Spanish style tortilla with beetroot leaves

Our beetroots and potatoes are doing incredibly well and we've also some onions coming on a treat. Beetroot leaves are surprisingly pretty nice either in a salad, or used cooked, like spinach. Here's a tasty recipe I cooked up for breakfast today that uses all of them:

Ingredients:

• A large potato or two, diced into small pieces
• Beetroot leaves, roughly chopped (spinach or chard will also work well)
• A medium sized onion or two
• 3 eggs
• Salt and pepper
• Olive oil

Method:

• Put the diced potato(es) on to boil.
• Just before the potatoes are ready, add a little olive oil to a hot frying pan and start frying the onions.
• When the potatoes are ready and the onions are part cooked, add the potatoes to the frying pan. You might also want to add some more olive oil to stop the potatoes sticking.
• While these are cooking, crack the eggs into a large bowl and roughly mix the yolks and whites together.
• Once the onions look like they're nice and translucent and the potatoes are starting to brown slightly, put them in the bowl with the eggs. The smell should be gently teasing your taste buds by this point.
• Add the chopped beetroot leaves (or spinach, or chard) to the now empty frying pan, along with a little more olive oil.
• Cook the leaves till they've reduced and softened a bit and then add them to the bowl with the eggs and potatoes.
• Season the lot with as much or as little salt and pepper as you like and then mix it all together.
• Add a little more oil to the frying pan (look, I didn't say this was the diet version, did I?) and then pour in the contents of the bowl. Cover the frying pan with a lid to help it cook all the way through.
• Once it's getting quite solid and the bottom is nicely browned, you need to turn it over and cook the other side (here comes the clever bit...)
• Remove the lid and place a large dinner plate over the top of the tortilla. Turn the frying pan over, keeping the plate firmly in place. Then slide the half cooked tortilla back into the pan, uncooked side down.
• Once the other side is also nicely browned, it's ready to eat.
• Mmmmmm! Tasty!

Nettle soup recipe

This is a bright-green and hence quite unexpectedly delicious soup. Truly foraged, nettle-only. Did I say unexpectedly delicious? Of course you can add potatoes and onions to thicken it up once they too are in season. But for the moment, the seed onions are in a bag in the hallway, and the first early potato plant only just poked out the ground today. So nettle-only it is.

Ingredients (highly approximate!):

• 400g (half a plastic bag) of freshly foraged nettle leaves (uncompressed). Pick only the four to six leaves at the top of the plant, as these are tender.
• 1-2 cups of water
• 4-6 teaspoons of Swiss vegetable bouillon powder
• 2 teaspoons of minced / crushed garlic
• Salt and pepper to taste

Method:

1. Put the water in a pan and put on the heat.
2. Wash the nettles. Carefully! (reminds me of the joke: how to hedgehogs make love? - carefully!)
3. Once the water is boiled, add the nettles. Don't be shocked if it looks like there are far too many for the amount of water, as they'll reduce down a treat.
4. Boil until the nettle leaves are nice and soft, then blend using a hand blender.
5. Add the bouillon, garlic and salt and pepper to taste.
6. Serve and enjoy!

Oh, and here's a picture of the current state of our kitchen table...

Wild garlic and new potato salad

I'm away at college this week, so I won't be able to access the allotment until the weekend, when I'll be getting on with fencing, fencing and more fencing. Until then I have a few moments spare to talk a little about the wild garlic we recently transplanted to the allotment and share another very simple, but very tasty and healthy, recipe with you.

Wild garlic is a fantastic herb that grows wild in many locations in and around our towns and cities. The chances are you have some near you - you'll know it by the seriously pungent smell as you pass by. Unlike regular garlic, you just use the leaves, which taste similar to chives and which you use in much the same way. However, it isn't around forever and now is the time to pick it, so get out there pronto unless you want to wait till next year to enjoy it.

We're keen to garden using permaculture principles, one of which involves planting crops that will pretty much take care of themselves with little or no input from you. Wild garlic is perfect, as it grows like a weed and it's really tasty, so we dug up some we came across while on holiday a week or so ago and transplanted it to a nice shady spot in the allotment. Hopefully it'll take ok, so fingers crossed.

