Courgette Soup and Marrow Rum

It's all gone a bit mad down the allotment, especially with our courgette plants, they seem to be growing and fruiting at an exponential rate. Pick one healthy size specimen, return a couple of days later and bang, a pair of bruising green truncheons appear in it's place. Leave it a week or so and woof, the zucchini transform into massive weighty clubs, fit for cavemen and trolls. It must be the wet but warm weather we've been having. Although I think the fact that I've left the plant's man and lady parts alone this year has helped too. You know, their flowers. Last year, I kept snipping off these delicate golden blossoms for stuffing and tempura, ignorant of the fact that I was making the plant less fertile and the yield was a lot lower as result. I feel a bit ashamed actually. The arguments I must have caused due to tension, frustration and feelings of inadequacy. The turning of backs, hitting of pillows, whispered name calling, 'flopsie wopsie', oh dear. But like I said, I have let the bees and Mother Nature do their thang this season and we really are reaping the benefits. So much so that we appear to be heading towards a 'glut' - a word which in itself seems have connotations of wanton abandonment - and so I have had to resort to extreme measures to cull the tide. In other words, I've been making soup, that great subjugator of excess food stuffs.

Courgette soup comes in many guises and with this fruit as a base, it seems like you can run off in various directions. During research on t'internet, I discovered that carrot, mint, watercress, curry powder (a Pear Cafe suggestion), tomatoes, chickpeas all make happy bedfellows but yesterday I plumped for a traditional Italian combination of courgette and parmesan. This is a slightly bastardised version of a recipe I found here to accommodate the quantity of courgettes I had. I also omitted some ingredients such as the cream simply because I didn't have any lying around in the fridge but I am not sure the soup needs it as courgettes do have an inherent, lush creaminess when cooked nice and soft which goes well the salty bite of the cheese. Great served warm but I bet it would be equally delicious cold.

Courgette and Parmesan Soup
serves 4 (with some to go in the freezer afterwards)

ingredients

50 gms butter and a healthy splash of olive oil

5 garlic gloves, chopped

handful of basil leaves, chopped

1 bay leaf

1 and half kgs of courgettes, quartered and sliced into 1cm rounds

1 litre of vegetable stock (I used Marigold Swiss Vegetable Boullion)

100 gms of finely grated parmesan cheese, plus some to serve

salt and pepper, for seasoning

method

Take a large pan and heat oil and butter until its foams and then add the courgettes, garlic, basil and bay leaf and cook gently for 10 minutes or so until courgettes are soft.

Take about a quarter of courgettes out and then add the stock and simmer for 10 minutes, remove from the heat and leave to cool slightly, take out the bay leaf and then blitz in a food processor or blender.

Pour the soup back into the pan and place onto a low heat, add the cheese and stir through until it has melted and warmed through. Season for taste, although you probably won't need much salt. Ladle into a bowl and spoon some of the reserved courgette into the middle. Sprinkle with some extra parmesan and drizzle some extra virgin olive oil around the outside of your courgette pile for poncy presentation effect.

Courgette and Parmesan Soup

Now I was always of the opinion that marrows were just overgrown courgettes and as they both member of the squash family, it's not too far flung a belief to behold. After all, when a courgette becomes huge and bloated with water it tastes exactly like marrow and therefore is pretty bland to boot. This didn't discourage us in sowing some marrow seeds earlier this year but after facing this recent onslaught of courgettes, I've been scratching around for alternatives this Daddy which rose into view across the allotment path like "wot no" Chad.

Again, I did a bit of research online and some unusual ideas did come up such as marrow and ginger jam which is pretty intriguing but then my eyes zeroed in on a recipe for marrow which featured the magic word 'Rum'. And then a ping of deja vu zipped through my brain. 'Didn't Helen of Food Stories say she was going to make rum with a big, fat marrow that I gave her as part of WMPC?' I asked her on Twitter and the answer was verily, "No! Bugger! Didn't get around to it".

I think I got to the shops and back within ten minutes, juggling bags of demerara sugar.

So yes, I am now on a journey to procure some of my very own hooch. There are many questions surrounding this project. Such as will this actually bloody well work? And what is the legality of making your own rum at home? Is it in fact rum or something entirely else? Grog? Minging marrowy mead? To be honest, I haven't got the faintest clue to any of these questions but still, it is all rather exciting and I hope to report back in a few weeks time with the outcome. My only real reservation is an innate worry that the stuff will turn out to be as potent as some poteen that I tried way back in my uni days, having been smuggled in from Ireland. After only a couple of glugs, I had a conversation with Elvis, went blind in one eye and woke up in a pool of my own vomit and urine. I doubt or at least very much hope that the same will happen here. In the meantime, here is a little pictorial of the first stages of my making marrow rum. Kids, don't try this at home.

Take your marrow, cut the stem end off and hollow out all the pith and seeds.

Fill the cavity with demerara sugar (roughly 3kgs)

Pour in some orange juice and activated bread yeast (not pictured)

Stir and marvel at the concoction and wonder, will it work? Will it?

Place stem end back on top, seal with sellotape and leave for 3 weeks in a muslin bag (not pictured). The second stage involves some filtering into a demi john or something but I haven't got that far yet. Whoop!