...when there starts to be a real glut of produce from the garden - even in such a terrible summer as the one we've had this year!
The tomatoes just keep going. We've already had the delicious roast tomato & basil soup from Nigel Slater's 'Kitchen Diaries' (thanks, sis!) a few times this summer, but hot rather than chilled as he suggests. It's a great, simple way of doing tomato soup - just roast chunks of tomato in olive oil & garlic for about three quarters of an hour in a casserole. Add a pint of vegetable stock, a handful of torn basil leaves, bring to the boil & then whizz up in the food processor or with a hand blender. Lovely.We're going to roast up the latest crop of tomatoes from the garden and then freeze them to bring a bit of colour to late autumn and winter. We've done this before with our glut of tomatoes - blended and then frozen, they can be pulled out of the freezer to make a great base for a pasta sauce or a pizza topping.The plums are almost over now - there will be one more crop that's just ripening up now. Despite our problems with mouldy plums (caused by a maggotty thing, we think, not helped by the damp) and the terrible year that England has been having for plums, we've not done too badly. They're lovely stewed in the oven and then served up for breakfast with some yoghurt. We've made a very nice 'instant' plum chutney from one of our cook books. And there have been two batches of plum jam so far - not to mention Delia Smith's great recipe for plum chutney, which went down so well last year.We're barely keeping up with the blackberries - which is good for the birds, I guess! The latest lot will probably go into some kind of chutney...Busy, busy...
Having previously blogged about Europadisc's 'Das Alte Werk' special offer, the label has now also turned up on offer at MDT until the 28th of October. They're selling single CDs for £5.50 & doubles for £6.50 - within the UK free postage applies to orders over £50.There really are some great recordings turning up in this series. MDT aren't offering the entire selection. From what they have, I already mentioned two CDs by Il Giardino Armonico, Bach's Brandenburg Concertos & a selection of excellent Christmas Concertos. Nikolaus Harnoncourt's brilliant recordings of Bach's B Minor Mass & Haydn's Missa in Angustiis ('Nelson' Mass) are also a snip.I've also been really enjoying Herbert Tachezi's Kunst der Fuge performed on the organ and the intriguing 1963 recording by Jurgen Jurgens & Andre Rieu of the two secular cantatas BWV 206 & 208 has turned out to be well worth listening to. It's 'old school' Bach to a certain extent, on modern instruments with pretty large-sounding choral forces (the Monteverdi Chor, Hamburg), but it's performed with a bit of dash and style and the soloists all sound pretty good. It doesn't have the leaden-footed quality I sometimes hear in earlier 'traditional' interpretations - instrumentalists and choir do a particularly good job with 'Lebe, Sonne dieser Erden' from the Hunting Cantata (BWV 208) - the need to have a good driving rhythm along with force and clarity in the vocal lines makes this short section a pretty good litmus test for the work as a whole - it's carried off with a fresh sound and a bit of brio. Sadly this CD isn't (yet?) included in the samples available from the Das Alte Werk site.In fact, that website is a little frustrating, as it seems to be rather slow to catch up with their own release schedule, as well as a little lacking in more general information. Having a glance at MDT's list of new releases for October, there seems to be a new batch due then - including two more fantastic Bach double CDs from Harnoncourt, his Orchestral Suites & first recording of the Christmas Oratorio (included on our Xmas website; & I blogged about his recent return to the piece last year) - where the official site falls silent. They're not on MDT's offer, unfortunately, but they are brilliant value nonetheless. If you search on 'Teldec' in the label field, you'll get a list of 10 releases, which also include more cantatas (sacred this time) from the Monteverdi Chor Hamburg & Jurgen Jurgens, featuring amongst others Kurt Equiluz & Max van Egmond.
Haven't found much time to blog lately. And when it comes to seasonal customs, this time of year was always too full of hard work for too much fun. I've already posted about our Rumtopf and now is the time for planning for and making all kinds of treats for the winter months. So it's jams, jellies, chutneys and booze that needs time to get tasty in bottle or jar. We really hope we can find a supply of quinces this year - Cambridge was full of them, we got loads via a post on the local Freecycle scheme - but we've not found a supplier so far in Newcastle...The beer is still going surprisingly well (I always expect these kind of things to go wrong!). The latest beer (a 'clone' of Banks & Taylor Black Bat from Protz & Wheeler's book of recipes - a nice strong beer for October) is currently fermenting away quite nicely in its bucket. Fermentation is going quite well - the gravity needs to drop from 1064 to 1015. So far, after 3 and a bit days of work it's down to 1040. The yeast I'm using this time is Wyeast's London III (1318).As that one starts off, we're tackling Brew 3, another Protz & Wheeler recipe, for Exmoor Gold. It's turned into a very clean-tasting (if a slightly *too* hoppy) golden ale, quite summery and light. The pictures below show samples at 1, 2, 3 & 4 (well, *almost* 4 - we couldn't wait any longer!) weeks. Somewhere in the 3rd week, the cloudy stuff turned into delicious golden beer...
All that's left of the loganberries now are the jars of loganberry jelly in the fridge and the job of cutting back the fruiting branches - leaving the new growth to produce fruit for next year. Despite problems with mould, no doubt caused by the miserable wet summer we've had, we're starting to get so many Czar plums from the tree that we hardly know what to do with them. So far, some have been added to our Rumtopf, another batch have been turned into an 'instant' (ie. no maturing) chutney to have with a curry & yet more have been made into delicious plum jam, which we enjoyed on pancakes this morning.Plenty of tomatoes are ripening - the pick of the bunch are the Bloody Butchers - and, having survived the slug onslaught, our leaves are now ready to make some great salads. A particularly nice salad we've been enjoying involves dressed leaves, broad beans, feta cheese and chopped dill. It's another good thing to add thinly sliced kohlrabi to as well. Also doing pretty well are the little purple and white striped Calliope aubergines. We've had a couple so far and there are 5 or 6 more at the moment getting towards ripeness. But we're a little nervous about our chillies. The plants are all doing really well, but we've been having such scarce sunshine that it's touch and go whether they'll ripen properly or fall victim to mouldiness.Our problems of course pale into insignificance compared to the situation facing farmers in England this year. Will the weather ever turn sunny?
