ginger pig & beetroot tops with anchovies – a book review

Posted on 19 June, 2013 by Andrea Mynard

It seems ironic that one of the first things I cooked from this very meat biased cookbook was beetroot tops with anchovies. And perhaps odd that someone who was a non-meat eater for 30 years is reviewing The Ginger Pig Farmhouse Cookbook, which has some excellent recipes for home-made cooking chorizo, pancetta and making your own pastrami.

Yet if you read this lovely book, which is packed full of gutsy, full-flavoured dishes from the farmhouse kitchen table (making use of meat from well-reared, naturally fed animals) and realise that I was a fish-eating sort of vegetarian who reared pigs last year, it starts to make sense. Well, in my mind anyway!

Tim Wilson, owner of The Ginger Pig chain of butchers (“There is no great secret to what we do: we simply raise the best animals in the happiest of circumstances, on the finest stretch of the Yorkshire Moors we could find.”) co-wrote this book with Fran Warde, cook and best-selling food writer. Fran states:

“As a food writer it is my passion to search out provenance ingredients. When it comes to meat this means it must have been looked after well, naturally fed, considerately slaughtered, dry aged and purchased from a reputable butcher in order for me to truly enjoy my work in the kitchen.”

There are some interesting recipes for cured meats, preserves, pies, pates and terrines, casseroles and stews, and a great personal story behind The Ginger Pig too. As an antique-dealing property renovator in the 1990s, Tim Wilson bought an eighteenth century farmhouse, with a view to doing it up and selling on as an idyllic country home. But he soon found the pond without ducks splashing about, the pigless sties and the empty fields a bit lifeless.

To cheer himself up he installed a few pigs; before he knew it Tim was breeding Tamworths and experimenting with curing and charcuterie. The son of an antiques dealer (but grandson of a butcher and a grocer) took on a monthly stall at Borough market and found that his tasty pork products from pigs that had led a happy life sold out. He ended up buying a bigger farm in Yorkshire with grazing rights across beautiful moorland, farming rare-breed cattle, sheep and pigs and becoming a popular part of the London food scene. There are currently five Ginger Pig shops. Chutneys, pickles and preserves are still made for them using fruits and vegetables from the farmhouse garden and from locally sourced produce.

As someone who has been converted to eating meat by having pigs to clear the back garden, I’m enthusiastic about the many Ginger Pig recipes that make the most of the animals who have added life and vibrancy to the farm – whether that’s from making Risotto Milanese from home-made chicken stock, Spent hen or yard cockerel casserole or Lardo from pork back fat.

Some of my friends think it’s bizarre that keeping pigs led me to eating meat again. Yet I’d put the effort into feeding them organically, filling up their water when they turned it over and generally getting stuck in mud while looking after them. Later I prepared meat for the freezer, made chorizo, liver pate and air-dried ham, salted some pork for 5 days for ‘pancetta’ and even changed my mind about the health benefits of home-produced lard while rendering fat on the wood-burner.

Not only did I want to sample the results of my work, I knew that these pigs had lived a good life – they had plenty of space, grew slowly over a long period of time, had trees to rub against and natural food. If I was going to eat any meat, this was the sort I felt comfortable with. And as my 5 year old daughter says, “They’re tasty pigs!”

I still feel that I haven’t quite perfected home-brined and cooked ham though and there are some interesting recipes to try here.

The slow-cooked Chinese spiced belly of pork and pulled spicy pork look fabulous too.

Now I enjoy the sort of balance of meat, fish and vegetarian meals that Trine Hahnemann recommends in her Nordic diet and that I feel is good both for my family and our environment. Roasting a traditional breed of chicken that has been reared slowly can seem expensive but provide so many tasty meals if supplemented with lots of home-grown/local veg. And rearing pigs shocked me initially in how much it cost (the price of feed has risen so much) but then there is so much flavour from slivers of the air-dried ham or cubes of pancetta from our Berkshire pigs that it goes a long way in so many meals. We wouldn’t waste a morsel of it, which is surely as it should be.

If you are planning on buying or rearing the best meat (often welfare for the animals happily goes hand in hand with flavour) you can afford but want to be frugal in not wasting any food, the Ginger Pig cookbook is good for inspiration. There are recipes for making stock from bones and classic British recipes for broths and pies that our grandmothers would be proud of.

