Roasted pumpkin with macaroni goat’s cheese - Orange food part one

I love autumn. There’s something about kicking crisp honey-coloured leaves on a sunny morning, the smell of damp leaves on a rainy day and curling up with hot spiced apple juice by a log fire that means autumn is here. I also start to crave orange food: pumpkins, squash, carrots, oranges etc.

The sweetness of squash is something that goes wonderfully well the saltiness of goat’s cheese, which gave me the idea for this recipe. Also, I was inspired by 5 Star Foodie’s challenge to make macaroni cheese with a twist. Until now, I’ve only ever made a pretty straightforward macaroni cheese, so I was a bit sceptical setting-out on this!

During an action-packed afternoon off from work, in between trying to speed-read a book for our book group meeting, taking the kittens to the vets and rescuing various bits of furniture from the exploring kittens, I also made this:

Roasted pumpkin with macaroni goat’s cheese recipe

• 300gr of squash, peeled, cored and cubed. (I used pumpkin, but I think it would be better with butternut squash)
• 1 tbls olive oil
• A pinch of paprika
• A pinch of chilli flakes
• A pinch of cumin
• 1 cup of macaroni
• 25gr butter
• 25gr plain flour
• 1/2 pint milk, warmed slightly
• A grate of nutmeg
• 80gr hard goat’s cheese (this was all I had, it would be better with more!), grated

1. Preheat the oven to 220 degrees Celsius and put a oven tray in to warm-up. Put the pumpkin in a pan of boiling water. Boil the pumpkin until it starts to soften slightly, about 5 minutes.
2. Drain the pumpkin and put the oven tray with the olive oil, the chilli, cumin, paprika and a good grind of black pepper. Roast for about 15mins, or until the edges are crisp.
3. Meanwhile, boil a pan of water and add the macaroni, cook according the instructions.
4. In another pan, melt the butter, add the flour and cook for a minute or two. Remove the pan from the heat and slowly stir in the milk.
5. Return the heat and gradually bring to a simmer, you will need to stir frequently. When it has thickened, remove from the heat and add the cheese and nutmeg.
6. Put the sauce and macaroni in a dish and stir to make sure they are combined well. Add the pumpkin and stir lightly so as not to turn the pumpkin pieces to mash.
7. Turn the oven down to 180 degrees Celsius and place in the oven for 10 mins.

This a great dish to, but I would definitely use butternut squash in future and more cheese, just to really bring out the flavours.

This recipe is also being submitted to 5 Star Makeover: Macaroni and Cheese.

Vegetable growing on a small scale – update 1

Number of days until submission of PhD: 9

Stress levels: Variable. Calm when in the kitchen, the ‘garden’ or writing on my blog. Other times, simmering, with boiling-point reached occasionally.

New growth:

Yippee! Some of my seeds have started to germinate! The tomatoes and aubergines need a bit more time, but the rocket (see the picture) and my leeks have started to sprout!

 

Google gardening calendar: My attempt to organise my growing

With limited space and a need to produce vegetables throughout the growing season I really need to be able to keep track of when I planted certain pots and trays and when I need to re-sow.

Despite constant nagging, I still use a paper diary to track my movements and work patterns. It feels right doing it that way. But, I have to admit, for my vegetable growing I’ve turned to Google Calendars. Not only can I record (and easily check) when I planted things, but I can set myself reminders for when I need to plant again! Being optimistic, it will also mean that I can build-up a record of what works and what doesn’t all in one place, over many years.

I know - I could do this in a paper diary too. Although somehow if I’m actually reminded to do something, I have more chance of getting it done…

 

Free seeds:

Blagger’s recent post alerted me to the fact that the BBC are running a ‘grow your own grub’ project, called Dig In. The idea is that they give away five varieties of seeds for people to grow, but there will be slots on Gardener’s World and info on the web about exactly how to grow the seeds, ensuring support throughout the season. In the autumn the scheme will end with cooking advice given by Nigel Slater on what to do with all the vegetables that have been grown. A great way to encourage people to grow their own food!

Seeds will be available from bbc.co.uk/digin from the 10th April. The website is not up yet, or it wasn’t when I last checked.

Another date to add to my Google calendar!

Organic, free range or local?

Is this really a dilemma? I didn’t think so – but now I’m not quite so sure. A few instances recently have made me begun to think about the difference and importance of: organic, local and free range produce.

