The French Country Challenge

New Beginnings...

January. A new year. Well, a new calendar year anyway. For me, milling uselessly about the muddy garden, it still feels like the old year, though with that antsy feeling of excitement and restlessness combined, like when you're waiting for someone to arrive whom you haven't seen in a very long time. I suppose it has something to do with the turning of the tide in daylight hours, with the waning having given over to a palpable waxing, gearing up for a new season of bringing forth life, despite no perceptible change in the weather.

I am aching to get started - let me at that seed compost! But last year it was very evident that in my excitement I started my seedlings too early. So unless I come by some cold frames or several score yards of plastic sheeting, I'll just have to sit on my hands for a while longer. The good news is the winter greens seedlings I put out a few months ago (under my currrently single solitary sheet of plastic) have managed to survive the onslaught of a harsh early winter, so it looks like we will be having spinach this year, hooray! On the other hand, though still alive, they don't appear to have grown any, meaning the Chinese cabbage, escarole and winter lettuces I also planted, destined for immediate winter consumption, aren't going to be gracing our table anytime soon, though hopefully we will get something out of them before they have to cede their spot to the spring plantings.

While I am waiting there is one thing to keep me busy, and which needs to be dealt with before the spring arrives - we have a mole infestation. So far it had been restricted to the neighbor's garden, I assume because of the dogs in ours, but with the dogs vacationing in a nearby kennel while we went to the States for Christmas, we have returned to a lunar landscape in the backyard. I suppose I could thank the little guy for aerating the soil in the yard, which badly needed doing, but he's going to have to be escorted off the premises before the garden gets going again. I'm just hoping the return of the dogs scares him off anew so I don't have to resort to more drastic measures, softy that I am. Judging by the even-more-than-usually (which I didn't think possible) muddy state of Maya and Kali's paws when they come back inside, they are on the job, so fingers crossed.

Experimenting with Fennel Root & an Identification Challenge!

In the course of clearing out the summer plants from the garden, we took out our remaining fennel plants (one of which we had cut already in order to dry the feathery leaves to be used later - apparently if brewed as tea it is good for the digestion!), which happened to be neighboring the parsnips. Much to our surprise, the tap root of the fennel plant was quite large and looked nearly identical to a parsnip! So much so in fact that we had to take a good look and make sure it was indeed attached to a fennel plant. Which brings me to the challenge part of the post... Take a look at the photo below, which is a lineup of a mixture of fennel roots and parsnips, and see if you can tell the difference!  I'll have to think of some prize to award anyone who correctly identifies all of them in the comments below (unless of course the difficulty was mine and you all get them all right).  :)

Anyway, this resemblance made us rather curious if indeed this enlarged tap root was edible. After some online searching, the only thing that was clear was that there is a lot of confusion surrounding this poor plant, about what should be called root, bulb, stem, etc (not to mention between the herb fennel and the vegetable fennel).  I did finally find one forum in which a few different people successfully ate it without dying or suffering any ill side effects, so we decided to give it a shot.

The idea was to make a soup, using other root vegetables as well as the small fennel 'bulbs' we had (they had been developing nicely, then when we came back from vacation this summer we found they had gone tall and weedy instead of developing the proper enlarged base that makes the vegetable fennel).  However, we were also curious what it tasted like on its own, so I decided to dice it up and boil it until tender.  The chunks we sampled weren't bad, but to be honest, didn't actually taste of much; they were just a bit starchy like a potato, but not as tasty.  So considering these results and at the suggestion of a friend (thanks for the idea Lizzie!), I simply used a handheld blender to whiz up the chunks in the water they boiled in to use to thicken the soup.

The soup was made with the small fennel bulbs, Savoy cabbage, parsnip, carrots and a beet from our garden, potatoes, onions and white beans.  Start by sautéeing the onions in a large pan, then add the other vegetables chopped along with some of the fennel tops and cover with chicken stock. Add the fennel root thickener & a few splashes of worcester sauce, season, and leave to simmer until everything is tender.

