In a previous post I wrote about how rather than the standard winter, spring, summer and autumn a kitchen gardener enjoys a lengthy series of seasons, their starts marked by picking and eating the first of a particular fruit or vegetable. Last week we had the first of our delicious Discovery apples, eaten straight off the tree they are somehow far more appley than shop bought, and the reddy-pink blush brighter and more alive. That's the good side of growing your own.
There is, then, a bad side too. We dashed off for a few days away recently, having inspected the produce close to readiness. A tiny greengage tree had seven or eight fruits just on the verge of ripeness, so we left them, anticipating a mini-feast on our return. The squirrels had other ideas - all bar one sorry specimen left broken on the ground had gone when we returned. We shared our strawberries with the little grey monsters too, the netting meant to protect the plants no barrier to these furry thieves, and a few well-bitten apples can be seen littering the ground in the orchard bit of the garden - we leave them in the hope that, easier to get at, they'll keep them off the rest for a time. Some hope.
I googled 'legality of shooting grey squirrels' and learned that you probably need a licenced shooter, and the preferred RSPCA method is catching them and getting a vet to put them down at £30 a pop. Only if you can guarantee a clean kill can you shoot them yourself (I have an old air-rifle that could possibly be of value, if they'd hold still until I was within three feet), so they will continue to enjoy the fruits of our labours undisturbed. No need I guess to go into detail of what happens to the bulk of the walnuts we grow.
Our interaction with the resident fauna is not all negative. We feed the birds partly because they put on a fine show, but also because in a largely organic set-up they are very helpful, for example eating loads of caterpillars. And we have a lot of flowers that attract hover-flies, which do a fine job on white fly and other pests. Thinking along those lines, what we really need is a resident raptor capable of taking squirrels. We don't have that, but hear owls aplenty, and The Dear Leader was buzzed a few weeks back by a Nightjar while she was on a dusk inspection tour of the crops. I now have to google 'how to attract Golden Eagles to your garden.'
Showing posts with label walnut. Show all posts
Showing posts with label walnut. Show all posts
Tuesday, 6 August 2019
Monday, 11 March 2019
Long-term Planning - Where Can I Hire a Truffle Hound?
In contrast to the appalling shower currently in government (and by the same token, Corbyn's cretins in opposition) the Dear Leader and I have been doing a bit of thinking beyond the next news bulletin, or even the next election. As noted previously here, we have planted what amounts to an orchard; have set out a good-sized kitchen garden; and invested in some relatively exotic trees (lemon, lime, mulberry, cherry, apricot...) to be kept in pots for winter storage under glass. Partly done for fun, partly for flavour - truly fresh lemons, for example, are streets ahead of shop bought ones - partly to give us an insurance policy in hard times - either our own, the country's, or the climate's.
Some of that forward thinking began a long time ago, and has paid off: we planted a quince maybe fifteen years back, and last year enjoyed our best crop ever; even earlier in our time in sunny Fulwood we put in a walnut tree, finally producing enough last year to make nocino. Thanks to a very generous gift by Dr Paul Thomas, whose company leads the UK in its field, we have just planted three tiny hazels - not for the nuts, though they will be welcome, but for the possibility that six years hence we will have out own truffles. Not the chocolate version, but the enormously expensive fungi. I met Dr Thomas on Saturday, to interview him for Lancashire Life Magazine. His company inoculates a range of trees with the seeds/spores, and works with estate owners, restaurants etc to see them through to production, something that takes at least six years.
Fingers crossed we make it to summer/autumn of 2025 unscathed, by no means a given of course. Similar digit crossing that the delicate and apparently temperamental truffles take in our soil (specially limed and lightened in their particular patch). I'm really looking forward to being able to cook with our own home-grown truffles; but I am really, really, really looking forward to casually dropping into some future dinner party conversation 'Oh, the truffles? Yes, we picked them earlier today. Did you like them? This year's crop has been exceptionally good.'
Some of that forward thinking began a long time ago, and has paid off: we planted a quince maybe fifteen years back, and last year enjoyed our best crop ever; even earlier in our time in sunny Fulwood we put in a walnut tree, finally producing enough last year to make nocino. Thanks to a very generous gift by Dr Paul Thomas, whose company leads the UK in its field, we have just planted three tiny hazels - not for the nuts, though they will be welcome, but for the possibility that six years hence we will have out own truffles. Not the chocolate version, but the enormously expensive fungi. I met Dr Thomas on Saturday, to interview him for Lancashire Life Magazine. His company inoculates a range of trees with the seeds/spores, and works with estate owners, restaurants etc to see them through to production, something that takes at least six years.