Only pick a few of the bigger leaves from each plant to allow the rest of the plant to keep growing and provide more tasty leaves for next time. Also, make sure you wash the leaves thoroughly before eating, as you never know who's been doing what to it before you picked it. When using it in your food, don't be shy with quantities, as it's a lot milder in taste than garlic cloves.

My favourite way to use it so far is in a simple potato salad.


Wild garlic and new potato salad

Ingredients:

• New potatoes
• A small handful of wild garlic leaves
• Extra virgin olive oil
• A pinch of sea salt

Method:

1. Boil some lovely new potatoes whole and in their skins (salt the water if you like)
2. In the mean time, wash the wild garlic leaves and chop them finely
3. Once they're cooked, give the potatoes a gentle bash with some kind of blunt implement (a potato masher is ideal, but don't over do it) to roughen them up and break them up a little. The oil and flavour will be better absorbed by the potatoes this way and the texture is lovely.
4. Mix through the olive oil, salt and chopped garlic leaves.
5. Mmmmmm!

A quick note on sea salt and extra virgin olive oil...

You should always use sea salt rather than table salt, as table salt contains chemical additives that stop the granules sticking together, whereas sea salt doesn't. If you find your salt sticking in the shaker, just put in a teaspoon of rice, which will prevent this from happening.

Lots of people don't know the difference between extra virgin and regular olive oil. It's really simple. They're both processed in the same way, but extra virgin olive oil uses olives that have been freshly harvested, whereas olives used in the 'normal' oil may have been sitting for some time before being pressed. I'd go for extra virgin every time.

Beetroot salad recipe

It might be a bit early to harvest beetroot, but I'm about to sow mine, which made me think of my seriously tasty recipe for beetroot salad.

Ingredients:

• Some beautiful beetroots, straight from the allotment
• Juice of 1 freshly squeezed lemon
• Some sunflower seeds
• Some Pumpkin seeds
• A little salt
• A little pepper
• Some olive oil

Instructions:

1. Grate the beetroot and put into a big mixing bowl.
2. Add the lemon juice and pour on some olive oil.
3. Add a wee pinch of salt and a little pepper (not too much though, you want it subtle, like).
4. Toast the sunflower and pumpkin seeds in a dry flying pan, along with a little salt (the pumpkin seeds should be popping a bit, but don't burn them).
5. Serve with the toasted seeds on top.

I love this salad and it also works well with carrots. Don't spare the lemon juice, as this makes it taste nice and fruity - the olive oil will tone down the acidity a treat. It'll keep in the fridge for a day or two.

Enjoy!

Wild garlic salsa

Here's one we whipped up while on holiday - a nice side dish for David's tortilla (recipe coming up).

3 ripe tomatoes
20 leaves wild garlic
1 small red onion
2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
olive oil, parsley, oregano, black pepper and salt to taste

Dice tomatoes and onion, cut wild garlic into thin strips (I use scissors). Mix these ingredients vigorously with generous amounts of balsamic vinegar, olive oil, chopped parsley, oregano, black pepper and salt. The resulting juicy dip should have a coarse soup consistency when the tomato juice is released. Refrigerate for up to 2 days, but be aware, the garlic taste gets stronger!

Wild garlic dip

Inspired by the time of year - and invariably returning from woodland walks with one hand full of broad-leaf wild garlic - here's a recipe that's quick and lovely:

10 leaves wild garlic
1 pack cream cheese or quark or yoghurt (200g)
1 squeeze lemon juice
salt to taste

Pick off individual large leaves of wild garlic - ideally away from dog walking routes - wash thoroughly and chop (I use scissors). Mix with other ingredients and refrigerate overnight to bring out the best of the flavours. Serve as a dip with crudites and breadsticks, or on toast topped with smoked salmon. Watered down, leftovers make a great salad dressing.

