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Red Pepper Burgers
2007-10-21 10:00:00
  This has absolutely nothing to do with red peppers but it entertained me as I sat in the park yesterday. On the bench next to me a woman in Gucci loafers sat chatting to a man wearing pastel orange cashmere. She stood up and called out to her companion."Oscar, come over here darling. Its time to synch our diaries."Oscar, who was head to toe in Ralph Lauren came over and sat with them, on the floor in front. They all got out their diaries. These were the kind of diaries that you see featured in colour supplements, covered in soft leather. With the kind of precision that you normally see in synchronised swimming, they all opened the page at November. Gucci Loafer woman was clearly in charge."Right then, if you can just pencil in that Mummy is in New York from the 3rd of November to the 8th. That is M in NY. Oscar, if you can pencil in that Maria will be looking after you over that week. Then she will hand you over to Assunta on the 8th as Daddy will be in Hong Kong from t...
More About: Pepper , Burgers , Urge

Roasted Romano Pepper Houmous
2007-10-19 10:30:00
 In 1912 in America, Mr.Wilbur Scoville devised the Scoville Hotness Scale. His human tasting panel measured the heat levels of different chilli peppers. Over the decades this has been refined in laboratories so that shoppers like me can stare at chilli pepper labels to see if they will merely scorch the tongue or incinerate it. I chose the mildest scoring red chilli pepper to team up with the completely innocuous red Romano peppers. These are long, narrow and bright red. Many of you have left comments about the bitter taste of bell pepper skin. So under a hot grill I blackened their skins. This was a tedious process. Every time I opened the oven door to check their progress the smoke set off the fire alarm. I had to run out of the kitchen with a mop handle to poke the reset button on the alarm. But there is something very satisfying about rubbing off the blackened skins under running water to reveal their sweet, succulent bright red flesh. I made Romano pepper houmous, using ...
More About: Pepper

P is for Peppers
2007-10-16 10:31:00
 Someone sent me a link to an article about a woman in America who has brought out a book of recipes designed to enable parents to give their children vegetables without any family rows. The idea is that you puree vegetables and include them in recipes, matching the vegetable puree in colour so that it is not detected by the children. I suppose Jessica Seinfeld is working on the principle that what you don't know about you don't worry about. I can see the logic and I admire her for finding a way that works for her family. "The trick to all of this is hiding vegetable purees in your children's foods," she says. "You can match the color of the puree to the color of the food that your kid is used to eating."But part of me thinks that this method, though admirable, is missing the point. Mealtime is not about tricking children into eating something unwittingly. That is to reduce vegetables to the status of medicine. It also does nothing to help the child to learn to taste them, l...
More About: Peppers

The Last Pea Post
2007-10-13 09:54:00
?Looking as like - as one pea does like another?Francois Rabelais (1483-1553) Rabelais follows a common misconception; that one pea is much like another. It doesn't have to be that way. This week we have experimented with the humble pea, turning it into sweet muffins,whizzing it into pea pesto,popping over the Atlantic Ocean to see how Amanda at Figs Olives Wine coaxes them into a Minestrone , leaning over Hannah's shoulder to see her stir a warm Pea and Ginger Soup,then travelling up to South Shields to visit David Hall from Book the Cook rustle up a Pea-Ella and create an irresistible Spicy Mint,Pea and Apricot Stew.Our last post on peas, for the moment at least, is our smooth Pea and Basil Soup. This scored 8 out of 10 from Freddie and ends our week's tribute to the small green dots of green that used to strike fear into the heart of one picky eater. PEA AND BASIL SOUPServes 4 - 6400g fresh or frozen peas1 large onion, finely chopped1-2 tbsp of olive oil1.2 litres of chicken o...
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I Hate Peas....(or do I ?)
2007-10-10 11:47:00
 This is the hat I bought for Freddie for our pea-tasting event. It came all the way from America, from this site. You can get t-shirts,mugs,stickers to help you make your statement. Trouble is, Freddie may have the hat, but he has been diverting from its message. And the pea and ricotta tartlets are one reason why... Pea and Ricotta Tart375g readymade puff pastry2 rashes of bacon1 teaspoon of oil150g peas1 clove of garlic, crushed2 tbsp ricotta cheeseSalt and pepper to seasonPreheat oven to 200C. Roll out the puff pastry until it is about half a centimetre thick. Using a large biscuit cutter, cut out circles of pastry. Place them carefully with a palette knife onto a piece of siliconised baking paper on a baking tray. Lightly score an inner circle within each pastry circle with a knife. This should be about a centimetre or less in from the edge. This will form a ridge round each tart when baked. Chop up the bacon into small pieces and fry in a teaspoon of oil for 5 minut...
More About: Hate , Peas

