Squash, feta and nettle pie

This pie was made from the last crop of 2016 – a tiny squash that had been sitting on the windowsill all winter refusing to ripen – and the first crop of 2017 – nettles which have been springing up all over the garden. You may prefer to use spinach.

Squash, feta and nettle pie (serves 2)

Ingredients:

300g squash

25g nettles (or 50g spinach)

30g butter

1 packet of ready-made filo pastry

100g feta

25g walnuts

Method:

Peel squash, cut into chunks, toss in oil, and bake at 200C/180C fan/Gas 6 for 20 minutes until tender. Leave to go cold, then mash with a fork, or blend to a puree. 

Wilt the nettles or spinach in a frying pan with a little oil. Leave to go cold.

Heat the oven to 200C/180C fan/Gas 6.

Melt the butter. Open the pastry and place under a damp tea towel, so it doesn’t dry out. Smear a small pie or baking dish with butter. You want a dish small enough that the excess pastry can be used to make the top of the pie.

Take one sheet of pastry, brush with melted butter, and place over the pie dish. Repeat four times.

Crumble half the feta over the bottom of the pie. Then use the squash to make the next layer, then use the walnuts, the remaining feta, and finally add the nettles or spinach.

Fold over the filo sheets to make the top of your pie, tuck in the sides, and use butter to make sure everything is sealed. Make a little hole in the top of the pie with a sharp knife.

Bake for 20 to 30 minutes, until golden brown.

A winter brunch with egg, chorizo, squash and kale

It’s very chilly out there, not to mention windy and rainy, but my kale has survived it all. It has been attacked by slugs, flea beetle, caterpillars and pheasants, and it’s come through. I’m very grateful because there’s not much else to harvest in the veg patch at the moment.

Kale goes particularly well with another seasonal staple - winter squash. Add spicy, savoury chorizo and rich, oozy egg and you have an extremely delicious seasonal brunch. This recipe relies on you having cooked squash in the fridge. If you don’t, cut a squash into cubes and then either steam for 10-15 minutes or roast for 20-30 minutes at 180 C fan.  

Winter brunch with egg, chorizo, squash and kale (serves 2)

8-10 slices raw chorizo sausage

1 handful cooked, cubed squash (roasted or steamed)
1 handful kale, chopped
2 eggs

You need a frying pan with a lid (or use foil). Cut the chorizo into 1cm thick slices. Fry these in a pan for a few minutes and turn over once browned. Add the cooked cubes of squash and chopped kale stalks to the pan, and fry for two more minutes. Add the chopped kale leaves and put the lid on the pan for two to three minutes until the leaves have wilted. Meanwhile, cook the eggs in a separate pan according to your preference (I go for poached). Pile it all onto plates and eat!

A recipe for brie and damson toasties

The temperature has dropped, the courgette plants have collapsed, and I have turned my attention to toasted cheese. This is a really delicious way to combine seasonal fruit with lots of unctuous cheese. The damson slips into the shoes of the more usual partner for brie, cranberry. 

Another great seasonal pairing is pear and blue cheese on toast. Lightly butter a slice of bread, thinly slice a pear and lay it on the bread in a single layer, sprinkle with a little blue cheese, and put under the grill for a few minutes.

Brie and damson toasties

This damson sauce is equally delicious with cheddar – it really brings out the savouriness of the great British cheese.

200g damsons

70g sugar

Brie (mild)

Bread

Butter

Oil

Put the damsons in a pan, add a splash of water to cover the bottom, put on a lid, and simmer until soft, about 10 minutes. Rub the damson mixture through a sieve, then return it to the pan and add the sugar. Stir until the sugar dissolves, taste, and add more sugar if necessary. Bring to the boil and cook for three to five minutes until the mixture has thickened (it may set like a jam as the damsons contain so much pectin).

Butter two slices of bread. Put the sliced brie onto one slice and spread with some of the damson sauce. Put the other piece of bread on top to make a sandwich and then rub a little oil into the outer sides so it doesn’t burn.

You can either place this in a sandwich toaster or on a pan over a medium heat. If you’re using the pan method, put a plate on top of the toastie and put something heavy on top of that to achieve the necessary pressure. After a few minutes on each side, your toastie should be ready. 

