Mangetout Stirfry with Baked Sesame Salmon

As promised, we harvested the first of the mangetout yesterday - 'Golden Sweet' yellow-podded mangetout from Real Seeds. I couldn't resist munching on a few raw - they're so sweet and lovely, and completely untouched by pea-moths and their ghastly offspring (the curse of allotment peas!). Think I'll have a few more with lunch today. And if I manage to stay organised over summer (ha!) I think I'll try a second sowing for an autumn crop too...

After a quick whiz round the garden for some other bits, we were ready for a stir-fry! We added some salsola, a couple of baby courgettes that seemed to be struggling (they're still having a hard time getting going) and some spring onions. Check out those onions! For some reason I always struggle with spring onions but this 'Eiffel' variety, grown on the doorstep in a big pot, are doing me proud! (The mushrooms were not grown by us. Sadly.)

I used to have trouble knowing how to flavour stir-fried veg. I wanted something to spice them up a bit, but I'm not keen on some of the common Chinese flavourings such as five-spice powder, and if I keep fancy stuff like fish sauce and rice wine in my cupboards, most of it will go out of date before I use it up (while sherry never sticks around long enough!). But I've found the perfect combination of flavourings - it gives that oriental feel and a bit of punch but doesn't drown out the flavours of the vegetables. Just a little soy sauce and red wine vinegar, and a dash of white pepper. Garlic, chilli and ginger can all be used to taste, too, but I don't tend to use them with a fish dish like this - I prefer to let the pea, salmon and sesame flavours rule.

Mangetout Stirfry with Baked Sesame Salmon
(serves two)

• Slather two salmon fillets in a little olive oil and soy sauce. Place on a baking tray and sprinkle generously with sesame seeds. Then pop in the oven at 180C for around 15-18 minutes (when it is just opaque in the middle, it's done).
• Wash your vegetables and slice bigger ones thinly. You'll need a big handful per person and you can use pretty much anything; mangetout, babycorn, peppers, courgettes, asparagus, mushrooms, carrots, greens, broccoli, pak choi, beansprouts... but I recommend a heavy emphasis on the mangetout!
• Put some rice or noodles on to boil.
• Put a wok or large saucepan on a high heat, add a little oil and let it get hot. Chuck all the veg in, with 2 tsps soy sauce, 2 tsps red wine vinegar and a dash of white pepper, and stir gently.
• The veg will only need a few minutes, depending on how crunchy (or not) you like them. Three to five minutes should be plenty for most veg. If at any stage the pan seems too dry or things are starting to brown, add a tablespoon or two of water.
• If you're using noodles, toss them in a little sesame oil.
• Serve rice or noodles and stir-fried veg with the baked salmon on top.

Doh! I forgot to put the salsola in! Guess I'll have that for lunch too. I was too busy getting excited about the leftover asparagus I remembered in the fridge and throwing that in! Next time...

Nome Makes Bread

Breadmaking is another of those self-sufficientish kinda things I've always meant to try but only recently got round to. Of course, one day I'd like to have a bash at growing my own little patch of wheat, and grinding my own fresh flours, but for now it'd be nice just to eat real bread that isn't stuffed with preservatives, stabilisers and other unnecessaries.

So for the past few weeks I've been experimenting with Jim Lahey's 'no-knead' breadmaking method (inspired by Monica over at SmarterFitter). It's just my kind of recipe; perfect for busy modern folk, or just lazy ones... What you do need to do, however, is plan ahead; instead of kneading, the dough is left to sit and do its yeasty thing for up to 26 hours (minimum about 13), so you generally need to start the day before. The other thing you need is a heavy ovenproof pan with a lid - this makes a great crust by holding the heat and steaming the bread in its own moisture.

I really can't stress enough how easy this is. It uses only the most basic of ingredients: flour, fast-action yeast, salt and water - and it takes just three or four minutes to mix the ingredients together, then five or six minutes to fold the dough and put it in a pan later. Then it's just a case of switching the oven on and off when required.
 

You can find Monica's recipes here - she's been doing this a lot longer than me - but I've been keeping it perhaps even simpler. Also of interest is this article on Jim Lahey's technique. If you fancy trying the recipe below, also bear in mind you may have to alter cooking times and temperatures depending on your oven - it took a bit of experimentation before I found what worked best for me (and I tweaked things to get a slightly softer crust).

So... 

No-Knead Bread
(makes a 750g loaf, approx.)

• In a large bowl, mix together 470g bread flour (including seeds if required), 10g (1 tbsp) sea salt, 1/4 tsp quick yeast, and 350ml water. Wholemeal flours absorb more water so you might need a bit extra. You can't really make it too wet so don't worry.

• Cover (I use a plate or baking tray, to save on the plastic wrap) and leave for 12-24 hours. After that time it should have roughly doubled in size, and will be full of big air bubbles. A bit like this:

• Tip the dough out onto a well-floured surface, with well-floured hands! Stretch the ends out and fold them one over the other, like folding a business letter into thirds. Then turn the dough 90 degrees and do the same again.
• Pop the dough, seam side up, in an oiled pan (remember to use a heavy pan with a lid) and let rest for another one to two hours.
• Then place it in a cold oven and turn up to 240C. After 25 minutes turn down to 200C. After another 35 minutes, take the lid off the pan to let the top crisp up. Then after another 5 minutes, remove from the oven. (Wholemeal flours need up to 10 minutes longer in the oven.)
• Cool on a wire rack.

Mmmm, can you smell it? This bread has great flavour due to the long fermentation time. The texture is slightly different to what I expected - more springy than fluffy like some artisan breads - but it's lovely. And it's easy to slice - bonus!

