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When I was a child we spent every summer holiday in Wales, staying with my maternal grandparents who lived near Gowerton, the gateway to the Gower peninsula. When the weather was good we would head straight to Horton beach after breakfast, with crab paste and ham sandwiches wrapped in foil, hard-boiled eggs, bags of crisps and a tin of Nana’s homemade Welsh Cakes and pre-buttered slices of Bara Brith to see us through the day.

My grandfather was a Baptist minister, so on Sundays the day started differently. Nana was up even earlier than usual, housecoat on and getting lunch (or dinner as we called it in those days) prepared before we all headed off to chapel. All of the vegetables came from the back garden, which was given over entirely to food; potatoes, runner beans, peas, broad beans, lettuces, onions, beetroot, carrots, parsnips, swedes, cabbages and, of course, leeks. A tiny greenhouse was full to bursting with tomatoes and cucumbers. At the front of the house, the long bed running down one side of the path was filled with Dadcu’s dahlias, tied to bamboo canes in regimented rows, a cacophony of colour in every shape available, like sweeties. On the other side of the path an assortment of exotics planted into the lawn, including a phormium, a bamboo and a pampas grass, provided me and my brother with a playtime jungle.

The chapel was just on the other side of the street so, as soon as the service was over, Nana would head back to the manse to get dinner on the table for Dadcu’s return. Although a full roast dinner was not unusual on these sweltering summer Sundays, the meal I remember most clearly, and which was my favourite, was cold boiled ham with minted new potatoes and broad beans in parsley sauce. I loved the combination of the cold, salty meat, buttery potatoes and creamy beans and would ensure I got a little of each on every forkful.

Thinking back to this garden now I realise that, although Dad also grew veg in our North London garden, it was Dadcu’s kitchen garden where I first really understood the connection between plant and plate. My brother and I would be sent out to help dig potatoes, getting a rush of excitement as the first pearly tubers were heaved from the rich, dark soil, scrabbling to grab them and put them in the bucket. Pulling carrots straight from the ground I would think of Peter Rabbit, although I was sure that, unlike Mr. McGregor, the Revd. Jones did not have a gun. And often I would sit on the back step with Nana and Mum easing broad beans from their pods, marvelling at their cushioned, fleecy protection and enjoying the plonking noise they made as they fell into a plastic bowl at our feet. I never questioned that what we ate at mealtimes had been grown just yards from the dining table, nor that there was work required to get it there. I think that even then those vegetables tasted better to me because they were so fresh and I had helped get them to table.

Broad Bean ‘Karmazyn’

Although I can’t profess to be as good a vegetable gardener as my grandfather, now that we have a kitchen garden of our own, I find it hard to buy anything other than lemons, melons or peaches from the local greengrocer in the summer. The feeling of being able to assemble a meal entirely from vegetables you have grown, harvested and prepared yourself has no equal. People say that vegetable gardening is hard work, and I agree, but I don’t understand why this is seen as a negative. The time, care and nurturing that goes into producing your own food gives you a connection to it that is as nourishing as the food itself. When you understand the hard work involved in growing, tending and harvesting you stop taking food for granted and get some perspective on how much food should really cost.

So, to get back to the broad beans. We have grown two varieties this year. An unnamed heritage variety with very decorative, dark pink flowers and green beans from a late autumn sowing, and a variety named ‘Karmazyn’, with white flowers and beautiful rose pink beans, which were sown in March. Surprisingly, the later sown ‘Karmazyn’ have been the quicker to mature. Earlier in the season, as it became apparent that the plants were starting to overtake their autumn-sown neighbours, I was concerned that we were going to have a major glut when both varieties came together, but it now appears we will have a good succession from pink to the green. Close by the artichokes are producing almost faster than we can eat them. ‘Bere’, the variety we grow, is spiny with little meat at the base of the leaves, but the hearts are a good size, sweet and strongly flavoured.

Due to their synchronised production in the garden it is no surprise that broad beans and artichokes are commonly cooked together, with a variety of recipes to be found in French, Italian, Greek, Turkish and other Middle Eastern cuisines. What is common to many of them is the generous use of lemon and fresh herbs. This recipe is very loosely based on an Elizabeth David recipe for Broad Beans with Egg & Lemon from Summer Cooking, which would appear to be of Greek origin. Here the boiled vegetables are dressed with a light, creamy, herb-flecked sauce. A more refined and delicate version of my dear Nana’s beans, although just as good with a couple of slices of cold, boiled ham. 

