Organic Allotment

Broccoli Part 2

As I explained in my last post, it wasn't looking very good on the purple broccoli front because the pigeons kept getting to it before I could. However, as you can see from this picture, things have improved and the broccoli is now coming so thick and fast that my feathered friends can't keep up with it leaving plenty for us to eat. This has to be one of my favourite crops off the plot so I'm really glad that we've finally got a share of the booty!

With regards to cooking it - the taste is so good that I don't like to meddle with it too much. One of my favourite things to do is pan fry it with a little garlic, fresh chilli and tomato to be served with pasta, fresh pepper and a little parmensan cheese. Deliciously simple!

Superfood

In this country you hardly ever see pumpkins or winter squash except for the awful orange monstrosities that appear in the shops for a week or two around Halloween that taste terrible and nobody eats anyway. Despite their lack of popularity they are a great vegetable to grow partly because they come with such a brilliant natural packaging. These ones were picked in October last year and are still waiting to be eaten in my kitchen - as long as you don't cut the stalk too short and give them a couple of weeks in the sun to dry out properly they'll last right through the winter. They do take up an awful lot of space on the allotment but if you grow a little one like Golden Apple, which is the one at the front of the picture, they'll be perfectly happy growing up a trelis. As a rule summer squash have a softer skin and need to be eaten as soon as they are picked but winter squash and pumpkins will keep all winter in a cool but frost free place.

The ones in the picture are Lady Godiva which is grown for its seeds that are perfect for eating - they have no husk and a fabulous almondy taste. The tiny ones are Golden Apple which are amazingly productive plants but feel so rock hard that you think you'll never be able to eat them. If you start them off whole in a very hot oven they get soft enough to cut the top off and mix something tasty in with the flesh before finishing it off in the oven for about ten minutes more - my favourite is rice, mushrooms and cheese. Their skin never gets soft enough to eat but that's great because it cuts down on washing up makes it a great bio-degradable bowl.