GBHD – What is there to cook from the garden?

As spring slowly arrives my thoughts turn to spring vegetables but nature has a way of disappointing; spring vegetables won’t be ready until April or even May, in March if we’re lucky there are still a few of the winter crops to sustain us.  But this is the period that is known to be lean.

Calabrese, cut ready to cook

Today I picked more Calabrese, tonight I’m going to make Orecchiette in the Pulgese style.  Last week I made risotto and some we ate as an accompanying vegetable.  With the warmer days the spears are growing more quickly and it won’t be long before the plants will be consigned to the compost heap; but they have given such value; definitely growing even more plants next year.  I’ve already decided to try growing them from seed myself and have already bought the seed, I suppose I will need to start the seed in mid-June, if anyone has any experience in this I’d be grateful for the advice.  I usually plant this type of winter vegetable out into the beds vacated by the onion crop; they then have time to grow into mature plants before light levels drop.

Swiss chard ‘Bright Lights’ is another crop that just goes on and on.   In spring very young leaves can be cut for salad adding very pretty colour to the salad bowl, then by mid-summer and through the winter it leaves can be cooked in a variety of ways, again a very reliable crop, I sowed more seed yesterday to replace the plants you see here.

Chard ‘Bright Lights’

Similar and very quick to grow is Pak Choi, I still have a few plants from last autumn’s sowing and have just planted out a few new seedlings, I pricked out some into modules and then decided to try a few straight into the ground (these are red Pal Choi from Jekka McVicar.

Autumn sown Pak Choi

Leaves already turning red of this spring’s sowing

You can see how stony this bed is, when the winter/spring vegetables come out I’m going to add some manure ready for Peppers.

There are still a few leeks

The cold nights have given the radichio and wonderful red colour

Fennel planted among the Calabrese for protection have lasted the winter, the firsttime ever.

Broad beans, now planted out from an indoor sowing

Still a few lemons, I haven’t had to buy any for ages

Tomatoes, peppers etc. growing well in the greenhouse

I’ve tried leaving peppers in the greenhouse through other winters but they’ve always died, this year, even though we’ve had a month or six weeks of sub-zero night temperatures the plant has survived and will hopefully give me some early peppers too; so something that is always worth trying even if not always successful.

… and a surprise, the pepper I left in the greenhouse all winter has produced a few peppers

Thanks to Barbara and Christine at The Gardening Blog for hosting, why not check out what gardeners are eating from their gardens today.

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Harvest Day, January – Still eating Calabrese

We were away for last month’s Harvest day so I thought I’d better make sure I noted down what we are eating from the garden now so that I know for next year.

There isn’t a great variety, but what there is, is good and I have plans to grow more things next winter (Good Greif, am I thinking of next winter already and this one’s not even over yet!).

There are secondary heads on the Calabrese, enough to pick some every week, I love this so will definitely try to grow even more next winter, it is better value than Purple spouting broccoli that has to be in the ground from August/September and really only produces for a few weeks.

Ready to harvest, Calabrese secondary heads

Pak Choi is actually growing even with freezing nights and some arm days, another chop I want to have available for much of the year.  It can be picked for salads when young but usually grows to harvesting size very quickly so a good infill crop.  I sowed some red Pak Choi in a heated propagator and it germinated in two, yes that’s TWO DAYS!

Pak Choi continues to grow through the cold weather

Growing between the Pal Choi is chicory which has turned a lovely red with the cold temperatures

Swiss Chard is giving us some fresh leaves on a regular basis.  I still have 2 more red cabbages, I’ve been stir frying it with sliced onions and ginger.

Swiss Chard ‘Bright Lights’

Swiss Chard ‘Bright Lights’, I love the mixture of colours

The Florence fennel I planted between the Calabrese has survived; I’ve never had any in January or February before – it might be a good crop to try in the greenhouse over winter.  The dwarf beans I sowed are alive and did have flowers but there’s no sign of any actual beans!

