AlexMitchell

A plum job I hate

It’s that time of year again, the time when I have to do something that goes against every thread, every iota of my being. So reluctant am I to approach this task that I have to do it in stages, over several days, to make the pain that little bit easier to bear. But it’s not just time to try to get a press pass out of the RHS for the Hampton Court Flower Show – a disheartening process that involves having to prove you are a real journalist and not just a tryhard hack imposter desperate to travel all the way across London so they can stand in a muddy field, drink warm Pimms and then buy some plants that will get squashed in the train on the way home.

No, it’s also time to thin your plums. I love plum trees – their weeping habit and their pretty early white blossom, but most of all the lush melt in the mouth that reminds me of my country childhood when we would ransack my farmer dad’s plum orchards, then get freaked out by the jelly stuff we sometimes found inside. What is that stuff by the way?

In my little London garden my Victoria tree is a gem, though so very generous with itself that I have to thin it ruthlessly in July. It’s really worth doing this because otherwise the tree will exhaust itself and you’ll end up with nothing to pick next year. The heavy crop can also break the branches. Thin the plums so that you end up with a pair of fruits every 15-16cm or six inches (approximately a hand’s breadth). It’s devastating I know, but well worth it, even if you do get left with this dispiriting handful…

plums

What a lot of lolly – well, five at least

Take three blackcurrant bushes, a toddler and a woman with that slightly maniacal ‘I’m going to do something FUN with the kids today’ enthusiasm that is best acted on in the morning before it wilts to ‘Let’s see who’s playing at Wimbledon’ apathy by midday.

I’ve never considered myself the sort of person who would make my own ice lollies. God forbid. But then I had children. It’s weird how little projects like this become feasible when you’re trying to entertain a two and a half year old who will otherwise launch himself off a large garden beanbag onto a willow obelisk.

My three extremely scrubby blackcurrant bushes, planted in a dry, shady and overcrowded part of the garden, have always been a bit of a disaster. Their annual crop would fit in a shoe. But luckily, that’s all you need to make five ice lollies. Lakeland provided the moulds, and this recipe seemed adequately idiot-proof.

So we picked them…
harvest

Then simmered them for a bit with sugar, lemon zest and lemon juice…
simmering

Poured them into the moulds…
moulds

And then realised they didn’t fit in the freezer…

But they did fit in my neighbour’s freezer.

Four hours later and small child is transported to blackcurrant lolly heaven.

eating1

Obviously I ate the other four.

Darwin over daiquiris

The launch party for Miles Irving’s The Forager Handbook a couple of nights ago served up some great cocktails – mean mojitos and cherry whisky sours – and moreish canapes, but there was no disgruntled crush at the bar. Could this be because most of the guests usually have to wade through thorns to get their sustenance? You could tell the foragers from the other folk since, in the chrome and glass, city trader-environs of The Paternoster Chophouse in St Paul’s, they were the ones wearing shorts, with brown faces. Miles himself, longish hair and three-quarter length trousers was in happy mood as he signed copies and chatted to some of the chefs he supplies with foraged finds, such as The Paternoster Chop House’s Peter Weeden and Simon Wadham, head chef of The Rivington Bar and Grill who zips between the Shoreditch and Greenwich branches on his motorbike.

Anne Misselbrooke, a forager who supplies Miles with plants from Cornwall, has no time for gardening. ‘I can’t be bothered,’ she said, ‘foraging is so much easier.’ Comparing my dressing-gowned pottering in SE10 with scrabbling around on a windswept beach for sea purslane and sea beet, I didn’t get it, till she explained, ‘You’re always having to battle against pests to keep plants alive. In the wild, something’s either there, and healthy, or it isn’t there at all.’ Flashes of nasturtiums and broad beans bowed under the weight of blackfly and ants and daily blasted by the garden hose in a vain attempt to win the fight came into my mind, and I rather saw her point. She’s going with natural selection, we gardeners battle it all the way.

Go wild in the country – The Forager Handbook

Back in August last year, I found myself crouching by a beach hut on the Whitstable shingle, riffling through a scrubby bush with an intensity that soon drew the stares of passers by. It was all Miles Irving’s fault – a foraging maestro who was showing me how to identify sea beet, dittander, sea purslane, buckthorn berries and other treasures of the hedgerows and shore you’d normally squash under your sandal. He also cooked me a gorgeous lunch of all sorts of things I could barely identify, many of which may well have been destined for one of the swish London eateries his company supplies.