Artichoke ‘Bere’

 

INGREDIENTS

Artichokes, 4 small per person

Broad beans, I kg in their pods to yield about 250g

Zest and juice of 1 lemon (reserve 1 tablespoon of juice for the sauce)  

 

Sauce

Butter, 25g

Garlic, a small clove, minced

Cornflour, 1 teaspoon

The yolk of a small egg, beaten

Single cream, 4 tablespoons

Tarragon or white wine vinegar, 1 teaspoon

Lemon juice, 1 tablespoon

Cooking water from the beans, about 200 ml

Fennel, 1 tablespoon finely chopped

Dill, 1 tablespoon finely chopped

Tarragon,  1 tablespoon finely chopped

Salt

 

Serves 4

 

METHOD

Bring a large pan of water to the boil. Cook the artichokes for 15-20 minutes until the point of a sharp knife can be easily inserted into the base. Drain the artichokes, run under a cold tap for a moment and then allow to drain and cool completely.

Put the lemon juice in a small bowl.  Cut the stalks from the artichokes and gently remove and discard all of the leaves until you reach the choke. Carefully scrape out the choke with the edge of a teaspoon. Tidy the hearts with a sharp knife removing any tough green bits. Rinse in a bowl of water to remove any clinging choke hairs. Dip each heart into the lemon juice as you go and put to one side in a bowl.

Bring a fresh pan of water to the boil. Throw in the beans and cook until just done. Freshly picked ones take only 2 or 3 minutes, older beans will take a little longer and may need to be slipped from their tough outer skins after cooling. When cooked remove 200ml of the cooking water and keep to one side. Then drain the beans and immediately refresh in cold water. Drain and reserve.

To make the sauce, in a pan large enough to take the artichokes and beans, melt the knob of butter until foaming. Take off the heat, put in the garlic and swirl the pan around to cook it lightly and flavour the butter. Still off the heat put in the cornflour and stir well. Add the cream and stir again. Add the egg yolk and stir once more. Then add about 150ml of the reserved cooking water, the vinegar and lemon juice. Season with salt. Put the pan back on a low heat and stir continuously until the sauce starts to thicken. Taste to ensure the cornflour is well cooked and adjust the seasoning. The sauce should be glossy and the consistency of single cream. If it is too thick loosen with some of the reserved cooking water. Put in the chopped herbs and lemon zest and stir through. Put the artichokes and broad beans into the pan and stir gently but thoroughly to ensure that all of the vegetables are well coated with the sauce.

Transfer to a serving dish, and strew some more herbs and lemon zest over the top. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Good enough to eat simply on its own or on toast, this is also a perfect side dish for poached salmon or trout, and cold roast chicken.

You can use any combination of soft green herbs that you have available. Chervil is particularly good, as are parsley and mint. For a more substantial side dish a couple of handfuls of the tiniest, boiled new potatoes make a fine addition. 

 

Recipe & photographs: Huw Morgan
Published 23 June 2018

At this time of year there are two major challenges in the kitchen garden; how to use up the remaining winter vegetables in order to clear the beds for the sowing of new crops, and how to bridge the hungry gap, as we reach the end of our stores. Most of the remaining vegetables have been sitting in the ground or in storage for the best part of five months and as the days start to lengthen and warm, we crave the flavours of spring.

The trick to bridging the gap is to combine these winter vegetables with fresher, spring ingredients; roast beetroot with fresh horseradish and watercress, or a plate of sautéed carrots with blood oranges and the last cobnuts. 

This recipe is an adaptation of one I usually make with purple sprouting broccoli. However, ours has been a disappointment this year as we sowed a couple of weeks too late and the plants failed to gain enough stature before the winter. The cavolo nero would also have done better with a fortnight more of summer. Although we’ve harvested a few good helpings of leaves we have learned not to uproot it too early, since we have found it has a second season and has been shooting furiously for the past few weeks as it readies itself to flower. The young cavolo shoots are best before all the energy goes into the flower so pick when you see the first buds to retain the velvety texture of the young growth. At the end of winter it has has a mineral richness, which is a good partner to the wild garlic that is now showing itself down by the stream. 

Gnocchi are quick and easy to make yourself and a great way to use up the last of the potatoes. It is best to use a floury variety or the gnocchi will be gluey, but I made do with ‘Roseval’, the last of our stored  potatoes, which is somewhat waxy. As long as you rice the potatoes while piping hot they still lose a lot of their moisture. 

Served with a sharply dressed salad of bitter leaves this makes a perfect spring lunch.

INGREDIENTS
GNOCCHI

500g potatoes, preferably a floury variety like Desirée 

1 large or 2 small organic egg yolks

75g Tipo 00 pasta flour

50g semolina

35g (a small handful) wild garlic leaves, finely chopped

Salt

 

TO SERVE

250g ricotta

100g cavolo nero shoots or purple sprouting broccoli  

Olive oil

Pecorino cheese, finely grated

Serves 4 or 6 as a starter

METHOD

To make the gnocchi cook the potatoes in their skins in a large pan of boiling water. Drain and peel them while still hot. Protect your hand with a tea towel or oven glove. Immediately put them through a potato ricer or mouli into a large mixing bowl. Add the egg yolk, flour, semolina, wild garlic and salt and fold through with a metal spoon until well combined. Using very light movements use your hands to quickly bring the dough together into a ball. Do not knead it or the gnocchi will be heavy.