There are also some great recipes for pates, terrines, dry curing and preserves such as mustard fruits that French, Italian and Spanish grandmothers would be proud of. While the recipes for bread salad, preserves, making use of fruit from the garden in old-fashioned puds and the ‘beetroot tops with anchovies’ make sure that nothing is wasted. Whether it’s leftover bread, fruit gluts or even parts of vegetables that often go straight or morsels of meat from a roast. There’s an interesting small chapter on ‘Food from the Wild’ too.

I have to admit that ‘A week in the farm kitchen’ describes a week of eating that is far too full of meat, butter and animal fat for my liking with roast beef, roast chicken and a meaty casserole all included in the menu. But then as an ex-vegetarian, eating a few pulse/veggie based meals a week comes easily to me. And I’m not labouring on a working farm all week.

My only other reservation would be that although this book gives great detailed instructions for curing hams and making confits, some of the recipes I’ve tried take for granted that the reader is aware of certain techniques. The walnut and salted caramel tart, for example, is delicious but does seem to assume that you know how to caramelize sugar. It doesn’t give precise instructions for the inexperienced caramelizer. This could just be my excuse as my first attempt ending up a tad on the crunchy side (it was a lovely ice-cream topping though!)

If you’re inexperienced in talking to a butcher however about different cuts of meat, the section on meat cuts at the end is excellent. Many of the cuts mentioned won’t be seen neatly packaged in the supermarket, but are a great, affordable way of eating good meat that has been reared well.

Which brings me to my beetroot tops with anchovies – at last! The beets that have been providing me with salad leaves while this year’s salad crops grow, are finally ready to pull up. The last leaves went into this dish, along with leftover bread made into crumbs, anchovies and chilli.

It’s equally tasty with seared tuna (line caught, sliced into thick chunks) and seared skirt steak. The ‘British beef cuts’ section informs that skirt is also known as ‘thin flank’ or ‘Bavette’ and “either needs long, slow cooking or marinating and flash cooking and slicing into thin, tasty ribbons with a good texture.” Our skirt steak came from a local smallholder who I know well; they’re not soil association registered but feed their livestock organically and rear them on organic principles. Marinated in olive oil having been bashed to tenderness with a rolling pin, the steak offers great taste and is very affordable for well-reared meat. Great served on the spicy, wilted beet leaves.

I felt that this meal fitted in with Tim Wilson’s principles:

“Nothing gives me greater satisfaction than rearing the best animals on one of the finest stretches of North Yorkshire, and using each and every ingredient to its full potential. I hope this book will help you to buy wisely, learn some new skills and produce fantastic dishes to add to your repertoire.”

Having tried the ‘Excellent roast chicken’ with plenty of garlic and white wine adding flavour to this succulent chicken (it’s partly cooked in a foil tent) it will definitely be added to my repertoire. I’m looking forward to trying out more of the recipes from this book, including the gooseberry meringue pie, glazed ham and Wensleydale and onion tart.

Will report more over the next few months on my trials – and errors!

With many thanks to Octopus Publishing Group for my review copy of The Ginger Pig Farmhouse Cookbook by Tim Wilson & Fran Warde.

The lovely photos of the steak and kidney pie, glazed ham and wensleydale tart are from the book, photography by Kristin Perers.

torta verde with jack by the hedge

Posted on 12 June, 2013 by Andrea Mynard

I’ve been taking a tip from resourceful Italians again, adding foraged greens to the first meagre pickings from the garden and adding them to ricotta and parmesan for a tasty pie.

I have to admit that I didn’t actually venture far from the garden in ‘foraging’ for this pie though. While gardening I keep noticing Jack-by-the-hedge springing out everywhere. It obviously says a lot about my shoddy weeding that it’s more a case of Jack-by-the-compost heap, Jack-by-the-ox-eye-daisies and, more annoyingly, Jack-by-the-raspberries.

With so many ‘weeds’ about, I’ve decided the best approach is to eat them. No point fretting about all those pesky weeds, best to just bake a pie with them. So I set to enthusiastically picking the top leaves of some of the Jack-by-the-hedge, adding them to the ever-trusty chard, cavolo nero, leaves of the perpetual spinach that is fast going to seed, rocket, a few tender nettles (they’re mainly too big now though) and some of the beet tops that soon need pulling up. Soon I had quite a pile of healthy greens in the kitchen.

