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.

 

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Harvest Monday - Summery / summary

We could really do with some rain please...we keep getting rain and storms forecast but then nothing happens...they just seem to pass us by in Norwich. The positive side of this, is that our Bank Holiday / Jan's birthday activities weren't rained-off....including a train trip to Cambridge Botanic Gardens, and a picnic in Eaton Park in Norwich (amazing huge park).

 

So anyway, I have had to do a bit of watering to keep things ticking over, prioritising plants which need it the most - for example, I've noticed with runner beans, if they're too dry the pods go all withery and/or start filling-out with big beans much too soon. Most of mine have been ok though.

Curcurbits (squashes and cucumbers) are also important to keep well-watered. The yellow patty pans have a delicious flavour, quite different to a courgette (also tasty).

Most of my cucumber plants have had it now...all shrivelled up and producing funny-shaped fruit, like these two at the top. A few fruits are still tasting ok though, but we have to try each end before using, to make sure they're not bitter.

I kept missing this top courgette (hiding under a leaf) but noticed it just before it became too marrowy.

A bouquet of chard...not quite as nice as flowers but the stems are pretty

Having so many beans this week I decided to try fermenting some. After a bit of Internet searching, a ratio of 1tbsp salt dissolved in 500ml water seemed a fairly common proportion used but if anyone has other preferences I'd love to know.

I chose some of the straighter beans, so they'd pack tighter in the jar. Laying the jar sideways first helps with this too, as the beans aren't falling all over each other.

Cut to length so they fit inside the jar ok

They're actually packed in really tight here, some of the beans are a bit shorter and are in shadow

I added some garlic, chilli flakes and black mustard seed too. Various fermenting recipes said to keep jars closed tight but then open them once a day to let the ferment gases escape, so I'm following this advice and will see how it goes. I also made a jar of chopped courgette (with a couple of oak leaves added for the tannin to keep the courgettes crisp), which interestingly seems to be fermenting quicker than the beans. I will probably make some more this coming week so might vary the recipe a bit as an experiment.

This week I've harvested the first sweetcorn, it has a brilliant flavour and doesn't even need butter. (I need to check on the variety, definitely one to grow again). I grew them in four short rows, to make a block shape. The cobs on the downwind side are quite well pollinated, with very few gaps in the kernels. In the pic below we enjoyed some with Jan's cheese and courgette muffins and a concoction of allotment veggies. The muffins were leftover from the picnic...we've had several meals of picnic leftovers combined with veggies. Ooh I should mention an amazing cheese and onion quiche made by our friends with eggs from their own hens...so delicious. I reckon the eggs really made a difference.

The tomato harvests have continuted this week. For the picnic we made a big tomato salad with chopped tomatoes, red onion, olive oil, black pepper and balsamic vinegar. The tom/vinegar/oil liquid left in the bottom of the tub after we'd finished the tomatoes made a really good salad dressing too.

The second harvest (picked earlier today) needed a bigger bowl..

Here's a view from our lounge into the lean-to, full of tomatoes and peppers. This was after I'd picked the big bowl of toms so there's not much red on show. Hmm, There is a pepper that looks like it's ripe though.

The blackberries are stil heaving with fruits. I leave the brambles as a boundary down one side of my allotment plot (28 metres-ish), so there are masses to pick from.

I made a couple more apple and blackberry loaves, for the picnic

We've been lucky this week receiving delicious foodie gifts too....home made rhubarb and vanilla jam, rocket pesto, 6 eggs, and two absolutely gorgeous figs.

That's definitely something I aspire to...my own hens and a fig tree, yum.

 

Thanks for reading this week, I'm linking in with Harvest Monday, kindly hosted by Dave at Our Happy Acres.

 

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Harvest Monday - blackberry and apple loaf

After a long period without much rain we finally had a decent downpour last night, hooray. It was quite windy at times too but there doesn't seem to have been any damage.

 

This week the harvests have picked up even more, loads of runner beans, courgettes and cucumbers. I haven't photographed them all but you get the idea....

Couldn't resist a little face, hehe

Several batches of beans like this

More self-sown chard too

And kale

I've made a tasty curry (freezing a portion of leftovers)

And a big batch of a more Mediterranean - type thing, with courgettes, tomatoes, red onions, lots of garlic and rosemary. My red onions are teeny, the slugs really attacked the stems, which hindered their growth.

I also added in some kale plus some haricot beans which I cooked-up today in the slow cooker, after soaking them yesterday. Haricots seem to be one of the quickest pulses to cook that I've tried so far (they're quite small).

This week I've harvested the first sweetcorn, it was really good, mmm, didn't even need any butter. On the whole the corn hasn't done too well but we'll get a few cobs.

Onto more fruity things...

First tiny sweet peppers with a pen for scale (I think they're meant to be bigger!)

A crown prince squash from one of my plants plus a spaghetti squash from an allotment neighbour. I'll try roasting the spaghetti squash - I cooked one that way years ago which I think is nicer than when just boiled. I'm not sure how many winter squashes I'll get this year, they sulked for a long time before doing much, so we'll have to see how the next few weeks go weatherwise.

I've had a couple of nice big bowls of tomatoes though

Picked today

I'm continuing to remove lower leaves and thin out ones higher up to let in more light and air..this is the 'after'. I'll remove some more soon too.

From the allotment I've had a few apples including these below. You can see some codling moth damage (and the caterpillars were still inside). There was still a good amount of edible apple though.

(A joke from my childhood "Q: what's worse than finding a maggot in your apple? A: finding half a maggot")

I cut into these apples rather than biting into them and risk finding half a maggot!

These were better. There were a load more windfalls too, which I combined with blackberries, ginger and cinammon, and froze in tubs (after a shuffle round in the freezer to make more room).

I used the peel and (non-maggoty) cores to make a couple of batches of cider vinegar - just add water and a few teaspoons of honey. Mix around, cover with something breathable (I've used kitchen towel), leave for a couple of weeks to bubble and ferment (check occasionally to push any poking-out bits back under the liquid, otherwise they might develop mould), then strain out the liquid and leave it to mature a few weeks or longer (I use old cider vinegar bottles and feel rather good when I see a price sticker still on them, knowing I've just made some for virtually free)

Talking of honey, my friends who have a couple of hives in their back garden in the city gave us a jar from their latest harvest, mmm. By the sounds of it they've had a bit of a nightmare with swarms this year but the honey looks good.

My friend Andrew has a greengage tree on his plot. The fruits all seem to ripen at different times, which means you have to keep checking for windfalls, but they've got quite a nice flavour

I've picked a couple of big tubs of blackberries again (and eaten quite a lot straight from the canes). There are some lovely big plump ones which attract your attention but also when I tried a few tiny ones of a different variety they were super sweet. The smaller ones take longer to pick but it's worth adding a few to the mix. There are so many though, I can't pick them all (well I would if I had more freezer space).

I wanted to use some up in a cakey-thing so a Google search came up with Blackberry and Apple Loaf on BBC Good Food. I simplified the recipe by just using Demerara sugar and didn't bother separating out any of the mix. I also doubled the recipe to make two loaves. Some blackberries get gently mixed in whilst others are popped on top. Oh, also I didn't include any orange zest but it didn't seem to matter.

Turned out nicely!

And it wasn't too sweet either. I gave half a cake to our neighbours, shared some with friends and family, and we ate quite a few slices ourselves, hehe.

We're having a picnic with friends at the weekend so this recipe may come in handy again, especially as there's so many blackberries around at the moment.

 

Thanks for reading this week, I'm linking in as usual with Harvest Monday kindly hosted by Dave at Our Happy Acres.

 

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