I started out using my 24cm cast iron casserole dish, but of course I got a very wide flat loaf - not ideal for sandwiches or the toaster.

So I tried making the bread in a 19cm cake tin inside the casserole dish, and it worked a treat!

And of course, one of the great things about making your own bread is trying out different types or mixes of flour. I've made white, I've made wholemeal, I've made my own mixes using different types of seeds, but the very best I've made was with this Allinson speciality flour: a white seeded mix. It's delish!

Now, other than being delicious, satisfying and easy to make, there are two more things I need from my home-baked bread. I need it to be cheap, and I need it to be healthy.

My shop-bought bread of choice costs £1.25 a loaf and lasts around four days. A 1.5kg bag of Sainsbury's-own bread flour costing £1.05 makes three loaves, each lasting two days. The cost of the yeast is less than 1p per loaf and the cost of the salt is around 5p per loaf. So my loaves using this flour come in at about 41p each, or 82p for the four days a store-bought loaf would last - not bad! (I should probably factor in the cost of the electricity used by the oven too, but I just don't have that much time on my hands...) However, speciality flours and seeds cost quite a bit more; the flour pictured above costs £1.10 for 1kg, making two loaves. That's £1.22 for the four days - still cheaper but only just.

Results are pleasing on the health front too (and of course, we know it has no funny chemicals in it). My bread (even with 100% white flour, the least healthy choice), has a few calories less than the shop-bought loaf per 100g (207 vs 235), and slightly less fat (1g vs 2.5g). It has more sodium though (500mg vs 390mg), so I think the next thing to experiment with is bringing that down slightly. However, my bread is denser so two slices actually weighs around 50% more than the shop-bought stuff. Hmmm. And there's always the danger I'll eat more of it, because it's so tasty! I'll have to be sure to cut my slices thin and not get carried away!

Edit: This calorie information is wrong - I totally miscalculated the weight of the water content. My bread is actually much lower in calories! I'll work on figuring out how many...

On the whole, it's a triumph all round. If you don't already make your own bread, give it a try!

I Smell a Stirfry...

Our golden mangetout pods are developing super-fast. And don't the plants look fab?

There's a stirfry on the horizon...

Beezzzzzzzz

We grow a little patch of comfrey beside our bench on the allotment specifically for the purpose of cutting it and adding it to the compost, or rotting it in water to make plant feed. Comfrey has super-deep roots that draw all sorts of minerals and nutrients up from the subsoil, so it's very useful this way and can add a lot of nutrition to your garden. The best time to cut it is just before it flowers, as that's when the plants have the most energy which can then be passed on to the compost. But can I ever bear to cut it then? I'd miss out on the lovely flowers, and the bees would miss out too, and then I (and my beans and courgettes and strawberries and raspberries and squashes!) would miss out on all the bee action!

Sadly the bees eventually ruin all the delicate little flowers - they make a hole at the base of the flower for easier access, and their clingy feet bruise the petals!

Some of them still do it the old-fashioned way!

The comfrey is now hacked back down to the ground, and the old leaves decomposing quietly on the compost heap. The bees hung around for ages afterwards wondering where all the flowers had gone! Comfrey makes a quick comeback - there will be more flowers soon!

Pruning Tomatoes

Pruning tomatoes began as quite a mystery to me, but it's easy when you figure it out. Not all tomato varieties need pruning, of course; bush or tumbling types (determinate, producing their crop all at once) can be left to their own devices, but to keep cordon or vining types (indeterminate, producing throughout the season until first frosts) in check and to focus their energy on fruit production rather than leaf production, a little help is needed.

At each point where a leaf branch grows out from the main stem, another shoot will grow, usually at about a 45 degree angle. Like this:

If you let these extra shoots, or suckers, grow, you end up with a sprawling and unwieldy plant requiring elaborate staking (trust me, I know this from experience!), and far more leaf than the plant really needs. So just pinch each extra shoot off at the base, and you'll have a much tidier plant, not to mention more, bigger fruit!

Easy. In fact, you can make new tomato plants by replanting these! If you want to do this, let them grow a few inches long before removing them, cut them off carefully so as not to damage the hairs on the stem (which will turn into roots), plant them with their stems deep in good compost, and take good care of them for a few days while they get settled.

We had quite a wet bank holiday weekend here (hurrah!) but that didn't stop me pruning the tomatoes and getting down to the plot to plant out the sweetcorn and some squashes. In fact, drizzly weather's ideal for planting out, as the roots don't get dried out or exposed to sun and the young plants settle in quicker to damp soil.

I planted out fifteen sweetcorn plants (Double Standard Bicolour from Real Seeds) in a block of 3x5 to assist pollination, plus two Baby Bear pumpkins, two Astia F1 courgettes, two Crown Prince squash (highly recommended to me many times but this is the first time I've tried them), one F1 butternut, one Waltham butternut, one Thelma Sanders Sweet Potato squash and one Sweet Dumpling! Phew! As usual I've planted them closer together than I probably should have, so I'll have to be careful to keep the plants in check and give them plenty of food and water. Now there's just the Atlantic Giant pumpkin to go, when I manage to dig over that last patch... Oh, and the brassicas, late as usual...

Can you believe we've harvested very nearly 2kg of strawberries already, and it's only the first of June?! I wasn't too impressed with this one though.

Anyone know what these beasties are? They look like earthworms but since when did earthworms eat strawberries? They're eating their way in, not out, right? Right?? If I ever bit into a fresh juicy strawberry and found that I think I'd be put off for life!