Early winter days...
The fire’s lit! Although I do try if I can help it (in the name of saving precious wood) to not light a daytime fire. But truly? This week the kitchen has been like an icebox without one! We can sense the snow falling down in the high country from here…and I do love to hear the gentle crackle and pop of a new log added to the slow-combustion firebox behind me, as I tip-tap away. After awhile it settles to a red-hot glow, and the atmosphere it generates, let alone the warmth, makes all the difference to a winter’s day. I think my hesitation at lighting a daytime fire stems from years of daytime absence from home: one doesn’t light a fire and then do the school run and continue on, to work. Back in those days, collecting kindling and setting a fire was the first thing I did once home and through the gate - (hopefully before dark) and old habits die hard. Although I’ve worked from home for a good many years - lighting a daytime fire still seems somehow…extravagant…decadent even; rather than simply sensible!
I do love the rhythm the daily collection of kindling adds to my routine. Woe I say, to an empty kindling basket! We keep a large one on the verandah, and once the chill sets in I’m sure to top it up regularly, and only dip in on random wet days when I can’t collect new. Other peeps however, who shall remain nameless, seem to use the kindling from the basket, should they set a fire! So my five-minute, fine-day, squirrel-like behaviour is vital in the scheme of keeping the home fires burning!
As is the making of regular batches of soup (and therefore regular batches of chicken stock to use as a base). Recipes have been a bit thin on the ground of late haven’t they? Although I did include the lovely one for tomato soup last week…we’re beyond that here now, and I dug such a huge haul of Jerusalem artichokes at the weekend, that I couldn’t resist making a batch of soup from those knobbly tubers to greet the first week of winter. I don’t think I made a batch last year at all - so it’s a missing one from my regular repertoire and the two recipe indexes on this platform. If you can get your hands on some Jerusalem artichokes (Helianthus tuberosus, also knows as Sunchokes or Earth Apples), it would be a beauty to make this long weekend (and if you live locally, give me a shout and I’ll happily dig some up for you!).
JERUSALEM ARTICHOKE SOUP
Ingredients
1.5 approx. litres chicken stock
1 kilo Jerusalem artichokes, scrubbed and roughly chopped
1 brown onion, peeled and finely chopped
3 cloves garlic, crushed
1 stick celery, finely chopped
25ml olive oil
75g unsalted butter
100ml verjuice
100ml full cream milk
sea salt and black pepper
Method
warm the butter and olive oil in a large, heavy based pan and sweat the onion, garlic and celery ‘til translucent (don’t allow them to brown)
deglaze the pan with verjuice and cook for a few minutes ‘til the liquid has been absorbed
add the Jerusalem artichokes and stir to coat, adding a good pinch of sea salt and a few twists of black pepper from a grinder - give another stir for good measure
cover with chicken stock, add the lid, bring to a simmer and cook ‘til the artichokes are soft
when cooked, whizz with a stick blender (be careful not to splash the hot liquid)
now….please don’t be tempted to skip this next bit! It may be a bit annoying, but it is worth the extra effort: pass the now pureed soup through a sieve / mouli - I hope you have one. Mine sits in its box doing nothing for most of the year, but I am grateful for it on the odd occasions I use it. It has 3 alternate discs with different hole sizes and for this soup I use the middle option
return the soup to the saucepan, add the milk, bring back to a simmer and check consistency, salt and pepper. Add a little more chicken stock if required but I find 1.5 litres is about right (it should be neither too thin or too thick…but of a velvet consistency
when serving, sprinkle with a little chopped parsley (I used celery this week which was delish). Drizzle with a tiny amount of olive oil and maybe another twist of black pepper
(A note on the quantity: I transferred some to a ceramic bowl to cover and keep in the fridge for this week…and we’ve just finished that first amount. I also filled two x one litre tupperware containers to freeze. At this rate I might need to defrost the first one tomorrow morning! Or…make a batch of something else for the weekend ahead - I’ll see what Saturday morning brings…).
I know some of you are going to say…but given the Jerusalem artichoke’s reputation…is this likely to cause a windy outcome? Well…no…it doesn’t seem to. Equally…I’ve rather taken (over the years) to enjoying soup as a little side - an accompanying slurp, rather than indulging in a large bowl. Sometimes yes…it’s more about the soup, but often I have an open sandwich (I do always crave bread at lunchtime!) and a little demitasse, a soupçon - so more than a thimbleful, less than a cup, seems to just hit the spot.
A curious hack I just discovered and one I haven’t tried: Jerusalem artichokes have earned their reputation due to containing inulin, a non-digestible carbohydrate that is fermented by gut bacteria. Apparently, soaking them in acidic water (3-4 cups water with two tablespoons of lemon juice or vinegar) to hydrolyse the inulin, will make the inulin a more digestible sugar. Hmmm…could be worth a try. (Thank you for the info discovered online at ‘Not Quite Nigella’).