Bulb Florence Fennel, protected by the larger plants of Calabrese

Leeks are one of my favourite winter vegetables and as I didn’t grow so many onions last year, and we’ve eaten all that I grew already, I use leeks in recipes that say onions; this is nice as the leeks give a slightly sweeter flavour so make things taste different.

Leeks

Lemons and limes are available from the greenhouse and new flowers are forming making a visit into the greenhouse a very sensual experience.

Lovely, juicy lemons

and limes ready for a Thai curry

HERBS

I have rosemary, salvia, parsley, mint and amazingly still green Marjoram, I dried some leaves as it is one of the few herbs that is actually better dry than fresh; in summer it is often not so good to dry (or I miss the correct moment) so I’m happy to have it now.  There is some Syrian thyme in the greenhouse but all of the plants outside die as soon as it gets cold, they seem to behave as annuals.

Today I planted some red and yellow onion sets, I hope I’m not tempting fate too much by planting them now.

Garlic with perennial celary and newly planted onion sets

What are you eating from your garden this month? Pop over to the Gardening Blog and see what Christine and Barbara are picking in their southern hemisphere gardens

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GBHD – Eating and harvesting at the beginning of December

I mentioned picking the main heads of broccoli, well already many of the plants have large secondary heads; one plant has so many there is more to eat from the secondary florets than there was from the first main head!  I love broccoli cooked in many different ways: just plain with a little new oil drizzled over, cooked then refreshed and then recooked in oil flavoured with chilli and garlic, roasted in the oven with coriander and garlic and, perhaps my favourite, cooked then used to make pasta sauce along with anchovies, garlic and chilli – this is a speciality of Puglia (Apulia).  Risotto with broccoli is also a warming winter dish.  Last week when I picked all the secondary heads that were ready there was enough to make risotto, pasta sauce and two portions just eaten as a vegetable.

A few fresh dwarf green beans – a treat at the end of November

I’ve never had such large secondary heads on broccoli before.

Colourful chard is giving a good crop and amazingly I picked fresh dwarf green beans from the last sowing outside, they are slow to grow now but taste very good.

Strawberries continue to give us a couple of bowlfuls a week, such a treat at this time of year.  I made juice with the pomegranates, there weren’t so many this year and they were small so not enough to make jelly as I had intended, but the juice was delicious.

Last weekend was cold, a time to be in the warm kitchen and cooking.  With some leeks, carrots and celery plus frozen Barlotti beans I made a hearty soup, served drizzled with our oil it was perfect to warm us in what is now definitely winter.

I also decided to make some jams and jellies with fruit I’d stored in the freezer during the summer.  Raspberry jam and Blackberry jelly (actually from fruit from 2011)

Blackberry jelly, just beginning to boil

and strawberry jam, crab apple mint jelly and (something I’ve never made before) green pepper and chilly jelly; there is one red and one yellow pepper but the rest are all green and I don’t think there is much chance of them ripening, hence the idea of making the jelly.

Green peppers ready to be added to the food processor along with green chillies

I can post any of the above recipes if anyone would like them.

There are a few aubergines, enough for one last meal but then the plants will be pulled out and added to the compost heap along with the basil plants that have lost all their leaves.

I’ve already used all my onions from this summer so I’ll have to grow more next year.  I’ve already planted some garlic and bought some red and yellow onion sets plus some shallots, I think now that the weather seems to be getting cold, I’ll wait and plant all the sets in February or early March.

While I was buying some new gardening gloves I saw that they were selling asparagus crowns, so I was tempted into giving them a try.  They weren’t a named variety and I’ve no idea if they are male or female, I will have to wait to see if they are worth the space they will take up.  I’m trying to work out how I might have space for some more beds – there is an area that is part of the property but outside the fence.  I is a bit of a slope so will need to be terraced I think.  It maybe too much work to be able to develop this space but it is hard knowing the space is there but I can’t use it.

Thanks to Christine and Barbie for hosting GBHD; they have late spring and summer crops now, so that will be a contrast to the wintery veg from the northern hemisphere.

