Monday 31 August 2009

Dinnerus Romanus



I made a Roman feast! I did! Honest! And some of it counted as allotment food!

About a month ago we were in Bath and my souvenir of our visit to the baths was a selection of books with historical recipes in them. One was "A Classical Cookbook" by Andrew Dalby and Sally Grainger. Ok so I have revealed my sources!

On Saturday I decided we were going to have a feastus romanus to celebrate my newus jobus. Again more later when all signed, sealed and delivered. In the mean time I am allowing myself a brief period of rejoicing which meant a roman dinner on Saturday. I have long been interested in food history, anorak that I am, and so was hugely excited. We recently watched a BBC programme where they had two presenters who had to eat Roman food but they gave them the really rubbish things to eat because obviously if they gave them the good stuff there would have been no drama!

I should explain that we had our meal in true Roman style lounging on the sofas and eating off the coffee table!

First up, although not allotment-based, was Conditum Paradoxum which sounds like a medicine. It is to be seriously recommended! SERIOUSLY! It is a spiced wine.
Romans traditionally served a honeyed wine called "Mulsum" as an aperitif but this one is a step up from that (oooooh get us! ) and includes white wine, honey, black pepper, bay leaf, saffron and a date. It was great - a bit like mulled wine only better.

First course various fruits including our own figs. I got the same type of fig as we have from a certain well-known supermarket and really there was no comparison. you can see the difference in colour etc from the picture.


I also made a dish called "Moretum" or garlic cheese with garlic from the allotment and it was really not for the faint hearted! In fact I shall put a warning on it:


DO NOT MAKE THIS DISH IF YOU DO NOT LOVE GARLIC. DO NOT PLAN TO KISS ANYONE WITHIN 24 HOURS OF EATING IT!

The original source, according to Sally, was from a book called "Cato's Farm". He was an early Roman soldier and politician who apparently expelled people from the Senate for lacking in morality. All he would have had to do was breathe on them after he had eaten his moretum. That would expel anybody.

He was obviously a very busy man because he also wrote a farming handbook for people who were looking to invest in a farm which really covered all aspects of it and included advice on how to make it profitable and how to store and cook the produce - a bit like an early Roman River Cottage. Apart from the slaves. So anyway this is his recipe for moretum which is a bit like humus in texture and apparently is best eaten spread thinly on crusty bread.

MORETUM

Ingredients

2 heads (20 - 25 cloves) garlic - honestly I did warn you - peeled
225 g pecorino romano, parmesan or similar hard Italian cheese
1 large handful of coriander leaves
2 heaped teaspoonfuls chopped fresh celery leaf
1 teasp salt
1 tblspn white wine vinegar
1 tblspn olive oil.

It also calls for 2 teaspoons of rue which I didn't use partly because I couldn't get it and partly because it is, as they say, boggin. It was herb used in Roman cooking for some inexplicable reason. Apparently it smells foul and tastes even fouler and could possibly be poisonous. Heidi the Herbalist in Holywood said she had never been asked for it as a cooking herb before - only as a treatment for rheumatism. But she said she would get me a plant. I just want to see how foul it is myself.

METHOD

Get your slave to grate the cheese and then pound all the other solid ingredients together in a pestle and mortar to form a smooth paste. If you don't have a slave or a pestle and mortar, do it in the food processor.

Stir in the vinegar and olive oil.

We loved it but it is VERY strong.


For the main course we had roast shoulder of pork but I can't really justify putting the recipe here since it had no significant allotment ingredients. But I had never tasted anything quite like it!

Have to go to bed now.

Pflaumenkuche von die schwesterin in Deutschland!



Havenm't visited here in a while. In fact we haven't been to the allotment for ages the reason being that we have all been very busy. I have been offered a new job but more on that later as I don't want to tempt fate. In case you are wondering why I am doing this at 1.53 am I can't really sleep. Must be all the excitement. Or maybe the aerobics.

This is the octogenarian mother's recipe for "pflaumenkuche" which was more "inspired" by what she ate whilst visiting die schwesterin in Deutschland und seine familie rather than an actual recipe. Die schwesterin ist very gut at making die kuchen so if die schwesterin or die schwesterin's familie ist ever reading diese they can let me know if there ist anything they would do different!


To get this recipe from her was a fairly tortuous process as she "just makes it" and I have added wee bits and pieces because I am a control freak. So there.

Ingredients:

170 g plain flour
120 g butter
2 tbspns icing sugar
1 egg beaten
2 tbspns ground almonds
2.5 kg plums - halved and stoned

Method:

Mix the flour, butter and 1 tbspn icing sugar to the consistency of breadcrumbs.

