Courgettes / zucchini - dealing with gluts of vegetables

I have just come back from a couple of days in London, visiting my daughters. I was only away for a couple of days but, already the crops are demanding that I harvest them.
Today, I have arrived home with a bag full of sweetcorn [more later], raspberries [not many but, enough to make some raspberry jam],  cooking apples [my precious Bramleys]. Last year I had very few because of the weather and the year before! [ my late harvest disappeared!] . That seems to be one of the hazards of growing on an allotment - though shameful!
I also have a large bag full of tomatoes - recipes to come!

It's amazing what a couple of days can do to a courgette crop - those fruits which were not quite ready to harvest before I went away are now almost marrow size.
This year, I have grown only yellow courgettes - two different varieties - Goldena from VegetableSeeds.com and Sunstripe F!. I prefer these courgettes as they are dryer and denser than the Zucchini types.
But, what can I do with the excess?

Using Gluts of Courgettes

Dish Ideas: -

Courgettes with Cheesy Topping – wash and dry the courgettes * trim the ends * slice the courgettes lengthways * give a light spray with olive oil and add sea salt and freshly ground black pepper * grill until the vegetable starts to soften * top with mature cheddar cheese and grill until the cheese topping starts to bubble and turn golden brown * serve with warm crusty bread.

Add to curry dishes – wash, dry and trim the courgettes * cut into 1 inch [2cm] lengths or chunks * add to curry dishes [ especially beef and lamb] for a light touch and added goodness.

Courgettes with Pasta – 

2 – 3 green or yellow courgettes – washed, trimmed and sliced

1 medium onion – peeled, halved and thinly sliced

1 – 2 green and/or red peppers – with tops and seeds removed – thinly sliced

50 gm [2 oz] black olives [with stones removed] can be sliced if preferred

4 good sized tomatoes – with skins removed and chopped

Good handful of fresh basil leaves – chopped

25gm [1 oz] approximately Parmesan cheese – grated

Sea salt and black pepper to season

1 Tblsp. good quality rape seed oil [or olive oil]

Method

·         Gently sweat the vegetables until they are cooked * add the seasoning, olives and the chopped basil.

250gm [8 oz] dried pasta OR 500gm [1 lb fresh pasta] – tagliatelle, spaghetti, fettucine, linguine, penne, conchiglioni – take you pick with what is available to you. Cook according to the instructions on the packet.

For the sauce

50gm [2oz] butter

50gm [2oz] plain flour

250ml [½ pt] milk

50gm [2 oz] mature cheddar cheese

Seasoning

·         Make a roux then add the milk gradually to create a white sauce. * Add the seasoning and the cheese and stir in until the cheese has melted.

Combine the ingredients:

·         Mix the cooked pasta with the prepared vegetables. * Add the sauce and mix in well * Sprinkle the parmesan cheese on top and grill lightly * Serve hot with crusty bread and a glass of good Italian white wine.

Pakoras

Although you can use a tempura batter, I do prefer the sublime spicy batter of Indian cooking – higher calorie perhaps but, so delicious.

You can use potatoes, courgettes, cauliflower florets, mushrooms, onions, carrots, mooli [white Asian radishes], etc

For the batter:-  100gm( 4oz) gram flour / besan flour

                           2 tsp ground cumin (jeera)

                           3 tsp ground coriander (dhania)

                           ½ tsp chilli powder

                           ½  tsp turmeric

                           ½  tsp salt

                           ¼  tsp baking soda( bicarbonate of soda)

                           Water to mix

                           Oil for frying

                          200ml water approx.

·         Mix the flour, salt, spices and baking soda in a bowl

Vegetables:     wash - potatoes – peel and cut into slices; courgettes – cut into slices and dry [press between absorbent paper or tea-towels], cauliflower – cut into smallish florets; mushrooms - cut in half; peel and cut into rings; carrots – peel and cut into batons or rings, mooli – wash and cut into rings.

·         Add the prepared vegetables and the water and mix until the vegetables are coated generously with the batter( ensuring there are no pockets of dry ingredients and that all parts of the vegetables are covered)

·         Add the coated vegetables to preheated oil in a deep-fat fryer or wok. If using a deep-fat fryer, don’t use the basket as the batter will attach to the wire.

·         Turn the pakoras over as necessary

·         Fry until the pakoras are evenly brown, then remove from the pan and drain.

Serve with a suitable dipping sauce. Chilli sauce is good.

Ratatouille – well, of course, there has to be a recipe for Ratatouille when talking about courgettes. I think probably the Zucchini [the green varieties in the UK] are more usual for this classical dish but try this recipe:

1 good sized aubergine – sliced and cut into short lengths

2 – 3 small to medium courgettes – washed, trimmed and sliced thinly

1 green and 1 red pepper – remove tops and seeds, then slice thinly

1 medium onion – peeled, halved and sliced thinly

3 – 4 cloves of garlic – peeled and crushed

4 – 6 good sized tomatoes – peeled and chopped

Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

Herbs – good sprig of lemon thyme-chopped, good sprig of French tarragon- chopped, good sprig of oregano [or marjoram], good handful of basil – chopped.