A recipe for courgette and mint dip

Our courgettes are still going strong, thanks to the unseasonably warm weather. This is a great recipe for a glut, as the courgette reduces so much during cooking. It's a simple flavour combination - courgette, mint, yoghurt - but it's one of the best ways I know of really bringing out the flavour of these mini-marrows. This recipe is adapted from a Turkish recipe from my brother-in-law’s mum. Thank you Nuran.

Courgette and mint dip

400g courgettes

1-2 cloves garlic, sliced

Mint

2-4 tsp yoghurt

                  

Grate the courgettes and squeeze out as much liquid as possible with your hands. Heat some olive oil in a pan and add the garlic. Cook for 30 seconds over a medium heat, don’t let them go brown. 

Add the grated courgette to the pan, spread it out and sprinkle with a pinch of salt. Cook for 10 to 15 minutes until the courgette has reduced by about three quarters and tastes sweet and concentrated (not watery). 

Take off the heat, add the torn up mint, and stir in the yoghurt. You can eat this warm, but it's equally good cold. 

A recipe for rødgrød med fløde

This is a Danish recipe. It’s a red berry soup with cream, or a deconstructed fool, depending on your point of view. We went on a family holiday to Denmark when I was a teenager and we all struggled to get the pronunciation right. It’s almost impossible for non-Danish speakers to say but it goes something like this... Rurr grurr mid fleurrrr. It tastes a lot better than it sounds.

Red berry pudding (serves 2)

You can use any mixture of berries, but if in doubt use raspberries and red currants. I used blackberries with a splash of Pinot Noir to make the rødgrød in the photo and it was lovely. 

350g berries – raspberry, red currant, blackcurrant, or blackberry

100ml water

120g caster sugar, or more to taste

1 ½ tbs corn flour (1 tbs for every 300ml liquid, see below)

Put the berries in a saucepan and add the water. Bring to the boil, and simmer until the fruit has softened, two to five minutes. Sieve the mixture into a bowl, discarding the pips.

Measure the liquid in the bowl. You will need 1 tablespoon of corn flour for every 300ml of liquid, but don’t add it yet.

Put the liquid back in the saucepan and, over a low heat, stir in the sugar until it has dissolved. Taste, and add more sugar if necessary.

In a small bowl, stir the corn flour and two tablespoons of water together until you’ve got a smooth mixture. Ladle a little of the warm berry liquid into the bowl and stir again until it’s smooth.

Stirring all the time, tip the corn flour mixture into the warm berry mixture, turn the heat up and bring the mixture to the boil. Simmer for two minutes, keep stirring, then take off the heat and check you can’t taste the corn flour. If you can, simmer for another minute and check again.

You can either eat it warm or, as the Danish prefer, cold. The traditional accompaniment is lots of whipped cream, but yoghurt also works well. 

A recipe for raspberry and coconut ice cream

It was an unexpected sunny weekend. The roses came out. The swallows skimmed the lawn. And we scrambled around on our hands and knees putting squash and courgette plants into the ground. 

The rugosa rose: excellent for making Turkish Delight

In the kitchen, I made some raspberry and coconut ice cream, using up fruit from the freezer. The ingredients are self-explanatory - raspberry, coconut cream, sugar - but by playing around with the quantities - lots of raspberries, not too much coconut cream - you get a pudding with a really punchy fruity flavour.

Raspberry and coconut ice cream

300g raspberries

150g caster sugar

100ml coconut cream (or the solids from a tin of coconut milk)

Sieve the raspberries. Whisk the coconut cream to get rid of any lumps. Combine all three ingredients in a bowl. Stir to dissolve the sugar. Taste and add more sugar if needed. Churn in an ice cream maker. We have this manual one. 

A recipe for scallops on toast

You don’t usually find the words scallop and cheap in the same sentence. But here is a low-cost recipe using the luxury shellfish. The contrast between the crunchy toast and the tender scallop is very good indeed. You need one big or two small scallops per person. Mine was large and cost £1.50. 

Scallops on toast (serves 1)

1 slice bread
1 scallop

Cooking oil (I used rapeseed)
Butter

1 garlic clove, chopped

1 squeeze chilli puree or a small chilli, chopped
Lemon

Put the toast down.