Goodness how I’ve been meaning to do this job for months! That is decanting the poppy seed from the beautiful heads I’ve had stored upright on their stems (in tall buckets for support) since collecting them last spring. Each time I spy them in the Dairy taking up space and collecting spider’s webs, I think I must do it…but there’s always something else more pressing to do, and as long they’re upright (I tied several rounds of string around their circumference to keep them so), their contents won’t spill…
But the moment their heads tip? It’s a stream…a river that can pour through the open holes just beneath their exquisite oriental-style hat…(that ‘pops up’, once the seed inside is ripe)…
Shaking the stems does speed up the job somewhat! And my there are a lot of stems. So far I’ve emptied the heads of two out of three buckets. It’s a task that gets a bit fidgety after awhile! Doing this on Tuesday meant I could make the most of the two mid-week days of optimum ‘seed sowing’ according to the Almanac, and although there are signs of self-sown ones already germinated, I’m really hoping to repeat last year’s enchanting display of peony poppies around the fig trees in the orchard again this coming spring. So I scattered more for good measure…probably way too many! The temptation with seed is always to overdo it, and when there’s such an abundance of seed to play with…!!!
If you’d like seed…I do have plenty to spare! Swing by and I’ll pop some into an envelope…if you’d like me to post (that could get out of control so send me a message!). As I was uploading a little story about this process onto instagram, I sneakily proposed to Rose Colbeck that a repeat poppy illustration workshop, as we did a few years ago, might be an idea for this spring. I have my fingers crossed I manage to twist Rose’s arm and we can find a date; as that day was one of the most exquisitely beautiful workshops you can imagine…
While on the subject of seed…I can be guilty of eating the last if I’m not careful! So as the rate of ripening tomatoes dwindles, I need to think twice as I’m popping them onto an open sandwich or into the oven. In reality, one doesn’t need a lot of seed. In this instance, after cutting the tomato into slices and popping them onto a piece of toasted sourdough, this number littered the chopping board. Plenty…of the variety I call the ‘Glenmore Black Krim’. After years of collecting, I’m not sure the shape is entirely true, but those fruit yielded from year to year will have acclimatised themselves to here…so it makes sense to grow them again.
I’ve already collected seed from the ‘Hungarian Heart’ (there are still a few more of good size on the vine that I’m hoping make it to a ripe stage - they are running out of time now); but we clearly ate the last ‘Yellow Pear’ without thinking! Lucky I still have seed from last year, which should be viable. I have my eyes on a plump ‘Black Cherry’ in the bowl of tomatoes on the kitchen bench (no doubt Larry has too, but for other reasons!) and I’m very keen to save seed from one particular ‘San Marzano’ specimen - whose fruit are of such a size I’d be very keen to repeat their performance.
And then there are the Zinnias. Again…one head is probably plenty, but I do find them to be quite temperamental when it comes to germination, so the more the merrier. This year, I might try sowing them into punnets rather than direct…you know how I love the happy sight of them in the late summer kitchen garden.
I picked the first navel oranges of the season! And oh my…with the ripply skins warmed on their branches in the afternoon sun, the air around the tree itself was swimming in ripe-orange perfume. In the basket and back inside on the kitchen bench…that rich scent only increased now it was captured with nowhere to go! Just squeezed, home grown orange juice, has made a return to our daily start.
While I’ve been busy collecting seed, I’ve also been sowing, and only wish I’d sown more…and more of it regularly. I’m excited to see there’s just a hint of life erupting in these punnets. I sowed seed of the Australian Yellow Leaf lettuce…one I’ve collected year on year for so many, maybe ten days ago (can’t remember and didn’t write it down…as ever, I’m inclined to be spontaneous - if things are not done in the moment, they’re inclined not to get done at all! I just know it wasn’t an optimum ‘seed’ day!). These are the lettuces with very crinkly, chartreuse coloured leaves that pop in a winter leaf salad…and they seem to enjoy growing through the winter months, when it can be difficult to persuade a hearting lettuce to do so. So I hope they get a wriggle on.
When I say I ought to sow more regularly, I do often wonder why I don’t. It’s a bit like the setting of a daytime fire - I am disinclined to ‘garden’ on weekdays in the full knowledge that I ought to be ‘working’, when in fact a job such as this might take only five minutes. It also comes from an attempt to not get dirty! When I go gardening, I like to go full-throttle gardening - and dress accordingly so it matters not how grubby I may get. Any temptation though, and it does happen all too regularly, I’ll get my better clothes into an inevitable soiled state! I can’t tell you how many ‘good’ long-sleeve t-shirts I swear I will not wear for anything other than the morning water and the evening pick have been ruined…due to getting momentarily distracted by some job, and the sleeves once again, have somehow got splashed with dirt! I much prefer to sit at my desk…clean! (And to know there are indeed spotless clean clothes in my cupboard!).
