Courgette Bread with tomato sauce

 Today we made courgette bread and tomato sauce.

Having been away for a few days, the courgettes became too big and the tomatoes needed processing for storage.  As I found this crock pot recipe for tomato sauce, I thought to try this one. There was a lot of juice, I made soup with it and used the thick tomatoes for paste.

We also roasted tomatoes to store in oil.

For a drink with our meal we made a refreshing cucumber and mint cordial

Mungbean curry and flat bread

Today was the first time that a larger group joined me in the kitchen to make mung bean curry with rice and flatbread (we used 200g SR flour, 5gr salt and 50g boiling water) if you don't have SR flour, use the link for a similar recipe.

Afterwards we walked to the allotment to enjoy yellow raspberries that are just starting to ripen, tomatoes and we picked runner and french beans to take home. We even had a groups photo before the drizzle appeared.

First apple pressing of 2021 with Kyosuke and Bella

 Yesterday I went to Lida and Graham and saw their lovely tree full of red apples.

They let me have some of them for our first apple pressing. Sadly they are thinking of taking the tree down to build an archive, so we need to enjoy the fruits even more. I also added some of Liz F apples, just to top it up so we can do 2 pressings.  The apples from Emma were good but too sour, I will use them once I find a tree with some sweet eaters (probably some of Githa's and Paul's)

Bella and Kyosuke came to help me press the apples into some lovely juice.

Garlic braiding

We had had such a lovely time a few years ago. This year the harvest is great but need to do this by myself.

Here is some interesting information about how to make a natural pesticide

Garlic and mint

This year's garlic looks good and hope it stores well for all the lovely recipes that we have in store for the year ahead.  We harvested the bulbs a couple of weeks ago, dried them off a little and today we decided to braid it.

Voila, the braided garlic

We harvested the red onions as they bolted, very disappointing, but we turned it into delicious red onion marmalade.

harvesting red onions

preparing onions for the marmalade

We went to the allotment to have a look around and pick some strawberries and flowers

A meeting in the allotment

Samantha, Terry's niece is joining us from Glasgow and is showing of the salad

Card made by Terry

This was first posted on 6/6/2018

then 8/6/2021

Elderflower cordial and asparagus

The sunshine has brought with it some long waited for warmth and allowed nature to catch up.
I noticed from last year's blog entry that exactly a year ago we were making elderflower cordial.
Looking around I found some lovely flowers which I turned into the first batch of cordial.

This annual activity I wanted to share with our visiting scholars as many would be able to find Elder in their own countries.

For those of the group who live near the Graduate centre, we went on a recce
 yesterday and found 5 very accessible elder trees.

The garlic in the back garden is ready to be harvested too, so that it can dry off and turned into a plat next week. We shall transplant the peppers (be sowed the seeds of peppers used earlier in the year) and inter plant them with the basil cuttings

We steamed Asparagus for lunch with poached eggs (added salt, pepper, chives and smoked zucchini)

as a sauce we used vegan garlicky mayonnaise.(with only milk and oi) or you can use the aqua faba mayonnaise recipe.

asparagus and poached eggs

strawberries almost ready

This post was originally made on 20 may 2018

Mushroom and Pea Risotto with Orange, Halloumi and spinach Salad

Over the last years we made risotto with leeks, peas, kale and broadbeans. They all turned out well, but took a little time to make as we needed to 'feed' the rice little by little with stock.

This easy Mushroom and Pea risotto  recipe has some short cuts, which made it super simple to make and VERY tasty.

In future I will use this technique again and add the vegetables that are available in the allotment at the time of cooking.

I suppose we could easily have had a simple salad to go with this,  but as I had some oranges and some spinach that needed eating, we made some Halloumi, orang and Spinach Salad to go with it.

Halloumi, orange and spinach salad

Mushroom and Pea Risotto

Bella's ready steady cook creation

Mushroom Bourguignonne with Mash potatoes and a chocolate raspberry Roll

 Unfortunately I did not manage the time as well as I should have as about 1 minute before the end of the cooking time, our Zoom call was cut short.

However, it was lovely to see Melendra, Meghan and Bella who joined me in the cooking session. 

It was a little ambitious to make 3 dishes in a 60cm x 50cm space (plus hob space). By the time we were finished, the area behind the camera was like a bombshell had hit it. The food however tasted very moorish. 

 The Mushroom Bourguignon went well with the mash potatoes.

 The chocolate roll came out well. I added a layer of raspberry jam on top of  the sweetened cream cheese. Due to being slightly rushed, the roll had not cooled down enough to put in the filling, so the cream cheese started to melt. Next time, make sure the cake is totally cooled down before you add the filling.

Other than that.  Great recipe for winter nights and the chocolate roll went well with a cup of coffee.

This one will end up in the next Zoom Cookery book!