my bare feet and lying down in the earth under the sun’s rays. But then I’m aware this wouldn’t be suitable for Hampton, dormitory suburb of England. And I have an 88-year-old neighbour one plot over who would think I was dead. He’d worry.

The best time is morning. Early as possible before anyone is awake. I’ve been here at 4.30 when I’ve woken into darkness and decided to give it a whirl, the ground slick with snails, the slowest parkour imaginable; snails hanging upside down on the bins, leaning against leaves like Gene Kelly, nonchalant. A world of slime.

Anyone would think that given that I spend so much time there, that my plot would be amazing, full of verticals and ploughed within an inch of its life. My other neighbours, Russians with a small boy, do more in a weekend than I manage in an entire season. I saw them this morning, him on the roof of his homemade shed with a fag on, heard the boy, who was swinging a piece of fence, their place dedicated to blue gauze which they had hanging over big wooden struts, to keep out nature – slugs, birds, foxes. In the foreground were manicured clumps of flowers and fruit bushes. How did they manage it when they’ve not even been here? I am here all the time. I manage nothing.

I like being near to their industriousness though. Sometimes I see the dad out in the street or on the bus and we have chats about the allotment or about our various ailments, and because of this, there’s a quiet empathy between us which makes working there easy. I know they don’t expect me to hang around, we’ll wave and nod and exchange pleasantries but no cups of tea or too many anecdotes. It’s important not to become too attached to growers, to maintain independence; a chat can easily take up too much time, grow unwieldy and then the next time you feel obliged to begin it all again, and then you’re never alone. You’re talking about Brexit and Trump. It’s ruined then.

You find you’re there ever earlier, to avoid the inane chatter. Chatter is what I grab my bike and ride to avoid. This is not the same as being happy to see people, which I am generally. So this is the bit before. Before summer when I avoid the weekends and the loud free-wheeling manic-ness of small children. Sounds occur now but they are abstract in nature, a solitary laugh, the tipping of a wheelbarrow, stone and tin. The rest is a kind of busy silence, where everything is alive and beyond me, the soil dry, sun everywhere. A time to unfurl.

My favourite thing at the moment is the new sorrel – a tight bundle of lettuce-green leaves, ripe for picking every day. It is a year-old plant grown from seed and it should be bitter by now but is still tart and lemony, turning a muddy taupe when introduced to heat and disintegrating totally in soups. It is the cousin of the handsome rhubarb, both of them astringent and singular stand alone perennials. I have not yet eaten sorrel raw, except pinched between finger and thumb and eaten in furtive shreds, so I only know it as a flavour and not quite as a texture. It would be nice to have those shield-like leaves in a salad bowl and feel the crunch. I am still afraid of fibre, but I will get there.

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Sorrel Merge

I add sorrel near the end of cooking time and it merges with all the other ingredients lending a sharpness and depth. Recently, I made a carrot and butter bean soup to which I added the leaves of parsley and sorrel five minutes before the end and the stalks earlier. Please use the stalks. If you’re interested in having an unadulterated sorrel experience simply sweat some young leaves in olive oil until they break down into a purée and keep in the fridge under a film of extra virgin. 

Olive oil, onion/shallot, garlic, carrots cut into thinnish rounds, butter beans, parsley, sorrel, sea salt, a few tablespoons of yoghurt, butter for the brave.

I have deliberately not mentioned amounts. If you’ve read Julian Barnes’s book A Pedant in the Kitchen you’ll know how infuriating he finds this. Whatevs. You can combine butternut squash with the carrots and you can also add celery along with the onion. Really it’s a melange of vegetables made liquid by the addition of some stock or water. I like to add a knobette of butter to the vegetable mess near the end, but you don’t have to. I think it lends a velvety quality.

Gently wilt the onion or shallot in a small amount of olive oil, then after a few minutes in which they’ve had a chance to soften, add smashed up garlic, sliced carrots, chopped herb stalks, butter beans and stock/water. I didn’t add the whole tin of butter beans but a handful. Cook over a medium heat until the carrots are soft and then add a generous handful of parsley and a fist of sorrel leaves and the butter if you fancy. The sorrel will turn mud-coloured. Cook for a few minutes more, or mere seconds if you like it very fresh. Liquefy in a blender and add a tablespoon or two of yoghurt, some sea salt and a smattering of fresh parsley, sorrel or other soft herb at the end.