Meat

Where possible I try to buy local produce that is organic, and in the case of meat and eggs, free range. Recently I came across a website for an organic farm in Devon who do mail-order meat. My initial reaction to it was: ‘Imagine the food miles!’. But after thinking about it the idea might not be as bad as it seems.

OK – here are the arguments against buying local meat (I can’t really believe I’m saying this!) and buying mail-order meat instead:

1. Purely selfishly, it is an hour round-trip to the ‘local’ butchers. If I want meat that is guaranteed local and free-range, make that two-hours to a different butchers. Mail-order meat arrives at the door.
2. Therefore there’s also rather a lot of petrol involved too. If I bought mail-order meat, it would be delivered by a courier company who deliver to other people in the area too, meaning that although a lot of petrol may be used, it’s not just for one person. Is the principle really any different from Amazon?
3. At the local butchers I’m not always entirely sure where the meat came from, what type of life the animal had, what it was feed, how it was killed, how far it has already ‘travelled’. I can know all of that from the farm in Devon. (Although admittedly the butcher is usually helpful when 1) he’s serving and 2) I ask!).

Against:

1. Our local town is lucky enough to have a lot of small independent retailers and I enjoy supporting them. The local fishmongers closed-down when Sainsbury’s moved in.
2. Convenience, I can just pop to the butchers to pick up the meat that I need, especially if I’m at work that day.
3. The food miles still seem ridiculous for mail-order meat!

OK, the best thing is perhaps a monthly trip to the second butchers who are further away, but where I know I can be guaranteed local and free-range meat. I can always get the occasional extras from the more local butcher in order to continue to support him. If I lived in Devon, I would definitely opt for their mail-order meat, but luckily Cumbrian meat is pretty darned good, it’s just getting to the butchers when the fells are in the way!

Vegetables

The next problem was vegetables. I’m trying to grow our main vegetable supply this year, but I still need to buy our vegetables at the moment. Also, I will probably still need to supplement what I will be able to grow in pots during the rest of the year too.

The greengrocers are usually excellent, selling a range of great seasonal produce (including Seville oranges, damsons, quinces, chestnuts and wild mushrooms). I needed onions the other day, so after grabbing some rhubarb and purple-sprouting broccoli I went to get the onions. I was surprised to see that they weren’t local, they weren’t even British - and I needed onions! Feeling like a traitor, I went of the Sainsbury’s and brought British onions from there instead.

I know seasonal and local are not synonymous, and I’m the first person to herald the joys of produce from around the world, like Seville oranges. But, if something can (and does) grow well here, why is it imported?

The next question that this shopping trip raised (and it certainly raised many!) was: are the supermarkets so bad after all? If I can be guaranteed that I will be able to find British produce in them, then should I give the greengrocers a miss?

Sweets

I don’t think that there are necessarily clear answers to any of these questions. Inevitably, I think my continual shopping around between different places will produce the best results. But it certainly got me thinking.

I felt a bit like a child in an old-fashioned sweet shop with all the jars of shiny sweets in front of me and I had to choose which ones I wanted. Rather than choosing just one sort, I think I need to pick and choose small quantities from each jar.

If you have any trouble finding your best local ‘sweets’, then I’ve found the search engine on localfoodadvisor.com is a pretty useful starting point for all things foody and local in Britain.

Sunshine and seeds

I had a slight set-back with the PhD yesterday. Hopefully not major, but enough to send me into a spiral of stress! By the late afternoon I was a bit calmer and in desperate need of a break and a fix of some all-too-rare sunshine. I was also aware that it was a prime time to plant tomatoes and aubergines; and I just happened to have some seeds waiting earnestly on the kitchen table…

All the seeds that I have chosen this year are supposed to be fine to grow in pots and tubs, perfect for the courtyard. The next hurdle is not growing tons of everything, that is usually easier said than done for me. A couple of years ago I grew so many tomato and pepper plants that I turned our conservatory into a jungle – I wasn’t very popular that summer!

In an attempt to keep a check on how much I’m growing, I decided that rather than plant the seeds in seed trays I would plant them in plastic bottles. This idea came from MrBrownThumb, it is ingenious! It’s cheap and it means that I can restrict my sowing!

I cut three 2-litre drinks bottles in half horizontally. Then I heated the tip of a fondu fork and used this to melt holes in the bottom for drainage. You could use tweezers or a long nail instead. I put the compost and seeds in the bottom half of the bottle, just like in a seed tray, but the seed were placed on a slightly greater depth of soil (about 8 cm). Gave the seeds some water and popped the top-half of the bottle back on. I cut a vertical slit in the top of the bottle so that I could squeeze it slightly and get it to sit just inside the bottom half. I thought this would be better that trying to balance it on top.

