Journal
Sweet cicely, rhubarb and ginger compote
Sweet cicely is a thug here. It looks beautiful, the ferny leaves, the white flowers that shimmer in the dappled shade, the sweet, fresh scent that gives it its name.
I planted some seeds at the back of the poly tunnel, a few more under the beech hedge by the front. Now it is so rampant that it has to be hacked back from the border where it is smothering tulips and peonies, it outgrows the grass in the paths by the cutting patch.
The seeds - a few always seem to escape my chopping - launch themselves like torpedoes, wedging their tips into crevices at the heart of plants and only appearing once the damage is done.
And yet . . . and yet . . . as with so many badly behaved plants, it has to be forgiven. It is so perfect for spring - so light and fresh and optimistic
This year I plan to keep it under control by eating as much of it as possible. I began with rhubarb and ginger compote - sweet cicely is meant to reduce the amount of sugar needed as it has a natural sweetness.
Rhubarb, ginger and sweet cicely compote.
Ingredients -
- good bunch of rhubarb, 5 or 7 medium stems
- 5 cm piece of ginger
- good handful of sweet cicely leaves and stems
- 25g sugar/honey
Slice up the rhubarb into 2 cm slices (approximately)
Peel and grate the ginger
Finely chop the sweet cicely
Put into pan with sugar and thoroughly mix together.
Leave for ten minutes before putting on a low heat, keep stirring. Ideally you want the rhubarb to give off enough liquid and stew in its own juice - a careful low cooking should do that. If you are worried that it is all going to burn you can add a small amount of water or orange juice to start it off (maximum 1 tablespoon).
After about 10-15 minutes the rhubarb should be beginning to go soft - take off heat and leave to cool.
I love this with yoghurt for breakfast. You can also mix it with equal amounts of whipped cream to make rhubarb fool.
You can download the recipe card here
A note on cutting sweet cicely flowers - they droop dramatically when you put them in water and look as though they are a lost cause - leave them somewhere cool overnight and they will probably recover and then last about a week.
The accidental foraging expert (my tv appearance)
10 years ago I was called up by a tv producer looking, rather last minute, for a foraging expert to appear on a tv show - they had read a blog post I had written about making nettle soup and thought I would be a good fit.
The reality tv show was called Conquer the Castle and took 6 city slickers up to Blair Atholl estate in Perthshire, teaching them rural estate skills. Each day the contestants competed in a variety of 'rural skills' tasks and at the end of the week one was crowned 'King of the Castle'.
I was there to show them what food could be foraged from the wild on a Scottish Estate at the beginning of July. Half the contestants would go fishing, half foraging and they would get together and make a meal at night from whatever they caught and found.
The estate is beautiful with lots of old pasture and woodland so we found wild garlic, wood sorrel, pignuts and lots and lots of nettles.
I taught everyone how to pick nettles without gloves and avoid stings (this is where the phrase grasping the nettle comes from - be confident, pick swiftly and you won't get stung) and how to choose good pignuts to dig up.
I loved the filming, striding around in the rain in a borrowed Akubra hat, it was amazing fun, much less choreographed than I had assumed.
The programme still occasionally airs on Sky. I haven't been asked to do any tv since though . . .
I am not a professional grade forager - I'm certainly not an expert, but I do love to collect tasty wild plants - especially at this time of year, the hungry gap, where we are all in need of the kind of 'pick me up' that early wild greens contain.
Nettles are very good for your health - as well as helping to reduce inflammation and improving circulation they are used for treating everything from prostate problems to menstrual cramps and kidney stones.
I tend to think of the as a simple, gentle, general detox plant that comes into leaf at just the right time of year.
By the way, if anyone else suffers from Reynaud's syndrome - where the fingers lose all circulation - deliberately stinging yourself with nettles is a great way of alleviating the symptoms. You do end up with the prickly buzz of nettle stings but I personally find that better than having stiff cold blue fingers. I keep a little patch of nettles in the poly tunnel through the winter to use.
Mostly however I use nettles in cooking and this recipe is one of my favourites.
Nettle Risotto
Pick the growing tips of nettles - just the top 4 or 5 leaves as they are the most tender. You can either wear gloves or just confidently pinch out the leaves. Nettles sting when you brush against them rather than when you squash them.
Ingredients
- Bowl of freshly picked nettles (quantities don't really matter) - roughly chopped. (use a big knife or wear gloves)
- Juice and zest of 1 lemon
- 1 onion
- 1tbs butter
- 200g risotto rice
- 1l stock heated in separate pan
- Soft goats cheese to taste
- Salt and pepper
Chop the onion finely and cook in butter until soft.
Add nettles and stir until wilted. Add lemon zest.
Add rice, stir to coat it in butter and add in hot stock a ladle at a time, slowly stirring until it is almost absorbed before adding in another ladleful. Do this for 15-20 minutes until the rice is cooked.
Take pan off the heat and stir in lemon juice, seasoning and cheese.
