Clearing out the garden

We decided to clear out the garden while the weather was still good. It's possible I could have got a little longer out of the tomatoes, but we wanted to take advantage of the good weather.

The garden now has some permanent fixtures in it, so it doesn't look as empty over winter any more. The sage in the herb patch and a few of the other herbs are permanent. So is the apple tree at the end and the stevia and raspberry plants (although the raspberry plant will be cut right back in February). I've also now planted Mr Fothergill's wildflower woodland mixture right at the back behind the apple tree because my abysmal failure to grow vegetables up that end of the garden this year made me think I should probably cut my losses and go for something pretty instead.

I've also sewn up the worst of the holes in the fleece protecting my leeks from allium leaf miners. I don't know if it'll work, but my entire leek crop was ruined last year, so it's got to be worth a shot.

Chili con carne recipe

Autumn is here in the garden and the morning sun makes the dew on the grass sparkle and casts long shadows.

It's an excellent time to eat chili and use up any excess tomatoes you may still have. OK, it's probably a bit late in the year to still be harvesting tomatoes, we've just cleared up the garden and there won't be any more tomatoes for us, but you can always use tinned or remember it for next year. Serves 4-6. Takes about 45 mins to 1.5 hours, depending on how long you simmer it for.

1-2 tbsp olive oil
1 onion, chopped (I often use frozen)
2 cloves of garlic, chopped/minced (I often use frozen)
2 peppers, chopped fairly small
500 g beef mince
1 - 1 ½ glasses of red wine (about 150 ml)
400-500g of fresh tomatoes (or 1 tin of tomatoes)1 level tsp mild chili powder
1 level tsp cumin
1 level tsp ground coriander
1 level tsp cinnamon
3 shakes of Worcester sauce
1 beef stock cube
1 tin of kidney beans

1. Heat oil in a pan, fry onion for 2 minutes, add garlic, fry for 1 minute,  add chopped peppers and fry for 3 minutes.
2. Add meat, cook until brown.
3. Add red wine and simmer for 5 minutes.
4. Stir in tomatoes (if you want to avoid lots of large pieces of skin from fresh tomatoes, chop them up first, but I liked the texture the skin gave).
5. Add chilli powder, cumin, ground coriander, cinnamon and Worcester sauce.
6. Crumble in stock cube.
7. Simmer for between 15 and 1 hour, longer is better.
8. Give the tomatoes a good squish with a spoon to make sure they are broken up.
9. Add kidney beans, stir and simmer for another 5-10 minutes.

Serve with rice or couscous or baked potatoes.

Autumn harvest in the vegetable garden

My entire squash crop this year: Thelma Sanders squash (the yellow ones) and Winter Squash Sweet Dumpling (the green and cream ones)

I looked out at the garden this week and decided it was time for a bit of a harvest and a tidy up. This is largely because most things looked like their leaves were most of the way through dying, with the exception of my runner beans, which are still producing a regular crop.

In particular, the leaves on the squashes had gone from just being mildewy, but otherwise green, to increasingly brown and yellow and curled up.

The tomatoes also look like they've pretty much had it.

A lot of the tomatoes you see there are not in a state I'd consider edible (they probably would be if I were starving, but actually, I've already harvested kilo upon kilo of healthy tomatoes, so I'm choosing to leave the ones that are old, split and partially eaten, I suspect I'm going to get a lot of self-seeding tomatoes next year).
I've discovered that the tomatoes I grew (Moneymaker and Gardener's Delight) work well as a substitute for tinned tomatoes. The food I cook with them looks less red and more orange, but it tastes divine. I simply wash them, then pop them whole into the recipe and give them a good squish with a spoon after they've cooked for a while. You end up with a lot of fairly large tomato skins in the food that way, but the texture doesn't bother me and I'm pretty sure the skins are good for me. If you're fussier about this than me, chop them up first so that the pieces of skin are smaller. If you're really, really fussy, remove the skins first.
I've also gathered in the sweet corn.

I don't fancy eating them in that state. I think theoretically I could use them in a recipe that calls for dried corn, but my plan is instead to use them in some sort of autumnal wreath and then to see if I can grow fresh sweet corn from them next year.
I also gathered in some of my coriander seeds. Not all of them were ripe yet. I simply gave them a rinse and then left them to dry before putting them in a jar. If there's any moisture left on them I think they'd probably go mouldy in the jar.

Finally, I also harvested my mooli mino radish. I had thought that they hadn't made it, given my complete lack of attention to the brassica bed after about early June, but then I noticed one sticking up through the soil. The problem is, that it was supposed to be harvested over a month ago, so I just ended up staring at it for a bit thinking "that looks like it would be unpleasantly tough", then chucked it on the compost heap. I wish I'd noticed them earlier.