Divide the dough into four. On a floured worktop roll the first quarter into a sausage a little thicker than your index finger, then cut into 2cm pieces with a sharp knife. Take each piece and, pushing away from you, roll them on the back of a fork to create ridges which will hold some of the sauce. Place them on a floured tray. Repeat with all of the dough.

Bring two large pans of generously salted water to the boil. In the first one cook the gnocchi in batches. They are done when they float to the surface. Remove with a slotted spoon and drain them on a clean tea towel while you cook the rest. 

As you cook the last batch of gnocchi put the cavolo nero shoots in the other pan of boiling water for two minutes. They should retain some bite. Drain, refresh in cold water and drain again. If using purple sprouting broccoli remove the small florets from the larger stems and cut any larger florets in half or quarters.

Put the gnocchi and cavolo nero shoots into a bowl. Add the ricotta in spoonfuls. Season with salt, ground pepper and a little olive oil. Stir gently to coat adding a little reserved cooking water to loosen if necessary. 

Divide the gnocchi between hot plates. Drizzle with olive oil and finish with grated pecorino.

Recipe & Photography: Huw Morgan

We always grow too many pumpkins. Such has been the luxury of having the space to do so. They have found themselves in a different position every year to give them the opportunity to reach. In the first summer they were in the virgin ground where we had turned field over to garden and the flush of weeds that had been disturbed by the change were kept in check by their coverage. The next year they were out in front of the house, each plant perched on a barrowload of muck on the banks. But it was too exposed there, we had a wet summer and learned their limits, for they made not much more than leaf. The disappointment of not having them in storage lasted the whole winter. Consequently, as the best way to learn is by your mistakes, I have taken their needs more seriously.

Six summers’ worth of trial, error and experimentation have taught us the good producers, the best keepers and those that under-produce in relation to their enormous appetite for space. A Californian friend and gardener, who grows the giant pumpkins you only find in the country where everything is bigger, was amazed that I was giving my plants so little room to grow. His pumpkin patch is the size of my whole garden, so he was not surprised that I hadn’t done better in terms of size and yield. A big plant with a rangy nature can easily take over a plot of nine or more square metres to provide the optimum ratio of leaf to fruit and, now that I have started planting up the garden, space for pumpkins is becoming more limited. So next year’s selection is due an edit. The giants will be separated from those that are happy with less space and the neater, more economical growers will have a bed to themselves in the kitchen garden with plenty of muck and sunshine. The big growers will be given the top of this year’s compost heap so that they can enjoy a romp and tumble over the edges unencumbered. 

‘Musquée de Provence’

Of the big growers that produce more leaf than fruit, we will not be growing ‘Musquée de Provence’ again, after three years of trying. The deep-green, lobed fruit, though handsome, are supposed to ripen to a rich tan colour, but even on our south-facing slopes we just don’t have enough sun to do so. Consequently, the skin doesn’t cure fully and they have been poor keepers. Our average of one fruit per plant is also not worth the investment of space. Although a single pumpkin can easily feed twelve, there are only so many times you require a pumpkin that large.

‘Rouge Vif d’Étampes’

‘Crown Prince’

We have had a similar experience this year with ‘Rouge Vif d’Étampes’, another French variety with large fruits of a strong red-orange. It also appears to need more heat to crop heavily and ripen fully. These two have been the first to be eaten, as we try and keep pace with the rot. All pumpkins and squash like heat and good living and our cool, damp climate sorts out those that are clearly missing the Americas. In contrast, ‘Crown Prince’ has been more adaptable here and one of the best croppers for a plant that needs space. It is also an excellent keeper. The saffron flesh is firm and sweet while the thick, grey-green skin means that they can keep into March in a cool, frost-free shed.

The varieties with dry, firm flesh are better for storing than the wetter ones, which I presume is due to their higher sugar content. We also prefer them for eating. Of the smaller growing varieties we have found the Japanese pumpkins to be the most consistent, with the highest yield for their economical growth and the most delicious flesh. They produce fruit of a moderate size, which is far more convenient to eat than opening up a Cinderella-sized pumpkin that feeds a horde and then sits on the side, the remainder unused, making you feel guilty.

‘Uchiki Kuri’

Of the Japanese varieties ‘Uchiki Kuri’, or the red onion squash, is the one you see most often in Japan and the one I will eat on an autumn visit to Hokkaido where it is grown extensively.  It is a moderate grower, with smallish foliage and an even and reliable yield, with each plant producing 8 or more 1-2kg pumpkins. The deep orange teardrop-shaped fruit are small enough to provide for one family meal and, with a good balance of flesh to seed, there is little waste. Kuri means chestnut in Japanese, and the flavour and texture of this and the other kuri varieties explains why. They are excellent baked, with a rich, floury texture that also makes superlative mash and soup with plenty of body.