P is for Pea Pesto Pasta
2007-10-09 08:46:00
Over at Figs Olives Wine, Amanda offered up her delicious Green Pea, Escarole and White Bean Minestrone col Soffrito, for Freddie and his fellow pea-haters. At Hannah's Country Kitchen a warming Pea and Ginger Soup was stirred up to entice. And at Book the Cook, David had created the ultimate Pea-Ella, a Spanish tribute to the humble pea. Thank you!Back at Pea Haters HQ, we had done a lot of thinking about what made the poor pea so loathed. Several comments left by you mentioned its strange popping texture, its squeakiness. I think you may have a point. And our Pea Pesto for Pasta helps to get round that. Freddie and Esme gave it 8 out of 10 and Jack and Alex ate plates full. So here it is... Pea PestoThis makes enough to serve 4-6 100g peas1 clove of garlic, chopped40g fresh basil 7 tbsp olive oil50g finely grated parmesan or parmeggiano cheese 3 tbsp pine nutsCook pasta according to instructionsCook the peas in boiling water for 5 minutes and drain. Transfer to a food processo...

A Party for Pea Haters
2007-10-08 10:37:00
Well P day has arrived. The day of reckoning. For those of you who have been with the Great Big Vegetable Challenge since the beginning, a tantrum over peas is what inspired Freddie and I to start the blog.As our march through the alphabet has gathered pace, with P for peas edging closer, Freddie had become a little nervous. These little drops of squeaky greenness used to prompt hysteria. And it seems that he is not alone. You can buy ?I hate peas? trucker hats and babygros on the internet.?Can we just do peas as quickly as possible?? Freddie pleaded. This violent hatred of peas demanded a special effort. So we held a pea-tasting party: a party for pea haters to challenge their fears. One of Freddie?s oldest friends is Esme who also hates peas, so she was invited. Her mum warned me that Esme was beyond persuasion. Alexandra and our neighbour Jack love peas. The guest list was balanced. All I had to do was to create irresistible pea recipes. Weeks of late-night teeming and ladling, c...
More About: Party , Haters , Hater

P is for Pak Choi with minted greens
2007-10-05 12:10:00
"Who's teeth marks are these?" came a cry from the kitchen. Noone moved from their seats in front of the television. Chris came in holding a piece of cheddar with a perfect dental imprint. I was relieved to see they were too small to be mine. I don't make a habit of biting into food and putting it back into the fridge but the stress of trying to do too many things at once can lead to irrational behaviour. The inquisition over the teeth marks continued."You might as well own up. These are clear enough to mould a set of false teeth." said Chris. No one owned up. Eyes remained fixed on the X-Factor. Bertholt Brecht was right when he said, 'Food comes first and then morals.'I went into the kitchen to make supper. The Green Pak Choi were waiting with their glossy green tresses. And it was the colour green that inspired our recipe that night; Pak Choi with minted greens. Our next vegetable will be P for Peas - Freddie's Freddie's worst vegetable nightmare. He had enjoyed the Pak Ch...
More About: Greens

