Little winter wonderland

The banana trees are all wrapped up (apart from a few of the larger ones), the apple tree is all bare and has lost its leaves, the nectarine tree is bare too, the blackberry bush needs some pruning and the vegetable patch is empty with a few hardy shoots of green manure peering through the remaining ice and snow. It's not very exciting at the moment in Cowick Garden. The paving and fencing is collapsing in certain parts too so in the spring we will have to look into replacing most of our paving and repairing a large part of our fence.

Though the snow caused quite a bit of havoc and the banana trees certainly didn't enjoy it, it was very pretty to look at, so below are a few photos of Cowick Garden wrapped up in a fluffy blanket of snow. You can make out the brown withered leaves of a couple of the larger banana trees in a few of the photos and on one you can just about see the leaves of the bamboo under all the snow. Many of the palms struggled under the weight of the snow and some bent down almost blocking the way to the rest of the garden. The garden table shows exactly how much snow fell in one night.

Luscious caramel apple loaf

We're still trying to get through the last of our apple pickings. After the cold snap, the blackbirds decided to have a hearty feast of the remaining apples in the tree so there aren't any more apples to be picked but still a very large pile of apples in a large bowl in the kitchen.

Last weekend we decided to make a caramel apple loaf and it was so delicious we made it again yesterday - and it's going fast! We found the recipe on BBC Good Food but decided to increase the number of apples seeing as the recipe didn't call for very many and we had very many indeed! This is the perfect gooey sticky cake to curl up with on the sofa with a hot chocolate or a big cup of tea on a cold dark winter's afternoon.

Ingredients


175g soft butter
Margarine (for greasing)
175g caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 eggs
225g self-raising flour
2 tsp cinnamon (though I think we added more!)
4 heaped tbsp Greek yoghurt
3 apples
50g walnuts (plus some extra for topping)
50g soft toffees
2tbsp double cream

Method


1. Heat the oven to 160 degrees C

2. Grease a 2lb loaf tin with the margarine and line the base and ends with some baking paper

3. Beat the butter, sugar and vanilla until pale. (Melting the butter for a few seconds in the microwave makes this whole beating process a whole lot easier!)

4. Add the eggs in one by one to the butter mixture and beat together.

5. Add the flour, cinnamon and yoghurt.

6. Peel, core and chop the apples into small chunks and add to the bowl. Mix all together with a wooden spoon.

7. Scrape the mixture into the loaf tin, smooth the top and scatter the walnuts down the middle.

8. Bake on the middle shelf of the oven for 1 hour 20- 30 minutes until a knife poked into the centre comes out clean. Cool the tin.

9. Now for the yummy gooey bit. Put the toffees in a small saucepan with the double cream. Gently heat, stirring the whole time until the toffees have melted.

10. Drizzle the toffee sauce over the top of the cake. Scatter with a few extra walnuts. Leave for ten minutes before serving and then enjoy!

Over-wintering banana trees

What a week it's been! Wind, snow, frost, rain, sleet, black ice. Just the type of weather banana trees don't like. Fortunately, before the big chill hit the UK this week, I wrapped up most of the banana tress in Cowick Garden.

Last year it was a little easier to wrap them up as by the time the freezing cold temperatures arrived, the leaves had already withered and were hanging by the stems so it was easy enough to throw over the frost jackets. This year the cold arrived so suddenly that all the leaves were still green and spread out so wrapping up proved a bit tricky.

I started by making sure the base of the stems and the ground around the plants were covered in bark chip as that protects the soil from frost and keeps it 'warm'. I then took some sheets of frost fleece, folded them in two and wrapped the fleece around the stem several times all the way up until I reached the leaves. Then, on the smaller banana trees I gathered the leaves as close to the stem as possible and covered the entire tree with a frost jacket. I've read that some people remove the leaves, however the leaves are added protection against the frost so I'd advise leaving them hanging around the stems (even if it doesn't look very decorative!) as this will give your banana plants an extra buffer against the cold.

On the larger plants it was not possible to put a frost jacket over them as they are too tall and the leaves are too spread out. However, the larger plants should be fine as they are quite hardy by now. It's the smaller banana plants that we need to worry about so they are the ones that have frost fleece all around the stems and a nice cosy frost jacket on top. Some of the larger plants haven't been wrapped up at all as we didn't wrap them up last year and they were fine. However, this winter is proving to be a very cold one (-5 degrees tonight apparently!) so we may have to wrap the larger ones if this cold weather continues.

