April Showers and Heartburn Brownies

Well we have been warned of a drought that could last until Christmas by some, had a hose pipe ban set upon us by the government and the day it comes into force the heavens open. This week has been very wet, a week of staying indoors and watching all that lovely rain falling to fill up the aquifers. I haven't been to the allotment since the Easter holidays, during which I planted all those lovely beans and peas. I paid one more visit after that and discovered the beans, marigolds and my new potato shoots all dead. Apparently a very hard frost came and it killed them all. The alliums are okay and randomly the peas are fine too, makes me wonder about how hard peas are to kill! It did make me feel that I wanted to give it all up, but having then received my formal letter asking me to become a permanent plot holder those feeling melted away.

So I'm planning to get down this weekend to have a look and see what weeds have grown with this rain. I did do some weeding amongst the raspberries which is looking tidier at least, more is needed but it's little and often I think that will win the day, 120 square metres is a lot to keep.

Baking
As you know this blog serves to marry my two previous blogs, so here is a baking recipe that I tried last week.


Bacon Brownies
I can't claim to have invented these, in fact it was Nigella Lawson tweeting her recipe to her followers that made me sit up and think, "hmm, I do enjoy bacon and marmalade, these may work". I took my trusty brownie recipe from Outsider Tart, and went to the supermarket to buy some 'American-style' bacon.

I also bought myself a new knife using up some vouchers that I was given for my birthday. It is Japanese steel so is light and very sharp, it made short work of the bacon which I cut into very small bites.

I basically threw these into a recipe and so adapted the Hepburn Brownie, christening it the Heartburn Brownie.

Heartburn brownie: Adapted from Outsider Tart's Hepburn brownies

Preheat an oven to 170C and grease and line a 30cm x 23cm x 5cm brownie pan.

1) Put 340g of butter into a pan and melt it slowly over a low heat.

2) When melted, add 200g of cocoa powder and 2 tablespoons of instant espresso powder (larger grained instant coffee doesn't work unless dissolved separately) I use Starbucks instant espresso.

It will become glossy and smooth, with that lovely mocha aroma.

Also I use that brand of Vanilla and bog-standard cinnamon :P.

3) Add next 675g of caster sugar, this will cool down the butter mixture enough to allow eggs to be added without them cooking.

It looks a bit like muddy-slushy-snow a few days after it has fallen and the weather has warmed up.

4) Add to this 6 large eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition. The batter will now become quite elastic like and smooth again.

5) Now add in 115g plain flour, 1.5 tsp of cinnamon, 3/4 tsp salt. Stir until only just incorporated.

Now this is the point that I added the bacon, however I would refrain from doing it raw as I did. I suggest frying the bacon up first, so it is very crisp, then drying, cooling and blitzing in a food processor to make little bacon shards (my Aunty Lynne's idea). Then mix this into the batter, pour into the pan and cook for 30 minutes.

When you take the brownies out of the oven they should have a solid wobble in the middle (as opposed to a sloppy wobble). Let them cool in the tin, and when cool enough put them into the fridge to set overnight. Fudgey brownies are essentially a very thick, set, chocolate custard, think of them that way and they will turn out delicious. 

These are very rich, so cut them up small.

Note, these aren't the bacon brownies, but just plain Hepburn's, which if you omit the bacon are what you will make.

I didn't think the bacon brownies were that great to be honest, but then again I didn't try them with pre-cooked and blitzed bacon, if you try them that way let me know. Otherwise, enjoy a tray of the best plain brownies.

Finally some rain!

Well the allotment got a decent shower of rain this past Tuesday, which was much needed, my water butt didn't benefit though due to my predecessor putting no guttering up to catch the rain, a bit of a waste of time really if it's not filling up. So another job to complete, and soon too if we're looking at a low amount of rain fall in the next few months.

I arrived to the site on Thursday to plant some things I had bought from Keston Garden Centre and found this wonderful sight.

Potatoes! At last I can see where the rows are that I planted, it was a bit of a guessing game before hand when it came to watering. It's a good sign though, and I'll soon be enjoying some delicious early potatoes. 

I decided to clear a bit by my shed and in moving a few more paving slabs I found some great mini-beasts.

A big fat spotty slug, which I read online eats most things dead and alive, so my young seedlings are not safe from it! Also some very odd, red woodlice. A bit of googling later and I can identify it as Androniscus dentiger or the rosy woodlouse. Apparently it's quite common in the UK but in all my years of mini-beast hunting and gardening I have never seen it before, so it was quite a find for me. I do enjoy feeling a like an intrepid explorer!

The area that I cleared I decided to edge with some more slate tiles and then plant up with some dog rose, which should cover my shed in a few years, and provide the bee hives with a bounty of flowers to visit. 