P is for Pak Choi - Because you're worth it!
2007-10-04 10:20:00
 P is for Pak Choi ,also known as Bok Choy or Chinese cabbage. We first brought this vegetable home a few weeks ago and it sat on the scales in the centre of the kitchen.It is a vegetable with huge green leaves that look like glossy tresses of hair. Pak Choi could easily star in a shampoo advert;'because you're worth it'. Not suprisingly, the Pak Choi,inspired a new game of vegetable faces, a mass vegetable movement that now means we have 46 vegetable faces from 4 continents of the world. You can see the slide show here - do send us your own version if you are interested. You can never have enough vegetable faces. Pak Choi has been grown in eastern Asia for thousands of years and is a member of the mustard family. But don't worry,if you have fussy children, Freddie couldn't detect any off-putting mustard quality. (And he has a super-sensitive radar for strange tastes.) In fact he thought it tasted sweet. There are several kinds of Pak Choi but we could find two sorts in the...
More About: Worth , Wort

The joys of Mock Banana
2007-10-01 12:07:00
 Meet Elizabeth Craig. She is the owner of the disembodied head that stares out rather nervously from the inside cover of a 1933 edition of 'Entertaining with Elizabeth Craig'. I bought it in a carboot sale this summer. I have grown very fond of Elizabeth who apparently had a kitchen which was a model of perfection: ?The ideal kitchen of which every housewife dreams.? There is a touch of the Mona Lisa about her smile. And if you knew what she had to contend with when entertaining you can see why she needed a sense of humour. The book has chapters on dealing with difficult guests, entertaining with or without a maid, with or without electricity. As I looked through the book for her thoughts on parsnips, a snippet of newspaper fell out. "?Tonight?s Black-Out starts at 7.36 and lasts until 6.22 am tomorrow.? Alongside the black out instructions are recipes for ?cheap and energy giving vegetables?. Parsnips, it says, can be roasted and mashed with banana essence. This is ?Mock ...
More About: Banana , Nana

P is for Parsnips and a tale of vegetable crossing
2007-09-28 14:29:00
 Right now, as I sit at my desk in my bedroom in West London there are 5,578 books released into the wilds of the United Kingdom, waiting to be caught. 16,257 books are lurking hidden in the United States and in Australia there are another 1,779 on walkabout. These books are waiting to be discovered by any one of us, left there by strangers as part of an internet-based phenomenon known as book-crossing. Book-Crossers leave books in strange places, lodge the location on the internet and wait for some unsuspecting member of the public to find them. Freddie and Alex have released books this way and dream of finding one. The website says,"Leave it on a park bench, at a coffee shop, at a hotel on vacation. Share it with a friend or tuck it onto a bookshelf at the gym -- anywhere it might find a new reader! What happens next is up to fate, and we never know where our books might travel next. Track the book's journey around the world as it is passed on from person to person."On the w...
More About: Vegetable , Crossing , Tale

Caramelized Red Onions
2007-09-25 13:15:00
 "No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader"(Robert Frost)This post comes tear-stained. Cara melized onions required industrial quantities of sliced onions. What scientists in the journal Nature identified as the onion?s ?irritating lachrymatory factor? has reduced me to a sobbing wreck. Freddie and Alex watched from behind a glass door. They like a kitchen drama and I was about to perform. I put on my trusty goggles which I keep in a drawer next to the cooker. These came with a Make Your Own Volcano Kit and are the same goggles that rescued me from being blinded by horseradish fumes. ?Damn.? I tried to put the goggles on without wiping onion juice in my eyes. ?Damn, damn, damn.?Chris came in. ?Do you know what you look like??I swore at him and he retreated behind the glass doors. Through my plastic goggles I could see him looking into the kitchen, weeping with laughter. The plastic goggles misted over, I misjudged the chopping and sliced at my thumb. Chris stopped lau...
More About: Onion , Onions