Fingers crossed we make it to summer/autumn of 2025 unscathed, by no means a given of course. Similar digit crossing that the delicate and apparently temperamental truffles take in our soil (specially limed and lightened in their particular patch). I'm really looking forward to being able to cook with our own home-grown truffles; but I am really, really, really looking forward to casually dropping into some future dinner party conversation 'Oh, the truffles? Yes, we picked them earlier today. Did you like them? This year's crop has been exceptionally good.'
Tuesday, 20 November 2018
Wood - and More - from the Trees
Last week I read what was an eminently sensible suggestion from a green lobby group, namely that in Britain we should produce less meat and use the land freed from sheep and cattle to grow more trees.
The idea was rooted (hmm) in thinking on greenhouse gases, animal farts being a significant contributor of unwelcome emissions, as it were. Trees take in carbon dioxide, and produce oxygen, so it's win-win. And win again, if the trees planted on the land in question were to be food producing species.
I'm not suggesting a vegetarian future, indeed for culinary, nutritional and other reasons I want to see us continue to farm land that's most suited to meat to produce - meat. There are plenty of upland areas in the UK where trees struggle, but make great grazing for sheep. But we've moved on, or should have, from every meal being a big lump of meat and two veg. Growing very productive trees like chestnuts - good protein and carbs - apples and pears, all suited to our climate, makes sense - I don't have the figures to hand, but I've read several times that in broad terms such husbandry produces a multiple of what meat farming can.
Walking the Dear Leader's domain* recently I counted up what we, in a very small way, had done along those lines. We have 18 trees in the ground that provide us with nuts and fruit, and a further 10 smaller ones in pots likewise giving us some return now, with the promise of more to come. There's (continued) austerity sense in investing in these plants, though we are now reaching peak tree at Pilkington Palace. About 15 years ago we spent maybe £15 then on what was a small quince tree, and after a decade of generally small harvests it is these days well established, and 2018 has seen it yield a perfumed glut. The walnut tree planted soon after our arrival here has similarly started to produce greater numbers of nuts, more to the benefit of the squirrels than us, but we have some jet black nocino maturing that we'd not have enjoyed without our own crop of green nuts. We have more cooking apples than we and several friends can cope with. We've enjoyed lemons and apricots, pears and plums, our bay tree is a cook's joy, and we hope one day soon to see cherries, mulberries, figs - even olives, who knows? There's a cobnut offshoot taken from the soon-to-be-quit allotment already doing well at the bottom of the garden.
This is the sort of action that many of us can take independently in our gardens. There are community orchards springing up in more enlightened towns and villages. But it's also the sort of thing the government should be getting behind. The cynic in me says that the meat processors and feed makers have more financial clout than the plant nurseries, well able to top up political coffers mightily meatily, and to wine and dine ministers and officials royally, so such thinking won't get much further in that direction than having a parliamentary committee established to study the broad range of possibilities - with deputations sent on fact-finding missions to... I don't know, Portugal, California, Australia, and anywhere else nice and warm.
Meantime we continue to lurch towards ever more calamitous results of climate change - the extreme events now coming thick and fast, though across the pond the Donald is keeping his piggy eyes shut to them - and a time when it won't be only distant foreign lands but our own struggling to feed itself. Planting productive trees, and beyond that permaculture, at least where it works best, is a proven solution.
*and mine
The idea was rooted (hmm) in thinking on greenhouse gases, animal farts being a significant contributor of unwelcome emissions, as it were. Trees take in carbon dioxide, and produce oxygen, so it's win-win. And win again, if the trees planted on the land in question were to be food producing species.
I'm not suggesting a vegetarian future, indeed for culinary, nutritional and other reasons I want to see us continue to farm land that's most suited to meat to produce - meat. There are plenty of upland areas in the UK where trees struggle, but make great grazing for sheep. But we've moved on, or should have, from every meal being a big lump of meat and two veg. Growing very productive trees like chestnuts - good protein and carbs - apples and pears, all suited to our climate, makes sense - I don't have the figures to hand, but I've read several times that in broad terms such husbandry produces a multiple of what meat farming can.