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Red Cabbage

The brassicas I planted early (soon after the onion beds had been cleared and it was cool enough to plant anything) – I think it was the end of August have grown really well; probably the best I’ve ever grown.  They are squashed into the bed too so that everything touches everything else.  We’ve eaten lots of superb broccoli and secondary stems are already growing and I can’t keep up with the pointy cabbages, they are splitting before I can get around to harvesting them, but it is the red cabbages that have looked so beautiful in the bed especially the one right on the corner of the bed (which is obviously benefitting from more light than the others).

Prize specimen

I decided that it would be ideal for the lunch party last Sunday (see here for the adventures of the day).  One of my friends is following a special diet to help relieve pain so she can’t eat any meat at the moment; but the day was forecast as rain and cold so some meat was the order of the day.  I made fresh pappardelle and another friend brought Hare sauce to go with it.  The Secondo was beef cooked in wine so I needed some good comfort food that didn’t contain meat for my friend Lucia.  Slow-cooked red cabbage was my choice! Along with roasted Broccoli with Coriander and garlic (from Delia Smith’s Winter Collection)

The red cabbage recipe is a classic and the recipe I follow is from the ‘Cordon Bleu’ series of, I don’t like to think how, many years ago – but a really good recipe is always a good recipe.

The cabbage weighed in at a hefty 2 kg and 100 grams (ALL my metric weights) good job I’d taken off all the outside leaves before weighing it!

The sheen and colour of the leaves is incredibly beautiful

The colour of the leaves was so beautiful, like shot silk, luminescent an impossible sage green with red, the camera hasn’t captured it but you get the idea.

I used the whole cabbage, but I blanched it in two batches

1. Cut 1 kg cabbage into shreds and plunge into boiling water and cook for 1 minute.  The cabbage turns an unlikely violet blue.
   

   So strange how red changes to blue in boiling water

2. Next chop 2 large onions I used red ones because that’s all I have left and soften in butter (or olive oil if cooking for Lucia).
3. Peel, core and slice 2 apples and add to the onions and cook for a couple of minutes.
4. Layer the cabbage, onion and apple in a large ovenproof casserole and season each layer with salt, pepper and a little vinegar and water (in theory you need 3 tablespoons of vinegar and 2 of water ) I just go my eye but being careful not to add much vinegar.  At this stage the cabbage changes back to its more appetising red colour.
5. Put in a low oven 170° C and cook very gently for 2 hours.
6. Here the recipe says to add kneaded butter to thicken the juices, I never find this necessary (and for Lucia I couldn’t use butter anyway!).This is good served with braised meat, sausages or with cold turkey.  Nice to have some ready-made in the freezer for when you don’t want to do any more cooking after Christmas day.

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Recipe of the Day – Lemon Marmalade

A couple of readers of yesterday’s post asked for the recipe for lemon or lime marmelade, so here it is!

Lemon Marmalade.

Fresh tasting, ideal with toast for breakfast.

I used the same recipe for limes, which is sharper and very slightly sour.

I found the recipe on the net but have adapted it considerably as the timings were incorrect for very freshly picked fruit.

Ingredients

1½ lb.  700gm. Lemons.  They should be untreated with chemicals and un-waxed.  I don’t use anything on my lemons so they are organic standard.

3 Pints  1.75 litres Water

3 lbs.  1.35 kg. Sugar

Method

1. Wash the lemons, and cut them in half.  Cut off the ends.  Squeeze out the juice, and put in a saucepan.
2. Now remove as much of the membrane and pith as you can and put it all with the pips into a piece of muslin and tie tightly.
3. Slice the lemons as thinly as you want, you will need a sharp knife.  I did mine quite thinly as that’s how I like my marmalade.
4. Put the cut peel into pan with the lemon juice and add the water.  Tie the muslin bag on to the side of the pan.
5. This is where I now leave mine to soak overnight.
6. Next day bring the pan to the boil and then allow to simmer for about one hour, until the lemon is soft.  If you are using purchased lemons I think they may take up to twice as long to become tender.  Check after 45 minutes.
7. By now the contents will have reduced.  Add the sugar ,(which you can warm in the oven on a low heat for about 30 mins – I didn’t), bring to a rolling boil and start to test for a set after about 10 to 15 minutes.
8. If you dip the spoon in the pan, then hold it up to see that the marmalade is dropping slowly from the spoon , then you are nearing a set.  At this point start testing on a plate or saucer that you have previously placed into the fridge.  Leave for a few minutes; if the surface wrinkles when you push your finger through it, you have a set.
9. Add a small piece of butter and stir which will remove any scum, then, IMPORTANT, Leave to rest for 15 minutes before putting into sterilized jars.
   This quantity made approx. 6 X half pint. or 250 ml jars

