Today's harvest

 

Poor Brendan, as the weather hots up and food finally starts to appear in the garden I feel another supermarket embargo coming on.

Today's harvest gives me: 5 quail eggs, 4 chicken eggs, some raspberries, 1 yellow tomato, a clump of swiss chard, some patty pan squashes and some courgettes - of course!

Tonight's menu based on my harvest and store room staples:

Courgette and tomato tart (on pre rolled flaky pastry) - thinly sliced peeled courgette and ripe red tomatoes arranged on pastry then seasoned with salt and pepper and a drizzle of sun dried tomato flavoured olive oil

Crab and grated carrot salad in homemade mayonnaise with garlic and ginger

Tuna and cucumber with home made mayonnaise with paprika

Courgette bake - thinly sliced courgette with bechemal sauce made with some frozen pheasant stock, topped with hamburger cheese - because that was all I had in the fridge, and some dry bread toasted and whizzed up for breadcrumbs mixed with dried parsley

Silesian sausages - a polish deli treat courtesy of my lovely mummy :)

To make mayonnaise, take a small bowl with a narrow base so that you can whisk into the bottom easily, and separate two egg yolks (discard the whites or freeze into ice cube trays for use in meringues or something).   Add a teaspoon of dried mustard powder, salt and pepper and start whisking - if you are using an electric whisk support the bowl on a teatowel because you need two hands for this.  Very very very slowly add about 250ml of oil, not oilve as that is too strong flavoured but a grape seed oil or similar, whisk each drop that you add into the egg and mustard powder emulsion, don't be tempted to rush or it won't work.  Just before the last of the oil goes in, add a teaspoon of vinegar, not malt but any pale vinegar, I use apple cider or raspberry because it adds another depth of flavour to the mayo.  Then trickle in the last of the oil, at no point stopping the whisking, and you should end up with a lovely thick yellow mayonnaise - which I should have photographed but had dumped into my tuna and crab bowls before I remembered.

And as for the raspberries - well I scoffed them with some yoghurt and cereal for my breakfast.