Jack-by-the-hedge is also known as poor man’s mustard, hedge garlic and wild mustard and has a high Vitamin A & C content. The leaves, white flowers and seed pods are all edible but I use mainly the upper leaves. They have a bitter taste, but like kale, nettles and rocket are great with parmesan and ricotta in pasta sauces, pesto and pie fillings.

I made a jar of pesto, mainly with the Jack-by-the-hedge and the rocket, with pumpkin seeds, olive oil and parmesan, using the same sort of quantities as in wild garlic pesto or the kale pesto I made here.

I love this sort of green mixture in a wild greens filo pastry pie too, but maybe a week including children’s parties and a fair bit of indulgent eating had me craving the healthy option of a Torta Verde, where the dough/pastry base is made from olive oil and flour. I wrote about Torta Verde here for Smallholder magazine, when describing how we can learn a lot from Ligurians in foraging our way out of the hungry gap. This version was crammed full of greens, yet as usual when ricotta and parmesan are involved, scoffed happily by my 5 year old. Despite still viewing greens with suspicion in lots of dishes, Ruby loves pesto too, hence my passion for making it with whatever greens are seasonal.

Leftovers are proving very handy for lunches, slices transport easily and so are great for picnics. So I’d like to enter it in the lovely seasonal Four Seasons Food Challenge hosted by Anneli of Delicieux and Louisa of Chez Foti.

And as this makes use of very seasonal weeds, would love to enter it for Ren Behan’s June Simple and in Season.

Recipe for Torta Verde

Pastry/dough base:

200g strong white bread flour

3 tablespoons olive oil

Pinch salt

80 ml warm water

For the filling::

400g of greens (any mixture of jack-by-the-hedge, nettles, chard, cavolo nero, spinach can be used)

100g ricotta cheese

1 large egg

1/2 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg

8 tablespoons grated parmesan (or

similar hard English cheese)

To make pastry, sift flour into large mixing bowl and make a well in the centre. Add the oil and salt and mix well, adding warm water a little at a time to form a soft, not sticky dough. Wrap in clingfilm and pop in the fridge while you make the filling.

Wash the greens well and barely cook in the water left clinging to them until they wilt. Drain and squeeze out excess water. Chop finely (I find this easy to do with scissors) then add to ricotta, mix with egg and nutmeg. Mix in half of the parmesan and season with salt and pepper to taste.

Roll the pastry out to fill a well-greased deep cake tin or pie dish, fill the middle with green/ricotta filling and crimp around the edges – I do this very clumsily, but then this is a very rustic pie. Sprinkle with the remaining parmesan and drizzle with olive oil. Bake for 40 mins in an oven preheated to 180 C.

This was scoffed happily by all of us. Even if Guy now eyes me suspiciously when he sees me with a bucket of weeds on an evening. Not realising I’m heading for the compost heap, he wonders if I’m harvesting dinner.

Obviously, if you’re using wild greens for this pie, make sure you have a good book for identification or are with an experienced forager. You can of course fill Torta Verde with completely home-grown cultivated greens too.

june in my kitchen

Posted on 7 June, 2013 by Andrea Mynard

in my kitchen this June…

…there are lots of flowers. Chocolate mousse decorated with violets, flowers from my lovely Mum brightening up the kitchen and jam jars filled with random selections. ‘Flower competitions’ which seem to be based on who can cram the most flowers into an old jar, appear to be competing with perfume making for pole position in my daughter’s world. And yes, these do include Jack-by-the-hedge and yellow flowers from the purple sprouting broccoli that is sadly finally going to seed. I’m very relaxed about this sort of flower picking but I have been trying to persuade Ruby and friends to keep her scissors away from my purple sensation alliums.

in my kitchen…

….the view is slowly changing. From one side the field of cow parsley is still frothy, the gooseberries are growing fast and the lovage is becoming gigantic behind the purple alliums. To the back, it looks as if a group of inept campers have attempted to set up a very rustic tepee site. This is actually due to my attempts to make stick wigwams for my beans and sweet peas to climb up. The new beds are made and planted and I’m hoping runner beans will make a sort of tunnel for children to run through. I’ve realised already though, that putting bean teepees in the middle of what still looks like bare earth (it is sown with seeds, honestly) is an invitation to toddlers to set up camp amongst my purple beans and emerging calendula. Oh well…

in my kitchen….

