Foraging in your own back garden

The other day we made a rather unusual discovery in our shaded vegetable patch at home. Firstly I know a shaded veg patch isn't ideal - it was the result of bad planning on my part when we erected a trellis fence half way down the garden and sited the veg beds immediately behind it in its shade. Oops. The area is also overlooked by trees but is hardly a woodland glade where one would expect to find what we found. But enough teasing...

We found a large growth looking a little like an alien brain. It was clearly a fungus but was it edible? Consultation with some eastern European colleagues who professed to be more in tune with the land and self sufficiency (despite being transplanted to this metropolis) yielded ominous results.

They declared it best to steer clear and they didn't recognise it from the perhaps vague photos sent through by Tom.

However I had a hunch. A hunch that we had a prized morel in our back yard. Online research showed morels to look similarly pitted and to have a hollow stem. There are false morels which are poisonous but they have solid insides. With trepidation we cut open the growth and to our delight it was hollow.
The next challenge was how to eat it. After worried enquiries by my mother when I told her we were about to eat an almost identified mushroom, we quickly checked where the nearest A&E was (Lewisham I believe). We went for one of 10 easy morel recipes - mushroom and butter pasta. Chopped and added to sweet sweated onions and garlic in butter and served with angel hair spaghetti made for a wonderful meal. Delicious and we are still here to tell the tale.

A word of warning: Do be very careful when identifying mushrooms and if in doubt leave it out.
Other foraged foods that could be found pretty easily are wild garlic (ransoms) and nettles. As usual avoid plants near paths and busy roads to avoid exhaust fume pollution and "doggy messages".

Rhubarb rhubarb (and chard)



Chard stalks before being blanched

Before the deluges came I harvested a vast harvest of rhubarb and chard. With 2kg of rhubarb and 1.612kg of chard I had to get out all the recipe books to use up the bounty. I made three dishes with each so it's been a week of rhubarb and chard for us.

The recipes were:
- Rhubarb and cinnamon cake for Riverford Farm Everyday and Sunday cook book
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Everyday-Sunday-Riverford-Farm/dp/0007388268/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1335172840&sr=8-2#reader_0007388268
It comes out a little 'puddingy' - I like to call it moist (apart from hating that word).
60g unsalted butter
380g sugar
3 large eggs
drops vanilla extract
300g self raising flour
1 tsp bicarb of soda
1 tsp cinnamon
250ml creme fraiche (I used used up left over custard and 0% fat Greek yoghurt)
450g rhubarb cut into 1cm pieces

Rhubarb cinnamon cake

Oven at 160 degrees. Cream the butter and sugar together. Add eggs, vanilla. Add flour (sifted if you can be bothered - I couldn't), bicarb and cinnamon, fold through creme fraiche and rhubarb. Cook for 40-50 mins until skewer comes out clean.
- Rhubarb and custard cake where they advise using ready made custard - I used more than the recommended quantity but then I also used a low fat version.

Rhubarb and custard cake

- Pickled rhubarb. This is something I first tasted at Mike and Ollie's supper club in Deptford and it was great with mackerel. I liked it so much I got the recipe and here it is in Mike's own words "Boil together cider vinegar, 1/4 of the vinegars volume in sugar, a few bay leaves and juniper berries. Pour over chopped and cleaned rhubarb and hey presto! It will keep for some time."

Chard gratin

- Chard gratin using stalks. Basically layers of blanched chard stalks (save leaves for the 'risotto' below. Top with a reduced tomato sauce (mine was left over from a pasta). Mix chopped onion and garlic into creamy mix, with cream cheese and 0% Greek yoghurt. Finally top with breadcrumb mixed with Parmesan. Pop into the oven for a bit until browned on top.
- Chard stalks and anchovy mix, served with pasta. Essentially chopped blanched stalks mixed with melted butter, garlic and a few anchovy fillets. From 'Vegetables from an Italian Garden' http://www.amazon.co.uk/Vegetables-Italian-Garden-Season---Season/dp/0714860808/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1335173364&sr=1-1

Chard 'risotto' with barley

- I used the left over chopped chard leaves in a pearl barley 'risotto' (I think it's called orsetto in Italian) inspired the latest series of Two Greedy Italians. Here they made it with pork mince but I kept it veggie and substituted chard for spinach. http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/pearl_barley_with_21752

The rain has limited my planting plans but in fear of running out of space at home I scraped a trench into the plot with a hoe and plopped the pea seedlings into it and left them to the garden gods. I must remember to provide pea sticks for support but they will have to muddle through for the moment. I also created a little line of beetroot seedlings on the garlic onion borders.
Apparently I can't harvest the onions and garlic until early to mid Summer. The internet informs me that this is probably June at the earliest. Perhaps I can care for the tomato and courgette seedlings long enough to delay planting them out till June?