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Aftermath

07 Saturday Jan 2017

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There was a man I recently talked to who said he always steamed his vegetables; this made me feel sad. I have a steamer and it is currently doing time on the top of my fridge, covered in a suspicion of ancient cobwebs. I come from a long line of Midlands folk who would not know what to do with a vegetable steamer, who rarely drank water (‘water is for washing’) and who needed proper animal fat for a day to pass without incident.

My grandpa had red hands, almost purple in hue, small and puffy and strangely delicate with ridged fingernails. He would wash my own small hands in the sink finger by finger as if whittling wood. He began many of his sentences with the word ‘why…’, which was in his lexicon the beginnings of an answer he was formulating. He was a timber merchant and had brylcreamed hair and resented the amount of trifle I ate and was constantly wiping my fingerprints off the glass doors. But of course I loved him and was in awe of the way he polished my shoes.

I remember the pristine plastic bag he would give me at Christmas, long like a sleeve. Inside was a Bunty comic – he was obviously ‘advised’ – and something to do with stationary and pencils. The smell of newness. I have always loved the smell of Christmas, the colours, the citrus, the nuts, the dome of disgraced pudding. However much you feel the bubbling up of resentment somewhere in your being (inevitable) it is hard to quash the feelings of excitement, of occasion, it’s always hard to sleep on Christmas eve. Presents, gold wrapping, a basted bird, the morning walk in frost, the sudden intimacies with strangers.

I have little recollection of what I ate with my grandparents at Christmas, except there was always trifle at some point and I remember the pudding on the day, hot and cascading with complicated fruit and brandy butter which I ate by the spoonful followed later by a spell of biliousness in the back of granny’s car. Breakfast would contain dry Alpen mixed to a rough cement with single cream (top of the milk).

Now the trees are on their lopsided uppers, kicked to the kerb, empty of trinkets. The only red thing left is a poinsettia, the oranges the only thing orange. It is over! It is not even the beginning of the end. It’s a whole new year. There is nothing tenuous about it. We must begin anew. My granny eventually turned her back on butter, switching to Flora margarine – something to do with Terry Wogan’s influence. But I can’t – butter is balm, particularly now in January, when darkness falls at four and the cold works its way pincer-like through all my layers. Fat makes you feel better. Well, me.

Here is a recipe for buttered carrots to which you can add the following: more butter. And a knife point of paprika, thyme, garlic or bay leaves. Adding some sweet potato can also be lovely; it will disintegrate within minutes though. I should say that I always add garlic to this. It is delicious alongside hummus or mixed with a bit of yoghurt or feta. It becomes a soup with ease, simply add water or stock. Meat stock can give it an intensity you should be prepared for.

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Buttered carrots

A bag of carrots, preferably organic (my bag says 650g)

Generous knob of good quality butter, min 25g (I use President)

Garlic, 3-4 cloves or more, bashed and chopped

Thyme sprigs (optional)

Melt the butter in the saucepan with the garlic and the (diagonally if you like) sliced carrots and coat well, add thyme or another herb here if using and a pinch of salt, then add sufficient water to cover the lot and bubble away until this has reduced to a stickiness. The moment it is ready is entirely a personal preference – I like my carrots almost burnt as it seems to bring out a corresponding sweetness, but Jane Grigson says the point of readiness is when the liquid is ‘reduced to a shiny, colourless glaze’. If you would like to make this into a soup then I would add more water and/or stock at this stage, bring it up to a boil and then blitz.

Roses and kale

07 Friday Nov 2014

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We have moved into our flat in Hampton (hence the silence, sorry) and I am thinking of getting an allotment. We went to Bushy Park Allotments on Sunday, to see if we could get in and at least get a good view of them, and there was a couple opening the gate carrying in a compost bin. We stood a way off looking at all the plots; they were untidy, shabby even, but there were also a lot of trees, and it looked both unkempt and rather beguiling; little portions of garden side by side as far as the eye could see.