‘Cha-cha’

Kabocha is the Japanese word for pumpkin, derived from the corruption of the Portugese name for them, Cambodia abóbora, since they were brought to Japan from Cambodia by the Portugese in the 16th century. This year we grew ‘Cha-cha’, which closely resembles ‘Blue Kuri’, a Japanese kabocha variety we have previously had success with. It has also proven to be very good. Slightly larger than ‘Uchiki Kuri’ the flesh is also dry, rich and sweet, and the thin skin is edible when roasted.

‘Black Futsu’

‘Black Futsu’, another Japanese variety with sweet, nutty flesh, is of a similar size. The fruits are heavily ribbed and dark, black-green when picked, quickly developing a heavy grey bloom, beneath which they ripen to a tawny orange. Though beautiful to look at, the ribbing does mean they are more work to cut and peel, but it is a small hardship in terms of yield and substance.

‘Delicata’

Another heavy cropper, although not such a good keeper, is ‘Delicata’, also known as the sweet potato squash due to it’s mild, sweet flesh which is moister than the varieties described above. Although kept and eaten as a winter squash ‘Delicata’ is of the summer squash species with a very thin skin (hence its name) and so has a propensity to soften quickly in storage. However, it needs no peeling as the skin is edible, so it has its uses in the earlier part of the season. The beauty of this very decorative variety is its high yield of long, cylindrical fruits (perfect for stuffing)  in a range of manageable sizes, some the perfect size for one, which makes it a very practical choice.

Although in the past I have let the first frost strip the summer foliage before harvesting, it is best to remove it by hand in September when the plants have done their growing and there is a little heat left in the sun to do a final ripening. It is best to pick the fruits before they get frosted or they don’t keep well, and care must be taken not to damage the hard, waxy skin which keeps them airtight through the winter. The stalks should be left intact for the same reason, as any wound quickly leads to rot.

Left in a warm, sunny place for a couple of weeks after picking the carbohydrates in the flesh turn to sugar and the skin hardens. The colour also changes, but this continues to develop in storage. When ripe they should be stored in a shed or outhouse on wire racks or a bed of straw to allow air to circulate beneath them. For now, I have them on old palettes in an airy barn, but when it gets colder they will be put into perforated plastic plant trays and moved to the frost-free tool shed. 

We are gradually making our way through this year’s crop with roast, mash, soup and finally preserves, before the rot sets in. It nearly always does and, although the decay has its own beauty, I’d rather not waste a summer of effort. Both ours and the pumpkins’. 

Words: Dan Pearson / Photographs: Huw Morgan

Artichokes are one of the pre-eminent Italian ingredients and so it makes sense to look to Italy for ways in which to prepare them. This recipe is from the River Café Cook Book Green which, alongside Jane Grigson’s Vegetable Book, is the cook book I turn to most frequently when looking for inspiration for good simple vegetable recipes.

Recipes for artichoke are legion, but they usually follow one of a number of tried and tested treatments; boiled and eaten with vinaigrette or another sauce such as bagna cauda, braised with herbs in stock or oil (sometimes with a stuffing), deep-fried, roasted or chargrilled or, more unusually, sliced very thinly and eaten raw as a salad vegetable.

This recipe attracted my attention as the artichoke hearts are used raw to make a pesto-like sauce for pasta. The pesto itself is a pale beige colour and so this is not necessarily the most photogenic of platefuls, but it is the delicate flavour of the artichokes that is so readily captured; their slightly resinous and nutty flavour foregrounded by this simple treatment. The sauce is deliciously creamy and rich, yet it has a completely vegetal freshness. I have halved the number of garlic cloves called for in the original recipe as, to my taste, they overwhelm the subtlety of the artichokes.

At this time of the year I trim the stalks and bases from all the artichokes, even the smallest, as these parts become increasingly fibrous towards the end of the season. If you make this earlier in the season with young artichokes it is possible to use the first 5cm of the stalk too, once the fibrous outer layer has been peeled away.

The pesto can also be used like a tapenade on bruschetta or crostini topped with some shaved Parmesan or Pecorino, or a slice of Parma or San Daniele ham. To use it in this way prepare as for the sauce below, but allow the pesto to cool after adding the butter.

Serves 6

Ingredients

400g spaghetti Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper Freshly grated Parmesan

ARTICHOKE PESTO 6 small globe artichokes 2 lemons 100g pine kernels or blanched almonds 2 cloves garlic 250ml milk 2 handfuls flat leaf parsley 150g Parmesan, freshly grated 150ml olive oil 75g unsalted butter

Method

The globe artichokes (Cynara cardunculus Scolymus Group) were some of the first plants to go into the new kitchen garden. They are a luxury vegetable, taking far more space than they provide reward for and shading their neighbours if, indeed, there is room left in their shadow. Nevertheless, I gave them a bed to themselves, in prime position and against the radiated heat of the newly built wall.

