Chanterelles

It's not all food from the vegetable patch. Yesterday, whilst walking the cats, I found three chanterelles. This is thrilling, I didn't think they grew in our woods and it's terribly exciting. Chanterelles are some of the most delicious and sought after fungi in the forest. I shall be going back to look for more.



These are some of the easiest fungi to identify but it's still possible to make painful or lethal mistakes. I was lucky enough to be shown how to identify them by my Swedish relatives. All Swedes are demon mushroom gatherers and it's practically a national sport for them. If you're not so lucky with your family, try to join a mushroom hunting walk with an expert or study your books very carefully.

Things to note from the picture are the beautiful yellow colour, not shaded or patchy in any way, the ridges under the cap which extend down the stem and the solid and sturdy growth. You will read that they have a fruity smell a little like apricots. This may not be apparent while you're gathering them but if you keep them in a paper bag for an hour or two and then sniff the fragrance will probably be there to a lesser or greater degree.



I didn't really have enough for much of a production. Simply sliced, fried in a little oil with just a smidge of garlic (I used one thin slice from a clove with these) and a good sprinkle of pepper made a wonderful breakfast.

All from the Garden

Not really been cooking these last few days again. This is what I've been eating, variations on potato salad with all the main ingredients being home grown and very simply prepared.

To vary tonight's supper, I baked the potatoes and beetroot before chopping up, mixing with a little chopped shallot (not in the picture, I forgot but added it afterwards!) and some blanched skinned broad beans and dressing in a little soya yoghurt with grainy mustard.

Other garden produce based meals are huge pots of leafy greens, leaves from the beets, magentaspreen, thinnings and trimmings, quickly wilted down, chopped and seasoned with pepper and cider vinegar or stews of cubed vegetables simmered in vegetable stock and miso and served almost as a soup with nutritional yeast as a garnish. All rather basic stuff and would be horribly boring except for the joy of picking my dinner minutes before I eat it and knowing that the work is all mine.

I've been working out some new ways of using courgettes too, but I'll save those for another post or there'll be nothing to write about next week. Hope you're all enjoying your summer cooking.

Wheat and Peas

In this case, bulgar wheat and chickpeas. I've just read an interesting article on Agricultural Biodiversity about diet, referencing work that tentatively suggests eating bitter vegetables and marginal foods may increase your life span because the body recognises that the food isn't optimal for offspring and damps down the reproductive systems. That's rather a poor precis so I recommend you follow the link to Jeremy's piece and go on from there.

This light evening meal isn't particularly poor nutritionally but does include some food that might only be eaten in desperation, beetroot leaf stalks. They were just so pretty and succulent looking that I couldn't bear to waste them.

Cook some bulgar (pre-cooked whole wheat grains, cracked and dried) in twice its volume of water. Add a little salt and herbs if you desire. The bulgar takes about 10 mins to cook so after five minutes add your washed and neatly chopped beet leaf stems (just like chard really!) and allow the whole thing to cook. Take off the heat after another five minutes, cover and leave to cool while you prepare the rest of the salad.

I used a lot of cucumber in this, had to or it would have ended up in the compost, shallots, chickpeas (from a tin or otherwise precooked), parsley, lemon juice, a little olive oil for flavour, salt and pepper, effectively making a warm tabbouleh with beet stems in it. I needed to sharpen the flavour with a teaspoon of cider vinegar but it's by no means essential, adjust to your own taste by varying the amounts of lemon juice.

Subsistence food perhaps but pretty good.

A curry of Pumpkin Tips

Not many cooking exploits to record, the harvest is beginning and simply cooked veggies from the garden (think new potatoes and broad beans in no particular order) are making most of my meals.

This though, is a slightly more complex preparation utilising some pumpkin prunings, the luscious tender tips of the vines. It's a less well known way of using cucurbits, in the UK we tend to wait for the fruit but if you're hungry the greens make good eating. I had to cut the tips anyway, as the plants need training to stop them overwhelming everything around them.

Serves two.

Prepare some pumpkin tips. I had seven or eight. Use just the top 15cm or so with one or two leaves chopped into 3cm pieces and rinsed well.

Chop a boiled potato or two into small dice. I used some leftovers.

Take:

3 cloves
1.5 dry red chillies
1 teaspoon cumin seed
1 teaspoon coriander seed
1/2 teaspoon black peppercorns
2 teaspoons sesame seed

Toast these spices in a dry pan for a few moments until fragrant, then cool slightly and grind into a fine powder in a spice grinder or your pestle and mortar. Adjust the chilli heat to suit your self.

Add to the ground spices:

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon (you can use some whole cinnamon and grind it with the other spices above if you like)
1/2 teaspoon ground turmeric

Grate:

about 3cm fresh ginger root
3 or 4 cloves of garlic

Chop finely:

1 medium onion

Gently fry the onion in some vegetable oil until starting to colour, then add the garlic, ginger and spices and mix together.

Add:

a small piece of tamarind paste soaked in a little warm water (or use 1 tsp. vinegar)

Add the potato and pumpkins tips along with some water, about 300ml should do it but you need to adjust this to your taste. The greens exude some liquid during cooking.

Stir well and cover the pan to cook gently while the greens wilt. Should take about 10-15 minutes. Add some chopped coriander leaves and mix in.

Sizzle a couple of teaspoons of mustard seed in some oil and pour over the curry at the end of cooking.

Serve with chapathis.