Courgette and Peach Chutney

Here we go again with the same ingredients but this time something for the winter.  We've had strong winds this week and it has blown loads of the peaches to the ground, they were still in good condition and totally usable.  Courgettes, well they just keep coming.

Makes about 2.5 kg

Ingredients


1kg courgettes
1kg peaches
3 large onions
150g sultanas
500g sugar
1 litre white wine vinegar
1 stick of cinnamon
4 star anise
1 tablespoon coriander
3 tablespoons salt
1 tablespoon yellow mustard seeds
1 tablespoon Jamaican pepper
2-3 fresh chili peppers
1 tablespoon ginger powder
1 teaspoon cardamon pods


How to go about it


Peel and chop courgettes into cubes, chop peaches.  Put in a bowl with 1 tablespoon of the salt and let degorge for 30 minutes, rinse and pat dry.  Put all ingredients into large saucepan, bring slowly to the boil and simmer for 20 minutes.  Then turn up heat a little and cook for 1.5 hours until nearly all the liquid has evaporated.  Put into hot, sterilized jars and seal.  Leave for at least 6 months.

Cannelloni bean and vegetable soup with harissa and yoghurt

So many vegetables in the garden, I think I am turning into a vegetarian.  I thought I would give this a bit of a twist, instead of making a straight forward minestrone I decided to put a bit of harissa and yoghurt in it.

Serves 4

Ingredients

300g of cannelloni beans, soaked overnight
3 carrots
1 courgette
bunch of swiss card
1 clove of garlic
1 onion
handful of green beans
1 - 2 teaspoons harissa (depending on how hot you like it)
1 tablespoon of tomato purée
1 400g tin of chopped tomatoes
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
small sprig of rosemary
small sprig of oregano
1 bay leaf
salt and pepper

For the yoghurt sauce

4 tablespoons of yoghurt
juice of half a lemon
1 teaspoon of lemon zest
2 tablespoons chopped basil
salt

How to go about it

First cook beans in a pressure cooker for 10 minutes or 40 minutes in normal saucepan.  Drain but reserve liquid.  Peel and chop onion, garlic and carrots, chard stems, gentle fry in saucepan until soft.  Add chopped courgette and continue frying for a few minutes.  Add herbs and cumin and fry for 2 minutes.  Add harissa and purée, mix and them add tomatoes, chopped chard leaves, beans and liquid from beans and more water if you think it needs it.  Season.  Simmer for 10 minutes.

Meanwhile make yoghurt sauce by mixing all the ingredients. Serve.

Artichoke and black pudding Pasta

When you grow your own veg, you don't always have the choice of what you are going to eat.  It's a question of what needs harvesting in the garden and how am I going to cook this.  This is a recipe that works with different combinations of early Summer vegetables.  I bought these artichoke plants about 3 months ago and was told that they didn't need cutting down to the ground at the end of May and they wouldn't be any artichokes till the following Spring, so I was surprised to see these artichokes in June!

Serves 4

Ingredients

2 artichokes
bunch of swiss chard
1 courgette
handful of broad beans, fresh or frozen
2 black puddings
olive oil
salt and pepper
400g macaroni pasta

For the sauce

100 dl olive oil
100g parmesan cheese
1 lemon
fresh basil
3 cloves fresh garlic
small bunch of basil


I had in my garden an enormous plant which I knew to be of the onion/garlic family but was told by a neighbour it is what they call french garlic and it is used to make allioli (Catalan garlic mayonaise) as it is milder.

How to go about it

First make the sauce by finely chopping garlic and basil, add olive oil and the juice of lemon and parmesan, mix with a fork.

Put a saucepan of water on to boil for pasta.

Prepare artichokes, discarding outer leaves and cut into eights, fry in olive oil.  Wash and separate stalks of chard, chop stalks and add to artichokes.  Finely slice courgettes in semi circles and add to pan.  Fry on low heat for 5 minutes.  Add chopped chard leaves and broad beans and fry for another 5 minutes.  While this is cooking, put pasta on to cook.  Follow cooking instructions on packet.  Drain but DON'T RINSE.   Add a bit of olive oil and salt and pepper.  Cover and keep warm.

Slice black pudding and gentle fry on both side for a few minutes. Remember that black pudding is already cooked so it just needs to be heated through and browning a bit. 