Serve as-is, or topped with a bit of fresh cream and/or fresh herbs or chopped chives.  If you're not a big fan of that anise flavor, don't worry, this soup was actually very light and subtle, not overpowering on that front at all.  We also used quite a bit of cabbage, and so made the soup in our large stockpot to have room for it all.  It actually lasted us nearly a whole week, which considering it was only for the price of a few onions, potatoes and a can of beans was quite a good deal!

 

Fall: Heating, Eating, Trick-or-Treating

While we had nearly a week's cold snap of frosts, this past week has warmed back up a little, and has been several degrees above freezing, but still far from warm.  This has upped the stakes in our house-heating challenge considerably, but so far we have stuck to our guns, wanting to see just how long we can leave it until we put the central heating (radiators) on. 

A large part of our motivation for this challenge were the three €500 gas bills we had last winter, but it is also better for the planet to use human heat as much as possible, not to mention saving on all the life-cycle emissions that would result from the production and use of the natural gas.  And since I have a hard time imagining us being able to produce our own natural gas, it also is good practice for more self-sufficient days when hopefully we'll have a wooded lot that can provide our heating fuel.

We have been lighting the fire in the evenings, as a few weeks ago we had a wood delivery of 5 stères of firewood, but otherwise during the day I've just been wearing an additional layer of clothing (so a long-sleeved t-shirt, a fleece and a hooded sweatshirt).  It is actually incredible how it may feel like the house is too cold, but simply putting on another fleece or sweater can remedy the situation rather than cranking up the thermostat.  We had some practice with this last winter out of necessity, when our hot water heater broke down during one of the coldest weeks of the winter with snow on the ground outside and sub-zero temperatures.  I kept all the shutters to the house shut to try to insulate it from the cold as much as possible, had the fire lit, and layered up the clothing, including a fleece hat and fingerless gloves.  This was a little extreme, and I don't think I'd do that out of choice again this year, but it was very interesting to see that with a fire lit and warm clothes on we could survive comfortably even in the dead of winter.  It must also be a testament to the construction techniques of generations past, as the thick stone walls of our house keep the place remarkably cool in the summer and definitely warm-er (if not exactly 'warm') in the winter.

So this year we are seeing just how late we can leave it to put the central heating on at all, and then when we do have to turn it on so we don't have to worry about pipes freezing, we'll just keep it set very low and still make use of the fire and an electric heater we have bought for the bedroom (waking up to a cold house with a cold bathroom was definitely the worst part), which should still save a lot of gas and money, as electricity is comparatively cheap in France with 80% of it nuclear.

As you may know the last couple of weeks have also been marked by continual strikes here in France as workers protested pension reform legislation, leading to fuel shortages.  This also happened to coincide with World Go Vegan Week, so we decided to make use of the food we had in the garden and give the shops a miss so as to conserve fuel and also try eating vegan for the week.  As we eat very little meat already, that wasn't really missed, but it was difficult trying to imagine a week without milk in our tea in the morning, butter for cooking and cheese to go on top of whatever we were cooking.  We basically ended up making two large pots that lasted us three nights each, a black eyed pea coconut milk curry and a dish that is already one of our comfort food favorites, quinoa and lentil stew, both with veggies from the garden (the root vegetables we have left - and that I really need to pull up and store before the hard frosts return and truly set in - and some Swiss chard stragglers).

It was a very interesting experiment, and I have to say I really didn't miss the dairy as much as I thought I would.  I probably ate a lot better in the day than I normally do as well, eating nuts and fruit, hummous and olives, oatmeal for breakfast, whereas I would tend to just have cheese and bread.  I actually used to be allergic to milk/dairy when I was little, too, and I have noticed before I don't feel that great when I have been eating too much of it (easy to do here in France!).  Overall I felt lighter and healthier and had a lot more energy, and at the end of the week when we had a pan-fried fillet of salmon with creamed leeks, both of us felt very heavy and almost queasy.  We both also lost a few pounds, so this week we're continuing with the vegan diet as a sort of detox.  While we wouldn't go completely vegan forever, I think it must be healthy to eat a primarily plant-based diet, focusing on vegetables and legumes/pulses with fish fairly often and just the occasional meat and dairy.

A food that would be very welcomed in this would definitely have to be pumpkin/squash, and at the minute, with the leaves turning their glorious fall colors and that delicious crisp feeling of the mornings, I am sorely regretting our decision not to grow any this year.  Last year we had these two fabulous 20-kilogram pumpkins, but the plants took up literally about a third of our total growing space, so we opted to use the room for other things.

