Vegetable » Carl Legge

Asparagus, tarragon and piave tart recipe

Dairy, Forest Garden, Permaculture, Recipes, Seasons, Spring, Vegetable 8 Responses »

May 102012

People have enjoyed the luxurious taste of asparagus for millennia. The Ancient Egyptians ate it. And it appeared in The Roman Cookery of Apicius in the late 4th & early 5th Century CE.

Asparagus seasonal right now but only for a short period. Also in season is the wonderfully aromatic, anise flavoured french tarragon. As with many things that are seasonal at the same time, these two ingredients make perfect partners. We grow both of these ingredients on the smallholding, so I had a ‘free’ meal in the making when paired with eggs from our chickens.

In this recipe I complemented these ingredients with some wonderfully sweet and full tasting, 24 month’s old, piave cheese. This is a cow’s milk cheese from a small area in Italy with the same name. I was lucky enough to receive some from my Twitter friend in Rome, Carla Tomasi.

The finished tart tasted really smooth, rich and special. The fragrance of the shoots, herb and cheese was subtle: our senses were gently stroked. We had the tart with new potatoes lightly dressed in wild garlic mayo and steamed brassica shoots the first day; and with lemony cous-cous and tarragon marinated tomato salad the next.

If you’d like to know how to make this tart and see some tips for how to grow your own asparagus, please read on…

Wild garlic mash, warm chickweed salad & seafood

Autumn, Foraging, Forest Garden, Permaculture, Recipes, Seafood, Spring, Vegetable, Winter 11 Responses »

Mar 202012

This meal started off as one of those: “What do I do with these?” scenarios.

Debs had made a gorgeous parsnip, cinnamon and lemon cake with some of our over-wintered parsnips. It was delicious. I had one parsnip left that Debs had not been able to use.

And I had cleared a space in our big polytunnel for a new kiwi ‘Jenny’ and for our tarragon. (How posh is that, to have a big and a little polytunnel?) The space for these had a huge clump of chickweed in it that we’d been harvesting for ages.

And, of course, it’s wild garlic time.

So I thought that the parsnip would make a really intense sweet/savoury mash with potatoes and wild garlic pesto. It did.

I gave the chickweed a good haircut. Then I just washed it, gave it a good shake and wilted a 2 litre pan full, covered and shaken for 2-3 minutes. I dressed it with my normal vinaigrette.

I brushed the seafood with a little harissa and griddled it on a very hot ridged griddle for about 4 minutes. I then turned the heat off and covered with a saucepan lid to leave it to cook in the residual heat and steam.

The whole recipe took less than 30 minutes to prepare and had a lovely contrast of colours, flavours and textures.

So the only thing for me to add is a recipe for wild garlic pesto. Read on… Continue reading »

First nettles of 2012

Foraging, Forest Garden, Pasta, Permaculture, Seasons, Spring, Vegetable 6 Responses »

Mar 182012

The first nettles of the 2012 season for us.

While the spaghetti cooks, gently fry garlic & anchovies in extra virgin olive oil. Then add nettles to the pan and cover till they wilt. Season with salt, ground black pepper and lemon juice. Mix through lightly drained spaghetti with a good handful of finely grated Parmesan cheese. Delicious!

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Stick blender Mayonnaise – Salad dressings No. 2

Autumn, Foraging, Forest Garden, Permaculture, Poultry, Preserves, Recipes, Seasons, Spring, Summer, Vegetable, Winter 15 Responses »

Mar 112012

I promised some more salad dressings when I wrote the Vinaigrette recipe the other day. I really looked forward to doing this post because mayonnaise this way is so simple and so spectacular. You’ll have great mayo in less than a minute. I hope once you have made this the first time, you will not feel the need to buy mayo ever again.

What’s more, it gave me an excuse to make a food-related video to show you how easy it all is. So it was lucky I needed some mayonnaise yesterday. It was to make into a wild garlic mayonnaise to go with some juicy prawns grilled with breadcrumbs and parmesan. I’m afraid there’s no picture of the finished dish because we ate it!