   Lemon Marmelade

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Harvest Day – Preserving the Crop – Citrus etc.

Although there was some welcome rain during October mostly the days were warm and it was pleasant to be out in the garden, with the changing of the clocks came colder weather, a fire in the evening became a pleasant idea.  Still no need for the heating but I don’t think it will be long until that is necessary.  But then last Friday was THE most beautiful day – sunny, warm, blue skies, a real joy to be outside.  I planted up some pots with Tulips and Alliums to flower next spring, tidied, weeded some beds began the greenhouse reorganisation ready for bringing in plants that won’t survive outside all winter.  Making space for cuttings I want to take and seedlings from the garden that I want to keep an eye on.

The bed with Brassicas has been very productive.  Pointy cabbages now need to be eaten, they are beginning to split.  I used the fennel a couple of weeks ago leaving just two large bulbs that were shelter for Swallowtail butterfly caterpillars, yes, they’re still there; I know I posted about them last month.  One of the larger bulbs I harvested last weekend to use to dip into the new olive oil.

The olives are harvested; we have 32 litres of fabulously green, peppery oil to enjoy plus about the same left from last year’s bigger harvest that is perfect for cooking.  I’ve been making soups with my Barlotti beans so we can drizzle new oil over the top.  New oil is all about drizzling!

There were still lots of aubergines and peppers up until the last weekend in October so another ‘last’ roasted Mediterranean vegetables was cooked and enjoyed and a last baba ghanoush.  Actually there are still a few aubergines on the plants and I will keep using them until they stop producing.

Quinces have been harvested; I made ‘hot’ quince jelly with the addition of some chillies while the quinces were softening.  This is lovely with cheese, but it is quite difficult to decide how much chilly to add, I used ones straight from the plant (meaning they had ripened when there was plenty of water) and so the result is subtle heat rather than blow your head off!  I also made for the first time quince chutney, the recipe kindly sent to me by Amelia from A French Garden; I’m letting it stand for a month or so before use as I know chutneys are usually better after a time for the vinegar to mellow a little.  It’s a nice colour so I’m looking forward to trying it.

Chopped quinces, green tomatoes etc. for chutney

Quince chutney almost cooked

I made Thai green curry paste with the green chillies and froze the excess red and green chillies for future use.

Most of my limes are ripe – ALL AT ONCE – so I made lime marmalade and will try a recipe for pickled limes I found in a Delia Smith book.  Any other ideas for syrups or cordials that you’ve tried would be greatly appreciated.  There are a lot of lemons too.  Lemon marmalade is now in the store cupboard, I’ve never made these kinds of marmalades before and am thrilled that they have a really fresh taste and are very different from each other, I rather feared they’d both taste the same.  I will make lemon curd and some preserved lemons too.  My store cupboard is beginning to look very full and pretty with all the coloured jars.

there were about 35 to 40 limes and about as many lemons but luckily the lemons aren’t all ripe at once!

Deliciously sharp and slightly sour lime marmalade

Lemon marmalade is better than I ever dreamed possible

The dwarf beans I planted outside have a small crop which is a real bonus this late in the season.  Basil has finished now, it doesn’t like the low light levels any more than I do!

I’m joining The Gardening Blog for Harvest day, I’m looking forward to seeing what they’re harvesting in their spring gardens.

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GB Harvest Day- Autumn Plenty

The cooler days are encouraging some things to produce more but it is inhibiting the growth of others.

