Natures bounty..

Its summer time and the vegetable garden is in full swing. Its been a bit of a hard year with the terrible cold weather and rain/floods we had in April , May and June but with some sunshine in July things started to look up.

We have had strawberries, raspberries, potatoes, blueberries, broadbeans, green beans, a few peas so far and more is coming -

 blue berries

 

raspberries

The tomatoes have started going red now and the florence fennel looks wonderful too. Some new additions to our garden are a mini kiwi fruit - looking good so far , fruits should be ready in October.

Mini kiwi fruits

And as if we didnt have enough lovely vegetables - we managed to get a crate of beautiful vegetables from the local nursery's farm shop.

What a treat - made some soup , froze some of it , eaten most of it and even tried my hand at making piccallilli .

recipe  :-

http://www.waitrose.com/home/recipes/recipe_directory/p/piccalilli.html

Piccalilli

Traditionally, all the vegetables in a piccalilli are salted, but I find the flavours are punchy enough, so I skip this stage. Substitute courgette for the cucumber and runner beans for French beans if you wish. It’s delicious with ham, cold chicken, Cheddar or the game terrine.

Preparation time:

30 minutes

Cooking time:

25 minutes to 30 minutes

Total time:

55 minutes to 1 hour 

Makes:

 1.7kg

Ingredients

• 700ml Malt vinegar
• 2 tbsp Coriander seeds
• 500g Cauliflower, broken into 3cm florets
• 2 Onions, peeled and chopped
• 3 tbsp English mustard powder
• 3 tbsp Plain flour
• 1 tbsp Turmeric
• 2 tsp Ground ginger
• 150ml Cider vinegar
• 100g French beans, trimmed and cut into 1cm slices
• ½ Cucumber, quartered lengthways and cut into 1cm slices
• 2 Garlic cloves, peeled and sliced
• 200g Granulated sugar

Method

1. Place the malt vinegar and coriander seeds in a large preserving pan and bring to a boil. Add the cauliflower and onion and simmer for 5 minutes until slightly softened but still crunchy. Meanwhile, put the mustard, flour, turmeric and ginger in a small bowl and gradually whisk in the cider vinegar until smooth. Add the remaining vegetables, garlic and sugar to the pan and stir over the heat for 2–3 minutes until the sugar has dissolved. Drain over a large bowl to collect the vinegar.
2. Put the mustard mixture in the pan and bring to the boil. Gradually add the drained malt vinegar and simmer for 10 minutes, until thick enough to coat the back of the spoon. Add the drained vegetables and take off the heat. Spoon into sterilised jars – if they’re not kilner jars, cover them with plastic discs and elastic bands rather than metal lids, which can sometimes react with the vinegar.  
   
   
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I used courgettes instead of cucumbers and white vinegar instead of malt vinegar. It has to mature for a little bit ( 2 weeks minimum I believe ) and should keep for up to a year.

We have feasted on wonderful food this week and we feel very spoilt - I love it !