Yacon

 Today in the allotment I noticed that the row of yacon was affected by the frost. The leaves turned from a vibrant green to a shrivelled black. Not long then before we can harvest the yacon!

Here are a few recipe ideas

A glorious day at From Spade to Plate

I made lavash today and thought of the 3rd feb when we first made this

We were welcomed by the sun today, the first bee was already buzzing so a little walk to the allotment was a treat.

As we were going to have to use the oven to bake our Lazy dough bread rolls so rather than having an empty oven to warm up, we made some Lavash. We used sesame and poppy seeds as well as some smoked paprika and put it directly into the flour. Then just before going into the oven we sprinkled sunflower and pumpkin seeds over the crackers.

 






When I saw this tasty Cheddar Soup,  and having some broccoli  and carrots in the allotment, thought we might slightly alter it to make a sauce rather than a soup. We just left out 2/3 of the stock, so it was thicker and  stayed in the bread rolls better.

Whilst June was keeping an eye on the oven (filled with crackers, vol au vents and bread rolls) the rest of us went off to forage for our salad.  We harvested some yacon, carrots, oca's in addition to edible flowers like daisies, corn flowers, calendula and rosemary (not too many as they are important for the bees to visit at this time of the year)

Sweet potato, pumpkin and kefir soup, with cabbage parcels

Last week, Julie gave me a bottle of Kefir to give to my friend. It turned out that she had left for holiday so what better to do then use it ourselves.
I found this spiced pumpkin-sweetp otato soup with Kefir it was a creamy velvety soup, which we had with a lazy dough bread roll.  We used the dough that we made on Monday, so Thank you to the monday group for making this lovely dough.


Then Carmen came with a page out of Velvet magazine op page 38 the Allotment diary .Stuffed Savoy Cabbage Leaves.


Ingredients
Large savoy cabbage
oil
3 carrots Shred
300g mushrooms - chop very finely
1 leek- chop very finely
1 tsp cumin seeds
2 cloves of crushed garlic
50g toasted hazelnuts
50g fetta cheese

Method
Carefully pull the 12 outermost leaves off the cabbage and set to one side. Remove the core from the remaining cabbage and finely shred (we have decided to also shred the first full dark green leaves as they were a little tough.

Heat 1tbsp oil in a pan over a medium heat  and add the shredded cabbage, carrots, mushrooms and leek. Sprinkle a good pinch of salt and pepper and cook for approx 5 minutes until starting to soften
   
Add the cumin seeds and garlic. Cook for a further 10 minutes stirring occasionally until the moisture of the mushrooms has cooked off and the veg is just starting to turn golden.

Put a large saucepan of water on the boil and pre-heat oven to 180 degrees. Take the cabbage leaves you removed earlier and shave some of the thick stem in the middle of each leave. Once the water is boiling, plunge the leaves in for 1-2minutes and then drain. (if your leaves are dark green, boil a little more as they could otherwise be tough)  




Chop you toasted nuts and crumble the feta- taste and add extra seasoning if necessary.




To assemble, lay your cabbage leaves out flat on a work surface and spoon the filling mixture evenly between the 12 leaves. Fold both sides in then fold over the bottom and top to make a little parcel. Place in an oven proof dish, fold side down. drizzle with oil and bake for 10 minutes. Serve warm for diner or cold for lunch the next day  (Velvet, recipe by Katie Moore of Allotment) January 2020
 
We went out into the allotment to pick Yacon, Oca,Carrots, Corn Salad, rocket, edible flowers like corn flowers, yellow and orange calendula, viola, rosemary flower and daisies for a lovely fresh salad
Stuffed Savoy Cabbage leaves