Squashes

Well, I've been busy with other things lately and these pictures are a few weeks old now, but I'll show you them anyway.

This is some of our squash harvest, picked on the 19th September. Hopefully everyone will recognise the round orange one. The green ones are 'Burgess Buttercup', the yellow curly ones are 'Summer Crookneck' and the heart shaped ones are my favourite - and longwinded - 'Thelma Sanders Sweet Potato' squash. Since that day we've picked another one pumpkin and five Thelma Sanders!

Bit disappointed with the turnout, really - the Thelma Sanders were amazingly productive as always, but we usually get many more pumpkins and I'd hoped for more Burgess Buttercups, but most of them rotted on the vines. And the Butternut squashes are conspicuous by their absence... Good job we harvested when we did, too - we just beat a couple of very early frosts:

We laid our harvest out on the carpet by the back door where they'd get plenty of sun to finish ripening them and 'cure' the skins, and here we learnt a brand new lesson. Don't store squashes on the blossom end. With their blossom-ends to the floor and unable to dry out, both the Burgess Buttercup squashes quickly went mouldy. Doh!

The Summer Crookneck squashes haven't lasted long either - at least, the knobbly ones haven't. The smoother skinned ones are still hanging in there. Must make an effort to finish them soon... Although I'm afraid I find them rather uninspiring. The flesh inside is so thin they hardly seem worth it - I think we will make sure to eat them all at courgette-stage next year. How do you eat yours?

Now, check this baby out:

I have to report that no, we didn't grow this 64lb monster. It was donated to Sainsbury's by another local grower for a competition, and they were going to chuck it out afterwards! Needless to say, we couldn't allow that. So we have planned a 'Pumpkin Party', and we're going to see how many different things we can make from it. More on that in a week or two!

Pie!

Well, I have learned to make pickle, chutney and jam this year. I thought I'd top it off by learning to make a good old-fashioned double-crust pie. I bought Angela Boggiano's lovely book "Pie" months ago and have been meaning to try it out, and with leeks finally reaching a decent size on the allotment, her chicken, leek and tarragon pie seemed perfect!

I found a set of individual pie dishes in our local charity shop and used those, instead of making one big pie like the recipe suggests. And of course, I made a few other changes too...

Chicken, Leek and Tarragon Pie
(serves four)

• Place a 1.5kg chicken in a large saucepan with a chopped onion, a chopped carrot, a tsp or two of tarragon, black pepper and a big pinch of celery salt. Add enough water to cover, bring to the boil, and simmer for 45 minutes until the chicken is cooked through. (Actually, I had a pack of diced chicken to use up so I put that in instead - and it was much quicker too.)
• Remove the chicken from the pan and set aside to cool.
• Continue to simmer the stock, until it is reduced by half.
• Meanwhile, heat a little olive oil and a knob of butter in a pan, add a small chopped onion and two chopped leeks, and saute gently until soft. At this point I added a big handful of sliced mushrooms too.
• Turn the heat up high, add 150ml wine and cook until reduced by half. Stir in 2 tbsps flour and mix in very well.
• Pour in 150ml cream and 150ml of the stock, and a splash of lemon juice. Season to taste.
• Shred the chicken into small pieces and stir into the sauce mixture along with another tsp of tarragon.
• Preheat the oven to 180C.
• Now line your pie dish(es). I confess I bought my pastry, and chose puff rather than shortcrust as recommended - I love puff pastry! Leave a little overhang round the edge on the bottom crust, and don't forget to cut round your dish for the top piece before you fill it!
• Fill the pie with the chicken mixture, brush round the top edge with beaten egg and lay the lid in place. Crimp the edges together with your fingers to seal, then trim any excess away and brush the top with more beaten egg to glaze.
• Place in the oven for 30-35 minutes, until the pastry is crisp and golden.

Wow! Not bad for a first-timer, huh? The flavour of this pie was soooo good - the wine and cream and lemon and tarragon really make it something special. And what made the meal even better was that I served a load of other NomeGrown goodies with it too - roast potatoes of course, and I took the NomeGrown onions and carrots from the stock and added garlic, chard and peas for a delicious medley of vegetables on the side.

