Own Grown Gardening

  I was lucky enough to collect a windfall of medlar from a local tree a couple weeks ago. As you can see, they are an odd looking fruit that, due to there rather unfortunate shape, where known once as the open-arse.  Although not widely known today, in Medieval Europe, it was a prized fruit. So much so that Charlemagne , in 800AD, mandated that all his gardens grew them. The reason it was so loved is because of the season medlar ripen. The fruit are ready to harvest very late, at the end of November and into December. This is a time when little else sweet remains. Bizzarely, when you harvest them from the tree, they are still hard. Not edible at all. The windfall medlar I collected off the ground where the same. Rock hard. To ripen them, I layed them along a windowsill out of direct sunlight for a good couple weeks.  Medlar probably fell out of favour, and into downright obscurity, due to the strange way they ripen. Some liken it to rotting rather than ripening, which ...

  Winter is closing in here in the United Kingdom. I had a couple tomato plants left with some lovely looking fruit on them, but it is just too cold now and the dark nights too long for them to ripen. Despising waste, I harvested the green tomatoes and composted the plants. The question is what to do with all these green tomatoes... The answer has got to be green tomato chutney of course, lovely with cheese and oat cakes. Here is the recipe. A word of warning, the house will smell of vinegar for days.  Ingredients: - 700g Finely Diced Green Tomatoes - 360ml Malt Vinegar - 1/8tsp English Mustard Powder - 200g Demerara Sugar - 3/8tsp Cayenne Pepper Powder - 70g Diced Apples (cored and peeled) - 1/8tps Ground Ginger Powder - 70g Finely Diced Onions - 10g Grated Fresh Ginger Root - 1/8tsp Sea Salt - 70g Saltanas or Rasins Mix all the ingredients together in a saucepan and slowly bring to the boil, stirring frequently. Once boiling, turn the heat down to a gentle simmer and leave ...

I thought as a follow on from yesterday's post about propagating rosemary, I would share a little gem of a recipe that uses this lovely herb. I find these biscuits somehow simultaneously sweet and savoury, an unusual combination.    SERVINGS 8 biscuits COOK TIME Prep time - 20 min Bake time - 17 to 22 min    BISCUIT INGREDIENTS 1 lemon 1 sprig of rosemary (about 10cm) 120g flour 1/2 teaspoon baking powder 100g butter (salted) 100g sugar 100g ricotta cheese (full fat) 1 egg 1/4 tsp vanilla extract   ICING INGREDIENTS 80g cream cheese (full fat) 80g powdered icing sugar 1 tbsp lemon juice Dash of vanilla extract   BUSCUIT INSTRUCTIONS Preheat the oven to 180 C and line a baking tray with baking paper Zest the lemon Remove the rosemary leaves from the stem and chop the leaves very finely Mix the lemon zest, finely chopped rosemary, flour, and baking powder in a mixing bowl and set aside In a second bowl, cream together the butter and sugar Add the ricotta chee...