If you want to know how make this, wild garlic mayonnaise or tartar sauce, please read on… Continue reading »

Winter Panzanella Recipe – Bread Salad

Dairy, Foraging, Forest Garden, Fruit, Permaculture, Recipes, Seasons, Spring, Vegetable, Winter 10 Responses »

Mar 092012

If you make or use much good bread, you’ll have bits left over that are a shame to waste. Sourdough is great for this because it lasts without going mouldy much longer than yeasted bread. So you can collect a little stash. The bread needs to be a few days old and dry or drying.

Many people know about the summer panzanella made with juicy & fragrant tomatoes. For this winter salad, I made the bread into crispy parmesan croutons and added some raw and roasted vegetables to make a big, punchy & pretty salad for a main meal.

I was asked on twitter if it’s filling enough for hearty appetites. Well this made enough for three hungry gluttons with some left over for a lunch the next day.

This is an ideal way to continue to have salad through the darker parts of the year. It’s another contribution from me to the 52 Week Salad Challenge.

It’s a very simple recipe, read on to find out more… Continue reading »

Vegetarian chilli with chocolate recipe

Autumn, Recipes, Seasons, Spring, Summer, Vegetable, Winter 10 Responses »

Feb 282012

Chillies and chocolate are a classic combination. The spicy warmth & smokiness of the chilli combine perfectly with the rich, smooth depth of the chocolate.

I was prompted to develop a recipe by Choclette’s February I Should Cocoa Challenge. The challenge was to use chocolate in a savoury vegetarian recipe. I’d previously done a Challenge in April last year in producing my Hidden Hearts muffins.

I had some wonderfully fragrant chipotle chillies which are mexican smoked jalapenos that I wanted to use.

The resulting chilli is rich, slightly fiery and smooth. The beans & grains provide substance. It’s a pretty frugal meal too that you can make loads of and freeze or can the leftovers for later. I served this with some brilliant yellow corn bread.

If you’d like to know what I did, please read on… Continue reading »

Vinaigrette Recipe – Salad dressings No. 1

Autumn, Recipes, Seasons, Spring, Summer, Vegetable, Winter 15 Responses »

Jan 302012

Writer and permaculture enthusiast Emma Cooper & her husband Pete came to us for a very enjoyable visit last year. We had lunch which included roast chicken, roasted pumpkin sourdough bread and a foraged salad.

Emma asked me afterwards for the method for making the dressing. It’s taken me a while, but here’s the recipe for the basic vinaigrette I made.

If there’s interest, I’ll blog some more salad dressing recipes for the 52 Week Salad Challenge I’m taking part in.

The aim is to have home-grown or foraged salad every week of the year.

A good choice of dressings help to make the most of the harvest.

The word comes from the French for ‘sour-wine’ – ‘vin-aigre’. The essence of the dressing is the vinegar or citrus juice flavours the leaves. You combine the vinegarwith oil to help it ‘stick’ to the salad ingredients.

If you’re interested to know how to make this, read on… Continue reading »

Nettle & brocciu pasties

Autumn, Bread & baking, Dairy, Foraging, Forest Garden, Permaculture, Recipes, Seasons, Spring, Summer, Vegetable 3 Responses »

Jan 292012

This week’s Short and Tweet Challenge was a dream recipe for me. That’s because it gave me the chance to use so much home produced or foraged ingredients.

The recipe was for Dan’s Spinach and Ricotta Pasties. A gorgeous ricotta/mushroom/spinach/garlic/chilli/oregano filling is encased in a tomato & cheese dough.

I changed the dough recipe slightly by using all wholemeal spelt flour. This was to intensify the colour and because I love the nutty/wholemeal taste of spelt. The dough was very easy to handle and Dan’s quick 10 second kneads make light work of it.

I had great fun with the filling. I was able to use my own dried chillies and oregano both preserved from the 2011 harvest. Instead of ricotta I used brocciu I made from goat’s milk that I first used in this chestnut ravioli. Instead of the spinach, I used foraged nettles that I’d frozen from last year.

In addition to those ingredients, I added 75g of toasted and chopped hazelnuts for taste & to give some crunch to the filling. Finally, I thought the mix could do with a little lift and so added the finely grated rind of an unwaxed lemon.

I was delighted with the combination of flavours. The pastry was thin and crisp and with a lovely cheesy edge from the parmesan. The filling had complex flavours, which blended together beautifully. The nuts and lemon really lifted the filling from good to excellent.

