It's been some time since I've done a post as I rather underestimated how long it takes to post on a regular basis so you'll need to bear with me, my brain is naturally lazy in many ways and the blog seems to have fallen foul of my lethargic ways.
Anyway. It's a beautiful Sunday and so I've been taking advantage of it. The tomato, aubergine, chilli and cucumber seeds that were sown almost exactly a month ago in my post Back in the garden are growing well, as you may see in the photograph. Despite my fears for the aubergines, three of the four seeds germinated nicely and so my back-up second tray means I have quite a few extra to go to friends. The celeriac came through a week or so after my last post, with only one seed not germinating, and they are growing slowly but surely. The chillies have been slow with the, normally reliable, Cayenne not germinating at all. With a second sowing they came through quickly, so I think the seed was just too old in the first batch.
Additions to the windowsill now include ten of each of the following:
Pimentos de Padron - fairly big green chillies that are very mild but deliciously fresh-tasting. I believe they are a common tapas dish in Spain, being fried whole and sprinkled with salt flakes. They appealled enormously when I discovered this, mainly because about one in every ten peppers is firery hot and so provides a sort of culinary Russian Roulette. These were brand new seeds and all but one of them germinated quickly.
Tomatillo de Milpa - I first grew tomatillos last year. They are like a cross between a tomato and a cape gooseberry. Little green (or purple, depending on the type) tomatoes in a papery lantern. I didn't really know how to deal with them so ended up with two enormous plants with lots of little parchment parcels dangling in great profusion. Once picked, de-husked and washed (they have a bitter sticky liquid on them) they made a brilliant salsa that I jarred up and added to mashed avocado as and when I wanted. Sadly it didn't store well in jars and mould developed after a month, so I'll be looking at a different way of preserving them this year. Only three seeds germinated but that's enough if they all grow up well.
Cornichon de Paris - pickled cornichon are extremely popular in the Jones household and so I'm going to try my hand at growing and pickling my own this year after the success of the pickled onions last year. All ten seeds have germinated and are growing vigorously.
Now we're nearing the end of March I'm starting to sow direct with the hardier veg types. This means sowing the seeds directly into the soil where they'll grow to harvest. I'm always a bit wary about starting this too early but now the sun is warming the beds nicely I'm butching up and getting on with it. I start with the troughs and containers as they warm quickly and I can fleece them easily and speedily if a frost threatens. So today I've started with carrots and pickling onions with the peas going out next weekend or the one after if it's cold.
Pickling onions
I grew these last year they were very successful. The variety I grow are Pompei which are a type of salad onion but with a very round, white end that pickles beautifully. These ones I got on eBay but last year I don't remember where I found them. I grow them in a big, long trough perched up by the garage, where they get sun all day long. It's a great way of making use of a tiny ledge of concrete. I've just sown these today, in the troughs I used for salad last year with the top 5 inches of compost removed and replaced with nice fresh multipurpose. Mark two shallow rows down the length of the trough not too close together, using the side of your palm, sparcely scatter the seed in the rows and cover with a thin layer of compost. Sprinkle plenty of water over the top and leave to grow.
Just a small aside at this point, remember to put the troughs in their final position before you water them. Water-logged compost is really quite heavy and you'll save yourself a lot of huffing and puffing if you water once they're in place. I wish someone had told me this. It would have saved endless physio sessions.
Carrots
The carrots are bog-standard longish orange ones as I can't seem to find my favoured rainbow ones. I'll order some shortly for the next sowing but I can't seem to remember where I got them from, they are a vibrant mix of orange, yellow, white and purple carrots which taste as good as they look. I'm afraid I don't know the type of the ones used in this sowing as they came free with an order from Plants of Distinction last year but my general favourite, as I said, are Rainbow with the little, round Parmex making an odd appearance. I prefer my carrots to be long and tapering, rather than round and bulbous. I grow all my carrots in two deep plastic troughs so I can place them on a wall out of reach of the dreaded Carrot Root Fly. This fly lays it's eggs on the carrots, which hatch into little larve that carve a maze of little tunnels around the carrots. They can smell carrot tops from miles away, so makes sure when you thin your seedlings later on to take the pulled ones well away from your bed or trough. They can only fly about 6 inches above the surface of the ground though so growing in troughs on a wall seems to thwart them but so will putting a fence of fleece around your bed. I hate the look of fleece and netting so troughs it is.
Remember to keep watering both inside and outside seeds. With tepid water please. If someone chucked a bucket full of cold water over you it would be a nasty shock and it's the same for seeds and seedlings. Also avoid getting water on the leaves as much as possible.
