As the weather turns cooler and the frosts start to creep in at night, for most people the main foraging “season” is coming to a close. Of course, the notion of a defined foraging season would have been nonsense to our ancestors who were relying on gathering their food from the wild in order to […]
The courgette glut is a well-known phenomenon. Every year I know it’s coming, and every year I continue to be surprised by how many of these incredible vegetables can be produced by a single plant in a very short space of time. We have about 5 courgette plants on our allotment and I would say […]
Flowering currants are a beautiful pop of pink in gardens, parks and the occasional hedgerow in spring. They are particularly abundant in March and April, but can still be flowering in early May in more northerly parts of the UK. I love their fruity aroma and gorgeous bright colour and they are just perfect as […]
The cabbage. An unloved, perhaps uninspiring vegetable to some, a saviour in winter for the allotment keeper! Cabbages are generally cool-weather veg with winter varieties that can grow slowly but surely through the frosts. There are the deep green crinkly varieties that fill you with the sense that you’re being good to yourself by eating […]
No I haven’t gone mad, nor has our current self-isolation driven us to eating our bulbs for next spring – thankfully we do have plenty of food. A bulb lasagne is just layering up spring bulbs in a container so that you get a lovely succession of spring blooms as one type finishes and the […]
Whenever I see a bed of tumbling nasturtiums it always makes me think of the beautiful hobbit gardens in the Lord of the Rings films – is that just me? There are countless varieties of nasturtium from deep reds, through tangerine oranges, to soft yellows. At some point I want to grow all of them! […]
The hungry gap is back for another year as we get through the last of the previous season’s produce and wait for the next season to start. Thank goodness for the few winter stalwarts of purple sprouting broccoli, cabbages and kale, but also the wild mushrooms and three-cornered leek. At this time of year I’m […]
Autumn is a beautiful season full of colour and feelings of warmth as the days grow shorter and the weather cools down. One of my favourite places to experience the essence of autumn is in the New Forest in Hampshire which, as you can imagine, is just stunning at this time of year. We spent […]
The story of this particular recipe begins – perhaps surprisingly – in Luang Prabang, Laos. You might be puzzled – how can a warming winter broth full of ingredients that grow abundantly in the wild during the coldest season here in the UK have anything to do with a small city in a tropical country […]
A recipe with melon at its centre might seem odd for me to post on a blog all about seasonal, local food, but it is actually possible to grow melons in the UK. I know, it was a surprise to me too and I have to admit it isn’t something I have personally tried yet, […]
You might have noticed a hiatus in my blog posting over the last few months. Without going into too much detail at this point, my body wasn’t taking no for an answer and the enforced rest was pretty much mandatory for a while! The good news is that I’m in full health, there is nothing […]
Slurping delicious buckwheat soba noodles is a New Year’s tradition in Japan. I know New Year’s celebrations might feel like a while ago at this point, but we’re still in January, and I’m certainly still in transition mode from one year to the next. I think we too often forget that this transition is something […]
There’s something magical to me, some sort of alchemy that happens when you cook over a simple wood fire. I know it can seem unpredictable and perhaps daunting to cook with fire, without dials and digital displays, but the flavour imparted to any ingredients cooked this way is unbeatable and I find it so grounding […]
Flowering currants are a beautiful pop of pink in gardens, parks and the occasional hedgerow in spring. They are particularly abundant in March and April, but can still be flowering in early May in more northerly parts of the UK. I love their fruity aroma and gorgeous bright colour and they are just perfect as […]