I have removed all the tomatoes from the greenhouse, even though they were beginning to produce more foliage and flowers I don’t think there is enough time for them to ripen.  Even the few tomatoes that are still being produced outside don’t have the same flavour and I think they will be pulled out next week too.  Most of the cuttings I took from the tomatoes at the end of last month did root but it is something I need to do much earlier.  I will try again next year at the end of June or certainly by mid-July so that I can plant strong new plants when the first cropping ones are becoming tired from over producing.

Peppers, aubergines and chillies are still producing reasonable crops, I was able to make one last Mediterranean roast vegetables last week.  Basil and Thai basil need to be cut ruthlessly otherwise they flower and this in the end will stop them producing the best leaves.

Red pepper outside, with more green ones that may or may not turn red!

These yellow ones are in the greenhouse

A smaller variety of aubergine that I grew from seed

In this very narrow bed, I squeezed, auberines, chillies, chard and celary

Mediterranean roast vegetables

I am harvesting huge quantities of Dwarf green beans; yesterday there must have been 3 kg. too many at once, but that’s the problem with dwarf beans, it meant I was able to give masses to the guy who helps me in the garden, I don’t freeze them, really I grow vegetables to eat seasonal vegetables, I have been better at successional planting of the beans this year and I have some more plants growing now, hopefully there will be time for them to flower and produce some beans before the weather becomes too cold; yesterday I sowed a few more in the greenhouse just to see it they will grow there and perhaps give me fresh beans up until Christmas.  I also sowed spinach in the greenhouse and in the garden, plus some Bok choi outside.

A few of the beans from last week; yesterday this washing up bowl was almost full!

I harvested the last of the Barlotti beans – these were amazing this year as from one sowing I had three harvests, some as fresh beans and some as dried, I’m looking forward to soups made with these and just cooked with new olive oil drizzled over them when we harvest the olives and make oil.

I’m picking small quantities of strawberries and raspberries, just enough for a taste of summer.  Pomegranates and quinces are about ready to harvest.

Just a few raspberries almost every day

The splitting Pomegranate tells me it is ready to pick

My quinces are pear shaped the apple-shaped form is “the golden apple” from the garden of the Hesperides, from which inspiration this blog takes its name

The wild rocket, arugula, has lots of nice strong tasting new foliage now and the pretty yellow flowers can also be added to salads.  The ‘cresto di gallo’ another wild leaf that I use in salads has produced hundreds of new baby plants all over the Slope so that editing and eating the very first new leaves will help the other plants have more space.

I picked one last cucumber last week, and zucchini are giving me a meal every couple of days but are nearly finished, most of the leaves have died back so I don’t expect many more.

New winter vegetables are ready to take over.  I’ve already eaten a ’pointy’ cabbage and several others are ready, red cabbages are hearting-up and broccoli are just beginning to form heads.  Some fennel bulbs are a reasonable size so I’ll use them soon, I might put some plants in the greenhouse to have a little later in the year; I love raw sliced fennel with sliced oranges, a few black olives and a drizzle of olive oil as a refreshing winter salad.

A caterpillar of a Swallowtail butterfly was hiding on its favourite food supply – fennel.

All of these brassicas are nearly ready to eat

Delicious pointy cabbage (a little eaten around the edges

There are lots of lemons and limes, I would like to make marmalade from them this year; if anyone has a reliable recipe they use for lime marmalade do please let me know.

Lemons

Limes

I’m joining The Gardening Blog for their Harvest day meme.  Visit them to see what they’re harvesting in spring.

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You Can Tell It’s Autumn When…..

When it rains everyone begins to start counting the days until there should be Funghi (wild mushrooms to pick.  Unless the wind swings round to the north or it suddenly gets very hot ten days after a good downpour the woods and hills are filled with people with baskets. They are up at the crack of dawn; there is a lot of competition!

Foraging for food is still a very common practice in this part of Italy – very soon it will be chestnuts when it is dangerous driving on the roads for the number of food hunters bent over collecting the chestnuts that have fallen from the trees onto the public road and therefore available for harvesting by anyone who is brave enough to share the road with the speeding cars.

