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I look out of the window and all I see is green. The endless rainfall of the past weeks and the last few days of warmer, sunny weather have resulted in a sudden explosion of growth that threatens to bypass spring altogether and fast forward straight to summer. Racing growth everywhere. Everywhere, that is, apart from in the vegetable garden.
By this time of year I would usually expect to have planted out almost all of the tender veg – courgettes, pumpkins, sweetcorn, and bush beans – and would hope to be eating the very first broad beans, lettuces and beetroot. This spring has been so cold that my first sowings of carrots took a month to germinate. So tardy that it was only when remaking the seed drill last weekend to resow that I discovered they were just starting to emerge from their seed cases. Kohl rabi that I started in plugs in the polytunnel and planted out in March have only just started to swell and the first peas, sown in the third week of April, are only now sending out their first climbing tendrils. So, although we were able to extend the harvest season with the polytunnel this year, there has still been a yawning hungry gap that will take a few more weeks to fill.
And so my eye has started wandering. I have been sizing up the broad bean tops and the kohl rabi and beet greens. The Swiss chard (which has to be the easiest, most reliable and productive green vegetable anyone can grow) has appeared in every guise imaginable – raw in a chopped salad, creamed with stewed shallots, pureed and added to ricotta for a green sformata and the stalks braised with saffron to waste not a thing. The land cress has gone to flower, but still has enough leaves to make it worth keeping and the fat hen seedlings that were missed and have matured in the polytunnel, transform from weeds into food with a simple change of perspective. As the plants of the woods and hedgerows have been burgeoning, seemingly less affected by the chill, damp weather I have been throwing garlic mustard and wild garlic into anything and everything and adding dandelion leaves, cow parsley and cleavers to salads.
Foraged wild greens would once have been a mainstay of the British kitchen at this time of year as we bridged the hungry gap without the benefit of greenhouse or polytunnel, but now they are only seen on the menus of upmarket restaurants. In Greece they are still firmly on the menus of anywhere you choose to eat and are easily found on market stalls in city and island villages the length of the country. Horta, as they are called, can comprise any foraged greens including nettle, dandelion, purslane, wild chervil, wild sorrel, sow thistle, shepherd’s purse, chicory and other wild greens that do not grow here. Most often these are served simply boiled and dressed with olive oil and lemon juice, but a favourite way to eat them is in a pie laden with fresh herbs, bought still warm from the village bakery and eaten straight from the oil-stained paper bag.
Foraging for greens doesn’t take nearly as long as you might think. The bagful I picked for this recipe took about thirty minutes, and it is an agreeable way to pass some time, providing an opportunity to slow down and look closely at plants that normally get a cursory glance or scowl. Both nettles and wild garlic are at the very end of their season now, so don’t pick the tops of nettles if they have started showing their flowers and choose the youngest, smallest garlic leaves. The older ones will be bitter.
When foraging for any wild plants remember to only take a little from each plant, do not gather from roadsides or anywhere that dogs have access and take a good wild plant identification guide. If wild greens are hard to come by they can be bulked out with chard, kale, chicory or beet tops. It can also be made with shop bought filo pastry and, divided evenly, makes 6 turnovers with a reduced cooking time of 20 to 25 minutes.
Today, eating a warm slice for lunch with a fresh chard salad in the long-awaited sunshine, we could almost feel the heat and smell the salt spray of Greece. Soon, we said, soon.
Pastry
350g plain flour
175g unsalted butter, cold from the fridge and cubed
1 whole egg, beaten
Salt
A little cold milk
Filling
400g mixed foraged and cultivated greens – nettle tops, sorrel, dandelion, garlic mustard, wild garlic, fat hen, orache, wild chervil, wild hop shoots, broad bean tops, pea shoots, chicory, beet greens, chard, land cress, rocket
100g mixed fresh soft herbs – dill, parsley, chervil, mint, fennel, tarragon, coriander
180g shallots, leeks or spring onions, finely sliced
2 fat cloves of garlic, finely chopped
200g feta cheese
2 eggs, beaten
Olive oil
Freshly grated nutmeg
A little milk
Serves 8
Set oven to 180°C.
To make the pastry put the flour, butter and a good pinch of salt into a food processor. Process until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. With the processor running, slowly add the beaten egg and enough milk to bring the dough together. Turn off the machine, tip the dough and any remaining loose mixture onto a worktop and quickly bring it together, kneading lightly, into a ball. Wrap in greaseproof paper and refrigerate for 30 minutes to an hour.
