Cooking Archives - SpadeRunner

BEAT, the Bacon Endive Avocado Tomato sandwich

July 14, 2016March 1, 2017 Stephen Carlin

The BEAT This to me is what growing your own produce is all about; we had some nice bacon left over the other day, and it was so easy to put together a great little sandwich for lunch with local, home baked, and home grown produce. The fresh endive and four different kinds of tomato really made it for taste and visual appeal. Instead of the BLT, here is the BEAT, delicious on home baked sourdough. Tomatoes Even though it’s Winter here, we always have plenty of cherry tomatoes, which…

Zucchini flowers, making the most of the crop.

January 29, 2016 Stephen Carlin

Zucchini flowers seem like an extravagance, using flowers now that you could pick as fruit later. This year though I have watched dozens of zucchini flowers open and fade without any fruit production at all. So I have realised that picking the flowers is actually a good use of the crop, giving possibly as much yield as waiting for the fruit.

Cowboy candy. Pickled jalapeños.

December 27, 2015May 31, 2018 Stephen Carlin

With the warm Spring weather the jalapeños have been very productive, so I have more than I can cook with and give away. It was time to get creative and try ‘cowboy candy’, sweet pickled jalapeños. I’m glad I did.

Cooked Chioggia beetroot is also good

November 25, 2015December 14, 2015 Stephen Carlin

My Spring Chioggia (candystripe) beetroot crop did well, but with the weather warming up it was time to pull the last of them. Because of their red and white rings I have only been using them as carpaccio, but as we had so many it was time to try them cooked.

Potato sourdough

November 11, 2015December 8, 2017 Stephen Carlin

We were given a huge bag of homegrown potatoes recently, which are beautifully creamy, so I thought I’d try potato sourdough. After a bit of tweaking I’m very happy with it. I would rate it as an advanced bread to try, as it relies on a feel for the dough consistency.

Pink pickled eggs

November 2, 2015December 28, 2015 Stephen Carlin

What to do when the trickle of eggs you waited and waited for finally turns into a steady flow and the full cartons begin to collect? Mum is of course always a good source of knowhow, and mine sent me a recipe for pickling eggs. They are not something I think I’d even tried before, although I’m sure I’ve seen them in jars in Yorkshire pubs. So I at least had to give them a go. And then I saw the tweak of adding beetroot to the pickling mix. Pink…

Stovetop meals

August 3, 2015December 14, 2015 Stephen Carlin

It doesn’t get particularly cold here, frosts are rare, but it’s nice to have a fire going in the shorter, darker days, and sometimes we need one just to drive out the damp when it’s been raining for days and we would like to get some laundry dry. Cooking stovetop meals There’s something primally satisfying about having a fire at night. We have a slow combustion stove in the living room. It’s a good size and very efficiently heats the house. A plus with it is that it’s good for cooking a…

Winter salad (pretending it’s Spring)

July 30, 2015December 14, 2015 Stephen Carlin

Being able to assemble fresh and interesting salads makes you really appreciate growing your own. We had a sunny midwinter day recently where we bucked the easy routine of bread (home made sourdough of course!) and cheese for lunch and had a freshly picked salad.

Making daikon kimchi

May 19, 2015May 16, 2016 Stephen Carlin

Making daikon kimchi is an excellent way to spread out a harvest. My daikon (white radish, mooli) crop did very well, but after a few weeks of picking, the final half dozen plants needed to be pulled to make way for the next planting. So with the fridge already loaded with daikon roots, I decided to try a fermentation.

Rosella jam and cordial from the one batch.

May 12, 2015December 17, 2015 Stephen Carlin

Rosella (Hibiscus sabdariffa) makes great jam and cordial, and here’s a way I have found to make both from the one batch. The cordial is refreshing and slightly astringent, which I find perfect for a rehydrating drink on a hot day. The jam is a little like plum jam, with an intense red colour. I took our third picking of rosellas the other day, and thought I would try cordial again, but this time with a recipe suggestion from Hip Pressure Cooking. Her recipe is for blackberry essence, but it…