….I’m still cooking the last of May’s gluts – rhubarb, chard and asparagus are featuring lots – while willing the broad beans and gooseberries to hurry up. Even the last spindly bits of PSB are still tasty, enjoyed in frittatas with lots of parmesan, with pasta, in frittatas and in thai style noodles with venison. I still can’t believe my luck that the air-dried ham actually worked and it’s proving very tasty shaved onto asparagus risotto, in salads and adding flavour to frittatas.

in my kitchen….

….I’m preparing for very simple outdoor food with a glorious sunny weekend ahead (fingers crossed!). I made these very healthy biscuits to sandwich ice-cream between from the Little Leons Brownies, Bars & Muffins book and think they should provide a perfect easy desert after a BBQ. They’re made with almonds, hemp seeds, dates, vanilla seeds and a pinch of sea salt, all pulverised in a food processor. I found them tricky to handle when rolling out and cutting, crumbly after baking but absolutely delicious – obviously I had to test one!

Having read Mad Dog’s post about tapas, I can’t get salted caramel choc-ices out of my head. To satisfy my craving for that sweet, salty, crunchy taste and texture with ice-cream I’m going to make my very easy Toffee Sauce:

180g dark brown sugar

120g butter

120ml double cream

Simply heat in a saucepan until the sugar dissolves then pour warm over fruit and ice-cream for an easy treat pud. The quantities of butter, sugar and cream sound very unhealthy I know, but this sauce goes a long way – either to feed a lot of people or leftovers keep well in the fridge.

This weekend I’m forgetting the fruit and planning to sandwich together vanilla ice-cream between the very virtuous Little Leon biscuits. These healthy biscuits will, in my mind, balance out the decadence of pouring over the ice-cream some of this toffee sauce and adding chopped salted roast almonds.

In the Little Leon book, after the recipe for an ice-cream sandwich, we’re instructed to “Hand to small child. Be prepared to load washing machine.” I would like to add that this is a pudding best eaten outside. But I’m feeling greedy just thinking about that salty, sweet, creamy combination; how much is handed over to the small children is debatable.

I’d like to join other bloggers from around the world in adding this to Celia from Fig Jam and Lime Cordial’s monthly In My Kitchen gathering.

Little Leons – book review

Posted on 4 June, 2013 by Andrea Mynard

It was the ‘Bar of Good Things’ that first caught my attention. The list of ingredients includes cashew nuts, sesame seeds, dried figs and sesame seeds and seems to be a great combination of the tempting and the healthy. As the name suggests, yummy yet perfect for a guilt-free mid-morning snack or for a child’s after-school treat.

Immediately wanting to bake such a life-affirming bar, it made me realise that this is one of the things I like so much about the Leon books; they’re packed full of recipes that manage to be both nutritious (but not in a hair shirt, depriving yourself sort of way) and delicious.

I found my first Leon Naturally Fast Food book (Book 2) in a second-hand bookshop and couldn’t resist buying it as it had a recipe for home-made salami with copious amounts of red wine and garlic, and I was busy making chorizo at the time. It’s since become one of the very well-thumbed books on my kitchen shelves, full of those tell-tale food marks that I like to feel is a positive (not slovenly!) thing in my favourite cookbooks. I love the great ideas for family meals – some are so simple they’re more ideas, but ideas for inspiring pairings of good, healthy ingredients that are great for adding interest when you get stuck in a rut of tried and tested mid-week meals.

So I was excited to receive review copies of the Little Leons, a new series of lovely, compact little hardbacks. Each little book covers a different food subject: Breakfast & Brunch, Brownies, Bars & Muffins, Smoothies, Juices & Cocktails and Soups, Salads & Snacks.

The Soups, Salads & Snacks book has a lovely Chicken Noodle soup recipe that looks like a great quick and easy supper dish, while I definitely want to try the Persian Onion Soup - obviously you can see that the temperature had dropped when I first looked at this book as it was the warming dishes rather than tasty dips and salads that appealed. The current sunshine has me turning to the 3 Sisters Superfood Salad though, packed with purple potatoes, corn, pumpkin, and sprouted beans.

And while the Breakfast and Brunch book has some healthy but simple to prepare ways to start the day, and the Smoothies, Juices & Cocktails book has some enticing drinks, I have to admit it’s the Brownies, Bars & Muffins book that has me eager to try out the recipes asap. This has a lot to do with the fact that we’ve just had a cold, rainy half term week and baking is one of my favourite ways to keep children (and myself!) amused.