They have grown in spectacular fashion – which is the greater part of the reason for having them – doubling and trebling their bulk in the course of the first summer and continuing onward to take all the space which was offered them. Cold weather in combination with winter wet is their nemesis but, since they were planted, both winters have been mild and they have only had a brief down time in the darkest months when they retreat to a core cluster of leaves.

Their aluminium foliage is wonderful in its ascendancy and as good as acanthus in its architecture. As soon as the weather warms in March it reaches from the clump, each leaf larger and more dramatic than the last, scrolling and bulking steadily until you see that, some time in May, the parent foliage has gathered enough energy for the flower spikes. These push proud of the forest of leaves, but it is whilst the heads are small that you need to curtail their reach and harvest the artichokes.

We grow a variety called ‘Bere’, which Paul Barney of Edulis Nursery offers, and is the selection his father found growing in the walled garden there in the 1950’s. It is spinier than some of the named varieties, but Paul says it is the best tasting of them all. Indeed, it is a wonderful plant if you pick the heads whilst they are still young and before they are fully armoured. The best and meatiest parts are still soft when the leaf spines are forming, but leave them to harden and fulfil their thistly leanings and you end up with an impossibly fibrous mouthful.

Cynara cardunculus Scolymus Group ‘Bere’

I plan to split my clumps in the spring, when growth is on the move and the crowns are manageable. Being mediterranean, they start life as soon as there is warmth and moisture in combination but, being sensitive to the cold, you have better chances in spring than if you move them at end of the season. It is a two-man job to lift the clumps and then prise a division, with root, from the clump. The divisions or ‘starts’ will be planted in the new herb garden, where they will provide ornamental architectural structure amongst the herbs.

I have six plants now, far too many of the same variety, so the plan is to thin the ‘Bere’ to three and equal it with the same number of purple-tinged ‘Romanesco’ to make up the half dozen. ‘Romanesco’ is an altogether friendlier plant without spines, and the scales that form the thistle head are soft and can easily be harvested and prepared without the need for gloves.

Each plant will be spaced a metre apart and inter-planted with stands of bronze fennel, which will cover for the artichokes’ collapse, which happens in high summer once all their energy has gone into flower production. At this point, once the old leaves start to fail revealing bare ankles, it is best to cut the lot to the ground and let the foliage regenerate. It will be back for the autumn, whilst the fennel covers during the recovery period.

In Italy the cardoon is also prized in the early spring for its edible leaves. The midribs, which look like celery, are stripped of the leaves and fibres, and then blanched and buttered, or baked in a gratin. You need rhubarb amounts of room for such a short season vegetable, but if you do have a spare corner in sunshine they are sure to provide you with drama at the very least.

I first grew the ornamental cardoon (Cynara cardunculus) as a border plant at Home Farm. Innocent looking divisions arrived from Beth Chatto, as beautifully wrapped in damp newspaper as they are described in her catalogue. They were planted in an ambitious group of three on a sunny slope and took their position, rearing up in a mound of metallic foliage. Tapering in August to a magnificent pinnacle of branching flower, the plants reach about three metres in height, and need staking if they are not to topple once the flowers break colour. Look up and you see bees staggering about drunk on the fist-wide pools of neon violet filaments.

The butterflies love them too, but the giant needs to be felled if it is not to leave you with a gaping hole once the collapse starts to happen. At Home Farm I planted it within a corral of late summer perennials, spaced at a sensible distance so that they can swallow the hole whilst it regenerates. Asters and rudbeckia will do the job, but you have to give the cardoon space in spring as it is an early season riser.

Cynara cardunculus ‘Dwarf Form’ with Centranthus lecoqii

Fergus Garret pointed me to a dwarf form that they have in the garden at Great Dixter and I grow it here against the barn. I am not usually a fan of plants selected for dwarfism, but this cardoon makes for a better-behaved plant. It is distilled in all it’s parts, and more evil to the touch, the undersides of every leaf defended with an armoury of needle-sharp spines. Its foliage is as beautiful, possibly more finely divided, and certainly more compact. It tops out at about a metre and so avoids the need for staking. In the border where I grow it with Centranthus lecoqii and Romneya coulteri it has taken it’s territory, but the repercussions are altogether more manageable, and I still feel I have the drama I am looking for.

Cynara cardunculus ‘Dwarf Form’

Words: Dan Pearson / Photographs: Huw Morgan

When we arrived here the flat ground was literally no more than a strip in front of the outbuildings. We perched a table and chairs there to make the most of not being on the angle. The floor of the boot room and those of the outhouses, the barns and levels of the farmyards were a patchwork of concrete, poured in mismatched batches and at a rake with the slope. The acuteness of the land had been diminished to create these spaces, but only enough to ease the grade. I didn’t know until we set out to create a new level why the farmer before us had minimised his excavations. Cut into the land and you quickly find the spring line.

