Harvest Monday - blimey big butternut

It's been so rainy here recently that trips to the plot have generally been short and infrequent. But I did decide to bring back my monster green butternut squash (ideally winter squashes are left a bit longer outside in the autumn sun to help them harden-up and store better over winter but the amount of autumn sun is virtually zilch at the moment, and I don't want them to rot with all the damp). So I took my trusty trolley (sadly on its last legs/wheels after more than 10 years...and I rescued it from a skip to begin with anyway, but I digress) and wheeled the squash home, with it poking out the top of the trolley. Here's the beast, over a stone in weight (14lbs 8oz) according to the bathroom scales. It took us a while to find somewhere in the house with a clear background so this is me standing on the bed...by this time the squash was getting rather heavy to keep holding, urgh.

And then yesterday I nipped down again after some rainy showers to bring back the second largest one...except I just took it upstairs to weigh and it's actually 16lb, so even bigger (it's shorter but one end is thicker). Here's minxie to give it some scale (some might say she was just pestering me for food but I like to think she was trying to help). The heavier one is the top one. The indentation around the right end is from when a tendril had wrapped around it when the fruit was small, aw. The pale bit on the left end is where it was sat on a bit of hard plastic to keep it off the ground. I'm really curious to cut into these squashes but think the flavour might develop more if I leave them a while longer. In the meantime they're completely in the way of course.

I harvested a few peppers from the lean-to at home this week. The nice ripe red 'lipstick' ones in the middle and some still-green 'quadrato' which started to show signs of damage (not sure from what though...slug?). Oh I've had another bowl of tomatoes too but didn't get a photo. I cleared a lot of the tomato plants yesterday to make room for planting out winter salad seedlings.

Also at home I picked the last of the courgettes (I've now pulled out the plant, which was in the way and the fruits were growing so slowly by now that slugs were damaging them before they got to a decent size). And I was surprised to find a couple of cucumbers hiding in the garden too, I thought the plants had finished. The left hand one is marketmore and the right hand one I forget the name of (burpless something).

In the lean-to I trimmed the top off the basils to promote some fresh growth. If I get round to it I'll make a little pesto with the trimmings. I also have some little basil seedlings that I should bring inside the house as the nights (and sometimes the days) are quite cold for them.

Back down on the plot I noticed a final sweetcorn that I'd missed before - it was on a plant that had blown over in the wind a while back, and was actually quite tasty. Next to it is my last (I think) blue kuri squash to bring home. I have three of these. There are still some other winter squashes to bring back (two more much smaller green butternuts and some gem types) but their stems aren't hard yet (an indication that they're not ripe).

And a real treat - some quinces from a garden I work in. They haven't got a quincy aroma yet, so will sit on the side for a while. I'm not sure if we should have left them on the tree longer but one had already fallen on the ground and rotted, so I picked most of them from the tree, and my friend and I shared them between us (it's her elderly mum's house - just turned 91!). Previously I've made quince cheese and quince jelly but this year I'd like to just use them in a crumble or something (maybe mixed with apple or pear) - anyone cooked with them before?

But that's 'nut' all the harvests this week (Ho Ho). Yes, I picked a few more hazels from the allotment.

They're looking really good so far. I've been through, selecting out the ones which seem to be empty (I.e. Nut is a bit small, doesn't come out of the husk easily, or is a pale colour), and cracked them open to make composting quicker. The rest are ripening in a shallow cardboard box lid, sitting on top of the two big butternut squashes in the kitchen. Yes, the kitchen is feeling rather cramped and messy, nevermind, just think of all the tasty food to come.

Talking of tasty food, yesterday we made a vegetable toad-in-the-hole. You make up the batter mix (in this instance the recipe includes mustard, which is the dark dots in the batter you can see) and partly cook your veggies of choice (everything here home grown except the carrot). Whilst that's happening, heat up the oil in a tray in the oven for ten minutes, then add the batter to the tray (careful of hot oil splashes), add the veggies to the middle of the pan and bake for about 35 mins.

Then...yum!

On a completely different subject, a while ago I mentioned that I'd germinated a couple of mango seeds (prise open the seed case with a blunt knife, pop the seeds in compost in a pot, moisten the compost and seal in a plastic bag or similar until you see growth). These two germinated in the lean-to greenhouse over the summer. Well they were looking really healthy but the bigger one started to get spots on it (possibly related to colder temperatures during the day and night?) so I've brought them inside. We'll have to see if I can keep them alive - anyone got any tips?

Thanks for reading this week. I really need to get to the plot and do some weeding if the rain holds off for a little while, it's looking a bit of a state. Anyway, tonight I'm linking in as usual with Harvest Monday kindly hosted by Dave at Our Happy Acres.

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Harvest Monday - sort of quince cheese

I haven't been to the plot since Thursday, as I had to work over the whole weekend. So looking back at these pics was quite a surprise at how much has been happening!

 

Thursday I brought home two more butternuts, they need to ripen a bit more though, one in particular is still a bit green. So I've got them on a shelf in the lean-to where they'll hopefully get a bit of sun. The orange squash was growing in my new hugelkulture bed, and grew up into the buddliea behind - a bit shady so didn't get very big. It's a really weird shape!

At home in the lean-to, some of the sweet peppers are actually quite red! They're on the top shelf so I guess this helped. I have to stand on a stool to reach them /see them properly, hence the nice surprise. I also snipped off my aubergines that only started setting fruit recently, despite the plants growing for the same time as the toms. I think maybe it gets too hot for them earlier in the year )

And I have some toms ripening slowly in there too. The squash is a tiny one from the back garden, I think it was too shady as well.

Yummy peppers. I'm not a huge fan of green peppers so these red ones are a real treat.

