Roasted tomato and cumin chutney

Faced with a major influx of ripe tomatoes, I realised that we had just used the last of a favourite - roasted tomato and cumin chutney. It goes wonderfully with a strong-flavoured cheese such as a mature cheddar or St Maure chèvre, or with rich meats such as lamb or duck. We only used six large Lemon Boy tomatoes (makes a kilo) and hardly dented the pile of produce. Having used (for fourteen years! Blimey) Jeremy Lee's recipe from The Guardian of August 21 1999, I looked it up on the web and couldn't find it, although I did find Mr Lee waxing lyrical on the subject of spices a year later. So here it is in all its tasty glory! It makes three remarkably small jars - I use little terrines which were previously used for patés.

1 tbsp black mustard seeds
100ml malt vinegar
1kg peeled tomatoes
70ml olive oil
1tbsp cumin seeds
3 red Birdseye chillies, chopped
2 tsp minced red chilli (I used frozen chillis as our "Cayenne" turned out to be a sweet pepper)
60g root ginger, roughly chopped
6 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
1½ tsp turmeric
60g palm sugar or light soft brown sugar
2tbsp Thai fish sauce (Nam Pla)
Salt and black pepper
Nam Pla is very salty so you may not want any salt at all - I didn't

Put the mustard seeds into a bowl, pour over the vinegar and leave overnight.

Peel the tomatoes...

Next morning, pre-heat the oven to 200C/gas mark 6. Place the tomatoes in a non-metallic dish in a single layer and pour over the olive oil. Roast the tomatoes for an hour. Toss the cumin in a hot dry frying pan over a medium heat until it has darkened. Grind to a powder. Put the cumin, chillies, minced chillies, ginger, garlic, turmeric, sugar, fish sauce and vinegar/mustard seed mixture into a liquidiser. Blend till smooth.

Pour the spice paste into a heavy-bottomed pan over a medium flame and stir until it comes to a boil. Stirring all the time, simmer for 10-12 minutes. This is prone to spitting while cooking.

Add the tomatoes and simmer, still stirring, for another 15 minutes (depending on how juicy your tomatoes are) until the chutney has thickened. Watchpoint here - do not let the chutney catch on the bottom of the pan. Season with salt and  black pepper to taste. Pour into clean warm, dry jars and seal.

Just two and a half small jars...

 Store for two to three weeks before eating.

The first jars from the 2013 tomato harvest...

From Guardian ‘Living Food’, August 21 1999 – Jeremy Lee, Blue Print Cafe, Butlers Wharf London SE1

Posted by Pauline [not Tim]

Chock full o'nuts

After the total failure of our nut harvest last year, when we didn't get a single walnut on our old tree, this year seems to be making up for it. This is probably down to the weather improving pollination, and the weather again, which has caused a crash in the population of small rodents. Today I harvested cobnuts and filberts from our bushes, planted in 2007 and producing a reasonable yield for the first time.

Hazel Nuts [Corylus avellana]

Cobnuts (avelines in French) are hazelnuts with attitude. Cobs and hazels are the same species, Corylus avellana, and we have a wild specimen in the hedge at the end of the orchard. Filberts are a different species, Corylus maxima, originating on the Balkan peninsula. The cobnut has a short husk (papery casing to the nut) from which the nut protrudes, whereas the husk of the filbert is long and covers the nut. The famous Kentish Cob is in fact a filbert. As the flowering of male and female flowers does not always coincide and weather conditions may be unfavourable, the Royal Horticultural Society advise that better pollination is obtained if two or more cultivars are planted.

A comparison... Filberts on the left, hazel cobs on the right.

Our allotmenting friend Andy Lawrence kindly gave us seven offsets (suckers or whips) from his Webb's Prize Cobnut which we planted in a diagonal across our orchard to separate the tree fruit area from the soft fruit. Over the years the littlest of these clung to life and finally established itself, while the others grew away strongly. All seven have fruited this year, the little one producing two clusters, but, hey, it got there! Today's harvest came to 457 grammes, or just over a pound, when removed from the husks, not vast but very satisfying. The husks are very long and I suspect they have some filbert in their ancestry!

