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!

Wild Garlic Pesto, Soup, Bread etc etc etc

I got caught up in a verdant frenzy of foraging and cooking yesterday and where it came from I don't precisely know. Perhaps it was the passing of Ostara that got me in the mood, finally throwing off the shackles of a long, dreary, grey winter. Awaking an impetus, a burning desire within my soul to take to the surrounding fields and forests and seek new growth, new life, new beginnings. To dance across streams, to climb trees, to run with the stags, to awake the cuckoo, to rip my shirt off and smear badger shit all over my hairy chest and yell at the top of my lungs, "Aslan is back! Aslan is back!"

Or maybe it was because a lot of people were talking about wild garlic on Twitter (well @audreygillan and @everythingbut mostly) and my garden is teeming with the stuff.

Nevertheless, there is definitely something exciting about spring and when the ramson shoots appear around our cherry tree and start to broaden into pungent leaves of green, I do get slightly hysterical, grabbing fistfuls to smell and shovel in my gob. I kid you not. And this is regardless of the fact that our cats often spray their business in that area. Over the seasons though, I have to say that I don't really utilise our crop as much as I should. In the past I've snipped some into salads, scrambled eggs or steamed and wilted very quickly and used as accompaniment for salmon or chicken but more often than not I've given the stuff away to friends. With the intention of using this alturuistic act to bribe them for goods, services, favours etc at a later date. But like I said I got thoroughly stuck in yesterday making wild garlic pesto, soup (with nettles) and bread so as a further act of goodwill I thought I'd post the recipes. Being the kind of guy I am and all.*

Wild Garlic Pesto

A simple recipe and an absolute humdinger, an assault on the senses and quite frankly one that will make your breath stink so make sure your partner also indulges. My son Fin was watching me with eager eyes whilst I was blitzing this up in the food processor, constantly asking "what was are you doing?" and "can I have some?". I warned him that it might be a bit too strong for a little boy to taste but Fin was insistant. Cue minute tip of teaspoon being placed into his mouth followed by much spitting and wailing and running around. Like I said I did warn him. Strangely enough though when heated through with some pasta, the intensity of the pesto did temper somewhat and Fin managed his bowlful with no qualms at all.

1 large bunch of wild garlic, washed

1 small bunch of curly parsley, washed

60gms pine nuts, toasted

60gms parmesan cheese

150mls olive oil (I mixed half extra virgin, half normal)

squeeze of lemon juice

salt and pepper

Method

Place all the ingredients into a food processor apart from the olive oil and blitz for a minute or two then slowly pour in the olive oil until blended. Use for pasta, mash, dipping etc etc

Wild Garlic and Nettle Soup

I got the inspiration for this vivid, fresh tasting, vitamin packed soup from the aforementioned @everythingbut (real name Claire) who also runs Shacklewell Nights supper club and writes Green Onions but changed a couple of ingredients with what I had to hand. Interestingly, did you know that after they've been picked, nettles do actually lose their sting before cooking? It's all to do with the fact that the flow of formic acid comes from the main stem of the plant, pluck the leaf off and the 'sting' dries up. So after washing you can use the leaves raw. Best leave the nettles overnight to test this theory though. In fact, don't hold me to this, I am giving you all this guff because some bloke from Cool Earth once told me I could do it. (And I did, just check my reaction on the video in this link). But I don't want to be held responsible for any incidents or get any phone calls from people saying "Dabby, I'th justh sbent ten hoursth upth the hosthpital coth of you, you bathsted".

2 onions, finely sliced

2 stalks of celery, finely sliced

3 potatoes, small dice

1 bay leaf

1 large carrier bag of wild garlic, washed

1 large carrier bag of young nettles, leaves picked and washed (wearing rubber gloves!)

2 litres water

pinch of nutmeg

a dollop or two of mascarpone

salt and pepper

large knob of butter

In a large stock pot, melt the butter and gently fry the onion and celery until soft, then add the potato and bay leaf and continue to heat and stir for a further 10 minutes or so. Pour in the water and bring to the boil and then add the nettle leaves. Bring back to a gentle simmer for 5 more minutes until the nettles have wilted and then throw in the wild garlic, which will wilt almost immediately. Take off the heat and blitz in a blender. Place back in the pot to reheat, stirring though the nutmeg, mascarpone and season to taste. Claire's suggestion of serving with grated boiled egg worked really well with this soup.


Wild Garlic Bread

Very simple. Just follow Dan Lepard's Easy Loaf recipe and at the stage when you have to pat the dough into an oval shape before rolling, just smear some of the wild garlic pesto over the surface. It helps to make some wild garlic pesto before this stage of course but this bread tastes amazing. No more frozen bagettes to be slammed into the oven 10 minutes before serving up your lasagne from now on. Yes this is slow food but also wild food. Luuurve food in fact......grrrowl.