Mix egg and 1 tbspn ground almonds

Add to dough, mould into a ball and wrap in greaseproof paper. Leave to rest in the fridge for at least half an hour.

Roll out pastry and cover flan base.

At this point I would blind bake it in the oven but this suggestion produced an indignant "Well you asked me what I would do.............."

Cover pastry with remainder of ground almonds.

Fill pastry with halved plums in circles.

Bake in the oven at 180 for 50 minutes.

Sprinkle toasted almonds and glaze with honey. Return to overn for further ten minutes.

I would also have added ground cinnamon at this point but it was really not worth the argument..............................................

We have all eaten quite a lot of it over the past few days!

The head gardener also made chutney so again recipe to follow.

Monday 24 August 2009

Pflaumenkuche

Try saying that when you're drunk! Tonight the Head Gardener made potato and beetroot mash which looked amazing. It was bright purple! Brill.
Recipe to follow since he wants to make a few adjustments to it. Then the octogenarian mother rang and asked if we wanted to over for pflaumenkuche. She made this with her victorias. The recipe is a German one from my sister who, handily enough, lives in Germany. It is very nice. So all three of us sat there eating huge amounts of pastry and plums (again recipe to follow) and watching the Queen in Uganda. As you do. The Head Gardener spent quite a lot of time reading one of the octogenarian mother's cookery books. It had a fairly comprehensive index of all types of food including things such as tripe and brains which he took great delight in. If he had one at home he would never go out! Unfortunately no photos at the moment since they are all on my camera which is at the octogenarian mother's house. Oh well. I think the Head Gardener is getting fed up with me constantly photographing our dinners because it delays the start time!

Sunday 23 August 2009

Send her victorias.............................










We had the octogenarian mother up for dinner tonight - she was feeling better - and made her an allotment based dinner. She was in rare form. She enjoyed her visit to Canada apart from the endless driving and intense heat. She said she hadn't got used to there not being lots of people around yet. My uncle has five in his family and lots of grandchildren.

First up was Onion Tart. This is a good one. Two members of the Head Gardener's family are veggie and once when we were entertaining for Christmas he made this as their main course. There was nearly a battle over it with the rampant carnivores.

Onion Tart

Ingredients:


150g butter
200g plan flour
1 kilo of onions sliced finely
1 tbspn olive oil
salt
black pepper
3 egg yolks
200ml double cream
100g gruyere finely grated

Method


Rub 100g butter into 200g plain flour and add enough cold water to bring the mixture together.

Press it straight into the tart tin with your fingers - do not roll or chill.
Line with greaseproof paper and gill with clay baking beans or real dried beans.
Cook for 15 minutes at 200 degrees
Remove paper and beans and return to oven to cook for further 5 minutes.

Heat the butter and olive oil in a pan.
Add onions and cook very gently for about half an hour - make sure they don't catch or go brown. They should be golden and soft.

Remove from heat and season with a pinch of salt, a pinch of nutmeg and some black pepper.

Beat together 3 egg yolks and the double cream.
Add the gruyere.
Combine the onions with the egg, cream and cheese mixture.
Spread evenly over the pastry case and bake at 190 degrees for half an hour until the filling is lightly puffed and golden.

Serve hot from the oven!

We had potato salad (standard recipe) with our own potatoes as well.

For desert I had plums that the octogenarian mother had brought from her own plum tree. They are Victorias which were always her favourite. She loved them so much that as a child she thought the words of the chorus of the (British) National Anthem were;

"God save our gracious Queen,
Long live our noble Queen,
God save the Queen.

Send her victorias
Happy and glorious.....!"

She had an image of the queen receiving a crate of plums. The Head Gardener didnt want any so I was more than happy to eat them.

And now to figs.

We are the proud possessors of two fig trees. In 2002 we moved house to Mountmerrion in Belfast where we had a fabby back garden. I decided nothing would do but the Head Gardener would have a fig tree as a Christmas present. As you do. you should try getting a fig tree in Nrn Irn in December. It is a real experience. I went to all the garden centres in the country and they all said they didn't stock them at this time of year. I did finally track one down and bought it on the spot. It is a Sicilian White fig and the tree was a thing of great beauty. I was also over seven foot tall which I could see was going to prove interesting in terms of keeping it concealed. So I hid it in the neighbour's garden. The neighbours were Archie and Margaret who were neighbours from heaven. This still left me with the issue of what to do with it on Christmas Eve. Having no idea about relative sizes I thought I could hide it behind the oil tank. On the night in question the Head Gardener was ensconced in Carols from Cambridge and I said I would like to close the curtains over the french windows to "keep the heat in". This was the only time this was done in the house in five years. Naturally he didn't think anything of this. I then went in next door, as pre-arranged with my co-conspirators, and tried to cart this tree with its pot into our garden in a wheelbarrow. This was no easy feat especially when being aided and abetted by our two neighbours. Any passers-by would have seen two older people accompanied by a younger woman manhandling a tree and wheelbarrow down our driveway and swearing continuously because it kept falling off. We then got it into the back garden and having failed to conceal it behind the oil tank, I thought it best to disguise it cleverly by putting it beside the bin. See picture. Well it was dark.