Walking the Dear Leader's domain* recently I counted up what we, in a very small way, had done along those lines. We have 18 trees in the ground that provide us with nuts and fruit, and a further 10 smaller ones in pots likewise giving us some return now, with the promise of more to come. There's (continued) austerity sense in investing in these plants, though we are now reaching peak tree at Pilkington Palace. About 15 years ago we spent maybe £15 then on what was a small quince tree, and after a decade of generally small harvests it is these days well established, and 2018 has seen it yield a perfumed glut. The walnut tree planted soon after our arrival here has similarly started to produce greater numbers of nuts, more to the benefit of the squirrels than us, but we have some jet black nocino maturing that we'd not have enjoyed without our own crop of green nuts. We have more cooking apples than we and several friends can cope with. We've enjoyed lemons and apricots, pears and plums, our bay tree is a cook's joy, and we hope one day soon to see cherries, mulberries, figs - even olives, who knows? There's a cobnut offshoot taken from the soon-to-be-quit allotment already doing well at the bottom of the garden.
This is the sort of action that many of us can take independently in our gardens. There are community orchards springing up in more enlightened towns and villages. But it's also the sort of thing the government should be getting behind. The cynic in me says that the meat processors and feed makers have more financial clout than the plant nurseries, well able to top up political coffers mightily meatily, and to wine and dine ministers and officials royally, so such thinking won't get much further in that direction than having a parliamentary committee established to study the broad range of possibilities - with deputations sent on fact-finding missions to... I don't know, Portugal, California, Australia, and anywhere else nice and warm.
Meantime we continue to lurch towards ever more calamitous results of climate change - the extreme events now coming thick and fast, though across the pond the Donald is keeping his piggy eyes shut to them - and a time when it won't be only distant foreign lands but our own struggling to feed itself. Planting productive trees, and beyond that permaculture, at least where it works best, is a proven solution.
*and mine
Monday, 20 August 2018
Odd Companions
I am not a fan of fusion cooking. Neither the imaginary version involving a nuclear-powered stove, nor the one where a chef tries to meld cuisines from radically different cultures and geographic locations. A bit of borrowing works, but pak choi with a red wine sauce and turmeric meringues doesn't. Nor am I one to experiment too radically with new (to me) combinations. But last night one (rather timid) attempt at introducing otherwise normally unconnected ingredients worked beautifully.
Pressed for time having returned from the cinema (The Equalizer 2 - not as good as the first one, but still a pleasing romp for a wet Sunday evening) we were to have the legs left over from the previous night's roast chicken - cooked by the Dear Leader no less (may her enemies shrivel like raisins) as I had been doing macho decorating stuff all day, and absolutely delicious - with a tomato salad, and needed something vegetal as a starter.
With kohlrabi aplenty at the moment I wanted to use some of that, so peeled and sliced two (raw) with a potato peeler into see-through circles (the secret is holding it with a fork so no blood is added involuntarily); cut thin slices of goat's cheese on top; crumbled some walnuts; and added a good handful of tiny basil leaves picked fresh from the plant. Dressed with walnut oil and cider vinegar, along with sea salt, it looked fabulous - which is a good start - and the four forthright flavours worked as well together as a string quartet.
That point about how it looked is important, more so for restaurants than the home, but still helpful in getting the gastric juices flowing. It actually looked good enough to cost £7.50 on a posh eaterie's menu. The dressing was not artfully drizzled in zig-zag patterns, there was no bloody silly lavender biscuit or similar to accompany it, but nonetheless looked fit for the commercial table. It also cost maybe £1 for two servings. When we arrived at the cinema around 6pm we passed a lengthy queue at the nearby McD's, where others were getting their treat of fat, sugar and carbs for rather more than that. Each to his or her own.
Pressed for time having returned from the cinema (The Equalizer 2 - not as good as the first one, but still a pleasing romp for a wet Sunday evening) we were to have the legs left over from the previous night's roast chicken - cooked by the Dear Leader no less (may her enemies shrivel like raisins) as I had been doing macho decorating stuff all day, and absolutely delicious - with a tomato salad, and needed something vegetal as a starter.