If the scallop is large (over 2 cm high) cut it in half across so it cooks more quickly. Put some oil in a pan. When it's really hot, add the scallop and its coral. Cook for 1 minute on each side. 

Put the cooked scallop on the toast. Put the butter in the pan, add the garlic and chilli and cook for 30 seconds. Pour over the scallop, squeeze over some lemon juice, and eat with a green salad.

A recipe for squash, red pepper and red chilli soup

This recipe is super-easy. You don't need stock, onions, or spices - just roast the vegetables, blend and add hot water. It has a surprisingly complex flavour - sweet from the squash and red pepper, earthy from the garlic and fiery from the chilli. 

I make so much squash soup at this time of year, as I tend to have lots of squash which aren't fully ripe when I pick them in October (they have to come in before the first frost). So, they all sit on the window sills until they are ready to eat (usually from Christmas time onwards). It's lovely to be eating something so sunny at such a gloomy l time of year. 

Butternut squash, red pepper and red chilli soup (serves two)

500g butternut squash

1 red pepper

1 red chilli

6 cloves garlic

Hot water
Squeeze of lemon

Preheat the oven to 200C, 400F (180C fan).

Peel the butternut squash, cut into chunks about 3cm across. Deseed and chop the red pepper. Put them both in a baking tray with the whole red chilli and the garlic cloves (still in their skins), drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle with salt, and cook for 20-30 minutes, until the vegetables are soft.

Boil the kettle. Scrape the vegetables into a saucepan, pop the garlic cloves out of their skins, and halve and deseed the chilli (you can add whole or half the chilli depending on how hot it is). Blend everything together, pour in the hot water until you have the consistency you like. Squeeze in some lemon juice, add more salt if needed, and top with yoghurt or creme fraiche if you fancy. 

A recipe for traditional marmalade

Last weekend I made marmalade using my granny’s recipe. My mum remembers helping her - picking out the orange pips, cutting up the skins, and watching her stir the mixture in a big brass preserving pan.

The recipe follows the “whole fruit method”. This means you cook the oranges whole, slice up the rind, and then boil it up with sugar to make the classic preserve.

It is the quickest way to make traditional marmalade. It will take you about four hours from start to finish and most of that time is spent waiting for the oranges to either cook or cool.

Seville oranges cooked and ready to be sliced

Traditional marmalade (makes about four jars)

500g Seville oranges (about four)

1 lemon, juiced

1 kg granulated sugar or cane sugar

1 litre water

Scrub the oranges and remove the buttons at the top. Put them in a pan, add 1 litre of water, bring to the boil and simmer gently for about two hours until you can easily pierce the skin with a fork. Leave to cool.

Take the oranges out of the pan and keep the cooking liquid, you should have 800ml (add some water if you don’t have enough). Cut the oranges in half and flick out the pips with a fork. Discard the pips. Cut the orange halves into bits, thick or thin depending on how you like your marmalade.

Put four clean jam jars on a tray and put them in the oven at 100C. Put a saucer in the freezer – you’ll need it later to test whether your marmalade has set.

Put the orange bits and the cooking liquid into a pan. Add the lemon juice and the sugar. Stir over a medium heat until the sugar dissolves.

Bring to the boil and boil hard until setting point is reached. To test for this, take the saucer out of the freezer and put a blob of the mixture on it. Return the saucer to the freezer for two minutes. Take it out and push your finger through the blob. If the blob wrinkles your marmalade has set.

Take the pan off the heat and leave to cool for 10 minutes. Then take the jam jars out of the oven, pour the marmalade into each one, and put the lids on (I use these cellophane lids). Done! 

A recipe for French toast with elderberry sauce

I had the idea for this recipe at Laporte’s. I’d been thinking about what to do with the elderberries in the garden. There were only a few, so jam or jelly was out of the question. And then I was eating my brunch at Laporte’s and I wondered if they’d make a good sauce for French toast. And they did.

Tiny, dark purple, and subtly fruity, elderberries are the fruit of the elder bush (the same one that produces elderflowers in the spring). They are ready in August or September when the stems turn red and the clusters of berries hang upside down. 

You’ve got to be careful when cooking them as the stalks and raw berries are mildly toxic. Pick the whole cluster, strip the berries off the stalk with a fork, and then remove any unripe or shrivelled ones.