Heat a little olive oil in a saucepan over a medium heat. Add the shallots and garlic and sweat with the lid on for 15 minutes until soft and translucent. Remove from the heat and allow to cool.
Bring a large pan of water to the boil. Blanch the greens for 1 minute, then drain and immediately refresh in cold water. Drain again and then squeeze out as much liquid as possible. Chop coarsely and put into a bowl. Chop the herbs fairly finely and add to the bowl. Add the cooled onions and garlic. Crumble the feta cheese into the bowl. Season with a little salt (the feta is salty), pepper and as much nutmeg as you like. Add the beaten eggs, reserving about a tablespoonful, then mix everything together thoroughly.
Divide the pastry into two almost equal halves. Roll out the larger half to line the bottom and sides of a 30 x 20cm rectangular metal tart tin or baking dish. Spoon in the filling and smooth out evenly ensuring that it is pressed into the corners.
Roll out the second piece of pastry to fit the top of the tart tin. Mix the reserved beaten egg with two tablespoons of milk and brush onto the edges of the pastry case. Lay the second piece of pastry on top and gently press the edges together with your fingers to seal. Trim off the excess pastry with a sharp knife.
Brush the remaining egg wash over the top of the pie. Make slashes in the top to let out steam. Put the pie onto a baking sheet and put into the oven for 30 to 40 minutes until golden brown and gently bubbling.
Serve warm.
Recipe & photographs: Huw Morgan
Published 29 May 2021
This article is dedicated to Susan Sheehan, a longstanding American client of Dan’s, who writes the most wonderful emails that frequently have us doubled up in tears. One of these sent last year started (all Susan’s capitals), “I always read DIG DELVE…naturally, it is my absolute fantasy life blog. I imagine myself calm and RELAXED looking at the row of trees you have on the horizon, at your enchanting house and garden, and whipping up a batch of ELDERFLOWER AND ROSE cordial and a RHUBARB GALETTE…all sounds so romantic, and utterly doable. Then I just have to slap myself in the face and out of the TRANCE your blog, Instagram posts and new website induce…it is all just lovely. I want to be just like you when I grow up.”
So Susan, here is a picture of my RELAXED life this week. Dan has been away for 10 days. I am working on the picture edit of the book he has written about the Tokachi Millennium Forest. There have been, and I kid you not, around 40,000 images to go through, which has required an insane amount of focus, concentration and organisation. At around 4pm each day I Facetime Julie, our American friend who is designing the book. She lives in Portland, Oregon. It is usually around 8pm before we finish looking at layouts, discussing the design and swapping images around. Then a walk for the long-suffering dog, dinner (or more likely cheese and biscuits) and then bed. Then repeat. Yesterday, I had the florist Flora Starkey here, squeezing in a winter photoshoot en route to Bristol airport, while an old university friend also arrived to stay for the weekend. Fortunately Sophie is an excellent cook since, on Saturday, I have also invited good friends and godchildren for lunch.
Trying to shoehorn cooking, writing and photographing a recipe for Dig Delve into that schedule is, unfortunately Susan, the very opposite of RELAXING and, although not every week is this extreme, it is closer to the usual state of affairs than the idyll you describe. It doesn’t always feel very doable or very grown up. Sometimes we have to cut corners and speed things up to fit everything in, so this extremely easy recipe was directly inspired by a starter we were served at our Waterloo local, The Anchor & Hope, just last week.
I used to love the crispy ‘seaweed’ that my dad would order from our local Chinese restaurant when I was a kid. I thought I was eating something very exotic, of course, when the mundane truth was that it was just shredded, deep-fried cabbage. When this plate was brought to our table last week it took me straight back to those foil takeaway containers, with the same crisp texture and delicious savoury taste. The bright and smoky harissa was the perfect foil to the dark leaves, while the cool contrast of crème fraiche, made the whole plate sing. I immediately knew that I wanted to reproduce it at home.
We have 5 beds of brassicas that keep us going through the winter, and are now close to having only two still producing. Many of the red cabbages, which were our most successful germinator last year, are still standing, as are the second sowing of curly kale. The Cavolo nero are producing less leaf, but have started to send out flower spikes in step with the Early Purple Sprouting broccoli. A new winter crop for us, which I will definitely be sowing a lot more of next September, is the turnip green Rapa Senza Testa from Real Seeds, which has stood fresh and green all winter. From one row we have only had a handful of servings of the delicious buttery greens, but they are still producing and now also going to flower.