The harvest, part way through tidying... Webb's Prize Cob are already bagged... the Halle'sche Reisennuss are being dehusked.

The filbert came from RV Roger of Pickering, North Yorkshire, an excellent source of orchard fruit tees, also bulbs and roses - and they deliver to France! We chose Halle'sche Reisennuss filbert for its splendid Wagnerian name, although it is also known as Hall's Giant. It came as a bush, I would guess about three years old, and has so far retained its advantage in size although filberts are smaller trees than cobs. After de-husking, the two sets of nuts look identical, and the weight of filberts came in at 451 grammes.

A close up of the Halle'sche Reisennuss filberts.

Finally we found a small handful of hazel nuts on the tree in our front hedge. These look very ripe and we probably lost a lot more - a reminder for next year to look for them before the cultivated nuts are ready.

We had already harvested about 150g of cobs and filberts, and a few others remain still to ripen, so I reckon the final yield will be something over a kilo. They will be perfect for hazelnut ice cream - recipes to follow!

Yellow soup

This soup can be made with conventional red tomatoes and zucchini-style courgettes, in which case it will be Tomato and Courgette Soup. The source is Elaine Borish's excellent "What shall I do with all those courgettes?" and for pictures see here.

Ingredients

4 medium crookneck squash, chopped (remove seeds if very ripe and use more squash)
2 medium onions, chopped
2 tablespoons sunflower or olive oil
2 large "Lemon Boy" tomatoes, skinned and chopped
1 litre chicken stock or vegetable stock
1 teaspoon salt
Fresh herbs e.g parsley, basil, chives, chopped

Heat the oil in a large pan. Cook the onions and squash on low heat for 10 minutes, covered,stirring occasionally. Add the boiling stock and cook for a further 20 minutes. Tip in the tomatoes and hit the pan with your whizzy stick until smooth (or allow to cool slightly and run the mixture in a food processor / blender). Add the rest of the ingredients and cook for a further 5 minutes. Serve with a garnish of your choice or allow to cool completely and serve chilled. Serves 6.

A Pain in the Crookneck

For the second year running we have grown Yellow Crooknecks....
they have rapidly become a  favourite.
We had three plants to start with...
one didn't thrive and eventually went to the "great composter in the corner"....
but the other two grew well...
very well...
very well indeedy!!
They are...
HUGE!!

The crooknecks are the two, huge, dark green plants...The gap on the right is where the third was!

They are triffid-like...

And underneath those leaves the triffid hides its mouth....

with droopy yellow tentacles...
and I'm beginning to dream about the things!
Rank upon rank of marching, yellow, gooselike gourds!!


We have used Yellow Crookneck instead of courgette in any dish that will take it...
and in many, many others.
We aren't going yellow through jaundice...
it's them thar crooknecks*!!!

Not more Crooknecks!!!!..... please!

Not that I am complaining....
oh no!
Crooknecks are creamier and more dense in the flesh than a courgette...
slightly sweeter, too...
so we started using them as a courgette substitute because our real ones were very late.

They are great sliced and fried...
they are nice raw with mayo...
they are wonderful in a courgette and tomato soup...
which, as Pauline decided to use Lemon Boy tomatoes...

A Yellow Crookneck squash with a Lemon Boy tomato.

was an all yellow affair... quite a visual/taste experience...
and great cold, too!!

A large pan full of chunky yellow soup!

And this serving for one barely dented the surface...

Pauline also made a yellow Ratatouille for bottling...

Ratatouille using Yellow Crookneck

and a very yellow version of a marrow mustard pickle...
That looks wonderful in the bottle... all glowing!!

Yellow Crookneck Mustard Pickle

Then Ken posted a Stuffed Courgette Boat recipe...
right... another use...
so we did a version using the crooknecks...

Cheese stuffed Yellow Crookneck....

and that will be repeated, too!!