With kohlrabi aplenty at the moment I wanted to use some of that, so peeled and sliced two (raw) with a potato peeler into see-through circles (the secret is holding it with a fork so no blood is added involuntarily); cut thin slices of goat's cheese on top; crumbled some walnuts; and added a good handful of tiny basil leaves picked fresh from the plant. Dressed with walnut oil and cider vinegar, along with sea salt, it looked fabulous - which is a good start - and the four forthright flavours worked as well together as a string quartet.
That point about how it looked is important, more so for restaurants than the home, but still helpful in getting the gastric juices flowing. It actually looked good enough to cost £7.50 on a posh eaterie's menu. The dressing was not artfully drizzled in zig-zag patterns, there was no bloody silly lavender biscuit or similar to accompany it, but nonetheless looked fit for the commercial table. It also cost maybe £1 for two servings. When we arrived at the cinema around 6pm we passed a lengthy queue at the nearby McD's, where others were getting their treat of fat, sugar and carbs for rather more than that. Each to his or her own.
Tuesday, 17 July 2018
End of the Allotment
Now, where was I? The answer to that is in a rather more (but by no means strictly) vegetarian place than before.
For health reasons more than economy (though I love a bargain), and because we produce a lot of our own fruit and veg, I have over the last two or three years cooked far fewer meat-based dishes than used to be the case. I have a new hero too, the cookery writer Ursula Ferrigno, who appears to be of a similar mindset given I have two books of hers that are solely vegetarian, and a third on trattoria cooking that has plenty of meaty stuff in it.
As the Dear Leader (may her enemies perish in despair) and I near our second 30th birthdays anno domini looms far larger in the imagination, so we pick up more readily on the health-page articles than previously, and getting five-, seven-, ten-a-day is a fixation there, and thus now with us. We have also both made successful efforts to lose weight, part and parcel of the new view of our diet.
The big thing, however, as ever as far as I am concerned, is taste and pleasure. The two big things. Amongst our weaponry. It is now mid-July, our soon-to-be abandoned allotment (fed up with people nicking stuff, have lost strawbs, broad beans and blackcurrants this year already) is producing loads of wonderful and next-to-free produce, and our garden likewise. The broad beans (we have still had the majority of what we grew, but I hate being abused by thieves) are picked small and some eaten raw they are that good. Our fennel, likewise picked when tiny, is packed with more flavour and of a texture that is silk to supermarket worsted.
There are gastronomic possibilities too in growing your own that are pretty near impossible in this country otherwise. We have for example had lots of artichokes already, again taken small and sweet. And for the first time ever we have beaten those far more relentless produce-thieves, the squirrels, to our walnut crop, still only perhaps a dozen picked green, but now macerating in a Kilner jar with spices and a bottle of unwanted clear spirit, nocino for Christmas 2019.
The Dear Leader (may those who fail to bow before her suffer endless agonies) is expanding our kitchen garden, already quite a size, we spent a happy Sunday last week building a second small greenhouse (my how they laughed at the instruction book, apparently a surrealist statement of merely possible realities) and we have plans for more trees - this morning's smoothie contained three of our homegrown plums - to add yet more unbuyable varieties to our basket. We seem to be looking forward to the best ever quince harvest too.
I will miss the allotment, and wish the two users who will inherit our ground (and trees, and artichokes, and fruit bushes, and...) well of it. But I fear that as we head into uncertain political times, and very probably poorer economic conditions thanks to a generation of politicians of all stripes who couldn't organise a fart from a can of beans, we will see more and more desperate people reduced to raiding allotments to keep from hunger. I'd prefer it if they had an allotment of their own though.
In case anybody thinks I'm a heartless sod begrudging food to the desperate, I regularly donate a bag of tins and packets to the Sally Army. I do wonder if those stealing things are desperate, or just greedy idle bastards - a while back the plot next door lost a giant pumpkin just before Halloween; and another guy had an entire row of spuds dug up.
For health reasons more than economy (though I love a bargain), and because we produce a lot of our own fruit and veg, I have over the last two or three years cooked far fewer meat-based dishes than used to be the case. I have a new hero too, the cookery writer Ursula Ferrigno, who appears to be of a similar mindset given I have two books of hers that are solely vegetarian, and a third on trattoria cooking that has plenty of meaty stuff in it.