Elderberries ready to pick: stalk is red and berries hanging down

French toast with elderberry sauce (Serves 2)

For the toast:

8 slices of day-old baguette (or 4 slices of another bread)

2 eggs

2 tbs milk

A pinch of salt

A knob of butter

For the sauce:

50g elderberries (about five clusters of berries)

25g caster sugar

1 tbs water

Put the elderberries (stripped from the stalks) in a saucepan with the sugar and water. Stir over a low heat to dissolve the sugar, then bring to the boil and simmer for two minutes.

To make the French toast, beat the eggs with a fork, add the milk and salt. Dunk the baguette slices in the mixture for about 30 seconds on each side. Heat the butter in a frying pan, and once it’s frothing, fry the slices for about two minutes on each side.

Put the French toast on a plate and drizzle over the sauce.

A recipe for raspberry ripple gelato

I went on holiday to Sicily in June. One of the things I loved was the ice cream or gelato – smooth, light, and full of fresh fruit. I discovered that on the island they often make their gelato from whole milk thickened with corn flour - no cream, no eggs.

On my return, I found a recipe for Sicilian-style gelato on David Lebovitz’s blog.  I’ve been experimenting a little since then and this is my best concoction so far, using raspberries which are in season at the moment.

Gratuitous photo of Sicily - it's very pretty

Raspberry ripple gelato (based on David Lebovitz’s recipe for pistachio gelato)

500 ml whole milk (or you can use semi- or skimmed)

2 tbs corn flour

100 g raspberries

6 + tbs caster sugar

Mix the corn flour and four tablespoons of the milk together in a bowl until well-combined.

Heat the milk and four tablespoons of sugar (or more to taste) to just below boiling point (It will be steaming with a few bubbles around the edge). 

Add the corn flour mixture to the milk, bring slowly to the boil and simmer for three minutes, whisking all the time. You only want a very gentle simmer, a few bubbles coming to the surface. Leave to cool, then put it in the fridge to go cold.

In the meantime, make the raspberry sauce by putting the raspberries and two tablespoons of sugar (or more if you prefer) in a bowl in the microwave for 30 seconds.

Mix with a spoon, and it should dissolve into a sauce. If not, heat in 30 second bursts until it does.  If you want to get rid of the pips, push the mixture through a sieve. Leave to cool, and then put in the fridge.

Once both the thickened milk and the sauce are cold, churn the milk in an ice cream maker (we have this manual one), put in a container and then swirl through the raspberry sauce. 

How to cook broad beans

Preparation

Broad beans are one of the most delicious spring vegetables, like delicate little green sweets, but you've got to get them out of the wrapper first. Open up the pods and push the beans out with your thumb. 

Cooking

Size matters. If your beans are two centimetres long or less, you can eat them raw or cook them for a minute in boiling water. If they are longer than that, it's best to boil them for two to four minutes until tender, run them under cold water, and then pop them out of their grey-green skins. Why bother? Because it's the difference between eating them because they're good for you, and eating them because they're delicious. 

Flavour combinations

Broad beans are tasty in their own right. Try substituting them for peas in your favourite recipes. However, they go particularly well with cheese (especially goat's cheese), bacon (or any preserved pork), lemon and fresh herbs including mint, parsley and coriander. 

Recipes

Only got a few beans? Can't be bothered to peel them? Got far too many? Never fear, there is a recipe for you...

Broad bean and feta frittata

This Valentine Warner recipe is quick, tasty and really highlights the delicate sweetness of the beans.This is the one to go for if you don't fancy too much peeling. You can use fewer beans than the recipe suggests, and you only need to peel them if they’re really tough. If you’re pushed for time, cut out the onions. 

Broad bean and pea risotto
A really delicious and comforting spring recipe from Brighton and Hove Food Partnership. There's something very therapeutic about stirring a risotto. As an added bonus, this is a great recipe if you don't have that many beans. You can just make up the numbers by adding extra peas. 

Broad beans on toast

An excellent alternative to baked beans. This River Cottage recipe is very simple - just beans, bacon, and spring onion piled onto toast. If you don’t have any spring onion, you could use a clove of garlic instead. This is most enjoyable when the beans are young, tender and don’t need to be peeled. 