Creamy spiralised courgette tagliatelle

I made another recipe up to use up my courgettes and use my new spiraliser (and let me tell you that spiralising is much easier when you don't need to cut down the vcg you're spiralising to fit in the gadget). Anyhow, this is what I did to make this vegetarian recipe, which even the committed meat consumer in the house thought was delicious). Serves 2.

Ingredients:
3-4 courgettes
1 tbsp olive oil
6-9 balls of tagliatelle (about 200 g)
1/2 tsp garam masala
1/2 tsp garlic granules (or you could put a chopped clove of garlic in just before you add the courgettes or leave the garlic out)
plenty of pepper, ideally freshly ground
salt to taste
125 g full fat soft cheese (e.g. Philadelphia)

1. Spiralise the courgettes with their skins on (or grate them if you don't have a spiraliser).

2. Boil the tagliatelle according to the instructions on the pack (probably 7-9 minutes).
3. Meanwhile, heat the olive oil in a frying pan then add the courgette and fry for 2-3 minutes.
4. Add the garam masala, garlic granules, pepper and salt and stir.
5. Add the soft cheese and stir until melted (about 1-2 minutes)
6. Drain tagliatelle and add to the courgette and stir.

 Tip: none of the measurements need to be precise. I added about half a tub of soft cheese and my measurements of the spices was very imprecise. Add more to the final dish if it doesn't taste strong enough for your taste.

Last hazy days of summer in the garden

The sun is lower in the sky now, casting a golden light through the garden. The runner beans are still producing, and have been my second most productive plant so far this year, after the tomatoes. Although they might yet be beaten by the coriander seeds that my coriander plants have produced en masse or by the squashes, which I have finally allowed to run to mildew, having visited Sissinghurst and seen that their pumpkins had mildew too.

Having listened to Monty Don on the subject of young fruit trees, I have cleared the grass and weeds from under the apple tree and given it half a bag of composted stable manure in apology for forcing it to compete with weeds so early in its life. Apparently it's not until later when I should be allowing grass to grow under it to prevent it from becoming overly big. Right now it needs all the growth it can get. As you might be able to tell from the photo, I haven't dug the manure in. My understanding is that organic matter has a tendency to work its way down into the soil even if you just leave it on top, and until then, it will act as a mulch, helping the ground retain moisture.

Tomato and apple chutney

I still have more tomatoes than I know what to do with. So I picked another kilo to make chutney with. That's after giving a couple more kilos to the neighbours, eating a kilo in spaghetti sauce and eating a tomato salad every lunchtime for weeks.

But I've still got even more left that are either completely ripe or almost ripe.
I used this recipe to make the chutney.
It tasted a little overly vinegary when I tasted it, but I didn't do the proportions quite right (I had about 10% too many apples and tomatoes, so I increased everything else by 10% as well, only I did it in my head, so it might not have worked out perfectly, and also I had to chuck a couple of tomatoes for looking funny inside and it was raining by then, so I didn't replace them, so I might not actually have properly had 10% more tomatoes and apples. On the other hand, the Internet said that the chutney would lose its vinegar sting over time, so it may not have been too much
The hardest thing about this is I didn't realise how much it would make .  I started off using this pot:

and quickly realised I needed to switch to this pot:

This, however, was the least of my problems. The most of my problems was having enough jars and sterilising them. I had to go and buy 2 new Kilner jars because I realised the jars I had collected weren't going to have enough capacity and no one was selling any other kind of jam jar. They cost £2.50 per 0.5 l jar, which really annoyed me because, firstly, I think that's too big for chutney, but there weren't any smaller ones, and secondly, 0.5l of chutney in a jar would barely cost more.
Problem two was sterilisation. Boiling jars is a real pain because it's really hard to get a big enough pan to cover anything but the smallest jar in water in an upright position, especially when you're already using by far the biggest pan you own to make the chutney. Also, getting the pan up to temperature takes ages.
Luckily, the BBC said I could sterilise them in the oven, so I did that for the bigger jars. I highly recommend doing that right from the start and only sterilising your lids and rubber seals in water (doing the lids in water is much easier space-wise, although you need to find a way of checking you're only at 82° C and not boiling). The oven thing also has the advantage that you can just take all the jars out of the oven on their tray and don't have to mess round trying to get them out of boiling water without ruining the sterilisation.
My next problem was how to put the lids on without removing their sterility - my hands definitely haven't been simmered at 82° for ten minutes, and also the lids were initially too hot to handle. Also, I quite often had to wipe spilled chutney off the rim of the jar, which I did with kitchen roll, which also isn't sterile. Anyhow, I'm just going to have to hope it was all sterile enough and reject any of the chutney if it tastes mouldy.
I'm currently listening to the jar lids pop down and form a vacuum as I write, so fingers crossed.
Mumsnet says I should now leave the chutney for 1-3 months to mature before I eat it.

