Baked Chard Orbs

I was given 800g of rainbow chard.  A kind gift for some volunteer work at a city centre community garden, but what to do with it?

I was just about to go to visit my family in a couple of days so felt I had to do something with the free chard or they may be wasted, but what to cook?

I recently came upon a courgette polpette recipe and thought I would tweak it slightly and use the chard in a similar way. 

This dish just uses the stalks.

1.  Dice the stalks and chop some onions or shallots.  Lightly fry for 10 minutes.

2.  Chop a couple of chillies and several garlic cloves (for the flavouring)

3.  Crack open a couple of eggs and whisk

4.  Put the chopped chillies, garlic cloves and eggs in a mixing bowl.

5.  Add 100g bread crumbs and 100g goats cheese to the mixing bowl.

6.  The stalks and chopped onions should be ready to add to the mixture now.

7.  Get a tin tray ready and grease it.  Then turn on the oven to preheat at 200 degrees centigrade.

8.  Next make sure the mixture in the bowl is well mixed and evenly distributed.  Then make the orb shapes out of the mixture with your hands.

9.  Place the orbs on the tin tray and then place in the oven for about 10 - 20 minutes.  (Check them after 10 minutes). Remove them from the oven when they are golden brown.


Ingredients I used for this recipe

500g chard stalks (or a good crop of chard stalks, I'm sure 200g would work perfectly well)
5 shallots
Garlic bulb
100g bread crumbs (best from home made fresh bread)
100g crumbly goats cheese
2 eggs

Have you got any great ideas for excess chard?

Scone Recipe

Got lots of new summer preserves? Well there's nothing better for them to go with than some gorgeous straight out of the oven fresh scones.

I've been baking scones since I was about 7 years old.  My mother must have taught me as I loved eating mum's straight out of the oven, butter melting, jam warming scones.  It was something we cooked when the oven was hot.

We had an old Rayburn which was coal powered so we would have to heat up the oven to over 400 degrees fahrenheit.  As soon as the dial reached 400 degrees, we'd whip out the big bowl and start making our mixture.

By the age of 10 I was displaying my scones at our local village fair.  I didn't win a prize for my scones, but when we came to collect them, they'd gone!  Mum told me, that it must be because they were just too tasty that they'd disappeared!!

So here's how I make my scones...


1. Pour 300g self raising flour into your mixing bowl.

(For my friends in Hong Kong self raising flour may be difficult to find.  Baking powder and white flour will do the same job...300g white flour, 2 teaspoons baking powder)

2. Pour in 100g sugar into the bowl

3.  And add 75g margarine (I use margarine because my boyfriend's lactose intolerant but use butter if you prefer) 

4. Mix all the ingredients together with your finger tips and keep mixing until the mixture resembles fine bread crumbs

5. Pour 120 ml full fat milk (raw milk from you local dairy or farmers market is best or lacto free milk for lactose intolerant sufferers).  Break an egg into the jug too and whisk together.

6.  If you would like raisins in your scones, mix them into the breadcrumb like mixture now.

7.  Make a well in the middle of the mixture in the bowl with a wooden spoon and pour about half the liquid mixture in the middle.  Work the mixture together with your wooden spoon.  When done, repeat the process for the rest of the liquid mixture.  Again work it through with the wooden spoon and when its worked through its time to get your hands in a knead the mixture together with your hands.  If the dough feels a little wet add a little flour, or if too dry add a little more milk.  If you are happy, it's time to get your dough on the table and switch on the oven at a temp of 200 degrees centigrade.

8.  Get a metal tray out of the cupboard and flour the tray.  Flatten the scone dough (I do this with the palms of my hands but you can use a rolling pin if you like).  With a pastry cutter cut your scones out of the dough and place on the tray.  Next you are ready to put the scones in the oven.  They should be ready within 10 - 20 minutes (depending how fierce your oven is).  Keep an eye on them and as soon as they are golden brown, get them out of the oven and allow to cool.

Or if you are brave or prepared to risk burnt fingers, pick a hot scones, break it open and melt some butter and jam and let them melt in your mouth.  Yum!

Ingredients List:

300g Self raising organic flour
100g Sugar
75g   Butter or margarine
1       Medium free range egg
120ml Full fat milk
100g Sultanas

Pickled Nasturtium Seeds

Nasturtiums have really brightened up my summer salads this year with their peppery leaves.  I think I'm hooked!

If you haven't tried these flavourful leaves I highly recommend you try them.  Nasturtiums are in the same family as water cress.

And in my garden and my community gardens right now, the nasturtiums are growing thick and strong in great clumps with their cheerful yellow and red flowers in all their different varieties.  

This summer I found out you could eat the seeds too!   The seeds pack a really good punch too and can be used in the place of capers to spice up salads.  You can even pickle them to ensure that this summer season delight can brighten up autumn, winter and spring meals too.

The first step is to put the seeds into a jar with a tablespoon of salt and fill the jar with water. Leave for 24 hours.