Autumn 2012

Two summers in it was clear that we needed a dedicated garden for fruit and vegetables. They were being challenged for space in the trial garden and we had become tired of negotiating the slopes for the detailed work that is part of growing your own. Sowing, thinning, weeding and harvesting on a slope were all that much harder with one leg shorter than the other and tools and buckets balanced. Beyond the tin barns the newly planted orchard was beginning to show, and the barns were the natural anchor point for a productive garden. We planned to grow figs and espaliered pears against the south facing breeze block walls of the barns and, on newly flat ground, soft fruit and vegetables, both annual and perennial.

October 2012

The first step in the process was made in October 2012 with the installation of a pair of monolithic 18th century granite troughs. I had three in total, brought all way from Yorkshire, but originally from eastern Europe where they had been used for tanning leather. They were magnificent things and I planned a pair as a division between the house and the long view west to the new kitchen garden. It was a Herculean task to get them in place. Each weighed four and a half tonnes and, in combination with the fifteen tonne fork-lift used to move them, the track collapsed and the concrete farmyard literally buckled under their weight. In the process we lost the drains from the house as the fork-lift crushed them, but my landscaper who was driving never flinched as the trough tilted the machine at a perilous angle. We threw rubble into the ruts and started again and, though it took all day to inch them to where I wanted them, they eventually reached their positions.

October 2012

I wanted the troughs to sit as an offset pair, running across the spine of the new level that links the house with the barns. Here they would act as a gateway to the vegetable garden, while also screening it from the house and defining the space. Their bold outline would echo the straight line of trees on the distant horizon. One would be filled with rainwater from the roofs for hand-watering, the other would eventually be fed by the disused hydraulic ram pump down by the brook in a long-term plan to refurbish it. When you passed between them, an orderly set of beds would run like ribs north south off the east, west axis. The orientation of the beds would allow for the best and most even light for each of the crops.

September 2013

Nearly a year later in the last week of August and riding good weather for the best part of three weeks, we started the land-forming to create the garden beyond the troughs.  The digger scraped back the slope to make a spine of flat land between the house and the barns, while another cut made to level a sloping track in the field above the house provided the subsoil to make up the level from the barns. A breeze block wall was made to hold the land to the upper side of the spine, and provided the garden with a wall for espaliered pears and shelter for vegetables that would like the radiant heat – an asparagus bed, globe artichokes, courgettes and climbing beans. Breeze block felt like the right material to use as it sat well with the agricultural aesthetic in which things had been built in the past.

September 2013

The topsoil, and the turf that came with it, were harvested and piled in the field below the new garden. It was stacked wider than it was high at 4’ or so, because if you stack soil higher the soil bacteria at the bottom of the pile get smothered and the soil becomes infertile. The sod rotted down to add organic matter, as the pile had to stay where it was until the following summer for, in mid-September, the rains came and made the site unworkable.

The scraping revealed the rubbly limestone brash that was perfect for making up the levels, but the brash sat on clay and, as soon as the rains came, a number of springs that had been moving through the slopes unseen, began running over the surface. As luck would have it, we had poured the footings for the wall by this point, but the workmen suffered, moving through the mud in slow motion to build the wall and then constructing a series of steel-edged beds. Mud stopped play not long after but, as soon as the weather was dry enough the following spring, the beds were soiled up to the depth of a generous spit. 

September 2013

Spring 2014

I graded the beds, starting with narrow metre wide beds at the windward westerly end of the garden. These were planted with the woody currants, gooseberries and raspberries to provide some wind protection. All the paths between the beds are a metre twenty wide to allow plenty of room for a barrow and growth to encroach from either side. The beds scale up in size to one and a half metres and then two metres wide, but no more, so that it is easy to work the beds from either side without having to tread on the soil more than necessary. That first summer we left the majority of the beds fallow, removing perennial weeds and mulching them with manure, which we dug in over the winter. We did plant a couple of the beds with brassicas and winter sown broad beans to make us feel like we were moving in the right direction.

Last year was our first summer growing in this new space and we are learning again with a new position and the challenges that come with it. Our knees and backs are certainly better for the flat ground – we can move about freely without having to watch our step – but we are finding that some crops are missing the protection afforded by the hedge in the old garden. We are working on the soil with our own compost this year and talking about making a couple of the beds no dig next year. But for now, the summer and whatever it will teach us, lies in waiting.

Spring 2016

Words: Dan Pearson / Photographs: Dan Pearson & Huw Morgan

The green sauce in this recipe is not the well known mediterranean salsa verde, but Grüne Sosse, a speciality of Frankfurt introduced to me by our friend Ariane, a native of the city, and a neighbour in Bonnington Square for many years. It is traditionally served with asparagus of the forced white variety, which is particularly prized in Germany, where Spargelfesten are held in its honour every spring. Although green sauce made from a variety of herbs can be found in German restaurants all year round, it is only in early spring that the truly authentic sauce can be made, when the herbs required are coming into their prime and the paper packages of them required to make it are found in farmer’s markets, together with the white asparagus which it traditionally accompanies.