I wrote about it in The Sunday Telegraph here

forage

Anyway, Miles’s book The Forager Handbook – A Guide to the Edible Plants of Britain is being published next week. It’s a beautiful hardback bible of all things foragey, and a nice mix of the anecdotal and the informative with black and white photographs of every plant he covers. In short, the definitive guide to enjoying the fruits of the forest without landing yourself in casualty.

I’m going to the launch party next week and am already feeling slightly wary of the canapes…

Beware the Victorian-style Potato Barrel

barrel2

My suspicions should have been aroused by the catalogue. Describing itself as ‘A unique and brilliant Victorian style design in a decorative terrocotta finish.. made from durable polypropylene’ this faux terracotta pot was clearly not going to fool anyone.

But I closed my ears to my doubts and, seduced by talk of its ‘lift-up sides for ease of harvesting’, bought one of these hideous plastic tubs three years ago and have been trying to hide it from view ever since, while duly putting my five chitted potatoes near the bottom and then gradually adding a quantity of compost rarely seen outside a municipal heap.

Come ‘harvest time’ and, instead of a bounty of white hen’s egg-sized potatoes, I found five edible ones, a handful of teeny marbles and some slimy, rotted stems. It’s always a nice bonus when you poke your hand straight into the mushy original seed one too, isn’t it? Like Paul Burrell putting his hand into a hole. Meanwhile my bog-standard terracotta pots were full of 30 or so perfect specimens. This has happened three years in a row now so I think this counts as a scientific experiment.

All that compost just starves the poor little tubers of air as they try to develop. Potatoes like to be earthed up, yes, but they don’t want to have to claw their way endlessly up to the light like desperate pot holers lost at the bottom of a big, er, pot hole.

The nice gentlemen from the council took the useless thing away this morning in a big black bin bag. As a gardener, I know I should have turned it into a clever watering system or shredded it for squirrel bedding or something, but sometimes, you just want rid. Say no to faux-terracotta polypropylene, you know it makes sense.

June tips

JUNE IS BUSTING OUT ALL OVER…

What can I sow now?

June’s the month for sowing direct in garden soil or compost in large pots. The soil’s nice and warm and seedlings will just romp away. Get these in now and you’ll be eating them this summer…

Peas, carrots, lettuce, rocket, runner and french beans, beetroot, sweetcorn, chard, spinach, salad onions, radishes

What can I harvest now?

Potatoes, broad beans, carrots, beetroot, lettuce, rocket, radishes, peas, spinach, chard

Top tip… potatoes

New potatoes are at their best in June. I love growing them in pots since they take over my garden beds horribly and look pretty straggly and rotten after a while. I’ve tried so many different containers for growing potatoes, and have come to the conclusion that all those fancy spud tubs and deep potato planters are a waste of money. This year I’ve grown potatoes in normal terracotta pots (about 30cm diameter) and also special ’spud tubs’ – black plastic tall pots. I got more potatoes from the normal pots than the spud tubs.

The best way to harvest new potatoes is to upturn the whole pot onto a bit of plastic sheet or cardboard , keeping the plants undamaged and then pick off the potatoes that look ready, then replace the whole thing in the pot and water and feed it with a liquid seaweed feed. This way, the plant barely knows it’s been disturbed and will continue to grow the little potatoes for a later harvest. It’ll also save you scrabbling about in the compost for hours in an endless version of lucky dip in which your fingernails get so filthy you’ll be moved on from public spaces.

June recipe

The June is busting out all over garden salad

Serves 2

You will need

For the salad
10 or so new potatoes
6 golf-ball sized beetroots
A handful of radishes
2 handfuls of washed lettuce leaves
2 handfuls of podded broad beans
1 packet feta cheese

for the dressing
3 parts walnut oil
1 part white wine vinegar

Boil the potatoes and beetroots until tender. Rub the skin off the beetroot when cool. Steam the broad beans, then pop out of their leathery skins. Top and tail the radishes. While the potatoes are still warm, toss in a little walnut oil and white wine vinegar (ratio, 1 part vinegar to 3 parts oil). Cut the feta cheese into cubes. Combine all the ingredients into a big bowl and toss well, pouring on more walnut salad dressing to taste.