If we could, we'd take ourselves and our palms and our banana trees off to a sunny warm tropical island right now -which is where we all really belong!

The birds are back

For the last couple of months we haven't seen many birds in the garden. They've managed to find bugs and treats elsewhere. However, with the colder days on the increase, bugs and food are becoming more and more scarce and over the last couple of days we've seen sparrows and tits feeding on the suet balls we have hanging on our bird feeder.

Last winter, a large variety of birds visited the garden from blue tits and great tits to sparrows, finches, thrushes, blackbirds and even robins. Of course, putting out bird food also meant the inevitable visit from the large clumsy pigeons who always manage to chase the smaller birds away and then plod around under the bird feeder picking at the seeds the other birds have dropped until one of the neighbour's cats comes along  to make a tasty (or not-so tasty) meal out of them. Let's hope we don't have to pick up the remains of too many pigeons this winter.

It's always a treat watching the different varieties of birds coming to visit and trying to identify them and listening to them tweeting and chirping away. Welcome back birdies!

An abundance of apples!

The last recipe was about apples and I'm afraid the next few recipes are going to be about apples too. There's an apple and almond cake baking in the oven as I write this and a half eaten spiced apple cake in the fridge and we have an enormous bowl full of apples in the kitchen and more apples are falling off the apple tree outside. It's apple mania!

I think we're going to have to look into making some apple chutney and maybe even some apple cider (now that would be exciting though I'm thinking complicated too!) to keep these apples under control. The apple cake recipes don't use a lot of apples so next week's task is finding a recipe which uses an abundance of apples.

In the meantime, here is the spiced apple cake recipe which I found on the Channel 4 website and is one of Gordon Ramsay's recipes. Talking about Gordon Ramsay I'm still sulking about the fact that La Garrigue, the French Bistro in Edinburgh, didn't win the French restaurant heat in his Best Restaurant series. For me, they were by far the better French restaurant. I'm also sorry that we never got to go to the restaurant when we were in Edinburgh in August. Next time!

In the original recipe the apple mixture is divided up into small baking dishes and a piping bag is used to squeeze the sponge mixture on top but as we didn't have small baking dishes (or a piping bag!) we opted for placing it all into one large baking dish.

(Note: If you have self-raising flour you can substitute the 125g plain flour, 1 teaspoon baking powder and pinch of salt with 125g self-raising flour)

Spiced apple cake

Ingredients

For the sponge

125g plain flour
50g butter

1 tsp baking powder

Pinch of salt

2 tbsp caster sugar
1tsp vanilla essence

1 egg

100ml milk (or enough to bring mixture up to 110ml)

1 orange zest

For the apple mixture

4 apples

50g unsalted butter

2 tbsp honey

100g dates, diced

1tsp ground cinnamon

Flaked almonds for sprinkling

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees C.

2. Sift the flour, baking powder, salt and caster sugar into a large mixing bowl.

3. Cut the butter into cubes and rub together into the flour mixture with your fingers until it resembles bread crumbs. (Licking your fingers after doing this is a very tasty treat!)

4. Beat the egg in a measuring jug with the vanilla essence then add the milk so the mixture reaches the 100ml mark. Add the milk mixture to the flour mixture, add a pinch of the orange zest and mix together.

5. Peel, core and dice the apples. Add the butter to a large deep frying pan and toss the apples into the butter mixture and then add the honey and mix through again.

6. Add the chopped dates, cinnamon and the rest of the orange zest to the apple mixture. Cook for a few minutes making sure the apples are evenly coated in the honey.

7. Add the apples to a baking dish and pour the sponge mixture on top.

8. Scatter the sponge with flaked almonds and bake in the oven for 18 minutes until golden brown on top.

9. Dust with icing sugar and serve with vanilla ice cream or double cream or custard!

Winter is here...

The clocks have gone back. That's it. It might only be a mild 16 degrees and the sky might be blue with bright sunshine and the garden might still be very green and the banana trees might still have their leaves but none of that matters because as soon as the clocks go back that one precious little hour at the end of October, that's it for me. It's winter.