*Obviously you have to find your own wild garlic though. Unless you can offer me a decent price.

Makin' Fish Soup, Ooh What A Palaver.....

I couldn't help but crack a wry smile as I peered out of the kitchen window earlier this week. It was my day off and it was pelting it down with rain. With my forehead resting on the cool glass and clutching a steaming hot cup of coffee towards my chest, I cast my eyes down upon a churned muddy scar running straight through the lawn and I thought to myself 'well that's perfect, just perfect'. And it was. I mean you just don't know how hard it was to turn to my wife and say "well darling, I don't think I am going to get much done in the garden today". You see the big project going on at home at the moment is to get the garden ready for the summer and some of the work involves filling in a whacking great big space where a concrete path used to be with tons of soil. I am not looking forward to it and it's highly likely that I am going to have to get cracking at the weekend. Unless it rains again of course. In which case I shall have to mask my glee and suppress any desire to skip through the kitchen, singing and clicking my heels together like some kind of Tommy Steele from yesteryear. Because that never goes down well.

After nipping out to do some shopping, getting mugged by an old charidee shop lady in the process and some play time with the twins where we built a camp to hide from the Gruffalo, I started to feel restless. As always, there is a billion and one things to do in the house, never mind outside landscape gardening so I decided it would be a good idea to retrieve a fish head and some bones from the freezer with the intention of some making fish soup. I know what you're thinking. 'My God, that man is practical'. I am often in the habit of freezing bones and the reasons are twofold. As you may well have already guessed, I do this firstly with the intention making stock at a later date but secondly to protect my dustbins from a marauding gang of cats that terrorise the neighbourhood. Around my way, leave a chicken carcass to ripen and rot in your bin at your peril because sooner or later, the mangy moggies will mount an attack. I've witnessed an eight strong platoon ram raid our bins with a scaffolding pole before. This not just a matter of wasting food.

Anyway, the fish bones in question came originally from a whole salmon after a bout of curing (or gravadlaxing, if that's a word) over the Christmas period and I was going to try and extract some decent stock out of them. However, after a consultation on Twitter back in January, I was persuaded by a certain Tom Addy, Scottish chef and blogger that the stock would be 'bogging. Instead he suggested that the bones, head and all, could be used to make a very tasty soup. I must admit this was a bit of a revelation for me despite being overwhelmingly obvious and considering that I love soupe de poisson so so much. Doh! Sometimes you need to hit a person over the head with plank before they will wake up and quite often that person is me. But anyway Tom fired off some brief instructions along the lines of 'sauté with loads of onion, carrot, celery, tonnes of garlic in butter', 'add tomatoes, bay, splash brandy and white wine, water/stock simmer for 2 hours and blitz, bones and all' and 'perhaps add cream or more butter for richness and perhaps cayenne and lemon to season = Good Soup'. So I did just that. Given the final result, it was a shame that I waited for a dull miserable day in February to make the soup because it tasted absolutely gorgeous and showcased just what you can do with a few key ingredients on the cheap or for free even, the principle being the salmon bones. If 'waste not, want not' is one of your mottoes (and of course it should be, these guys have got the right idea) then I would definitely recommend that people, you people in other words, give this very simple method a go.

I should add a word of caution though, please do consider the equipment at hand when you get to the blitzing stage. As per Tom instructions you do want grind everything up but be wary, not all regular domestic blenders might not be up to the task. In fact when Mrs FU spotted me ladling the condensed fish mush into our KitchenAid blender she did question as to whether it was wise to put the fish head in. I scoffed in her face and said "of course it'll be ok, the head and bones have been cooking down for two hours now, they're nice and soft". Cue switching of button on, whirling sounds, then a high pitched squeal, crunching noise and abrupt switching of button off, followed by several minutes of deflated silence. When I finally turned to face Mrs FU, she shot me a look which, well how can I sum it up, pretty much went like this:

I bloomin' well told you so,
but did you listen to me, no
you went ahead, with yer fishy head
and now the blender is bloomin' well dead
but did you listen to me, no

(or now who's going all Tommy Steele eh?)

So by all means go ahead and make this wonderful soup but perhaps it would be best to chop everything up in a heavyweight food processor first and then strain through a sieve. Yes I think that might be a better idea.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'll be out in the garden. In the pouring rain.

The key ingredients

The fish 'ead what done it

The sautéeing bit

The damage

The better tool for the job

The sieving

The soup