As the Dear Leader (may her enemies perish in despair) and I near our second 30th birthdays anno domini looms far larger in the imagination, so we pick up more readily on the health-page articles than previously, and getting five-, seven-, ten-a-day is a fixation there, and thus now with us. We have also both made successful efforts to lose weight, part and parcel of the new view of our diet.
The big thing, however, as ever as far as I am concerned, is taste and pleasure. The two big things. Amongst our weaponry. It is now mid-July, our soon-to-be abandoned allotment (fed up with people nicking stuff, have lost strawbs, broad beans and blackcurrants this year already) is producing loads of wonderful and next-to-free produce, and our garden likewise. The broad beans (we have still had the majority of what we grew, but I hate being abused by thieves) are picked small and some eaten raw they are that good. Our fennel, likewise picked when tiny, is packed with more flavour and of a texture that is silk to supermarket worsted.
There are gastronomic possibilities too in growing your own that are pretty near impossible in this country otherwise. We have for example had lots of artichokes already, again taken small and sweet. And for the first time ever we have beaten those far more relentless produce-thieves, the squirrels, to our walnut crop, still only perhaps a dozen picked green, but now macerating in a Kilner jar with spices and a bottle of unwanted clear spirit, nocino for Christmas 2019.
The Dear Leader (may those who fail to bow before her suffer endless agonies) is expanding our kitchen garden, already quite a size, we spent a happy Sunday last week building a second small greenhouse (my how they laughed at the instruction book, apparently a surrealist statement of merely possible realities) and we have plans for more trees - this morning's smoothie contained three of our homegrown plums - to add yet more unbuyable varieties to our basket. We seem to be looking forward to the best ever quince harvest too.
I will miss the allotment, and wish the two users who will inherit our ground (and trees, and artichokes, and fruit bushes, and...) well of it. But I fear that as we head into uncertain political times, and very probably poorer economic conditions thanks to a generation of politicians of all stripes who couldn't organise a fart from a can of beans, we will see more and more desperate people reduced to raiding allotments to keep from hunger. I'd prefer it if they had an allotment of their own though.
In case anybody thinks I'm a heartless sod begrudging food to the desperate, I regularly donate a bag of tins and packets to the Sally Army. I do wonder if those stealing things are desperate, or just greedy idle bastards - a while back the plot next door lost a giant pumpkin just before Halloween; and another guy had an entire row of spuds dug up.
Wednesday, 9 December 2015
A Composition
I think last night - with reference to the subject of the previous post - that I actually composed a dish, rather than conducted another person's recipe/score. Certainly I had no written source to work from, nor experience of eating a similar dish.
With some white and rather pappy hot dog buns to use up to make room in the freezer I decided to make a bread and butter pudding, but had none of the dried fruits or peels that would usually go in one. What I did have was plenty of walnuts, so I went with them.
Butter was mashed up with the walnut oil normally reserved for salad dressings, and two tbsps of Tia Maria (one of those things that seem to turn up in the drinks cabinet with nobody aware whence they came) to make it a coffee and walnut version. Walnuts broken into small nibs were put between the two layers of buttered bread, some of the liqueur poured on the upper layer of bread, a Tia Maria rich custard mix poured over the lot, and the top sprinkled with sugar and a bit more cinnamon. Cooked at 180C for 45 minutes it came out beautifully risen and browned.
The Dear Leader (may her enemies writhe in agony) was kind enough to say it was good, and after a pico second's persuassion graciously accepted a second helping. We'd only eaten a salad as the first part of the meal, so little or no guilt was suffered.
It would be (and will be) improved with a very strong expresso used to up the coffee flavour (like a tiramisu), and next time I make it I'll pound some walnuts to add to the custard (just milk, beaten eggs and some sugar with a tsp of cinnamon) and thus increase the walnut flavour too - what we ate last night was rather too genteel, but it was also extremely enjoyable: the texture of the slithery base contrasted as it should with a B&BP with the slightly crisp top, and the flavour was very coffee and walnut cake.
Conductor and composer. Where's my bloody knighthood? Maybe I need to work on my orgasm-while- smelling-a-fart face.
With some white and rather pappy hot dog buns to use up to make room in the freezer I decided to make a bread and butter pudding, but had none of the dried fruits or peels that would usually go in one. What I did have was plenty of walnuts, so I went with them.