Now, this may look like just a splob of veggies but it was soooo tasty - onion, garlic, aub, pepper and toms. It was so good but there was only enough for two portions - the aubs were all picked and used in one day in one meal - better than nothing though. Mmmmm.

In the back garden I picked all the borlotti beans - more that I thought! I then separated them into flat pods ( for eating like runner beans) and swollen ones for podding.

Some went into a stewey thing

Not my own kale though, I must admit

We had a long walk on Sunday up on the coast and fancied a hearty meal in the evening. Jan took charge to make a hotpot, with squash

All my own veggies, yum

With cheesey wedges she made too (Alas, not my kale again, I got a huge bag from the organic veg stall on the market). Jan took the pics too, you can tell cos she's much more arty than me.

Tonight I picked another pepper

Which we had with scrambled eggs and some leftover hotpot filling mixed in (we'd had most of the leftovers for lunch - very filling, and weighed a lot too, my work bag was very heavy!)

On my day off last week I decided to make quince cheese. It started off okay but didn't end that well! I used a recipe from The River Cottage preserves book

The lovely quinces (from my friend's mum's garden)

Give them a wash, chop 'em all up and just cover with water

Cook them up until nice and soft, then leave for a few hours. I then also mashed them against the side of a the pan with a spoon

Then push through a sieve to get out the juice and small particles (if this was for a jelly you'd strain only the liquid off)

Next, weigh the liquid, place back in a clean pan and add an equal weight of sugar (for me this was about 1.5kg). Bring to the boil and simmer for about an hour until thickened, then pot-up.

 

So, all was going okay until the very end, when instead of scooping off the scum (aerated liquid) I decided to splop it all in the jars and then scoop it out (which had worked when I recently made elderberry and apple jelly). But because the mixture was much thicker than for a jelly, some of the scum didn't float to the top and settled itself at the bottom. Sigh! And it started setting quite quickly so I couldn't scoop it all out. This means all but one of the jars have bubbly bits in.

 

You can see a bit in the pic below. The rest of the jars were too embarrassing so I turned them round for the photo! The bowl has the scum inthat I did manage to scoop off, which I added as a sweetener to a huge pan of stewed fruit, rather than waste it.

So I was a bit disappointed in the end with those. I don't think they're good enough to give away as proper presents. Ho hum. I also feel a bit like I wasted them - the pure quince juice actually had a really nice flavour on its own, so didn't need loads of sugar to make something tasty. Next time (probably next year) I think I'll just use quince for mixed fruit (it's quite a hard fruit so would need cooking first before adding softer fruit like apples).

Oh also, if you're making a proper quince cheese you might do it in smaller portions or in a tray, to slice and have with real cheese or meat (if you eat meat). But I just put mine in jars.

That's been my fruit and veggie week!

Linking in with Harvest Monday with Dave at Our Happy Acres

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Quince jelly

So these were quinces that andrew from my allot site gave me. He has a really small bush that he grew from a seed. He reckons this year it had 90 fruits! They're not v big fruits, with not much flesh so I decided to make a jelly as you just chop the whole lot up rather than having to cut out the core etc.

I used a jelly recipe from the River Cottage preserves book by Pam Corbin.

First chop up the fruits. I didn't weigh them as it didn't really matter too much - you work out the amount of sugar to add after you've strained the juice off. Although you do add 100ml of cider vinegar in the recipe. Not sure what that actually does to the recipe but it had a very good set.

Anyway, here's the quinces having a rinse. Although it looks like some are damaged (brown) they're actually all fine and rock hard.

And one chopped in half - not much flesh as probably an ornamental variety.

You add enough water to cover the fruit and bring to the boil then simmer (covered) until the fruit is soft. I did chuck in two or three apples too as they needed using up., that you can see on top. I hadn't added the water at this point.

After they were soft I gave them a bit of a bash around with the spoon to break them up a bit and get more juice out.

Then I used my makeshift strainer (upturned stool) and left them overnight. You scald the jelly bag first to get rid of germs, I do this by putting it in a small bowl of boiling water.

With the straining, I start it off with the jug a bit higher up (more plates) to reduce the amount of splash, then remove some plates when it starts filling up. Also I strain straight into a jug as the next thing is you need to know the volume of juice anyway, so it saves washing up.

In the morning - if you want a really clear jelly you're not meant to squeeze the bag but I'd rather get more jelly for the effort, so I squeeze it as much as I can! You have to be careful the bag doesn't split.

This is the juice that had come out by the morning

And after I'd given it a good old squeeze, quite a lot more!

When you know the volume of liquid, you measure a particular ratio of sugar. For every 600ml of liquid you add 450g of sugar.

Bring the liquid to a boil and then stir the sugar in ( it's important to add the sugar after the liquid is boiled) making sure it's all dissolved and add the vinegar (I'll have to just check at what point the vinegar went in, am writing on the train, heading away for the weekend).

You then rapid boil for 10 mins or so and can check for a set (turn off the heat and place a teaspoonful on a cold plate). I could see as soon as I turned the heat off it was already set, as a skin started forming on top, so had to act quickly to pot it up into sterilised jars. It's got a really nice flavour, and lovely colour. The batch I made a few years ago was pink (made with proper cooking quinces) but this batch turned out a nice orange.

It was pretty clear despite the extra squeezing! I didn't get too much scum either - you can skim that off whilst boiling. I left it and just moved it aside and then ate it at the end (after all, it's just the same as the jelly, just has air bubbles in). I used a small glass jug for filling up the jars as they're quite small jars and the funnel wouldn't fit it.

So that's it! If I ever get a bit more space I think I'd grow a quince tree. I wouldn't be allowed one on my allot as they've introduced a maximum number of trees etc and I already have more than that witht the apples and plum and hazel. Maybe I could sneak a little bush in though.

 

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