Genuine Grüne Sosse requires seven specific herbs; sorrel, chervil, chives, parsley, salad burnet, cress and borage. However, it is seldom that any of us have access to all of these herbs, and so substitutions can be made. The crucial thing is to ensure a good balance of flavours, with the requisite amount of sourness, freshness, bitterness and spice. There is no hard and fast rule about how much of each herb to use, but a rule of thumb is that no one herb should make up more than 30% of the bulk. When possible I try to get a fairly even balance between all of them, but you should adjust to taste and to what is available.

From left to right: borage, wild chervil or cow parsley, salad burnet, wild onion, watercress, sorrel, parsley

Since it is so plentiful in our fields I use wild sorrel (Rumex acetosa), which I suspect is what the authentic recipe calls for, however you can replace this with the more usually grown French or garden sorrel (Rumex scutatus). If neither of these are available  you could use young chard or spinach leaves and an extra squeeze or two of lemon juice.

When it is available I use wild chervil instead of cultivated. Otherwise known as cow parsley (Anthriscus sylvestris), it is perfect to pick right now, and can be substituted for garden chervil (Anthriscus cerefolium) in salads or sauces for chicken and fish. If you are an inexperienced forager you must be extremely careful not to mistake poisonous hemlock for cow parsley. Use a good field identification guide (Miles Irving’s The Forager Handbook and Roger Phillips’ Wild Food are invaluable) and, if in doubt, do not pick it.

In place of chives I use wild onion (Allium vineale) from the fields, being careful to pick only the youngest quills, as the older ones are tough. The cress can be replaced with watercress, rocket or even nasturtium leaves, to provide the peppery note. And, from the hedgerows, I have also used the leaves of garlic mustard (Alliaria petiolata), young dandelion leaves and even nettle tops, when the other herbs are hard to come by. 

The salad burnet and borage both impart a distinctive cucumber flavour which it is not possible to replicate with other herbs and which is particular to this sauce. When unavailable I have used peeled and finely grated cucumber in their place. Salt it and squeeze the juice from it before incorporating, to prevent it diluting or curdling the sauce.

It is also possible to make up the quantities with more easily available herbs such as dill, fennel, tarragon or mint but, with their pronounced flavours, these should all be used in moderation or they will overwhelm the flavour. 

This sauce is also traditionally served with boiled new potatoes and halved hard boiled eggs, or as an accompaniment to boiled beef or poached fish.

Clockwise from top left: salad burnet, watercress, sorrel, parsley, wild onion, borage, wild chervil
Ingredients
150g mixed green herbs
250g sour cream or quark
125g yogurt
2 hard-boiled eggs
3 tablespoons lemon juice
sea salt 
7-8 spears of asparagus per person

Serves 4

Method
Wash the herbs. Put them in a salad spinner and then dry on a tea towel or paper towel. 
Remove the leaves from the stems.
Discard the stems. 

Peel the eggs and put the yolks in a mixing bowl. Coarsely chop the whites and reserve. To the egg yolks add the lemon juice, 2/3 of the herbs, 1/4 teaspoon salt and the yogurt . Liquidise using a hand blender. 

Stir the sour cream into the mixture. Add the coarsely chopped egg white. Finally add the remaining finely chopped herbs.

Season with more salt and lemon juice to taste. 

If possible allow the sauce to rest in the fridge for an hour or so for the flavours to combine. Allow to come back to room temperature before using.

Gently bend the asparagus spears until they snap. Trim the broken ends. If necessary finely peel the lower sections of the stalks of the outer fibrous layer.

Put water to a depth of 2cm into a lidded sauté pan that is wide enough to take the asparagus in a more or less single layer. Bring to the boil. Put in the asparagus and simmer until tender. For thicker or older spears this may take as long as 5-6 minutes. Fine spears and those just picked will take far less, 2-3 minutes at most. Take the asparagus from the water and spread out on a paper towel on a plate to drain and cool quickly.

Arrange the warm asparagus on plates. Spoon over some of the sauce. Decorate with reserved herb leaves. Eat with fingers.

Recipe and photographs: Huw Morgan

Although asparagus only became prized as a culinary vegetable in Britain in the 17th century it was grown, and indeed prized, by the ancients as a medicinal herb and vegetable. The Romans even froze it in the High Alps, with the Emperor Augustus creating the Asparagus Fleet to take the freshly pulled spears to be buried in the snow for later.

The tips, which are the sweetest part and known as the love tips or ‘points d’amour’, are always best when eaten fresh and, though we think nothing of seeing it on the supermarket shelves as an import, there is nothing like eating it in season, right there and then, when the energy of the new season is captured in young spears.

So it is a good feeling to have planted an asparagus bed, as they represent longevity and permanence. Plant one and it will take two to three years to yield, but established crowns can easily crop for a couple of decades if you give them the care they need; namely good drainage, plenty of sunshine and little competition at the root. The roots, which radiate out from a crown in spidery fashion, are shallow, and hoeing is not advisable, so an asparagus bed is also a commitment to hand weeding. You will have to work for your reward.