About twenty minutes later I was upstairs and I heard the Head Gardener shout "HELLO!" He had gone to put something in the bin (damn! Why didn't I think of that?) and found a huge tree.

In the meantime I had also placed an order with another garden centre for a Brown Turkey Fig which they said they would probably be getting in in the spring. I thought that would be better than nothing if I couldn't get one at Christmas. I promptly forgot all about it. So when they rang at Easter it came as a pleasant surprise. It is the most wonderful tree. This one we have trained up against the fence in the back garden and from the very first year we were getting figs from it. The white sicilian took until this year to get settled - maybe that was connected with our house move as well.

This year they have both done well. So tonight we sampled figs from both! The brown turkey fig is the one with the lighter coloured flesh. They were both great!
So all together a great night!

YUMMMMMMMMM


I have just sampled a wee piece of the tart and the rest of it might be in danger! Will have to make sure that it makes it to the octogenarian mother!

One potato.................................



So it was when we were digging potatoes out of a sodden, blight-ridden plot in the pouring rain and the howling wind (in August!) that the head gardener started talking about getting his passage to Americay.......................

We did manage to rescue a large number of potatoes and in fact when I weighed them a short time ago there were 13 pounds. That means that the total crop - we had already had some - probably weighed about 26 lbs! All that from half a dozen salad potatoes.

We also lifted some more onions and the head gardener as we speak is making his famous onion tart - recipe and photos to follow. And we had bolgnese alla vedova di piccolo what's its name last night too! The octogenarian mother is currently sleeping off jetlag. She was bouncing when she got off the plane on Thursday morning so I reckon it has just taken that time for it to hit her. I will be taking her her share of the potatoes and some onion tart later so that she doesn't have to worry about cooking tonight. I also just want to see her for my own peace of mind since she sounded really unwell yesterday. I couldn't get to see her yesterday because I had my hand up the bum of a large purple crow called Bertie. We had a big event in work and I was doing the storytelling. I have a magic story-telling cloak and my friend Bertie who incidentally is a puppet. Just in case you thought there was animal cruelty going on.

So to sum up:

Hours spent working: 1
Work undertaken: holding bag for head gardener to put potatoes in after he had dug them (I got the better option), digging potatoes (head gardener), weeding, putting recycled peat into the potato bed to try and lift some of the moisture out of it and lifting onions.

Cost of seeds/plants: minimal - half a dozen left over salad potatoes from a certain supermarket and some onion sets.

What has been planted - nothing today!

What has been brought on in the green house - no green house on the allotment but the one at home which is really a garden shed with a perspex roof and wall has a bed in it much favoured by Gilbert the Three legged cat. Who incidentally has to go to the vet in the not too distant future. He is the biggest fighter in the area, three legs notwithstanding, and when I came home yesterday I heard the most god-awful screech of cat from behind the houses across the road and Gilbert was nowhere to be seen which is very odd because the sound of the car arriving means he is going to be fed. I went out looking for him and couldn't find him but he turned up eventually. He seems to have a war wound on his chin and it seems to be slightly swollen so he will probably need antibiotics again!

Harvesting and weighing of produce: 13lbs potatoes and two large red onions! lovely. Will just check now to see how much a leading supermarket would charge for these online. Organic red onions are 40p each which means it is £1.20. Wilson's Country Comber potatoes are 75 p a pound which makes it £8.72. That means total value is almost £10!!!!

Time spent on social activities - one of our neighbours gave us two courgettes. We three were the only people in the allotment.

Wildlife seen: worms, a few desolate housemartins flying about.