We also didn't have any pumpkins to carve for Halloween, a holiday that is growing in popularity here as French children have cottoned on that it means you get to eat as much candy as you want in sanctioned form for one day out of the year.  With our fuel-saving and strict-eating ways the past week we also didn't have any candy in the house for the little princesses and skeletons that came knocking on the door chanting "On veut des bonbons, on veut des bonbons!"  ("We want candy! We want candy!" - not quite the same ring as "trick-or-treat"!), or the strangely polite "Des bonbons, s'il vous plaît!" ("Candy, please!").  Fortunately however, the French kids haven't figured out the entire principle of the classic Halloween, that if there aren't treats you get a trick. So luckily we didn't have our house egged or tp'd!

Changing Seasons

I had a feeling it was coming, and sure enough this morning we had our first frost.  I don't presume to pretend I can predict the weather as well as some of the hoary villagers around here, but it does seem as though my gardening activities have me more in touch with the natural world, and I felt the need to instinctually join in with the other animals, like the squirrels scampering around after acorns and chestnuts, in preparing for the winter.

As such, this past week I have been tying up all the loose ends of summer, and readying the garden for winter. One of the most pressing things was to round up the last of the vegetables that were grumbling about the increasing cold and would really not be happy with a proper frost. Unfortunately, this was it:

With a rather cool August and September, I think we only ended up with about five aubergines, though that is an improvement on last year's one. The chilli pepper plants, however, were surprisingly prodigious in their output. We have been tossing one in whatever we happened to be cooking every few days for the past few weeks, and still we had a decent amount remaining on the plants. There were even more than this, in fact, though the rest were green and thus not suitable for drying. Although a lot of the plans for various vegetable processing have not come to fruition, I am happy that at least we ended up with a string of red chillies that can be used to add a bit of summer heat to our winter fare.

It is as simple as threading a large needle with some string, tying a knot in the end, then pushing the needle through the fatter end of the peppers (not the caps, as these may come off as they dry), then hanging them up in an airy place. They actually make for quite good decoration, much better than those strings of chilli pepper lights that plague college dorms and the like.

Although some of the hardier herbs are good to winter over, I also cut back those such as sage, and hung them up in the house in bunches to dry.

As far as the garden itself goes, I have taken out all the tomato plants (finally), as well as the fantastically-failing cauliflower that never grew any larger than a few inches for some bizarre reason, making room for some fall plantings.  In early September I sowed some winter brassicas, spinach and other hardy greens, which are intended to go where the tomatoes were, in order to rotate but also as that side of the plot turned out to be shadier than I thought in the summer. These have been struggling along in the sun room, victims I believe of the shortening days, a bit pale and leggy despite the help of a lamp. So I am not so sure how they will survive in the cruel, now frosty, outdoors, even if I put them under plastic, but we will see I guess!  As always, this year has been a learning experience, so next year I will know to start the winter greens indoors a bit earlier so that I'm actually at the point of getting them in the ground by end-September, despite what the seed packet calendars say.

If they do in fact make it, part of the greens will be eaten over the winter then make way for the new spring sowings, but some crops for next year actually need to be planted now, for instance the spinach and garlic. That was something I didn't realize last fall, when I simply prepared the earth, then went to plant everything in the spring and was heartbroken to realize my garden would be bereft of these two favorites.  Apparently spinach needs cool weather when it is establishing itself or it will bolt, and garlic needs so many days of below a certain temperature (can't remember exactly and can't find where I read this) to form the bulb properly.

Figuring out this calendar of when to sow, plant and how to keep things successional is one of the key elements to becoming more self-sufficient, as it is all well and good to have a productive summer, but you also need to make sure you have something to eat the rest of the year! It also is a reminder that nature does not tolerate procrastination or bad planning. It has been difficult for me this year to realize that a mistake made has consequences for the entire cycle (such as the lack of spinach and garlic), and that once the opportunity has passed that year, you don't have a chance to right your wrong until a full year later. In our modern times of immediateness and often shortsightedness, it is quite a shift of consciousness to macrify one's timescale to that of nature and the seasons, and to accept that it is necessarily going to be a slow learning curve.