O is for Onion Soup
2007-09-24 09:00:00
 ?Let onion atoms lurk within the bowl,And, scarce-suspected, animate the whole.?In Lady Holland Memoir 1855So said the 19th century clergyman Sydney Smith. All through the Great Big Vegetable Challenge I have been using onions as an ingredient, ?scarce-suspected?. It is hard to imagine cooking without them. Just four months ago and Freddie would still scrape the onions off a pizza, sift through bolognese sauce, even pick them out of onion bread. But months of secret onion use has paid off. I never believe any sentence that begins,"Experts say..." but I keep on reading that it takes a child between 10 and 30 tastes of a new food before they get used to it. Without knowing it, Freddie, has clearly been getting used to their taste and texture. Now it is time for onions to come out of the shadows. I made French Onion soup from a recipe in an old Robert Carrier cookbook. The photos were taken in the early 70's: the colours are bright and brittle. It reminds me of the brown enamel ...
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O is for Onion
2007-09-19 15:38:00
 I cannot be trusted to have a deep fat fryer. And as we arrived at O for Onion s I knew we would want to try out fried onion rings. I suspect the reason that I have an uneasy relationship with the chip pan lies deep in my childhood. My Dad is a great cook who loves food. On the nights when my Mum was working at the local library, my Dad would make our evening meal. Long before the Lucky Chinese restaurant opened in town, he had learnt how to make sweet and sour pork balls in batter. He also made delicious chips and fried courgette sticks. But all this had to be carried out under strict conditions of secrecy. Mum wanted us to eat a healthy diet. The chip pan, full of oil, hid in an outhouse. When the coast was clear it was brought into the kitchen. One of us would cut up the potatoes. As the oil heated up, the scent of our last forbidden meal would fill the kitchen. We would eat up quickly and greedily. A cover-up operation followed. The chip pan was returned to the outhouse, ...

Okra with chicken - a present from Greece
2007-09-17 15:42:00
 Having finally banished the slime by seasoning and frying okra, I couldn't say good bye until I had at least tried to cook it successfully another way. When you have 30 people from around the world championing the delights of a vegetable it is hard to resist another recipe. We discussed it over breakfast and Freddie decided that okra deserved another crack at the whip. We looked through the suggestions once more. An email from Kalli in Athens said that she had been amazed how the "slime" had disappeared when her friend had cooked chicken and okra recipe for her. We like to imagine where people live, what their kitchens look like, what they see when they look through the window. Alex and Freddie imagine that as Kalli typed out a recipe for them, she could see the Parthenon in the distance. Whatever the truth, as we made our Greek Chicken with Okra , we thought of her. I went to our local butchers to buy the chicken. If you want to learn more about vegetables, visit the butchers...
More About: Greece , Present , Resent

The Great Big Okra Convention
2007-09-13 14:21:00
 I read through the comment box, and scoured the internet message boards. Message boards are the modern day equivalent of gathering round the campfire to chat. A man called Norm popped up in a box on the Martha Stewart community message board, telling me how his mom used to cook okra. Your suggestions came thick and fast. And this was the consensus on my new best friend, okra:1. Buy small and fresh (I know my first lot looked rather ill) 2. You must fry them.3. Bread them, then fry.4. Coat in cornmeal, then fry. 5. Soak in buttermilk, then fry.6. Embrace the slime and make a gumbo.7. Oil and roast them.8. Spice them and fry.9. Sauté them.10. Deep fry them.I get the message. OKRA NEEDS TO BE FRIED. I did offer Freddie the gumbo option and he turned it down. Armed with this collective wisdom, I have now followed the path to zero slime. The most intriguing tip had been emailed by Cynthia who lives in Barbados. She advised me to lay out my cut okra on a baking sheet and let them d...
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O is for Okra
2007-09-11 13:21:00
Forget singles columns or online dating sites, vegetables are the next big thing in making relationships. Okra has generated more conversations, more new friendships for me than any other vegetable. I am presuming that the okra's long slender shape gave it the name lady's finger.It beckoned at me from the supermarket shelf and then pointed at the first of many people with whom I found myself discussing cooking methods. My first introduction, in the supermarket aisle, was to a woman from Syria. She insisted that the best okra are the smallest ones.Later at Shepherd?s Bush Market, a Nigerian man insisted that the worst crime is to overcook them. I made a mental note of his tip and went home with my bag of okra. The trouble is that slime has got in the way of making a dish that the family like. The okra feels the need to dribble this clear gooey secretion as I cook it. I made a sauce with bacon and onions and tomatoes and the okra then spoilt it. Not even my husband,with an iron s...