The gentle hum of an engine, and I looked back at a man in a very low open-top car, with a bucket in the back and heaps of pink geraniums. He too looked unkempt and rather beguiling. He hadn’t sounded his horn, just sat in his very low down slightly rusted car waiting for us to move. He had shoulder-length sandy hair and was what people used to call rakish. My grandmother would not have trusted such a man; she would have said something about him being ‘freelance’. But there was a glamour about him and that he’d given us just the right amount of smile, to show he didn’t think we were in any way an irritant, made him alright.

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The car rattled through the gates and disappeared into the thick brush of trees and stalks and general vegetable matter. That’s when we could have gone, but the couple smiled at us now and so I went up, leaving Joe to loiter, and said hello. Can I put my name down for a plot? (‘Put your name down!’ ‘Have you put your name down?’ has been a mantra of my mother’s since childhood). “Yes, you put your name down,” the lady nodded. And then they gave me advice along the lines of: make a nuisance of yourself, wear them down, and eventually someone will break and give you a piece of earth. “You need to not be afraid of hard work”, she said, looking me up and down in the way people do, thinking they’re being subtle.

They didn’t have much to do; it was cold and rainy and a few minutes later they’d emerged. ‘Put your name up on the gates and ask if anyone wants to share a plot’, the lady who was called Roz now said. I have to put my name up now as well as down. She said they’d picked some roses and they had some nice kale and they were done for the day. It seemed rather a bleak enterprise; coming to pick kale. I like roses but it wouldn’t occur to me to grow them on an allotment.

I think if it was me, I would take my lead from the freelancer driving through the gates and plant things with colour, a bit of rakishness, and some sweetness, some fruit, otherwise it all gets a bit Eastenders. A bit Arthur Fowler.

When I started this blog in LA I wrote about lemon curd. The curd was made from the very few Meyer lemons I’d eked from the tree we’d bought from an extremely rakish garden nursery on Fairfax and Santa Monica. We were promised ‘lemons in abundance’ from  the nice stoned man and although the tree was initially heavy with fruit, it never fulfilled its promise. As Joe Queenan likes to say, it wrote a cheque it couldn’t cash. But the sweetness of those lemons, their strange hybrid flavour and the thin mellow peel, started me off. I loved the colour too, a happy, acid yellow. I was never devoid of fruit thereafter. I fell in love with fruit, probably because there was an awful lot of it about in LA – orange trees mainly and their rampant, swooning blossom – and it was the first thing I genuinely liked about being there. It was growing, it was nature, it was beautiful to watch.

Perhaps I have not got the point of the allotment quite. Although I would be happy to share a plot and I wouldn’t be shy of digging, I’d need to insist there was a splash of colour, some orbs, some blossom, a cage, a tree, some espaliered plums and some brickwork to keep them warm. In the meantime I think I can live without kale, a terrifyingly healthy leaf.

Courgette plot

12 Tuesday Aug 2014

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Hard to say if this is an unusually buoyant time for courgettes or this is the norm. Everyone has a recipe, and people who profess not to be gardeners are growing courgettes and holding forth on what to stuff the blossoms with, and what size an ideal courgette should be (small). I was given a bag of courgettes by French-friend-Monique, and they were on the large side, almost marrows, though when I cooked them they didn’t become the sloppy, watery mess cooked marrows are famous for. They actually tasted of something but with big gangster-like seeds. I followed French-friend-Monique’s recipe for soup, which was so easy and lacking in peril of any kind that I kept asking her the same thing – is that it? – because being French I thought it would be difficult but taste very good in the end. Her instructions, repeated for my benefit, were to “put them in water with a stock cube and throw in some cheese triangles.”

She gave me two triangles and the soup was delicious, and the next night I put in two blobs of goat’s cheese, and I think that is the soup’s secret. I also added some ‘umami paste’ that was being sold off cheap at the supermarket because reportedly no one knew what they were buying. It is in fact a mixture of anchovy, olive, parmesan, and other dark and yeasty backnotes, but you are essentially buying flavour; a bit like buying a jar called ‘hope’. A friend who tried it couldn’t quite put her finger on what it was she liked, the soup a tease.