Catch Up!

This year was more or less a bust, garden wise for us.  Weeds took over while we were on vacation in California, and we were never really able to gain control again.  Sigh.  This makes me sad, but it is the way it is, so onwards and upwards.  

After thinking about it for quite some time, I think that we need to do something drastic to our plot.  This winter, or rather in a few weeks, we are going to rip it all out, the fence, the grass border, the little boxes where there were herbs at one point, and try to start completely over from fresh.  I think that years of weeds growing in that plot has made it hard to keep them at bay.  I am hoping that if we rip everything out and start over, possible covering it all with some compost or manure, we can avoid this problem next year.  We don't mind working in the yard, but weeding hours upon hours per day for a rather small plot (maybe 60m2), was a little bit too much, and not effective.  

So, we have found a U-pick place not too far from our house, and we went there this past weekend to get our halloween pumpkins, and some other veggies.  A local farmer made the rounds, house to house, and I bought enough potatoes, carrots, onions and garlic to make it through to next season.  Which means I bought a TON.  Our cave is full of food, and it is a really good feeling.  Something to remember and work towards later.  So, I think all I will need to buy are the occasional cabbage, leeks, and other veggies.  And some meat now and then.

In other 'garden' news, I think that we are going to get some chickens.  I am thinking 4 or 5, after all there is only 3 of us for the moment, and that is a lot of eggs.  I need to find some sort of a home for them, I am thinking of buying them an already built wooden tool shed, that you can get at the local do-it-yourself place.  We have a cement pad poured in the yard with an electrical outlet, so I am thinking that may be a perfect place for them.  For roosting, I am thinking about maybe wine crates.  Some hay on the ground and I think that it may be perfect.  Maybe a sodium lamp out there for the really cold evenings...  

As for the chicks...  Well, I am not sure yet.  I know that they can be bought at feed stores sometimes, and I even saw them on the news at a Truffaut (garden/pet center).  I am going to try to stay local, and I can't get much more local then my neighbor's place.  I know one of his hens had chicks a few weeks ago, I saw them running around.  So, I am going to try to ask him about it when I run into him next, but it may be a while because they never seem to be there...  I think that if he doesn't want to sell me some, he will at least know where to go to get some.  

Besides all of this news, Miss Lily, Bandit and I have been going on long walks everyday.  Very long walks.  Most days we get about 6-7 kilometers in, and I am feeling great, and I think we are all sleeping better with all the fresh air.  I just have to figure out how to get the rain cover on my stroller so I can keep the now freezing cold air off of her, because it is very cold out here in this neck of the woods these days.

Chestnuts & Meatless Shepherd's (Gardener's?) Pie

I seem to be doing a lot better at my goal of foraging for some of our food these days, perhaps because the fall forest is providing some easy pickings. In addition to the mushrooms, it is the season for nuts, and the forest near us has an abundance of sweet chestnuts. So much so in fact that one has to be careful when walking off of the path not to be divebombed by these prickly-podded treats, a bit like in Princess Bride in the fire swamp, except you can hear them falling through the leaves above, signaling you to try to dodge out of the way. The chestnuts have been a tasty snack, peeled and eaten raw as we meander about the forest with the dogs crashing through the brush around us, or indeed roasted over the open fire (we just had to give that a go, though I am a bit confused now as the chestnuts are falling in October and that is a Christmas song...). I had been simply filling my pockets with them, but a couple of days ago we went with the mushroom basket, and due to an odd dearth of mushrooms I went ahead and filled the basket with chestnuts.

(By the way I am very proud of this basket - I found it online for 8 euros. It is supposed to be a trout fishing basket! But the shoulder strap and flat side were exactly what I was looking for in an easy-to-carry mushrooming basket.)

However, chestnuts have a high water content and dry out very quickly, and not in a good way that other nuts will dry to keep for months, so last night I figured I needed to do something with my haul so they wouldn't go to waste, and I had the idea of roasting them in the oven and then putting them with potatoes for chestnut mash, which then gave me the idea of making a shepherd's pie.  With no lamb or even beef about but instead quite a few veggies in the garden to eat, it became an experiment in a vegetarian, or one could say gardener's, pie.  And I have to say it turned out to be quite delicious! 