Edited: Mumsnet was right. After a couple of months it turned into the most delicious chutney I've ever eaten. So delicious I've only been able to persuade myself to give one jar away and have been hoarding all the rest. This makes me want to keep the recipe so much that I'm recording it here for posterity (warning, it takes 4 hours):

1kg apples - peeled, cored and sliced
450 ml water
1 tablespoon yellow mustard seeds
1kg tomatoes, sliced/chopped
2 large onions, chopped
1 clove garlic, chopped
85g sultanas
140g caster sugar
2 1/2 dessertspoons curry powder
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
2 dessertspoons salt
560ml (1 pint) malt vinegar

1. Place apples and water in an extremely large large saucepan (jam-making size). Bring to the boil, reduce heat, and cook for 25 minutes, or until the apples are tender, stirring occasionally. Add more water as necessary to keep the apples simmering.

2. Wrap the mustard seeds in muslin or cheesecloth, and place with apples. Mix tomatoes, onions, garlic, sultanas, sugar, curry powder, cayenne pepper, salt and vinegar in with the apples. Stir until sugar has dissolved.

3. Bring the mixture to the boil. Reduce heat, and simmer for 3 hours, stirring occasionally, until a thick chutney remains. Remove and discard wrapped mustard seeds. While cooking, sterlise your jars (in the oven was easiest for me). Seal the chutney in the sterile jars. Store for at least one month before serving.

From bud to apple - the journey of an apple from start to fruit

My last three remaining apples were knocked off my dwarf Katya apple tree by some sort of animal that left tooth-marks in two of them and took a big bite out of the third this week, so the journey of my apples this year is complete. I trimmed the tooth marks out of the less damaged two and ate them anyway and they were ripe enough for consumption, so not a complete loss, just not the perfectly plucked apples I was hoping for.

I've been taking photos of them every week or two, so here's the journey from bud to fruit (NB Dates may be a couple of days out due to imperfect record keeping.):

2 April 2016

23 April 2016

30 April 2016

7 May 2016

14 May 2016

22 May 2016

29 May 2016

5 June 2016

11 June 2016

26 June 2016

1 July 2016

17 July 2016

31 July 2016

5 August 2016

23 August 2016

29 August 2016

Bumper harvest of tomatoes

I had a bumper harvest of tomatoes yesterday. I picked about 2 kg of tomatoes, and that was just the very ripe ones and the ones that fell off when I was picking the very ripe ones. I made tomato sauce with pasta with a kilo of them, gave some to a neighbour and need to find more neighbours to give the rest to. There are still plenty of ripe ones left on the plants.
Based on their size, I think the majority of the tomatoes that have ripened so far for me are Gardener's Delight. This leaves me in a bit of a quandary, as based on a taste test, I think I prefer Moneymaker, which are sweeter and less sharp. I don't think I've had many of those yet this season though. I think about 95% of my harvest has been Gardener's Delight, which seems to produce more and ripen quicker. Either that or I'm wrongly attributing variety based on size and rough location in the plot. Either way, it leaves me wondering what it's best to plant next year.
Tomatoes have been my most successful crop this year and I have discovered that you neither need to stake them nor cut away leaves to expose the tomatoes to the sun to get a good crop. Many of mine are hidden behind leaves - possibly also protecting them from pests - although the fact this has been possible may be due to their prime sun position in the garden. The down side of this approach is that the tomato patch looks like a mess.

It's hard to tell from a distance, but even after that mega-harvest, it's still full of ripe tomatoes.

Mind you, they are in the sunniest part of the garden, in the bed that last year produced my most bountiful crop. Last year it was squashes, and I'm doing pretty well on squashes this year, but I don't think they'll rival my tomatoes for sheer volume.

In less good news, my corn ripened earlier this year than it did last year, so I again left harvesting it too late and only managed to eat two cobs at correct ripeness. They're now busy drying out on the plant, and if they manage to dry nicely I hope to be able to use them for popcorn or maybe in stews or other recipes I find on the Internet for dried corn.

I am, however, regularly harvesting runner beans and am still getting a pretty decent crop.

Pork, cider and apple casserole

This one hardly has anything from the garden in it, just onions, as my apples are neither ripe nor the right sort for this recipe, but it's delicious, so here's the recipe anyway. It takes about 1.5 - 2 hours to cook in total and feeds 6-8, depending on appetite.