Mix pasta into veg, then mix in sauce.  Serve in bowls or on plates and arrange black pudding on top.

Courgette, pea and new potato soup

Now that my three courgette plants have started to give courgettes, it has become really the star veg of my table each day.  Wanted or not, I have to eat it, I can't abide wasting food, especially food that I have grown, that my soil has given me.  So today instead of the usual puréed courgette velouté, I decided to keep it a bit chunky.

Serves 4


Ingredients


1 young onion
3 - 4 wet (fresh) garlic cloves
2 large new potatoes, scrubbed, not peeled
2 courgettes
small sprig of fresh rosemary
700dl of vegetable stock or water
4 handfuls of peas, shucked fresh or frozen,
salt and pepper
Olive oil


How to go about it


Peel and chop onion.  Peel and finely chop garlic, cut potatoes into large cubes along with the courgette.  Put a couple of tablespoons of olive oil in a heavy bottom saucepan and gentle fry onion, garlic, courgettes and potatoes for 15 minutes until almost cooked, add more oil if it is dry.  Then just cover with stock or water, add finely chopped rosemary and season, add 2 handfuls of peas.  Let simmer for 5 minutes.  Meanwhile cook the other to 2 handfuls of peas in a little water for 5 minutes, then purée.  Add the puréed peas to the soup, heat through for a few minutes and serve.

Butter bean and vegetable tart with a gofio shortcrust.

An early morning stroll down the garden in my pyjamas I saw this vibrant courgette flower.  So beautiful in the early morning sunlight.  I picked a few vegetables and strolled back up to the house.

Not much of a wide selection but I had some butter beans in soak and I had been thinking about making a vegetable tart, similar to one I had made about 25 years ago for my parents.  I don't know why I had been thinking about it but I suppose it is like going through old cookery magazines of the mind.

I thought that I would make the paté brisé a bit different and I remembered that a couple of months previous I had come across a packet of gofio on a supermarket shelf and bought it because I was curious to know what it was.  Well, it is a toasted wheatgerm that comes from the Canary Islands.  In appearance it looks like light brown cornflour but its smell  resembles wheatgerm.  Another thing that I use to eat in my 20's when I was a cycling fanatic, it was an ingredient in my power breakfast drink, which now I suppose would be called a smoothie.  So in a way this pie is a bit of a trip down memory taste lane.

Ingredients

for the pastry

150g plain flour
50g gofio
100g butter
pinch of salt
1 egg yolk

filling

small bunch of swiss chard or spinach
1 onion
1 clove of garlic
grated nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon of ground cumin
small bunch of fresh coriander
2 tablespoons of cream
1 egg
tomato frito
salt and pepper
25g roasted hazelnuts, chopped
2 carrots
2 courgettes

Firstly, make the pastry by rubbing the butter into the two flours, add salt and yolk and bind with a little cool water.  Knead for a few seconds and wrap in cling film and let it rest in the fridge. 

Drain butter beans and put in pressure cooker and cover with water and cook for 15 minutes under pressure, drain but reserve the cooking liquid.

Wash all the vegetables and separate the swiss chard stalks and chop stalks along with the onion, garlic and carrots.  Gentle fry this in olive oil for a few minutes, add cumin and fry for a couple of minutes longer.  Add the beans and about a cup of tomato frito and a little of the cooking liquid.  Let cook gentle for five minutes adding more liquid if needed.  Add chopped coriander and turn off heat.

Cook green part of swiss chard in a little water for five minutes, cool and drain, making sure you squeeze out excess moisture.  Liquidize with cream and a little nutmeg, let cool.

Slice courgettes thinly and parboil for two minutes, refresh in cold water, drain and pat dry.

Grease a 23cm flan dish, roll out pastry and line flan dish.  Prick base with a fork and line with foil, put in baking beans and cook for 10 minutes in a  preheated oven of 180°c, remove foil and baking beans and cook for a further 5 minutes.  Remove from oven.

Fill pastry lined dish with butter bean mixture, then mix in beaten egg to chard purée add hazelnuts then spread out on top of beans.  Top with courgettes overlapping in an ever decreasing circle, brush with olive oil and cook for 35 minutes  or until golden on top.

The gofio pastry I will definately be making again, it had a lovely nutty flavour.