Dark evenings, squash and lovage

Clocks put back an hour today, the year's turning to winter properly now. I've always liked these early dark evenings: we even had some cocoa late on this afternoon as it got dark. It's soup weather - so I've included our recipe for squash soup below.

Mostly I love winter better than summer, even though having summer crops has been so great this year. We can still pop out for some things to cook - the beans are having a last hurrah now - but it'll be the greenhouse that'll come into its own soon. We've already moved in some more tender herbs, like parsley, tarragon and some little thyme plants. We may end up moving the lovage plant in there too.



It's a pretty unprepossessing plant, just stalks and leaves, tattered and a bit faded, but it has the most wonderful flavour. A sharp, savoury, celery-like tang, it's particularly good when it comes to making soups and stews.

Which is what we've been doing. We had a nice-sized onion squash in our veg delivery last week, which we decided would be best turned into soup, with a little help from our much-reduced lovage plant.

Soup-making's really easy. The key to it is to sweat down the vegetables for long enough before you add the water or stock. Even better if you have some good, home-made chicken stock to go in it, but for the strong flavours of this soup, you're fine with a light vegetable stock, or even just water.

A quick note on ingredients first. You don't really need lovage - a stick of celery chopped into a small dice and added to the onion would also be fine. Similarly, the fresh parsley's good, but not essential. However, the fresh grated nutmeg is, we think. Nutmeg's one of those great traditional ingredients that seems especially good at lifting hearty, warming foods in autumn and winter.

Squash Soup

Ingredients (serves 4)

1 tpsp olive oil

butter

1 medium to large onion, chopped
1 onion squash (you could use other orange-y squashes), diced
1 clove garlic, chopped
a generous pinch of lovage, chopped (or a celery stick)
1 good sized cooking apple, peeled and sliced
1 bayleaf
1 litre water or a light stock
squeeze of Lemon juice
fresh nutmeg, grated
fresh parsley, chopped (optional)

Method

In a large casserole, sweat the chopped onions (and celery, if using) in some olive oil and butter for 5 to 10 minutes, until the onion is soft.

Add the diced squash, the garlic, apple, lovage (if using) and a bayleaf and sweat on a very low heat, with the lid on, for another 10 minutes. Stir occasionally to stop it sticking to the pan.

Add the water or stock, bring to the boil and cook on a low simmer for 15 minutes.

Liquidise or blend until smooth.

Add a squeeze of lemon juice, a grate of nutmeg and salt to taste.

Serve & garnish with the chopped parsley.

Extending the season

It's been a lovely autumn day here today, a chance to rake up some of the masses of leaves to make leaf mould and just to enjoy being outside. The beech tree we can see over the back of our garden looked especially lovely today. While clearing the leaves, we probably had our last little conker hunt of the year - and it was good fun comparing these 'tree seeds' with the exploding seed pods of the garlic chives:



Nothing if not educational, our garden. The borage is nodding its lovely, dreamlike blue flowers in the herb bed: there are plenty of flashes of colour still in the garden:



But everything's winding down there now, with the last of the cucumber, squash and marrow plants now uprooted and chucked on the compost heap. Next it'll be the turn of the beans. We're still getting plenty of runners, although we haven't done brilliantly this year. And the crop of borlotti beans hasn't been as generous as we'd hoped. Still, we'll be able to rustle up enough fresh to enliven some pasta and stews, even if we won't be looking at drying them for the winter.

Which brings us back to the title. One of the things people are most ingenious at is extending the fruits of summer and autumn into the winter. Sometimes this ingenuity is pretty crass and pointless, like the array of tasteless fruit on supermarket shelves all year round. But often it's brilliant, whether that's preserving fruit in alcohol, pickling, jam- and chutney-making, or taking advantage of polytunnels and greenhouses to extend the growing season where most appropriate. We're going for winter leaves this year:



The seedlings above include American Land Cress (a fab watercress alternative that doesn't require a babbling brook), a spicy mix and some Lambs Lettuce. They're doing well so, with a fair wind, we'll have some leaves to make wintry salads or to add to sandwiches. A little bit of summer through winter.

The cucumber pickles, preserving for the next few months one of our best crops this year, are nothing short of profoundly great:



When it comes to the beer, there's something about autumn and winter that demands something darker, I think, and something new, rather than the extension of summer's light, golden ales (although that's not a bad idea). My porter, to a recipe I cobbled together myself, is now two weeks or so in the keg and is doing very well. Another couple of weeks and this should be ready. Can't wait:

Thinking the Unthinkable

Or maybe posting the unpostable. Or something. It's not really as dramatic as it sounds, but is an acknowledgement that it's time to start seriously thinking about plans for Christmas. If you're the kind of person who enjoys rushing round at top speed through the shops on Xmas Eve, then it probably isn't. But if you want to have a more home-made time of things, you need to be more organised and start thinking about things early.

The most popular thing we've done over the past few years is to make a load of sloe gin, to bottle and give to friends as presents. And you really need to get your skates on with this now, unless you've already done so.

Sloes are easy to identify. Here's the patch we used to visit, by the River Cam in Cambridge:



The berries are blue-black, with a slight whitish bloom on them. They're hard, bitter and incredibly astringent - but they should have a bit of give to them at least when you pick them. Whatever part of the country you're in, they should be at their ripest now. The thorns are a bit evil, so take care. They have a terrible reputation amongst local farmers, apparently.

The recipe we use is pretty simple: 600ml of gin (pick a decent one, 40% or above, but nothing too fancy) to 450g (or a pound) or sloes and 450g of sugar. We prick the sloes with a skewer first, although you can stick them in the freezer to split the skins, or even bash them with a rolling pin apparently. Pricking them means less filtering later on, in our experience. Put the sloes in a big jar or crock, pour the sugar over the top and then the gin. Shake or stir it a few times a day until the sugar's dissolved and then give it the occasional shake or stir. Here's ours on the go:



If you start it off now, it should be drinking from some time in late January or early February. If you're bottling it for other people, put a 'best after' note on the label.

Another thing you can be getting on with is pickling. We've got a few jars of pickled onions on the go now, which are real favourites to go with all those lovely Christmassy cold cuts between Xmas Day and the New Year:



And then there are other things you can be getting on with, especially if you're going to be making crafty gifts. We'll be dusting off the Christmas Blog in the next couple of weeks to post a few hints, tips and ideas through October, November and then a lot more throughout December. Christmas is better if you plan it a bit, we think, so now's a good time of year to sit down with a drink and a list of people you want to give gifts to, and work out just what you need to do.

Ignore any misgivings about 'starting' Christmas early and see now as an opportunity to have a more enjoyable, and less stressful, time later on.