1 Tblsp good quality olive oil or good quality rapeseed oil

2 Tblsp wine vinegar

Method

·         In a large pan, sweat the onions and garlic.  * Add the aubergine, courgettes, peppers and tomatoes and cook gently to produce a soft vegetable dish * Add the seasoning, herbs and vinegar to taste.

Of course there are also Courgette Fritters, Courgette potato cakes [ I do love any dish with potatoes, let me know if you would like the recipe].

Today , I put my excess crop out on my garden wall with a notice saying - Please, Help Yourself. Within a few hours [especially around the time of coming home from work] They had all gone. 

I think I will set out my over- production on my garden wall in future. Now that is a sense of achievement!

The Summer Harvest - Tomatoes, Peppers, Chillies, Blackberries, Cooking apples and Recipes

The Summer Harvest

This is such a busy time of year. My intentions, when I go to my plot are:

• to spend some time maintaining the ground – weeding, strimming, pruning, etc.;

• to harvest crops which are ready;

• to water where necessary;

• to keep in touch with my allotment neighbours.

Well! I spend so much time watering, harvesting and chatting to my neighbours that I’m finding that the general maintenance is falling behind. Let’s face it:

- watering is essential for life;

- harvesting is essential for the satisfaction of having achieved;

- chatting is essential for the feel-good of life.

The maintenance will just have to be done as and when. I usually spend about 3 hours, 5 days a week on my plot. Occasionally this can extend to 5 hours and rarely- can reduce to 2 hours, depending on my reasons for going there. Really! If this is not enough to maintain my plot then – TOUGH!

I hope this doesn’t put prospective plot-holders off but, really – once a week with kids in tow who will not let you stay there to work will not result in a productive plot.

It is most important that we understand that ‘what we put in – we get out’, as my daughter put it so succinctly. But, this is not really what I want to talk about today:

Tomatoes – I’ve just harvested my first for this year – really too few to photograph and actually, well behind many others (including my son who has just started on the allotments experience – his were ripe three weeks or more ago!). This year, my firsts are Sultana – a small plum-shaped salad tomato from Dobies. Each year, following a suggestion from my daughter, I try something new, (this is not always successful but, new products and different varieties are always worth a shot if you have the time and space). The Sultanas – I picked all two of them which were ready were very delicious, though somewhat hard-skinned. I’m sure that is a positive in preventing –disease /blight maybe (give me time to research).

Don’t forget to keep removing the side shoots. These will re-grow and will keep coming up as your plant grows. Unless you are growing bush varieties, it is most important – very important – extremely important that you remove the side shoots as they appear (always, as the year progresses some side shoots will have escaped your notice. If this becomes apparent you must decide to leave them or remove them, depending on the amount of damage you might do the mother plant). If you don’t remove the side shoots you will find that you have hundreds of small green tomatoes of which, few ripen.

It is also very important to (as well as watering your plants regularly) feed your tomatoes. They are quite greedy feeders but, let’s face it, when we get it right they will continue to produce wonderful crops until the weather become too cold for them to do so. You can buy tomato plant food which is excellent though, last year, I decided to make my own organic food for my plants. I have a large bath tub on my plot which I filled with a mixture of nettles, comfrey and cow manure – topped up with water. This produced a thick black liquid that, I thought, was better diluted. This year I think it has been diluted enough with rainwater so am adding it to my plants neat – nothing has keeled over yet. Over-winter I will put the sludge out on my plot and start again.

Don’t forget that tomatoes can get blight – similar to potato blight. If you are growing outdoors you might want to look at ways of protecting your crop. In the past, I have used Bordeaux Mixture (essentially copper sulphate). This worked well and I believe was accepted by the Soil Association. However, it has now been removed from the market and I am growing all of my tomatoes in my poly-tunnel. If you have an organic solution for this problem (or even one which is not organic but is not too poisonous), please let me know and I will pass the information on.

Peppers/ chillies – these have been slow to establish this year and after a poor outdoor harvest last year I have dedicated a larger area of my poly-tunnel to this crop. I am amazed when I see tiny plants producing full sized peppers but, I do hope that they will grow a bit more and give me a better crop. That said, last year I had one particular plant, grown from a free packet of seed on a gardening magazine which I had bought – Sweet California – from a little plant, no more than 30cms high ( 12”), I had 8 full sized beautiful, ripe peppers. -perhaps I will be able to recreate that crop this year but, although my various pepper plants are looking hopeful, I don’t think it will be so spectacular.

Fruit – Blackberries and Cooking Apples

Blackberries are now ripening so, apart from just eating them straight from the briars we must think of ways to preserve them.