Two weekends ago in the woods I was a little perturbed to see the tiny emergent leaves of the wild garlic, which seemed far too early and too young and few to harvest. However, already they are here in number, and so yesterday I picked a handful to flavour the harissa. I made the harissa with a variety of smoky, medium and hot dried chilies from the pantry together with some fresh red chilies from the greengrocer. Unless you like it very hot avoid the bird’s eye and scotch bonnet types. The recipe below makes more than you require. It keeps well in the fridge covered with olive oil.
To make this into more of meal it is delicious topped with a poached or fried egg.
Serves 2
200g mixed brassica flower sprouts, tender stems only
2 litres rapeseed oil
HARISSA
25g mixed dried chilies
25g fresh red chilies
1 tablespoon cumin seeds
1 tablespoon coriander seed
1 tablespoon fennel seed
A small handful of young wild garlic leaves
1 teaspoon smoked paprika
1 tablespoon tomato puree
1 teaspoon sea salt
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
100ml olive oil
Crème fraiche, to serve
First make the harissa.
Put the dried chilies in a heatproof bowl and pour over enough freshly boiled water to cover. Leave to soak for 30 minutes.
Toast the seeds in a small dry frying pan over a high heat until they become fragrant. Tip into a mortar and grind to a fine powder.
Remove the seeds and stalks from the fresh chilies and do the same with the soaked dried chilies. Put them all into a small blender with the other ingredients. Blend until a fairly rough paste is achieved.
Transfer to a small Kilner type jar.
Heat the oil in a large deep pan until smoking. Fry the flower sprouts in batches for a minute or two at the most. Be very careful as you put them into the oil as they will splutter. Keep a close eye on them, as they can take differing lengths of time to cook. When done, lift them from the oil with a slotted spoon and put into an ovenproof dish lined with kitchen paper. Put the dish in a low oven while you cook the remaining flower sprouts, transferring them each time to the oven to keep warm.
When the sprouts are all done transfer them to a hot serving plate. Toss over a couple of pinches of sea salt. Spoon over some of the harissa. Put some crème fraiche on the side of the plate. Eat immediately.
Recipe & photographs: Huw Morgan
22 February 2020
We have just returned from the Climate Strike march in Bath City centre.
Like many of us this year I have been inspired by the school children’s and young students’ worldwide strikes in the name of Fridays for Future, initiated by the example of Greta Thunberg.
Like many of us I have also felt guilt and shame at the fact that we, the older generation, have left it to the young to draw international attention to something that we have been aware of since before these young people were born.
Well, now there is no turning away. There can be no more heads buried in the sand.
During 7 minutes of seated silence this morning I looked around me at all of the people. I thought about how all these like minds and their kind around the globe will have all been trying to make small differences to counteract what we know are the causes of climate change, global pollution and environmental pillage.
I thought about the corporations, businesses and individuals that have benefitted from the destruction of our environment fully aware of the cost to the planet, and reflected on the kind of person who knowingly robs future generations of their future for short term financial profit.
I berated myself; for not engaging, for not doing enough, for consuming too much, for judging others for their apparent profligacy.
I considered how we can have an effect. What can we all do that will make the biggest change ?
The word that entered my head was simplicity. No more than you need.
I intend to make changes. I plan to be stricter with myself. I am sure I will lapse. I know there will be challenges.
It is also essential to enjoy what life offers. To know that it is not only our responsibility to effect change. We must force those that are able to create the biggest and most meaningful changes – governments, manufacturers, agriculture, industry – to face up to their responsibilities to ensure there is a future world that humans can inhabit.
The main ingredients in this dish are from the garden, prepared simply and just enough for one
100g fine green beans
1 pear, about 100g
10 cobnuts, about 20g
A small handful of young salad leaves – lettuce, mizuna, mustard greens, rocket, spinach
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 tablespoon hazelnut oil
Salt
Put a saucepan of water on to boil.
Remove the tops from the beans and boil for 3 minutes. Drain and refresh in cold water.
Shell the cobnuts and slice coarsely.
Wash and dry the salad leaves.
Put the lemon juice into a large bowl.
Quarter the pear and core. Cut each quarter lengthways into 3 pieces. Put them immediately into the bowl with the lemon juice and toss to coat.
Add the beans, salad leaves and cobnuts.
Drizzle over hazelnut oil.
Season with salt and toss everything together.
Serve.
Recipe & photographs | Huw Morgan
Published 21 September 2019
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