Strawberry feels forever

strawberries1 Note to self, when making summer pudding from your precious homegrown redcurrants, blackcurrants, raspberries and strawberries, don’t buy thick ready sliced bread and squish it down hard in the bowl first.

It will form a layer impermeable to all known substances, particularly berry juice, prove impossible to chew, let alone digest, and decompose sometime in the next millennium. On the plus side, I think I might have found something to regrout the bathroom.

‘More pepper, ladies?’ I’d rather have broad beans

Last weekend. Paris. Too lazy even to open a guide book, I and my friend (a fellow mother of small children – ie punch drunk with exhaustion and a need for essential oils, complimentary shower caps and an evening in front of the Eurovision Song Contest) asked at the hotel front desk for a restaurant recommendation.

This is risky. The second night, we hit dross with La Rotonde where I felt like we’d wandered into that Victoria Wood sketch where the waiter looms leeringly over two sunburnt female holidaymakers with a giant pepper grinder – ‘More pepper, ladies’ – flirting patronisingly in search of a tip, which obviously being British and terrified of offending, we gave anyway. But the first night we hit gold with Le Timbre, a tres intime little place who’s English chef (I know, alarm bells did initially ring) wowed us with the usual French fare of snails and duck, but most importantly a fillet of cod on a bed of succulent broad beans of the brightest emerald, coaxed to perfection with a smattering of lardons.

We strolled through the Jardins du Luxembourg, wondered why Parisians in the 6th arrondisement need so many children’s clothes shops when, by the looks of it, there have no actual children, and marvelled at how very French France is (queues outside patisseries! old women looking like Brigitte Bardot! little dogs! little dog shit!).

But, safely returned on the Eurostar, it’s those broad beans that I keep thinking about. This is because I have very little capacity for high culture and a very high capacity for food. However pretty the Georges Pompidou Centre is, you can’t eat it. But mainly it’s because the broad beans in my garden are just about ready to pick and the bar has now been well and truly raised. So how do I recreate that perfect broad bean dish?

Does one steam them or boil? Obviously you have to pop them out of their grey pods to avoid wading through a dish of saddlebags, but when? What oil do you use? What bacon? What herbs? Do they need lemon juice? The questions are endless, I need answers…

Spring rising

Been a bit busy lately – having a baby and looking after a toddler too (unfortunately, it seems the two and a half year old can’t look after the baby) – so my blog has rather fallen by the wayside.

Now the clocks have gone back, I can hold back the tide of spring enthusiasm no longer and must once again bore all incomers with minutiae about my London kitchen garden. The carrots that won’t germinate. The blurry close-ups of redcurrant flowers. Sorry, but I’m compelled to. Especially since the Sunday Telegraph has stopped my weekly Edible Gardener column for the time being due to reasons of ‘budget’ and ‘space’, those twin horrors of the freelance journalist.

Meanwhile, in the world of media gardening, Carol Klein has driven around Britain in a Nissan Sunny with the roof down and continued her tireless championing of the rolled up jean, Sarah Raven has come up against the wrath of lower-middle class England with mutterings about cous cous in the Sissinghurst kitchen (‘But Vita and Hadji loved Morrocco!’) and Toby Buckland has become the host of Gardener’s World, channelling Geoff Hamilton. Which some may think is a marvellous thing. Some.

Garden highlights from my early morning garden patrol: two peas have germinated in the wine crate and a cat has sicked up a piece of baling twine.

Here’s a blurry close-up of a redcurrant flower…

redcurrant

3 things I learnt yesterday

1) Andy Sturgeon is really really nice (sort of guessed that already, but turns out I was right)

2) It’s amazing how you don’t notice the rain and cold of a British August when you’re high on adrenaline and caffeine and have a radio transmitter velcroed to your upper thigh

3) Being filmed for the telly is not quite as terrifying as I thought it would be

So a TV crew came yesterday to film me and my ‘edible London’ garden for a show that’s going to be on in November and the lovely Andy was presenter. Naturally, being August, it rained so everything looked wet, but I’m hoping they can do amazing things with the wonders of television. And, obviously, being a publicity-hungry media hack, I’ll be letting any reader(s) of this blog know exactly when it’ll be on when I do.

Now, when I’ve finished pulling up all those plastic aubergine plants, I’m off to that darkened room…