Tomatoes - a summary

The tomato season has almost drawn to a close here, now blight has killed off all my plants but two, and those left are struggling to ripen fruit in the worsening weather. But having enjoyed the most successful tomato crop ever, and since I never told you the results of my seedsaving experiment, I thought I'd give a quick rundown of the varieties I grew.


From left to right we have 'Hundreds and Thousands' (self-sown), 'Red Cherry', 'Gardener's Delight', 'Angelle' (seeds saved), 'Moneymaker' and 'Sub-Arctic Plenty'.

The 'Hundreds and Thousands' have a slight tendency to be thick-skinned, but are so deliciously sweet, so productive and so easy to grow that I will certainly grow some more next year, if I can get them to self sow again.

The 'Red Cherry' have always been the quickest plants to grow for me, but having finally had a decent sample of the fruit this year, I don't think I'll bother with them again. The skins are very thick and they're not as tasty as some others.

The 'Gardener's Delight' again suffered from thick skins. Maybe it's my soil or something - does anyone else have this problem? They are delicious and have a touch more acid than any other variety I've grown, and so are good for salads or sandwiches where you don't want too much sweetness.

The 'Angelle' (also pictured below) are from the seeds I saved from a supermarket tomato. They have come pretty true to type and are absolutely delicious, not to mention incredibly easy to grow, with few leaves, and the last ones to go down with blight! The crop wasn't huge, but I could easily grow more plants in a small space since the foliage is so sparse. I will certainly be sowing the rest of my saved seeds next year!

'Moneymaker' were very pleasing, with thick flesh and a delicious flavour, and pretty productive, although they were the first to get the dreaded blight and I ended up putting most of the fruit - still green - in chutney. I'd like to give them another try, but if they are susceptible by nature to blight maybe it's not worth it outdoors...

'Sub-Arctic Plenty' were the biggest surprise. The plant always looked rather sickly but the fruits were huge - up to 100g each - and soooo tasty! They did not live up to their '45 days from seed to harvest' claim - far from it - but they're definitely another variety I will grow again next year.

Do you grow tomatoes outdoors? I'd love to hear what varieties work well for you.

Green Tomato Chutney

Remember the huge bowl of green tomatoes we picked when our tomato plants began succumbing to blight a few weeks ago? We are now enjoying them in a lovely green tomato chutney - especially delicious with cheese - the recipe for which I found in Thane Prince's book 'Jams and Chutneys: Preserving the Harvest', and, of course, tweaked a bit.


Green Tomato Chutney

• Chop 1kg green tomatoes, 375g onions and 250g cooking apples.
• Place in a large pan with 300ml cider vinegar and simmer for about 30 minutes until soft.
• Add 3 or 4 crushed garlic cloves, and ginger and chilli to taste. The recipe used fresh but I didn't have any, so I guessed at 2 tsps mild chilli powder and 2 tsps dried ginger.
  
• Add 1 tsp salt and 250g sugar, simmer very gently until the sugar has dissolved, then increase the heat and simmer for a further 30-40 minutes until reduced and thick. Mind the bottom doesn't burn!
• Pour into hot sterilised jars (sterilise jars by washing well then placing them in a cold oven, heating it to 140C, then turning the heat off. Boil the lids/rubber rings in a pan of water for a few minutes), seal and label.

Who'd have thought making chutney would be so easy!?

A Day Without Learning is a Day Wasted

This is how our allotment looks at the moment:

Gah! But don't be fooled; it's not all nettles and fat hen. There's asparagus, cauliflowers, broccoli, calabrese, herbs, leeks, swedes, strawberries, raspberries, potatoes, runner beans, beetroots and all manner of courgettey squashy things in there too. And check out those sunflowers!

This past week we've dug up most of our potatoes. It's not a very impressive harvest - I guess those late frosts did more damage than we thought - but they'll keep us going for a while, and I suspect there are a few more more deep ones to be found when we have time to dig over the patch a second time.

We also brought home our apple harvest; three times what we had last year! Although one as you can see has been munched by a maggot.

And we brought home our garlic too; thirteen small but lovely bulbs. One of them had gone to flower, and what a funny creature! At the top of the flower stem was a bunch of tiny garlic cloves, exactly the same as the ones that form bunched together in the ground! Who knew? I'd never have guessed they grow cloves both at the bottom and at the top of the plant!

Well, you learn something new every day!