Friday 21 August 2009

Allotment dinner

The head gardener went to the allotment the other day and was delighted with himself because he was able to get a haul of vegetables to present to the octogenarian mother on her return from the other side of the Atlantic as a "welcome home". He got her courgettes, carrots, potatoes, peas, beetroots and onions. Notwithstanding the fact that she gave me the wrong date for her arrival, she came this morning and was duly delighted with her food! I had also got her groceries from Tesco because we thought she would be tired. I was concerned that she would be tired after a car journey, transatlantic flight, two hour bus journey from Dublin and a train journey from Belfast to Holywood (I had said I would pick her up but she insisted and when the octogenarian mother insists there is no point in arguing). I was concerned because I also knew that she would insist on driving home. I neednt have worried. She spent the flight talking to her new best friend (a lady from Athlone) and sleeping. She said it was her "best flight" from Canada and she was fresh as a daisy and in fact considerably fresher than I was. So that was ok. She was full of tales from Canada about things like driving around in a 1961 vintage chevrolet and watching blindfolded drivers racing vintage Model A and Model T Fords. As you do.

This is the recipe for courgette pasta:

Serves 4
1 kg courgettes sliced finely
Olive oil
salt
3 cloves garlic crushed
2 tablespoonfuls cream
50g parmesan

Heat the oil in the pan.
Add the garlic and salt.
Cook the courgettes GENTLY until they are softened but not browning. This will take at least 20 minutes.
Cook your pasta as required.
Stir the cream into the sauce and heat through.
Stir into pasta and serve.

Brill.

I will not be at the allotment tomorrow as I am spending the day dressed in black hooded cape with my hand up inside a bright purple crow. Hopefully scaring small children.

Monday 17 August 2009

Then and now



These two pictures are of the allotment on the first day and more or less the same view now.

allotment dinners part whatever



Bolognese alla vedova di piccolo appezzamento

I have spent over two hundred and seventy hours of my life cooking bolognese. It is time well spent! I have tried a few different recipes all of them claiming to be authentic. This I think is the best one. I can only claim it in that I have made slight alterations but since you can't copywright a recipe I don't care! My criteria for allotment dinners is that at least one (preferably more than one) of the main ingredients was grown on our allotment. Here goes.

Bolognese Alla Vedova di Piccolo Appezzamento ( Allotment Widow Bolognese)

Serves 4, or 2 if they are us.

Ingredients:

500g salad potatoes (knocknagoneyensis!) or pasta

olive oil for frying

80g butter (6tbspns)

1 large onion chopped

1 large carrot chopped finely

2 rashers bacon chopped

1 stalk celery

150g minced pork

150g minced beef

50g Italian sausage - can be salami or pepperoni or whatever you want. Just make sure the skin is off.

1 glass white wine

15 ml 1 tbspn tomato puree

1 wine glass stock.

salt and black pepper

75 ml double cream

parmesan for grating

Method

Heat the oil and 4 tbspns butter in a heavy pan.

Cook the onions for about 4 - 5 minutes until clear and soft

Add bacon and cook for further 4 -5 minutes until cooked, if you see what I mean.

Add the carrot and celery and cook for a further 5 minutes or until soft.

Add pork and cook until it is browned

Add beef and cook until it is browned

Add sausage meat

Add white wine, raise heat slightly and cook it until it is absorbed

Mix tomato puree and stock or use 400g of your own tomatoes chopped if you have them!!

Season.

Cook on a very low heat for one and a half hours.

boil your potatoes or cook the pasta according to packet instructions.

Stir in the cream, add parmesan if required and serve.

Apologies for the picture but it was the only one that nearly came out! Will get a better one next time!

When I made this over the weekend we had our own onions and carrots.




So Saturday was open day! And great craic it was too! We met lots of new allotment friends and my cover was blown thanks to one of our allotment neighbours whose not-the-designer-wellies were £10 from Dunnes! It wasn't you I was talking about earlier honest! Thanks for the tea and traybakes - yummy - and I hope you raised a lot of money for Assissi! In fact with the free potatoes from Maurice the farmer, the tray bakes for Assissi and the bag of delicious fudge thanks to Broom Cottage, I had no room left for my scone!



The Head Gardner was able to sit and show off his produce and talk to visitors about his onions! I felt very proud of our allotment as well and tried to take credit as much as possible obviously!

I then thought it would be nice to display some produce in my basket of loveliness at the bottom of the allotment - shame I hadnt thought of it before we left home because our house is coming down with allotment veg and what was still in the ground wasn't quite ready but I made quite a good fist of it anyway. I actually lifted some potatoes! Out of the ground! For the first time! We have had some already but this was the first time I lifted them. The head gardener is very proud of his potatoes and in fact we have named them tescoknocknagoneyensis. People were asking what kind they were. We got half a dozen salad potatoes long past their best at the bottom of a bag from a well-known supermarket that shall remain nameless but was Tescos. The head gardener split them in half and planted them. From that we got a whole bed of lovely potatoes! So that is why we have decided to call them tescoknocknagoneyensis because that is where they came from.