Last weekend I was lucky enough to be invited to dinner by friends who had just returned from a successful morning’s collecting.

We had raw porcini (ceps or penny bun or its Latin name is Boletus edulis) and raw ovoli (Amanita caesarea – Cesear’s  mushroom to as an antipasto.  Sorry, no image of this; it was eaten too quickly!

Followed by a fried Parasol Macrolepiota procera.

Parasol, Macrolepiota procera

The main dish was roasted potatoes with the caps of the enormous porcini cooked on top so that all the delicious flavours dripped down onto the absorbent potatoes.  The caps were studded with a shards of garlic and seasoned with salt and pepper and the magic ingredient a sprinkle of dried fennel flowers.

The cleaned mushrooms waiting to be cooked

Mostly porcini but you can see a couple of orange capped ovoli

The classic shape of Boletus edulis, Porcino

To have a sense of scale, Lidia is holding up two of the prize specimens

A wonderful meal was rounded off with roasted chestnuts!

Thank you Lidia and Giuliano

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GBHD September Bounty

Just into September and the weather is beginning to change.  So some crops that struggle with the very high temperatures and bright sun of summer will now begin to grow better.  Crops that thrive on heat and sun will slow down.

Perhaps now is a good moment to review the successes are failures in 2012.

Tomatoes have produced a huge crop and this year I have been better at using them and preserving them.  My store cupboard is full of tomato sugo, readyto use throughout the winter months to come.  We’ve eaten fresh raw tomato sauce, gazpacho, and in numerous other recipes.  They are coming to an end now, a little earlier than I would have liked but I can’t complain, every plant has produced more than I could possibly expect.  I have cut back most of the plants, leaving off shoots from near the base in the hope that they might provide a few more trusses.  I also used some off shoots as if they were cuttings, but I fear I have done this too late.  I’ll update information about this in future posts.

I’ve loved preparing delicious tomato salads from all the different varieties I’ve grown, these are all small varieties but their taste packs a real punch.

Some tomatoes are now being eaten by a caterpillar

Zucchini have not been over prolific this year but if I’m honest, we’ve had as many as I’ve needed.  The yellow variety were a disappointment, my favourite variety, Romanesco, were OK.

Climbing beans were not the success I was hoping for; I am pretty sure that there wasn’t enough humidity for good germination, but I will try the purple climbing beans again because they were so delicious.  Dwarf beans were more abundant and I managed a successional planting so that I have lots more to pick now, I have made another sowing outside and will also sow in the greenhouse to hopefully have green beans until December.

Barlotti beans were also very good.  I harvested some fresh and some dried in the pod, and then allowed the plants to continue growing; great as I’m now harvesting again from just one early sowing (March, I think)

Cucumbers were slow, there’s been enough for when I made gazpacho but really they needed more water and not quite such hot temperatures.

Capsicums and aubergines (melanzane in Italian) have been very stunningly prolific this year.  One pepper plant alone had 18 fruits on it yesterday.  I’m impressed because other years I’ve started with some grafted plants which everyone says produce more fruit more quickly but they have never been as good as this year.

I should probably thin the fruits on the peppers as the plants seem hardly big enough to support them

I picked a washing up bowl full on Sunday

…and another earlier last week

I roasted some prior to making into a concentrated sauce which I froze in ice-cube trays

Others made a roasted vegetable ratatouille

Aubergines

Melanzane I use to make baba ghanoush, curry, caponata, and some I prepare as in the image above and then freeze.

Strawberries produced prodigiously early in the summer, then a little rest with just a few bowlfuls now they are producing well again, with lots to eat and some I made into purée then mixed with Prosecco for a rather nice aperitivo.

Prosecco with some ice-cubes of frozen strawberry purèe, a little sugar and ……

……Salute!

Basil, both Genovese and Thai provide all I need and enough to freeze for winter use.  Although I only make pesto in summer with fresh basil, I like to eat seasonally so don’t mind not having some things at certain times of year.

Raspberries need cooler temperatures than we’ve had this year, the early crop was miniscule but the autumn crop is a little bigger so we’re eating and freezing some every few days.

