The Greedy Gardener

Growing, cooking, foraging, brewing and preserving food from my garden and allotment. Plus occasional witterings about bikes and the weather.

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Forced rhubarb. The love of rhubarb is a peculiarly British thing, its astringent flavour being an acquired taste. As a perennial originally from Siberia, it’s one of the earliest things to start growing in very early spring. Covering the crown to exclude light and protect from frost results in an even earlier, sweet, tender and luminous pink first cut

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Meet Betty Boothroyd and Barbara Castle

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Spring has sprung

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Holders Lane Woods

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Four dishes, one squash

1 - squash and leek soup with toasted seeds

2 - fragrant spiced squash with buckwheat noodles, pak choi and smoked tofu

3 - warm salad of roast squash with chickpeas and tahini dressing

4 - squash "risotto" with spelt, goats cheese and pea shoots

#homemade #winter #homegrown #allotment #seasonal #seasonality

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At four kilos, this is the largest of the dozen or so Crown Prince squash we grew last year. Making soup tonight then risotto, curry and possibly a salad with the rest over the next week or so.

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Fennel and orange pickle because you need something bright and breezy to get though the dark days

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Finally got some proper snow

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Working from home is fine, you just need the support of a good team

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I’ve taken to making some of my preserves outside - peeling apples for purée or chopping tomatoes for passata while a pot bubbles on the camping stove is a very pleasant way to spend a warm September afternoon, especially with a glass of something chilled for company. It’s also a good way to avoid the house steaming up when making things like this marmalade that need a long time simmering and reducing. The aroma of Seville oranges is filling the air as I potter about doing a few garden jobs and the chickens burble.

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Seville oranges are only in season for a few short weeks so hurry up and get some now if you want to make your own marmalade. I’ll be adding a little dark, sweet Pedro Ximénez sherry to some of this before it goes into jars. Full recipe here.

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Golden globes

There are certain things I will never be able to grow here in Birmingham and oranges are definitely in that category. It is possible to grow lemons and oranges in the UK if you have a big greenhouse to house the tree over winter, but the fruit’s not up to much. Unless you live in a stately home with its own orangery, of course.

Sweet oranges are available all year round, but the bitter Seville orange is only in season for a few weeks in January and February. This mouth puckeringly sour fruit has many uses as a flavouring, for example in Cointreau. The blossom is the source of neroli essential oil and the culinary ingredient orange flower water; in Spain, the falling blossom is gathered in sheets laid under the trees to make a very relaxing tea.

The majority of the crop grown around Seville is exported to the UK to make marmalade, because the rest of the world doesn’t share our taste for this tart preserve. The word marmalade comes from marmelo, the Portuguese word for a thick quince jam similar to the Spanish membrillo. Britain has long standing links with southern Spain and Portugal through the sherry and port trade, so the word and the preserve probably made their way here by the same route.

It’s well worth making your own as you can tweak the recipe to suit your own taste, thick or thin cut. Seville oranges are not widely available and the season is short, so get them while you can and freeze them if you haven’t the time to use them now. Here in Brum, the LOVE (Local and Organic Veg) stall on the Bullring market has them, as does the very marvellous Ward’s greengrocer in Stirchley.

My grandma used to make cracking marmalade, in one huge batch each January to last her the whole year. I used to beg the odd jar, but she made it very clear that the consequences would be serious if she prematurely ran out of her essential breakfast item due to her largesse. This recipe is a mash up between one of her’s from The Modern Housewife’s Book (published in 1933, price three and six) with River Cottage’s suggestion of Demerara sugar. You can use all Demerara, but the set will be softer. Makes 5 or 6 1lb jars.

Seville orange marmalade

Ingredients:

1 kilo/2 lbs Seville oranges

1 kilo/2lbs golden granulated sugar

1 kilo/2lbs Demerara sugar

75ml/3 fl oz lemon juice

2.5 litres/5 pints cold water

Wash the oranges thoroughly and juice them, putting the juice in a large bowl. Slice the peel with a sharp knife, thick or thin, it’s up to you. It’s a lot easier to do this with the shiny orange skin side down and also lets you spot any stray pips. Collect all the pips in a small bowl and cover with boiling water. Put the sliced peel in the bowl with the juice from the oranges and add the cold water. Leave both bowls to stand overnight.

The next day, put the soaked fruit peel and soaking liquid into a large, heavy pan. The stuff in the small bowl will have set like jelly. Sieve out the pips and add the liquid to the pan. Bring the whole lot to the boil and then simmer until the peel is soft - this will take up to 2 hours, depending on how thick you’ve cut the peel. The volume will have reduced by about a third.

Next, add the sugar and lemon juice and bring to a rolling boil, that is the whole surface bubbling quite vigorously. Stir regularly. If it begins to boil too near to the top of the pan, turn the heat down ever so slightly until you get back to a rolling boil. While it’s boiling, but a saucer in the freezer and sterilise your jars.

After about 25 minutes, test to see whether it’s reached setting point by dropping a teaspoonful onto the chilled saucer. Put it in the fridge for a minute or two, then push your finger tip through it. It’s set when the surface wrinkles as you move it. If it stays completely liquid, keep boiling for another five minutes and repeat the test until it’s set.

Once set, turn off the heat and leave it to cool for about 10 minutes - this allows it to thicken slightly, otherwise all the fruit would float to the top. Stir gently and pour into warm jars and cover. I use a jam funnel which saves a lot of stickiness and waste.

A word about jars:

Jars for jam or marmalade need to be scrupulously clean, dry and quite warm before bottling. Do not stand them a cold surface otherwise they will crack when the boiling hot jam touches the glass.

The easiest way to sterilise them is in the dishwasher on a hot-ish programme, then whip them out just before you need them while they’re still hot so that any water evaporates.

If you don’t have a dishwasher, wash them thoroughly, then place them in a low oven to dry out and warm up before bottling. If you’re using the fancy pants jars with the rubber seals like in my picture, TAKE THE RUBBER SEAL OFF BEFORE YOU PUT THEM IN THE OVEN. Don’t ask me how I know this.

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