Apart from sulking at the fact that it's dark at 5 o'clock in the afternoon it's also time to rake up all the leaves, clean out the greenhouse, plant violas, cyclamens and pansies and curl up with warm soups, hot chocolates and my early winter favourite - mulled wine! I think we'll have a go at preparing our own mulled wine this year instead of buying the usual sachet filled with cloves and cinnamon. Yes, this year we'll create our own little bundle of spicy goodness to place in a pot of warming red wine. Mmm...delicious!

Anyway, before I get carried away thinking about warm spicy wine, onto something not very warm  at all. A few days ago we decided to make a Waldorf salad with the apples from the apple tree. There are so many apples on there at the moment and so many shapes and sizes too. Some extra large ones to some tiny little baby ones and all sorts of shapes too as some have grown in peculiar places like squashed between small little gaps in the branches so they're plump on one side, skinny in the middle and plump again at the end. I suppose that's what happens when you try to grow too much in a tiny space like ours. So with an apple corer in one hand and a couple of unusually-shaped apples in another we decided to desert the sweet for the savoury and make a winter Waldorf salad.

This is one of the simplest recipes I could find. Some recipes use yoghurt instead of mayonnaise but having recently invested in a very large jar of garlic mayonnaise we decided to add a tiny twist to the recipe by opting for garlic mayonnaise instead of ordinary mayonnaise.

Wintery Waldorf salad


Ingredients
2 large (round or not very round) apples
4 tbsp garlic mayonnaise
1 tbsp French Dijon mustard
2 stalks of celery
1 tbsp freshly-squeezed lemon juice
Walnuts, generous helping
Watercress, a handful

Method
1. Core the apples and cut into slices and then mix with the lemon juice to prevent from browning.

2. Cut the celery sticks into chunks and add to the apples.

3. Mix the mayonnaise and mustard together in a salad bowl and then add the apples and celery and toss together until well coated.

4. Sprinkle the walnuts and watercress on top. Crunchy and delicious!

Tidying up

We said goodbye to the tomatoes, courgettes and runner beans yesterday. With temperatures dropping quite a bit over the last few days we thought the time has now come to prepare the garden for the long winter months ahead. We planted the hungarian grazing rye in the patch where the broccoli was (that part of the vegetable patch  also known as Caterpillar Heaven) a couple of weeks ago and it is doing well and growing steadily.

It's best to plant cover crops before the end of October so we decided it was now time to take out the courgettes as well as the tomatoes and make some more space for the cover crops. We hadn't been getting many large courgettes over the last few weeks anyway and the tomatoes were still being chewed by some stray caterpillars bent on re-creating another patch of heaven in our garden.

So we uprooted and chopped up the plants, which was quite sad seeing as we'd planted them all from seed and watched them grow and now we were banishing them to a big black garbage bag. However, they did well and we made some great meals and next year we'll be planting new seeds and watching them grow all over again.

We have a large bowl in the kitchen filled with tomatoes, peppers, courgettes and runner beans. We also picked some apples and there are many more to be picked.

The greenhouse and the vegetable patch is looking very bare at the moment.  It's a beautiful bright crisp morning in London and the plan for today is to plant the hungarian grazing rye mixed with some tares.

Summer flowers

With winter fast approaching I thought I'd warm up by thinking back on those sunnier days and looking at photos  of the beautiful and colourful flowers we had in the garden over the summer.

Heavenly homemade custard

This custard is indeed heavenly. No other way to describe it. Ready-made custard bought from the supermarket tastes nothing like custard freshly prepared at home.

We attempted to make some custard last night to go with our freshly-made apple crumble and though the apple crumble was delicious, the custard was runny and lumpy. Not quite the divine dessert we were anticipating.

So we decided to try another recipe tonight and Delia came to the rescue. This recipe appears in her book How to Cook Book One.  In the recipe she says you can use creamy whole milk instead of cream, however, having tried a recipe with milk last night, I'd say definitely go for the cream and if you don't want to be too indulgent use single cream instead of double cream but make sure you get the cream.

Ingredients
1 vanilla pod
275 ml double cream (or single cream)
3 large egg yolks
1 teaspoon cornflour
1 tbsp caster sugar

Method
1. Split the vanilla pod by cutting it lengthways with a sharp knife and scoop out the seeds using a teaspoon. Breathe in that beautiful sweet warming vanilla smell.