There are lots of possible alterations to this recipe, like most foraging recipes it is very adaptable - sometimes I add in chopped sorrel with the nettles, sometimes I use parmesan instead of goats cheese. Nettles go especially well with strong salty and sour flavours
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Gluten free, sugar free (but still delicious) brownies
Last Friday - when I was at Sarah Raven's garden in East Sussex we had a brownie so delicious that I managed to smear half on it over my forehead. Sadly I did not notice this until lunchtime, when I saw myself in a mirror, and wondered why I had a great chocolatey streak above my eyebrows.
However, even that did not put me off trying to recreate the brownies when I got home. The brilliant thing is that they are gluten free and refined sugar free and have fruit and vegetables in them, so you can pretty much pretend that they are a health food.
The recipe is from Sarah Raven's book Good, Good Food (which I haven't had a duff meal from yet)
Beetroot Brownie
Ingredients
- 200g beetroot (2-3 small beetroots, if you are in a rush I can't see why the vacuum packed cooked beetroot wouldn't work)
- 200g 70% cocoa chocolate (or above)
- 200g stoned dates
- 100g ground almonds
- zest and juice of a large orange
- 2 medium eggs
- 1/2 teaspoon baking powder (gluten free if that matters)
Cook the beetroots in a pan of boiling water until they are soft. This will take 30-45 minutes. Let them cool a bit and chop up. I didn't peel the beetroots as they were small and young but the original recipe says you should.
Preheat oven to 180/Gas Mark 4 and line a 20 cm baking dish with baking parchment.
Melt the chocolate, either in a bowl over simmering water or in the microwave.
Blend the beetroots and the dates together - I used a blending wand which worked fine.
Add in the almonds, beaten eggs, orange zest and juice, and baking powder - mix well and then stir in the melted chocolate.
Pour/spoon into the baking tin and bake for 25-30 minutes until a skewer comes out clean - you want it to be still squidgy. Leave to cool in the tin and then cut into small squares.
As you can see in the photo, at Sarah Raven's they added on a very smart (if forehead staining) ganache icing to the top but I don't think you need it as the brownies are very rich and satisfying on their own.
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Goats cheese with edible flowers recipe
This morning my friend brought me round a kilner jar of cheese from her goats.
I love goats cheese - my favourite restaurant is goat themed, it would be my desert island food - so it is always a wonderful treat.
By co-incidence 91 Magazine - which is my great new discovery this month - had a recipe for flavoured goats cheese covered in flowers. I had to give it a go.
I popped down to the village and picked some wild garlic from the slope behind the carpark, I pulled some flowers from a primrose in the pots outside the workshop and this is what I made.
Ingredients
- 100g soft goats cheese
- 6 wild garlic leaves chopped up fine
- zest of small lemon
- pinch of salt (I used Cornish sea salt with seaweed because it is my new love and I'm adding it to everything)
- 20 primrose flowers, 4 garlic leaves to serve.
Mix the goats cheese and the seasonings together in a small bowl.
Use 2 spoons to make the goats cheese into a ball.
Lay 4 wild garlic leaves on a plate and carefully put the goats cheese ball onto them.
Put the primrose flowers all over the goats cheese until it looks like a 1960s swimming hat.
Serve! I think it would look particularly stunning on those charcoal black crackers.
Make sure that you know where your flowers (& garlic) have been growing, avoid any that may have been sprayed with pesticides and wash and dry them well.
Great Glen Charcuterie
Sometimes I think that the most innovative businesses in the UK, the ones changing and expanding existing markets, are producing food.
Such is Great Glen Charcuterie, based in Roybridge, near Fort William where Anja and Jan Jacob Baak aim to make their Scottish Venison Salami as recognisable as Parma Ham.
Anja and Jan Jacob originally moved to Scotland to look after the Highland estate for a fellow Dutchman. They saw an opportunity in the fact that for the stalkers the venison was almost a waste product and wasn’t commanding a high price.
Jan Jacob built a smoker in their garden and began transforming venison into delicious charcuterie while Anja fashioned baby booties out of deer leather while looking after their 6 children.
In 2003 they took the plunge, and both started to work full time in the business - gradually building up an impressive client base of chefs and high quality stockists.
Anja points out that this was just about the worst timing - just as they moved to a high end artisan product the economy tumbled “People were not buying expensive charcuterie and we really got hit in sales. It took years before we could start making any money and it was tough for our family”
Over the years though Anja has used Social Media to teach people about her product - how venison charcuterie is a healthier alternative to traditional pork, how not much is needed to transform a dish and to showcase how top chefs are using their chorizo, salami, pepperoni and bresaola in dishes. You can find her recipes on the Great Glen Charcuterie website
Now they process 250-300 kg of meat per week and their charcuterie is stocked in Fortnum and Mason and Harrods amongst other shops.
I asked Anja what her advice would be to someone wanting to start a business and she said
“Follow your heart, look at what you really enjoy doing and find a job in that sector. It might not be your dream job but start somewhere and get experience. My first job was as a bakery assistant”
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