More Autumnal Than Falling Leaves

Being able to cook truly seasonally is one of the big benefits of growing your own, though careful shopping can bring the same end - some things like decent culinary pumkins, Jerusalem artichokes and British apples are not always easy to find.

I just got back from spending a happy half hour of my lunchtime picking stuff from our allotment, the day job of writing magazine articles having taken up my morning. Conscience about getting back to it is nudging me gently in the ribs now. The three carrier bags of veg brought home hold turnips, beetroot, kale, apples, runner beans, parsnips, Jerusalem artichokes, leeks, the final pair of tiny pumpkins, and a load of courgettes and patty pan squash. The last two tell a tale perhaps about how our climate is changing: summer squash are now harvested through October and even into November if we're lucky.

Last night's main was venison sausages, potato-pumpkin-and-turnip-mash, roast onions and apple sauce. As autumnal as the brown and gold leaves carpeting sunny Fulwood. More so, as the leaves have been falling since late summer, possibly because it was unseasonably dry then. It may well be my imagination, but I feel more at one with the universe having indulged in something in keeping with our place and time than if I had eaten asparagus from Peru, for example. The Dear Leader lit candles in the dining room, we drew the curtains on the dark night, and the house had a sense and apple-rich scent of the season.

Tonight though the meal will be different the results will, I trust, be similar. Steamed kale with anchovies, garlic and pepper on toast as a starter, a thick vegetable soup with leeks at its heart as the main. To lower the tone somewhat (hugely), no Jerusalem artichokes till the weekend, as the DL is giving a workshop ("Death Rays and How Best to Develop Them," I think) tomorrow, and were she to fart loudly and repeatedly as she addressed her adoring audience of master criminals and dictators it would mean the gulag for me. Again.

Re-Train Your Gravy

Too convoluted a title?

A simple idea for using up surplus gravy - so about 12 million households currently then - beyond the traditional moistening of turkey sarnies.

On the 20th we committed a major sin against the austerity cannon by buying in Chinese - I can blame my visiting father whose idea it was. The next day, though we had imbibed very modestly, both my wife and I felt headachey, maybe the MSG at fault. So we prefer homemade, and a soup should always be part of any Chinese banquet (when you attend posh ones you get several), thus on the 27th I made the following as part of a full Chinese meal.

I had half a gravy-boat of beefy goodness from Christmas Day (as we had a small piece of sirloin to go with the turkey crown). A chopped onion and finely diced carrot were fried until the onion was taking on a hint of colour, then a huge clove of garlic in the thinnest slices was added along with a de-seeded chili, and the gravy poured over the lot. Topped up with water and spiced with plenty of star anise and 5-spice the soup was simmered for 20 minutes, then a handful of sirloin in cubes and the same amount of sweetcorn kernels dropped in, and finally some pre-soaked noodles.

It's a recipe with endless variations possible, but the core of the thing is the affinity of beef and star anise.