Next to the chitting-potatoes on my window sill I now have three little mini propogators! One containing Gartenperle tomatoes, one with Baby Rosanna aubergines and one housing King Richard leeks. I hope that they work! I’m not so sure about the leeks, looking at the calendar I perhaps should have left these a day or so before planting them. If they don’t work, I can always blame the moon!

Keep it in the family, or amongst friends

I was asked what I plan to do with my rhubarb this year. Well, the short answer is: nothing.

The longer version is that when we decided to move over to Cumbria one of my first concerns was the rhubarb, “How can I leave that here?”. The simple answer was that I had to take it with us. So, I duly dug up the rhubarb last January, popped as much as I could into pots and brought it over to Cumbria. The previous autumn I had split it, so I was a bit wary about transporting it and leaving in it pots indefinitely, so soon after. To spread the risk I also gave some to a friend who has promised to give me some back when we finally settle.

Last year it really didn’t do well in pots and was at least a quarter of the size it usually is (that may have had something to do with my forgetting to water it). I hadn’t expected it to still be in pots now, or for us to still be in a rented house for that matter. For the time being at least it seems happier this year, but I don’t want to rock-the-boat and risk weakening it again two years in a row. So it will continue to sit by the backdoor in the courtyard and be much admired this year, so long as the cat leaves it alone. Unless of course it grows strongly and then rhubarb crumble will be on the menu!

I really should explain why I’m quite so worried about my rhubarb. This rhubarb is a little bit like a family heirloom to me. Some families pass down the family silver, but the rhubarb has been passed down on my mum’s side of the family for about a century.

It originated in my great-grandfather's vegetable plot, then moved onto my grandfather’s two successive homes, then onto my mother’s garden, and now some has come to me. My mum forgot to take some with her when she moved, so some of mine went to her new home where it now thrives.

With that legacy behind it, maybe I shouldn’t worry whether it is a survivor; like me, it seems to thrive on change wherever it is placed.

The primary function of growing vegetables is usually to create food; and at the moment with the current economic climate the practice is increasingly being heralded as a way of saving money, which is not a bad thing! But vegetables (and growing them) can also be associated with other things such as memories or family, or they may just bring out a smile on a rainy day. Surely that’s just as important?

Bits ‘n’ Pieces – chicken stock, egg shells and seeds

My breaks today have been spent sorting out.

Chicken Stock

The other day we treated ourselves to a wonderful, organic, free-range chicken from a local estate. It was fabulous, so succulent! Today’s primary job has been simple: to make stock with the leftovers.

I’ve been left with a car without a current tax disc (as mine has gone on a jaunt to York) so I’ve been rather restricted to the house for the last few days and unable to get any extra ingredients.

Therefore, working on the principle that you only really need: a chicken carcass, some water (about 2 litres) and some veg (preferably so-called ‘white’ veg), I embarked on my stock-making during one of today’s breaks. To the pot with the water and chicken I added:

• Two rather past-it parsnips
• A floppy carrot
• Some left-over leek tops
• A red onion (no white ones left)
• A couple of bay leaves
• A good grind of coarsely-ground black pepper.

Next, I spent most of the two-hour cooking time making sure that the cat didn’t attack the protruding bits of carcass…

Result: just over 0.5 litre of yummy stock. I feel I should have a bit more, but with a hob with almost non-existent temperature control (barely simmer or raging boil) I can’t be too disappointed.

Egg Shells

Next, I seem to have had a large collection of egg shells building up. They were duly put in the oven to be baked (100 degrees for an hour or so), crushed and stored.

I plan to use them as an anti-slug repellent for my lettuces. It’s a tip I saw somewhere, and I can’t remember where, but ‘thank you’ to whoever suggested it!

…and seeds

Lastly, while I was washing-up I was mentally planning an email to send to the seed company who I placed an order with over a week ago. There was something in their confirmation email which said “All goods will be despatched to arrive in good time for planting”. This year or next? The word impatient comes to mind again…

…but then a knock on the door revealed the postman, not an unusual occurrence, but he was clutching two small packages! I’m yet to open them but they bear the name of the seed supplier on them! You can guess what tomorrow’s breaks will be spent doing.