We had originally planned to make some beetroot soup - recipe to follow - but unfortunately one the head gardeners colleagues was leaving and Friday was her last day. So drinking took priority on the Friday night and it was a much as we could do to get up on the Saturday at all much less make a vat of beetroot soup. We had plenty of visitors anyway and one lady wanted to know how to cook beetroot so just on the off chance that she might read this - I know I am optimistic - here is the head gardeners favoured recipe for beetroot soup which I can vouch for -

Head Gardener's Delight Beetroot Soup

Ingredients:

Oil for frying
1 onion
1 clove garlic
500 - 600g beetroots (or as many as you have/want) chopped
1 tin chopped tomatoes
1 litre stock (preferably beef)
Feta cheese

Step 1 Fry the onion and the garlic in the oil in a large pan until soft.

Step 2 Add the chopped beetroot

Step 3 Add tin of chopped tomatoes and stock and bring to the boil.

Step 4 Simmer until cooked thoroughly.

Step 5 Return to pan and heat through

Add feta and serve!


Pride of place on our allotment was what I call our north american plot with the pumpkin and the sweetcorn on it!

There were a few stalls there and quite a large number of visitors. To the lady who took it upon herself to sample our peas I would like to say that I hope she enjoyed them! The octogenarian mother has always been desperate for that - no bunch of grapes in the greengrocers is safe. As a teenager it made me cringe with embarassment (then again is that not what parents are for when you are a teenager?) and pretend not to be with her. I still do this because so does she! She calls it "sampling". She would have loved today because she would have been able to go round and chat to everybody and get their life stories! Unfortunately she was otherwise detained at a vintage car rally in Ontario. What else would you be doing on a Saturday?


It was also very nice of the Ards flying club to put on the air display for us! Although on reflection I think it was more for the Tall Ships Festival in Belfast.
We actually went to see them afterwards - very impressive but very crowded.


So to sum up what happened today -

Hours - 12 noon - 6 pm
Activities - lifting spuds, weeding (head gardener)talking to people eating things showing off to visitors muttering about people taking our peas without asking veg talk gardening tips cookery ideas
talking to people I went to school with about a century ago - no names no pack drills!
Feeling old because of the above.
How much did plants and seeds cost - no idea
what has been planted so far onions, leeks, garlic, peas, italian beans, other beans sweetcorn, pumpkin, beetroot, carrots, parsnips, brussel sprouts, potatoes, cos lettuce, iceberg lettuce, italian lettuce, raspberry canes, blackcurrant, redcurrant and whitecurrent.
what has been brought on in the greenhouse - nothing due to lack of greenhouse. Mind you I frequently get a shock when I look in the hotpress.

harvesting and weighing of produce - about an hour. supermarket value would be about £5.

Time spent on social activities 6 hours time well spent.

Wildlife seen: butterflies, housemartins and a peregrine falcon having a dust bath in the car park!

We were speaking to the man from the beekeeping association who said that there might be a plan for keeping hives at the allotments. That would be brill.
The head gardener then thought it would be great to have chickens and maybe a time-share pig or two.....................................

And I forgot about the courgettes.

Monday 3 August 2009

So sorry I have not updated this for such a long time. There has been a massive amount of progress since the last time. The head gardener is justifiably proud of all his work. So far we have had three types of lettuce, potato, beetroot - fab borsht recipe also done by head gardener - runner beans and peas. The onions are coming on. We will have to lift the rest of the potatoes soon because the weather has been very damp and they may get blight. We also have at least one pumpkin, carrots and parsnips and tomatoes! Huzzah! The head gardener went there yesterday. I was otherwise occupied. He returned five hours later having lost track of time completely. He had been doing manly banging and sawing and things. One of the beetroots that he came down with was the size of a football. I was so impressed!

My octogenarian mother, who recently celebrated another birthday, now never has to pay for vegetables. Which is brill. Now she is away to Canada to see the Llamas of Ariss. In fact come to think of it she may be visiting her aunt as well when she is there. Although maybe not after last year.

The head gardener has now got an official allotment flask as well which is great.

I still think he should have pin ups from "Girls and Sheds Magazine" in the shed but unfortunately nobody has actually published the magazine yet so we just have a poster on butterflies and moths.

I am trying to persuade the head gardener to take part in the open day on saturday but he is very shy.

So there yare now.

Hours spent - FIVE!!!!!!

Activities - pulling up beetroots, weeding, swearing (probably), weeding, digging up spuds, weeding, havesting peas, weeding, manly banging and sawing and then some weeding.

cost of seeds - no idea

value of produce - approximately £3.00 -


socialising - with the boys from conlig behind!

so for dinner we had roast chicken with potatoes and peas from the allotment! So there.