Yesterday we bought a sack (yes, a sack!) of potatoes for £2.00!  They look pretty good, but I'm not sure how long they'll keep, so we're likely to be eating potatoes every day for the next couple of weeks.

The first thought is jacket potatoes.  My favourite way of eating jacket potatoes is with home-made coleslaw, although there are lots of lovely combinations - what about scrambled egg with chopped up crispy bacon - or one of the many ideas given below? but before that here's one idea:

Bonfire Jackets

4 large Maris Piper potatoes

6 rashers lean back bacon

75g mature Cheddar cheese, grated

400g tin of kidney beans, drained

4 spring onions, chopped

½-1tsp smoked paprika

75g sweetcorn (optional)

When cooked, remove the potato from the skins and mix with cooked bacon, plus half the cheese and the other ingredients.

Put rest of cheese on top and grill for a few minutes.

From: https://www.lovepotatoes.co.uk/recipes/jo-pratts-bonfire-jackets

Also good with jacket potatoes are the following combinations of fillings:

• Lunchtime special: chopped lambs kidneys and sliced onions, sauted in butter, add s&p, garnish with chopped parsley.
• Walcott Potatoes: scrambled egg, quartered tomatoes, sliced blanched red and green peppers (optional), chopped rashers of grilled bacon. Garnish with rings of green pepper and onions.
• Potato and Kidney Lyonnaise: one small lamb's kidney, cored and sliced, 2 oz onion finely chopped, simmer in two tablespoons stock until cooked and stock has evaporated.
• Cheese and haddock bake: smoked haddock, steamed and some grated cheese.
• Chicken and mushrooms: diced cooked chicken, sliced mushroom, chopped onions, simmered together in some stock.
• Slimmer's delight: cottage cheese, chopped chives, chopped red pepper.
• Crisp and sweet: butter, sweet corn, cooked bacon, cream, s&p, garnish with crisp grilled bacon.
• Fisherman's supper: cheese sauce with flaked smoked haddock, pepper. Garnish with lemon slices.
• Ploughman's potato: butter, mix together pickle or chutney, grated cheese and pepper. Top with grated cheese and brown under grill. Garnish with watercress.
• Liver and onion: one small sliced and fried onion, sliced and sauted mushrooms, sliced sauted liver, pepper.
• A la bolognese: minced beef cooked with tomatoes and onions, garnish with sliced tomato.
• Norfolk special: butter, diced turkey or chicken and ham, cooked peas. Garnish with rolled up ham and some watercress.
• Stroganoff: finely chopped onions, sliced mushrooms, cooked in butter, mixed with matchsticks of fried steak in sour cream sauce, s&p. Garnish with mushrooms and parsley.
• Hawaiian: butter, chopped pineapple, diced ham, chopped celery stick. Garnish with pineapple and celery leaves.

Other ideas for potatoes:

Salmon, Prawn and Leek Hotpots: https://www.lovepotatoes.co.uk/recipes/jo-pratts-salmon-prawn-leek-hotpot

Low calorie potato recipes: http://www.eatingwell.com/recipes_menus/recipe_slideshows/low_calorie_potato_recipes?slide=1#leaderboardad

Also my (wonderful though I say so myself) Leek and Potato Soup: http://edvisgardening.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/leeks

January means Soups

Although we have soup for lunch most days, the winter is the best time to enjoy a warming bowl of broth, and here are some of my favourite soup recipes.  

Although these are some of my favourite recipes, most soups we have are mixtures: vegetables from the previous meal, together with stock, either vegetable, chicken or ham, along with lentils, split peas or other additions.  One of our mantras at dinner every evening is ' if we don't eat these vegetables tonight they'll go into the soup!'.


Chilli Bean Soup

2 Onions
2 oz butter/olive oil
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1 clove garlic, crushed
1 tsp chilli
2 x 14oz cans Kidney Beans, drained
1.5 pints stock
1 tbsp tomato puree
s&p

1. Chop onions, fry in butter/oil, along with the oil.
2. Add spices.
3. Add kidney beans and stock, cook for 20 mins.
4. Add tomato puree and s&p

Variation: could serve with meat balls to make a hearty supper:

Meat balls: Process 1/2 lb mince with half an onion, add 1/2 tsp chilli powder.  Fry teaspoons of mixture in a some oil.  Put on top of soup to serve.  (It's probably worth making double this amount, so save having half an onion left over, and freezing the meat balls  for next time)


Carrot & Coriander Soup


Fresh Coriander
1.5 lb peeled thinly sliced Carrots
1 Onion, peeled and chopped
1 oz Butter/olive oil
1.5 pints Vegetable Stock
(Single Cream - or milk)

1. Gently cook onion and chopped coriander stems in butter/oil.
2. Add carrots, cover and cook on low for about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.
3. Add stock, bring to the boil and simmer for 15 minutes.
4. Blend, add chopped coriander leaves and stir through, season to taste.
5. Serve with a little single cream if liked, and garnish with a few coriander leaves.

