My Garden: 7th August 2013

Cobs have started on my sweetcorn!

I’ve started feeding them Comfrey tea which should help the cobs along.

And my late tomato plants that I didn’t have much faith in, have fruited!! Again, Im feeding them Comfrey tea and removing side shoots daily to concentrate all that food in the fruit.

And here is a little hamper of produce I harvested for our dinner, including the first potatoes!

My Garden: 27th July

After three full weeks of scorching sun, and temperatures which we are just not used to in this country, Ireland was officially in a drought for the first time I can remember in my adult life. And then the rain came, while the heat remained and the garden just loved it.

My sweetcorn which was stagnant in size for quite a while is coming on and has started to produce the grain.

Carrots looking good enough to eat. Note I have mixed sand into the soil - supposed to be good for carrots. Make sure not to plant in freshly manured ground as it will have the effect of fine foliage but not much root. The root only grows to find food for the plant, so if your soil is too fertile, it will happily sit there enjoying it, rather than working for it!

Onions are swelling:

The beetroot isn’t ready to eat but the leaves provide a very tasty and under-rated salad crop while we wait

The legumes have been my success this year and the pea hedge has been almost stripped bare by us over the last few weeks

But if you search among the jungle of leaves, some fat pods are still there for the taking

But with every success comes a failure and even though I had my hopes pinned on a bumper crop of beautiful tomatoes after last years bounty, I failed miserably with my seedlings and have only two small plants which, although flowering, aren’t filling me with great hope

I planted a range of brassicas including cauliflower, cabbage, broccoli and brussel sprouts but only the latter actually germinated

And last, but not least, some random flowers from around the garden. I had hoped to have alot more to encourage bee population [which is much better than last year] but the weather has been so mixed that they haven’t done as well as I’d hoped [although I suspect some of my seeds were poor quality]

Double Chocolate Chip Cookies

These intense and crumbly cookies will satisfy even the strongest chocolate craving.

Ingredients

• 150g dark chocolate
• 150g plain flour
• 30g cocoa powder
• 1 tsp bread soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 125g soft butter
• 75g brown sugar
• 50g white granulated sugar
• 1 egg beaten
• 125g chopped milk chocolate

Method

• Pre-heat the oven to gas 3/170C/325F
• Melt the dark chocolate over boiling water
• Cream the butter and sugar together in a bowl
• Mix in the melted chocolate and beaten egg
• In a separate bowl, sieve together the flour, cocoa, bread soda and salt
• Combine both mixes and stir through the chopped chocolate

On baking trays covered with greaseproof paper, divide the mix into 18 rounds, allowing room to spread

Bake for twenty minutes, allow to cool and enjoy!

10 Minute Chocolate Chip Cookies

These wonderful quick and easy cookies are a great impromptu treat. The recipe is slightly adapted from the original River Cottage one. They actually take twenty minutes if you take prep into account… :)

Ingredients

125g unsalted butter

Pinch sea salt

100g caster sugar

75g light brown sugar

1 egg

2 tsp vanilla essence

175g plain flour

1 tsp baking powder

100g dark chocolate chopped up

Method

Preheat the oven to gas 5

Line baking trays with greaseproof paper

Melt the butter over a low heat

Remove from the heat

Mix in the sugars and dissolve

Add in the lightly beaten egg and the vanilla essence

Sift in the flour and baking powder

Add the salt

Mix in the chocolate

Make small circles of the mix on the baking paper, leaving plenty space for expansion

Bake for ten minutes, leave to cool and enjoy

Vegetarian Lasagna with Cauliflower Sauce

I used minimal sauce and cheese in this recipe but it could easily be increased for a creamier, more comforting dish.

Cauliflower Sauce

Ingredients

• 800g cauliflower
• 800ml stock [I used chicken so not technically vegetarian but easily rectified..]
• 60ml milk
• Pinch salt and pepper

Method

Boil the cauliflower in the stock until it begins to soften

Blitz with the milk and add salt and pepper to taste.

Lasagna

Ingredients

• 5 sheets of lasagna pasta
• 1kg mixed chopped veg [I used carrots, pak choi, onion, yellow bell pepper and some tinned tomatoes]
• Your already prepared cauliflower sauce
• Grated cheese to personal preference [I used mozzarella and cheddar

Method

Pre-heat the oven to Gas 5/190ºC/375ºF

Boil the pasta for a few minutes

In an oven proof dish, layer your sauce, veg, pasta and cheese as desired

Cover dish with foil and bake for 25 minutes

Remove the foil and bake for 15 more minutes

Remove from oven and enjoy!

My Garden: 19th June 2013

Spying slug damage starting to appear on some of my broad bean pods, I cut my losses and stripped the plants bare, blanching and freezing the remains of the crop. As we’ve been eating beans straight of the plant for the last six weeks, I’m pretty happy with the results. I strongly recommend planting your broad beans in Autumn [as is often recommended] because I shudder at the thought of how depleted my crop would have been if the young beans had to contend with the slugs and aphids of spring and summer.





Shelled beans ready for blanching and freezing. Time will tell how successfully I’ve preserved their taste…





In three weeks, my pea hedge has gone from this:





To this:

Branch parts stuck in the ground are proving good supports with a natural look.

Sweetcorn plants are almost ready for planting out. I’ve learned that the male flowers emerge before the female so to assist pollination in a small crop, collect pollen from the male flowers into an envelope and hand pollinate the female flowers when they emerge. Sweetcorn is naturally wind pollinated and best grown in blocks rather than lines, to assist the process.

Beetroot is coming on, and I’m planting a few more seeds every now and then. Looking forward to eating the young leaves

Radishes are protected by plastic bottles because it doesn’t take a big fat slug too much time to munch through a sweet little radish.

I hope the spuds look as good underground as they do overground

After a failure of tomato plant seedlings, I managed to salvage two plants so hopefully I’ll still manage to have a late small crop

Last year, we ate our first Brussel Sprouts on Christmas Day and they were beautiful so hoping for an even better crop this year.

And inside, my cactus is getting ready to flower its beautiful bloom that it bestows upon me once a year. It’s coming late this year. It has flowered as early as April some years.

This is how it looked last year:

Beautiful Baked Eggs and Smoked Fish

Ingredients per ramekin

• 15g butter plus extra for greasing
• Dash olive oil
• One egg
• Large handful spinach [it shrinks considerably when cooked]
• 50g smoked fish shredded (mackerel, salmon or kippers for example)
• Tablespoon pouring cream
• Pinch nutmeg, freshly grated if you can get it

Method

Preheat the oven to Gas 4/180ºC/350ºF

Grease the ramekin with butter

Heat the butter and oil in a pan and wilt the spinach for 2-3 mins

Remove and squeeze out any liquid

Finely chop and mix with half the cream, nutmeg and salt and pepper if desired

Mix in the shredded fish

Put the fish mix into the base of the ramekin, crack the egg on top and pour over the remaining cream

Bake in oven for 20 minutes, allow to cool and turn over in the hope that it all stays together [I didn’t take a photo of the second one that fell apart :)]

Enjoy!