Gardener's Pie

1 large onion

Several carrots

Several leaves of Swiss chard

1 good-sized (softball size) beet

Frozen peas

Worcestershire sauce (leave this out if you want a 100% vegetarian recipe)

Balsamic vinegar

Nutmeg

Beluga lentils (or you could use green)

Red quinoa

Vegetable stock cube

Several potatoes

Chestnuts (20-30?)

Cheddar cheese (optional)

Start by pre-heating the oven to 200°C (400°F) while you prepare the chestnuts. Traditionally you cut an 'X' in them, but I simply sliced into them down the median line (a cut I used later), which was much quicker and easier.  Spread them evenly in a roasting tray, then put them in the hot oven for 15-20 minutes. Remove and set aside to cool while you start making the bottom of the pie.

(I only used probably less than half of these in the end, the rest going into the fridge - hopefully they'll keep!)

In a large pot, gently cook a large onion, diced, in a couple of tablespoons of olive oil.  Season and add the carrots diced then the stems of the Swiss chard (I flip the leaves over so you can see the rib and use a sharp knife to cut along it, setting aside the green tops for later, then chopping the stems crosswise like celery), as well as the frozen peas.  Add a knob of butter if you wish, as well as a few splashes of balsamic vinegar and worcestershire sauce while this is cooking down.  Remove the beet greens and peel the beet and chop it finely to add to the pot (then rinse your board and hands if you don't want stains!).  Get some water boiling in a kettle if you have one while you add the lentils and quinoa to stir through, then add just enough boiling water to cover the ingredients with an inch to spare.  Add the stock cube, then turn down the heat and let this simmer for about 15-20 minutes before adding your roughly chopped chard and beet greens, along with a few swipes of grated nutmeg. 

While that is reducing so as not to be too sloppy, peel your potatoes and cut them into large chunks and boil them for the mash.  And while that is going, return to your chestnuts, cutting them in half along the nick mark from earlier and scraping the flesh out with a spoon. (I found this to be a lot easier than trying to peel them, plus it already broke down the chestnut flesh into small pieces, ready to be stirred through the mash.)

Turn your oven down to 180°C (350°F) and drain then mash the potatoes with butter and cream, S&P and a little nutmeg.  Stir the chestnuts through the mash.  Adjust the seasoning of the base of the pie if need be at this point (usually with the lentils and quinoa you'll need some more salt), probably adding a little more worcestershire for good measure, then cover it with the chestnut mash and top it all off with a layer of grated cheddar cheese.

Put it in the oven (with no lid) for about 30 minutes, or until the cheese is golden and bubbly on top, then serve up and enjoy!

 

(Green) Tomato Chutney

Yesterday I harvested any remaining tomatoes on the plants, most of them still quite green.  I am hoping, if the rain holds off, to take out the plants today to make room for my new fall greens seedlings which are coming up quite rapidly in the sun room (escarole, Chinese cabbage, spinach, lettuce), as well as a few other things I need to sow directly like turnips. But for now this morning I am attempting to make green tomato chutney.  This is my first attempt, both at making any kind of chutney, as well as at truly canning something (last year I did manage to preserve some plums in sugar solution, which I made into ice cream that didn't kill us, so I'm guessing I did do something right, but it was such a confused palaver that I feel it doesn't really count), in order to have not completely failed at that item on the self-sufficiency checklist.  I read quite a few recipes, but I am pretty much winging it.  This is what I did, so we will see how it actually turns out once it has matured!

Green Tomato Chutney

1 colander's worth of tomatoes

5 cloves garlic

Rosemary, thyme, fennel tops

1 apple, diced

5 cloves

1 cinnamon stick

1/2 tsp nutmeg

200g/1 cup muscavado sugar

Several small onions (2-3 large), chopped roughly

300ml cider vinegar

2 thumbs (40g) fresh ginger, grated

125g sultana raisins

More fresh fennel top (1 sprig), chopped finely

Pick all the remaining tomatoes on the vines, wash and trim off any bad bits while also removing the top/core.  Grease a roasting tray with olive oil and place the tomatoes cut side down on the tray along with any whole cherry tomatoes.  Roughly chop 4-5 nice cloves of garlic and sprinkle among the tomatoes.  Spread a few sprigs of rosemary, thyme and a little fennel over them, then drizzle olive oil and a few twists of salt and pepper over everything. Roast in the oven at 150°C (300°F) for at least an hour, or until you are able to pinch off the skins.  Remove as much of the skin as possible (the rest can be skimmed out later), using tongs unless you have Teflon fingers, and take out the sprigs of herbs.