2. Place the cream in a small pot and add the vanilla pod and the seeds.

3. Gently heat the pot to just below simmering point.

4, While the cream is slowly heating, whisk the egg yolks, cornflour and caster sugar in a mixing bowl with a balloon whisk.

5. Once the cream has heated, remove the vanilla pod ( and put it aside - I'll come back to the pod a little later)

6. While still whisking the egg mixture in the mixing bowl, slowly add the hot cream mixture, whisking the whole time.

7. Once the egg and cream mixture have been well mixed together, return to the pot on a gentle heat and continue whisking.

8. Your arm may get a bit tired at this point so if you have help in the kitchen a good idea to take turns whisking. You need to keep whisking over the low heat until the custard is thick and smooth. I was loosing heart at one point thinking this mixture is never going to thicken but just below simmering point it suddenly gets all thick and gloopy. Mmm!

9. If you overheat the mixture you can return it to the mixing bowl, whisk until it becomes smooth again and then transfer back to the pot.

10. Once it's lovely and thick it's ready to serve with apple crumble...or trifle..or any other dessert.

If you want to enjoy the custard a bit later, place the mixture in a jug or bowl and cover with cling film. When you're ready to serve, remove the cling film and place the bowl in a pan with a small amount of simmering water.

As for the vanilla pod, rinse the creamy mixture off, place on a sunny window sill to dry and once dry pop it in your sugar bowl for  deliciously sensual vanilla-flavoured sugar!

Indian summer in London

So according to the weather forecast it's supposed to be 23 degrees and partly cloudy tomorrow. Considering we're almost into the middle of October and close to that dreaded time when there's no denying that winter is upon us, ie when the clocks go back, 23 degrees and partly cloudy is tropical!

We planted the Hungarian grazing rye in one of the vegetable plots last weekend and we can already make out some brown shoots peering through the soil. Are they our cover crops or simply weeds? It has been a very rainy week so it's no wonder something is shooting up out of the soil.

Courgettes, tomatoes and peppers are still fruiting and for some reason, we are STILL waiting for the apples to ripen. So much for that homemade custard recipe I promised a dear friend! Becoming a gardener is teaching me the art of patience...not easy.

So...heavenly homemade custard coming soon...

It's raining, it's pouring!

As a new gardener I'm learning to love the rain. Nothing like a good soaking especially for the banana plants; they love a good long soak. But it hasn't stopped for the last few days and looks like it's going to rain most of the weekend. Give us a chance to go out there and do a little gardening, rain!

We want to plant our cover crops in the vegetable patch this weekend. The plot where we had the broccoli is now bare and all the good nutrients in the soil get washed away in the rain so cover crops, or green manure, as they're sometimes called, help retain those nutrients and improve the content of the soil over winter. They also prevent weeds growing on your bare patches of land.

We've decided to go for Hungarian grazing rye and Tares, though there are many other varieties to choose from. Grazing rye is especially good for heavy clay soil, which is what we have, as it has fibrous roots which break up the earth. Among all these benefits the cover crops will also provide a bit of greenery at the back of the garden during the dreary winter months.

The best time to plant the cover crops is late September to October so best we get out there this weekend. Wellington boots and sexy anoraks here we come!

Rich runner bean soup

So many runner beans! And as per all the crops we've had an abundance of we decided to make a soup. So far this year we've had tomato soup, courgette soup, beetroot soup and now runner bean soup. It's getting colder and the nights are getting longer so definitely a good time to curl up on the couch with a warm creamy soup.

We've been caught out with our runner beans though (so much to learn in this gardening business!) We left them slightly too long so they've become quite stringy. Apparently it's best to harvest them quite young otherwise the skin becomes coarse. They've grown splendidly in the little soil patch we have around the greenhouse. On one side of the greenhouse we rested a trellis fence and the beans happily climbed it showing off some very pretty red flowers as they did so. On the other side of the greenhouse we built a bean wigwam and they loved that too but soon outgrew it so we pinched off the growing tips at that point. They're very thirsty plants so as long as you give them enough water they flourish and grow without too much trouble. Now I understand why they say it's a good beginner plant to grow.

So about this recipe. We harvested over 500g of runner beans and considering it was such a cold and rainy day yesterday we thought it would be a good idea to make a soup. The one we made was inspired by a recipe on the fantastic site Cook Sister. We added a few extra ingredients and topped it off with a very indulgent helping of roquefort. Delicious! However, remember to harvest your runner beans when they're young otherwise you'll get lots of stringy bits stuck between your teeth. Eww!

