Well Christmas is tomorrow and I went down to the plot to check on the brussel sprouts. They are looking healthy if a little small and I picked enough to cater for Christmas lunch tomorrow. What a proud day to be able to serve them up to my family.
I will toss them in butter with bacon bits and walnuts. While the potatoes I still have left are too waxy to make really good roast potatoes (I always favour a Maris Piper potato for that) I will still use them to make salmon fishcakes to eat on boxing day.
In the mood for some cooking and loving Chinese food (at least before the diet starts in January) I also decided to try out a recipe I'd seen in BBC Good Food magazine. Chinese seaweed. I was surprised to see that it isn't actually seaweed but cabbage shredded and fried. I used a small savoy cabbage and some sprout tops, shallow fried them in some plain oil and then tossed them in a sweet sour mix with toasted sesame seeds. The sweet sour mix is two parts sugar and one part salt.
Delicious (and easy).
Top tip: think ahead to enjoy flavours of summer in the winter
Instead of buying expensive flavoured vodkas (think Vom Fass at Selfridges - delicious but expensive) why not try making your own? It's the easiest thing in the world. Even Tom and I could do it.
Take two litres of cheap vodka - we used Sainsburys basics. Add 2 punnets of raspberries into a kilner jar with a bit of sugar and keep in the cool. Shake every day and taste (the best bit) until you are happy with it. Don't try using lemon grass as it was unsatisfactory and we ended playing catch up with more raspberries.
Delicious but dangerously easy to drink!
Top tip: Keep trying exotics - they might surprise you
Well not only have we had amazing frosts but we have also had snow showers that disabled the Southeast and threatened Brussel sprout farmers. Apparently despite frosts making sprouts sweeter, the snow and prolonged bad weather has meant that farmers can't harvest during their usual hours (the sprouts go black if picked when frozen) so hopefully my few on the allotment will be worth a million pounds. Well, a girl can hope. Mind you, as we are not allowed to profit from the plot I will just have to enjoy the kudos of serving our own sprouts on Christmas day.
In the mean time I have been enjoying using kale which I can sometimes find a bit tough in an Asian inspired dish. Boil up the leaves in chicken stock and add noodles and sprinkle with dried shallots - a perfect and nourishing lunchtime snack.
Just before the frosts hit I had the excitement of harvesting the first and last of the physalis or cape gooseberries as they are known. I thought they would never ripen and thought the seedling I bought at the Hilly Fields Country Fayre would be a complete dud. It grew but stayed a resolute green. And then by magic, fruits appeared. Not many but they were lovely.
Tangy and sweet, they are great dipped in melted chocolate but they are great on their own too. It just goes to show don't give up on a plant too soon (unless it's carrots, peppers or aubergine where it really isn't worth it).
Well Christmas is tomorrow and I went down to the plot to check on the brussel sprouts. They are looking healthy if a little small and I picked enough to cater for Christmas lunch tomorrow. What a proud day to be able to serve them up to my family.