When I first took over my plot, half of it was overgrown with a very strong, invasive, 2 metre high bramble thicket. I spent a long time cutting back and digging out the roots which only mediocre success – I have been cutting out new young shoots ever since but, I’m winning. Of course, I was beguiled by an advertisement in my favourite seed and plant catalogue for a blackberry which produced amazing 2-3cm long fruits. Stupidly, I planted this about a metre from the door of my poly-tunnel. It established itself very quickly and started to fruit in its second year. It was quite good though, since I left childhood, I’ve not been a huge fan of blackberries. The fruits are nice enough but, the thorns are wicked.(I hate thorns and nettles!) This year, I find I have to hack my way into my tunnel about once a week as the plant is now putting out amazingly strong branches and side-shoots for next year’s crop. I can’t quite regret it, however, as it is also giving me a good crop of large succulent fruits and I now have to think what to do with them.

Fortunately, my Bramley apple trees – one at home and one on my plot – now in their third year with me, are looking excellent, with quite heavy crops. They are not totally ready to pick (they should come away from the tree easily when you take hold of them, without pulling) but, they are ready enough to use.
Do try:

Apple and Blackberry Pie

I can’t believe that my old college cookery book has no recipe for blackberry and apple pie. When I was a child this was definitely the dish I waited for all year. (well! apart from Christmas dinner!)We went out blackberry picking when I was very young – my mother said that I ate more than I picked. In wet years, I remember, the blackberries were full of maggots - well, each berry may have had its pet maggot but, I soon learned to ignore them in favour of the berries themselves. Blackberries are one of the real wild fruits available to us as the ‘brambles’ – the plants they come from are very hardy, deep-rooted, tenacious, so – are particularly difficult to eradicate. So, let’s make the most of them. (Don’t be put off by the reference to blackberry maggots, I haven’t seen a single one this year, in spite of the rain).

Ingredients – for a 1 litre ( 1½ - 2 pint) pie dish

2 good-sized cooking apples – Bramleys for preference

1 good sized punnet of blackberries( 1lb or 450 -500gm). The amount is not critical. The fruit must fit into your pie dish to fill it well.(the fruit will drop as it cooks)

3 Tblsp. sugar

Short crust pastry

150g plain flour (6oz)

75g margarine or butter (3oz)

Pinch salt

6 tsp cold water approx.(this amount may vary slightly depending on the weather and the flour you are using – you need the ingredients to bind together without being sticky).

Method

• Sieve the flour and salt into a baking bowl. Add the margarine and rub in with your finger tips to create a texture like fine breadcrumbs – don’t allow the mixture to become sticky.

• Add the water slowly to ensure the ingredients combine without becoming too soft.

• Knead gently to combine the ingredients for a short time – 1 minute.

Making the Pie
• Preheat the oven to 180°C, Mark 6 gas
• Peel, core and slice the apples and place half of them in the pie dish.
• Put in a layer of blackberries and a layer of the sugar.
• Repeat this process until the dish is full.
• Roll out the pastry on a lightly floured board to ½ cm thick approx.(¼in)to the shape of the pie dish. Cut off a strip of pastry wide enough to go around the rim of the dish
• Wet the edges of the pie dish with water and apply the strip to the edges. Wet the top of the pastry strip with water.
• Put the pastry on top of the pie. Trim and seal the edges. Put a small slit on the top of the pie to allow the steam to escape.
• Bake for about 15 – 20 minutes then reduce the temperature and bake for a further 15 – 20 minutes to ensure the fruit is cooked. Don’t allow the pastry to burn
• When baked, sprinkle the top with a little caster sugar immediately and serve with cream, ice-cream or crème fraîche.
Try also:

Blackberry Jelly
Ingredients
Blackberries (the amount is, up-to-a point irrelevant, they must fit easily into your preserving pan)
Perhaps a little water to start the juicing process - ¼ - ½ litre if needed- depending on the amount of fruit..
Lemon juice
Sugar – depending on the amount of juice
A knob of butter
Method
1. Pick over the fruit to remove any leaves, etc.
2. Put in the preserving and over a very low heat, simmer gently until the fruit has broken down and is totally tender, (with the water if you feel it is necessary).
3. Strain though a jelly strainer.
4. Measure the amount of juice.
5. Allow 1 kilo (lb) sugar for each litre of juice (pt) – don’t mix up the quantities from metric and imperial measurement.
6. Put the fruit juice and the sugar into the preserving pan over a low heat until the sugar has dissolved. Add the lemon juice.
7. Bring to the boil in a preserving pan or a large saucepan to allow the preserve to come to a rolling boil.
8. When setting point has been reached, add the knob of butter and mix in well to reduce the amount of foam on the top of the preserve.
9. Pot, cover and label.

Blackberries can freeze easily, similar to raspberries – choose perfect, dry- if possible, fruits. Pack them gently into freezer tubs ( don’t squash them) and freeze.
On storage of cooking apples – more later.