Ingredients

3 tbsp butter or margarine

500g runner beans

2 garlic cloves

1 large onion

1 courgette

700ml vegetable stock

100ml single cream

Roquefort cheese

Chilli flakes (they always manage to sneak their way into my recipes...)

Salt and pepper

Method

1. Top and tail the runner beans and remove the stringy bits on either side with a potato slicer

2. Chop the onion, garlic cloves and courgette

3. Heat the butter or margarine in a large saucepan and add the chilli flakes - one teaspoon should be enough

4.  Fry the onion and garlic and then add the chopped courgette and the runner beans

5.  When the beans are starting to look a little softer, add the vegetable stock

6. Bring to the boil and then simmer for 30 minutes

7. Puree in a blender and then add to the soup bowls with generous crumblings of gooey smelly roquefort cheese, a sprinkling of salt and a healthy helping of pepper

Banana pups part 2

They've been saved by the rain! If it hadn't rained there might have been a banana massacre. We cut one banana pup away from the mum but cut too close to the stem of the pup (my suggestion to cut closer- oops) and as a result we cut through the root bulb so poor little pup only has half his roots with him. I doubt he'll survive but we've put him in a pot and we'll see what happens.

We didn't realise that the bulbs are quite deep underground and because there is so much growing in Cowick Garden it wasn't very easy to position ourselves next to the plants as we also had to fight our way between palm leaves and ferns and the branches from the apple tree. It then started raining so we scurried inside and decided to do a bit more research on this whole transplanting process.

A few websites suggested waiting till spring or at least until there is enough warm weather remaining to allow the pups to settle into their new habitat. With temperatures due to drop over the next few weeks then now is probably not a good time. This sound advice made sense and I'm sure a large number of the pups we have won't survive the winter anyway as they are far too small. So we're going to let nature run its course and see how many pups remain after winter and deal with the fiesty survivors in the spring.

So the pups are still intact and they're out there lapping up the rain with one lonely pup in a pot on the deck, also getting a good soaking.

Tomato and courgette linguine with pesto

This recipe was inspired by courgette and pesto pasta; a recipe I found on goodtoknow.co.uk. We'd harvested some cherry tomatoes that day so I decided to add them to the mix and the result was this very quick and simple pasta dish.

Ingredients
4-5 small courgettes, coarsely grated
Large handful of cherry tomaotes, chopped in half
Chilli flakes
Olive oil
1 small onion, finely chopped
300g linguine
4tbsp green pesto (I bought it fresh from Waitrose)
Parmesan, grated
Handful of fresh basil leaves

Method
1. Heat the olive oil in a pan, add the chilli flakes and cook the onion until soft, approximately 5 minutes

2. While the onion is cooking, cook the linguine in a pot of salted boiling water for approximately 11 minutes, or according to the instructions on the pack

3. Add the grated courgettes to the onion and cook for approximately 2-3 minutes

4. Drain the pasta and add it to the courgette and onion mix. Add the tomatoes and fresh pesto and toss

5. Add the parmesan and continue to toss

6. Garnish with a generous helping of fresh basil leaves

I'm a big fan of chilli and all things spicy so I normally add at least a small teaspoon of chilli flakes to most of my pasta dishes  but you could easily leave this ingredient out for an equally tasty dish.

Goodbye broccoli

Well we chickened out of separating the pups from the mothers this weekend but we ended up doing something equally difficult: we pulled out all our broccoli. Unfortunately the caterpillars were victorious. They gorged themselves very happily on most of our broccoli leaves and despite trying to remove as many of them as possible we realised we were defeated and there were simply too many of those voracious little creatures. Even if we spent an entire day digging them out from around the foliage and scraping them off the leaves, we still wouldn't find them all.

It was a shame as we were just starting to get some broccoli heads after so many months of waiting. Doubt we could have eaten any of that broccoli though considering how many small caterpillars had burrowed their ways into the florets too.

So one by one we pulled out each broccoli plant. Some of the plants near the back fence were reduced to pale green skeletons as the caterpillars had devoured all the fleshy parts of the leaves leaving only the harder green stems.