N is for Nopales
2007-09-08 15:04:00
 ?If you want to know where nopales come from,imagine the cacti in cartoons. They are like the ones with the huge Bugs Bunny ears.?My nopales therapy session took place on the telephone with a Mexican food wholesaler. There I was kneeling on the kitchen floor, surrounded by an array of phone directories pursuing an edible cactus. I hadn?t even got dressed yet. Finally I had found someone kind enough to give me a free thumbnail sketch of nopales. Nopales have been giving me a lot of trouble. I have marched round countless supermarkets. I have scoured the Mexican food aisles.Store managers have looked at me as if I am one nacho short of a full mexican picnic. In the end, it is the phone book that rescued me. But my Mexican food wholesaler had saved me from failure. ?I?m afraid we can?t sell you any fresh nopales. We used to stock it but no one was buying it. But you can come along and buy some pickled nopalitos in jars.? So on the way back from work I picked up my jar of nopa...

N is for Nori Sprinkles
2007-09-04 07:52:00
When you place a sea-shell against your ear, you hear the waves. Well, when you eat Nori it tastes of the sea. There's no other way to describe it. Following on from our Sushi making session, I found a bag of something marketed as "Nori Sprinkles? in the health food shop: crispy flecks of seaweed.  We sliced some Ciabatta bread, drizzled olive oil on each slice and sprinkled a couple of teaspoons of nori on each slice and toasted it in the oven until the bread was just golden brown. I knnow its a million miles away from kinfe-wielding Sushi chefs but Nori Ciabatta was a perfect accompaniment to a bowl of soup. Freddie awarded Nori Ciabatta 10 out of 10. Read about the Great Big Vegetable Challenge

N is for Nori
2007-09-02 09:52:00
The letter C had vegetables emerging from every corner. But the letter N has taken a lot of coaxing. I sent a group email around the office to generate more inspiration. Other office emails invite people to share a pint in the pub or join a football team. Mine have become rather narrow in their focus. But my colleagues are tolerant. Putting aside the comments that I needed therapy or a holiday, (do they not realise that cooking all these vegetables is better than therapy?), they suggested neeps, nuts, nori and nopales. I rejected nuts as they aren't vegetables. The Scottish dish of neeps will have to feature later on under S for Suede.But nori and nopales intrigued me. Nori used to be a more general term for various kinds of seaweed but nowadays it usually refers to the thin dried seaweed sheets that are used in some sushi dishes. It starts off life as a reddish coloured plant that is made into these dark green paper sheets. Like the Japanese, we decided to hold our very own nor...

The Naming and Shaming Fridge
2007-08-29 17:30:00
We are now just over half way through the alphabet of vegetables, Freddie has tasted over 40 vegetables and tried over 130 new recipes, thanks to all the wonderful ideas and most of all encouragement from all of you. In our kitchen in London we have what we have called the Nami ng and Sham ing Fridge .   There are three categories: Vegetables I hate, Vegetables I am not sure about and Vegetables I like. Freddie moves the vegetables up and down depending on how he scores a recipe. At the start, all but potato and sweetcorn sat in the "I hate category" : a whole class of vegetable outcasts. But look at the fridge today. Needless to say that when we started out last November, most veggies sat in the "I hate" category. Now its all changed. Very few are hated. Many sit in a state of suspended hope, waiting to be loved. And now,encouragingly, a number of vegetables bask in the glory of being liked by Freddie. Its a great achievement and I hope it encourages other parents not to giv...
More About: Ming , Naming

N is for Nettles
2007-08-28 07:20:00
 Tender-handed stroke a nettle,And it stings you for your pains;Grasp it like a man of mettle,And it soft as silk remains.Moving on to N means moving on to nettles. We went nettle-picking armed with a verse, a pair of gardening gloves and a Grandpa. London nettles come ready-dressed with diesel dust and dog pee so we needed to find some cleaner country nettles. From his home in Oxfordshire, Grandpa carried out a reconnaissance trip, locating a clump of nettles where no weed killer had been used. He explained to Freddie and Alex that the best time to pick nettles was in early spring and you have to pick the smallest, most tender top shoots. They put on their gloves and ankle-protecting boots and grasped the nettle literally and metaphorically. Nettles, like the pungent horseradish root require some form of body protection to prepare. Cooking in gloves was challenging. I picked through the nettles, threw away other weeds, caterpillars and bugs and made nettle soup. Cooking ...

