So, it’s been exactly 18 months since I took on what has become known as Project Garden. The Silver Fox had spent ten careful years of studiously ignoring the fact that he had a huge back garden with massive potential (this is neither a euphemism, nor a metaphor) and was more than a tad surprised when this here filly decided to make tidy work of the out of control ‘paddock’.
Last summer’s endeavours brought a fairly functional garden, with some flowers and plants a few herbs including a couple of lovely rosemary bushes, but the big ambition for 2010 was to cultivate us some veggies!
So, as with most projects, it all took a little longer than planned to come together, but here I find myself in Autumn 2010 with more carrots than I’m entirely sure of what to do with!
On the same Sunday in July, I planted the following , all in seeds.
1) Basil. Resulting crop was functional but not great. Remaining leaves now look very yellow and entirely unappetising.
2) Rocket. Now, a better run of luck with this. We had leaves for a good 3 or so weeks, and loved mixing them through spaghetti carbonara, which for some reason became one of the recipes of the summer.
3) Cabbage. Total, absolute failure to get off the ground before we even started on this one. If I’d only taken heed of advice about potential ‘brassica massacres’ by the local flight school. I had been advised about this by Tracy Griffen who proudly took ownership of a Leith Links allotment this summer and was full of lots of useful info. Anyway, I did get to see about three baby sprouts of cabbage before the lot was demolished. A lesson learned and that lesson is netting.
4) Spring onions. Well, maybe the name says it all, and seeing as I planted them in July, what did I expect? Cheat nature? Anyway, we did get a crop of spring onions, but as you can see from the photo, they were a mite puny. Nevertheless, they were harvested and featured in the carrot soup.
5) Carrots , 2 types, autumn gold and another one. Anyway, the name definitely suggested I’d be on a better streak with these and they weren’t wrong. Everyone I spoke to warned me about carrot-fly, told me about thinning them out, and making sure the soil was packed back down. I tried to follow advice, and I think was struck with some beginner’s luck. Resulting crop, many many tasty yummy, sweet crunchy, slightly muddy tasting carrots of every shape and size. Some have bums, some are the classic ‘Barbie legs’ others are quite ordinary, supermarket-grade sexy looking carrots.
So, on to what to do with them. Hidden in one of last year’s posts there’s a really good recipe for carrot cake, which no doubt will come around again, but for Sunday night, I decided to make some soup with what was around the kitchen. Not the most refined or technical of recipes, but awfy tasty!
Ingredients
Olive oil
3 small garlic cloves
2 small onions (or some of the puny spring onions from the back garden!)
1.5 kg of washed and peeled (or well-scrubbed) carrots
1 good chunk of fresh ginger, skin off
400ml tin of coconut milk
500ml of vegetable or chicken stock (my vote, as always, is for Kallo organic)
2 tablespoons of Tom Yum paste
Fresh coriander to garnish at serving
Having been out in the garden all day, I made this as lazily as possible using the Magimix (come on, it’s what it’s there for!) but you can chop and grate to your heart’s content instead if you prefer.
Gently heat up about 2 tablespoons of olive oil in a non-stick pan.
Peel the onions and whizz up with the garlic in the Magimix with the knife blade. Once finely chopped add into the pot to soften.
I then swapped to the grating disk and put through the carrots and ginger. Obviously if you don’t have the gadget, just use the thick side of a normal box grater.
Once the onions have softened up, add in all of the carrots and allow to cook on a medium heat for up to 10 minutes. Stir the mixture (that looks like a hot salad!) around from time to time to make sure the carrots are evenly cooking.
Add in the coconut milk and the warm stock and bring up to the boil.
Then add in the tom yum paste and seasoning to taste.
Simmer on a low heat with the lid on for another 30 minutes to let the carrots break up. If you like, you can make a smooth soup with a hand-blender, but I just kept it as it was and liked the texture of the carrots. Slight problem when I encountered a small chunk of ginger that hadn’t quite had enough of a run-in with the grater but not the end of the world.
A few chopped coriander leaves to garnish and you’re good to serve up in a giant bowl.
Thanks to my garden!
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