September In My Kitchen

Well to be truthful, much of what I am sharing is from August, but there will be some things that will take us into September.  

But before i start sharing, some of you have been asking about my fur friend.  Here is a recent picture of him. 

I made this Apple and Blackberry vegan pie three times in the last couple of months.     

The recipe comes from Post Punk Kitchen vegan chefs Isa Chandra Moscowitz and Terry Hope Romero in their publication Vegan Pie In The Sky. 

The blackberries were foraged.    

The cooking apples from the garden.    

Garden Harvest

These blueberries were mostly eaten for breakfast, either with homemade waffles or stirred into Greek yoghurt.

We thinned out the beetroot and carrot pot. The carrots are not worth mentioning at the moment, but the baby beetroot was excellent. We have begun digging out some potatoes. The green and dwarf yellow beans are beginning to dwindle and we don't have much in the way of runner beans this year. There is also plenty of tomatoes coming from the greenhouse. 

 The courgettes are coming thick and fast.  If i miss one, you can guarantee the next day or two, they tease me having becme overgrown marrows, but i've been fortunate as my mother and sister in law are requesting the marrows to accompany a meat dish they make.  

I'm not being overly inspired with courgettes to be honest, adding them to mostly to pasta dishes. 

This is a tweaked Chilli with courgettes and sweetcorn in place of the usual peppers or carrots.

And this is one I actually made last year, but failed to blog about it. It's a Courgette Casserole.  I sliced 3 medium courgettes, crushed 6 cloves garlic, sliced 4 spring onion, stirred in 1 tablespoon lemon juice and 3 tablespoons of olive oil along with salt and pepper to taste and a handful of fresh parsley.  Then stirred well. Before pouring over 3 -4 large tomatoes roughly chopped to create a sauce of sorts.  Stirred again, before transferring  to a baking dish.  Transfer to preheated oven gas mark 4/180oc for 45 minutes.  It was served alongside some boiled new potatoes.  

These green beans were used in this recipe called Piccalilli Spiced Rice. It also incudes cauliflower, red onion, carrots and red chillies

The recipe was bookmarked from Meera Sodha's cookbook East.  I must admit, it's perhaps one of my most used cookbook from the past year or so. 

The Piccalilli Spiced Rice dish was really good, we topped the dish off with some mango chutney. 

Lovely homegrown tomatoes. 

I made a few dishes from Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi's cookbook Jerusalem.

 Mixed Bean Salad with red peppers and Spiced Chickpeas and fresh vegetable salad. 

I am sharing this blog post with Dave over at Happy Acres who hosts Harvest Monday. 

Ending with these poppies from the garden, they are all gone now burned from the heatwave, but they were lovely to see while they lasted. 

Mid August In My Kitchen

Its been a while since i've joined in with In My Kitchen Series.  There has been cooking in my kitchen, but its much of a muchness. I go back to firm favourites.  But the thing that is always new in my kitchen is homegrown produce.  So let me share some of them with you.  

Windfall apples, some in tact, some bruised, still edible. 

These stunning voluptuous tomatoes.  

Mish mash of vegetables: yellow and green beans, yellow and gree courgettes. Albeit some a little on the large size.

Good diversity of tomatoes including one described as a green sausage tomato by our neighbour. I am sharing this blog post with Dave over at Happy Acres who hosts Harvest Monday.  

Here are some of the dishes made with the homegrown vegetables.  

Chunky courgette pasta in a mildly  spiced tomato sauce. This one was made by eye-balling ingredients. I used a 500g bag of penne pasta, 6 cloves of garlic crushed sauteed in 6 tablespoons olive oil, 1 teaspoon chilli flakes, then added 6 medium courgettes, sliced lengthways then half moons, 1 fat red chilli sliced (optional for more kick) and about 350g tomatoes, chopped in half added to the pot with salt and pepper to taste.

Turn the heat down until tomatoes are breaking down and courgettes are softening, but still have some bite.  Stir in the cooked pasta to coat. Stir in optional chopped coriander or parsley. Taste and adjust seasoning before transferring to a large serving dish for everyone to help themselves. 