Go on - you know you want to, make a vegetable face!
2007-08-22 12:32:00
It has been Britain's wettest summer on record. Entertaining children in the wet is never easy. We have watched our entire DVD collection, played board games and visited all the museums. But who would have thought the answer to family boredom lay in the vegetable basket? As the rain pelted down on the roof of our kitchen, we made faces out of vegetables. What started off as a desperate cry for help from grinding boredom, turned into real entertainment. Here are some of our creations. Freddie and I would like to challenge all of you to find your inner child and make your own vegetable pictures. Email them to us and we will feature them on the Great Big Vegetable Challenge. Go on, you know you want to! Thank you so far to Amanda at Figs,Olives,Wine, David at Book the Cook, Joanna at Joanna's Food, Celia at Purple Podded Peas, Tanna at My Kitchen in Half Cups, Ed and Leila at The Slow Cook, Alanna at Kitchen Parade/A Veggie Venture....Keep sending them in!My email address is in my pr...
More About: Face , Make

Mushroom and Halloumi kebabs
2007-08-21 15:15:00
 Our mushroom fest continues. We made Halloumi and mushroom kebabs, skewering chunks of halloumi alongside chestnut mushrooms. We grilled them and the squeaky-saltiness of the halloumi flavours the mushrooms. He who used to hate mushrooms ate the kebabs and scored them 7 out of 10. We are trying to do a bit of forward planning with our alphabet and want to appeal to all of your expertise out there. We are looking for vegetables beginning with Q, U and X. Any thoughts?Read about the Great Big Vegetable Challenge
More About: Mushroom , Mush , Allo

Bertie's Mushroom Sauce
2007-08-16 16:55:00
One of Freddie?s best friends from school is Berti e who is brilliant at loads of things, apart from eating mushrooms. That is, until his mum Natasha created a mushroom pasta sauce and told me about it in the school queue. An essential part of the recipe is not to let the mushroom-hater know it contains mushrooms until after it has been tasted. Freddie ate the first bowl without looking up. Once the first fierce pangs of hunger had gone, he asked for seconds. ?What?s this made of Mum?? ?Mush room s?, I said as I filled his bowl with a second helping. "It's one of Bertie's favourite recipes," I added, shamelessly relying on peer pressure. He was straight on the phone to his friend.?They tricked me into eating mushrooms. But your sauce was really good. I?m giving it 10 out of 10.?   Bertie?s Mushroom Pasta Sauce 450g mushrooms2 generous handfuls of parsley3 shallots or one medium onion1 -2 cloves garlic2 tbsp olive oil100 ml double cream or crème fraiche50g grated parmesa...

M is for Mushrooms
2007-08-14 15:31:00
 This summer I have been allowing fungi to slowly grow in my airing cupboard and under the kitchen sink. Nestled between the sweet-smelling duvets, pillowcases and towels there is a bed of budding mushrooms. Once the grey layer of mycelium forms I move the latent crop to a cooler spot under the sink, where Freddie and Alex are checking their progress. And little by little,this web of grey morphs into small white pods. And the small white pods will in time become our mushroom crop. The Great Big Vegetable Challenge has become more than a race through the alphabet of vegetables. We like to stop and become better acquainted with our latest new veg. (Strictly speaking, mushrooms don't belong in this challenge but we don't like to exclude)And it might sound strange but vegetables tell stories too. I remember my father growing his own mushrooms in the scullery of our Edinburgh home. At the age of 6, checking the mushroom crop was my job. Deciding when to harvest them was a fine jud...
More About: Mushrooms , Mush