Broad bean hummus 

This Nigel Slater recipe is a good way to use up a glut of larger beans. He suggests using dill to flavour the hummus, but you could also use mint or coriander. It is worth peeling the beans so that you get a lovely, bright green colour and a really bean-y flavour. But if you don't bother, it'll still taste good. 

Two good rhubarb recipes

I have never been a fan of rhubarb. But it’s abundant at this time of year, and there’s little else to experiment with pudding-wise. So, for the past few weeks I’ve been trying to find a recipe I like.

I started by making rhubarb compotes. However, I only enjoyed eating them when I used equal quantities of sugar and rhubarb. I took the hint and moved on to jams. 

Rhubarb and ginger jam  

Rhubarb and ginger jam

Rhubarb is low in pectin, so you need to either use jam sugar (which has added pectin) or add another fruit that’s high in pectin (oranges, lemons or apples). Otherwise the jam won’t set.

Using jam sugar cuts the cooking time down to 10 minutes or less.

This BBC recipe was easy and produced a delicious vibrant jam; plum red and punchy.

Rhubarb and orange marmalade

This Lakeland recipe uses oranges to provide the pectin. You take near equal quantities of rhubarb, oranges and sugar, and cook them for 45 minutes.

This produced a very different jam, much more subtle than the first, with a delicate sweetness from the oranges and a faint tang of rhubarb.

Rhubarb and orange ice cream

Rhubarb pudding

The first jam was delicious swirled through yoghurt. 

The second made a lovely marmalade ice cream using the recipe from Sarah Raven’s Garden Cookbook (worth tracking down, you don’t even have to churn the mixture).

A recipe for squash dip

I harvested my squash in October, and immediately cut one up to make soup.  It was not ready, and the rest spent two months ripening on a warm windowsill. Finally, just in time for Christmas, they were good enough to eat.

We’ve had a lot of squash soup since then, as well as squash risotto, squash dip, squash pizza...

This squash dip is good hot or cold. We spread it on toast and eat it for lunch. I got the idea of putting peanut butter with squash from this very tasty River Cottage soup recipe.

Squash and ginger dip (makes one bowl)

I love the combination of squash and ginger, but you could use garlic and chilli as well.

400g - 500g butternut squash (about half a squash)

Olive oil (or any other cooking oil)

Salt

1 cm chunk of fresh ginger

Squeeze of lemon juice (about 2 tsp)

3 tsp peanut butter

4 - 8 tbs water

Preheat the oven to 200 C, 400 F. Peel the butternut squash, chop into 2cm cubes, and put in a baking tray. Drizzle over the oil and salt, and roast in the oven until soft (about 20 minutes).

Put the roast squash in a food processor, grate in the ginger, and then add the lemon juice, peanut butter and water. Blitz, taste and add more of the ingredients as necessary. You might need more water to get the right consistency. 

A recipe for mackerel with orange and lemon zest

I bought some Scottish mackerel and  Seville oranges this week. I hadn't planned to use them together, but then I wondered whether the oily fish and the tart citrus might get on quite well. I grated Seville zest into some oil, fried the fish in it, and it proved very tasty. However, as the Seville season is so short, I thought I’d better work out how to make the dish using normal oranges and lemons. This is the result...

Mackerel and citrus zest (serves 1)

It’s important to cook the fish and zest gently in very little oil. Otherwise you will make a mess of oily fish and burnt zest.

1 mackerel fillet

1 small garlic clove

1 orange, zest only

1 lemon, zest only

2 tsp rapeseed oil

If the orange and lemon are waxed, scrub them in hot water first. Chop the garlic and debone the mackerel fillet.

Put a frying pan over a low-medium heat and add the oil. Once the oil is gently sizzling, add the mackerel skin side down, and cook gently for three to five minutes until it’s cooked almost all the way through. Add the garlic, orange and lemon zest to the pan and wait until they start to sizzle. 

Turn the fish over so that it's on top of the garlic, orange and lemon zest, and cook for a minute or so until the mackerel's done (i.e. until it’s white all the way through). You can add a little squeeze of lemon or orange juice if you like. Eat.

Sussex credentials: Non-existent. Oranges and lemons are seasonal, coming from the Mediterranean at this time of year. Mackerel will be back in season down here in the Spring.