Category: Cooking and eating from the garden

Cooking and eating from the garden7 Comments

Redcurrant chutney

Reclaiming Paradise

What could be more festive than redcurrant chutney? I made this back in the summer from a redcurrant glut and put it in the back of the cupboard to save for Christmas. We opened it a few weeks ago to begin our festive celebrations. It tasted so good I was pleased that we had several jars to see us over the season and into the ‘using up the Christmas cheese’ phase in January. As well as being nice and red and festive it also tastes amazing. Here it is without the cheese: I found a recipe written in my ancestral … Continue reading Redcurrant chutney

Cooking and eating from the garden4 Comments

Green and red tomato salsa

Reclaiming Paradise

Tonight’s impromptu use of garden produce turned out rather good. I was getting impatient waiting for the green tomatoes to ripen, so mixed together some green ones with some nearly red ones, making a rather nice salsa: Green and Red Tomato Salsa If you are very lucky, as we were tonight, add a chopped cucumber – This was the complete crop of crystal lemon cucumbers this year. It tasted good but was disappointingly small and lonely. Oh well, time to start planning next year’s crop. Continue reading Green and red tomato salsa

Cooking and eating from the garden, Growing vegetables, fruit and flowers6 Comments

Summer harvest begins

Reclaiming Paradise

As we pass midsummer the harvest in the garden and allotment is really getting into full flow. The soft fruits are appearing: raspberries, redcurrants, strawberries and even some cherries this year, rescued from the tree before the blackbirds got to them. All this bounty is helping me towards my target of sixty different harvestable fruits, vegetables, herbs and weeds to celebrate my sixtieth birthday. I’ve now passed the half way point and am reasonably optimistic that I’ll meet my target – for an update see here As well as all the summer fruits, the overwintered broad beans are producing great … Continue reading Summer harvest begins

Cooking and eating from the garden4 Comments

Apple and walnut scones

Reclaiming Paradise

It was a day for using up nearly the last of the Howgate Wonder apples. I remembered making apple and walnut bread a couple of years ago – all on the blog here – and that it had been slightly unsatisfactory, my conclusion being that the recipe would be better adapted as scones. So scones it was – and gosh they were good. So revised recipe here: Apple and Walnut Scones 250g wholemeal flour 1 tsp baking powder 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda 100g grated cheese 50g chopped walnuts 2 apples, chopped up small (or one Howgate Wonder) 3 eggs … Continue reading Apple and walnut scones

Cooking and eating from the garden1 Comment

Christmas cooking

Reclaiming Paradise

Dedicated vegetable growers will be able to make an entire Christmas dinner from the garden. I am dedicated but not sufficiently organised or successful to do that. However, we did manage to have Howgate Wonder apples for every meal on Christmas Day: some fruit salad for breakfast, some pieces of apple as part of a snack lunch and in both the red cabbage (a family tradition, cabbage from the farmers’ market) and the Christmas Pudding for the main feast. We also had our own Brussels sprouts, rosemary in the roast potatoes and bay leaf in the bread sauce. For Boxing … Continue reading Christmas cooking

Cooking and eating from the garden, Growing vegetables, fruit and flowers4 Comments

A very purple SixOnSaturday

Reclaiming Paradise

Astonishingly I’ve managed a #Sixon Saturday today – here we go – First of all in the pic above is a bunch of flowers from the garden for my Mum, all blues and purples and whites: lavender (still flowering), a deep purple salvia, white cosmos, blue phacelia. (that’s all the purples though) The sun is still reaching the back of the garden and these Shropshire Lad roses are just gorgeous. They smell as good as they look. The roses in the front garden are also still doing well. The one above is a Gertrude Jekyll. Also in the sun in … Continue reading A very purple SixOnSaturday

Cooking and eating from the garden, Why I garden8 Comments

Apples and raspberries

Reclaiming Paradise

It’s October which means apple season. The apples are in full flow – pictured here a couple of giant Howgate Wonders, with a sensibly sized Sunset for scale October is also birthday season at Reclaiming Paradise which means the apples are put to good use in a variety of cakes. My mother’s is the first birthday of the month, so I used these monsters to make a chocolate apple cake – recipe here . Since she was 85, candles seemed excessive, but I wanted to decorate it with something special. This handful of raspberries, fresh from the garden, seemed the … Continue reading Apples and raspberries

Cooking and eating from the garden8 Comments

Start of the preserving season

Reclaiming Paradise

The jam making season has started here at Reclaiming Paradise. I’ve got a glut of green tomatoes, plums, runner beans, courgettes, a couple of marrows, apples on their way and one giant cucumber Where to to start? Some of the tomatoes are ripening but a few of the others have blight so I reckoned I need to pick some and start the preserving season. Whether to make plum jam and green tomato chutney, or green tomato marmalade and plum chutney? I decided on the marmalade first – it’s simmering away as I write: See here for the recipe – green … Continue reading Start of the preserving season