I've been cooking quite a bit from 'What Will I do with all those Courgetttes' by Elaine Borish.  Including this Layered Vegetable Salad which made a good alternative to our usual new potato salad.  

And this Spicy African Stew, but i adapted it replacing the uncooked white rice with brown rice. and reducing the peanut butter by half - it was 175g.  It was very rich and the rice seemed to have absorbed much of the liquid that i could hardly call it a stew.  It was more of a Risotto/Jambalaya dish.  It was substantial too, serving at least 8 people. Well I had to take some of it over to my nephew and O, who enjoyed it, but stated it was rich in flavour.  I think its a good dish to serve up at a buffet or potluck lunch.   

I also made this Zucchini Spice Bread - nutmeg, allspice, cinnamon and ginger. And don't laugh, i forgot to put in both the raisins and the chopped walnuts.  It turned out dry, but that was my fault.  We've been eating the bread smothered in butter or jam.

Not all the recipes have been adapted or inspired by cookbooks.  Courgette and Bean Curry

From natural food to processed snacks in my kitchen. I was introduced to Takis a few months back, by my niece and i have been loving these tangtastic bites.  

I leaped in excitement, when i saw it make an appearance on the series The Wilds, that was recommended to me by a friend. i thoroughly enjoyed it by the way for some mindless escapism.  But then i introduced the same friend that introduced me to the series to an actual packet of Takis's and she squealed in excitement in the same way i did, but to be honest - she tried a couple, but they were a bit too strong for her palette.    

I am sharing this blog post with Sherry of Sherry's Pickings for the In My Kitchen series.  Please do go by and check out the other contributions. 

July Harvest Monday

Summer is in full swing and the vegetable garden is beginning to reward us with some home grown produce.  

But these cherries are not from the garden, these were bestowed to us by our neighbour who harvested them from a a friends garden. 

Raspberries are beginning to ripen too, enough for a bowl with some yogurt or scattered ove home made waffles with maple syrup. 

Soon we will have blueberries. 

Cooking apples and pears growing well too.  It's the first time our apple tree has been laden.  But our plum tree is disappointing this year (no photographs). 

We have artichokes, but i have not harvested them.  Letting them bloom for the bees. 

These are dwarf green beans. You would not think so, looking at the length of them. 

Although we have some beetroot growing, ours are not ready yet.  These came from our neighbour who sowed his seeds early in the year.  We've already roasted them and stirred them into a potato salad.

This little yellow cucumber also came from our neighbour.

We were not organised this year with sowing seeds and growing plants from scratch this year. Our neighbour has been very kind and gave us a lot of tomato plants.  Names of which i do not know, like these black tomatoes.   

These little tomatoes were plants we picked up from a garden centre. I am sharing this blog post with Dave over at Happy Acres who hosts Harvest Monday.  It's always nice to see what's happening in other vegetable growers garden around different parts of the world. 

Wolverhampton and Yet Another Banana Bread

I started writing this blog post on the 24 January 2022. 

It was going to be about our long early drive and day trip to Wolverhampton, England.  

But then shortly after, I was off sick from work.  It was not Covid, but whatever it was it struck me down.  

So much else has happened in between.  

I have missed some blogging friends and loyal readers.  So I just had to come by and say Hello - i am still here.   Thank you for your kind messages. 

This is just a short post, to share some snaps from our day trip in Wolverhampton. 

Also in an attempt to start blogging again, partly motivated by wanting to share some photographs from day trips and visits to places combined with some homemade eats.  I'm slowly dipping my virtual feet back in this space. 

Brimful of Asha by Cornershop is one of my favourite songs. The band Cornershop formed in Wolverhampton in 1991. 

Yet another Banana Bread!  

The topping was lovely, especially the way the sliced bananas caramelised on top, but i was not keen on the recipe.  I think the addition of lemon in the mix did not quite please me.