But there are also so many healthy treats that I really want to eat – an amazingly moist looking More-Fruit-Than-Cake-Cake that combines red wine and figs, ice-cream wafers made from almonds, hemp seeds and dates and some ‘Good Scones’ whose gluten-free ingredients would go down well with my mother-in-law. Lots of recipes that will enable me to bake a sweet treat for my vegan friends too.

When Henry Dimbleby, John Vincent and Allegra McEvedy opened their first restaurant, on London’s Carnaby Street in July 2004, their aim was to change the face of fast food. These little books, with recipes selected from the full-sized Leon cookbooks, definitely let you have your cake and eat it.

At £6.99 each they’d make great little gifts, and are easy to pop in your bag, or to pack for a holiday. Apparently the Leon vision is “to have Leon’s all over the world, making it easy for everyone everywhere to eat good food.” Being lucky enough to live in a rural area, I don’t have easy access to a range of fast food outlets, let alone healthy ones. So I’m always a fan of books like these that make healthy fast food such a joy to produce at home.

With thanks to Octopus publishing for my review copy of the Little Leons, published by Conran Octopus April 2013.

All photos used in this post are from:

Leon Minis: Breakfast and Brunch, published by Conran, £6.99

Leon Minis: Brownies, Bars & Muffins, published by Conran, £6.99

(www.octopusbooks.co.uk)

Sicilian tuna pasta with wild garlic

Posted on 30 May, 2013 by Andrea Mynard

I’ve called this Sicilian tuna pasta, as although it uses a mix of my Cotswold store-cupboard basics and woodland greens, it reminds me of the sort of pasta dish enlivened with Arabic spices that Sicilians are so good at.

Sicilian fish and pasta dishes always transport me to the lovely holiday we had between the laid-back Sicilian island of Salina and the Baroque faded grandeur of southern Sicily when I was 5 months pregnant with Ruby. The simple dishes we ate, flavoured with freshly picked lemons, local herbs and wonderful ingredients from the sea were particularly enjoyed as I was so happy to be in the middle of my pregnancy, and loving the attention my bump attracted from exuberant, Italian mamas.

Back down to earth, this dish is very handy during a rainy half term week when I’m happier playing with my now 5 year old daughter and her friends and cousins and cooking for them than fitting in a shopping trip. All of the ingredients come from the store cupboard except basil which is now growing well on the windowsill and wild garlic which is thriving for a little longer in the woods and hedgerows.

Serves 6

1 onion, peeled and finely chopped

1 red chilli, deseeded and finely chopped

1 level teaspoon ground cinnamon

A bunch of basil leaves

2 400g tins plum tomatoes

2 x 200g tins tuna (sustainably sourced, pole & line caught) in olive oil

500g dried pasta of your choice

juice of 1 lemon

1 handful wild garlic leaves (chopped) and a few flowers

extra-virgin olive oil

Heat the drained oil from one of the tuna cans in a pan and cook the onion, chilli and cinnamon on a medium heat for 10 mins until the onion is softened and slightly sweet. Add the tomatoes, tuna (all drained) and a pinch of salt. Simmer for about 20 mins, taste for seasoning and break tomatoes up with a spoon. Cook the pasta according to packet instructions and drain, reserving some of the cooking water.

Toss the pasta into the sauce with the basil (roughly torn), wild garlic leaves and the lemon juice, drizzle with a little extra-virgin olive oil, loosen with a little of the reserved cooking water if needed, check seasoning and serve with the wild garlic flowers scattered over.

I’m sure the wild garlic is a very inauthentic touch if I’m associating this easy supper dish with Sicilian food. Having loved the imaginative culinary use of wild herbs in Sicily though, I like to think that if a Sicilian were visiting the Cotswolds in the very lush month of May, they wouldn’t be able to resist adding this fragrant freebie.

May in my kitchen

Posted on 22 May, 2013 by Andrea Mynard

I started May spending as much time as possible outside the kitchen. The very welcome sunshine prompted the garden to burst into life, while I couldn’t resist spending any spare time outside planting. Simple food was needed.

Luckily so much of the seasonal food in May is completely delicious with little or no cooking. Tender little purple sprouting broccoli florets are delicious picked and munched raw in the garden.

Or cooked very briefly and tossed with some chilli oil on bruschetta. I love freshly picked asparagus al dente too, whether dipped in goose eggs or tossed with olive oil and sea salt and quickly roasted or griddled.