The pasties are incredibly filling. This may be partly because I used a wholemeal flour for the dough. I think you could easily make these pasties into smaller buffet size ones and make double the number of pasties. This will be a firm favourite in our house from now on.

All I needed to serve with it was some home-made (and home canned) baked beans. Make these, they are delicious.

Vegetarian Haggis Recipe

Autumn, Recipes, Seasons, Vegetable, Winter 14 Responses »

Jan 202012

When I tweeted the meat version haggis recipe, I was asked on twitter whether I had a recipe for a vegetarian haggis. I did not and said that I would develop one. I’ve now done this and it’s below. Modesty isn’t going to prevent me tooting my own horn: I think it’s really good. I blind tested it on my 16 year old son, who wolfed down a big portion eagerly before asking “Ok, what is it? It’s lovely!”

While researching ideas I checked online. Most of the recipes appear to be the same or similar to the Vegetarian Society recipe. To be honest, I wasn’t very impressed. It reminded me of the plethora of 70s & 80s standard ‘veggy’ recipes that tried to mimic meat meals and that all seemed to taste & feel the same. When I started cooking veggy in the 80s I got tired of seeing and tasting under-flavoured, under-seasoned ‘veg-mush’.

My blogging friend Monica Shaw tasted one the leading brands of commercial vegetarian Haggis, McSweens and blogged about it on the Great British Chefs site. And it started a bit of a debate on Facebook about whether such stuff could legitimately be called ‘haggis’. I have strong feelings about this sort of “authenticism”. To avoid boring the folk just here for the recipe, I’ll return to this in another post later this month.

Some of the comments in the GBC Facebook discussion also commented on ‘veg-mush’ state of veggy haggis offerings. I tried hard to match the texture/feel of the meat version in the veggy version. The choice of the grain and pulses and their cooking is important to get this right. Most of the veggy recipes I’ve seen online don’t get this. In addition the oats and nuts are roasted for added flavour. The nuts are only coarsely chopped for the texture they give.

Apart from the olive oil, there’s no added fat, unlike some of the commercial versions. I don’t think there’s a mouthfeel need for the fat, so I didn’t add any veg suet although I’d bought some in case.

This makes a fair old quantity – about 2.7kg. I did this because there’s a deal of prep and the haggis will freeze well, so I’ll have some ‘free’ meals to hand. It’s probably not worth making much less than half the recipe.

Another bonus of this recipe is that it is very economical indeed to make. The total cost of the 2.7kg is about £6 which means a 150g portion comes out at £0.33.

If you’d like to know how to make this delicious dish, please read on… Continue reading »

Cider vinegar muffins, egg & salad

Bread & baking, Foraging, Permaculture, Recipes, Seasons, Vegetable, Winter 7 Responses »

Jan 152012

I was very keen to have a go at this week’s ShortandTweet Challenge as one of the recipes was for these muffins. And that meant I could use our hens’ eggs in the recipe and the cider vinegar I had made earlier in the year. A bonus was the chance to incorporate some foraged salad garnish for the 52 Week Salad Challenge as well.

The recipe for the muffins was a doddle. Mix the dough the night before and keep in the fridge. Then take the dough out in the morning, allow it to warm up and cook away.

I was short of time (and hungry) so I abbreviated the process that Dan had written in the recipe. I took the dough out of the fridge and folded it. I then scaled and shaped the dough straight away into 9 muffins which I allowed to prove in a very low oven for a couple of hours.

Cooking the muffins in a frying pan was a first for me. It was a bit fiddly to do, so the first muffins were a little misshapen. Batch 2 and 3 went much better.

The colour of the muffins is striking. In Dan’s book the muffins are pearly white. Mine have this glorious saffron hue. I think this is due to the eggs from our free-ranging chickens. As you can see from the picture at the top, they have striking yellow yolks.

The muffins taste just great. They have a nice crisp exterior and a soft interior which is just ideal for soaking up egg. I’m looking forward to some toasted for breakfast tomorrow with some cranberry and orange jam I made the other day.

The chickweed salad came from some chickweed that we had picked 2 days ago. It was washed and keeps very well in the fridge. It’s a great foraged vegetable with a really good taste. To see what other stuff I have in the garden available to me see this earlier post on January pickings.