Take the larger tomatoes and chop them into smaller pieces, but leave a variety of sizes, including some good-sized chunks, then transfer all the remaining contents of the roasting tray to a large pot.  Add the rest of the ingredients.  Simmer for a good long while (took me a couple of hours actually), stirring occasionally, then more frequently as it thickens, until you get to the right consistency (I think I remember from River Cottage you are supposed to be able to pull off a Mosaic-ish parting of the chutney seas, but mine was a little sloppier than this), picking out any remaining tomato skin while you go.  While this is going on, sterilize your jars either in the oven or a hot water bath (I used the latter as that is how I did the final jars).

When you are ready to go (above picture still has a long time to simmer), pick out the cinnamon stick and the cloves, and take the jars out of the hot water, then fill the jars (leaving a bit of headspace) and seal.  Return the jars to the sterilizing pot, making sure there is at least an inch of water over the top of them.  Keep the water at a simmer for 10 minutes, then remove jars to cool at room temperature (then label with the contents and date).  The chutney should be allowed to mature for at least a month, and if the jars are kept in a cool, dark place it should stay good for up to two years. 

I used some pretty different quantities from most of the recipes I saw, notably a lot less on the raisins and the apple, but I think it turned out really tasty. Though I have to say, I'm not sure how a just-made chutney should taste in relation to a mature chutney!  Also, this made four small jars, with a little left over, probably enough for a fifth jar actually, but only four fit in my sterilizing pot, so I think I will cook some chicken thighs in it for dinner tonight!

Planning for Next Year and A Taste of the Unexpected (by Mark Diacono)

It hardly seems fair, but the riotous flourish that is the summer garden is already on the wane.  For schoolchildren it is the rentrée, the beginning of a new year, and in many ways September can be seen as the start of the gardener’s year as well.  For me it is a time both to sit back and evaluate the successes and failures of the past season, and to begin planning for next year’s plantings.

While we have thoroughly enjoyed every prized bite of our own produce, this first summer season has made it painfully obvious what novices we truly are, and how terribly far we are from the mark of self-sufficiency.  We always knew the first year with a full plot would be somewhat of an experiment, just cutting our teeth really on the whole potager (kitchen garden) experience, but to be honest our results were far from the bushels of fresh vegetables and shelves of our own canned tomatoes that we had envisaged.  In fact, so far I have yet to can a single thing (despite that being one of my goals on the Self-Sufficiency Checklist), as we haven’t had a surplus of anything (but courgettes, naturally), and all our produce has thus gone straight to our stomachs.

We have learned an unbelievable amount, however, and it is on this knowledge that we will build for next year, starting with a generous helping of good planning right now.  I will write more in detail later of the successes and failures of this year, as for now I want to turn my attention to a book that just might heavily influence that planning…

As you just might (*cough, cough*) have picked up, we are pretty big River Cottage fans in this household, and one of the books I have turned to most in our gardening adventures is the River Cottage Handbook No. 4, Veg Patch, by Mark Diacono, for its handy format, straightforward advice,  and especially the alliance of gardening and cooking.  As Mark so rightly points out, having a garden is first and foremost about growing the things you love to eat.  But this isn’t actually the book I mean.  I was thrilled to see on Mark’s blog, www.otterfarm.co.uk, that he is coming out with a new book, A Taste of the Unexpected, another great title from Quadrille Publishing.  And with many thanks to the guys at Quadrille, I have had the extraordinary good fortune to get my hands on a copy of this beautiful book early.