When younger daughter was little we went out for a walk one Sunday afternoon into nearby woods.  At one point she wandered ahead, then came running back to us - 'mind the lentils! mind the lentils!'.  Mystified, we followed her to an enormous patch of nettles, which they've been called in the family ever since.  Here's a favourite soup involving the famous 'lentils'  (hint: must also find a recipe using nettles).

Spicy Carrot Soup (easy)

I found this recipe a little sweet, so on second making added a grated clover of garlic, a stick of celery (sliced) and a potato (sliced)

600g carrots, sliced

140g split red lentils

1 tsp cumin

a pinch of chilli powder

1 litre vegetable stock

125 ml milk or soya milk

1 tbsp oil

1. Put oil in pan, add carrots, cumin and chilli powder and cook a little.
2. Add rest of ingredients and simmer until lentils are cooked.
3. Whizz, and enjoy.

Green Pea Soup

2 Onions, chopped
2 Potatoes, chopped
cumin, coriander, s&p, paprika
1.5 lb Peas
Single Cream

1. Boil onions, potatoes and spices, 'til cooked (or could fry onions and spices gently, then add the potatos and water and cook)
2. Add peas and cook a little.
3. Whizz.
4. Add cream to serve.

Note: 18/4/2016 - I made this soup and added a few leaves spinach which were left over from yesterday's salad and it was really nice as it took away some of the sweetness.

Chestnut Soup
1 onion, chopped
1 carrot, chopped
1 tin chestnut puree
1 oz oil/butter
1 pt chicken soup
some cream

1. Cook vegetables in the oil for a few minutes. 
2. Add chestnut puree and stock, season.
3. Simmer for 20 minutes.
4. Liquidise, then reheat.

Spinach and
 watercress soup
1 tbsp oil
1 onion, chopped
325g potatoes, diced
600 ml chicken or vegetable stock
250g fresh/frozen spinach
75g watercress
300ml soya milk
s&p

1. Cook onion in oil for a few minutes.
2. Add potatoes and stock and simmer 15 minutes.
3. Add spinach, watercress and soya milk and simmer five minutes.
4. Season and then puree, reheat to serve.

Alternative: today I didn't have enough spinach so put in some courgette instead.

Leek & Potato Soup
3 medium Leeks, washed and sliced.
1 large Potato, sliced
1 oz butter/olive oil
1 - 2 slices Bread
1/2 pint Milk
1 pt Stock
s&p, bay leaf*, oil

1. Melt butter/oil add leeks then potatoes.
2. Cover pan and cook slowly for 10 minutes.
3. Add stock and milk and bring to the boil, turn down the heat.
4. Add salt and bay leaf and cook for 15 minutes.
5. Remember to remove bay leaf! 
6. Puree the mixture.
7. Return mixture to the pan, bring to boil and serve immediately with fried bread croutons.
8. Serves 4

*Variation: omit Bay Leaf and add some Tarragon before serving.

Also see: 
Jamie -  http://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/vegetables-recipes/leek-and-potato-soup/#J4vRCWYoeFPY4Ccx.97
Delia - http://www.deliaonline.com/recipes/cuisine/european/english/leek-onion-and-potato-soup.html

23 Feb 2014:  I bought some leeks yesterday to make this soup, they had lots of green tops so the soup is a beautiful colour (looks more like pea soup) but the important variation is that I used soya milk instead of cows milk.  It was no different, so it's a cream soup for your vegan friends to enjoy.  I also didn't have any vegetable stock handy so, made some as follows:

Vegetable stock
1 onion
1 carrot
1 stick celery
1 middle bit of the cabbage
bay leaf, s&p
usually I'd have used bg (bouquet garni) but wanted the flavour of bay leaf in the stock.  The reason was that so often I put a bay leaf into soup when making it, then forget and whizz it, along with the soup.  I thought that by putting it in the stock then it wouldn't be forgotten!

Here's a more fancy vegetable stock: http://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/how_to_make_vegetable_stock/

Bramborova Polivka (Potato Soup)

1.5 lb potatoes

5 fl oz sour cream

Flour, milk, butter

Black Pepper

Gherkins, hardboiled Eggs, Chives

1. Dice potatoes, then boil in salted water
2. Drain, keeping the potato water.
3. Make a roux with the flour and butter.
4. Add milk and potato water until there's a thick consistency.
5. Add cooked potatoes, sour cream, pepper.
6. To serve add chopped egg, gherkin and chives.

See also: http://www.mamincinyrecepty.cz/polevky/bramborova-polevka-s-koprem

Double digging


Some farmers still lift potatoes by hand.  Their method was to work along each row lifting the potatoes out of the soil with a broad fork, depositing them neatly to one side of the row, leaving the haulms on the disturbed soil behind the digger.