M is for Mange Tout Stir fry
2007-08-10 14:34:00
As crudites, Freddie was unimpressed with mange tout. It was more a case of Mange Rien. So our next attempt was to make a stir fry. These make perfect family meals for a number of reasons. They smell fantastic as they cook, increasing appetite and hopefully putting the children in a good frame of mind. They are crunchy, which seems to be a texture that our resident fussy eater enjoys. And they are quick to make which is good for me as I often cook after a long day at work.He who hates peas had not rumbled that a mange tout is in fact a pea pod. Alex nearly spilled the beans (or rather peas) but not before Freddie had eaten quite a few. He scored this 8 out of 10.Mange Tout Noodle Stir fry.200g mange tout,125g baby corn,250g dried noodles3 tbsp sunflower oil250g frozen prawns, defrosted2 cloves of chopped garlic2 tbsp sweet chilli sauce2 tbsp light soy sauce2 tsp sesame seedsThoroughly defrost the prawns and drain off water.Wash and dry baby corn and mange tout. Cut the mange tout in...

M is for Mange Tout
2007-07-24 11:33:00
Excuse the two week absence from the blog. We have been on holiday. We were staying in Cornwall, on the South West Coast of Britain. The cottage we rent each year has no available mobile signal, no phone connection and therefore no blogging. That didn't mean though that we left behind the Great Big Vegetable Challenge.Our journey through M continued with Mange Tout. Mange Tout (?eat all? in French) are simply peas cut off in their prime: immature pea pods. For Freddie, a pea-hater, they are a sheep in wolves? clothing. This is where we came in with our drama over peas, the reason why we started the blog. As we are only four letters away from his worst nightmare - P for Peas, mange tout can be seen as a kind of rehearsal. Instead of sneaking them in under P for Peas we decided to give them their own day of glory. First off, we kept it simple. They make useful crudités for dipping in hummus. Freddie loves hummus and tentatively bit into the mange tout. Houmous Recipe400g tin of...

M is for marrow with roasted garlic
2007-07-24 11:19:00
If there was an ?Extreme Makeover? programme for vegetables, the marrow would be a perfect candidate. This time I tried to overwhelm the marrow with the flavour of roasted garlic. The recipe would also work well if you combined aubergine chunks with the marrow. And as M from the Stripey Cat blog said, you can use this roasted marrow as a base for a great soup. Freddie gave it 6 out of 10, loved the taste but again thought the texture of marrow was unappealing. The rest of us loved it.Roast ed Garlic and Herb Marrow Serves 4 as a side dish1 marrow3 tbsp olive oil1 roasted garlic bulb1 teaspoon of dried oregano1 teaspoon dried basil1 teaspoon balsamic vinegarSea salt to seasonGround pepperCut off the marrow stalk. Wash and dry the marrow. Chop into 2 inch cubes. Place in a bowl with the oil, balsamic vinegar, herbs and a pinch of sea salt. Mix around. Squeeze out all the soft garlic from the bulb and add, mixing it thoroughly to make sure the marrow chunks are well covered. Add a twist...
More About: Arli

M is for Marrow
2007-07-22 08:36:00
If there is one thing more boring than the taste of a marrow, it has to be visiting 7 superstores, 3 markets, 2 church fetes and 2 farm shops to find one. Normally, it?s the sort of vegetable that people try very hard to give away, making hundreds of jars of marrow chutney.But chasing the marrow has been like trying to apprehend a fugitive. Wherever I went, the marrow had just slipped away, moments before. I took to phoning stores in advance."Hello? Can you tell me if you have marrows in the store?""Let me check. Can you hold?"Time to listen to a Pan Pipe version of Greensleeves on a loop."We have five left. And another order coming in tonight."I rushed round to the store, straight to the marrow pen but they had always flown. Someone had clearly tipped them off.In the end I asked the local Co-op store to arrest them for me so they couldn't get away. When I arrived they were grimacing at me from behind customer services with a label, ?Reserved for Charlotte.? ?We haven?t had anyone ...