       A Taste of the Unexpected, by Mark Diacono

Long before I was actually able to get my hands dirty, literally, I used to sit in my tiny Parisian apartment poring over tantalizing gardening books, contenting myself with a few small pots of fresh herbs on the windowsill and dreaming of the vegetable plot I would one day have.  Recipe books also received the same fevered fingering, cruelly displaying their delights, unfortunately reserved only for those people who actually had things like ovens, instead of two hot plates, or a kitchen counter on which to chop things, rather than a chopping board rested on one’s knees while sitting on the edge of one’s futon (a foot away from abovementioned hot plates).  However, as I am truly coming to realize now, my dreaming was actually surprisingly dull, with my imagination restricted by my limited knowledge of the vegetable world, itself due to our modern food systems that offer the same sparse handful of fresh produce items year-round in our supermarkets.

Even as I became aware of my passion for vegetables and managed to move to the country to pursue it, this first year’s garden as you know contained the obligatory potatoes, carrots, tomatoes, courgettes, etc, still the standard supermarket fare, albeit much, much tastier.  We did branch out a little with some heirloom varieties of tomatoes, or that Swiss chard, but for some reason I felt the need to dedicate our limited space to the staples, despite my true desire to plant such weird and wonderful things as kohlrabi, or Romanesco broccoli.  Mark Diacono speaks of a very similar experience in his first year of smallholding in the Introduction to A Taste of the Unexpected, although in terms of volume he seemed to have better success, describing a result of “sackfuls of perfectly ok food”.

As he says, “Of course, French onion soup can be fabulous, and there’s nothing wrong with a jacket potato, but unless you’re striving for self-sufficiency, why put the effort into growing those staples when you can grow wonderful alternatives such as oca, yacon and Egyptian walking onions for your larder instead?  Life is too short to grow unremarkable food.  It’s simply not worth the time or effort and – happily – it’s no more tricky to grow the utterly delicious than it is the entirely ordinary.”

I couldn’t agree more.  Although we are in fact striving for self-sufficiency, I am confident that it can actually be achieved through growing a large variety of fabulous vegetables and fruits, as diversity was a standard key to success in more self-sufficient times, as it ensures you always have something that is ripe at different times of the year, or if a particular crop is plagued with a disease or pest, you still have plenty of others to fall back on.

As far as oca and yacon go, I had never heard of them (although I know now from this book that they are tubers, or as Mark terms them, “buried treasure”), and I was extremely intrigued to find out more about Egyptian walking onions (do they in fact, walk like an Egyptian when they walk? Sorry, couldn’t resist…).  These are but a few of the delightful new acquaintances I have made in the pages of A Taste of the Unexpected.  And as someone who is aiming for self-sufficiency, I very much appreciated the fact that the book unites a wide variety of edible goodies, covering Tree Fruit, Nuts, Soft Fruit, Herbs & Spices, Beans & Greens, Leaves & Flowers, and Buried Treasure, as it is important to think of food sources beyond the simple rows of vegetables.

My only problem is that I now want to grow all these wonderful things myself, and the fantasies of my enlightened mind would now seem to demand I double or triple my plot space.  However, I think the point is that perhaps they should in fact usurp the original territory of the standard fare.  I am also inspired to try cooking with these out-of-the-ordinary fruits and vegetables, as each new ingredient opens up wondrous culinary potentials, and A Taste of the Unexpected offers precisely that, a taste, as this book also includes mouthwatering recipes for each of its starring cast in addition to the background information and advice on varieties, growing and harvesting.

So as soon as I am able to tear my eyes away from the gorgeous photos and enjoyable reading of the pages of this book, I have my work cut out for me in planning next year’s garden.  However, I suppose I must apologize in advance to you, dear readers, as the next year of this blog is likely to feature quite a few recipes using vegetables you will be hard pressed to find in the supermarket!

Whether you are a cook, a gardener, or simply a fantasizer as I was for so long, you are sure to enjoy A Taste of the Unexpected.  I heartily recommend it.

Here are some of the places you can find it:

River Cottage

Amazon UK or Amazon.fr  (can be delivered to the US)

Waterstones

Guardian Bookshop  or  Telegraph Bookshop

Boomerang Books or Abbey’s if you’re in Australia

 

Still trying to use up those marrows!

