Allotment – Keeper of the Kitchen

July 1, 2016

Carrot And Cheddar Shortbread Recipe

An odd side effect of growing your own food is that sometimes you have very small amounts of produce. For example, we harvested a handful of carrots this week, thinning out space for the other carrots to grow bigger. This gave us about 8 small carrots which is barely a snack of one person, never mind a side for three, so I had to think of something we could make that use the carrots to best effect.

I decided a good snack for a picnic we were attending would be Carrot and Cheese Shortbread. I know shortbread is normally a sweet treat, but why should it be!?

This recipe was a bit trial and error, but it worked out so well, I’m really pleased with it. And if we have another small batch of carrots I intend to do the same again, but freeze the dough so that we have ready shortbread whenever we want – I think it’s a great way of saving summer produce too! I’ll let you know how I get on with that.

In the meantime, here’s the carrot and cheddar shortbread recipe.

Carrot And Cheddar Shortbread Recipe

Recipe Type: Snack

Author: Keeper of the Kitchen

Prep time: 35 mins

Cook time: 25 mins

Total time: 1 hour

Serves: 20 biscuits

In the Thermomix this just takes a few minutes, then there’s a 30 minute chill time. After chilling you need to slice the cookies or you can roll them out to make shapes.

Ingredients

115g (4oz) salted butter
90g (3oz) carrot and cheese*
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
1/2 tsp thyme
1/2 tsp rosemary
220g (1 1/4 cups) plain flour
1 tbs water (a bit more if your flour is organic)

Instructions

(If you’re not using a Thermomix, grate the carrot first)
Add room temperature butter to a mixing bowl and using an electric beater whisk it till it’s light and fluffy

(Thermomix: add the butterfly and mix on speed 3 for 30 – 40 seconds)

Add a mixture of carrot and cheese to add up to 90g. In this case I used 45g of each, but more or less of whichever you have, to add up to 90g.
Add the rest of the ingredients, except the water and mix until combined

(speed 6 for 1 minute)

Add the water and mix till it combines and pulls away from the sides
Tip out onto greaseproof paper, and shape into a sausage. Chill for 30 minutes in the fridge.
After 30 minutes, turn the oven on to 180C/350F. Slice the sausage into 1cm thick slices and place on a baking tray. Bake for 20 -25 minutes.
Leave to cool.

July 1, 2016July 1, 2016

Grow Your Own Harvest: June

I honestly wasn’t expecting a huge harvest from our allotment this month. We only started planting two months ago, and the weather hasn’t been great. And despite a huge amount of work, it being our first season in this new plot… well, I wasn’t overly hopeful. But, as it turns out, the ground is fertile, and the rain has helped!

Our fellow allotmenteers, who had all started sowing and planting and getting seedlings going before we even had a plot – and a wonderful friend who started off some seedlings for me – were all very generous, and things progressed rapidly.

First in the ground was a row of salad greens, but they didn’t make it – just a patch of curly parsley has come up, so it withstood the slugs and frost that killed off the rest.

The kids planted beans in early spring at their playgroup and home ed group, and while they’ve grown beautifully, they haven’t produced anything. We’ll see if they do. We did have a huge struggle with slugs early on, and after a few rounds of Epsom salts, coffee grounds and prayers didn’t work, I chucked down a thin layer of slug pellets. That helped, but I still pick ’em off every day!

My friend Sara found some onions in the back of her cupboard growing legs, so she gave them to me and not really knowing what to do, I stuck the in the ground. I’m told they won’t produce onions, but they are going to seed, so I’m going to see if I can do anything with those. If nothing else, they are pretty to look at.

I have about 6 tomato plants growing, but so far only two have flowered. We’ll see what that means for the rest.

The apple tree that came with the plot is loaded with beautiful looking red apples. I’m excited to see what comes of them, and so far they are insect free, despite the huge caterpillar nest I took off the tree a few weeks ago.

Our harvests so far have been small, but that’s understandable. That radish is huge though. I’ve never liked peas, so I was keen to try a fresh one, and I love it. I ate it pod and all. And the carrots are sweet. I’m so excited by this first harvest.

We have three average sized rhubarb bushes on the plot, but they are producing plenty too.

The second harvest this month was really just kale and mint and spearmint. Made delicious kale and paprika chips with it, and added a mint layer to the strawberry yoghurt ‘ice creams’ my children enjoy.

The third harvest was the biggest so far. We are running out of carrots which is a shame, but I shall plant some more this weekend. I figure they may still work out if we have a later summer than normal. With any luck, maybe even an Indian Summer, then they should have plenty of time. More kale – the plant is a champion producer! We also got our first gherkins. I need to figure out how to start their pickling process as the rest of the plant is still just swelling, rather than showing actual fruit (veg).

And finally, our neighbouring plot is inhabited by a lady named Carol, who has an artichoke bush – and apparently I’m the only one she knows who likes artichokes… lucky me!

So, June’s thrown a few learning curves our way, and there are some bits in the beds that I’ll do differently next year, but for now, progress is forward motion, and I’m thrilled!

June 30, 2016June 30, 2016

Our New Allotment

Two months ago we received a plot on the local allotment. Our plot was rather overgrown, but we had one bed ready to use and another hidden under a mountain of plastic, rocks and broken glass! Here’s our new allotment journey!

I decided to start with the existing bed, and go from there, so I planted what I had a little (retrospectively) too haphazardly, but never mind – it’s year one, and a huge learning curve.

In this bed we planted salad greens, chives, nasturtiums, marigolds (calendula), radish, carrots and beetroot. A few weeks later I added rows of more beetroot, radish and khol rabi in between. Then I realised I had a quarter bed left empty, so I popped squash, courgette and gherkins in too as well as raspberry canes along one edge. A neighbouring plot holder turned up with two sun flowers for the children, so we popped those in too, to hide the compost bin.

Obviously that’s a lot for one bed, but with limited space we had to do what we could, really.

After I managed to uncover the second bed, I popped the strawberries in, leaving way too much space between them, and made a herb circle. At the end of that bed I added a Logan berry, four tomatoes and two peas.

We’ve had a few strawberries, but not many – I’ve actually just put some cloches on to try to protect it from the birds, but I suspect that’s affected the sun the strawberries are getting as we’ve not had any since. But it is their first year and they’ve only been in the ground for 2 months, so that might be it too.

In the middle of the herbs I’ve put some Kale, and so far they’ve avoided white fly, and have been producing beautifully, so that’s great news!

The plot came with a fully grown and flowering apple tree (complete with a gazillion caterpillars, but fortunately they were the nesting type, so I just moved their whole nest and that seems to have gotten rid of them all) and an abundance of mint and spearmint. It’s surrounded by brambles too, so that should mean plenty of blackberries and there’s a huge Comfrey plant, so fertiliser should be easy to arrange too. Oh, and I almost forgot the huge rosemary bush too! I’m excited about that!

It’s been a massive amount of work, and I honestly didn’t think I was going to be able to do everything I have, so I’m feeling rather pleased with myself – even with the new wildlife discoveries we’ve been making!

We’ve been at it for two months, and we’re now at the harvesting stage for lots of the things we’ve planted, which is terribly exciting! Watch this space for lots of fresh and healthy recipes as well as growing tips as we learn them!