But you don’t want a recipe for soup. And it’s hardly, barely a recipe at that (I did in fact, unbeknownst to Monique, sweat the courgettes in some butter and olive oil with some garlic before adding the water, cooking it gently for 20 minutes and then whizzing in a blender with the soft cheese, because I couldn’t bear not to, but this is the Michelin starred version).

I made courgette and potato rosti – otherwise known as patties, polpette or even, and this might just be in my house, rissoles – and they came by way of a rather recalcitrant man in a tight vest who was weeding his plot in a walled garden I happened to be in the other day. The walled garden was spectacular; full of tall wavy bolting lettuces that made me think of Rapunzel, wigwams of fussy frilly sweet peas with their butterfly flowers, darkly mottled pears against one wall and espaliered plums on the other, covered in netting, which somehow made me think of bras. In the middle was this man, bending to fill his trug with slim purple beans.

At first he seemed friendly. “We’re just admiring the garden,” we said by way of introduction, because it was in fact private property, in the grounds of an old house, a retreat of sorts, but the gate had been open and so we had sidled in. “Of course, yeah,” he said and started to peel the drying sheafs off his corn cobs. “I like your courgettes,” I said because we were standing right by a strange serpent-like mass of them blooming up from the ground; blossoms yellow as butter reached out from the sides, and yellow and green snakes of the vegetable slithered over the ground.

“Yeah,” he said, or something like that. And I told him about my marrow-like courgettes from French-friend-Monique, and he said big was bad and did we have an allotment? No, no garden, mum said. No garden since 1976. That’s why she loved coming here, she was thinking of asking if there was a plot to spare. And then we started talking about what we could do with the courgettes, and he reeled off a list while he threw his corn into the trug and carried on peeling away at the next cob – “there’s courgette bread, courgette cake, courgette rosti, courgette soup, sweat them down with a bit of oil and garlic etc.” – and as he went on I decided I didn’t like him. It was just a feeling.

If this had been Monique she would have slipped us a few courgettes and thrust the blossoms in a bag with a flap of her hands as if it hadn’t happened. Not because I was expecting him to – but because I knew he was the kind of person who wouldn’t. “It was nice to meet you, enjoy your harvesting,” I said and moved away. He bent over his trug and threw in the corn with another, bleaker, “Yeah”.

And as we left we saw, right by the mottled pears, a trench of unused, overgrown spartan earth; a plot. That gave us ideas. Which we kept to ourselves until we left the grounds. And then we schemed and schemed and schemed away.

Courgette and potato rosti 

Adapted from Mark Hix, the Independent

The idea with rosti is to grate cooked potato with – in this case – raw courgette and then fry in a little olive oil and butter until it looks like a golden haystack. I was taken aback by the sheer amount of juice the courgette extruded. I dealt with this by squeezing the (considerable) liquid out of the grated courgette using a tea towel before adding it to the potato. The rosti were light and subtle, grassy-green and fresh-tasting and I found dusting them lightly in flour before frying helped counteract the dampness. I ate mine with horseradish and a poached egg.

Serves 4

200-250g waxy new potatoes, boiled in skin, cooled then grated

1 large or 2 small courgettes

salt and freshly ground black pepper

1 clove of garlic, crushed and finely chopped

flour

2-3 tbs vegetable oil for frying

A couple of good knobs of butter

Grate the unpeeled courgettes using a cheese grater or something similar and then squeeze out the liquid through a clean tea towel. Add the grated courgette to the cooled and grated – and unskinned – potato. Mix well and season. I add the garlic here; I know this won’t be to everyone’s taste, but I think it adds to the heady freshness. Heat a non-stick blini or frying pan with a glug of oil. Add balls of the courgette and potato mixture dipped in flour to the pan once the oil is shimmering, press the mixture down a little with a spatula and cook for about 2-3 minutes until brown and crisp. Flip them over and add a little butter to the pan and cook for a similar amount of time. Serve with a poached or fried egg and a dollop of horseradish.