Community Gardening in North-West Leeds
A versatile Finnish cake with apples or other fruit.
This versatile recipe for an Finnish apple cake was published in 1978 by the Leeds branch of the National Childbirth Trust in a little booklet called Growing Up With Good Food. The booklet was a collection of recipes from Leeds mothers, edited by Catherine Lewis. We still occasionally use our old copy, now dog-eared and food-stained.
Rahkomenakakku has been a long time favourite in our family.
Utterly delicious – worth keeping a small bed of sorrel somewhere.
I think Sally got this recipe from The Greens Cook Book. It is utterly delicious.
We keep a small bed of sorrel protected from the birds on our plot which keeps us going most of the spring and summer.
Prepare the tart dough and partially pre-bake.
Melt the butter in a pan, add the onion and salt. Cover the pan and stew for about 10 minutes until the onion is soft, stirring occasionally. Meanwhile cut the stems off the sorrel leaves and roughly slice the leaves. Add them to the cooked onion and cook until the sorrel has turned a grey-green colour (about 3-4 minutes). Whisk the eggs with the cream and then stir in the onion, sorrel and half the cheese. Taste for salt and season with pepper.
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C). Spread the rest of the cheese on the bottom of the flan case, then spread the filling on top. Bake for 35 to 40 minutes until set and well coloured. Serve hot.
Makes one 9 inch tart
Sally Foster
An Indian recipe for spinach, this works with cabbage or kale, too.
I learned this wonderful way of cooking spinach so long ago I almost forgot where it came from. I think it was a Sikh friend who showed it to me, but it doesn’t just go with Indian cooking – and it works with other greens besides spinach. I like it with cabbage, and even kale sometimes. This should be enough for two people who really like their greens.
Wash the spinach well and drain. Heat the ghee (or oil and butter) with the garlic and ginger in a pan until it starts to sizzle. Then throw in the spinach, still wet, and cover the pan. Cook gently, stirring occasionally, until the spinach is soft and smells delicious. With other greens you may need to add just a bit of water to stop it burning.
Joe Foster
“This recipe is so good, I have to share it.”
I know you will think I am obsessed with rhubarb (I am!), but this recipe is so good, I have to share it. It’s really easy and so nice…
A good way to make use of your rhubarb (don’t forget you can donate some rhubarb to the Hedge Veg box for our neighbours if you have some spare, too).
Serves 6 to 8
Angie Willshaw
Serves 6-8
There is more to it than pie and crumble.
Starting in April, or earlier, we pick lots of rhubarb until June on our plots. Here are some recipes and recommendations from members for surprising ways of using it.
Sweet cicely is an attractive perennial herb with an aniseed scent, easy to grow. It combines especially well with rhubarb:
Pick them young, before the choke develops and try this.
Globe artichokes are coming on nicely at the moment (mid May). Instead of waiting for them to get enormous, this is how I’ve been cooking them:
Pick them young and tender.
Cut of the top third, and take of several layers of ‘leaves’.
Cut them in two. There is no choke at this stage.
Boil in wine/water+lemon juice or vinegar for about 10 minutes. Dress them with vinegar or whatever.
Eat!
From Rosie Hall
JAs are delicious roasted, and as soup.
Jerusalem Artichokes are related to sunflowers so will grow tall and eventually have small yellow flowers. The sprouts are brittle so take care not to break the growing tip when planting them. Its best to harvest them all in the autumn or over winter, and then replant each year – otherwise they get very congested.
They are delicious roasted, and I like them as soup. Here is a simple recipe:
JAs contain inulin, a starch which encourages healthy gut bacteria but they can make you pretty windy, you have been warned!!
From Rosie Hall
Spring is the time for kale sprouts – the best part of the plant.
Through March and April, kale which has survived the winter starts to put out flowering shoots, a bit like sprouting broccoli. Kale sprouts are delicious – the best part of the plant. They are much better than the tough older leaves that are served in trendy cafes along with quinoa and chia as “superfoods”.
I gather the sprouts when they are still growing fast, and tender enough to break off the stem easily. I wash them in a bit of fresh water, then drop them, still damp, into a pan with a bit of olive oil. Kale tastes best to me if I start it on a fairly high heat, tossing them in the oil. After a minute or two I turn the heat down and add just enough water to steam them without burning, but not so much that they become soggy. (Well, I do get this wrong sometimes, but then they are just ‘pan browned’ – definitely not ‘burned’.) When they are tender and they smell done serve them up.
Cook lots, or you will wish you had.
I cook broccoli the same way. Sometimes I add a clove of chopped garlic to the oil, especially with supermarket broccoli, which isn’t as tasty on its own.
Joe Foster
Around mid-June our hardneck garlic sends up scapes – curly stems you can eat.
Frijoles refritos are easy to make, and Borlotti beans work really well.
Refried beans (frijoles refritos) go with lots of Mexican or Tex/Mex dishes, like quesadillas, huevos rancheros, burritos, or as a dip for tortilla chips. They turn out to be easy to make, and the Borlotti beans that many of us grow work especially well.
One cup of dried beans makes two or three cups of frijoles refritos, depending on how soft you want it.
Soak and cook the beans as usual. Drain them, but save the cooking water separately.
In a heavy frying pan, sauté the onions in the oil until they start to brown. Add the garlic, and sauté a bit longer.
Add a big spoonful of the beans, and mash them in well with the onions. Fry them for a while, then add some more beans and mash them in with the rest. Continue until all the beans are fried. This process causes a reaction between the starches and proteins in the beans (a Maillard reaction, if you want to know) which brings out the special flavour.
Now add a bit of the cooking water at a time, mashing it in as you go, until you get the right consistency. Make it a bit sloppier, actually, because they set firmer once they cool. I like to make the dip version quite soft.
Salt the mixture to taste. Beans stand quite a bit of salt sometimes. Keep tasting as you go.
Joe Foster