Our rhubarb has started to poke it's leaves tentitively out through the thick layer of mulch and compost I covered it with last Autumn. We don't force ours (cover it with a pot to exclude the light) so it comes up later than the attractive pink stalks hitting the shops at the moment. I love everything about forced rhubarb and, as the vast majority of it is grown nearby in the suitably named Rhubarb Triangle in West Yorkshire, I try to buy it as much as possible when it's in season.
Whilst flicking through the most recent Waitrose magazine (yes, it seems I really am that middle class) I found the perfect recipe to utilise these coral lovelies, a baked cheesecake with a scrummy rhubarb and ginger compote. The recipe for this is below, along with a rather poor photograph of my creation.
We've had some friends staying this weekend so this formed the grand finale of the night's supper, following on from Lamb, Chickpea and Pear tagine from Lorraine Pascale's book Home Cooking Made Easy. A great book actually, I had my doubts after watching an episode of the accompanying TV series in which she bizarrely seemed to mostly cook and/or present on the fire escape of her building. Not really the time of year for lamb as everything available has hauled itself half way around the world from New Zealand but I'm making an exception as I want to make use of the last of the British pears still in the shops. Besides, I think the spices in the tagine would overpower the delicate Welsh lamb available later on in the year.
Cheescake with Rhubarb and Ginger
Rather misleadingly called Rhubarb and Ginger Cheesecake in the magazine, it's actually a vanilla cheesecake with a rhubarb and ginger compote. I've altered it slightly with the addition of lemon to the cheesecake mix but other than that it's pretty much the same, so thank you to Waitrose magazine, although your cooking times were a bit off. I hasten to point out that the recipe is conveyed here in my own words, Waitrose would never use the English language in such a cavalier manner.
150g gingernut biscuits
75g unsalted butter, melted
500g curd cheese (you can only get this at the deli counter in supermarkets, although surprisingly Waitrose didn't have any so I used mascarpone instead)
200g cream cheese (full fat please, don't use light as I find it invariably never works)
150g caster sugar
2 eggs, beaten
1/2tsp vanilla extract (never essence)
1 lemon, zest and juice
170g soured cream (I used a whole 300ml pot actually)
75g granulated sugar
400g rhubarb, cut into 3cm lengths
1 ball of stem ginger in syrup, finely chopped, plus 2tbsps of the syrup
Preheat the oven to 150◦c and baseline a 20cm springform tin. Put the gingernuts in a bag and bash them to crumbs with a rolling pin or other appropriately weighty object. Pour into a bowl, mix in the melted butter then push into the base of the tin. Pop in the fridge to harden.
Mix the curd cheese (or mascarpone), cream cheese, caster sugar, vanilla and the zest and juice of half the lemon. Beat until smooth then beat in the eggs. I use a wooden spoon as you need to start off with a spoon anyway but you can use a whisk, starting with a whisk is tricky as great lumps of cheese get stuck in the, ummm, prongs?
Pour the cheese mixture on top of the gingernut base and bake in the oven for an hour and half. The cheesecake should have a slight wobble in the centre. The recipe says bake for one hour but after an hour mine had a massive wobble all over so in fact it took and hour and half to reach minor wobble status. Turn off the oven and leave the cheesecake in there for half and hour with the door ajar.
Remove from the oven, pour over the soured cream and leave to cool overnight or for at least 4 hours, then put in the fridge for 4-6 hours.
For the rhubarb, I tripled the recipe as I love rhubarb and will use the leftovers for eating with Greek yoghurt or some such, if you do the same make sure you triple the amounts of granulated sugar, ginger, ginger syrup and lemon. The method below is using the amounts stated above, so using 400g of rhubarb.
Put the granulated sugar in a pan with 2tbsps of water over a low heat. Simmer until all the sugar granules have dissolved, then add the rhubard, chopped ginger, ginger syrup and the juice and zest of the other half of the lemon. Turn up the heat and bring to the boil, then lower the heat once more and simmer for 5 minutes or until the rhubarb is soft but still mostly holding it's shape. Put a sieve over another pan and pour the rhubarb into the sieve. Leave to go completely cold and for the syrup to drain into the pan below. Put the rhubarb to one side then boil the syrup in the pan until reduced in volume by half. Reunite the syrup with the rhubarb and leave to go cold. Then put in the fridge.
I prefer to serve this room temperature so you can taste the flavours better so remove both the cheesecake and the rhubarb from the fridge about an hour before serving. Serve slices of the cheesecake with a great dollop of the rhubarb and ginger compote.
No comments:
Post a Comment