Stuffed Yellow Crookneck served with fresh "Moonlight" Runner Beans and new "Charlotte" spuds.

Fortunately...
very fortunately...
we have this book...

"What will I do with all those Courgettes?" by Elaine Borish

...and all the recipes work with Crooknecks!!

*And possibly all the Lemon Boys...
we seem to have a yellow theme going this year....

Savoury bread & butter pudding

In the Summer 2013 issue of Beer...
the quarterly magazine of CAMRA...
there was a recipe for a Mediterranean bread and butter pudding...
and it sounded very tasty.
Yesterday we needed a hot meal...

As it left the oven...

But, as usual, we didn't have all the ingredients...
the full recipe as published is at the bottom...
but this is the recipe as I made it...

1 sliced loaf of brioche... this was bought for the recipe... and it was sandwich loaf shaped
98g butter, softened... it was all I had...
200g rather overhard Chévre cheese, "shaved" carefully with a Chinese chopper... the Micro-planes wouldn't touch it!!
15 slices [one packet] of Smoked Austrian ham... from LIDL

and for the custard...
3 whole eggs and 3 yolks.... my recipe for meringue calls for 3 egg whites
1tsp un-smoked paprika... but home grown and ground
1tbs brandy
200ml La Borde "double" cream... so thick it needed extra thinning
250ml milk
I cut back a bit on the liquid to allow for the extra egg white

The method was much as below, but I decided to blend the butter and cheese together with a spoon to make spreading easier... that worked well!
The LIDL ham doesn't have separators which always makes it a bit tricky to get them apart...
and I didn't cut the slices in half... and I had three extra of course!!
When packing them in, I did cut the end crusts in half across, not down...
that allowed me to use the two tops in the centre...
The addition of the liquid for the custard took almost the 45 minutes that you are meant to let it stand... huh?
So I then let it stand another 45 minutes to soak properly... towards the end of this time I pre-heated the oven.
After the 50 mins there was still runny custard in the middle...
so it was back in for another 30 mins...
and, because I like crusty bread & butter pudding...
I didn't do the covering bit...
until the last 30 mins as the crusty outside was how I like to see it after the first 50 mins.

One portion on the plate and you can see the yummy moistness in cross section

We ate half of it hot, with a plain green salad, roast tomato & cumin chutney and sweet pickled ripe Oxheart tomato...
it was exceptionally yummyumm!...

Plated up... the ripe tomato pickle is top left [just below the salad]  with the roast tomato & cumin chutney below it.

Tonight we ate some of it cold...
again with a plain green salad and tomato & cumin chutney...
with the addition of a potato and hard-boiled egg mayonnaise, some radish and half a fresh tomato... again it worked well and would probably be a good picnic main course...
Not often I use a magazine recipe...
but this one really caught my eye.

The actual recipe in the magazine was:

1 loaf of brioche
100g butter, softened
200g Manchego cheese, shaved
12 slices of Serrano ham

and for the custard...
2 whole eggs and 4 yolks
1tsp smoked paprika
1tbs brandy
400ml double cream
150ml milk

Slice brioche into 12 slices,
butter one side of each and top with cheese and a slice of ham.
Cut each slice in half to give 24, then arrange them crust-up in a buttered casserole dish; don't pack too tightly.

Whisk together custard ingredients, pour over the pudding and leave for 45mins.
Pre-heat the oven to 150°C / 300°F / gas mark 2.
Season pudding liberally with freshly ground black pepper.
Cover pudding with greaseproof paper, then aluminium foil; bake for 45-50 minutes, until firm.
Serve with tomato chutney.
Serves four!
No... it would easily serve six to eight!!

The recipe is served as a starter at the Anderson in Fortrose... this hotel/pub, reportedly with a magnificent selection of Belgian bottled ales and UK beers on draught, has been run for the last ten years by one Jim Anderson [formerly a US beer writer] and his wife Anne [a cutting edge chef]... they fled Philadelphia for a Victorian hotel in Scotland... with some success it appears!!