Monday 5 September 2016

Harvest Monday - courgettes and apples

So the gluts are upon us ...I usually stick to fairly similar (and easy) meals but being a bit adventurous in the kitchen can help make things more interesting.
I had a large courgette left from last week and decided to have a go at fritters - one of my friends had emailed me a link to a recipe on the Guardian website - the journalist had tried out loads of different recipes to come up with the best. On a bit of a whim I also decided to double the recipe and try freezing some... but having weighed everything out in double, when I came to mix in the four eggs it seemed really sloppy...at which point I realised I'd doubled everything except the courgette, aha. I only had one other small courgette picked and didn't have time to salt it (to remove excess water), so grated the courgette into the mix along with a big carrot, and crossed my fingers. Oh also the recipe had salad onions but I used red onion instead.
 
The original courgette, salted, left for 30 mins and pressed the water out
Hey, they turned out ok
Mmm
And there were enough to freeze too, here separated by grease proof paper
Other harvests have been quite nicely varied
A couple of small sweet peppers from the lean-to
These sorts of meals always look messy but taste good
Yesterday I got some more figs too, from my friends plot. They are so good, just eaten on their own.
I picked a couple more sweetcorn but one was past its best (kernels starting to shrivel) and so went straight in the compost
Earlier in the week I picked a small tub of blackberries. They're starting to 'go over' now but I've picked and frozen quite a lot already. Elsewhere in the countryside there'll be other varieties which are later than the ones on my plot.
A large bulk of my apples from the dwarf trees were ready to harvest, with the fruit coming away from the branch with a twist of the wrist. You can see some codling moth damage too. I gently cooked-up the blackberries with some of the damaged apples, adding a bit of old quince jelly as a sweetener. I hadn't been planning on harvesting the apples so didn't take my trolley down to the plot, which meant a rather heavy rucksack on the way home, oof.
We were heading to a friend's so I also made an apple scone round, from one of Jan's Great British Bake Off books. It only tastes 15 minutes to bake, which is a bonus.
Looks just like it eh, and tasted good too. I added a bit of extra cinammon plus some nutmeg
Out in the lean-to I've picked a big bowl of toms, it was quite hard to hold the bowl with one hand, so a very quick photo taken!
I think this might be the biggest tomato I've ever grown. It's big for me anyway.
And a pepper that really looks like a pepper. This was meant to be sweet but had a hotness to it as well, which although a surprise, actually made a nice flavour combination.
Here's some of the toms before I harvested, looking out the lounge window
Then after the harvest and a further thinning of the leaves. It doesn't look that different from this angle but I did get a big trug-ful of leaves (there are more plants to the left of this view). I've tried to be a bit organised and have sown some lettuce seeds in modules, to plant in the tomato pots when they're finished cropping.
Excitingly, the aubergines are getting going. These are on the top shelf of an old set of pine book shelves, so are above head-height.
In the back garden the beans are still going strong, some growing up a wigwam and others up the fence. Looks like I'll be harvesting these for a while longer.

It also helps that we finally got some rain this weekend, a decent few hours, hooray.

 

That's me for now, thanks for reading. I'm linking in with Harvest Monday kindly hosted by Dave at Our Hapoy Acres.

 

8 comments:

  1. You waited for us to arrive in the county before you got your rain didn't you? It's amazing how little courgette you are left with once the moisture is squeezed out. I think adding carrot was a good idea flavourwise.

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    1. Ah, sorry about the rain Sue... the allotment dried up again quickly but we've just got a bit of rain today...must be something about saturdays.
      Yeh the courgettes do reduce down a fair bit, but it's good this recipe uses a reasonable amount of courgette in the first place...some only use a teeny bit and don't help much with the glut.

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  2. The fritters sound tasty but the scones look especially yummy! You can't beat a recipe that comes together that quickly either. And what a lovely bowl of tomatoes, looks like you did a great job on the one-handed pic.

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    1. Thanks Dave - quick and easy (and tasty) recipes are always popular with me :)

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  3. That Apple Scone thing looks really fab for something made in 15 minutes! I expect you could do a savoury version too - with courgettes maybe??

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    1. Hi Mark, yeah I'll have to use that scone recipe again. It takes about 30 mins total, including just 15 mins baking. Maybe it's a quick bake because it doesn't have any egg in?
      Hmm, courgette plus cheese might work, nice idea.

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  4. The courgette fritters look great! I've not made any this year but hopefully I get a few more from the vines so that I can give that recipe a try.

    That is really strange about that bell pepper - I don't think I've ever seen a spicy pepper that's that large before.

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  5. Thanks Margaret, I'll be making those fritters again for def.

    I lost track of my pepper labelling but I think this was a quadrato d'asti rosso sweet pepper. I wonder if the very hot weather and probably eratic watering on my part gave it a bit of spiciness. It was sweet too...weird!

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