This is the way many allotment gardeners harvest their spuds.  However, if you have a sticky clay loam soil that sticks to the potatoes it's not always that easy: there are always a few small ones that insist on remaining in the soil.  Have you noticed how self-sown potatoes always shoot up amongst delicate seedlings


A recently suggestion I saw (which has actually been in use many years) is to scoop the potato row to the left, then 'pick' the potatoes into a bucket and thence into a sack.  Then deposit the haulms behind you, after carefully removing even the tiniest of tubers that might grow again.


By the end of each row you'll be left with a hollow littered with haulms and a few uprooted weeds.  Then dig over the hollow, burying the rubbish, effectively double-digging the ground, leaving a layer of vegetation as a sanctuary for worms and quietly rotting away to increase the soil's fertility.


This sounds a good system, I'm going to try that next year.


Two Golden Rules for a weed-free allotment

1. Leave enough room between rows of plants so it's easy to get at the weeds with your hoe.  Cabbages are a good 'cleaning crop'; they're robust and spaced well apart.  As they mature they shade any weeds and inhibit their growth.
2. Hoe the soil before the weeds become noticeable.  Hoeing allows air into the soil, creating a mulching effect which reduced the evaporation of moisture in hot dry weather.  (I was taught 'if you hoe when you don't have to hoe, you'll never have to hoe'!)

Five Fallacies about weeds

1. Potatoes are a 'cleaning crop'.  This is only partly true; potatoes won't get rid of weeds without a lot of effort on your part.  What is true is that you can't grow a decent crop of potatoes on weedy ground.
2. You'll have to get rid of every scrap of weed root.  This is a counsel of perfection that deters many people from gardening.  The fact is that good cultivation - digging and hoeing - kills off the most persistent weeds like couch grass and nettles.  If they do grow again, they're easy to pull up when the soil's been well cultivated.
3. You shouldn't put weeds on a compost heap.  Yes, you should.  The heat generated by a properly made compost heap destroys all weed seeds, rhizomes and bulbils.
4. The only way to deal with weeds is to remove them with their top layer of soil.  This gets rid of any seeds that may have fallen from them.  What an appalling fallacy!  Your allotment's fertility lies in the top few inches of soil and weeds are better adapted than your vegetables to grown in an impoverished soil.  Actually weed seeds best survive deep down in the soil where there's less air; every time you dig your plot you bring next year's weeds to the surface.  Skimming off the surface won't appreciably reduce your weed population but it will reduce your chances of growing a good crop of vegetables.
5. Modern weedkillers make weed control easy.  Weedkillers like Glyphosate have their uses but generally speaking, not on allotments. Spraying involves as much effort as hoeing and weedkillers with their suitable sprayers are expensive to buy.  Furthermore drifting spray might kill the wrong plants, worse still they could kill plants on your neighbours' plots, which won't make for happy gardening.

Potato Growing

Maris Peer:
http://varieties.potato.org.uk/display_description.php?variety_name=Maris%20Peer
http://www.lovepotatoes.co.uk/the-potato/potato-varieties/maris-peer/

How to grow potatoes:
http://www.vegetable-garden-guide.com/how-to-grow-potatoes.html

Best potatoes for flavour:
http://www.allotment.org.uk/vegetable/potato/potato-flavour-type.php

How to chit:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/gardening/basics/techniques/growfruitandveg_potatoes1.shtml

Runner Bean Glut

If, like us, we have far, far too many runner beans - then what to do with them is a challenge.



This website had some good ideas: http://everything-runnerbean.com/cooking-and-eating.html# - stir fry, spicy, stew, soup ...


and here's another fun site: http://recycleworks.wordpress.com/2010/09/29/if-your-runner-beans-are-stringy-dont-despair-turn-them-into-yummy-runner-bean-soup/

This amount of beans is not too much, but when this is picked every day ... well ..

And there's a good recipe from:  http://www.cooksister.com/2008/08/runner-bean-soup.html.  From what this site says, unfortunately they haven't had such a good summer up in London.


These recipes seems to have onions, potatoes, carrots and stock. With sherry, thyme, savoury, mint and/or garlic are, so will try this tomorrow...


Am also going to make some yummy Leek and Potato Soup to which I love to add tarragon!


7pm: Well I've made some Leek and Potato Soup and put it in the freezer and have also tried the runner bean soup recipe (the one with potato, rather than with carrot) and it does seem rather a lot of beans. 
Memo: next time weigh the beans before topping, tailing and strimming the sides, then they'll weigh much less. (Incidentally, the beans which were cooked with the soup, and then removed before whizzing the soup, we ate with a meal and they were rather delicious, both hot and cold!)