I planted a bleeding heart in my allium bed, to add some height and colour to the corner, it will be a nice plant to walk past when I come to visit and others also will get to appreciate it too.

The flowers look like bleeding hearts, thus the name, I didn't sacrifice a pigeon and plant it in the bed. Though I'm sure *Unproven-Tom-Fact-Alert* some people in the olden days did that in some kind of ritual to bring on fertility and health to their gardens.

My bean and pea bed is now full as I set up my pea and bean canes and planted some seedlings into it. I decided to throw out the classic wide-drill, zigzag approach to pea planting and went for a more haphazard method, covered by 4 wigwams with some twine strewn between to provide a climbing frame to the peas. 

As you can see it's a bit of a eye catching lay out, as in you may loose an eye if you fell on to it. I put some runner beans in the other end, transplanting a broad bean which was growing on it's lonesome, out of the 6 I had sewn it was the only one in that drill that had grown, I'm not too upset really as I don't particularly enjoy broad beans.

Finally the only crop I am able to harvest is still rhubarb, 

which is getting quite prolific.

So lots of stewed rhubarb is heading my way, I think I've seen a rhubarb cake recipe in a book somewhere too. A friend even suggested serving it unsweetened with mackerel which may be quite tasty, a bit like lemon and cod. 

Anyway, that's all for now.

Amalgam

The idea of this blog is to bring my two previous blogs (which were proving to be difficult and time consuming) in to one place. This will be the place you can find my meanderings about my allotment and cooking.

My allotment is now starting to produce food, mostly rhubarb at the moment really.

But at least I'm able to have weekly crumbles! That is quite a perk to the allotment at the moment, considering I have 3 clumps of the stuff growing. In fact when I went to the allotment a week later the rhubarb had completely doubled in size, so harvesting is now a weekly task.

I made a rhubarb crumble with the stalks, after disposing of the leaves at the allotment. 

Rhubarb Crumble:

A very basic recipe and along with a basic victoria sponge one of the first I committed to memory.

Chop up about 5 stalks of rhubarb in to one inch chunks and pop into a saucepan. Add a little water and bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer and allow to cook until tender.

In another bowl, add 4oz of butter to 6oz of flour and 2oz of jumbo oats. The rule of thumb for a crumble is whatever weight of flour you use you use half that of butter and half that again of sugar for sweetnest, typically 8,4 and 2 ounces.

Rub the fat into the flour and when it resembles bread crumbs add the oats and 2 ounces of demarara sugar. 

Put the rhubarb into an oven proof dish and topple the crumble onto the top. Bake at 180C for about 25 minutes and serve with plenty of custard or cream.

The result was delicious and lasted me a week, very tasty breakfasts. 

The allotment is coming along really well, the garlic I planted in the winter is growing very well. 

Also the shallots and red onions that I planted are coming along too! My allium bed is doing really well and as I use all of those veggies in pretty much every dish I cook I'm pleased.

 

Against my mantra of 'grow only what you will eat' I have dedicated bed number 3 to potatoes... I know, it's all a bit much really but I figured that if I have them available then I will use them. I will look into correct storage of them in my shed come the winter time.

I have dug over the rest of the bed and planted more potatoes too, and although I don't have a photo of it, they are growing!

Last weekend we had an allotment work day to help spruce up the site. The glorious March sunshine made the day a great success and I got to meet some more plot holders too. I was given a section of the bank by the ditch to weed and dig over. The plan is to plant it up to look more appealing to us growers. 

Here it is before, it had been sprayed with some round up as the cootch grass (gootch grass?) is a pretty determined weed.

Two hours later the result is a weed free bank! 

Having caught the sun and with only 20 minutes until I had to leave to go and do the matinee of Half a Sixpence in town I decided to quickly prune my rose and also tayeberry (I'm still umming and ahhing about that to be honest). There was a roaring fire on the site so I made good use of it and burnt the taye and rose branches so I didn't have to find some other way to dispose of them.

I have also trimmed back the unruly sage, transplanted a fennel and rescued some sorry looking thyme bushes from a local hardware shop to create a small herb garden. It's a work in progress and I want to grow some summer savoury and lavender too (for the bees).

I found two paving slabs on my plot and also some slate tiles which were being used to weigh down plastic sheets, I thought they make better edging for beds. The rest of this section needs to be dug over a bit more sorted out. I'm thinking of putting a cold frame here and sowing some meadow seeds to encourage the bees a bit more too.

Anyway, thats all for now, will update in the week.

Look at my previous blogs to catch up on all previous posts.

the suburban allotment

The alchemaic baker