Our first co-op plants

With rabbit fencing begun and ongoing, we've concentrated on putting out the less tasty plants:
4 rows of pink fir potatoes (from the Castle Douglas health food shop organic sprouted pile for 50p), one row each for Sarah, David, Cate and Malcolm. We planted the sprouting potatoes in deep grooves, covered with horse manure and kept soil aside to fill in as the plants grow to encourage more root growth. David dug in 3 further rows of charlotte potatoes a few days later (the bolted variety off the reduced shelf at homebase)

We - David and Sarah - dug up a good square metre of broad-leaf wild garlic plants while on holiday in Dumfries&Galloway, and transported them back in three baking trays we had brought along. They travelled back precariously balanced on top of our bags in the back of our miniature car, in sweltering heat - well, not bad for Scotland anyway. The two hour trip back to Edinburgh with open windows was - well - aromatic.

Nenya spent a couple of afternoons tending to the bulbs and distributing them in the far-end woodland patch. I feel a recipe coming on!

On the way back, we stopped by David's dad's place, dug up a large potato patch in his back garden to get them started, borrowed a couple of tarpaulins and offered to thin out the rhubarb patch. Here's one of the six root pieces now in our "pumpkin patch":

Justin's lentil&chard stew

Our very first recipe! Courtesy of Justin. Enjoy!

5-6 large leaves Rainbow Chard (or other leafy green veg)
200g Green or Brown Lentils
50g Pot Barley
1/2 Red Onion
1-2 cloves Garlic
1Carrot
8-10 cupsWater
3 tbsp Sunflower Oil
15 Black Peppercorns
2-3 Bay Leaves
2 tbspMarjoram (dried)
1 tbspPaprika
3 tbspTomato Puree
1 Vegetable Stock Cube (optional)
Sea Salt to taste

Soak barley 6 hours, and lentils ½ hour prior to cooking. Dice onion, carrot and garlic. Chop chard leaves. Heat oil in pan and fry onion until lightly browned, then add garlic, paprika, marjoram, and bay leaves. Stir and fry 30 seconds. Add lentils and barley and water, and bring to boil. Crush peppercorns and add to pot. Add stock cube (optional) and tomato puree. Reduce heat and simmer 30-40 minutes or until lentils and barley become tender. Add more water as required. Add carrot and chard, return to boil and simmer 10 minutes.

Serve stew on its own, or over mashed potatoes or rice. Serves 3-4.

Healthy herb oven chips

potatoes, as many as will fit the oven
olive oil
salt
oregano

Wash (don't peel) the potatoes. Cut thin potatoes (like pink apple) lengthways in quarters, thicker ones into wedge shapes. Dry wedge surfaces very thoroughly on dry kitchen towels, rub with oil, salt and oregano and bake in a 200C oven until edges are deep brown and middles soft. No need to pre-heat - it's a waste of good energy.

Harvest - what a way to start!

In a brief visit to the garden after two weeks of absence, David and I found two 17" courgettes! Only two plants made in through the slug attack, and have produced 4 large ones each so far. I keep walking around work with large courgettes in my handbag - and the comments keep coming as you might expect.
The bean poles were leaning diagonally under the weight of runner beans, so we came to the rescue. Bean curry anyone? The rainbow chard has shot up since planting out, the yellow, pink and white ones make a great salad - the red ones are better cooked as they're quite tough. Sweetcorn are looking like they want attention soon - the maize hair is browning on the crowns. Hmmm fried in butter...














The new plot is looking great, except Alexandra's poor flower that has been demolished by slugs. Someone has weeded another two beds ready for sewing - can't wait to see what!








On the old plot we've taken down the old bean poles and dug up the pink apple potatoes - David's first potato harvest. This was also the first outing of my new camera, and I can't recommend alternating potato digging with lens handling. From originally 12 seed potatoes in April we filled a tray...

The tomatoes in the greenhouse have been less prolific, though the 100s and 1000s plant in our kitchen window at home just keeps them coming - tomatoes and greenfly galore. In the picture: mini, gardener's delight, yellow and pink plum tomatoes.