Chard is looking good and will hopefully take us through the winter.  I’ve already planted broccoli, pointy cabbage, red cabbage and fennel.  I have ready to plant some more broccoli and some cavolo nero and another type of cabbage.  I planted leeks last week.  I planted quite a few because I won’t have enough onions to take me through the winter this year.  Last year so many went rotten, but I did have enough to last until the new crop so perhaps I’ll plant a lot again this winter.

I’m pretty happy with the crops this year, I haven’t bought vegetables or fruit except for a couple of melons, the fox ate mine!

What are you harvesting now?

This meme is great to compare what you grow and harvest with other gardeners across the world.  Especially fun to compare the garden crops in the southern hemisphere with those in the north.  Go to: The Garden Blog to read more.

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Not all Doom and Gloom in My Hesperides Garden

I know I sounded depressed in my post yesterday and I have been feeling down; so many plants suffering and feeling I could do so little.  But it really isn’t all despair in My Hesperides Garden.  The vegetable garden has been producing pretty well; true some crops have not been as plentiful as other years but many plants are thriving – the vegetable plot, orto in Italian gets irrigated each night but this is not enough for everything.

These sweet delicious orange fruits don’t always even make it into the kitchen, I just eat them like sweets while I’m in the garden

Tomatoes have been spectacular, they are planted in a bed that had manure spread last autumn and they have responded to the extra body in the soil by producing a wonderful crop.  My store cupboard is bulging with jars of homemade sauce and we’ve been eating them in so many ways EVERY DAY! – No, I’m not sick of them, I don’t really eat fresh tomatoes in winter, they are never the same as fresh picked in summer so in winter they are for cooking in sauces so I’m ahead of the game.  This is the first year I’ve made sauce, other years I’ve given huge quantities of tomatoes away and some have sadly just rooted on the kitchen work top.

These plus……

these, also from the garden, make wonderful roasted vegetables – I’ve made this almost every week for the last 6 weeks, not just for us but for parties too.

these were for Gazpacho – something else I make most weeks.

I love all the different small tomatoes, they are perfect in Mediterranean roast vegetables, or as a simple, hardly-cooked sauce or just to pop in the mouth as you pass by.

I often make a raw tomato sauce for hot pasta by whizzing tomatoes, without their seeds and water with a little oil and basil and sometimes a little added buffalo mozzarella.

The basil has also been better this year, not that it wants hot sun on it but with heat, shade and water I always have enough to make pesto and add to tomato salads etc.  Thai basil was new for me this year and although it seemed to take an inordinate time to grow into useful sized plants is now growing well and I’ve already frozen some leaves whole; the next batch I’ll chop first, it has such an evocative flavour of wonderful Thai curries that I’m inspired to cook more of them.  I think it might also be nice in cool drinks instead of mint or borage.

Today was a real high spot in my gardening life, I harvested my first peaches.  I planted small trees last autumn that I intend to grow as espaliers; they were really quite small so I had no great hopes of having a crop this year.  They are Redhaven and the label says they should be ready in July, well maybe because they a new trees or maybe the heat has stunted them they are ripe now!  They are quite small, no very small, because I didn’t prune off any of the fruit so the tiny tree has produced a large quantity of small but delicious fruit!  I had gingerly pressed them at the weekend but they seemed very hard; today they still felt hard (lack of water, I wondered?) so I picked one to eat and Wow!  It was juicy and sweet and well, just the perfect peach – to me anyway.  I harvested them all and I may put some into some white wine in the fridge so they last a little longer but the rest we’ll just enjoy as they are.  This year many people have found that tree fruit has gone from being under-ripe to over-mature in a day, due to the temperatures; but as there is a manageable quantity I’m sure we’ll be able to eat them before they spoil.

I suppose these should have been pruned to just one or two fruits!

The branches needed to be tied in to support the fruit

Sooooooo beautiful and juicy

…….and so many

……but small, I put the secateurs so you could see what size they are (but we’re always being told size isn’t everything!).

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