Do you remember a few weeks ago, I mentioned deciding the only way to deal with a lily caterpillar infestation in the Cliveas was to…well…clear them of all their foliage? Ugghhh….it’s not something we’ve either ever had to do, or done before. Ever since planting them out, some thirty-something years ago, they’ve soldiered on and multiplied at a great rate. Although some of their leaves got hit by dreadful frosts during the drought years, the only other problem was the amount of leaves and sticks and twigs they’d accumulated over time. Well…job done, I confess to being rather nervous at what might happen next. I took the image above…I think the weekend before last, and already you can see some new tips emerging. By now, there are a whole lot more. Of course I feared (though was happy to accept) we’d be unlikely to see flowers this year, which usually erupt in August, and that may well be the case. But I’ve come to realise over the years that there are two different varieties (although I planted them all from the original clump under the Loquat tree near the front gate) - though few are the variety that have fine bell flowers, that seem to flower earlier.
But look at what I spy! I hope this isn’t a last, forced hurrah….
Oooh, before I forget - I know you haven’t all read it, but in the ‘Gallivanting’ post I wrote last week, I included a quite long segment about the Walled Garden at Knepp. I was surprised then on Saturday, to see reference in the papers to a new film about Knepp Estate released into cinemas this week! It’s called Wilding…and I intend doing my best to go and see it! The cinema timings could not be more infuriating and it will require a trip to Sydney but…see if you can make it work for you…before it disappears!
I wish you all a very happy long weekend.
Mickey x
Productive garden notes:
Eating from the garden:
Onions, garlic (stores of both diminishing fast now and those left are sprouting!); aubergines, tomatoes, coloured chard and spinach; lettuce, rocket, red elk mustard, newly germinated cima di rapa - eating the thinnings! Kohl rabi, parsnip, Jerusalem artichoke. Lemons, oranges (new), celery, celeriac and fennel. Rhubarb. Lovage, mint, chives, rosemary, thyme. Calendula, nasturtium and borage petals, fennel fronds. The mandarins are coming…and I picked two pomegranates yesterday! Haven’t yet opened them..fingers crossed for luscious beads!
Going / gone: basil, onions, garlic, aubergine, tomatoes
Seed saving: tomato, zinnia
Sowing: Australian yellow leaf lettuce, cima di rapa, carrot, beetroot, parsnip, coriander, parsley, poppy, sweet peas (it’s late now but I’ll still do a little sowing this weekend. I sowed the sweet peas on Wednesday and just hope it isn’t too late)
Planting: brassicas (kale, cavolo nero, cabbage, broccoli, kohl rabi, cauliflower), lettuce, radicchio, fennel (bulbing), bok choy and leeks…and onions. I’d suggest it’s very late for these now (except the onions) but I might try one last flurry…
Ornamental garden notes:
Picking for the house: a rose here and there…a fennel or tansy stem and the first furry stems of lavender dentata (French lavender)
Perfumes and aromas: Daphne!!!! Well…there’s still just that one open flower…and…the first jonquil!
Pruning and other: I did a bit of snip-snipping…the pineapple guava I’m trying to coax into a solid ball next to the old cubby house in the Barn Garden, and the Port Wine Magnolias in the Courtyard, but my main focus was in the kitchen garden (where I picked the pumpkins and pulled out the long vines). I took down the old sweet pea tunnel that had supported a summer/autumn growing zucchini Trombonchino and thought to try an experiment of wigwams in that spot instead to see what I think. I made them roughly, left them for a few days, then re-arranged them properly. Much as I’d like to begin with new bamboo…I think I can get one more season from those rods and given my philosophy is to use and re-use ‘til they can be re-used no more…I tied them into position and that’s that! Thalia finished the oleander hedge and that final clip and tidy will get it through the winter months. She weeded and made a good edge around the Cliveas under the Chinese Elm while in the vicinity…and weeded the lawn gutters there too. And she’s made a good stab at clearing the detritus from the clump of Mauritus-hemp, Furcraea foetida in the Persimmon Lawn, and cutting a clear edge around them too.
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More like Larry's keeping up with chopping enough wood! And early enough in the season so it's...well...seasoned. Glad I'm not the only one who finds Zinnias to be temperamental! Mx
Oh I know you India...your pockets are as full as your hands! And I'll bet like me...that your shirt/apron/jumper...is also loaded with bits you should have taken a basket for! Mx