Molly gets dressed for the occasion and patty pan squashes

Yeserday Molly had her first taste of a working life and got all dressed up to help me alter the length of a friend's party frock.  Apart from posing for my own work in progress top this is the first work she has done in the studio and I have to say it went well, she seems a natural.

I know that I have posted this photo already but I don't have any additional ones, however I do now have 4 patty pan squashes so that's a 200 % inmprovement on last year.

Which of course begs the question of what to do with them, so here are a couple of recipe ideas that I am trying out today.

PATTY PAN AND CHICK PEA SALAD


I am putting my chickpeas in to soak overnight so I can make this tomorrow, but here goes the recipe anyway.

Cut the patty pan squash into its natural segments, drizzle with some olive oil and add a pinch of salt, roast for 30mins at 200°C.

Once the squash is cooked through, allow to cool and then add the soaked then boiled chickpeas, I use 2 heaped tablespoons per person as a portion guide.

For the vinigrette:

handful of fresh chopped chives
handful of fresh chopped coriander leaves
a couple of leaves of mint
4 anchovies
a pinch of cayenne pepper
2 tablespoons of lemon juice
freshly ground black pepper
a touch of oilve oil

whizz everything up together then liberally coat the chickpeas, before adding to the cooked patty pan segments.  This can be eaten hot or cold, a starter or a side dish.


One Pan Patty Pan


(snappy title dontcha think?)

In a large suacepan with a lid, fry a large onion over a gentle heat in some olive oil with a couple of cloves of garlic until soft.

To the pan add some roughly chopped fresh ripe plum tomatoes, and your patty pan squashes, once again cut into their natural segments.

Then add about 10 cm of chorizo sausage, cut into large chunks, season and add a couple more tablespoons of olive oil.  Reduce the heat and leave to cook for one hour, I am using an enamelled pan, that once I have fried on the hob I can put into a preheated oven at 180°C for the 60 minutes required.

Stir in a couple of chopped leaves of coriander to finish.



As my family of meat eaters don't consider that to be enough meat, we are having our patty pans with a pork chop, grilled in garlic oil alongside.

Here are are the next lot of patty pans growing nicely.

Will have to start thinking of savoy cabbage recipes soon too....

....... as well as cauliflower...

 Luckily the grape vine has not managed to dislodge the solar panel for our night time hall and stairs lighting yet, but I will have to think about re-directing it soon.

The Martian Red Weed

For those fans of War of the Worlds, here is my own Martian Red weed.

This is actually a Chinese red leaf lettuce, which was sown in amongst a mixed batch of salad leaves in our first year, and it keeps coming back, in fact there is so much of it now it is taking over patches of garden and is beginning to look like red lawn.  Which would be great except for the fact that it is completely tasteless so only adds some colour to a salad.

We went to our local farmer's market today with the hopes of finding a pig, which we did from our usual supplier, this year he has some Gloucester Old Spots x Duroc piglets, but we just could not decide on one, or even whether we should get one - our freezers are still full and we have too many chickens, some ducks awaiting a cull and even more rabbits on the way.  In the end we went home empty handed and now I am not sure if I should be regreting that or not.

Once home, with the sun out and some time before I have to depart for work, I managed to squeeze in a bit of gardening, planting out some Batavia lettuce I bought at market into our salad poly tunnel, alongside the succession sowing we should have a nice steady supply of salad leaves in a month or so.  I also got some cabbage seeds into pots, and a few more peas which I am going to try growing 'The Edible Garden' ready for eating the tips in salads only.

Watched that again last night and learnt something new - I did not know I could eat the radish seed pods - I get quite a crop of these every year when I let my radishes take over.

Alys Fowler also reminded me that it was time to get my nettle fertiliser on the go, so I collected up two 5 litre plastic wine kegs, stuffed them with new fresh nettle tips and topped off with water.  For those who are going to try this, as Alys said last night - the solution absolutely stinks, but the tomatoes do love it.

The Edible Garden

While wandering around the garden I spotted a couple of globe artichoke plants coming through from last year. Lucky that I did as they are growing in the bed that I was going to use as my composter ready for next spring, and it is these two plants that are the inspiration for today's project.


I watched the first episode of the new GW series "The Edible Garden" last night, and whilst it was quite light and frothy viewing there were a couple of good ideas in it that I decided to steal.

One was the recipe for the green bean falafel which looked very quick and easy to make, and the other was the lobster pot frame supports.

So this morning once I had weeded my flower bed - as you can see my lupins are coming up nicely, as are my gladioli, I cut down some branches from our firs.

These were then stripped of greenery and I was left with some flexible spurs approx 1 metre long. I chose the firs not only because there is an abundance of branches to experiment with, but also the thin young branches are very bendy at the moment so easy to manipulate into whatever shape you fancy.

In an attempt not to mow down or cover in manure or otherwise decimate them, I made the first lobster pot frame to cover my newly found artichoke plants. These don't actually need the support of the frame, the frame is quite literally there to remind me not to destroy the plant!

I then made a couple more to go around some sweet peas that grow in an odd spot in the garden but keep coming back each year, and another small pyramid to go into a container for my cherry tomatoes later in the year.

At this point I realised not only that it was freezing outside, but that it was 6pm and I had not made anything for dinner yet but that I had made one too many lobster pots, so decided to call it a day and hunt down the gin in my topsy turvy kitchen.