Checking in with the changes

B.W. Before Weeding

After heat and drought, temperatures are back to seasonal norm and Easter onwards gave us rain. However now half the country is in drought (predicted to be the worst since 1976) and we are unlikely to have hosepipe bans lifted until December.

Temperatures at night dropped so much that the emerging potato tops have browned a little in the frost. This weekend it was time to plant last Shetland black potatoes and earth up others. This is done easily by using a rake to drag the soil from the mounds to cover the green (and brown) leaves. Damage to the leaves is noticeably worse on the plot than near house where there are no signs of frost damage.  The house itself must give them a little protection.

I finally got around to weeding the onions and garlic which are shallow rooted and hate competition. This should be a lesson to me to regularly weed rather than do a marathon job - two wheelbarrows later and I was exhausted.  But as you can see, it made a huge difference. Now I just need to fertilise them and water the Jerusalem artichokes which are in the shadow of the grape vines so don't get rained on even if it does rain.

A.W. After Weeding

Great excitment was felt (well, by me anyway) after the weeding revealed our very first stems of asparagus. 2 weedy little specimens but mine own no less.
Window box salad is through as are some spring onion shoots (I think).
We had a mini disaster with the chili seedlings. Tom knocked them off the window sill and all but 3 seedlings are no more. I suppose it's a crude form of survival of fittest. Mind you I don't need many just enough to make chili jelly. Plus  the overwintering grafted one we bought from the RHS Hampton Court flower show is coming back to life. Both tomatoes and chili are actually perennials but our winters usually kill them off and they grow so easily from seed that they are usually treated as annuals.
Other seedlings that are doing well are the butter nut squash - I need to pot them on as can't plant out yet but I want to make room for sowing giant pumpkin seeds. My beetroot and PSB (purple sprouting broccoli) probably need repotting too as they are too fiddly and tiny to plant out but I will also try to direct sow as they look unhappy in their seed trays.

Some tomato seedlings are out but I have let them get leggy and should really pot them on deeper (ie plant them with half the stem submerged) to allow for roots to form further up the stem and make sure they are sturdy.  I also want to sow the black tomatoes to test them out.  Where will I find all the place?

And they're off!

St Patrick's day saw me down at the plot harvesting the last of the Jerusalem artichokes - 4.88kg of them to be precise. This is where all my recipe books will come in handy I hope.

To start within made a Jerusalem gratin from Sarah Raven's book 'Sarah Raven's Garden Cookbook'. I used what looked like a sweet potato but it was white in the middle so have assumed it was a yam. We have a kilo of prosciutto we brought back from Sicily so I was a little more generous with that. It tasted nicer than it looks here, I promise (we started eating before preserving it for posterity!)

I have also been busy on the seed sowing side.
3 types of tomato - black, moneymaker, mixed cherry
Purple sprouting broccoli
Chili

There are also now four large potato tubs on the patio with Charlotte x 2, British Queen x 1 and Ratte in. Plus a mixed lot in the old bean planter.

Last year, the planters were an unexpected success so fingers crossed for this year. The dry weather won't have helped the potatoes and garlic that need lots of water in the early growing stages. Annoyingly, having ignored potatoes most of the year they are the one thing I really want to eat but have no more in store.

The broad beans sowed on 20 February have come through. The experiment is inconclusive. I can see no difference between those exposed to the mild weather and those protected by a cloche.

Times of extremes

In the week the clocks went forward the days were reaching 22 degrees by lunchtime but the clear skies allowed temperatures to drop at night.  A quick visit to the plot saw a touch of frost on the strawberries but everything else untouched. Yorkshire has just joined the South in suffering from drought and though temperatures are due to return to a seasonal average, there is still no sign of rain.

Of the 3 potato trenches I planted, Sharpe's Express and Swift are poking through but Pentland Javelin is still staying under the soil. At home, the potatoes Bernie and I opportunistically planted in pots in the front have survived their January planting and are coming through.

Saturday was a day of action - clearing side passage, taking out the last of brassicas in raised beds, pruning and pressure washing before the water ban comes in on the 4th April.

In contrast to the highs of March (It's official. March 2012 was the sunniest, driest on record in the UK.) April temperatures are back to a seasonal average and we even had some rain on the 3rd. (the right sort of rain not just flash flood heavy rain that washes down the drain.)