“…established crowns can easily crop for a couple of decades if you give them the care they need…”

Being a coastal plant, Asparagus officinalis is tolerant of salt, indeed tradition has it that the beds be salted to keep weeds at bay. However, I do not. In truth my bed is far from text book perfect. I have not raised it above the surrounding ground like the carefully drawn diagrams in the books, and the Californian poppies and Shirley poppies have seeded into the open, weed-free ground to become the, admittedly attractive, weeds in the patch.

I winkle the Eschscholzia out where they seed too close to the crowns, but leave a handful, as they like the same conditions and sit brightly beneath the fronds once the asparagus is allowed to grow out after cropping. The few plants that are female pepper themselves with scarlet, pea-sized fruits, which hang in suspension like beads caught in a net as the fronds fade to butter-yellow later in the season. It is a fine but unadvisable association, if playing things by the book is your thing.

Californian poppies provide interest beneath the asparagus ferns later in the season

Our first asparagus bed was planted four years ago in the original mixed vegetable and trial garden. The crowns, which are best planted bare-root in the spring, arrived by post and were carefully planted in late April. The soil was manured the previous summer and the crowns laid out on an 18” grid. The books advise two feet between rows, but our slopes are sunny and the ground hearty, so I took the risk with a closer planting.

I opened a trench and fashioned a little mound of soil for each plant to allow the roots to radiate out, down and away from the crown. The trench was then backfilled with the crown just below ground level and marked with a cane to protect the position of the first emerging spears. Over the first year the crowns gather in strength, each frond outreaching the next so that, by the end of the first summer, they are already showing their potential. It is essential to wait before cropping to allow the plants to build up their reserves. I cropped them for the first time last year, but took only a few spears to avoid weakening them. This year, there will be no need to hold back.

Asparagus officinalis ‘Connover’s Colossal’

I bought two varieties initially, both male, so I am not sure how I have females in the mix, but no matter. Male plants are more productive and so, according to the rules, the berrying females should be weeded out. ‘Connover’s Colossal’, an old 19th century variety, is a reliably strong cultivar, but ‘Stewart’s Purple’ has been disappointing. It is supposed to be higher yielding than many of the green varieties, but you only really know and understand what a plant’s habits are when you grow it for yourself and, for me, ‘Stewart’s Purple’ doesn’t cut the mustard.

A third of the plants have failed and, although the spears are a beautiful inky purple colour and deliciously sweet, even the plants that have survived have cropped very erratically. They require far too much space to waste on such a meagre harvest. Anthocyanins, which give vegetables and fruit their purple colouring, are valued as antioxidants, but I wouldn’t grow this variety again other than to possibly work it into the herb garden as an ornamental. Here, with moody fronds rising up prettily above chives and purple sage, occasional spears could be harvested and thinly sliced raw into salads.

Asparagus officinalis ‘Stewart’s Purple’

There is an associated guilt attached to my original asparagus bed, which comes from the knowledge that the bed could never have been long-term. I always knew the test garden would give way to a new ornamental garden and, over the last couple of years, I have been relocating the vegetable garden to the other side of the house. The diggers are coming in shortly to shape the land for the new garden, but the asparagus bed will remain for one more year, like a boat anchored off shore.

Last spring I planted an F1 variety called ‘Gijnlim’ in the new vegetable garden to pave the way for the hand over from the old bed to the new. Having been selected for its hybrid vigour ‘Gijnlim’ is said to crop within a year, but I am still leaving it this year to build up reserves, mulching the bed with home-made compost before the spears emerge. It won’t be easy to cut my old bed adrift when I have to later in the autumn, but for now we are enjoying the luxury of eating the spears absolutely in season, when the garden is beginning to rush with energy.

“It won’t be easy to cut my old bed adrift when I have to later in the autumn….”

When a bed is up and moving in the spring, you can visit it daily for three weeks or so of harvesting. A sharp knife inserted carefully at the base of a spear and just below ground level is the best way to pick what you need, but be careful not to damage the crown. See it as a surgical exercise and, for best and sweetest results, pick just before you eat. Steam and serve al dente and every mouthful will be worth the commitment.

If you read up about asparagus yields to try and arrive at an ideal number of plants for a bed that suits your needs you get wildly differing advice. An American website says that 24 plants produce enough for a family of four. Big portions I’m guessing, but advice closer to home advises ten to twenty plants for the same number of people. We have sixteen crowns in the new bed and hope that this will be plentiful enough to pick what we need without providing a guilt-inducing glut. I’d have liked for there to be two varieties, so that we have an early cropper and a late, but we have had to draw the line somewhere. There is only so much ground that can be committed to perennial vegetables, even one as delectable as sparrow-grass.

Words: Dan Pearson / Photographs: Huw Morgan

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