Apparently, the best way to prevent caterpillars attacking your broccoli is to cover the plants just after you've sown the seeds and make sure the cover is held down tightly with landscaping pins. Seeing as we didn't do this and the caterpillars struck we could have, if we'd done this as soon as we spotted the first caterpillars, used a soil bacteria called Bacillus thuringiensis which is a naturally occuring soil bacteria to kill them off. Well, we'll know for next time.

On a happier note, we harvested some more tomatoes and also some courgettes, baby courgettes. For some reason our courgettes now seem to be rotting when they reach a certain size. They were growing quite well in July and when we went on holiday in August we came back to find three very large marrows in the courgette patch.  However, since the marrow-episode we haven't had as many courgettes (that's usually because if you let the vegetables reach that size, the plant thinks job done,time for a rest!) and the few we have had start rotting very soon after the flowers fall off.

Despite this we managed to harvest at least five healthy-looking baby courgettes and made a very delicious tomato and courgette pesto linguine. I'll upload the recipe in the next post.

Banana pups

One of the most striking features in Cowick Garden is the banana trees. We had six large ones on one side of the garden and four smaller ones on the other side. Sadly, the snow and bitter cold over the last winter took its toll and two of the larger trees didn't make it.  We were glad that most of them did survive and watching them come back to life in spring and seeing the green shoots emerge out of the shabby brown stumps in the ground was very exciting! As you can tell I don't get out much.

Anyway, the two banana trees that didn't quite make it have produced pups. Yes, apparently baby banana trees are called pups and when a tree dies the long root or corm produces little shoots known as pups. These pups can, so I'm told, be easily separated from the corm and replanted. Well there are so many little banana pups in Cowick Garden and I mean so many that not only are we going to have to replant some elsewhere (if we can find the space) but we're going to have to put some in pots and give them away. I can't bear to throw any of them away and especially now that I know they're called pups?! That would just be too cruel!

I started looking up the best ways of separating the pups from the corm and came across descriptions on the Internet which referred to the main tree or plant as the 'mother' and the connection between the mother and the pup as the 'umbilical cord.' Eek! With these analogies and pictures now in my head I have no idea how I'm going to find the courage to perform this little operation and separate the pups from the mums! Wish me luck...

Apples are ripening

The apples are getting redder and redder! Don't think they are ready to pick just yet. You know when they are ripe when you cup an apple in your hand and twist the stem very lightly and it falls off in your hand. I've been trying this everyday for the last week but up until now they are holding on very tightly.

We're getting a bit impatient for them to ripen because one of our favourite recipes is apple crumble. We made this last year and it's a delicious comfort treat when the weather is turning colder and the days are getting shorter. This recipe is courtesy of Merrilees Parker on the BBC website and it's one of the simplest ones we found.

A good trick (and we were caught out a few times) is to only peel and cut the apples at the very last minute. As soon as you cut the apples they turn brown and though this doesn't affect the taste it doesn't look very attractive.

Comforting apple crumble

Ingredients
For the crumble:
300g plain flour, sieved with a pinch of salt
175g unrefined brown sugar
200g unsalted butter, cubed at room temperature (room temperature bit -important!)
Butter or margarine for greasing
For the filling:
500g apples, peeled, cored and cut into 1cm pieces (leave till the last minute)
50g unrefined brown sugar
1tbsp plain flour
1 very generous pinch of ground cinnamon

Method
1. Preheat the oven to 180C

2. Pour the flour and sugar in a large mixing bowl and mix together.

3. Add  a few cubes of butter and rub into the flour mixture with your fingers. Keep adding the butter and rubbing together until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs

4. Place the apples pieces in a large bowl and sprinkle over the sugar, flour and cinnamon. Stir well and take care not to break up the fruit. Breathe in the delicious heart-warming comforting smell of apple and cinnamon. Delicious!

5. Grease the ovenproof dish and spoon the fruit mixture into the bottom and sprinkle the crumble mixture on top.

6. Bake in the oven for approximately 40-45 minutes until the crumble is browned and the apple mixture is bubbling.

7. Serve with cream and custard!

Refreshing bean risotto

We've made this risotto about three times and each time it's even more delicious than the last. I never used to enjoy risottos as I always found them too heavy and stodgy and ended up walking away from my meal feeling all bloated. But this recipe turns risotto into a refreshing and extremely moorish dish. It's little piece de resistance is simply lemon zest. Somehow that lifts up all the flavours in the dish and turns it into a lively little taste sensation. Some might find the lemon zest too overpowering so worth trying it out with a small lemon to begin with.