Rhubarb and primroses have featured heavily too this month. I’m not the only one who’s been loving getting out in the garden. Ruby and friends have been very enthusiastic about picking primroses. So I decided I’d better make use of the ones that hadn’t made it into the bowls of ‘perfume’ to be found lurking in lots of hidden corners. There have been lots of primrose ice cubes, pretty in rhubarb cordial until the borage starts flowering. Liz Knight has inspired me with her primrose curd, great in primrose muffins. And Fi Bird, Mum of 6 and inspirational Hebridean forager/seaweed eater who has written The Forager’s Kitchen has some great ideas for edible flowers too.

The May view from the kitchen window reminds me that this also seems to have been a month of making the most of all those fresh green shoots, mixing the cultivated and wild. From my side window everything is so lush; there are the acid greens of marjoram, variegated lemon balm and the slightly deeper greens of the lovage and angelica. Pretty cream sweet cicely flowers are in the foreground, very similar to the creamy umbels of cow parsley now rampant in the meadow behind. Nettles and ground elder are trying to sneak in from the meadow.

So my tactic has been to either top up the compost with nettles (only the ones that aren’t flowering or setting seed) or to eat them. Mixed with the perpetual spinach, beetroot and chard leaves that are having a new lease of life before new plants take over, I’ve been using them in wild greens pies or as a stuffing for cannelloni. I’d like to try Louisa at Chez Foti’s Forager’s Nettle and Wild Garlic risotto too.

Wild Garlic from nearby woods and purple sprouting from the garden have come together lots in recipes this month, including in my wild garlic egg-fried rice.

My frittata with wild garlic and PSB is packed full of nutritious greens and is very quick to make. I made it after I’d been tempted to stay out gardening one evening longer than planned and it was just the sort of easy supper that I needed – tasty in a very savoury way, perfect with the glass of red wine I thought I deserved after my hard work, yet virtuously healthy. As it includes wild greens/weeds, it’s also a great way to wreak vengeance on those pesky perennial weeds after gardening!

Wild garlic and Purple Sprouting Broccoli Frittata

1 handful of wild garlic leaves, washed and roughly chopped.

2 handfuls purple sprouting broccoli

2 handfuls wild/cultivated greens such as spinach, chard, nettles, sorrel, beetroot tops washed well and roughly chopped

2 tablespoons olive oil

6 eggs, mixed with a fork and seasoned with salt and pepper

150g Grana Padano or Parmesan cheese, grated

Heat 1 tablespoon of the oil in a frying pan over a medium/high heat and toss the purple sprouting broccoli (if you are using freshly picked, tender PSB from the garden it will only need cooking briefly) before adding the greens and stirring until wilted.

Add the wild garlic leaves, stir then add the contents of the pan to the eggs and cheese in a bowl and mix while you heat the remaining olive oil in the pan. Add the eggs and green mixture back to the pan and immediately turn the heat to low. Cook for about 10 mins until most of the frittata is set and just the top is still runny. Meanwhile heat the grill and pop the frittata under the grill for a few minutes until the top is set/golden.

You can of course turn the frittata in the pan to cook on the remaining side, but I took the easy/cowardly option!

We enjoyed this with a rocket and tomato salad, partly as last year’s rocket is also enjoying a new lease of life. I can definitely recommend a glass of wine alongside.

Any leftovers are great cold for lunch the next day too.

As this is a very simple way of making use of seasonal ingredients from the garden and hedgerows, I’d like to enter my Wild Garlic and PSB Frittata into Ren Behan’s Simple and in Season blog event.

I’d also like to add it to Celia of Fig Jam and lime cordial’s In My Kitchen, which is a lovely place to gain inspiration from other kitchens around the world.

But I can’t finish a post about May in my kitchen without a mention of the windowsill. Very much a big focus of my kitchen this month, it’s been home to a succession of seedlings before they’re transferred to the coldframe for hardening off. Borlotti beas have germinated in loo roll tubes and purple leaved Kohl rabi have germinated in little newspaper pots (following Sarah of the Garden Deli’s great instructions to make your own posh paper pots). I’m currently exciting at the appearance of tiny great shoots of perilla. Mark Diacono of Otter Farm inspired me to grow this interesting culinary herb by describing it in a great article on herb growing as “the earthy but bright child of mint and cumin parents.” Already imagining handfuls of it rolled in flatbread with feta and salad, how could I resist?!

shabby chick

estbd 1968