After 24 hours, rinse the seeds in water
                                                                                                                                    

Dry the seeds on kitchen towel and pat dry.







Next step is to prepare the vinegar and flavourings.

Chop your favourite chilli.  Ideally the chilli should be fresh from your garden, greenhouse or windowsill.

And add them to a saucepan.

Then add 12 peppercorns (or a small handful).

And a tablespoon of salt.

Finally add 400 ml of white wine vinegar and simmer for 10 minutes.

While the vinegar is simmering, start to put the nasturtium seeds in a sterilised jar.  Put a single layer of seeds down.

Then a layer of finely chopped onion.  Then continue with an alternating layer of each seeds, onions, seeds, onions etc. 

When you have finished filling the jar, the vinegar mixture should have simmered long enough.  Allow to cool, then pour the mixture into the jar.













After a week you will be able to add your pickled nasturtium seeds to salads, pasta, meat dishes - anything which you would like to add a peppery flavour.

Ingredients

Nasturtium seeds       About 100g (or a good handful)
Salt                            Tablespoon
White Wine Vinegar  400ml
Peppercorns              12 (or a small handful)
Chilli                           1
Onion                         1

Ornamental Edible Garden

Courgette Hummus

My boyfriend's due home in a few days.  I've been willing my whole garden to grow lots of food for him with plant food in the form of worm tea, wishful thinking and lots of watering. The tomatoes are refusing to ripen but I do have a lot of squash growing out there.

On the courgette plant (as I was only successful at getting one seed to germinate) I pollinated one courgette and was letting it grow big as I wanted to save some seeds.  This plant is such a good cropper I do want to save some seed from it.  Unfortunately, it looks like the whole plant is putting all its energies into this one courgette and stalling on ripening more.  I decided it was time to remove this courgette to give the other fruit a chance.  It was approximately 25cm long.  I should have plenty of time to let courgettes grow later in the season when I grow tired of the glut.  Right now I need good crops available to cook for Matt in about 3 days time!

So what to do with a 300g courgette?  I hit my favourite seasonal cookbook "Grown in Britain Cook Book" which lists its recipes by crop group.  I stumbled on a recipe for pumpkin hummus and this gave me the inspiration for courgette hummus.

I'd never made hummus before.  I love eating hummus but as chickpeas are imported to the UK I have avoided making it in the past.  But I thought, just this once I would make some at home and bought a bag of dried chickpeas on my last trip to the shops.  So I had already rehydrated the chickpeas when I was trying to think what to do with the big courgette - now I could give it a local twist.

I started by chopping 3 garlic cloves in the food mixer.

Then chopped courgette went into the mixer.

I had no idea how much water courgettes contain!  Still it made wonderful courgette puree!

Courgette puree and chopped garlic

 Next, I put 200g chickpeas in the food mixer

Pureed chickpeas

 Next step, I combined the garlic, courgette and chickpeas together.

Mixing the courgette, chickpeas and garlic

And finally the best bit.. it was time for the seasoning: Tahini, lemon juice and paprika to taste.  Followed by a few good blobs of olive oil.

And here's what the finished result looked like...

Courgette Hummus

Not bad for my first go!

Great with some soldiers of home baked bread or even slice up spare raw squash - perfect for a bit of  crunch.

Ingredients:
200g chickpeas
300g courgette (or a medium sized squash - I wouldn't worry about the weight being too exact)
3 cloves of garlic
Table spoon Tahini (adjust quantity to personal taste)
2 Table spoons Lemon juice (adjust quantity to personal taste)
3 Table spoons Olive Oil/Rapeseed Oil
A few pinches of Paprika (adjust quantity to personal taste)

A good summer roast

With all the squash 

Crookneck Summer Squash - Seeds from Real Seeds

and courgettes ripening in our gardens, its time to get the squash recipes out...

Striata di Napoli - Seeds from Real Seeds

One of the first things I did when I had my very first courgettes grew in my garden was to lightly fry them with tomatoes and garlic.  I thought this tasted absolutely amazing.  It was the first time I was eating food I'd grown myself.  It was like nectar from the gods!!

Since then, I've discovered roasting vegetables is a wonderful thing to do with vegetables as it brings out the sugars in them.

Zapallito de Toscana - Seeds from Heritage Seed Library

One of my favourite veggie roasts is to roast squash with a good slice of mild goats cheese and a sprinkle of chilli powder on top if you like it a bit spicy.  Also, I like to roast them in the midst of lots of chopped onion and garlic.  Onion has a wonderfully sweet flavour when roasted which compliments squash perfectly.  If you are a carnivore, pork and apple sausages from your local butchers or farmers market will compliment the roasted squash and onions perfectly.  You could even experiment with a little roasted apple in there too...depends how sweet you like your savoury.  Crank the oven up to 40 degrees and in 30-45 minutes (when it all looks nicely browned to your liking) enjoy the fruits of your labours of growing your own!