Ingredients
2-3 tbsp olive oil
2 large onions
3 cloves of garlic (I used 3 tsp of frozen garlic)
500g stewing pork cut into large chunks
1 can of cider (mine was 440 ml)
3 tbsp Dijon mustard
3 tbsp plain flour
1 tsp dried thyme
salt and pepper to taste
4 apples - Golden Delicious or Jonagold
4 heaped tbsp full fat natural Greek yogurt

1. Peel the onions and chop them very small.
2. Put the olive oil in a large pan or casserole dish and heat.
3. Add the onions and fry until tender, stirring occasionally.
4. Peel garlic and finely chop, then add to pan and stir.
5. After a couple of minutes, add the stewing pork. Fry until white.
6. Pour over the cider.
7. Turn up the heat until gently boiling, then put the lid on, turn the heat right down and allow to simmer for 1 hour (don't worry about it going frothy, this isn't a problem).
8.  Peel and core the apples and cut into segments (about 12 per apple).
9. Add the apple to the pan and continue to simmer for 10 more minutes.
10. Mix the Dijon mustard, flour, thyme and salt and pepper. Add mixture to pan and stir Cook for 5 more minutes.
11. Add yogurt, stir and heat through until warm.
I served mine with mashed potato and peas.

Butter chicken with courgette and runner beans recipe + vegetarian and vegan versions

I decided to make butter chicken, but I didn't have enough chicken, whereas I did have ripe courgette and runner beans. So I decided to make up my own recipe. It turned out pretty good, so here it is, followed by a recipe for a vegetarian and a vegan version:

Ingredients
2-3 tbsp butter
1 onion
1/2 tsp cinnamon
2 tsp crushed garlic (I used frozen)
2 tsp crushed ginger (I used frozen)
1/2 tsp turmeric
1-2 tsp ground chili (I used mild chili)
3 tsp ground coriander
340 g chicken thigh or breast, cut into large chunks
100 g ground almonds
400g tin of tomatoes
1 tbsp tomato paste
2 medium or 1 large courgette (I used about 200 g)
150 g runner beans
2 tbsp of full fat plain Greek yogurt

1. Cut onions into thin slices.
2. Heat large pan or casserole dish. Add butter and melt until frothy.
3. Add onions and cinnamon and fry lightly.
4. When the onions are soft, stir in the garlic and the ginger.
5. Add turmeric, chili and ground coriander. Cook over a medium heat for 5 minutes.
6. Meanwhile, cut the chicken into large, bite-size chunks.
7. Once the spices have cooked for five minutes, add the chicken to the pan and fry until white.
8. Add ground almonds, tomatoes and tomato paste.
9. Stir, then cover and cook on a low heat while you chop the courgettes and runner beans.
10. Chop the courgette into bite-sized chunks about 1 cm cubed (don't peel the courgette) and diagonally slice the runner beans.

11. Add the courgette and runner beans to the pot (if the curry seems too dry, add a bit of water, but not too much, because the yogurt you add at the end will make it runnier).
12. Put the lid on and simmer for about 15 minutes until the beans and courgette are cooked.
13. Add yogurt, stir and heat through.
I serve mine with couscous or naan bread because I'm allergic to rice, but rice would also work well if you don't have allergy issues.

Vegetarian/vegan version: Creamy almond curry
Ingredients
Vegetarian version 2-3 tbsp butter/vegan version 2-3 tbsp olive oil
1 onion
1/2 tsp cinnamon
2 tsp crushed garlic (I used frozen)
2 tsp crushed ginger (I used frozen)
1/2 tsp turmeric
1-2 tsp ground chili (I used mild chili)
3 tsp ground coriander
340 g sweet potato, cut into chunks of 2-3 cm cubed
100 g ground almonds
400g tin of tomatoes
1 tbsp tomato paste
2 medium or 1 large courgette (I used about 200 g)
150 g runner beans
Vegetarian version 2 tbsp of full fat plain Greek yogurt/vegan version 1/2 tin-1 tin coconut milk OR tahini with extra water to taste OR cashew sauce to taste

1. Cut onions into thin slices.
2. Heat large pan or casserole dish. Vegetarian: Add butter and melt until frothy. Vegan: add olive oil.
3. Add onions and cinnamon and fry lightly.
4. When the onions are soft, stir in the garlic and the ginger.
5. Add turmeric, chili and ground coriander. Cook over a medium heat for 5 minutes.
6. Meanwhile, peel the sweet potato and cut into bite-size chunks about 2-3 cm cubed).
7. Once the spices have cooked for five minutes, add the sweet potato to the pan and fry for a couple of minutes.
8. Add ground almonds, tomatoes and tomato paste.
9. Stir, then cover and cook on a low heat for about 10 minute while you chop the courgettes and runner beans.
10. Chop the courgette into bite-sized chunks about 1 cm cubed (don't peel the courgette) and diagonally slice the runner beans.

11. Add the courgette and runner beans to the pot (if the curry seems too dry, add a bit of water, but not too much, because the yogurt you add at the end will make it runnier).
12. Put the lid on and simmer for about 15 minutes until the beans and courgette are cooked.
13. Vegetarian version: add yogurt.  Vegan version: add coconut milk or tahini to taste (plus enough water to make it a nice consistency)  or cashew sauce. Stir and heat through.
Serve with rice or naan bread, or even couscous if you fancy it.