Believe it or not, I'm still trying to use up the marrows that were growing on our courgette plants when we returned from vacation.  I've finally managed to get through two of them in the form of several meals but I decided to freeze the rest in order to do something with it and be able to use it later.  One marrow was enough for several servings, however, so I now have about 10 baggies with single (meal-size) servings of marrow chopped into cubes.  To make room for these, however, I needed to do something with the pumpkin that has been residing in there since January, so I decided to use some of the remaining marrow and the frozen pumpkin and make a soup.

Marrow and Pumpkin Soup

Half a big pot's worth of marrow chunks (deseeded, etc)

The other half of the pot worth of pumpkin chunks

1 large or 2 small onions

2 cloves garlic

Ground ginger, nutmeg and coriander seed

Mixed dried Provence herbs

Chicken or vegetable stock

Start by gently frying up the onion (diced) and the garlic (chopped) with the spices and herbs and S&P.  Add the chunks of marrows (can be pretty big as it will all get blitzed up after).  Now the skin was actually pretty tough on these, so we ended up having to strain the soup after we whizzed it up to get all the bits of skin out.  So alternatively you could peel the marrow chunks to begin with.  After these have started to cook down a bit, add the pumpkin chunks (I just put them straight in frozen) a handful at a time, then cover for it all to heat up (adding the frozen pumpkin will take the temperature down), stirring occasionally.  Once the heat has built back up, add hot stock or hot water and a stock cube, enough to cover everything, but leaving at least an inch below the top of the pot as a lot of water can come out of the pumpkin.  Leave to simmer until everything is tender, then use a food processor to whiz it up.  Strain if need be then return to the pan to rewarm if required and adjust the liquidity/seasoning (if too watery, simmer with the lid off to reduce a little).

We served it with freshly ground pepper and shredded Emmental cheese.  And apologies, I didn't get a photo, so here are some big puppy-dog eyes from Kali instead...

 

Oops, actually I just uploaded some pictures from my camera and saw that I did in fact take a photo while it was cooking (just no final 'plated' shot...)!

Tomatoes!

And now, the moment we've all been waiting for....homegrown tomatoes!

If you've been following the blog for awhile, you'll know that we dedicated quite a lot of our limited space to producing tomatoes.  The reasons for this were (at least) twofold: firstly, I developed a dependency last year on something I can only call HTI, or homegrown tomato intoxication, an ecstatic Dionysian state brought on by the untempered consumption of those nectar-filled explosions of sun humbly called tomatoes.  And secondly, we were planning a bumper crop of tomatoes with the idea of preserving them whole and peeled, something that you may have noticed figures regularly in our recipes, and as our own homemade pasta sauce.

So we planted several different kinds of tomatoes: cherry tomatoes, Roma/plum, vine, and Black Russian, starting them indoors as seedlings.  Pretty much all of them came up, so we ended up with nearly 30 thriving tomato seedlings.  Unfortunately during one of the repottings we managed to lose track of which was which, so we ended up with a potluck of which ones we actually planted (giving some away to our neighbor and his daughter, too).  Fortunately, however, we ended up with a pretty decent mix, though probably a slightly disproportionate number of cherry tomatoes than would be ideal for our plans.  Even though each plant of the larger varieties has a good 4 bunches of ripening tomatoes, it still doesn't seem like a lot.  We have been reveling in the prodigious output of deliciously sweet cherry tomatoes, which have contributed quite a few snacks and a couple of light meals, but I honestly don't think we are going to have any spare tomatoes to preserve.  I may still be proven wrong, but I think all of our crop is going to go straight to our stomachs!

So far we have only had one bunch of the big tomatoes, leaving the others to continue to ripen, and with the cherry tomatoes we have basically been eating them as-is or with some buffalo mozzarella they are so tasty.  This or a shredded beet and carrot (and sometime courgette or Swiss chard stem) salad with a light honey and cider&balsamic vinegar dressing has been frequently gracing our table for a light dinner since we've been back (hence the lack of posted recipes in case you were wondering).  It is perfect summer fare, though the weather has turned decidedly un-August and un-summerlike at a cool 13 celsius (55 F) with a constant drizzle to downpour for the past 36 hours (literally, uninterrupted rain).  I hope we get some warm weather back so the rest of those tomatoes (and everything else, peppers in particular) can ripen!