We found this recipe on www.uktv.co.uk and modified it slightly. In the spring we used broad beans from the garden which we planted over winter and more recently we've used runner beans which are growing madly around the greenhouse.

Ingredients
100g margarine
1 large onion, finely chopped
1 stick celery
1.5 litres vegetable stock
350g Carnaroli risotto rice
1 large glass white wine
1 bunch asparagus, trimmed and chopped
150g broad beans, blanched or runner beans, chopped and steamed
1 lemon, zest only
100g parmesan, grated

Method
1. Melt the margarine in a large pan over a low heat and add the onion and celery and let it soften

2. Add the rice and mix all the ingredients together for about two minutes until the risotto grains become translucent

3. Heat the stock in another saucepan and keep it simmering

4. Turn up the heat under the risotto and add the white wine. Allow it to bubble, stirring the whole time until all the liquid has been absorbed.

5. Add the chopped asparagus.

5. Now for the tedious part. This is the part where you need to make sure you have some good music on the radio and the bottle with the remaining wine nearby. Add a ladleful of stock and stir until all the stock has been absorbed. Add another ladleful of stock and carry on stirring until it's all absorbed. Repeat. Have sip of wine. Repeat.

6. After about 15 minutes of cooking and stirring, add the broad beans or runner beans to the risotto and then carry on stirring in the remaining stock for another five minutes or until the rice is creamy and tender. You may not need all the stock, then again you may need to make more if you run out.

7. When the risotto is cooked, and your arm is aching from all the stirring, remove the pan from the heat and add the lemon zest and parmesan and some extra margarine.

8. Season with freshly ground salt and pepper and leave to stand for a few minutes and there you have it, a beautiful lively zingy risotto!

Tasty tomato soup

In the days before the caterpillars we made some lovely tomato soup. I found a very simple recipe by Emma Lewis on BBC Good Food and modified it slightly using vegetable stock instead of milk so the soup wasn't too creamy but still very filling and tasty.


Ingredients

500g tomatoes, chopped

1 onion, chopped

1 garlic clove, finely chopped

2 tbsp olive oil

1 tbsp tomato sauce or tomato puree

600 ml vegetable stock

Handful of basil leaves

Method

1. Heat the olive oil in a large pan and add the onion and garlic

2. Cook over a low to moderate heat until the onion and garlic have softened which should take about 5 minutes

3. Add the tomato sauce or the tomato puree, the chopped tomatoes and some of the basil and bring up to the boil

4. Once the mixture has started to boil, turn down the heat and leave to simmer for 15 minutes

5. And then it's all into the blender for a quick whizz to make it smooth

6. At this point you can pack the mixture away into a container in your freezer for later use (it can freeze for up to one month).

7. However, if you're hungry now return the mixture back to the pan and add the vegetable stock.

8. Bring to the boil and then simmer for 5 minutes

9. Serve and garnish with basil leaves

Caterpillars!

There we were enjoying the deliciously juicy cherry tomatoes from our garden; making tomato soup, tomato salads, tomato sauces, more tomato soup and then what happens? The caterpillars strike! Large pale green ones, big furry black ones and sickly looking yellow ones all over the tomato plants, helping themselves to all our delectable fruit. The cheek!

It has to be said that we were struggling to keep up with all the tomatoes our plants were generously producing. We also bought a variety of tomato suitable for hanging baskets but then didn't have enough hanging baskets to plant them in and so planted them in the ground which wasn't the best solution as they are not the easiest variety to tie to sticks and bamboo. No matter what they give in to gravity and keep hanging down. So there were dozens and dozens of deliciously ripe juicy tomatoes trailing along the ground in our greenhouse and the caterpillars probably thought well if you aren't making the most of these we happily will, thanks very much. All very well if they eat a whole tomato here and there but no they have a little bit of a nibble here and a nibble there and eat some leaves and some stems while they're at it and before you know it the leaves are turning yellow, all your fruit is rotting and your plant is dying.

What to do?!

Welcome to Cowick Garden

It's been exactly a year since we moved to Cowick Garden and so much has happened we thought now would be a good time to sit back and take stock of the year and everything we've done; the plants we have, the new ones we've planted, the old ones we've looked after,  the vegetables we've grown and all the delicious recipes we've tried with our harvests.