Butter was mashed up with the walnut oil normally reserved for salad dressings, and two tbsps of Tia Maria (one of those things that seem to turn up in the drinks cabinet with nobody aware whence they came) to make it a coffee and walnut version. Walnuts broken into small nibs were put between the two layers of buttered bread, some of the liqueur poured on the upper layer of bread, a Tia Maria rich custard mix poured over the lot, and the top sprinkled with sugar and a bit more cinnamon. Cooked at 180C for 45 minutes it came out beautifully risen and browned.
The Dear Leader (may her enemies writhe in agony) was kind enough to say it was good, and after a pico second's persuassion graciously accepted a second helping. We'd only eaten a salad as the first part of the meal, so little or no guilt was suffered.
It would be (and will be) improved with a very strong expresso used to up the coffee flavour (like a tiramisu), and next time I make it I'll pound some walnuts to add to the custard (just milk, beaten eggs and some sugar with a tsp of cinnamon) and thus increase the walnut flavour too - what we ate last night was rather too genteel, but it was also extremely enjoyable: the texture of the slithery base contrasted as it should with a B&BP with the slightly crisp top, and the flavour was very coffee and walnut cake.
Conductor and composer. Where's my bloody knighthood? Maybe I need to work on my orgasm-while- smelling-a-fart face.
Friday, 21 March 2014
Walnuts are the New London Buses
A skim through my calorie counter book yielded a few surprises. Take for example walnuts, at 50 kcals for one large nut. Which means that a smallish grilled rump steak is just about equivalent to four of them. My wife is now cursing me, as walnuts have been a regular feature in her packed-lunch salads for years.
Four teaspoons of oil have the same calorific value as that steak/those nuts too. Weird.
The nice surprises (and the steak thing counts as one of those, let's look at and possibly through half full glasses) include water chestnuts and bamboo shoots, where a small can of each runs to a total of roughly 50 kcals (one walnut - now to calories what the London bus is to height, or the area of Wales to disappearing rainforests). And a generous portion of coleslaw made with light mayo is round about - yes, you guessed, a walnut of calories. I love coleslaw.
Mushrooms, another favourite, are deceptive. Just 13 kcals for 100g raw or boiled (I guess I've done that in stews, but never on their own), they shoot up to 157 when fried in oil.
Happily eggs are pretty austere on the calorie front, at about 80 when poached or boiled. Happily, as our four hens produce enough for cooking and for our breakfast every other day.
We refuse to use the dreaded D word and to go on one, so tonight's meal will be our usual Friday fare of steak for males and fish for the supreme leader. They will, however, be carefully cooked and served with super healthy stuff again: steamed French beans and mushrooms (done in a way yet to be decided, but microwave-steamed may work), steamed new spuds. With a salad to start our virtue will be assured. Then sod it, and glory be, a Magnum - it's the weekend, and the dear leader in particular deserves a treat - Magnum Classic being five walnuts of calories.
Four teaspoons of oil have the same calorific value as that steak/those nuts too. Weird.
The nice surprises (and the steak thing counts as one of those, let's look at and possibly through half full glasses) include water chestnuts and bamboo shoots, where a small can of each runs to a total of roughly 50 kcals (one walnut - now to calories what the London bus is to height, or the area of Wales to disappearing rainforests). And a generous portion of coleslaw made with light mayo is round about - yes, you guessed, a walnut of calories. I love coleslaw.
Mushrooms, another favourite, are deceptive. Just 13 kcals for 100g raw or boiled (I guess I've done that in stews, but never on their own), they shoot up to 157 when fried in oil.
Happily eggs are pretty austere on the calorie front, at about 80 when poached or boiled. Happily, as our four hens produce enough for cooking and for our breakfast every other day.
We refuse to use the dreaded D word and to go on one, so tonight's meal will be our usual Friday fare of steak for males and fish for the supreme leader. They will, however, be carefully cooked and served with super healthy stuff again: steamed French beans and mushrooms (done in a way yet to be decided, but microwave-steamed may work), steamed new spuds. With a salad to start our virtue will be assured. Then sod it, and glory be, a Magnum - it's the weekend, and the dear leader in particular deserves a treat - Magnum Classic being five walnuts of calories.
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